Prague Fatale

by Philip Kerr

  ‘I wonder why I never met him.’

  ‘Yes, I heard you were down there last October.’

  ‘I had hoped never to go back.’

  ‘Rough, eh?’

  ‘Not for me. Not particularly. But there was a girl. Arianne Tauber. It was very rough for her.’

  ‘She’s the one who tried to blow up Himmler, right?’

  ‘Yes. The assassination attempt that no one talks about. Do you happen to know what happened to her?’

  ‘No, but I could probably find out. In return for your help in Prague.’

  I nodded. ‘Fair enough. There was another fellow. The spy. Paul Thummel. What happened to him? Do you know?’

  ‘Difficult case,’ said Nebe. ‘You have two sides to that story. The Abwehr says that Thummel only ever pretended to spy for the Czechs so that he could obtain information about UVOD’s London contacts. The SD, however, insists he was the genuine Esau. And nobody wants to put him on trial so they can prove the case one way or the other. That would be embarrassing for someone important, either way. So Thummel stays in an isolation cell at the fortress in Terezin, under a false name, the poor bastard.’

  When we arrived in Prague we found things were even more chaotic than Nebe had described. The streets were empty of everyone except lots of SS troops, who were reportedly trigger-happy, while the cells at Pecek Palace and the prison at Pankrac were full after the arrests of almost five hundred Czechs, nearly all of them innocent, of course. But the situation at Hradschin Castle was nothing short of laughable. Daluege was working on the assumption that the assassination was the beginning of an organized Czech uprising; he had called in police reinforcements from Dresden and declared a nine p.m. curfew. Most of the Czechs arrested had simply fallen foul of Daluege’s curfew.

  Pannwitz and Frank were jointly of the opinion that the ambush was the work of a team of British parachutists, and these two had set in train a painstaking search of every single house in Prague in the hope of uncovering the assassins’ hiding place.

  As soon as they saw Arthur Nebe, Kopkow and Wehner complained that there was little hope of catching anyone so long as revenge appeared to be the only order of the day, for as well as the five hundred Czechs who had been arrested, it seemed that the Gestapo had already shot more than one hundred and fifty men and women who were suspected of working for UVOD, including two witnesses to the actual assassination. Which hardly helped their investigation.

  Nebe and I viewed the damaged car, the scene of the crime and other evidence, including a bicycle used by one of the assassins, and the coat he had been wearing; these were on display to the public in the window of a popular shoe store in the centre of Prague. Then we went to Bulovka Hospital to view Heydrich’s dead body and found the autopsy was still in progress. This was conducted by Professor Hamperl – who had also handled Captain Kuttner’s autopsy eight months earlier – and Professor Weygrich, who was also from the German Charles University in Prague.

  Nebe, who had no taste for hospitals, left me there to speak to the two professors while he went to the Pecek Palace for a meeting with Frank and Pannwitz.

  I did not enter the operating theatre. Although the whole floor was guarded by several SS-men – to me this looked like covering the well after the child had already fallen in – I could easily have entered the theatre itself; Nebe made that clear to the NCO in charge of the guard detail. But I didn’t go in to the autopsy theatre. Perhaps I just didn’t trust myself not to tell Heydrich that if he had listened to me then he would have been alive. Perhaps. But I think it’s more likely that I wanted to avoid finding the least bit of sympathy in myself for that truly wicked man. So I sat on a wooden bench outside the doors and waited for good news, like an expectant father.

  When the autopsy finished, Hamperl was first out of the operating theatre, and he greeted me like an old friend.

  ‘So, he’s really dead, is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  I lit a cigarette. I never much cared for big cigars.

  We walked along the landing.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked Hamperl. ‘Did you ever catch that poor Captain’s murderer?’

  The official record showed that Kuttner’s murder remained unsolved. Hamperl probably knew that. It was just his way of teasing me. I was hardly about to tell him that he’d just finished dissecting Kuttner’s murderer. Somehow that didn’t seem appropriate. Besides, as well as the SS guards there were several Gestapo men hanging around the floor.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We never did.’

  ‘We? You were in charge of that case, weren’t you, Commissar Gunther?’

  ‘I thought that, too. But it turned out I wasn’t really.’

  ‘Who was?’

  I nodded back at the autopsy theatre. ‘He was. Heydrich.’

  ‘I expect he’s why you’re here now. Yes?’

  ‘It’s not because I like this place.’

  ‘No, indeed. Well, it was good to see you again, anyway.’

  ‘No, don’t go away. I’ve come all the way from Berlin to talk to you, Professor.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

  ‘Come on, Professor. Help me out here.’

  It’ll be a day or two before Professor Weygrich and I have finished our report,’ said Hamperl. ‘You can read it then. Now, if you don’t mind, Commissar, I have a lot of work to do in the lab.’

  I followed him downstairs.

  ‘All I want from you is your probable assessment. And then I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘No. I can’t help you there. My report is for the eyes of General Frank only. Until he authorizes its release, I can’t discuss the case with anyone. That’s what he told me. And I wouldn’t care to disappoint that man. He’s in a mood to do harm to this city. To the whole country, perhaps.’

  I ran ahead a few steps and then stopped in front of Hamperl.

  ‘I can appreciate that. But I really must insist.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Commissar. You’re in no position to insist on anything. The report must remain private for now. Now get out of my way.’

  I stayed where I was. ‘Would it make a difference if I said the word “Rothenburg”, sir?’

  Hamperl did not reply.

  ‘I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, Professor Hamperl. The Pension Matzky.’

  ‘I was visiting a patient,’ he said. ‘In my capacity as a doctor, you understand. That is why I was there.’

  ‘Of course. I understand perfectly. What you don’t know perhaps is that nothing that happens there is private. Nothing at all.’

  Hamperl’s fixed jaw slackened a little.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There were hidden microphones.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘All I’m asking is that you give me a few minutes of your time, Professor. In private. Do you have a car here, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Perhaps you could give me a lift back into the centre of Prague, sir. We might talk a little during the journey.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t see why not. We could certainly do that. A good idea. Follow me.’

  That evening I met Arthur Nebe at the Esplanade Hotel where both of us were staying, and over an excellent dinner I told him what I had learned that afternoon from Professor Hamperl.

  ‘It seems that Heydrich was making a strong recovery until yesterday lunchtime. He’d just finished a meal cooked specially for him by his wife, Lina, when he collapsed and lost consciousness.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to tell me she poisoned him.’

  Nebe grinned and poured himself a glass of wine. He was doing his best to enjoy himself in spite of everything that had happened, and some of the wariness that was almost always in his narrow eyes was gone. Probably it was just the wine. Nebe was especially fond of good wine and good restaurants. He put his long nose into his wine glass and breathed deeply.

  ‘Do drink up, Bernie. This is a superb claret.’

  ‘
It wasn’t her that poisoned him. But—’

  He put down his glass and watched my face for some sign of humour.

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Professor Hamperl is scared, Arthur. He’d like the autopsy to report that Heydrich died from anaemic shock.’

  ‘The man lost his spleen, didn’t he? Anaemic shock would be a fair conclusion to that sort of injury.’

  ‘However, Professor Weygrich wishes to mention the presence of organ damage resulting from an infection. A bacteria or poison.’ I shrugged. ‘Well, again, you might expect infection to result from bomb splinters.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘However.’

  ‘Ugh. That word again.’

  ‘Hamperl would prefer not to mention this inflammation of the tissues at all. Mediastinitis, he called it.’

  ‘I fail to see the need for two ominous howevers. Infection is common in such situations.’

  ‘After the patient was making a strong recovery?’ I shook my head. ‘Listen, Arthur. On Tuesday Heydrich had a temperature of one hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit. But yesterday his temperature was down and his wound was draining freely. That is until midday, when the infection suddenly returned. A complete reversal of his condition.’

  ‘So what are you saying, Bernie?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. Hamperl is saying it. And frankly he’s not likely ever to say it again, to anyone. I had a hard enough job getting him to say it the first time. And here’s another thing, Arthur. I’m never going to say any of this again, either. If you ever ask me about this I’ll just say I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘All right.’ Nebe nodded. ‘So, let’s hear it.’

  ‘Hamperl believes the infection was introduced long after the wound was sustained. That Heydrich was infected by a bacterium introduced by an outside agency. In other words, he was poisoned.’

  ‘Good God. You are serious.’ Nebe grabbed his glass and drained the contents. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘He won’t say. But I checked through the medical records myself and they show that Heydrich was initially under the care of Himmler’s personal physician, Professor Karl Gebhardt.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nebe. ‘As soon as he heard Heydrich had been injured Himmler ordered Gebhardt to come to Prague and take charge of Heydrich’s treatment.’

  ‘But later on, Hitler’s own doctor, Dr Karl Brandt, arrived on the scene and, having examined Heydrich himself he recommended that Heydrich be treated with an anti-bacterial sulphonamide. Gebhardt refused however, on the basis that the drug isn’t particularly soluble and, crystallizing in the kidneys, sulphonamide can cause a certain amount of pain. You wouldn’t want to prescribe it to someone who wasn’t eating or drinking.’

  ‘But you said that Heydrich was eating and drinking normally.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘And if he was taking liquids, any pain from sulphonamides would have been considerably lessened.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That Gebhardt poisoned Heydrich?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. When I was last in Prague, Heydrich told me that SS doctors were experimenting with sulphonamide compounds, as a way of treating wound infections. Doesn’t it seem odd that Heydrich of all people should have been prevented from taking advantage of a drug newly synthesized in SS laboratories?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ admitted Nebe.

  ‘At least until you remember that Heydrich already suspected Himmler of trying to kill him.’ I shrugged. ‘Who better than a doctor to finish the job started by the British parachutists? And here’s another thing that I found out at the Bulovka Hospital. After her husband died Lina Heydrich had some sort of altercation with Dr Gebhardt and actually accused him of killing her husband. It seems that she had to be restrained from hitting him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. I never knew this.’

  ‘Apparently she told Major Ploetz, Heydrich’s adjutant, that she won’t be accompanying your SS guard of honour back to Berlin.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. It seems she herself believes that her husband’s death is not exactly as advertised.’

  ‘Himmler will be furious. Hitler, too.’

  ‘There is that possibility.’

  Nebe rubbed his jaw anxiously.

  ‘You’re right, Bernie. We never had this conversation.’ He toasted me with his glass. ‘I might have known you’d discover a very different culprit from the ones I was hoping to find. I think we’d best leave it there, don’t you?’

  ‘I already did. When I get back to Berlin I’m going to deny I was ever here. As I discovered last October, being in Prague can be damaging to your health. Even fatal.’

  Nebe uttered a grim-sounding sigh.

  ‘About your girl friend, Arianne Tauber. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. I wish I could give you some good news, but I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Good news I wasn’t expecting, Arthur. I just want to know for sure what happened to her.’

  ‘They sent her to a concentration camp near Krakow.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s not so bad. People have survived concentration camps before.’

  ‘Not this one. This is a new kind of concentration camp. Only part of it is a true concentration camp of the kind that you and I know about. You know, like Dachau or Buchenwald. Mostly this is a special new sort of concentration camp. Much bigger than those others. It’s called Auschwitz.’

  That was the first time I ever heard the name Auschwitz. While I was eating a good dinner and enjoying a fine bottle of wine in an expensive restaurant. It seems astonishing now that the name did not stay with me longer, but within a few days I had more or less forgotten it. Years later, I heard the name again, and this time it stayed with me. It stays with me always now, and whenever I think of it I know I can put at least one face and name to the several millions of people who died there.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Three Kings were Josef Masin, Josef Balaban and Vaclav Moravek. Balaban died in Prague’s Ruznye Prison on 3 October 1941; Vaclav Moravek was killed in a shoot-out with the Prague Gestapo on 21 March 1942; Josef Masin was executed in May 1942, as part of the Nazi retaliation for the attack on Reinhard Heydrich.

  On 9 June 1942, a special train carrying one thousand Jews left Prague for Auschwitz. The train bore a sign which read ATTENTAT AUF HEYDRICH (Assassination of Heydrich). On the same day, General Karl Hermann Frank ordered Horst Bohme to destroy the Czech village of Lidice, north-west of Prague, because it was vaguely suspected of having harboured some of Heydrich’s assassins. One hundred and ninety men over the age of sixteen were executed, summarily. One hundred and eighty-four women were sent to Ravensbrück; eighty-eight children were sent to Lodz. On 1 July 1942 Eichmann ordered the women and children to be sent to Chelmno, where they were all gassed in specially converted gas vans. The village itself was razed to the ground.

  On 16 June 1942 Karel Curda walked into Pecek Palace and gave away the names and addresses of many prominent UVOD resistance workers, among them the Moravec family (no relation). Marie Moravec poisoned herself rather than be taken alive by the Gestapo. Her son, Ata, was captured and tortured. His interrogators showed him his mother’s severed head before dropping it into a fish tank. Ata Moravec broke down and revealed the hiding place of the Heydrich assassins; this was the church of St Cyril and St Methodius in Resolva Street. The Germans called this church Karl Borromäus.

  Hiding in the crypt of St Cyril’s (a Russian Orthodox church – not a Roman Catholic one, as might have been supposed) were Jan Kubis, Adolf Opalka, Jaroslav Svarc, Josef Gabcik, Josef Bublik, Josef Valcik and Jan Hruby – all members of an assassination team trained by the British Special Operations Executive for a mission called Operation Anthropoid. A pitched battle ensued during which all six men were killed or committed suicide. The bodies were identified by ‘the traitor’ Curda. The entire families of all these brave heroes were sent to Mauthausen Concentrat
ion Camp, where they were executed on 24 October 1942.

  On 3 September 1942, the officials of the Resolva Street church of St Cyril’s were tried in the conference hall of the Pecek Palace in Prague. The trial lasted three and a half hours. On 4 September, Bishop Gorazd, Jan Sonnevend, Vladimir Petrek and Vaclav Cikl were hanged.

  Adolf Hitler gave Lina Heydrich the Lower Castle at JungfernBreschan (the Czech name for this place is Panenske-Brezany) in gratitude for her husband’s ‘heroic work’. Heydrich’s eldest son, Klaus, was killed in a traffic accident outside the gates of the house in October 1943. The boy is buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of the house. In January 1945 the Heydrichs left the house for good.