Between fellow parachutists it’s different, and if Valčík and Gabčík introduce themselves as though they’re meeting for the first time, that’s simply so they know what to call each other. Or rather, as this changes so often, which Christian name is on the false ID papers they’re using at that moment.
“Are you staying with the aunt?”
“Yes, but I’m moving soon. Where can I get hold of you?”
“Leave a message with the concierge. He’s safe. Ask to see his collection of keys—he’ll trust you then. The password is ‘Jan.’”
“Yeah, the aunt told me that, but… ‘Jan’ as in Jan?”
“No. Here, he’s called Ota. It’s just a coincidence.”
“Oh, right.”
This scene is not really useful, and on top of that I practically made it up. I don’t think I’m going to keep it.
178
With Valčík’s arrival in Prague, there are now nearly a dozen parachutists roaming around town. Theoretically, each one works on the mission for which his group was sent. The aim is to keep things compartmentalized, so the different groups are meant to communicate as little as possible. That way, if one falls, the others aren’t dragged down with it. In practice, though, this is almost impossible. The number of addresses where the parachutists can find shelter is limited, but at the same time it is prudent to move as often as possible. As soon as one group or parachutist leaves an address, another takes his place—so all the members of the different groups cross one another’s paths on a fairly regular basis.
In the Moravec family apartment especially, there’s a never-ending procession of all Prague’s parachutists. The father asks no questions; the mother—whom they affectionately call “the aunt”—bakes them cakes; the son, Ata, is overcome with admiration for these mysterious men who hide pistols in their sleeves.
The result of this game of musical chairs is that Valčík, originally part of Operation Silver A, quickly gets closer to Operation Anthropoid. Soon, he’s helping Gabčík and Kubiš scout for locations.
The other result is that Karel Čurda, from the group Out Distance, meets pretty much everybody: the parachutists and their hosts. So many names to drop, so many addresses to let slip.
179
“I adore Kundera, but the novel of his I love the least is the one set in Paris. Because he’s not truly in his element. As if he were wearing a very beautiful jacket that was just a little bit too big or a little bit too small for him [laughs]. But when Milos and Pavel are walking through Prague, I believe it totally.”
This is Marjane Satrapi, in an interview given to Les Inrockuptibles magazine to promote the release of her beautiful film, Persepolis. I feel a vague sense of anxiety as I read this. Flicking through the magazine in the apartment of a young woman, I confide my anxiety to her. “Yes, but you’ve been to Prague,” she reassures me. “You’ve lived there, you love that city.” But the same is true for Kundera and Paris. Anyway, Marjane Satrapi adds: “Even if I’ve lived in France for twenty years, I didn’t grow up here. There will always be a little Iranian core to my work. I love Rimbaud, of course, but Omar Khayyám will always speak to me more.” Strange, I’ve never thought about the problem in those terms. Does Desnos speak to me more than Nezval? I don’t know. I don’t think that Flaubert, Camus, or Aragon speak to me more than Kafka, Hašek, or Holan. Nor, for that matter, more than García Márquez, Hemingway, or Anatoly Rybakov. Will Marjane Satrapi sense that I didn’t grow up in Prague? Won’t she believe it when the Mercedes suddenly appears at the bend in the road? She goes on: “Even if Lubitsch became a Hollywood filmmaker, he always reinvented and reimagined Europe—an eastern, Jewish Europe. Even when his films are set in the United States, for me they take place in Vienna or Budapest. And that’s a good thing.” But does that mean she’ll think my story is happening in Paris, where I was born, and not in Prague, the city my whole being yearns for? Will there be images of Paris in her mind when I drive the Mercedes to Holešovice, near the Troie Bridge?
No, my story begins in a town in northern Germany, followed by Kiel, Munich, and Berlin, then moves to eastern Slovakia. Passing briefly through France, it continues in London and Kiev before returning to Berlin, and it is going to end in Prague, Prague, Prague! Prague, city of a hundred towers, heart of the world, eye of my imagination’s hurricane, Prague with fingers of rain, the emperor’s Baroque dream, the soul’s music flowing under bridges, Emperor Charles IV, Jan Neruda, Mozart and Wenceslaus, Jan Hus, Jan Žižka, Josef K, Praha s prsty deste, the chem engraved in the Golem’s forehead, the headless horseman in Liliova Street, the iron man waiting to be liberated by a young girl once every hundred years, the sword hidden in a bridge support, and today the sound of boots marching, which will echo for… how much longer? A year. Perhaps two. Three more, in fact. I am in Prague—not in Paris, in Prague. It’s 1942. It’s early spring and I’m not wearing a jacket. “Exoticism is something I hate,” says Marjane. There is nothing exotic about Prague, because it’s the heart of the world, the true center of Europe, and because in this spring of 1942 it is going to be the site of one of the greatest scenes in the great tragedy of the universe.
Unlike Marjane Satrapi, Milan Kundera, Jan Kubiš, and Jozef Gabčík, I am not a political exile. But that is perhaps why I can talk of where I want to be without always being dragged back to my starting point. I don’t owe my homeland anything, and I don’t have a score to settle with it. For Paris, I feel neither the heartbreaking nostalgia nor the melancholy disenchantment of the great exiles. That is why I am free to dream of Prague.
180
Valčík helps his two comrades in their search for the perfect spot. One day, surveying the city, he attracts the attention of a stray dog. What strange or familiar quality does the animal detect that draws it to this man? It follows his footsteps. It doesn’t take Valčík long to sense a presence behind him. He turns around. The dog stops. He sets off again. The dog follows him. Together, they cross the city. When Valčík gets back to the apartment belonging to the Moravecs’ concierge, where he’s staying, he adopts and names the dog. When the concierge comes home, Valčík introduces him to Moula. From now on, the two of them will scout for locations together, and when Valčík can’t take him, he begs the good concierge to “look after his dragon” (so it must have been a big dog, or a very small one if Valčík was being ironic). When his master goes away, Moula waits quietly for him—curled up under the living-room table, immobile for hours. The dog probably won’t have a decisive role to play in Operation Anthropoid, but I would rather jot down a useless detail than risk missing a crucial one.
181
Speer returns to Prague, but is received with less pomp than on his previous visit. The minister of armaments is here to discuss manpower with the Protector of one of the Reich’s biggest industrial centers. And in the spring of 1942, much more so than in December 1941—with millions of men fighting on the Eastern Front, with Soviet tanks destroying German tanks, and British bombers striking German cities with ever greater frequency—the question of manpower is vital. More workers are needed to produce more tanks, more airplanes, more artillery, more rifles, more grenades, more submarines. Not to mention those new weapons that should help the Reich finally win the war.
This time, Speer dispenses with the tour of the city and the official procession. He’s come alone, without his wife, for a work meeting with Heydrich. Neither has time to waste on small talk. Speer’s efficiency in his domain is considered the equal of Heydrich’s in his, and he is undoubtedly pleased about this. But he can’t help noticing that Heydrich not only travels without an escort but that he calmly cruises the streets of Prague in an unarmored, open-top car, with no bodyguard at all except his chauffeur. He expresses his concerns to Heydrich, who replies: “Why should my Czechs shoot at me?” Heydrich probably hasn’t read the 1937 newspaper article by Joseph Roth—the Jewish writer from Vienna, now exiled in Paris—mocking the vast amounts of money and men dedicated to protecting N
azi dignitaries. In this article, he has them say: “Yes, you see, I’ve become so great that I’m even forced to be afraid; I am so precious that I don’t have the right to die; I believe so utterly in my star that I must beware the risks that can be fatal to many a star. Who dares wins! But who has won three times over no longer needs to dare!” Joseph Roth no longer mocks anybody because he died in 1939, but perhaps Heydrich did read this article after all. It appeared in a newspaper for dissident refugees—subversive elements, no doubt closely watched by the SD. In any case, Heydrich feels duty-bound to explain part of his weltanschauung to this pampered civilian Speer: surrounding yourself with bodyguards is petit-bourgeois behavior, in very poor taste. He leaves this kind of thing to Bormann and other Party higher-ups. In fact, he refutes Joseph Roth: better to die than to let them believe you’re afraid.
Nevertheless, Heydrich’s initial reaction must have disturbed Speer: Why would anyone want to kill Heydrich? As if there weren’t already enough reasons to kill Nazi leaders in general, and Heydrich in particular! Speer has no illusions about the popularity of the Germans in the occupied territories, and he assumes that Heydrich is the same. But this man seems so sure of himself. Speer can’t tell if Heydrich’s paternalistic tone, speaking of “his” Czechs, is just an idle boast, or if Heydrich really is as powerful as he claims to be. Call him a petit-bourgeois coward if you must, but in the open-top Mercedes inching its way through the streets of Prague, Speer doesn’t feel entirely at ease.
182
Colonel Morávek—sole survivor of the Three Kings, last remaining chief of the three-headed Czech Resistance organization—knows that he shouldn’t attend the meeting. It has been arranged by his old friend René, alias Colonel Paul Thümmel, Abwehr officer; alias A54, the most important spy ever to have worked for Czechoslovakia. A54 has managed to warn him: his cover has been blown, and this meeting is a trap. But Morávek probably believes his own audacity will protect him. Wasn’t it audacity that saved his life so many times before? This man who used to send postcards to the head of the Gestapo to tell him what he’d done isn’t going to let himself get scared now. Arriving in the Prague park where the meeting is due to take place, he sees his contact, but also the men who are watching him. He gets ready to run off, but two men in raincoats call out from behind him. I have never witnessed a shoot-out and I have trouble imagining what it would be like in a city as peaceful as Prague is now. But there are more than fifty gunshots during the chase that follows. Morávek runs across one of the bridges that span the Vltava (unfortunately, I don’t know which) and jumps onto a moving tram. But the Gestapo are everywhere—it’s as if they’ve been teleported. They’re even inside the tram carriage. Morávek jumps off the tram, but he’s been shot in the legs. He collapses on the rails and, completely surrounded, he shoots himself. This is obviously the surest means of not telling the enemy anything. But his pockets will talk: on his body, the Germans find a photo of a man who (although they don’t know it yet) is Josef Valčík.
This story marks the end of the last chief of the Three Kings. It proves a thorn in the side of Anthropoid, because at this date—March 20, 1942—Valčík is still closely involved in the operation. It also represents a double success for Heydrich: as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, he manages to decapitate one of the most dangerous remaining Resistance organizations, thus fulfilling his mission. And as head of the SD, he unmasks a superspy who is also an officer of the Abwehr—the secret service run by his rival and former mentor Canaris. For the Allies this isn’t the first setback and it won’t be the last, but March 20, 1942, is assuredly not a red-letter day in their secret war against the Germans.
183
In London they are growing impatient. It is five months now since the agents of Operation Anthropoid were parachuted into their homeland, but since then there’s been hardly any news at all. London does know, however, that Gabčík and Kubiš are alive and operational. Libuse, the only secret transmitter still working, sends information of this kind whenever there is any. So London decides to give the two agents a new mission. As ever, employers are obsessed by their employees’ productivity. This new mission adds to rather than replaces the previous one. But it also delays it. Gabčík and Kubiš are furious. They have to go to Pilsen to take part in a sabotage operation.
Pilsen is a large industrial town in the west of the country, quite close to the German border. Its famous beer, Pilsner Urquell, is named after it. However, London is not interested in Pilsner for its beer but for its Škoda factories. In 1942, Škoda doesn’t make cars—it makes armaments. An air raid is planned for the night of April 25–26. The parachutists have to light fires around the industrial complex to help the British bombers pick out their target.
So at least four parachutists travel to Pilsen. They meet up in town, at a place agreed on in advance (the Tivoli restaurant—I wonder if it still exists?), and, that night, set fire to a stable and a stack of straw near the factory.
When the bombers arrive, all they have to do is drop their bombs between these two bright marks. Unfortunately, all their bombs miss the target. So the mission is a total failure, even though the parachutists did exactly what they were asked.
Then again, Kubiš did get to know a young female shop assistant during his brief stay in Pilsen—a member of the Resistance, who helped the group fulfill its mission. With his handsome movie-star face—imagine a hybrid of Cary Grant and Tony Curtis—Kubiš was always a hit with the ladies. So, even if the operation was a bitter failure, at least he didn’t waste his time. Two weeks later—two weeks before the assassination attempt—he will write a letter to this young woman, Marie Zilanova. A careless thing to do, but luckily without consequences. I would love to know the contents of that letter. I should have copied it down in Czech when I had the chance.
Returning to Prague, the parachutists are very annoyed. They’ve been forced to risk compromising their principal mission—their historic mission—and for what? Nothing but a few big guns. They send London a sharp message suggesting that next time they send pilots with some knowledge of the region.
To tell the truth, I can’t even be sure that Gabčík was present for this mission in Pilsen. All I know is that Kubiš, Valčík, and Čurda were.
I’ve just realized that apart from one elliptic allusion in Chapter 178, I haven’t mentioned Karel Čurda before now. And yet, historically and dramatically, he is going to play an essential role in this story.
184
All good stories need a traitor. The one in mine is called Karel Čurda. He’s thirty years old, and I can’t tell, judging from the photos I’ve seen, whether his betrayal can be read upon his face. He is a Czech parachutist whose background is so similar that it could be mistaken for those of Gabčík, Kubiš, or Valčík. Demobilized from the army after the German occupation, he leaves the country via Poland and travels to France, where he enlists in the Foreign Legion. He joins the Czechoslovak army-in-exile and, after the defeat of France, crosses to England. Unlike Gabčík, Kubiš, and Valčík, he is not sent to the front during the French retreat—but this is not what makes him fundamentally different to the other parachutists. In England, he volunteers for special missions and follows the same intensive training. He is parachuted over the Protectorate with two other comrades on the night of March 27–28. As for what follows… well, it’s still too early to tell you that.
But it’s in England that the seeds of the drama are sown, because it’s here that it might have been avoided. Here, Karel Čurda’s dubious character gradually reveals itself. He is a heavy drinker. Not a crime, obviously, but when he drinks too much he says things that alarm his regimental comrades. He says he admires Hitler. He says he regrets having left the Protectorate; that he would have a better life if he’d stayed there. His comrades consider him so unreliable that they write to General Ingr, the minister of defense in the Czech government-in-exile, warning him about Čurda. They add that he has also attempted to con two English girls who were in love wit
h him. Heydrich, in his day, was kicked out of the navy for less than that. The minister passes on this information to Colonel Moravec, who is in charge of special operations. And this is precisely where the fate of many men is sealed. What does Moravec do? Nothing. He just notes in the files that Čurda is a good sportsman with impressive physical capacities. He does not remove him from the list of parachutists chosen for special missions. And on the night of March 27–28, Čurda is dropped over Moravia with two other comrades. Helped by the local Resistance, he manages to reach Prague.
After the war, someone will note that almost all of the dozens of parachutists chosen to be sent on special missions in the Protectorate gave patriotism as their motive for volunteering. Only two—one of them Čurda—said they volunteered because they were seeking adventure, and both turned out to be traitors.
But in terms of its impact, the betrayal committed by the other man will bear no comparison at all with that of Karel Čurda.
185
The train station in Prague is a magnificent dark stone building with two perfectly disturbing towers. Today is the Führer’s birthday—April 20, 1942—and President Hácha is going to present him with a gift from the Czech people: a medical train. The ceremony is taking place in the station, naturally enough, with the highlight being a personal inspection of the train by the Protector himself. While Heydrich boards the train, a crowd of gawkers gathers outside. They stand in the vicinity of a white sign planted in the ground, declaring: “Here stood the memorial of Wilson, removed on the orders of Reich-Protector SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich.” I would like to be able to tell you that Gabčík and Kubiš are in that crowd, but I have no idea if it’s true—and I suspect it isn’t. To see Heydrich in these circumstances is of no practical use to them as it’s a one-off event, unlikely to reoccur. And with the station so heavily guarded, being here would expose them to pointless risk.
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