by Mat Nastos
* * *
Rela nearly cried out as Grimm’s pale as bone hand slid out of the shadowed blackness and clamped itself tightly about her mouth, pulling her inside. The soft ‘click’ of the door being closed and locked was the only hint of her passing.
“Don’t fight, Rela… it’s all right,” soothed MacAndrew from just behind the woman’s shaking shoulders. “Grimm, let her go! The lass is on our side, man!”
In the scant light of a dying bulb in the far corner, Rela tore herself from the big man’s grasp. Hair whipping around her, she turned on MacAndrew, panic filling her bright eyes.
“Jozef, is my Jozef alive?” The woman’s voice was on the verge of breaking. The stress of her part in the rebel’s scheme and her being forced to remain in the center of the Nazi occupation in the city were beginning to shred her fragile nerves.
Forcing every bit of reassurance and warmth he could muster into a smile aimed at the frantic woman, MacAndrew said calmly, “Your beloved is fine, lass. Whole and hearty at our safehouse not far from here.”
“Take me to him, Captain Ian. This place has become too dangerous. The Germans have eyes and ears everywhere. I can feel their gazes on me everywhere I go. They suspect everyone. Please take me to Jozef.”
“I can’t, my dear,” replied MacAndrew, to the woman’s horror. “Not yet.”
The quiver in Rela’s lips and moisture collecting in the corner of her eyes told the Scot that, whatever else happened, they needed to extricate her before she cracked under the pressure. If Rela remained too much longer, there was a very good chance she’d reveal everything to their enemy.
A growl of patience worn thin by too much waiting sliced the air between the Czech girl and the British Agent.
“Tell me of Heydrich, woman.” Grimm’s robust voice, filled with intent and impatience, gave MacAndrew and Rela both a start when it cut into their conversation. “Where do they have him now?”
Rela looked the large man over with a focus that seemed to bounce back and forth between lust and fear. A slight nudge from MacAndrew’s elbow snapped the young woman back from whatever trance she’d fallen into. Still staring wide-eyed at Grimm, Rela laid out as much of the situation at Bulovka as she knew.
While Nazi security had been nearly watertight, enough information flowed out of the cracks to be passed around from curious Czech worker to Czech worker. Specific details weren’t known but what Rela did know allowed the men an excellent glimpse into what they would face inside.
“The SS has taken control of most of the main building. All patients have been moved from the central and west wings into either the east wing or one of the outlaying halls.”
“Is that where the Butcher is?” MacAndrew asked, chewing on the edges of his mustache as he listened to the beautiful woman feed them information.
“Yes. From what the doctors have said, he is being kept on one of the top three floors of the west wing. That is where the most extreme patients have been held, and it offers the most security.”
A noise from outside in the brightly-lit hall caused Rela to jump. Grimm held up his hand for silence and opened the door a fraction, allowing a sliver of green-tinted light to burn off a line of the darkness on the floor between them.
Turning back to his co-conspirators as he shut the door, Grimm asked Rela if she could get them onto the floor Heydrich had been taken to. A cloud of slick black hair shook with an emphatic negative.
“None of the regular staff outside of the head surgeons working on Heydrich, are allowed inside. The nurses and orderlies have all been denied entrance as well.”
“They must have more than just a few of your doctors working to keep Heydrich from Hel’s cold grasp,” growled Grimm.
“The Nazis have brought in their own medical staff to oversee his treatment,” she said. “One of the orderlies overheard the guards saying they’ve even called in the personal physician of Himmler to aid in his treatment.”
“Aye, that would be who we saw arrive in the convoy. Only someone as important as Doctor Gebhardt would warrant such an escort,” said MacAndrew.
“The Germans have been bringing in men and equipment all day to lock down the area. Homes within a mile around the hospital have been evacuated and families are being forced away at gunpoint.”
Seeing the woman was getting more and more upset, more and more paranoid with each moment they passed hiding in the darkened room, MacAndrew grasped her firmly by the shoulders to try and calm her.
“There were two men who arrived with Gebhardt a few moments ago. Do you know who they are?”
A thin line formed between Rela’s eyes as she searched through her memory. “The Austrians.”
MacAndrew’s head tilted questioningly at both Grimm and the young woman. He was surprised to see the larger man nodding to the woman’s revelation.
“Ludwig Wittgenstein and Philipp Frank,” Grimm said.
“Yes,” Rela whispered. “Those were the names I heard.”
Puzzled, MacAndrew asked Grimm, “You recognized them outside. Who are they?”
Striding over to the heavily-curtained window of the tiny room, Grimm pulled the fabric back enough from the glass to allow the Scotsman to see through it. Outside, the mass of bodies scurrying back and forth across the courtyard had increased in scope since the pair had infiltrated the facility, giving full credence to Rela’s gossip about the Reichsführer of Germany’s imminent arrival. On the opposite side of the paved plaza MacAndrew could see the two men in question supervising the unloading of a series of large crates from the German trucks.
“I have… encountered those men once before. They are members of the Edda Society,” answered Grimm finally. “They are arcane scientists and the men responsible for opening the gateway to the Jotnar. If they are here it means the situation with Heydrich is dire indeed. There will be little time to take his life before Wittgenstein uses his machines once more. A day or two at most. We must hurry!”
Moving over to stand near the opening at the window to stare out at the mass of troops spread out in front of the hospital, MacAndrew removed his pipe from the depths of his coat and began to absent-mindedly chew on its mouthpiece as he contemplated the enormity of their situation.
“It’d be suicide to try and attack Heydrich head-on without help, without planning, without an army behind us. We’d die before we reached the doors. We need to wait.”
“No!” Grimm slammed his iron-hard fist into the metal counter lining the storage room’s walls. The force of the impact bent the table nearly in two and left the imprint of the giant’s knuckles in its surface. The sound exploded like a cannon blast in the tiny room. MacAndrew prayed none of the hospital staff or their Nazi overseers were close enough to have heard the outburst.
“Enough waiting!” Grimm snapped, the volume of his voice permeated the entire room and billowed out into the hallways beyond. “You English cowards may wait until the Reich burns your cities, but I will stand by no more!”
“You can go and get yourself killed, mate, but I won’t be letting ya take me with you,” MacAndrew hissed back at the raging German. The air between the two men hummed with the static electricity of anger.
A tiny voice from behind the men silenced them. “Himmler arrives at dawn,” said Rela in a panic-filled whisper.
“What did you say?” MacAndrew was too stunned by the revelation to say more.
“Say again, woman,” said Grimm, equally as startled.
Himmler? Here in Prague? MacAndrew reeled at the thought.
“It is no matter. Reinhardt Heydrich must die tonight before the cold iron machines of Wittgenstein and his partner are completed. Now is the time!” The normally cool demeanor of Grimm had begun to crack with pent-up rage. It was clear he was a man of action and not one accustomed to waiting idle. “It is the All-Father’s will.”
“I don’t c
ompletely understand what’s going on here, lad,” said MacAndrew thoughtfully. “But I do know that if Himmler is on his way here, then we should wait and try to kill two birds with one stone. Taking out the Butcher of Prague and his boss in one fell swoop will send the Nazi command into chaos. It’ll leave a power vacuum the boys in London can take advantage of… we could save millions.”
“Or sentence the world to the fires of the Jotnar if we fail.”
MacAndrew could hear the seething anger in Grimm’s voice. There was something the Scotsman was missing – a vital piece of information that explained why the giant was hell-bent on his mission of murder. One look into Grimm’s face was more than enough for MacAndrew to realize the man wasn’t about to share that information. Not about this so-called Jotnar, about the All-Father or any of the giant’s other ramblings. It was all starting to wear thin. He’d followed the big German almost blindly, but he with the imminent arrival of Himmler…
“Our best bet is to radio my superiors and tell them of Himmler’s arrival here in Prague. Whatever those men are doing, you said yourself, they won’t be done before morning.”
Rela raised her hand slowly, getting the attention of both men. “I have to go. They’ll begin to miss me if I’m not on my rounds. Suspicion and paranoia are running high with the Germans.”
The door swung open silently allowing the woman to make her exit into the glaring light of the hallway once MacAndrew made sure the way was clear.
Giving her forearm a gentle squeeze, the Scotsman said, “On your way, girl. Don’t take any chances and I’ll make sure Jozef comes for you before morning. You’ll both be safe out in the countryside before lunch.”
With encouragement and hope beaming from her face, Rela rushed down the hall, disappearing around the corner before watching eyes could catch her standing in such unusual company. The worst thing for any of them would be for her to get caught with the end of their mission – their months of planning and plotting – so close at hand. If things continued on their current path, Heydrich would be dead within a day and Prague would be on its way to freedom once more.
An enormous hand clamping down on the thick muscles of MacAndrew’s right shoulder stopped him from following Rela’s exit. The deep voice that followed froze him in place.
“I do not like your plan, but I do see the wisdom in it, little Celt,” said Grimm. “Use your machines to contact those who make your decisions. I will wait to fulfill the All-Father’s wishes for another day, but no longer. By tomorrow, Balmung will once more taste the life’s blood of Heydrich and send him screaming into Hel’s cold bosom.”
MacAndrew tossed one final look back down the hall in the direction Rela had made her retreat before following Grimm back outside and away from the throbbing heart of the enemy’s stronghold.
“We’ll radio Baker Street from Boromejsky Church,” said MacAndrew as the pair crept across the heavily guarded hospital courtyard, keeping to the shadows as best they could. “They’ll have a plan to handle the Butcher and Himmler both.”
* * *
The shadows moved behind the retreating pair, revealing the form of a man, hidden and waiting. A smile twisted out of the darkness. It had heard enough. It knew where the traitors were going; where to find them and where they would be cornered like rats, unable to escape the cold grip of death.
Soon. The shape flitted silently after them. Their souls would feed the Jotnar.
CHAPTER 6
HOT BLOOD, COLD IRON
Blood and ammonia.
Even after more than three decades serving as a surgeon, both in the hospitals of Prague and on the continental battlefields of the Great War, Doctor Artur Slanina had never gotten used to the ways the odors of those two things mixed and mingled. The acidic tang of both foul liquids burned the inside of his nose, and the elderly doctor swore he could smell them even in his sleep. No amount of washing would free him of the stench.
Being covered in the nearly-black blood of the German Reichsprotektor as Reinhard Heydrich slowly shuffled off the coils of life made the stench no more bearable for Slanina. With the presence of a battalion of Nazi SS soldiers filling every bit of empty space in Bulovka Hospital, Slanina knew his life would last only as long as that of his patient. Every drop of Heydrich’s blood on the once white tiles of the operating suite was a drumbeat in the final song of the doctor’s own existence.
If Heydrich died, then so did Slanina and every other member of the medical staff present.
He stared over at his protégé, the nearly hysterical Doktor Walter Diek. Well at least I won’t be alone in the afterlife.
Seconds flowed into minutes and then into an hour. Flesh was cut and stitched, arteries tied off, bones braced, all while blood continued to drain away, each drip marking the passage of time.
“Does the Reichsprotektor still draw breath?”
The demanding voice of Doctor Karl Gebhardt called out in his harsh, southern-German accent, shocking Slanina into nearly dropping the scalpel with which he had been slicing into his patient’s distended abdomen. The question was repeated once more as the finely-dressed figure in black leather filled the room’s entrance.
They are all such small men, these Nazis. Slanina watched the immaculately-groomed Gebhardt march into the operating suite, flanked by a quartet of SS officers. It was difficult for the Czech to believe a man lacking in height or breadth could have risen as high in the National Socialist Party as Karl Gebhardt had.
The Nazi surgeon’s haute attitude displayed itself prominently as he removed the thick, black leather long-coat that hung about his shoulders and held it out absentmindedly for someone to take. When none of the medical team had the wherewithal to accept his garment, dark brown eyes rolled back into Gebhardt’s head and were accompanied by a twist of disgust across his lips.
“Did you not hear me, Doktor?”
Slanina recovered, wiping globs of plasma and unidentifiable gray tissue from his hands. “Of course, Herr Doktor Gebhardt. My attention was locked on the work of saving our patient.”
Somehow, the shorter Gebhardt looked down his nose at the taller Czech physician with a flash of not quite disguised contempt.
“And how is your work progressing?”
The question from the personal physician to one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany was a layered one. Not only did it inquire about Reinhard Heydrich’s chances of survival, but it also very subtly linked Slanina’s own continued existence – and that of the entire medical staff of Bulovka Hospital – to the man living out the night. Fifteen armed SS soldiers slid forward an almost indeterminable inch to help punctuate the implications entwined in Doctor Gebhardt’s query.
Every eye in the room was on the senior doctor, waiting for his answer. “The Reichsprotektor is in critical condition. He received through-and-through wounds to his stomach that bisected his liver and tore out his spleen. There was additional damage to his lungs and right kidney.” A heavy breath was sucked out of the room as Slanina pulled back the thin, blood-stained sheet that had covered Heydrich’s torso, allowing a mess of twisted meat to grin back from below. “Gastric acids have flooded his abdominal cavity and his upper intestines have been punctured in God knows only how many places. We are dealing with the most life-threatening of injuries first, but any one of them would have killed a lesser man.”
With the last words dropping from his lips, Slanina was convinced the Germans could hear the sound of every muscle in his body clenching. He had little doubt his assessment would mean death for every Czech in the building. The Nazi physician’s reaction stunned Slanina completely.
“What do you recommend for treatment?” Gebhardt asked, amusement in the man’s voice.
Slanina was aware Gebhardt considered him a backwater physician of Bohemia who would probably suggest leeches or some other medieval snake oil remedy; wanting Slanina and his colleagues to embarrass
themselves in front of their so-called ‘betters’.
It was Diek who answered. “With wounds as extensive as those the Reichsprotektor has sustained, sepsis is as immediate a concern as blood-loss or anything else. Even if we can stabilize his condition, infection could take his life as easily as the bullets of the rebels who attacked him.” Doctor Diek’s reply was accompanied by more than a touch of trepidation.
Slanina knew his friend dreaded the focus of attention his voice would bring upon him from the Nazis. The lower the profile one kept in German-occupied Prague, the higher one’s chances of survival. “We suggest an immediate treatment of–”
A barking laugh, lacking any semblance of actual humor, cut off the diagnosis. “Of what… sulfonamide? Don’t be ridiculous. The last thing Herr Heydrich needs is one of your dirty gypsy potions to taint him. It’s bad enough he’s been subjected to your crude ways, I refuse to have him die at your hands.”
The two Czech doctors exchanged confused glances. An antibiotic treatment such as Diek suggested had become standard practice in hospitals all over the continent during the past decade. To refuse one bordered on madness.
“But, Herr Gruppenführer Gebhardt…” Worry bubbled up through Slanina’s words, shot-through with incredulity.
“Enough!” The two syllables ended all argument with a finality that threatened violence and death. Gebhart’s eyes, pulled tight beneath the perfectly round spectacles perched high upon his thick nose, moved to Hans Hagan, whose huge form orbited nearby.
Slanina’s gaze flicked from his patient to Gebhardt as the man stepped up to his subordinate. “Hauptsturmführer Hagan, Herr Wittgenstein and his associate are in the courtyard with equipment vital to the survival of our friend, the Reichsprotektor. You and your men will give them every accordance and any resources they need. All of Prague itself will be laid open before them should they request it.”