Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  He hesitated. Because no one was covering him, he had to risk another leap forward into the alley or rot there until they picked him off; if the Germans sent a small counteroffensive from the building it might come sooner than he thought.

  Mother, save me!

  Her response came immediately.

  I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF!

  He threw caution to the wind; racing out along the side of the building near the garbage cans, he deliberately squeezed the trigger, trying to hit the chink between them: one, two, three, four, shit in your pants, Kraut, and stay back there, or you might just knock me off, five, six— then he reached the life-saving alley, spitting distance from the garbage cans, and suddenly he wasn't running but flying through the air; dropping his gun, he splayed onto the concrete like a frog. Was he hit? No. Immediately he realized what had brought him down: he had tripped over a corpse without a face. The hand grenade that had opened these gaping holes in the alley walls had probably blown it off.

  Why had he left those six whores' faces on? Shouldn't he have cut out their likenesses as well as their hearts? It could have been his own contribution to the inspirational picture. Wait... maybe what he'd just tripped over was a sign meant for him. He ignored the German— let his nerves jangle for a while—and rummaged in the man's clothing. There was an identity card unscathed in the breast pocket. Tensely he unfolded it and swallowed with gratitude: The faded picture showed a middle-aged man with average features, easily interchangeable with half of mankind.

  Including me!

  He shoved his own papers into the man's pocket and repeated his new name to himself.

  LUDVIK ROUBINEK.

  Now he turned with renewed interest to the enemy. Pressed against the alley wall closest to the German he glimpsed the corner uphill where he had started. Those chicken-shits still didn't dare come after him. But he didn't need them; actually, he'd rather take care of the German himself and just hoped the Kraut wouldn't run away like the Hungarians did at Komarno.

  He had that taste again and intended to satisfy it. He called out to his prey.

  "You there!"

  The air vibrated with the shots and detonations still resounding from the radio building. He shouted louder, and in German.

  "Sie dort!"

  No answer.

  "Your men won't help you. They're surrounded. Give up!"

  Silence, humming with the nearby battle.

  "I have a grenade; I'll count to three. Put your weapon on the trash can, or it's all over. Don't be a fool and you'll live to tell the tale. One ... two ..."

  Mother, help me, don't let him call my bluff!

  Metal clanged against metal. A submachine gun lay on the garbage can, gently rocking on the bent top of the lid.

  You're divine! But what about him?

  Two fiercely trembling hands appeared. Slowly a cap and then a head emerged. The haggard kid in the SS uniform might have been twenty. But he's a German, she said sternly. And you're a czech!

  Yes, yes! He raised the hand with the pistol and went as close as he could, until only the garbage can divided them. The barrel touched the gray-green cloth in the region of the heart. No, that would be too fast a death for a German pig. The soldier licked his lips, but did not move when the gun slid diagonally down to his belly.

  He'd give him time.

  Time to repent.

  I was waiting till I knew it was you, love," Grete explained; he had been banging on the bolted door, but she would not open it until he began to call her name. "No, I'm not afraid, not in the least; I'm just a bit terrified, actually. But since you wanted me to go somewhere I wouldn't go, and I decided instead to be terrified by your side, I really can't complain. Tell me what's going on; suddenly the radio only speaks Czech!"

  Litera had explained why as they were leaving.

  "They're fighting over it."

  "And that means ..."

  "Probably the beginning of the uprising. And maybe of the assault on Prague."

  "Aha. And what about us?"

  "I warned the Czechs, Grete. And I want to keep it up as long as I can.

  "Good idea. What will they do for us in return?"

  Her selfish directness made him doubt his reasons for changing sides again. She flared up at him as if reading his thoughts.

  "Don't try to be Saint Erwin, love. Since you've decided to save yourself, save both of us in the bargain! Why should the only Germans to survive the war be the criminals?"

  "Morava offered me an apartment," he responded. "The one where you and his wife ... where it happened. Can you bear it there until we can see what comes next?"

  "Will you stay with me?"

  "I'll do everything I can to stop in for you at least once a day...."

  "Aha...."

  She sounded disappointed. He wondered disconsolately how to respond if she suggested escaping together again.

  "When?" she asked instead.

  "Right away!" he said, relieved. "Pack what you need and I'll bring all the groceries from the house."

  "What do you need?"

  "Some underwear."

  Like a seasoned traveling artist she was ready before he was. They .packed the baggage space with two suitcases of personal effects, two bags of food, and a rolled-up blanket in a fresh plaid cover with a pillow—after all, she opined, they couldn't sleep in the same one that poor girl...

  Then he remembered his pistol.

  On the threshold, she kissed him.

  "May we never be less happy than we are now!"

  As it turned out, they had left Little Berlin at the last possible moment. At the intersection below the last house a Wehrmacht truck in the hands of the insurgents had blocked the roadway except for a narrow passage. A man in the moth-eaten uniform of a former Czechoslovak Army first lieutenant was directing a handful of civilians with tricolors pinned on. All of them had rifles.

  The police driver and car satisfied the lieutenant; he saluted Buback as well, who was sitting with Grete in the back. Down by Stromovka Park a German guard unit had surrendered a small arsenal, he told them; they'd found a pile of guns there. They'd been sent here to comb through the villas, checking for any treacherous "werewolves"— German storm troopers—who might be hiding there.

  "Take care," Litera advised him. "The criminals will be right behind the war heroes. Everything's public property now."

  "I'm no policeman!" The first lieutenant seemed almost insulted.

  "And our men aren't soldiers, but unlike you they're already in battle. Happy hunting."

  He hit the gas and grinned at Buback like an ally.

  "Mothballed soldiers!" Litera sniffed contemptuously. "We haven't seen the last of 'em."

  On Mendel Bridge, where tar-paper signs had restored the Czech painter Manes's name, the crew of a German light cannon tried to drive them back. Buback took care of it. He easily negotiated passage around the large-caliber machine gun at the National Theater.

  Litera slowed down again at the railway bridge to let two city buses move aside; they were blocking riverside traffic and the way south to Vysehrad. Prague seemed to be divided into Czech and German islands. On the former, celebration was giving way to resistance activities, while the latter were empty spaces guarded by jittery soldiers.

  "I see we make a good pair," Litera said to Buback after his performance at the theater, "so long as we don't pull out the wrong piece of paper!"

  Beran's apparent involvement and Buback's miraculously good Czech instilled in Litera a measure of goodwill toward the German, which was now growing into approval.

  Grete was quiet as a mouse the whole trip, but the anxious grip of her fingers told him her true state of mind. At each control point he had to free himself from it forcibly, only to return tenderly afterward.

  Only a few nights ago she had been amorous, uninhibited, an apparently superficial consumer of her own existence. In this dark hour, however, Grete's character seemed suddenly different, contradicting her own confessions. Now
she would suffer all the more as he abandoned her to an unknown fate for an indeterminate time, but she did not use any of the feminine weapons arrayed at her beck and call to force him to the decision she must be hoping for. Or would she try it at the last moment?

  They arrived. He could feel Grete tremble at the sight of the house. The kitchen windows had not been repaired, but someone had boarded them up, nailing the planks an inch apart, so there would be light inside during the day. Litera carried their baggage in alone. The two of them shouldn't be seen much in public, he said; there were only a couple of old geezers living around here, but just to be on the safe side! When he disappeared into the hall with the first load, Grete had her last chance.

  Instead, however, she kept her grip on his fingers and stared motionlessly ahead. Once Litera had taken in the last bundle and was waiting inside to show her in, she kissed Buback gently on the lips and, surprisingly, made the sign of the cross on his forehead.

  "Come back when you can, love. And ring or knock the fate theme: da da da dum ...!"

  How would he get back here? he wondered once she had disappeared into the house. And would he come back at all? The only thing he knew for sure was that he loved and admired her.

  He and Litera retraced their journey. At the railway bridge two pot-bellied garbage trucks had joined the buses. Men in leather aprons were rolling heavy trash cans over from the nearby houses, but instead of feeding their contents to the metal stomachs, they made rows of them in front of the trucks. Litera stuck his head out the window.

  "What's it going to be when it's finished?"

  "City radio just urged people to set up barricades. The Germans are on their way from Benesov!"

  Buback felt sure it was a consequence of his information—the first result of his betrayal... no! He remembered Grete's words: he had simply tried to mitigate the effects of a grand treason his people had perpetrated on ... on his people, yes.... what was he anyway? A Czech, like his mother, or a German, like his father? Wasn't he a living example of the senselessness of nationalism? And therefore wasn't he predestined by his heritage to…

  A traffic policeman jumped out of the left bus and cut off his musings.

  "You won't get through along the embankment: the Nazis are there and now they're shooting."

  Litera squinted at his neighbor. Buback said in reply, "We've done well so far together. I'll cross the last German watchpoint with you, and once I've negotiated your way out, I'll go back to Bredovska Street on foot."

  He saw the driver blink in shock.

  "Tell Mr. Beran that I'm trying to talk to my supervisor, who was just promoted; I'm hoping he'll agree to proclaim Prague an open city they won't fight for. I'll try to get back with fresh news as soon as possible; could you ask the chief to inform your guard posts?" "You're asking for trouble, Mr. Buback, do you know that?" "Well, did you know I was born here, in Prague?" They passed easily through several checkpoints on Czech-controlled territory, getting as far as Stepanska Street, where the German-occupied city center began. From there on no one stopped them; the presence of an employee from the Gestapo building must have been relayed by field telephone. Buback rode with him as far as the boundary formed by a row of machine guns; now Litera would easily be able to draw a plan of the German defenses. Am I a spy on top of everything else? Buback wondered.

  When they parted and the car disappeared in the direction of Narodni Avenue, he set off back toward Bredovska to the sound of detonations carried down from the radio on the spring wind. What chance, he wondered, did a small cog like he have of influencing the workings of this huge machine?

  Jan Morava's first direct military involvement in the Second World War lasted all of a few long seconds. By the time he had reached the bend in the staircase in a hail of fire that miraculously missed him, the fifteen policemen ahead of him had used the element of surprise to clear the Germans from the main halls of the second and third floors. The occupiers were now stuck in the side hallways, preventing the Czechs from breaking through to the broadcast studios, wherever they were. The newcomers moved to secure what they held to the left, the right, upstairs, and downstairs. SS troops still held the fourth floor, which was the seat of the German directorate; at noon they had driven the first group of Czech policemen up to the top floors, where they were still contained.

  In both mezzanines and the mouths of the corridors, barricades of desks and file cabinets were going up all around Morava, while he racked his brain. How could he achieve the main task Beran had set him: ending the fighting?

  The modern 1930s building was like a labyrinth; its hundreds of locked doors, all missing their plaques, would have been a tricky puzzle under normal circumstances, let alone with ricocheting bullets whizzing past like crazed bees. He knew the Germans must still be searching for the source of the broadcasts, which were being heard across Bohemia. If they found them, brave announcers and technicians would die, and Germany would inflict a heavy moral defeat on a citizenry trying to atone for the national shame of the 1938 Munich capitulation. Morava understood: The fighting had to be stopped or resolved as soon as possible. With Sucharda dead, the young detective was now in charge.

  Fortunately the city telephones were still working and the radio's switchboard had not been disconnected. The employees trapped there led him on all fours to a phone; a sniper was peppering the front of the building from an attic window opposite. They drew him a rough plan on the wooden tiles of the whole complex and a more precise map of the back wing where the broadcasts were coming from.

  At Bartolomejska they either could not or would not bring Beran or Brunat to the telephone. Finally they got Superintendent Hlavaty, who had so brilliantly scented the widow killer's trail in the Klasterec priest's missive. He instantly grasped the urgency of the problem, and shortly thereafter Brunat's voice came on the line. On the advice of two editors, former reserve officers, Morava requested that he send another armed unit through the attics of neighboring houses and across the flat roofs. With this assistance, the men defending the upper floors and those down below could clear the Germans from the middle and then the base of the building.

  The Germans in the middle had fortunately run out of grenades and lacked Panzerfausts; like the Czechs beneath them, they were cut off from supplies on the ground floor. The first side to obtain reinforcements would break the stalemate.

  "I'll bring them personally," Brunat promised. "The radio's the key to everything now. But try to negotiate with the Germans; maybe they'll fold of their own accord."

  "Depends whether Schorner's set out already," Morava replied. "How does it look?"

  "For now it seems we're ahead by a hair. The city radio's sending out instructions on how to build barricades. Prague's starting to become impassable; I'm afraid it'll take us a while to get to you."

  "Try the way we went: up Wenceslas Square past the Germans— yes, they're reserve officers and new recruits. If you wear police uniforms and formulate your request correctly, it gives them the option of saving their own skins without losing face."

  "Wait, Jan...." He heard Brunat give a muffled assent. "Beran says that in the name of the Czech National Council you're to meet with Thurmer, the German radio director. You can offer free passage for German employees and soldiers, but careful: no weapons, period. Break a leg; we'll be over in a jiffy to give them a good-bye kiss."

  They crawled out of the threatened office to plot how and when to proceed, shouting at each other in the hallway against the noise of the battle. Morava picked the two who spoke the best German and were least afraid to negotiate with Thurmer. The apparently insurmountable problem of how to contact him was solved again by the telephone.

  "The director will meet with you," his secretary responded after a short while, "if you'll stop shooting and cease your hostile broadcasts from this building for the duration of the negotiations."

  Morava rejected the second condition. Thirty employees trapped unexpectedly by the turn of events were squashed with the pol
icemen into a narrow space between the unreliable-looking wooden barriers. In a few cases, their nerves were in tatters.

  "Why not call the studios and have them play music for a while," suggested a pitifully pale woman slumped weakly on the tiles, her back propped against the wall. "Everyone's heard the broadcast anyway, and we'll never get out of here unless—"

  "Chin up, Andula!" a colleague interjected. Another employee added, "The Germans know they won't just be able to escape, not at any price; all of Prague is sharpening its knives for them."

  Finally the German fire began to quiet down. The phone rang; the director was waiting for them. The negotiators should put their hands behind their heads; they would be searched on arrival.