Prague Fatale

CHAPTER 11

An hour later we were moving again and quickly through Bohemia, although, from the number of Nazi flags and banners and German troops we saw, you would scarcely have been aware of this. And almost every Czech town we passed through had a new German name, so that it felt less like visiting a foreign country, or even an autonomous territory – which, strictly speaking, is what a ‘protectorate’ amounts to – and more like a colony.

We reached Prague in the late afternoon. According to my 1929 Austrian Baedeker – for some reason this edition included a section on Prague, as if it was still a city in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire – the hotel was just around the corner from Masaryk Station, so we decided to walk there and, holding Arianne’s bag and mine, I led the way through a tall archway and short colonnade of Doric pillars into a square entrance hall with a glass roof and a peeling maroon and gold plaster architrave that resembled something out of an abandoned villa in Pompeii. The hall was full of field-grey uniforms, some of which eyed Arianne hungrily, like wolves. I didn’t blame them in the least. She had a figure like a snake charmer’s pipe. Arianne herself was not unconscious of this effect and, smiling happily, she put an extra couple of notes into the swaying and seductive melody of her walk.

It was less than a hundred metres to the end of the street where the Imperial Hotel was situated. The outside of the building was grey and quite unremarkable, but inside the place was a shrine to art nouveau. On the face of it this seemed at odds with the hotel’s obvious popularity with the German Army, which isn’t well known for its interest in art except of course when it’s stealing it from some poor Jew for Göring’s personal collection. On the walls of the small but impressive entrance-lobby was a creamy-coloured ceramic relief featuring six classically dressed ladies exercising their pet lions. I knew they were classically dressed because they were wearing little gold circlets with asps on their heads and because they had bare breasts – a fashion of which generally I approve.

The breasts of women are a little hobby of mine; and while I know why I enjoy looking at them and touching them, it continues to elude me why I seem to like looking at them and touching them so much.

As soon as I saw the hotel entrance-lobby and the huge café with its temple-tall mosaic pillars I thought of the Ishtar Gate at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, and I suppose this might have been one reason the Imperial was a local favourite with the German Army. Then again, it might just have been because the hotel was also expensive. The Wehrmacht likes expensive hotels and, if it comes to that, so do I. Since I first worked as the hotel detective at the Adlon, I have come to realize that I am very easily pleased: usually the best is good enough. Either way, the Imperial’s café was full of soldiers and their off-duty laughter, their off-colour jokes, and their better-quality – better than Berlin – cigarette smoke.

Our fifth-floor corner-room had two windows. From one side there was a fine view of the south-east of Prague, which was mostly spires and smoking chimneys; from the other, to the west, you could see the rooftop immediately opposite, which had one of those pepper-pot domes made of oxidizing copper. It looked like a large green samovar.

Almost immediately we went to bed, which seemed like the sensible thing to do, as I had no idea of how soon Heydrich would summon me to his country house or for how long, and strenuous sex was something that had been on our minds ever since the train had left Berlin – although, to be more precise, it had probably been on my mind more than hers. Either way she didn’t have to be persuaded, very much. It was love, or at least a good imitation of it, on my part at least.

And then there was life, which of course is love’s nemesis, sliding under the door in the shape of a brown envelope.

I rolled off Arianne’s naked body and walked across the room to collect it.

Arianne rolled onto her belly, lit only her second cigarette of the day and watched me read the note.

‘Mephistopheles?’

‘I’m afraid so. His driver will collect me first thing tomorrow morning, in front of the hotel.’

‘That certainly gives us plenty of time to do all kinds of things. Who knows, we might even find time to see the sights. I hear the Charles Bridge is worth a look.’

‘Is that what you’d like to do?’

‘Not right now.’ She blew smoke at the ceiling and then gave me a narrow-eyed look. ‘Right now I just want some more of what I came for.’ She put down her cigarette and, lying back on the bed, opened her arms and then her thighs. ‘Everything else, you know, is just tourism and I can do that on my own.’

I threw Heydrich’s note aside, climbed back onto the bed and crawled between her thighs.

‘But for this,’ she said. ‘I need help.’