Gabčík held his rifle high above his head with both arms, trying not to stumble on the uneven, shifting surface of the seabed, bending forward to allow for the 40lb pack full of rocks that was strapped to his back. He advanced as quickly as the buffeting of the ocean would allow.
A few more steps and he was pulling himself free from the grip of the water, which tugged at his soaking fatigues, weighing him down, and he became instantly aware of the harsh cries of the two British NCOs waiting on the shingle.
‘Move yourselves! Move yourselves!!’
‘Get out of there now! This is not a fuckin’ tea dance!’
Both men were with the Special Operations Executive and, with the sadistic enthusiasm to which Gabčík had become accustomed, they were hell bent on turning him into a commando. As soon as he was free from the surf, he sprinted across the cove in a stumbling run, feet sinking into the shingle, running like a child trapped in a bad dream who cannot get away fast enough. His lungs heaved under the exertion and the breath caught in his throat, before it was expelled in little clouds of vapour that were immediately left behind him as he powered forward.
Now he was almost there, he could make out the giant shadow of the cliff face in front of him, even though his head was down to avoid the pretend bullets of an imaginary machine gun they were assured was in the cliff tops.
‘Diggah! Diggah! Diggah!’ screamed the Glaswegian corporal. ‘Yer fuckin’ deed Kubiš!! Unless you get yer bastad heed doon!!’
Like Gabčík, Jan Kubiš would barely have understood a word from the Scotsman’s mouth but he would have easily picked up the meaning. That’s what it was like here; a few half comprehended phrases of command were all they had to cling to. That and a desperate yearning to one day return to their homeland to fight the Germans who occupied it.
Till then their world was a completely foreign place. These defeated Czech soldiers awoke each morning in a Scottish barrack block in Mallaig, to be ordered around by officers, they could just about understand. As for the NCOs, they were a grim bunch of hard soldiers, with varied and unusual communication skills. Everything was barked or yelled in a guttural holler. That was fine, it was the same the world over and Gabčík was a six year veteran of the Czech army, when it had an army, but the few words of English he and his comrades picked up were torn and tortured beyond understanding by these career soldiers. The NCOs were cursing now as some of the men made a slow and unsteady progress across the beach.
‘What’s wrong with you lot? Are you all pissed or something? Gabčík! You short-arsed little runt! All you’ve managed to prove is your legs are not long enough to get you where you need to be!’
With these inspiring words of encouragement ringing in his ears, Gabčík finally reached the cliff face at a full sprint, almost slamming into it. As always, he did not let up until he was at the very end of his task.
He leant against the rock gasping for breath, a few of the quicker, fitter men having arrived at roughly the same time. Gabčík was pleased that, at twenty-nine, he was among the first there, could still hold his own. His short frame was stocky and powerful, making him capable of feats of strength that would defeat larger men. Gabčík had a volatile temper that could cause embarrassment in civilian life but served him well during a hail of bullets or shelling. And he had already fought, and killed, Germans.
He had beaten Kubiš there by a yard and felt no less respectful of the slightly younger man for it. Jan Kubiš was still a fine soldier and theirs a good friendship, forged under the most maddening of circumstances. As the NCOs got the men together he noticed Kubiš, like him, was quickly recovering.
‘That woken you up?’ asked Gabčík.
Kubiš was breathless. ‘There’s nothing like a nice walk along the beach.’
The corporal immediately rounded on him. ‘Save your breath, you’re gonna need it.’
The Scottish corporal was away again. This time it was an unrelenting rant at their inability to cover the yards of beach-head within the desired time; a limit Gabčík was savvy enough to assume would always be a few seconds quicker than their fastest man, such was training, such was the army.
‘Now you are going to redeem yourselves with a nice gentle climb!’
The NCO cajoled the men into one final effort, an eighty-foot vertical ascent of a sheer rock face.
‘Make it look good or we will throw you off this course. You can go and dig potatoes with the Land Army girls. I’ve seen a couple of them up close and they are a fucking sight scarier than you lot. Now move it!’
And so Gabčík climbed, for he knew it was his only way back into the war. With three and a half thousand other Czechs, Jan and Josef had endured a perilous sea journey to England. The Czech Brigade based itself at Leamington Spa and the two veterans had experienced the boredom of army camp life there with no imminent prospect of a return to action. After a year of frustrated inactivity, the request had gone out for volunteers to join the SOE. Neither man hesitated and they were on the move again; to Mallaig and the six week commando course that was more than two thirds through by the time Gabčík found himself stranded half way up the cliff face.
He clung perilously to the rock; red face pressed against the stone, hissing profanities to himself in Czech. He was about to fail his assignment and would likely be thrown off the course as well, and it was all down to his own stupidity. Had he listened to the instructor when he urged them all to use proper footholds and not just grip the rope with their hands like they always did? The cliff face was too high for that. Gabčík’s biceps burned and the small of his back throbbed with the effort required just to stay still. He tightened his grip round the length of grey, wet rope that hung from the upper most point of the crag and rubbed the skin from the palms of his hands.
Moments ago he had admitted to himself he was stuck, unable to go back down and seemingly stranded without the footholds needed to carry him the extra forty feet to the summit. All about him lesser men than Gabčík were making steady if unspectacular progress. The humiliation was too much and it spurred him into action. Rage welled up inside him and it slowly replaced the fear and the doubt; he cast his eyes to the left and spotted an outcrop that was tantalisingly out of reach. If he could just spring from his current spot, he might get enough leverage with the rope to propel himself onto this toehold. Gabčík hesitated for a moment, closing his eyes and summoning up his anger, the storm that had always served him so well in battle. He had to make it and fear of falling must not be allowed to prevent him. If he did not make the jump he could not move higher. If he did not climb higher he would never reach the top and would not then pass out of the commando course, to join the other would-be saboteurs – his only opportunity to engage the Germans and remove the shame he felt at abandoning his country. And so, he jumped.
For a second there was nothing but air around him, then his left foot connected with the rock, his left hand scrabbling for an indent, and it held. He clung there, the rope drawing fresh blood from the base of his thumb, which he contemptuously ignored. Gabčík barely paused. Instead he hauled himself higher and propelled his other hand into the air. He could not see the ledge above him but grasped it firmly and pulled his body upward again, stretching out his right foot till he connected with a large outcrop. And so on it went; Gabčík rising, cursing and rising again, using his self-recrimination to push him on, catching up with the others.
He remembered the last thing the Scottish corporal had told them in the briefing.
‘When you reach the top of the cliff I want you to give me a battle cry. Let me hear the roar from each of you. Pretend I’m a Nazi machine gunner. I want you to scare the shit out of me!’
Gabčík took him at his word and shot over the edge of the cliff with the most bloodcurdling cry imaginable. Even Corporal Andy Donald was impressed.
Gabčík careered past him at a full sprint, only stopping at the rallying point, wh
ich was already beginning to fill up with his fellow Czechs, who sat on the ground next to, or on top of, their packs. One of them was foolish enough to let out a laugh at Gabčík’s crazed countenance and they exchanged a handful of insulting words. That was it. Without pausing for a moment, Gabčík whirled on his mocking colleague and smashed a fist squarely into his chin.
Corporal Donald immediately began to shout new orders, to have Gabčík dragged away from his hapless victim. Gabčík was in one of his private worlds, all red mist and hot rage, and Donald had seen him like this before. It could start with something quite trivial, an upended mug of tea or the frustration borne of an inability to complete something; assembling a Sten gun blindfolded perhaps. Corporal Andy Donald was a hard man, scared of nobody, but even he recognised this soldier had a truly awesome temper, the kind that, if harnessed correctly, would take him through any obstacle without a second’s hesitation; bullets bouncing around him would go unnoticed. It would take a lot to stop Josef Gabčík if his mind was set.
It took three of Gabčík’s comrades to haul him away. That is what happens when you train men to kill but don’t let them anywhere near the enemy, thought Donald.
‘Alright, that’s enough! Enough!!’
Had Gabčík really seen Nazis as he reached the top of the cliff? Probably, knowing him. For a second Corporal Donald almost pitied the poor bloody Germans.
3
‘All is over, silent, mournful, abandoned, recedes into darkness’
Winston Churchill on the invasion of Sudeten Czechoslovakia
‘One more please. Please Herr Gruppenführer, just one more, with the big smile, and so! Now perhaps we have Frau Heydrich with little Heider is it? Heider yes! Heider and Klaus, and of course the little Princess Silke. We haven’t forgotten you, have we?’
The photographer cooed absurdly at Reinhard Heydrich’s baby daughter, shaking his head. ‘No, we haven’t, no!’ – she sensibly chose to ignore him.
Hauptsturmführer Zentner belonged to Goebbels’ propaganda division and his mission today was to capture the Heydrichs at home – on film at least. Reinhard had agreed to the photo call weeks ago, aware of the need to project a positive image at all times, and to every section of German society. It was part of his strategy to reach the very top. He had even consented to be photographed out of uniform, in a ridiculous pair of shorts and shirt sleeves, in order to contrast the man at home with the man of state, as Captain Zentner put it.
First, it was full silver/grey SS dress uniform, complete with ceremonial sword, at the foot of the staircase; then behind his desk, again in uniform, black this time, pretending to peruse a blank sheet of paper as his pen hovered above it motionlessly, until the click of the shutter and the flash of the bulb melted him from the frozen image he had assumed.
Now the whole family was made to cavort ridiculously on the lawns to the rear of the Panenské Břežany mansion. But the photo shoot was taking too long, as these things always did, and Heydrich’s mind was elsewhere. He had postponed a liaison with his mistress for this and began to long for the delicious friction of her even as he posed, with his children all around him, smiling inanely at the lens. Today, though, he had weightier matters to consider and he wondered what had happened to his driver. Klein had been sent back to Hradčany three hours ago to collect a batch of urgent signals. He had been told not to pause even for a cup of coffee but to return as soon as he had the papers and hand them personally to Heydrich. What on earth could be keeping the man?
Heydrich’s irritability found a target in the photographer. Zentner was a small, thin streak of nothingness with a lispy, effeminate manner, who danced round them enthusiastically as he sought the perfect picture of the Heydrichs. Too enthusiastically for Reinhard, who eyed the man contemptuously. He was convinced he was a bum boy, like that scrawny drag queen he once had the misfortune to witness in a Berlin nightclub, at a time before the Nazis had shipped out all of the fags along with the gypsies, the communists and the Jews. But hadn’t Lina already established that he had a wife? While he was setting up his tripod and cameras on the grass, and bossing his two silent and anonymous young assistants, she had trilled in a nervous, eager to please manner.
‘And is there a Mrs Zentner?’
Did she actually hold this photographer in some form of awe?
‘Back in Koblenz, yes, Frau Heydrich!’ He had called back familiarly, as if she were the wife of a sergeant.
No children though I’ll bet, thought Heydrich, probably a show marriage, to take suspicion away from his unnatural, nocturnal activities. What was Goebbels thinking, employing degenerates like this fellow? Heydrich had been told they were sending one of the best men from the propaganda division and the photos would be seen all over the Reich. There was another SS man close by with a cinematograph machine, so the ideal Nazi family unit could be displayed across a thousand film screens as well. Lina was loving every minute of it, which was perhaps why she was so uncharacteristically civil to the captain.
He remembered how she had been in a fury the day they had seen the first, sanitised newsreel footage of the Goebbels family, a prelude to the feature attraction of some Berlin cinema. There was Magda, the archetypal Aryan matriarch, seated and flanked by no fewer than six children. Her adoring husband Joseph stood at her shoulder, beaming down at her, while a rousing commentary extolled the virtues of maternity, motherhood and the glorious provision of young Nazis to serve the greater German Reich. Cut to shots of sexless young women doing exercises in a field somewhere in Bavaria. Dressed in identical white blouses and dark shorts, fine figures of Germanic girlhood one and all, they danced in synchronicity and on the spot, while the commentator told them how healthy bodies produced healthy babies and urged them to marry the right Aryan boy, and immediately begin gestating for the fatherland.
This little insight into Nazi thinking ended with a final shot of the beaming Magda, provider of life, champion producer of children. Of course, at the time of the film Joseph, the perfect family man, had been screwing Lída Baarová, the famous Czech film star, whose career he had extravagantly promised to advance. But no one was going to put that in a newsreel.
Lina proclaimed Magda to be a vain and common bitch parading herself in this manner. She had obviously forgotten this heartfelt opinion now, for she scooped all three of the Heydrich brood to her arms at once and clasped them to a more than ample bosom, as she tried to persuade them to smile for the camera. Heydrich thought it an impossible exercise as Silke was entirely uninterested and Klaus appeared to be choking on her breasts. Lina was unlikely to spot his distress, however, so entranced was she by the adoring camera.
‘Lina, you’re suffocating the boy.’
He wandered away from the scene as Frau Heydrich flushed, before trying to turn the whole thing into a joke, desperate to stifle Klaus’ already welling tears. Heydrich lost interest in this charade the moment he noticed Klein. His chauffeur was literally running towards him across the manicured carpet of lawn that divided them. The two men met a few yards from the cameras.
Klein saluted, ‘Apologies, Reichsprotektor, the signals arrived late and I had to wait for the dispatches to be decrypted.’ Klein knew Heydrich cared little for excuses but was determined to prove the delay was most certainly none of his doing.
He handed over a sealed folder containing several sheets of paper. Receiving no further instruction from Heydrich, who simply wandered away wordlessly as he scrutinised the information.
Avoiding the distractions of Lina’s wittering and the unchecked hollering of his children, Heydrich read the eastern front dispatches. It took only a moment’s perusal to realise operations were not moving quickly enough, not by a long way.
The memos contained a detailed report on the Einsatzgruppen and their daily ratios, and they were letting him down. The Einsatzgruppen were Heydrich’s personal responsibility; along with controlling the entire secret service o
f the Reich and running the ‘Protectorate’ of Bohemia and Moravia as the Czech territory was now known, he had volunteered for one more assignment, a pet project very close to the Führer’s heart. Only by achieving success in all three arenas could he be assured of further advancement. The top job in France was his next target, for he had noted with satisfaction how the current administration had the country far from under control. It would take the SS to subdue the French and Paris would prove the perfect stepping stone. Then, one day, the longed for call to Hitler’s bedside, when an ailing leader would publicly name Heydrich as his successor and leader of the German people. Nothing would stop Heydrich from reaching his goal but the Einsatzgruppen would have to improve, and quickly.
The majority of the three thousand men of the Einsatz-gruppen were of a civilian background, often from the professional classes; disgruntled doctors, lawyers, government officials and clerks, all sharing one trait, a fanatical belief in the semi-Darwinian theory of Nazism. Their three weeks training at Pretzsch Police School in Silesia was an indoctrination period, reinforcing the mantra of eugenics, not a lesson in tactical combat. Let the strongest survive, eliminate the weak and, of course, it is the Germans who are the strongest, the Jews occupying the lowest rung on the human evolutionary ladder. The men of the Einsatzgruppen were not being trained to fight, they were being taught to kill. These ‘Action Groups’ would go in after the first wave of German soldiers. Once the Wehrmacht had broken enemy lines and secured the area, the work of the Einsatzgruppen could begin in earnest. Under their mandate to carry out ‘Executive Measures’, they would rid the land behind the lines of undesirables, subhumans and, of course, the insidious plague that was Jewry.
And so it began; the firing squads, the hangings and the officially encouraged pogroms, carried out by non-Jewish locals under the watchful, indulgent eye of the all-conquering Germans. As the Wehrmacht swept through Soviet territory, the area behind them was being cleansed for future occupation by German settlers, who would find nothing there to disrupt their utopian lebensraum. Heydrich assured Hitler his trademark ruthlessness would be put to good use marshalling the four Action Groups that would prepare the land, and he had received the Führer’s blessing to command operations, but how long would he remain a favourite if progress was too slow? Had he not used the same argument to oust his predecessor Von Neurath from the seat of power in Prague? How easy it had been to convince the Führer a new man was required to get the job done, that all it took was a change of personnel to fulfil his grand vision. Heydrich knew he was on dangerous ground; having promised stunning success he could hardly deliver anything less.
Hunting the Hangman Page 2