missions in the Protectorate gave patriotism as their motive for volunteering. Only two—one of them Curda—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 Curda.
185
The train station in Prague is a magnificent dark stone building with two perfectly disturbing towers. Today is the Fuhrer’s birthday—April 20, 1942—and President Hacha 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-Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich.” I would like to be able to tell you that Gabcik and Kubis 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.
On the other hand, I’m almost certain that the joke which is immediately spread around town has its origin here. I imagine someone in the crowd—probably an old man, a guardian of the Czech spirit—saying in a loud voice, so that everyone around him can hear: “Poor Hitler! He must be really ill if he needs a whole train to make him better…” That’s straight out of the good soldier Svejk.
186
Lying on his little iron bed, Jozef Gabcik listens to the sound of the tramway bell outside as the tram approaches Karlovo namesti—Charles Square. Very close to here is Resslova Street, which leads down to the river: the street still knows nothing of the tragedy whose setting it will soon provide. A few shafts of sunlight force their way through the closed shutters of the apartment where, these days, Gabcik lives in hiding. From time to time you can hear the floorboards creak in the corridor, or on the landing, or in a neighbor’s apartment. Gabcik is alert but calm, as always. His eyes stare at the ceiling while in his mind he draws maps of Europe. In one map, Czechoslovakia has its old borders back. In another, the brown plague has spread across the Channel, attaching Great Britain to one of the swastika’s arms. But Gabcik, like Kubis, tells anyone who’ll listen that the war will be over in less than a year—and he probably believes it too. And not over in the way the Germans want it to be, obviously. Their first fatal error was declaring war on the USSR. Their second was declaring war on the United States in order to honor their alliance with Japan. It’s quite ironic that, if France was defeated in 1940 because she didn’t honor her promises to Czechoslovakia in 1938, Germany should now be about to lose the war because she
I’m sure these political musings occupy Gabcik’s mind, and the minds of his friends; I’m sure they have endless discussions at night, when they can’t sleep, when they’re able to relax a little by chatting. As long as they can forget the possibility of a nocturnal visit from the Gestapo. As long as they can stop themselves jumping at the slightest noise in the street, on the staircase, in the house. As long as they don’t hear imaginary bells ringing in their heads, and yet are still able to listen out for the sound of real bells ringing.
This is another age—one where, each day, people eagerly look forward not to sports results but to news from the Russian front.
The Russian front, however, is not uppermost in Gabcik’s mind. The single most important thing in the war today is his mission. How many people believe this? Gabcik and Kubis are convinced. Valcik too. And Colonel Moravec. And President Benes, for the moment. And me. That’s all, I think. In any case, only a handful of men know about Operation Anthropoid’s objective. But even among this handful, there are some who disapprove.
This is true of certain parachutists working in Prague, and also of certain Resistance leaders—because they fear the reprisals that will be unleashed if the operation succeeds. Gabcik had a tedious argument with them the other day. They wanted to persuade him to give up his mission, or at least to change his target—to choose a prominent Czech collaborator, Emanuel Moravec, for instance, instead of Heydrich. This fear of the German! It’s like a man who beats his dog: the dog may sometimes refuse to obey his master, but he will never turn on him.
Lieutenant Bartos wanted to cancel the operation. Sent by London to carry out other Resistance missions, Bartos is the highest-ranking officer among the Prague parachutists. But here, rank means nothing. The Anthropoid team, consisting only of Gabcik and Kubis, received its instructions from London—from President Benes himself. There are no more orders to be given now. The mission has to be accomplished, and that’s that. Gabcik and Kubis are men, and everyone who rubbed shoulders with them has emphasized their human qualities: their generosity, their good nature, their dedication. But Anthropoid is a machine.
Bartos asked London to stop Anthropoid. In reply he received a coded message, indecipherable to everyone except Gabcik and Kubis. Lying on his little iron bed, Gabcik holds the text in his hand. Nobody has found this document. But in a few encrypted lines, their destiny is mapped out: the objective remains the same. The mission is confirmed. Heydrich must die. Outside, creaking metallically, a tram moves away.
187
SS-Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel, the leader of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C—the group that so zealously performed its task at Babi Yar—is going mad. At night, in Kiev, his car passes the scene of his crimes. In the headlights’ glare he contemplates the staggering spectacle of that ravine of the damned, and he is like Macbeth, haunted by his victims’ ghosts. The dead of Babi Yar are not easily forgotten, because the earth in which they’re buried is itself alive. Smoke rises from it. As the decomposing corpses produce gas bubbles that escape upward, clods jump out like popping champagne corks. The stench is foul. Blobel, laughing dementedly, explains to his guests: “Here lie my thirty thousand Jews!” And he makes a sweeping gesture that takes in the whole immense gurgling belly of the ravine.
If it goes on like this, the corpses of Babi Yar will be the death of him. At the end of his tether, Blobel travels all the way to Berlin to plead with Heydrich in person to transfer him elsewhere. He gets a suitable welcome: “So you’re feeling sick, are you? You spineless queer. You’re no good for anything but selling crockery.” But Heydrich quickly calms down. The man in front of him is a drunken wreck, no longer capable of carrying out the work entrusted to him. It would be pointless and dangerous to keep him in that job against his will. “Go and see Gruppenfuhrer Muller. Tell him you want to go on vacation. He’ll remove you from your command in Kiev.”
188
The working-class district of Zizkov in eastern Prague is supposed to have the highest concentration of bars in the whole city. It also has lots of churches, as you’d expect in the “city of a hundred bells.” In one of these churches, a priest recalls that a young couple came to see him “when the tulips were in flower.” The man was short, with thin lips and piercing eyes. The young woman, I know, was charming and full of joie de vivre. They seemed to be in love. They wanted to get married, but not straightaway. The date they wanted to book was precise but uncertain: “two weeks after the war ends.”
