Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  Those fucking policemen!

  A few yards farther and wide green steps led down to the towpath; he had planned to use it as his escape route afterward. Instead, he headed directly down toward the dark water. Nothing to be done; he'd come back later, once he'd changed his appearance. How much time left till the train? He had to put his watch up to his eyes to read the hands. Then he saw night become day.

  The whine of planes high overhead and the distant bark of anti-aircraft fire explained the light immediately. He knew the shining signal rockets on parachutes would dazzle the air defense systems, but instead of fleeing he stood mesmerized, watching the whirl of countless foil strips designed to distract the German gunners.

  The fireworks had to be a thank-you message from her!

  The unearthly light show found Morava in Jitka's company. "Take a motorcycle, drop Jitka off, and go home; I want you here bright and early tomorrow," Beran had decided. The tram lines to Pankrac and Podoli were out of service and the superintendent had felt guilty keeping them late into the night under these conditions.

  Morava turned cartwheels inside at this unexpected assignment; it turned a bloody day into a private celebration. Despite his good fortune, he would have seen her to the door of her suburban house (hidden in a romantic blind alleyway on a craggy wooded slope) and said good night with a courteous handshake—if not for the bombardiers. At that very moment, instead of dropping their bombs, they decided to rain a slowly descending radiance onto the city. Evidently they were trying to avoid another tragic error, but Jitka saw it as a warning of impending doom.

  "Hurry," she ordered with a firmness he had never seen in her before, "into the shelter!"

  Of course, he did not protest, trembling as he obeyed the command. So they waited with last year's potatoes, alone in a quite ordinary cellar. Half of it had been quickly cleared and redecorated with garden furniture; the landlords—a waiter and a cook—were working for a German military hospital in a former north Moravian health spa. When the all clear finally sounded, she invited him up to her attic room for tea with rum, since the kitchen downstairs was unheated.

  Finally, he was warm enough to reclaim his courage.

  "Please excuse me...." He had to clear his throat again before continuing. "Please excuse my rudeness in asking, but I'm not in the habit... do you think... that I could ... that you could ... that we might get to know each other better ... ?"

  Meckerle was on the rag again; the entrance guards spread the word as usual after he had chewed them out. Immediately there were rumors as to why. Yesterday's firestorm at Dresden had swallowed the villa the colonel "Aryanized" some years ago; it had been a symbol for him of his station. Of all the officers, only Buback was not quaking in fear.

  Buback knew the rest of them were incompetent amateurs who owed their posts to their connections; he was the only one who understood his craft. He was sure Meckerle realized this. The giant SS agent was capable of anything, it was true, but Buback found him particularly capable of pulling the right strings in the occupation government's crucial central office—even in times when there had been no recent victories.

  Buback agreed with him that the baroness's murder offered a unique chance to illuminate the inner workings of the Czech police, which had so far proved surprisingly resistant to the Gestapo. German informants found themselves isolated from all interesting information with amazing speed, a fact that pointed to the existence of hidden structures. Just yesterday Buback had turned his brigade, based in the former Czech college dormitory in Dejvice, over to his deputy Rattinger, an experienced detective he'd brought with him from Belgium. Buback recognized both Rattinger's yearning for promotion and the primary impediment to his career. Rattinger drank too much and Buback covered his blunders, which obliged Rattinger to him and secured his loyalty. The fanatical Kroloff watched their every misstep like a hawk, apparently convinced that they were the sort of people who were causing Germany to lose the war.

  With Meckerle's backing, Buback would inflate the importance of the case by investigating the widow's murder personally. This would force the Czech police superintendent to make the same gesture. Except Buback would move into their camp and engage his secret weapon: his knowledge of Czech. After years of experience in similar organizations, he felt sure he would be able to ferret out any Czech police conspiracies against the Third Reich.

  When the colonel had cut his senior minions down to size and then thrown them out, Buback was left alone with him in the room. As he had anticipated, Meckerle instantly calmed down and offered him a shot of surprisingly good cognac. He was uncharacteristically open with Buback.

  "Those swine." The giant threatened the distant pilots with a fist. "Soon we'll be the ones flattening their cities. Headquarters reports the Allies are on the brink of collapse. V-1 and V-2 are toys compared to our new weapons. And I wish the Allies would keep bombing so the Czechs would lose interest in stabbing us in the back."

  At exactly 8:00 his aide came to announce that the Czechs had been sitting in his waiting room for some time. Meckerle let them cool their heels a while longer as he had two more cognacs. Melancholically he showed Buback photos of his luxurious villa, and when asked politely if at least the inhabitants had survived, he informed Buback gloomily that by sheer coincidence his wife had been in Prague. (Buback, like everyone in the building, had heard of the chiefs passionate liaison with a member of the temporarily closed German Theater.) For a short while longer the two men reminisced about their beloved Dresden, until finally Meckerle, purple with fury and regret, stood up sharply and swept the empty glasses off the desk.

  "So, let's give it to them."

  The trio entered. At first sight these representatives of the Czech Protectorate's executive forces were less than impressive: the police commissioner, small and round, reminiscent of Pickwick; Superintendent Beran, tall and thin, a Don Quixote; and the kid from yesterday, broad-shouldered with small, pink cheeks. Just like Silly Honza, the hero of Czech fairy tales, whom Buback had loved as a child and therefore now especially disliked. He knew, though, that a Czech's appearance is a sadly deceptive thing. Those innocent and harmless-looking Honzas were the worst sort of traitors, and their cunning multiplied their strength.

  The colonel had his own opinion about the Czechs. He did not acknowledge them or their lackadaisically raised right hands, and bellowed at them as if they were new conscripts.

  Once he had repeated what they had heard individually from him and State Secretary Frank, he concluded: "The Third Reich believes the brutal murder of Baroness Elisabeth von Pommeren is a signal from agents of the traitorous London government-in-exile. With this act, they are unleashing a wave of terror against all Germans in the Protectorate. The guilty party must be detained, and an appropriate punishment meted out. Otherwise the Reich's retaliation will be even more severe and extensive than after the Heydrich assassination. The empire of Greater Germany stands on the brink of a decisive reversal in its all-out war against the plutocrats and Jewish Bolsheviks; we will annihilate them on their own territory! The empire will destroy anyone who even contemplates knifing it in the back!"

  Or perhaps slicing its stomach open, Buback thought.

  "We will drench the soil of Prague in rivers of Czech blood if doing so will save a single drop from German veins. It is in your hands, gentlemen." (It was evident how little he meant by that word, Buback thought.) "Will you protect your countrymen from a calamity planned by a handful of cynical expatriate mercenaries? I authorize you to form your own investigative team; you will bear full responsibility for the results. The liaison officer of the local Reich Security Office, Chief Inspector Buback, will be my representative. He will be providing me with detailed information about the state of the investigation and can secure the cooperation of our offices for you, should you need it. That is all. Now, which of you will answer personally for the team's activity?"

  Police Commissioner Rajner bowed as respectfully as his paunch would allow, and his gaze
—till now fixed upon the colonel—slid over to his scrawny neighbor.

  "Superintendent Beran...."

  Buback had expected it. It would be interesting to work with a man whose name had been a household word for years. He recalled the way the papers had praised Beran during one particular case. A jealous man had killed his wife and her lover, and Beran had stepped forward from the barricade of officers around the house, shouting, If you don't shoot me, I promise you I'll take you for a beer once you get out of prison! And he had undoubtedly done so. Even years later, Beran seemed like a man who kept his word and got things done no matter what. It dismayed Buback that he would have to spy on such an opponent and neutralize him.

  Beran nodded agreeably and replied, in accented but passable German, as casually as if he were talking about the weather.

  "Given the current personnel situation, I'll still be supervising all of Prague's criminal police operations. As time goes on, we'll be more and more hard pressed by the influx of refugees from the East. Therefore, my deputized representative, detailed exclusively to this case, will be Assistant Detective Morava."

  Buback was stunned when Meckerle just nodded; how can he let them foist that kid on us? Careful: the colonel's a dangerous fox. Silly Honza straightened up woodenly, blushing all over. Buback remembered the schoolboy's notebook. You, at any rate, will be mine, kiddo! He tried to answer Beran in the same casual vein.

  "That's your business. My job is to see that you get your job done as quickly as possible."

  "That's what we ordinarily do," the superintendent replied politely and looked him straight in the eye.

  Figures we'd be enemies, Buback thought ruefully; we'd make a great team. At the same time he noticed that Meckerle's attention was slowly but surely beginning to drift. To avoid a general dismissal that would have included him as well, he snapped to attention. At least it would remind the Czechs that this wasn't a social call.

  "Standartenfuhrer, permit me to escort the gentlemen to my office to receive their status report."

  Meckerle now stiffened up as well and gave them a parting shot for good measure.

  "I want that man, here and soon," he bellowed, pointing imperiously at the floor between them. "I want to be the first to ask him personally why he did it. I might even save us the expense of an execution."

  Then, finally, he stuck out his arm in the German salute.

  As usual, Morava shook off his jitters quickly; the knowledge that he was doing his best calmed him. Feeling Beran's confidence buoyed him as well.

  The tumultuous events of the evening before had further sharpened his wits. He had woken, as he'd planned, at five o'clock, even after his first night of love. For a while he had gazed in adoring disbelief at the girl beside him. Once he had made sure that he wasn't dreaming, he went downstairs quietly in the dark, found the chicory in the unfamiliar kitchen, and made himself a quite drinkable coffee. As he sipped it, he wrote down neatly what had already happened, what was happening now, and what must happen in the near future.

  He could cross off the site investigation and the autopsy. He had dictated a detailed report (including, among other things, the fact that the murderer had worn gloves and left no traces) to Jitka yesterday in the office—a century ago, he smiled to himself, before that magnificent radiance had descended on them.... The superintendent had managed to have the report translated into German overnight, and left it for Meckerle.

  In Buback's office, a bulletin was being sent by telegraph or courier to all the police stations in the Protectorate. It ended with a directive to review all the old police blotters; any cases with even a distant resemblance should be brought to Prague's attention. At this point Morava fell silent and looked inquiringly at his boss.

  The superintendent turned to the German. "I request your permission to examine the blotters from the former Czechoslovak Republic; we will be looking for any leads in this case."

  The German answered without hesitation.

  "I will permit it—as long as an agent from the appropriate German security detachment is present at all times; afterward the logs will be resealed immediately."

  He's got a good head on his shoulders, and the authority to back it up, Morava evaluated. He finished by asking if the chief inspector had any additional suggestions.

  "For now, the press is not to report on this item."

  "The censor's office has already been alerted, but it only reviews the Czech press," Morava said, pleased that he had anticipated this demand.

  "I'll deal with the German office myself," the man behind the desk snapped.

  The upholstered doors opened noiselessly. A young man with a shaven skull handed Buback a sheaf of paper and disappeared. The German looked over the report and turned to Beran again; my first goal, Morava thought, will be to get this man to stop ignoring me.

  "Why are your people at the house on the embankment?"

  "I ordered them to watch the caretaker," Beran said, taking responsibility. "He's a potential witness for the prosecution; the perpetrator might try to eliminate him."

  "Call them off. There are German organizations housed in the building; we'll take care of it ourselves."

  Beran nodded again genially. Morava could sense what he was thinking: We'll save on overtime, and now we have a good idea where their counterespionage is.

  Buback abruptly stood up. Social graces were clearly not his strong point.

  "I expect your reports daily at eight hundred, fourteen hundred, and twenty hundred hours. At an appropriate point I'll join the investigation. Prepare an office for me in your building with two telephone lines."

  He did not wish them well, but neither did he say Heil Hitler. From his position at the side of the desk, Morava spotted the faces of two women in a picture frame. Unbelievable, he thought. Despite the events of the last twenty-four hours, Jitka was still on his mind. But could Germans still feel love, after everything they had done?

  As they walked down past three checkpoints to the ground floor of the Gestapo fortress, a wave of antagonism rolled over him. These run-of-the-mill sergeants with the skull and crossbones on their caps behaved with incredible arrogance toward the highest officer and best detective of the Protectorate police. They were infinitely worse, he thought, than any Czech guard in Bartolomejska would dare be even to a prisoner. It filled him with a chilling sense of his own insignificance. Only a couple of steps separated them from the infamous basement that had swallowed several of his colleagues, among them Beran's right-hand man. The only way out of there was via the concentration camps or the military firing range in Kobylisy.

  Morava believed that Meckerle, who was in charge of all this, was dead serious. If they did not bring him the murderer's head, he'd take one of theirs, and Morava had no doubt which of the three of them would be least missed and would thus suit them best as a general warning.

  At times his people's humiliation and degradation had infuriated Morava so much that he would gladly have given his life for their freedom. Thus far no one had ever offered him the chance. But last night for the first time, love had lit up his world more dazzlingly than the pilots' magnesium flares, and now he wanted desperately to live.

  That morning, when Jitka had opened her eyes, he had felt fear instead of happiness at her presence: how easily he could lose her or be lost to her in this strange time!

  He asked himself: Is happiness a cage for souls to cower in, robbed of their courage?

  No! He remembered the passages his grandmother used to read to him from the Bible: It is a shield that would protect him, Jitka, and their children from harm.

  My love, I swear to you: in the name of our happiness, I will catch that butcher!

  MARCH

  An insistent thought woke him: today! He kept his eyes closed so as not to frighten off the long-awaited images.

  He saw himself there again as she lay down on the dining-room table transformed into a sacrificial altar. A couple of times in the past few days he'd heard her reproa
ch him sternly for losing his nerve. He countered that he had a cold, that he must have caught a draft as the pressure wave (he'd remembered it only later) blew out the window-panes. He knew, though, that it was a feeble excuse. Something in him balked; he had gone soft again, and it took all his strength just to keep his workmates from noticing.

  Brno still haunted him, though it hadn't been a complete catastrophe. Even if he had screwed it up, at least he'd saved his skin for the next attempt. And after all, the newspapers had hashed and rehashed the story; even in the words they used to humiliate him—labeling him mentally ill—he heard a poorly concealed sense of admiration and horror. In the end, though, a depressing sense of his own failure won out. Add to it the memory of how the girl screamed and fouled herself, and the whole affair had tied his hands for years.

  Now that he had finally dared to accept the mission again, he was eager to see what the newspapers would say. On the second and third days he was patient when the news brought only pictures of disfigured victims from the first Prague air raid—although it annoyed him that his immaculate work would not be contrasted with the random results of bomb explosions.