Widow Killer

by Pavel Kohout

  He untied the bundle. The identity card! Agitatedly he unfolded it. The face from the Plzen police document stared out at him.

  But everything in Morava that made him a detective protested. Why, out of all the dead, had this particular one lost his face? Was it an incredible coincidence? Or a clever ruse?

  He bent down, piled the rest of the personal items between the prewar corduroy trousers (Careful! We'll need the shoes and clothes to show Rypl's colleagues and neighbors!), and put one item after the other on the napkin. A comb. A nickel-plate watch. A key ring (important for identification)! A wallet. Contents? A couple of banknotes and change. A half-empty matchbox. No cigarettes. A child's fish-shaped penknife. A handkerchief. (Monogrammed? No....)

  Still, the bloodhoundlike stubbornness Beran had admired on their last stroll told Morava that this was not their man, and that the true owner of these documents could not be far away. So what was Morava doing here?

  He persuaded a reliable-looking sergeant to leave the victory celebrations and arrange for corpse thirty-five and everything belonging with it to be sent over to Pathology. Then he rushed back to the building. He headed up to the top floor and circled the halls, sticking his head into each room. He continued this way from floor to floor, trying to use his one advantage: He knew his prey, but his quarry did not know its hunter. He did not stop until he was out on the street again.

  There were hundreds of faces, but none belonged to Jitka's murderer.

  The crowd's confidence grew from hour to hour. Finally they had seen their occupiers humiliated. Furthermore, a rumor was circulating that the Americans had sent a tank division east from Plzen, which was due to reach Prague that night. Close to tears, Morava barely noticed them. Jitka, he's here, so close I could touch him, but he keeps slipping away.

  He would go see Beran and request a change of plans. Uprising or no uprising, they couldn't let this monster go free.

  On a hunch he turned to the closest cluster of onlookers and unfolded Rypl's documents.

  "Gentlemen! This man is missing. Has anyone seen him?"

  "That's him!" called a postman, his German helmet tied with a Czech tricolor like a hat with a bow, "the one who let 'em have it!"

  One after another they told of a man with similar features who had fired into the throng of Germans granted free passage. According to their descriptions it was Brunat who stopped him.

  "Mr. Superintendent," said a boy with wire-rimmed glasses, mistakenly elevating his rank, "I met him earlier; he's a moral degenerate who's turning the uprising into a slaughterhouse! He shoots prisoners through the stomach and blows them up with grenades."

  "He called them right, though," the postman countered. "They were carrying concealed weapons."

  Morava impatiently cut off the burgeoning argument with an urgent question.

  "Where is he now?"

  "He wasn't alone," said the bespectacled youth. "There were two guys with him. He said we were all cowards, and they'd go get themselves some jerries somewhere else."

  Where? Where?? Where???

  If he had his way, he would have run off, prowling the streets like a hunting dog, but he could feel the sharp tug of his professional leash. With a heavy heart he set off for Bartolomejska Street.

  He and Ladislav, a stoker for the bakery firm Odkolek, understood each other from the first. Strangely enough, however, the others had disappeared by the time they returned from the washroom. Alone in the basement, of course, they had no chance of getting through, so they returned to the entrance. A pair of boot heels and toes now lay mute behind the garbage cans. The guns in the radio building were still quiet, but in the deadly silence the street seemed all the more menacing. Then two bullets struck the pavement. They hurled themselves to the ground next to the dead man and considered their options.

  "Hello!" A cry rang out from the opposite side. They could see the outline of a man waving at them from the building's hallway.

  "If you want to run out, I can spray them."

  They exchanged glances, nodding to each other and then to him. Then they saw him raise his gun.

  "I'll count to three. Ready! One! Two ..."

  The last word was lost in the gunfire; he covered the side wall of the radio building in a long burst. They galloped over, wheezing; it seemed the street would never end. They nearly knocked the gunner over. Then they all chuckled.

  "Thanks!" he said.

  "No fucking problem."

  The stocky, balding man in a wildly checked pullover reeking of sweat grinned at them. Three ugly gaps broke his smile; he looked decrepit, although he could hardly be more than thirty.

  "What's happening?" he asked the man.

  "Zilch. Waiting for the Americans, they say. I thought it'd be different."

  "How?"

  "A chance to have some fun with the browncoats. I owe them."

  "They knock your teeth out?" Ladislav inquired.

  "Yeah. Deployed me to Diisseldorf in the Totaleinsatz. I was gettin' on real well with this German bitch. So they gave me this and the camps—for 'corrupting racial purity'—'cept then the Brits rolled in and threw the brig wide open. Couple of weeks I slept in ditches and ate last year's potatoes. Wouldn't mind a bit of Kraut, now."

  "We made two of them into grenade stew," Ladislav bragged. "On the can! Shoulda flushed, y'know."

  The grenade wasn't enough, he thought as he listened; you can't see it up close and it's too fast. Those son-of-a-bitch Germans deserve a drawn-out punishment, just like the widow whores. And suddenly he knew what it would be. The idea was ...

  All mine!

  And it was completely new. He made a mental note.

  "Great!" The dental avenger was praising him. "Need another hand? Call me Lojza."

  The stoker repeated what was clearly his favorite question: What next, since the evening was still young? Then the deathly silence outside ended. Individual shouts soon merged into a joyous noise. Both the side streets and the main road, where Czechs killed at the beginning of the battle now lay, were swarming with people.

  He and his companions set off for the intersection. Above the front portal of the radio building, strips of white tablecloths and towels fluttered from the first and fourth floors. An excited throng had formed an arc at a respectful distance from the main entrance. Through the broken doors a curtain of smoke still hung behind the barbed-wire barricades. For several long minutes nothing happened. The Czechs' anticipation gave way to fear: Was it a trap? You could cut the silence with a knife; one shot, he felt, and hundreds of people would panic and flee.

  Instead, a Czech policeman came out of the building, unstrapping his helmet and fingering a wayward lock of white hair. Then he picked up a megaphone.

  "Citizens!" he rumbled. "The radio is ours. The Germans have capitulated."

  Fear turned instantly to intoxication; the crowd went wild.

  He and his two companions waited curiously.

  The policeman waved his megaphone around for a while until the throng quieted down.

  "They have ceased their resistance under the condition that all Germans, employees and soldiers, are offered free passage without weapons down to the main train station."

  There were a few indignant shouts from the crowd.

  "Citizens! This agreement was concluded at the behest of the Czech National Council. President Benes has named a new Czechoslovak government, but until they can return here from Kosice, which has already been liberated, the council is assuming control in Prague. We have been empowered to conduct similar negotiations with all German offices in the former Protectorate, first and foremost so that our beloved Prague can be spared the further ravages of war, and so that we can safeguard the fundamental human rights we will uphold again in the future!"

  The cop was getting on his nerves more and more. Then he flinched when someone next to him whistled so loudly his ears rang. It was the balding Lojza, now shouting through cupped hands.

  "Germans aren't humans!"

&
nbsp; He clapped along with Lojza and a couple of bystanders. They began to chant.

  "Germans aren't humans! Germans aren't humans!"

  The white-haired man strode purposefully toward them, droning on through his megaphone.

  "Masaryk, the founder of our state, taught us that humanitarian ideals do not admit the collective guilt of races or nations. These men were soldiers; they followed orders and in spite of them capitulated. We cannot change the decision of the Czech National—"

  "Then they should fuck off!" Lojza shouted at him. "We shed blood and we want an eye for an eye!"

  He almost laughed at Lojza for not saying "a tooth for a tooth," but it made him angry to see the policeman gaining the upper hand among the crowd. Those bastards are listening to him!

  At that the first of the Germans exited the building, flanked by Czech guards. The foursome of ashen women in front—probably secretaries—caused some confusion, but the male employees, marked by white bands on their sleeves, drew whistles of derision. Their escorters smiled, as if acknowledging the onlookers' annoyance, but implying the crowd must surely understand their position too.

  Lojza was arguing wildly with the policeman; leaving them to their quarrel, he stepped forward to see better.

  The soldiers had begun to come out. The orderly rows of men had neatly polished and buttoned their hated uniforms, and held their heads up as if on review. Their commander had made a mistake in thinking this would boost their morale; signs of defeat would have been more to their credit. Any feeble sympathy the onlookers might have had now disappeared.

  Now, finally, there arose in him a strong, almost holy wrath against Germans, similar to the one his mother had instilled in him years ago against feminine infidelity.

  Before anyone noticed, he raised his submachine gun, took aim so as not to threaten any of the Czechs, and began to squeeze the trigger. He heard another rifle at his side—must be Ladislav!—and in the corner of his eye saw Lojza fighting with the policeman.

  The women shrieked, the whole transport dove against the pavement for cover, but shots rang out from it as well.

  Those whore bastards had guns!

  He was right!

  The irritable policeman with the wispy white hair immediately deflected his aim by shoving his gun barrel into the air, but in the ensuing chaos he had so many other problems that he was soon distracted; it was necessary to round the prisoners up again, look them over and send them and their dead away as fast as possible. The cop had managed, however, to infect a decent-sized group of people who instantly turned against the three gunners. Among them was the four-eyes who'd irritated him over by the garbage cans.

  "Degenerate!" Now the kid was taunting him with this completely nonsensical word. "Go back to the nuthouse; this is a democratic revolution!"

  You're the crazy one, he wanted to shout back; and a TRAITOR to our cause, who deserves the same treatment!

  Should i just blow him away?

  This time right in the heart, so as not to horrify the more delicate bystanders.... He quickly came to his senses. Many in the crowd were just as well armed as he was.

  In addition he remembered that he had a new name, but the same old face. There were clouds of police swarming about; what if by coincidence ... ?

  "Men," he said to his companions, "the fun's over, anyway. The hell with these cowards; there are plenty of Krauts left in Prague."

  “My love!" Grete said. "Oh, my love, finally! It's been forever since I saw you!"

  Of course her time dragged, while his flew, it seemed only moments since he had left her at the house. In the meanwhile, however, yesterday's city had changed into a jungle which even the natives did not recognize.

  The neighborhood called Pankrac, where he and Kroloff had been sent, was an exception; it was still firmly in German hands. A single barricade of derailed trams beneath the court building reminded them of the unrest; its builders had been driven down into the Nusle Valley. Immediately thereafter a merry-go-round of motorized watches went out, discouraging other potential barricaders.

  Schorner's heavy tanks would turn Pankrac into an extensive operations base. From here they could roll over the barricades in the valley, opening a passage to the city center and onward to the west. Aside from sporadic fire from various directions, however, there was no noise at all, and even after twilight only advance men on motorcycles came through. They mentioned barricades sprouting in the villages and towns around Prague, saying the colonnades had had to detour around through fields. These could not have presented any real obstacles to such powerful equipment, and thus further rumors were born. The prevailing opinion was that the Americans were approaching, which made a German advance pointless. Kroloff eagerly spread that afternoon's news: In his imagination the Protectorate was to be the launching point for a future western alliance, including the Reich, against the hydra of Communism.

  "And that's the secret weapon," he kept repeating, "the truly brilliant secret weapon the Furhrer providentially left us!"

  The headquarters was filled with commanders from various lower units. They had nothing to do beside organizing patrols; there was no word from the approaching army and the Prague division just checked in every hour to ask what was new. Buback thought of Grete, alone and helpless. It gave him an idea for how the officers could usefully fill their time. There were thousands of German civilians in Prague; why not concentrate the ones in this corner of the city under military control, at least until the army could guarantee their safe passage out or their right to remain?

  His idea did not strike anyone's fancy. None of the officers seemed eager to complicate his own life unless ordered to do so; not even Buback's authority as a Gestapo emissary helped. It was Kroloff who dealt the plan a final blow. The Furhrer’s memory, he parroted, could be best honored by unflinching adherence to the principles of Total War. The German citizens of Prague had been offered the opportunity to arm themselves a long time ago. The ones who availed themselves of it must have realized that every German apartment here could become a fortress. The ones who failed to do so had only themselves to blame; they had cut themselves off from the fellowship of a brave warrior nation.

  Buback reminded him about the German woman who had saved the armored transporters trapped in the web of suddenly nameless streets that afternoon. If any of her Czech neighbors had spotted her, she would pay dearly indeed. After all, they couldn't expect civilians in their apartments to behave like soldiers under fire, if only because they had no unified command or clear orders.

  Aha, Kroloff trumpeted triumphantly, but a civilian evacuation would confirm the Czechs' false hope that the Reich was capitulating, and could provoke a real uprising—the recent attempts by extremists had fortunately been just a pale imitation. After all, they'd just learned that one airborne torpedo had put an end to the unfortunate episode with the radio!

  Buback did not prolong the argument. Better to preserve his authority for a real crisis situation. He would have to meet with Morava or Beran again to warn them of the problem; the haunting image of a murderer's holiday, which Grete had used, was seared into his brain. Grete! He had to see her, to put his mind at ease.

  Two highly unpleasant events put a temporary end to the confused discussion. The same Czech announcer who had recently been cut off in midword during the successful German air raid now unexpectedly resurfaced, apparently from a replacement studio. And the telephone stopped working in the local pub the German command had occupied. The Czechs therefore controlled the city switchboard. Buback seized the moment.

  "You stay here as long as necessary," he ordered Kroloff. "I'll try to get to Bredovska. We've completed our mission, but I don't like the fact that we don't have orders covering various possible developments. What's important is not which of us is right, but what sort of general directives have been worked out in the meanwhile."

  "They won't bring you back through at night, and there may already be more than one barricade in the valley."

 
Buback was amused to see Kroloff s earlier outbursts of toughness give way to fear.

  "I realize that. The surest way back is on foot."

  "But there's a curfew."

  "All the better. I'll take an escort as far as our outpost sentries. On the other side I'll blend in in civilian garb."

  "How will you get back tomorrow?"

  "The same way, unless a corridor has been freed up by then. You should know, Kroloff, why I was transferred here: I'm originally from Prague.”