Hunting the Hangman

by Howard Linskey

  ‘Good, then you will help us?’

  ‘Yes, Jan, I will help you but it is not that simple. Bartoš and Vaněk want a meeting. They will try and persuade you to stop this.’

  ‘In that case I’ll let Josef do the talking.’ And he grinned at Zelenka. ‘Have you ever tried to argue with the man?’

  Zelenka nodded. ‘I’ll get a message to them. Think of a time and place. They would greatly prefer to meet outside Prague, for security.’

  ‘That’s acceptable to me. What about you, Valčík? Will you help us kill Heydrich or does the very thought bring out the pacifist in you?’

  ‘What?’ replied the indignant Valčík. ‘You mean miss this and let you two get all the glory? Besides you would only make a complete cow’s arse of it without me. So tell me, what is your plan?’

  ‘Besides killing Heydrich you mean?’

  ‘I mean how do you intend to get close enough to kill him?’

  Kubiš appeared uncomfortable. ‘I’ll be honest with you, we don’t know yet. We have been watching him for weeks. There’s not an inch of any route the man has taken that I don’t know, but we are still no nearer getting to him now than we’ve ever been.’

  Valčík couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  Zelenka spoke. ‘Once we knew your target for sure I began making enquiries among our most trusted comrades; don’t worry, Jan, I have been discreet. I asked for news of any sign of weakness in Heydrich’s daily routine. There must be something there we can exploit.’

  Kubiš remained resolute. ‘I never said it was going to be easy, Valčík, now did I, but we’ll get him.’

  24

  ‘We know that some Germans get sick at the very sight of the SS black uniforms – we don’t expect to be loved’

  SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler

  Kubiš walked out of the tiny railway station, alone except for a couple of traders and a forlorn looking old lady, who trudged along with the wearisome gait of one who might actually welcome death.

  Where the hell am I? he wondered bemusedly. He knew Prague right enough but, in all his years, had never seen the need to venture more than forty miles outside it to visit the tiny town of Kutná Hora. What attraction could this settlement to the east of the capital contain for Josef, the man from Slovakia?

  ‘You’ll see,’ Gabčík had told him infuriatingly, unable to hide his glee. ‘I have the ideal place for this meeting with Bartoš and Vaněk. I am taking you all to church.’

  Unlikely, thought Kubiš. Gabčík never disrespected religion – it did not pay to when you were a soldier, requiring all the help you could get, divine or otherwise – but he was hardly a three times a day worshipper.

  ‘Just get there,’ insisted Gabčík unyieldingly. So Kubiš trudged off into the town for his rendezvous with the resistance.

  Gabčík had travelled on a separate train for security and he was waiting for Kubiš, who was wholly unprepared for the sight that greeted him. ‘What in God’s name is it?’ asked Kubiš, genuinely alarmed.

  ‘The Church of the All Saints,’ replied Gabčík.

  ‘I know that, you said. I mean what is that?’ and he pointed ahead of them.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Gabčík as if he had only just noticed, ‘that, Jan, is the remains of thirty thousand people; their bones at any rate.’

  Kubiš blinked into the dark and empty church and, sure enough, as he had suspected and Gabčík has just confirmed, the whole building is full to bursting with bones; human bones, many thousands of them.

  ‘But how…?’ Bartoš cannot complete his sentence. He is simply unable to comprehend the sheer scale of human life. Vaněk and Zelenka meanwhile are looking about them in confusion.

  Gabčík told the story with blackly comic detachment. He could be discussing a sporting event over a beer.

  ‘The cemetery has soil in it that is said to have come all the way from Golgotha – brought back from a crusade. When people heard about it, and this is eight hundred years or so ago, they all wanted to be buried there because it would bring them closer to God, so the old and the sick started making pilgrimages there when they thought their time was almost up.’

  ‘A few years later, there was a great plague and the place became very popular. As soon as you spotted the symptoms you started the journey to Kutná Hora and if you didn’t make it there was probably someone left in your family who’d put your body on a cart and drag it here, in line with your last, dying wish. Throw in a couple of wars as well and pretty soon you have a cemetery, made for a few hundred townsfolk, that is full to bursting with thousands of bodies from all over Europe.’

  ‘Fine, all well and good, lots of bodies,’ Kubiš tries to sound calm, ‘but why this?’ and he waves an arm expansively at his surroundings.

  ‘About eighty years ago the place was being looked after by Cistercian monks. Realising they had a bit of a problem with all these bones, they went to an artist – Rint he was called, I’ll never forget his name – and they gave him a most unusual commission. “Do something with our bones, Rint,” they said, “anything you like really, but keep it tasteful.” Well, I suppose old Rint must have thought it was tasteful.’

  Bartoš ventured further into the Church of the All Saints and his mouth gaped in horror. Above his head was a huge chandelier entirely fashioned from human bones. This enormous construction had candles protruding from bleached human skulls, the skulls sat on little ledges, conveniently fashioned from what Kubiš assumed were pelvic bones, but unlike Bartoš he was none too keen to get close enough to check. The skulls stared sightlessly ahead but all of the mouths were full. Each contained a solitary limb, wedged horizontally between the jawbones. Zelenka stared at the nearest skull and it looked like a dog that’s successfully scavenged outside a butcher’s shop. Beneath the skulls, literally dozens of leg and arm bones were vertically suspended, hanging down like stalactites to enhance the elaborate trimmings of the chandelier.

  Kubiš tried to tear his eyes away but there was nowhere to look. Every available surface in the church contained a similar abomination.

  ‘What were they thinking, to make art from the remains of men?’ asked Bartoš.

  ‘Christ, even the Nazis would not create such a thing.’

  Kubiš is about to turn on his heel when his eye caught a final blasphemy. On closer inspection a truly enormous mound of bones was revealed, piled high on top of one another, and imprisoned behind an arched window set back into the wall of the church. The window contained the remains of hundreds, their skulls looking out at passers-by, as if to say, we were living once too – now look at us. It was an open, mass grave, for all to see and marvel at the fragility of man. And Jan wondered – what thoughts, what good hearts and deeds were lost forever at the deaths of all these people? Is this how they could end up, he and Josef and Anna, their bones scattered among anonymous thousands?

  ‘It’s horrific.’

  Bartoš shook his head in disgust and wonder.

  ‘How did you know about this place?’ Kubiš asked the man from far off Žilina.

  ‘I was visiting family in Prague and my cousin brought me here, when I was maybe seventeen. It scared the hell out of me even then I can tell you.’

  ‘Why,’ Vaněk asked, ‘did you bring us here, Josef?’

  ‘I thought it was a suitable location to discuss the killing of a Nazi. Can you think of anywhere more appropriate?’

  He was challenging the resistance man and they all knew it. Gabčík sat down in one of the aisles in the empty church and Kubiš joined him. Bartoš and Vaněk sat in the one in front and Zelenka, significantly perhaps, chose the seats occupied by Jan and Josef. The discussion had a surreal quality as all five men faced ahead, looking towards the altar.

  Bartoš, unsettled by the array of bleached bones, began. ‘I will come straight to the matter we wish to discuss. This attack on Heydr
ich must be called off.’

  ‘On whose authority?’ Gabčík spoke swiftly, his adrenalin up and arguments prepared thanks to the warning Kubiš had given him.

  ‘I am a ranking officer here, Gabčík, a captain in the army and you are still expected to obey my orders.’

  ‘Not when mine come from a higher authority. Do you feel you somehow outrank the President now, because if you do I have not heard of it?’

  Captain Bartoš rounded on him then. ‘Don’t be insolent. The chain of command must supersede any orders you had back in London. I am here in Prague and aware of the true situation the network finds itself in. I am better equipped than a politician to determine the right course of action on the ground. If you try to assassinate Heydrich you will fail and die in the attempt. Even if you do succeed you will unleash a terrible retribution on the population and that includes all of us.’

  Gabčík was immediately dismissive. ‘You may well know the situation on the ground, but so do we. We can see how the people are living, like slaves, and you want us to do nothing. You might as well turn up at Gestapo HQ with a white flag or shoot yourself in the head right now for all the use you are doing.’

  ‘Josef…,’ cautioned Kubiš but Gabčík would allow no interruption.

  ‘Men are being sent to Germany as slave labour, Jews are being shipped out never to return, innocent people are arrested, tortured and executed every hour of every day. Right now someone is being lined up against a wall and shot or guillotined in the Petschek Palace. Our country is being destroyed and you ask me to do nothing? What right have you to ask that? We should be doing more, not less.’

  ‘But the Germans will…’

  ‘Let the Germans do what they want but when we hit Heydrich it will hurt them all. This act will be like a knife through Hitler’s heart. Then he will know there is still resistance in Prague. They have not entirely crushed us yet and they never will.’

  ‘Josef, I am begging you,’ pleaded Bartoš, choosing reason above threat, ‘the Germans will kill everybody.’

  ‘They can’t kill everybody, there would be nobody to make their weapons, change their bed linen, polish their shoes, serve their drinks. The more they kill, the more hatred and resistance they bring down upon themselves.’

  ‘I am ordering you not to go ahead with this mission.’

  Gabčík stood up and gave the captain a look of such anger Kubiš feared he might even strike the man.

  ‘And I am telling you no. I have never disobeyed an order in my life but I will not obey yours now. Unless you provide me with complete proof that President Beneš or Lieutenant Colonel Moravec wish this action to be called off it will go ahead. Do you understand me? Because I will not discuss it with you any further. You are just a captain.’

  There was anger in Bartoš’ eyes but Gabčík was not finished yet.

  ‘And one who seems to have forgotten his duty.’

  Bartoš, flushed and humiliated, at first had no reply to this and Gabčík strode from the building.

  ‘Gabčík! Come back here.’ Bartoš belatedly found his voice but Gabčík was gone.

  Without a word Kubiš rose to his feet and followed him.

  Now it was Vaněk’s turn to attempt reason. ‘This is madness. Zelenka, you must do something. You must go after them and stop this hothead from carrying out his crazy mission.’

  Zelenka sighed, for he knew that he too was about to defy his superior and the clash of loyalties caused him pain.

  ‘Gabčík may be a hothead. He may be indelicate in the way he puts forward his arguments but I am afraid, I have to say, I think this time he is right. We cannot just do nothing while our nation continues to descend into darkness. I’m sorry.’

  Zelenka walked from the church then too. He left Bartoš and Vaněk alone in the church surrounded by the bones of thousands of men.

  Outside the argument had already begun. Gabčík marched off at a brisk pace fuelled by the adrenalin of his defiance. Kubiš called after him to wait but his friend continued to pound away down the street. They had gone some distance when an exasperated Kubiš halted Gabčík with a shout.

  ‘What the hell is the matter?’

  Gabčík spun round. ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘Hear what, Josef?’

  ‘Why you said so little in there.’

  ‘I let you speak for both of us, and I think you did a pretty good job.’

  ‘Really, are you sure?’ asked Gabčík, clearly rattled by his confrontation with the captain.

  Kubiš bridled also. ‘What do you mean? I am on your side.’

  ‘Are you certain about that, Jan, or perhaps you’d rather we abandoned the attack like Bartoš wants. Then you can spend every day from now on with Anna if you please.’

  ‘Hey, fuck you, Josef. I have never given up on this mission.’

  ‘It looked like we did not speak with one voice in there. What I want to know is why?’

  ‘Because you did not stop talking for one second, you great idiot, then you stormed out of there. How the hell was I supposed to get a chance to speak while you were telling everyone what they should say and do? Answer me that!’

  ‘I just need to know if you want to go ahead and do this, or would you rather run off and marry your girl instead? I’ll do it alone if I have to.’

  That was it for Kubiš and he snapped, advancing on Gabčík and shoving him violently in the chest.

  ‘Fuck you, Gabčík, you know nothing!’

  Gabčík was stunned at this show of Jan’s temper, which was all the more disturbing because it was seen so infrequently. He reacted in typical fashion.

  ‘I know your mind is not on this and if you shove me again there’ll be trouble!’

  ‘My mind isn’t on this! Do I take my woman on surveillance operations? At least I don’t use Anna as my bag man. What will you do, Josef? Replace me with a nineteen-year-old girl?’

  ‘Why not, when you act like one?’

  Gabčík’s heated final words acted as a signal and the two men immediately advanced on each other, both set to land punches; another moment and they would have been brawling in the gutter. They were no more than a yard apart when two middle-aged women rounded the corner and stopped sharply in their tracks at the unexpected sight of grown men about to come to blows. The spell was immediately broken and the understandable fear of arousing suspicion or prompting arrest instantly calmed Gabčík.

  ‘Sorry, ladies,’ he spluttered in embarrassment as he stepped back to let them pass. ‘It’s just a game…’

  By the time they had crossed his path Kubiš was already marching furiously down the street. Gabčík called his name in irritation and Kubiš rounded on him.

  ‘Take the next train, Josef. I don’t want you on mine! It was your idea to come out here!’ Then he rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

  25

  ‘All means, even if they are not in conformity with existing laws and precedents, are legal if they serve the will of the Führer’

  Diktat from Adolf Hitler

  When Gabčík returned on the afternoon train, he discovered he had another problem, for Liběna had disappeared. She was not waiting for him at her house as agreed and he received a particularly frosty reception from her father, who merely grunted in recognition as he entered the parlour. Realising something was amiss, Gabčík did not even bother to remove his raincoat. Instead he turned and walked out of the door.

  She was still weeping when he found her. Liběna was sitting on their bench in the Municipal Park, as he had instinctively known she would be. Oh Lord, would he ever become immune to her tears? He thought it unlikely. And now he would have to make light of her fear again; Liběna’s constant and understandable trauma that she was on the verge of losing him.

  Even the weather conspired against Josef. Instead of a bright and all-forgiv
ing sun, bursting through the leaves on the surrounding birch trees, he was forced to make his assurances under a dark and maudlin sky. The scene was of a grey drabness suited to her mood.

  Taking no encouragement from his surroundings Josef walked up to the bench, sat down next to her without a word, and put his arm around her shoulders. Liběna did not look up. Instead she dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked. ‘I thought we talked about everything. I thought you understood the situation.’

  ‘I understand that you will leave me soon.’

  Gabčík sighed his disagreement.

  ‘My father tells me not to become too attached to you.’ She let out a bitter little laugh at Fafek’s belated powers of deduction. ‘He says you will not stay here long, that you will try to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich and will very likely be killed in the attempt.’

  Jesus, who in the resistance had told Fafek, or had he somehow worked it out for himself? Either way he must be desperate for his daughter to stay away from him now.

  ‘If you survive you will leave Prague when your mission is over and I will never see you again,’ Liběna concluded.

  ‘Your father has a lot of ideas,’ he began, buying some time, ‘most of them completely foolish.’

  He was momentarily lost for what to say next then decided on, ‘I would have thought you were old enough by now to realise fathers do not always know everything.’

  This was a wise choice of tactic and it temporarily calmed Liběna. She was the last person to assume her father was perfect and he knew it.

  In truth, up to that point, Gabčík had never really contemplated a time beyond their mission. It was true that, once Heydrich was dead, he would have to go into hiding, either in Prague or the surrounding countryside, but he anticipated the hunt for the killers would eventually die down and he would then be free to continue his life; his life being Liběna.

  ‘I have no plans to run off and leave you when my mission, whatever it may be, is over.’