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by Laurent Binet

  Frank is persuaded by these arguments and decrees an amnesty for whoever provides—within five days—information leading to the capture of the assassins. After that he won’t be able to contain Hitler and Himmler’s lust for blood any longer.

  As soon as she hears this news, Mrs. Moravec understands what it means: the Germans are staking everything. If, after five days, nobody has denounced her lads, they will be free from any further fear of informers and their chances of survival will increase considerably. Because, once the amnesty has expired, nobody will dare to go and see the Gestapo. Today, June 13, 1942, a stranger turns up at Mrs. Moravec’s apartment, but there’s nobody there. The man asks the concierge if Mrs. Moravec has by any chance left a briefcase for him. He is Czech but he doesn’t give the password, “Jan.” The concierge says he knows nothing about it. The stranger leaves. Karel Čurda has almost resurfaced.

  244

  Aunt Moravec has sent her family to the countryside for a few days, but she herself has too much to do in Prague. She washes and irons clothes, and she runs errands all over the place. In order not to attract too much attention, she is helped by the concierge’s wife. They mustn’t be seen too often carrying packages, and naturally the parachutists’ hiding place must remain secret, so the two women arrange to meet in Charles Square, surrounded by flower beds and crowds of people. After that, the aunt walks down Resslova Street, enters the church, and disappears. Another time, they get on the same tram but the concierge’s wife gets off two or three stations earlier, leaving her bags, and the aunt picks them up. She brings the men cakes still warm from the oven, and methylated spirits for their old stove. She also brings them news from the outside world. The lads are all a bit under the weather, but their morale has improved. Heydrich’s death cannot erase the memory of Lidice, but gradually they come to realize the significance of what they’ve done. Aunt Moravec is welcomed by Valčík in his dressing gown. He looks a bit peaky, but he sports a thin mustache these days—and, my word, how very distinguished it makes him look. He asks for news of Moula, his dog. Moula is fine: he has been adopted by a family with a large garden. The swellings on Kubiš’s face have gone down, and even Gabčík has recovered a bit of his old joie de vivre. They are beginning to get organized, this little community of seven: they’ve improvised a sieve from an undershirt and they’d like to try to make coffee. The aunt promises to find some. Meanwhile, Professor Zelenka is working with the Resistance on some very hypothetical plans to get the parachutists out of the Reich. The problem is that Anthropoid was really designed as a suicide mission, so nobody gave much thought to the question of their return. First of all, they must be smuggled into the countryside, but the Gestapo is still under great pressure to arrest them and the city is in a state of maximum alert—so this will have to wait. It will soon be St. Adolf’s day, and as they wish to celebrate this (because, to be clear, Lieutenant Opalka’s first name is Adolf), Aunt Moravec is going to try to get hold of some veal scallops. She’d also like to make them a broth with chunks of liver. The lads no longer call her “Aunt,” but simply “Mom.” These seven highly trained men are now reduced to a state of total inaction, as vulnerable as children, cloistered in this damp cellar and wholly in the hands of this little lady who cares for them like a mother. She keeps repeating to them: “We just have to get through to the eighteenth.” Today is the sixteenth.

  245

  Karel Čurda stands on the pavement at the top of Bredovska Street—today renamed the Street of Political Prisoners—which comes out at the central train station. On the opposite corner is Peček Palace, a dour and menacing presence in gray stone. This huge pile was built after the First World War by a Czech banker who owned almost all the coal mines in northern Bohemia. Perhaps the anthracite-gray façade was designed as a reminder of the origin of his fortune. But the banker gave up the mines and the palace to the government, prudently deciding to leave the country for England just before the German invasion. Even today Peček Palace is an official building—home of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. But in 1942 it is the headquarters of the Gestapo for Bohemia and Moravia. Nearly a thousand employees work here at the blackest tasks, in rooms so gloomy it looks like night even in the middle of the day. Located in the heart of the capital and equipped with the latest technology—a printing works, a laboratory, a pneumatic postal service, and a telephone exchange—the building is, from a functional point of view, absolutely perfect for the Nazi police. Its many underground chambers and cellars have been cleverly converted for the Gestapo’s particular needs. The head of the police here is a young Standartenführer called Dr. Geschke. I’ve seen only one photo of this man, but—with his scar, his womanly skin, his mad eyes and cruel lips, his side-parted hair and half-shaved skull—it was enough to freeze my blood. Anyway, Peček Palace is the very incarnation of the Nazi terror in Prague, and you need a certain courage just to stand in front of it. Karel Čurda does not lack courage, but he is motivated by the thought of twenty million crowns. Though, to be honest, it does take courage to denounce your comrades. You have to weigh up the pros and the cons, and there is no guarantee that the Nazis will keep their word. Čurda is playing double or quits with his own life: either wealth or death awaits him. But he’s an adventurer. That’s why he joined the Free Czechoslovak army; that’s why he volunteered for special missions in the Protectorate: because he has a taste for adventure. He hasn’t enjoyed this return to his homeland because, ultimately, the clandestine lifestyle isn’t very appealing. Since the assassination he’s been living in the provinces with his mother, in the little town of Kolín, forty miles east of Prague. Before this, though, he did have time to meet many people involved in the Resistance, among them Kubiš and Valčík—they worked together in the Škoda operation at Pilsen—and also Gabčík and Opalka, whose paths he crossed several times when they were switching hideouts in Prague. He knows the apartment of the Svatoš family, who supplied a bicycle and a briefcase for the assassination. And above all he knows where the Moravec family lives. I don’t know why he went there three days earlier. Was he already thinking of betraying them? Or was he attempting to get back in contact with the network because he’d had no news of them recently? But why come back to Prague, if not for the reward? Wasn’t he safer with his mother in picturesque little Kolín? Actually, he probably wasn’t: in 1942, Kolín is a German administrative center, where the Jews of central Bohemia are rounded up, and its train station is a rail junction for deportations to Terezín. So it’s possible that Čurda no longer wished to endanger his family—he had a sister in Kolín as well as his mother—and that he came back to Prague to seek support and refuge with his comrades. How important, then, was the closed door he found when he went to call on the Moravecs? And yet, Aunt Moravec was expecting him, because when the concierge told her about the mysterious visitor, she asked if he had come from Kolín. But she’d gone out… We can never know why things turn out the way they do—malicious and mischievous fate, or the powerful forces of some higher will. Still, by Tuesday, June 16, 1942, Karel Čurda has made his decision. He doesn’t know where his comrades are hiding. But he knows enough.

  Karel Čurda crosses the road, presents himself to the guard standing in front of the heavy wooden gate, and tells him that he has important information to provide. Then he climbs the wide steps covered in red carpet that lead up to the vast entrance hall, and he is swallowed by the stone belly of the black palace.

  246

  I don’t know when or why the father and son of the Moravec family returned to Prague. I guess they went away for just a few days. Perhaps it was the son’s impatience to help the parachutists that brought them back, or his unwillingness to leave his mother in Prague alone. Or perhaps it was the father’s work. It’s said that the father knew nothing of what was going on, but I can’t believe that. When he saw the men his wife welcomed into their house, he knew perfectly well they weren’t Boy Scouts. And besides, he asked his friends on several occasions for clothes or a bicyc
le or a doctor or a new hiding place. So the whole family took part in the struggle—including the eldest son, who lived in England and was an RAF pilot. He will die when his fighter plane crashes on June 7, 1944, the day after D-day. Nearly two years from now, in other words. In times like these, that’s an eternity away.

  247

  Čurda has crossed the Rubicon, but he is not exactly being welcomed like a conquering hero. After being interrogated all night long—the Gestapo give him a good beating in recognition of the importance of his testimony—Čurda now waits quietly on a wooden bench in one of those dark corridors while they decide his fate. Left alone with him briefly, the requisitioned interpreter asks him a question:

  “Why have you done this?”

  “I couldn’t bear any more innocent people being murdered.”

  And also for twenty million crowns. Which he will get.

  248

  The Moravec family have lived in fear of one thing throughout these years of iron and horror, and this morning it finally comes to pass. The bell rings, and it’s the Gestapo at the door. The Germans stick them up against the wall—mother, father, and son—then frantically ransack the apartment. “Where are the parachutists?” barks the German commissioner, and the translator translates. The father replies quietly that he doesn’t know any. The commissioner goes off to inspect the other rooms. Mrs. Moravec asks if she can go to the toilet. One of the Gestapo agents slaps her face. But then he is called away by his boss and she asks the translator, who agrees. Mrs. Moravec knows she has only a few seconds. So she locks herself quickly in the bathroom, takes out her cyanide pill, pops it in her mouth, and—without hesitating—bites down on it. She dies instantly.

  Coming back to the living room, the commissioner asks where the woman is. The translator explains. The German understands immediately. Enraged, he rushes to the bathroom and breaks down the door with his shoulder. Mrs. Moravec is still standing, a smile upon her face. Then she sinks to the ground. “Wasser!” yells the commissioner. His men bring water and try hopelessly to revive her, but she’s dead.

  But her husband is still alive, and so is her son. Ata watches the Gestapo guards carry off his mother’s body. The commissioner approaches, smiling. Ata and his father are arrested and taken away in their pajamas.

  249

  It goes without saying that he was tortured horribly. Apparently, they showed him his mother’s head floating in a jar. “You see this box, Ata…” He must have remembered Valčík’s words. But a box has no mother.

  250

  And now I am Gabčík. What do they say? I am inhabiting my character. I see myself arm in arm with Libena, walking through liberated Prague, people laughing and speaking Czech and offering me cigarettes. We are married now, she’s expecting a baby. I’ve been promoted to captain. President Beneš is leading a reunified Czechoslovakia. Jan comes to see us with Anna, behind the wheel of the latest-model Škoda. He wears his cap backwards. We go to drink a beer in a kaviaren by the riverside. Smoking English cigarettes, we laugh as we think back to the time of the struggle. Remember the crypt? God, it was cold! It’s a Sunday. The river flows by. I hug my wife. Josef comes to join us, and Opalka with his Moravian fiancée—the one he used to talk about all the time. The Moravecs are there, too, and the colonel, who offers me a cigar. Beneš brings us sausages, and flowers for the girls. He wants to make a speech in our honor. Jan and I plead with him: no, no, not another speech! Libena laughs and teases me gently. She calls me her hero. Beneš begins his speech in the church at Vyšehrad—it’s cool in there, and I’m dressed in my wedding suit. I hear people come into the church behind me. I hear Nezval recite a poem. It’s a Jewish story, of the Golem, of Faust on Charles Square, with golden keys and the shop signs in Nerudova Street, and numbers on a wall that form my date of birth until the wind scatters them…

  I have no idea what time it is.

  I am not Gabčík and I never will be. At the last second, I resist the temptation of the interior monologue and in doing so perhaps save myself from ridicule at this crucial point. The gravity of the situation is no excuse. I know perfectly well what time it is, and I am wide-awake.

  It is 4:00 a.m. I am not asleep in the stone recesses reserved for dead monks in the church of Saints Cyril and Methodius.

  In the street, black shapes begin their furtive ballet once again. Except we are no longer in Lidice, but in the heart of Prague. It is now much too late for regrets. Covered trucks arrive from all directions, forming the shape of a star, with the church at its center. On a control panel, we see the luminous streaks of vehicles slowly converging on the target, but stopping before they meet. The two main stopping points are the bank of the Vltava and Charles Square, at either end of Resslova Street. Headlights and engines are switched off. Shock troops clatter out from beneath the covers on the trucks. An SS guard stands at his post before each doorway, each sewer opening. Heavy machine guns are placed on the roofs. Prudently, night flees the scene. The first glimmers of dawn have already begun to lighten the sky because summer time has not yet been invented and Prague—though slightly farther west than, say, Vienna—is sufficiently eastern for these cold, clear mornings to come while the city is still sleeping. The block of houses is already surrounded when Commissioner Pannwitz arrives, escorted by a small group of his agents. The interpreter accompanying him breathes in the fragrant smell of the flower beds in Charles Square (and to still be in a job after allowing Mrs. Moravec to commit suicide, he must be one hell of an interpreter). Pannwitz is in charge of the whole operation; this is both an honor and a heavy responsibility. Above all, there must be no repeat of the fiasco of May 28, that unbelievable fuckup, which—thank God—had nothing to do with him. If all goes well, this will be the crowning glory of his career; if, on the other hand, the operation ends with anything other than the arrests or the deaths of the terrorists, he will be in deep trouble. Everyone is playing for high stakes today, even on the German side, where a lack of results can easily look like sabotage to the leaders—all the more so when they have to conceal their own errors or quench their thirst for blood (and here both factors are in play). Scapegoats at all costs—that could be the Reich’s motto. So Pannwitz spares no effort to keep himself in his bosses’ good books, and who can blame him? He is a professional cop and he will proceed methodically. He has given his men strict instructions. Absolute silence. Several security cordons. A very tight dragnet of the area. Nobody to fire without his authorization. We need them alive. Not that anyone will hold it against him if he happens to kill them, but an enemy captured alive brings the promise of ten new arrests. The dead don’t talk. Although, in a way, the Moravec woman’s corpse told them a few things. Does Pannwitz snigger quietly when he thinks this? Now that the time has finally come to arrest the assassins, who have been making fools of the Reich police for three weeks, he must be feeling a little nervous. After all, he has no idea what’s waiting for him inside. He sends a man to get the church door open. At this instant, nobody knows that the silence that reigns over Prague will be broken in only a few minutes. The agent rings the doorbell. Time passes. At last, the hinges turn. A sleepy sacristan appears in the doorway. He is hit and handcuffed before he even has time to open his mouth. But they do still have to explain to him the objective of this morning’s visit. They wish to see the church. The interpreter translates. The group crosses a vestibule, a second door is opened, and they enter the nave. The men in black spread out like spiders. Except that they don’t climb the walls—only the echo of their footsteps does that, ringing out and ricocheting off the high stone surfaces. They search everywhere but find nobody. The only place they haven’t yet searched is the gallery over the nave. Pannwitz spots a spiral staircase behind a locked gate. He demands the key from the sacristan, who swears he doesn’t have it. Pannwitz orders the lock smashed with a rifle butt. Just as the gate is opened, a round (perhaps slightly oblong) object rolls down the stairs. Hearing the metal chiming on the steps, Pannwitz understands. I’m sure h
e does. He understands that he’s found the parachutists’ lair, that they are hiding in the gallery above, that they are armed, and that they are not going to give themselves up. The grenade explodes. A curtain of smoke falls inside the church and then the Stens enter the action. One of the Nazi agents—the most zealous of the lot, according to the interpreter—begins to yell. Pannwitz immediately orders the retreat, but his men, blinded and disoriented, just run around shooting in all directions, caught in the cross fire from high and low. The battle of the church has begun. Clearly, the visitors were not prepared for this. Perhaps they thought it would be easy? After all, the smell of their leather raincoats is usually enough to petrify their prey. So the element of surprise is on the defenders’ side. Somehow the Gestapo gather up their wounded and manage to evacuate. The shooting from both sides stops suddenly. Pannwitz sends in an SS squadron, who receive the same welcome. Up above, the invisible marksmen know exactly what they’re doing. Perfectly positioned to cover every angle in the nave, they take their time, aim carefully, shoot sparingly, and hit their targets more often than not. Each burst of gunfire is answered with an enemy scream. The narrow, twisting staircase is as good as the most solid barricade for barring access to the gallery. The second attack ends in a second withdrawal. Pannwitz realizes there is no chance of taking them alive. To add to the atmosphere of chaos, someone orders the machine gunners posted on the roof opposite to open fire. The MG42s smash the windows to pieces.