The Widow Killer (39 page)

On the way to Pankrac, Buback saw that what had been primitive barriers at noon were being continually, diligently, and painstakingly strengthened. However, the flotsam and jetsam from workshops, construction sites, and houses were no match for caterpillar vehicles. All along the route the Czechs fled into nearby buildings; the convoy met no opposition.

In crossing the deep gash called the Nusle Valley, Buback was reminded of how the city’s topography would aid in its defense. Still, he knew the force that was preparing to strike, and could imagine the desolation it would leave in its wake. As they rose toward Pankrac, a rare panorama opened for a moment before them: to the left the towers of Vysehrad, to the right the cupolas of Karlov, and beyond the river the distant Hradcany Castle, which seemed to hang in the air.

How odd: Although he had lived most of his life in Dresden, and its destruction had filled him with deep sadness, he accepted it as a higher form of justice, one gruesomely foreshadowed in the deaths of Hilde and Heidi. Now he felt sure: This war Germany had begun was immoral. It had bathed Europe in tears and blood, and his nation would be punished for it with the crudest defeat in history—tragic, yet logical! Prague had been brutally violated six years ago; was it really possible she would be reduced to ruins now, when freedom and renewed dignity were just around the corner?

How strange it was! He had spent his early childhood in Prague, and had only a couple of fleeting, not to mention banal, memories of his life here; how could he feel more connected to this place than to the city where he had studied, worked, and loved, a city he had known far better? But he knew the answer: Something in the unconscious of the young child Erwin Buback had stirred his mind and heart and tied him inexplicably to this place. For years that “something” had been submerged beneath a flood of other sensations, but it did not disappear. It was still there, as strong as ever, and awoke again as soon as he returned: the language of his birth mother, forever his native tongue.

This did not quite make him a Czech, but he could not call himself a pure German either. So he was simply a native of Prague, heir to two and more cultures which for centuries had lived side by side, separate but not hostile. He must have had more of Prague in him than he realized, since both his Czech and German sides hoped with equal fervor that the splendid scene before him would be preserved for future generations.

So then, he was not a traitor, absolutely not. He was a redeemer of betrayal, destined by his heritage to help bring this destruction and murder to an end, so that Czechs and Germans in his native city could someday meet on the same sidewalk and greet each other with a tip of the hat.

Only the Praguers gave Brunat’s reinforcements trouble on the way over. Encouraged by the radio defenders’ example, they suddenly filled Wenceslas Square; the Germans lost interest in shooting, and seemed glad of the chance to withdraw to Bredovska Street with their skins intact. When the police finally got through, they reached the building by climbing across rooftops, and after a short battle drove the SS from the sixth to the fourth floor. The Germans attempted to break through past Morava to the main hall, but they did not succeed. The soldiers on the first floor were now hemmed in by Czech irregulars on the surrounding streets, and Director Thurmer was forced to open negotiations.

Thurmer was a shadow of the man who two hours earlier had shouted at them, pistol in hand; he clearly saw the situation (or, at the very least, his own personal case) as hopeless. He did not even mention retreating with weapons; instead he requested, or more accurately begged, for an escort to accompany the German employees and soldiers to the main train station, which was still occupied by the Wehrmacht. The commander of the SS forces in the hall agreed to the arrangement as well. Brunat took over command but did not release Morava.

“Once they leave the building, have it searched thoroughly, so they don’t leave a Trojan horse in here—they’ll certainly try to get the radio back by any means possible and we don’t want to be stabbed from behind. And Morava: Get some systems in place right from the start. I know our countrymen: Soon thousands of radio station warriors will be demanding a reward for their services. Round up all the paper pushers and have them record everyone who’s been here since twelve-thirty. And be sure to get a list of the dead; they’ll start looking for them shortly. Then off to Beran; he needs you.”

While two hours earlier everyone stuck at the radio had desperately wished to be as far as possible from that steel-and-concrete trap, now almost no one would leave the building. Despite the near-certainty that the Germans would be back, the Czechs were now eager and impatient; their long-awaited victory could come here, today.

Onlookers gawked at the battle sites, and the diligent cleared away the debris blocking passages. For safety’s sake, the heroic announcers moved into a hurriedly equipped studio in an air-raid shelter. Doctors descended on the building, examining the lightly wounded on the spot, and sending the severely wounded off to various hospitals. The fallen were carried down to the courtyard.

This was where Morava stationed what seemed like the more reliable civilians, instructing them to secure the victims’ personal belongings before the scavengers arrived. They did not believe anyone would take advantage of this historic moment, but promised him they would work in pairs, recording every detail.

A wild burst of fire in front of the building almost sent him scrambling outside, but it ended as quickly as it had begun; soon he learned that someone had tried to start a massacre of the departing Germans. Civilians kept bringing down more dead Czechs as they found them in various corners of the ravaged building, and he tried to wrap up all the tasks Brunat had set him as fast as he could, so that he could get back to Beran and then to his mission.

An hour later Morava was sure there were no Germans hiding in the building, and the snipers on the surrounding blocks had been taken care of. He returned to the courtyard. The fallen lay on thick curtains from the large music studio; at their feet were bundles made from canteen napkins, which held the contents of their pockets. Where possible, the personal effects of the deceased had been put back into the bags or briefcases they had been carrying when they were struck down. Morava promised to send a replacement over as soon as possible, took copies of the list, and went to report to Brunat.

On his way there, a woman in a beret, which looked odd against her gray pigtails, addressed him timidly. “Excuse me, officer… my son ran over here at noon to help and hasn’t come back; do you know if anything’s happened to him… ?”

When he unfolded the papers he realized he could not give her a definite
answer.
He should have
assigned someone to get
a
list of the
wounded; now their relatives would have to wander from hospital to hospital. He could have kicked himself, but he hoped that at least he could rule out the worst for her.

“What’s his name?”

“Richter. Rudolf Richter.”

He looked but could not find the name.

“If it’s any comfort, I have a list of the dead and…”

He fell silent, staring at the name he had found in place of the woman’s son.

“Rypl Antonin, b. 27 May 1900 in Brno, res. Plzeh.”

Jitka! Could he have gotten off that easily?

The horror in the woman’s eyes shook him out of his trance, and he quickly showed her that her son’s name was not on the list. Then he hurried back to the courtyard. The dead man was number thirty-five and a bloody towel covered his head. Accustomed as he was to gruesome sights, he still shuddered when he lifted it. Only the back of the man’s head remained; the front had been almost entirely shorn off.

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 Düsseldorf 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.