The Widow Killer (33 page)

“Is he that decent or just chicken?”

Yes, he admitted, it was a good question; was he, an insignificant German, truly convinced he bore all his nation’s guilt on his shoulders, or had Grete’s “give-and-take” infected him? Was he simply a better sort of opportunist, abandoning ship in a slightly more genteel fashion than the bosses who fled with their loot?

After all, he’d only needed one thing all his life: self-respect!

Buback mused on this on the way back to Prague, as the driver and his companion boldly compared notes in Czech on the illegal radio stations’ war reports. What he was doing now made him the lowest sort of stool pigeon, if for no other reason than that Morava had trusted him. It was wrong to continue deceiving him. But how could he end the deception? And should he really give up his last and only advantage in this godforsaken posting?

On the way through a small town halfway to Prague, the Czech contingent suddenly fell silent and stared in the same direction. A man stood on a ladder in front of a pub with a bucket hung at his side, painting over the sign warme und kalte kuche, bier, wein, limon-aden with circular strokes of his brush. The meaning of this spectacle evaded Buback, and they had already turned the corner when he understood: The man was not getting rid of all the lettering, only the German phrases. And he was not doing it surreptitiously by night, but in broad daylight, in full view of the German soldiers passing constantly through on the main road.

An SS man taking a tip; a clerk admonishing a Gestapo agent for destroying Europe; and a man with a bucket of lime—the first three visible cracks in the facade of the Third Reich. It reminded Buback of the time during the retreat from Belgium when he had watched the military engineers destroy a bridge. After the blast it rose upward along its whole length and seemed to hang in the air for an unbelievably long time before it hurtled into the water, disintegrating into a thousand pieces. He felt that all Germany was now in that deceptive state of elevation preceding collapse, and would carry both him and the woman depending on him down with it.

“Excuse me,” Morava’s voice broke in. “I have to work out with my colleagues what we’re doing next.”

He nodded, knowing that the majority of men from the Prague criminal police had formally passed the required examination in German, but like Litera could not hold a conversation; for ordinary workers the Reich offices had had to turn a blind eye to keep the Protectorate government functioning at all.

“Whether he’s hiding there or not,” Morava began in Czech, “he has Sebesta’s pistol, and yours were taken in the raid.”

Angular Matlak turned toward the back and waved a powerful paw dismissively.

“That’s all right.”

“Don’t overestimate your bare hands.”

“They’re not bare.”

“What do you mean… ?”

Now Jetel grinned as well.

“They left us our gun permits, so we dug into the old reserves, as the super—”

“That’s enough!” Morava warned them almost casually.

He doesn’t trust me, Buback realized, noticing only now that his companions’ jackets bulged gently. So they’ve opened the secret cache! Meckerle had sensed it, while they’d managed to lead Buback away from it from February till now. But maybe he’d let them succeed. Had he already given up the Germans’ war when he got to know Jitka Modra and the young man beside him? The Czechs’ brief conversation yielded one important fact. Morava had not disappointed him; even his own people, the Czechs, knew he was a “lotus flower” incapable of deceit, so for safety’s sake they had isolated him from all information. How should he treat his relationship with Morava and the whole confounded situation now, after his last conversation with Grete?

He never finished the thought. They had come to a halt in front of a house that stood out like a poor relation in this well-to-do neighborhood, which bore the name Kralovske Vinohrady—“Royal Vineyards.” On the crumbling facade of the late-twenties apartment building was a barely legible stucco sign: railway house.

The lady caretaker, clucking like a chicken at the police’s arrival, informed them in one long sentence that the man they were looking for lived on the third floor, number fourteen; was orderly and friendly; paid her, without arguing, to unlock his door when he forgot his key; and was a bachelor, so the wife of his friend Mr. Kratina in number fifteen looked after him, cleaning and doing his laundry. No, she herself hadn’t seen Mr. Malina since Sunday and didn’t know the man in the picture.

The card on the apartment door read malina and was handsomely executed in prewar style, with India ink. Morava motioned to his subordinates to wait on the stairs below the landing. Buback understood he was worried about the peephole, and retreated. He watched Morava expertly press his ear to the door before ringing, to catch any possible reaction, but the building was too noisy. Two more rings and still no reaction; Morava stepped over to the neighboring apartment.

An attractive forty-year-old woman opened the door in her apron; she looked feisty, but the foursome made an impression on her. Like a schoolchild called on in class, she answered them in complete sentences. Mr. Malina? Yes, she knew Mr. Malina; she earned some money helping him with the housework. The keys to his apartment? She only picked up the keys to his apartment on Wednesdays, she didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s home these days, she’s sure they understood why. Yesterday? Yesterday she saw Mr. Malina when she returned the keys to him; he’d mentioned he might go see his mother. Where? She didn’t know where, maybe Kladno, west of Prague… or was it Kolin, to the east? Someone else in the apartment? No, there was no one else in the apartment; she’d been there to clean, after all!

When Morava began to translate for Buback, the German could not help noticing that the woman was trembling with nervousness. As a Czech she was certainly within her rights to do so. Involuntarily her eyes strayed over to him; she averted them instantly and turned back to the assistant detective.

“Sir, he… Karel… I mean Mr. Malina sometimes talked too much, but he wasn’t the type to get involved in anything, especially anything political!”

“He wouldn’t have let anyone stay over here, by any chance?” Morava asked.

“I would have known!”

“Just so we understand each other: I’m asking in his own interest. We’re looking for a man he was seen with the day before yesterday, that evening at the train station. The man is most probably a murderer we’ve been tracking; he could easily kill Mr. Malina as well.”

“Do you really believe I’d want that on my conscience!”

She’s got something with him, Buback sensed. Morava was apparently thinking the same thing.

“Listen to me, then,” he said, giving her Rypl’s photograph. “As soon as he returns, send him immediately—day or night—to number four, Bartolomejska Street; my name is Morava. If he did meet this man, he has to tell me everything he knows. You’re sure you’ve never seen him?”

“No!” she said plainly and convincingly, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her. “As God is my witness, on the lives of everyone I love, never!”

It was all worked out and rehearsed in advance. For two long days he’d done nothing besides listen to the building. He heard the steps of four men on the staircase at that odd hour and was at the door in his rubber-soled shoes before they rang. She had taught him to plan for the worst: Life stinks, Tony; it’s always got more lousy tricks up its sleeve! The runt had probably opened his big mouth on his morning grocery run and now someone had blown his cover.

After Malina returned from his neighbor’s, he had forced the terrified runt to bind his own legs at gunpoint with the straps. The poor half-pint still believed that his disobedience had aroused the parachutist’s suspicions, and swore up and down that he was a true patriot. Obediently he put his hands behind his back, so he could be more easily tied up, and even nodded appreciatively when told that the Resistance hero would have to secure him temporarily; of course, he would release his host with honor as soon as it was possible.

When it came down to it, this motor mouth posed a real danger to him. Now that he’d resolved to take revenge on the Krauts he had the RIGHT TO A TACTICAL DECEPTION.

He explained his reasoning to the half-pint quite convincingly. After a while Malina stopped squirming and resigned himself to his unpleasant fate, lying bound and gagged in the bathtub bed he had made for himself the day before. During the day the bathroom door was unlocked, and he was allowed to signal with a muffled knock that he needed facilities or food. Eventually the half-pint’s hunger passed. At least we’ll save on food, his captor thought; for the moment there was nowhere else to go and supplies were running low. At night he locked the bathroom so he could sleep in safety. If you even think about knocking on the wall to your neighbor… He had left the sentence unfinished and put his long, slender knife up to the guy’s throat.

It was strange that now, when the only thing keeping him safe was the thin wooden panel of the door, his heart wasn’t even racing or his knees knocking! In the space of a few dozen hours, something had happened to him in that apartment, and it was evidently connected with his new mission. But there was something else, something he had automatically grabbed at home and hidden to use later as bait, and now, as he felt it, it brought back the best moments of his life.

The pistol.

He could still remember the marvelous happiness he’d felt on the Brno shooting range. In 1919 he had joined a regiment of fresh recruits for the brand-new Czechoslovak Army. She tried to derail his application, but failed: he was absolutely healthy, and greenhorns were just cannon fodder anyway.

Seasoned legionnaires from France led the exercises; they worked the recruits so mercilessly that he had no time for homesickness during the day, and evenings he simply collapsed from exhaustion. The Hungarian invasion of Slovakia made time of the essence. On the seventh day they marched over to sharpshooting, and that was where it happened. He was the only one in his unit to hit all the targets and was singled out in the orders for his unforeseen talent. He had never been the center of attention before. It was no surprise that he now set his sights on the army.

I’ll be a soldier!

The soldiers at the front sensed it. He was the only rookie they didn’t mess with; on the contrary, a week later when he repeated his achievement in a mock battle, the feared Sergeant Kralik invited him to the canteen for a beer. He should sign up for Slovakia, the sergeant urged him; it would undoubtedly be the last war for a long time and that was when military careers were made. He’d return as a noncommissioned officer and would be set for life.

After all those years with HER he was so utterly unprepared for this opportunity that he hesitated. No need to worry, Kralik said; he sensed something in the boy that makes a soldier a soldier. What? Well, what else: A taste for killing!

He froze. He did not understand where he, a fragile and unsure loner nicknamed “mama’s boy,” could have gotten it from, but at that moment he knew for sure that Kralik was right.

I HAVE IT!

And i want to be myself!

He rushed into battle like it was a hunt; he literally shook with longing to score a hit. The Hungarians abandoned Komarno, on the Slovak side of the river, of their own accord; the battle in the streets was almost over. The rest of the day they spent huddled on the banks of the Danube in grenade-launcher fire, pulling the wounded out. When they were just about to storm the Hungarians, the last grenade landed and it was all over.

He had had no place to go from the hospital except back to her.

That taste suddenly resurfaced after almost twenty years, but by then he was guided by the picture. It had captivated him so completely in the country church that he had remained there largely for its sake.

When he left, he had to take it with him, since he knew it was the

PROTOTYPE.

He had that taste, that old taste for shooting, again today, as beyond the doors the trap closed around him. He listened to the Czech-German conversation outside: Someone had seen him with that guy. With his pistol in hand he felt confident. If that whore had the keys, or if they broke through the door, half a round would take all of them out, and no one else would stand in his way.

Then he heard the neighbor’s oath, and even though it was the result of his own cleverness, he was still a bit disappointed. Still, there was no need to stir up extra difficulties for himself. Not when the hunt for Germans was just beginning!

SO NEXT TIME!

Once the woman had returned to the apartment and he heard the men’s footsteps on the staircase, he went quietly through the kitchen and bedroom into the bathroom to see if the guy had wet his pants in disappointment.

“My love,” Grete welcomed him home as he opened the apartment door, “they want to evacuate all of us.”

He had been expecting this pronouncement for almost a week now as various institutions vanished from Prague on a daily basis, but had not dared to think it through. Even if Grete had a definite destination, the likelihood of their meeting again was minimal. Once the fiery column had rolled past, telephones and post offices would no longer exist, and millions of homeless would wander across a devastated Germany like nomads. And as for himself, he knew he’d already decided inside; it was the only way to avoid complete disgrace in his own and her eyes as well. If that was his path, then his fate lay with the stars.

“Where to?” he asked, just to say something, and tried not to show how upset he was.

“Somewhere in Tyrolia.”

“And there?”

“All troupes of the German Theater are to be housed there temporarily until we can return here.”

“They said that!”

“Yes,” she sneered. “Theater Director Kuhnke appeared personally to assure us that starting next season we’ll be playing in Prague as usual.”

“And what does it really mean?”

“He wants to cut and run, but can’t do it without us, so he’ll pretend it’s to protect the flower of imperial art for better days. He’ll shove us into some flea-ridden barracks and get his own fat ass over to Switzerland; his brother works at the embassy there.”