Germany were of less importance to UVOD; and a few months afterwards I left the BVG’s employment. I was not unhappy about this as my boss, Herr Vahlen, was besotted with me and something of a nuisance. Thereafter I worked in a series of nightclubs. Especially the Jockey Club, where I was supposed to befriend Germans from the Foreign Ministry in order to sleep with them and get information useful to the Czech cause. I did this. Again I was short of money and sometimes I was obliged to sleep with some of these men in the Foreign Ministry for money so that I could keep myself. I also worked for UVOD as a courier. Then in the summer of 1941 my contact Detmar was replaced by another Czech called Victor Keil. I do not know what happened to Detmar and I don’t know Victor’s real name. But we were very uncomfortable comrades. Victor was a very demanding man to work for and I did not like him at all. He was not brave like Detmar. He was fearful and he did not inspire much confidence. He didn’t understand my situation at all, how difficult it was for me in Berlin. And we often quarrelled. Usually about money.
Question: Tell me what Victor asked you to do for him.
Answer: He gave me a gun and asked me to shoot someone for UVOD. I don’t know the man’s name. All I had to do was meet the man and shoot him. I didn’t want to do this. I was worried the gun would attract too much attention and I’d get caught. So Victor gave me a knife and ordered me to use that instead. Again I refused. I am not a murderer. So Victor murdered the man himself at a railway station in Berlin where I had arranged to meet him. He was a foreign worker, Dutch I think, and all I had to do was ask him for a light and distract him and Victor would commit the murder. Which he did. But it was horrible. And I said I couldn’t ever do something like that again.
Question: What station was this?
Answer: The S-Bahn station at Jannowitz Bridge.
Question: What else did he ask you to do?
Answer: Victor had come into possession of an important list of Czechs who were working for the Germans in Prague. I don’t know where he got this list. He was intending to return to Prague with it. Leaving me on my own. Which greatly alarmed me as I suspected he wasn’t planning to come back. He was scared he was being followed and so, temporarily, he gave me the list to look after until he was sure he wasn’t being shadowed by the Gestapo. Then Victor and I quarrelled, again about money. I was broke and I said that if I was going to stay on in Berlin and do important jobs for UVOD like help to kill people I wanted more money to cover my expenses. We’d arranged to meet at the station in Nollendorfplatz, in the blackout, but as he went away there was an accident and Victor was knocked down and killed by a taxi. Which was a disaster.
Question: So what did you do then?
Answer: I was in real shit here. Without a contact in Berlin I had no way of getting the list of traitors to our people in Prague. And no way of getting more money. So I resolved to try to go there myself and make contact with someone from UVOD. But it was dangerous and, of course, I was still very short of money. Not to mention a suitable cover story to get myself down to Prague.
Question: So how did you do this?
Answer: After Victor’s fatal accident I had become intimate with a police officer called Bernhard Gunther, who was investigating Victor’s death. When I met him I didn’t know he was a policeman; but when he turned up at the bar one night I got a bit suspicious and searched his coat pockets in the cloakroom and found his Kripo identification disc. At first I thought he was suspicious of me so I decided that the best thing to do would be to seem to take him into my confidence. And to throw myself on his mercy and persuade him that I was simply a joy- girl who had made a bad mistake. When I told him this he didn’t know that I knew he was a cop.
Anyway I told him that a man I’d met in the Jockey Bar who I knew only as Gustav had hired me to give an envelope to a stranger on a railway station in return for a hundred marks. I told Gunther that I got greedy, which is why the transaction went wrong. And I also told him I had no idea what the envelope contained as I’d since lost it.
Question: Which station was this?
Answer: The S-Bahn station at Nollendorfplatz.
Question: Tell us about Gustav.
Answer: There never was a Gustav. In fact it was Victor who had given me the envelope. And I didn’t mention anything about a list of Czech agents who were working for the Gestapo. I just told him about the envelope and that I’d been looking to make an easy hundred marks. Subsequently Gunther revealed he was a policeman and told me that he believed Victor had been working for the Czechs and that I was in danger. I think it flattered him that he could help me; and I allowed a relationship to develop. An intimate relationship.
Question: Tell me more about your relationship with Bernhard Gunther.
Answer: After Victor was killed, I had no one to help me in Berlin. I thought of returning to Dresden but then the idea of developing Gunther as an unwitting source of intelligence presented itself to me. I knew he was a senior detective in Kripo. So I began a relationship with him. I told him I loved him and he believed me, I think. It was dangerous but I felt the possible benefits were worth taking that kind of risk. And when he told me he had been posted to Prague, I saw a way of travelling there in comparative safety and comfort: as Gunther’s mistress. This seemed a fantastic opportunity that was too good to ignore. After all, what better cover could I have for travelling to Prague than as a Kripo Commissar’s bit on the side? He even paid for my ticket and arranged my visa at the Alex. In all respects he was very kind to me.
Question: Did Commissar Gunther know of your involvement with UVOD?
Answer: No, of course not. He suspected nothing except perhaps that I had been a whore. Or very stupid. Or both. Either that or he didn’t care to ask very much. Perhaps it was a bit of both. He was in love with me and he liked sleeping with me. And, of course, also he was too busy with his own work.
Question: Did he talk about his work?
Answer: No. It was very hard to get any information out of him. He said it was safer for me that way. It took me a while to find out that he was working for General Heydrich and that he was coming to Prague to work at Heydrich’s country house. But he didn’t say what he was doing there.
Question: What happened when you arrived in Prague?
Answer: We arrived in Prague and stayed at the Imperial Hotel. We spent the first day together. For most of the next day Gunther was away on official business. He turned up at night to sleep with me. Which suited me very well as I had the rest of the time to myself. I had heard Detmar talk about what to do if he and I ever lost contact. The places to go for help. There was a man in Prague, a UVOD agent called Radek. I should go to these places myself and try to make contact with this man. And I decided to go to these places and ask around for Radek. It was taking a risk but what choice did I have?
Question: What were these places you went to?
Answer: Elektra. It’s a cafe on Hoovera Ulice, next to the National Museum. And Ca d’Oro, a beer restaurant on Narodni Trida, in the same building as the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta. Detmar had given me some instructions in how to go about this: I should take a red rose wrapped in an old copy of Pritomnost and leave it on the table while I ordered something. Pritomnost is Presence, the weekly review that Masaryk helped to found. I could buy a copy on the black market quite easily. That’s what happened. And having made contact with Radek in the Elektra — I do not know his last name — I handed over the list of traitors.
Question: Was it Radek who came up with the plan to kill General Heydrich this morning?
Answer: No, it was someone else Radek introduced me to. I’d told them about Gunther and how he was working at the Lower Castle in Panenske-Brezany. How a car from Gestapo HQ with just a driver would come and pick him up and drive him there. A plan was quickly conceived — the opportunity appeared too good to miss. Two men from UVOD would hijack Gunther’s SS car and sit on the floor behind the seats so that they might get into the grounds of the castle, walk in and shoot everyone and anyone they could. Hopefully Heydrich would be one of these casualties.
Question: By which time you would be safely on a train back to Berlin?
Answer: Yes. That was the plan.
Question: And Gunther?
Answer: He was also to be shot by the two UVOD assassins. But the plan went up in smoke when Gunther’s car from Pecek Palace was cancelled and the poor fool had to walk to the Castle and requisition a car from there. After that, there seemed little or no choice but to get on the train as arranged. I’d done all I could. What will happen to me, please?
