The Widow Killer

APRIL

Jana Kavanová walked home from the funeral smiling. Beneath her black stockings and black ankle boots the bright green grass struggled up between the cobblestones; runners of woodbine wound about the fortress ramparts, their leaves slowly unfolding, and the sky over the moat of the street was amethyst blue and free of airplanes, as it had been for weeks. A feeling of complete happiness suffused her, so strong that she felt ashamed.

Her older sister had just buried her beloved husband. Jana had left her up at the graveside and hurried home to the embrace of her young lover. She could — and would — comfort her sister tomorrow, the day after, and all the days to come, but she would only have Robert today. Prague was swarming with Gestapo agents; it was too risky for him to stay. She had made the arrangements; tomorrow he would be taken on borrowed documents to a place where he could wait out the end of the war safely.

Jana, almost thirty, had met Robert two months before in the shelter beneath Prague’s main rail station. A tall fellow in a clearance-troops overcoat, he gallantly offered her the rare gift of a cigarette. His voice was deep, and in the emergency lighting he looked like her contemporary. She had already accepted his invitation to meet that evening when she learned that he was a newly deployed seventh-year gymnasium student. She kept her word, however, and had not regretted it.

He ended up at her place that evening. The majority of pubs and cafes were closed and the rest seemed hollow and empty: either there were no menus for the customers, or no food for the cooks, or no appetite for the food. Back at the statue of Saint Wenceslas, still the meeting place for young Prague — and God knows Jana didn’t feel old! — she boldly invited him to her apartment for tea with real rum. She could always send him home to his mother, she rationalized to herself. However, as it turned out, he was no child; she warmed to him more and more, and when they had finished the rum (without any tea), she was happy for him to stay.

I’m certainly not his first, she thought jealously, when she saw how skillful he was. Still, she had not slept with anyone for a good six months, since her most recent disastrous fling, and this kid was only a temporary distraction, anyway. Eventually she would find the right man, maybe after the war when the better-quality ones came home from the army. So she gave herself to him without a second thought.

Apparently he took to her as well. He confessed that he’d never been with such a… mature woman. He chose the word carefully and it stung her, but at the same time she felt appreciated. After that he came to see her every night and painted a humorous picture for her of his aunt and guardian’s mounting disapproval. Then, in mid-March, he had learned that in two days his whole class was leaving for northern Moravia.

The Protectorate’s eighth-year gymnasium students had long since been deployed at hard labor around the Reich; the seventh-years were now assigned to build the defensive line against the anticipated Russian offensive. Gangs of eighteen-year-olds were to do the excavating under the supervision of German guards. Families of deserters would be threatened with punitive measures. Robert therefore went.

As they agreed, she tagged along that morning, twenty yards behind him — too young to hug him like the other mothers, too old to join the girls accompanying their boyfriends. The truck with its benches trundled off and dissolved in her tears. She knew then that this was not just a passing fling; Robert had truly become her lover.

For a month she heard nothing from him. Her initial despair gradually abated as she stubbornly pieced together information from every possible source. Finally she could not bear the burden of her love alone, and confided in her sister. It surprised and comforted her when her sister emphatically told Jana not to worry about the age difference; she was happy just to see Jana happy.

Leaving early today had been her sister’s idea. Her older sibling had fallen in love with and married a man twice her age, knowing she would soon be more of a nurse than a wife. But she loved him even then and cared for him for many years. Four days ago he simply did not wake up. Only then did Jana hear her sister wail that her life had lost all meaning.

Despite this, her sister ordered her to go straight home from the funeral. She was the only one who knew that Robert was momentarily hiding at Jana’s. As the Soviet cannonade swept across the northeast past Ostrava, the Nazis’ deviousness grew worse and worse; there were fearful rumors that in their desperation the Germans were planning to send the Czech students out in front of the tanks as human shields. His classmates were afraid to flee, so Robert risked it alone.

Two days’ hard march brought him to Olomouc. Even hitchhiking, he’d seen his luck hold; a truck driver put him in a sick deliveryman’s seat, and took him all the way to Prague. Their first night together he and Jana made love until morning. The following day she visited Robert’s aunt. The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, and promised to arrange safe transfer and shelter for her nephew until the end of the war.

So this would be their last night together for who knew how long, and Jana was grateful that her sister had not asked her to give up a minute of their limited time. At the graveside, she thought fondly of her dear brother-in-law, cast a handful of dirt on the coffin, gave her sister a heartfelt kiss, and set off toward the tram. Death was instantly forgotten, and Jana was filled with that joyful longing that had been with her for three days, ever since she let Robert in and he knelt, exhausted, on the threshold and pressed his head into her lap.

The tram conductor asked if she had a ticket, and Jana returned abruptly from her thoughts of Robert to the outside world. As she paid she noticed a postman with a bulging bag. Why did he seem so familiar? The fog began to clear from her brain. Hadn’t he passed her on the way from the cemetery? But if he’d been going uphill, how did he end up here?

She put him out of her mind and spent the rest of the trip to Smíchov laying her plans. Of course, Robert couldn’t come to Prague from the country, but why shouldn’t she visit him on Sundays? The trains still ran, albeit with delays, despite the air raids. She wasn’t afraid of them anyway; love was her armor.

As she quietly unlocked the door, her heart was in her throat. She crossed the entrance hall on tiptoes and silently opened the bedroom door. Robert lay naked on the bed, breathing deeply. Yes, he was a man, but in sleep his boyishness showed through. She gazed at him, lost in adoration, and in that moment believed that despite the difference in their ages, nothing could separate them.

The doorbell made her jump. Who could it be? The police? Or maybe the Gestapo? Impossible, she snapped at herself; no one had any idea he was here, aside from his aunt and her sister, and they would never betray him. Feeling more confident, she returned to the apartment door and boldly asked, “Who’s there?”

“Special delivery,” the answer came back.

She remembered the man in the blue cape, swollen by the fat bag underneath it, and had to laugh: she and her postman had taken the same tram here. Or would it be a different carrier? Probably! She opened the door.

It was him.

They still kept to their unspoken agreement: the terrors and horrors of their work would not cross the door of their tiny and uncertain refuge. The need for peace and quiet ran deep in their blood.

Both Jitka and Jan had grown up in families that were a world unto themselves, and had spent their childhoods in an atmosphere of gruff tenderness. Just north of Moravia’s vineyards, nature seemed to have run out of the gifts she had been so profligate with farther south. Here she coddled no one. Economy was everything, starting with food. Children handed down shoes and clothing until the oft-mended uppers and fabrics gave out.

Caresses, not sweets or presents, were the only signs of affection for the youngest offspring — and those often hurt, since hardened calluses covered their parents’ palms. And when that same hand punished them — as it occasionally and reluctantly did — its traces were visible on the skin for days afterward. However, one thing neither Jan nor Jitka could ever remember was a conscious injustice. Once, when Jan was beaten instead of the true culprit (a stable boy who had blamed a broken jug on him and was later found out), his mother knelt before him and kissed the hand she had just thrashed.

Jan and Jitka first spotted each other in Beran’s anteroom. It was just before his promotion to assistant detective; she had arrived under the work exchange, a Nazi order that uprooted young people from their native villages, breaking the ties that might lead them into the Resistance. The very first words they exchanged brought them closer together: their south Moravian accents marked them as clearly as a scent identifies a flower. Their deeply ingrained modesty did not, of course, permit them to show their interest. It took them a year to get farther than “good morning” and until recently they had addressed each other formally, but their warm smiles — his as gentle as hers— confirmed they shared a common temperament.

Their meeting as lovers on the day the bombs reached Prague was therefore natural — and practically foreordained.

He never doubted they would stay together afterward, nor did he need to ask; it was further proof of the link their shared roots had forged. Young couples can have trouble adapting to sudden communality and often falter on it, unable to overcome the selfishness of differing habits, but from the first time Jitka and Jan woke up together, their common language smoothed over the minor differences in their characters. Their opinions and needs merged; they became in truth “one soul — one body.”

When they boarded the tram at the long-closed National Theater, the working day with all its filth was simply forgotten, as if they were never going to return. At home they cleaned and cooked together, discovering new stories that mapped out the part of their lives when, incredibly enough, they had not known each other, and in love they learned more about one another. This time of innocence would end each morning as Jan awoke. Holding Jitka close in his embrace, he would let his brain get to work.

Today, exceptionally, his mind was already racing before bedtime. In her second month of pregnancy Jitka felt worse than ever before. Her frequent indisposition made her tired during the day; lethargy dulled her appetite and her ensuing weakness made her stomach more irritable. It was a vicious circle that accelerated as time went on. Beran spared her as much as he could; he even suggested that she take sick leave, but she refused.

“Then I would really fall apart. It’s work that’s holding me together right now.”

Morava knew she did not want to leave him alone with his string of failures, and in return he arranged something to look forward to: Saturday, April twenty-eighth, would be their wedding in Jitka’s hometown church, and he had already filed the applications. Both families had agreed by letter that if the front moved dramatically before then, they would marry in Prague, in a civil ceremony; it was unthinkable that Jitka should remain single as their child grew inside her.

That day became a magic date for him. He had learned from Beran that a good detective always sets a deadline for cracking the case, even if the deadline was only a personal one. Now the repeated newspaper announcement and the confidential information they had sent had brought in a stream of warnings and reports, and it was up to him to solve it in time. He had no doubt that the butcher was planning to strike again, and this time he wanted to be quicker.

The killer, he felt, was already in his closely woven web, and Morava’s greatest fear was that some accident of fate would let the man slip through a slack loop. Although his most experienced people were reviewing the reports as they came in (so long as none of them were busy directing the graveyard operation), he tried at least to have a look at all of them. In doing so he realized he had come to rely on Buback as well.

At a certain point — actually, since his mysterious dinner with Jitka— the German had begun to cooperate enthusiastically and with impressive results. During their daily consultations, Morava noticed that the chief inspector was fingering the same sort of suspects he was. One time he mentioned it and had the impression his overseer was even pleased.

Today, Jitka had fallen asleep as soon as they arrived home. Morava opened his briefcase and removed the materials he had prudently smuggled with him. Making his way quietly down to the kitchen, he spread the new leads across the table like playing cards. In about fifty cases, his intuition had coincided with Buback’s: half a hundred fates marked by a predilection for perversion. Almost none of the fellows (all were men) had cropped up on the criminal register, and the few who had were down for minor offenses: three petty thefts, one drunken vandalism, and one slight injury.

The public servants they had contacted were deeply shaken by the detailed description of the murders. They had taken pains to observe their patients, clients, guests, neighbors, and other people who they sensed might harbor traces of exceptional if hidden brutality. A good half of the reports concerned repeated mistreatment of women, children, and animals. The majority took place behind closed doors at home, and therefore had been classified, albeit with some sense of discomfort, as private affairs.

A slew of the men were barroom brawlers, prone to brutalize other pub customers over a difference of opinion, a game, or just because they were too drunk to care. A couple of cases mentioned torture, and the witnesses belatedly reproached themselves for not having the courage to step in. In the end all were concluded by settling the score somehow, with the participants agreeing to hush up the affair.

For obvious reasons the rape cases interested Morava most. In some, women were tied up and subjected to sadistic assaults. It amazed him how many serious offenses like these went unpunished, because the victims either let themselves be bought off or did not dare to press charges for fear of retribution. He marked as “urgent” the case of one barber who, according to the examining surgeon’s report, had sliced into his unwilling lover’s breasts, but later prevailed on his victim to change her statement, apparently compensating her financially as well.

The remaining reports did not fit any one profile: there were exhibitionists, sodomites, voyeurs, and other deviants indulging their aggressive whims. Under the Nazis, unlawful firearms possession by a Czech usually meant death by firing squad, so knives were now the weapon of choice.

A few unclear reports were left over. Instead of containing direct leads, they were requests for consultations. None of them sounded urgent enough to require immediate action; Morava saw them as fallbacks in case the other trails led nowhere. For example, there was one note requesting the police to kindly visit the rectory in the north Bohemian town of Kláterec u Teplic. It concerned the disappearance of a picture of Saint Reparata, which was later returned by the thief.

Morava shook his head and resolved to give the newcomers on his team a little lecture about concentration at work. On the sheet he noted that it should be remanded to the appropriate department. Then he pored over the sorted piles and tried to put himself in the killer’s place the way Beran had taught him to.

Why is he doing it? So consistently and painstakingly? Why the fixed order, even with a double murder? Where did he find this secret rite, one never before seen or heard in this country? Could it be from somewhere else? Only the excised heart reminded him of Inca rituals.

The one thing that continually nagged at him, and he repressed it with revulsion, was the method and the vessels the killer used — all startlingly similar to those of the Moravian zabijaka….

It was past midnight when, his skin burning from an icy shower, he crawled under their eiderdown slowly and quietly, so as not to wake Jitka.

“I’m not sleeping,” she said.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I couldn’t fall asleep.”

Morava was immediately worried. “Is something wrong?”

“No….”

“So why, then?”

“I’m angry at myself for wanting it… our child….”

She was turned away from him as she said it, and he sat sharply up, turned on the light, and leaned over her to see into her eyes.

“Jitka, please! Look at me.”

Her eyelids were scrunched up in pain, and she shook her head.

“But we both wanted… we both want it, Jitka.”

“It’s always the woman, though. I really only wanted it because I was worried about you.”

“Well, so?”

“I should have been thinking of the child. It’s so defenseless.”

He managed at least to turn her toward him. Even in their mutual solitude he whispered to her.

“It’s in the safest possible place: inside you. And I’m right here.”

“But what if one day you’re not? Look how useless I am.”

“It’ll be over soon. You read our mothers’ letters: they were sick up till the third month, then it vanished. Remember?”

She was not comforted; instead she turned away from him and her heaving shoulders told him she was crying. He was at a loss.

“Come on, Jitka! Please?”

“No, Jan… This is no world to bring a child into….”

It was the first time their thoughts and feelings had diverged, and the change was sudden and dramatic. Stubbornly he sought the words that would convince her.

“It never has been a good world. The pages of your family Bible testify to that. But it’s been better, and it will be again. Who would have believed three years ago that truth would win out? And now we can almost touch it. It may be a few more months, but the Reich will collapse, it’s in the air, as inevitable as spring; even Roosevelt’s death can’t change that. Peace will come, freedom will return, and our child will live in both of them.”

She said something; he didn’t immediately understand.

“What?”

“But so will that monster! Catch him, Jan! He frightens me more than Hitler does….”

Grete stepped into the bathroom as Buback began his soak in the tub. He had not heard her arrive over the din of the water and was all the happier to see her. Buback never knew for sure when and if she would come. After his first night with her, the longing to be back with her had never abated, despite his fatigue. He felt sure he had never had and could never have a better lover. However, a nagging feeling of impropriety held him back: Meckerle had entrusted her to him, counting on Buback to behave decently. But did that extend to covering up Meckerle’s infidelities…?

Just before midnight, his body had resolved his debate with his heart. Resolutely he left the German House bar and set off to see her. When he rang the bell he did not even have the chance to say his name before her voice broke in: “Where are you?”

This time she was wrapped in the white bath towel he had worn the day before; it emphasized the length of her arms and legs.

“What have you come to tell me?” she asked before he could speak. “That you betrayed his confidence? Or even mine?”

“No,” he admitted. “Just that it was pure rapture with you.”

“Aha. .. So then, Buback,” she said, addressing him as a man would, dispensing, as he would soon find out, once and for all with his Christian name, “if you want to keep me, then grant me three wishes, as the old custom goes. One: no watches. It’s bad enough that I have to be on time once a day. Two: I want to tell you the truth. I’ve been lying my whole life, playing a role, and before I die — which these days might be anytime — I’d like to find out what in me is real and what’s a lie. And the third one you can discover on your own, since you’re something of a detective.”

Then she opened the white material like a curtain.

Encouraged by the way she gave herself to him again, he tried afterward to draw her closer as he used to with Hilde. However, the intensity of her resistance contradicted the passion preceding it. Although he owned her completely when she was in his embrace, he lost her entirely the moment she was dressed. Her estrangement took place with miraculous speed. She hardened like plaster of paris, he thought, and mentioned it to her: did she push him out of her mind before he even left her sight?

She hated good-byes, she explained, and had decided that sorrow and disappointment would never rule her again; she’d seen too much of them already, finito! At the best possible moment, she would snap down the shade and hold it there until she was sure the joy would stay with her. How did she know? he asked. The way a bat knows, she laughed; she had learned to sense unhappiness and deception even in the dark, and to veer around them.

“Space, Buback! I hate walls; I have to feel space around me.”

He understood that freedom was fresh air for her. Without it she would choke; she fought for it fiercely, like a drowning woman. Did she want to see him tomorrow? And how could he find out today? Maybe he should stop watching his watch and find out for himself when the time came! Would she take his extra set of keys? Why not, unless he needed them for another woman….

Her “truth telling” was even more disconcerting. Soon she began to lay out her life story for him, loading one cigarette after another into her holder like ammunition clips. Her first lover at fifteen, a dancer only three years older, who held on for over ten years; it was a long, happy young love, Hansel and Gretchen, that would have lived on into friendship in old age, except for Martin Siegel. Like the actor? Buback asked, surprised. Yes, the very one.

Siegel, the darling of Hamburg’s female stars, suddenly fixed his gaze upon her, a novice. Hans shook with rage. On his twenty-fifth birthday she did not have a present for him. “I’ll cut Seigel off,” she promised, as a consolation prize. The oldest trick in the book, she now laughed; the famous thespian behaved just as Meckerle would years later. Instead of consoling himself with the next in line, he would not let go.

Siegel rewarded her coldness with heightened attention; in a short while it changed to outright wooing. Passionate poems soon accompanied the flowers; he found her slenderness captivating. Bemused, she read them to Hans and was surprised to see how jealous they made him. Why was he so upset? she objected; Siegel was thirty years her senior, an old man. But if it bothered him that much, she realized, then why didn’t Hans marry her? They’d send the artist a wedding announcement and if he still wouldn’t leave her alone, Hans could challenge him to a duel.

Hastily conceived, eagerly accepted by Hans and carried through by both of them with youthful verve. True, an insultingly extravagant bouquet arrived from Martin Siegel, but with a disarming note. He apologized for pestering her; now he knew her true feelings, and he wished the couple a long and happy life together. At once, she admitted, she felt disappointed that the game was over: it was she who had been defeated. When, two years later, the film weekly Ufy gave detailed coverage of Siegel’s spectacular marriage to a beautiful young Berlin actress, envy entered the fray as well. Now she knew for sure that her Hans needed precisely those thirty extra years to treat her the way a man should. Her love for him was no longer young or happy; in fact, it wasn’t even love anymore. It was then she began to deceive him.

Over the years, many men had vied for her favor; now their time had come. She found a new game: men, she learned, fell head over heels in love with her. She managed to convince each of them that he was her chosen lover, while his competitors were no more than a pretext. If she had learned anything perfectly, it was how to pretend passion and to lie. Let Buback beware! For none of these men had been able to give her the pleasure she faked so expertly.

Then she met Martin again.

This time he came to Hamburg on tour, and she fretted over how to behave. Avoid him? Confront him? He solved the problem for her. When he spotted her, he came over and greeted her affably, as if they were close friends. He asked if he could invite the two of them to dinner. And she lied to him, saying Hans was not in town, but she would gladly join him. Martin was staying, of course, in the luxurious Hotel Atlantic; they feasted on lobsters with French wine, and then he returned to their old story. He hadn’t been able to accept her refusal at the time; he could laugh at it now, but she had been the first woman to turn him down at fifty. For two years he was devastated, until fortunately he met Ursula. She was Grete’s age, and that helped him get over it.

She laughed along with him, but felt miserable. Suddenly all the time she had wasted with Hans hit her full force — she could have spent it with this enchanting man, whose skin was just like Hans’s, and his eyes even younger! Soon the hotel carriage would come to take her home; she nearly wept at the thought.

Once they had explained everything to each other, he asked if he could invite her to his suite afterward. There was champagne on ice waiting for him there every evening. In the elevator she decided to be his lover.

“And this fellow I had written off three years earlier as an old man was the first to bring me to a climax and keep me there all night — like you, Buback…. Why do you look so embarrassed when I praise you? Come make love to me instead.”

He was only too glad to obey, but her past was beginning to affect him. Why? Hard to be sure, but he felt a strong urge to keep his own a secret. Once, he confessed the short but strong burst of feeling he had had for the Czech girl. The restaurant fiasco had done him more good than harm, he declared, because it broke down his defenses and led him from an imaginary lover to a real one. She laughed.

“So I was a consolation prize! I’ll make you pay! You’ll never have me again!”

He took it as a joke, but when he tried to make love to her again, she crossed her thighs and locked them together. He tried to overpower her; after all, he was sixty pounds heavier and had wrestled. But she thrashed about in his grip; he could not grab her hands or open her legs. He could not even roll her onto her back, because she would wriggle deftly from side to side. Gasping for breath, he talked to her, begged her, warned her he would hurt her. Just before he crossed the line into brute violence, he gave up. His week of euphoria over, he lapsed into a deep depression. He remembered the men she had teased and led on, and felt sure she had written him off for good. Had she gone back to Meckerle? After all, she hadn’t shown up the night before…. Silently he released his grip so she could get up. Instead he was suddenly in her embrace.

“Come on! Make love to me. Buback! More than ever!”

Much later, when she seemed far more passionate about her cigarette than about him, he dared to ask why his truth, in contrast to hers, had deserved punishment.

“Your fateful love was Hilde; mine was Martin. The rest of them don’t belong here.”

Another thing confused him. It could happen at any time, except when making love — they could be listening to music, eating a meal, or just talking. Suddenly, she seemed to back away from him. A strange, bitter smile would appear on her face, and her mood would change as abruptly as the fickle weather of Sylt, where warm stillness gave way in seconds to an icy gale. When he mentioned it, she snapped irritably that nothing was wrong; she wasn’t moody, just thinking! After all, she couldn’t giggle at his every comment like an imbecile. If he wanted to stay with her — which was up to him — he should stop trying to force her to explain things and learn to deal with her as she was.

He asked himself why he should bother with the whims of this woman, when their only connection was a mutual need to dull the pain of irreplaceable loss. He got his answer one night when she failed to show up. Although it was his first chance at a good night’s sleep in days, he stared for hours into the darkness and tried to conjure up the sound of quick footsteps on the side staircase. With Hilde he had been a good husband; with Grete he was a complete man again. But he didn’t feel like much of a man at the moment. There was no point in drawing it out: if she wouldn’t explain why she stood him up, he would end it.

But the next night, when she ran up the stairs to his door, his need overwhelmed everything else. And when she hungrily kissed him like before, he lost his desire to ask the question. So she continued to come or sometimes not to come, when she supposedly wanted to be alone, and when she came, she drank, smoked, talked, and made love to him even more insistently. Then, by the time he returned from the shower she was asleep again, as if deep in thought, chin propped on the back of her hand.

Today, he dived into the bathtub, not knowing if he would see Grete or not, and took stock of their time together. He had known her less than thirty days, and yet she had altered the very fabric of his existence. She lent it meaning, he admitted; she gave him a goal, even if for now it was only to wait for her.

Like before in Dresden, in the days of his professional innocence, he studied the reports of potential widow killers on a daily basis. First he would listen as the translators summarized them for him, then later, with the office door locked, he would read the Czech originals over in detail. He consulted with Morava and his group as to what was and was not worthy of investigation, and meanwhile, diligently and unfalteringly as a barometer, measured the pressure and temperature in the ranks of the Czech police. This morning for the first time he would be able to satisfy Meckerle’s curiosity.

“If there’s a rebellion, the Czechs’ trump card will apparently be the radio, Standartenführer.”

“No kidding,” his boss snorted in contempt. “Now there’s an idea. Radio’s been a target since the day it was invented.”

“I don’t mean the Protectorate radio station; a couple of tanks and a round of grenades will take care of it. I mean the city radio station.”

“And what’s that?”

“The central office for civil air-raid defense under the Prague police. Besides the sirens, it can patch through to all the public loudspeakers in the city.”

“Wouldn’t one tank and a single regiment be more than enough?”

“For the office, yes. I’d assume the Czechs are clever enough to broadcast by telephone from any local switchboard.”

“Aha,” Meckerle mused. “So what then? Cut the connections?”

“We could turn them off from the main post office, but then we’d be risking our own people’s lives; we don’t have a separate warning system.”

The giant leaned forward in his chair and thumped his elbows down onto the table, which indicated he expected his subordinate to make a suggestion.

“So, then.”

“With your permission I’ll ask our technicians and their Czech colleagues to check the state of the equipment across the entire city grid. Our agent will be there to map out all the stations. Then he’ll hand over a precise plan to the SS officer you designate, who will put together units that can occupy or decommission all the radio transmitters at once when the time comes.”

Meckerle sank back into the armchair.

“Dictate the order. Have it brought to me for my signature.”

Buback snapped to attention.

“Permission to leave, Standartenführer.”

“No…” His boss visibly wavered before finally deciding. “Do me one personal favor, if you would. Take this note to… you know.”

“Yes,” he said, hoping that he wasn’t blushing. “Should I wait for a reply?”

His oversized boss looked as pleased as a child.

“Great idea, Buback! Thank you!”

“Silly idea, Buback!” said Grete, freshly returned from a performance. Balancing on the edge of the bathtub, she skimmed through the letter.

“Sorry,” he said humbly. “Somehow I thought it might divert any suspicions he had—”

“He’s got other problems at the moment,” she retorted. “He’s under suspicion himself.”

An image flashed through his mind: the conversation about that secret meeting of high-placed Reich chieftains, which had de facto contravened the Führer’s orders.

“Who suspects him, and why?” he asked tensely.

“His wife. Because of me. That’s the reason I have so much time for you.”

“But for God’s sake, how did she find out?”

Grete tossed the paper away, stood up, and began to undress gracefully, a warm smile on her face.

“From me, love. I wrote her an anonymous letter. Now, let me into the tub.”

As always he read the daily papers on the night train. STILL NOTHING! Meanwhile, for three long days they’d been going on about how the American president’s sudden death would disrupt the Western alliance with the Bolsheviks. He didn’t know much about politics, but was sure this was empty talk. The Reich was on its back, like a beetle that’s been kicked over. He grinned at the thought of a street full of Krauts, their boots scrabbling in the air.

He felt himself CALMING DOWN, although home was still more than an hour away. He was alone in the compartment; the majority of travelers were commuters who had debarked by the time they reached Beroun. No one boarded the train there for Plze; it was almost midnight. Despite the shock he had gotten, he WASN’T TIRED. Not in the least! He was content.

I’M REACHING MY STRIDE!

There was no denying he’d made some nearly fatal mistakes. That whore was the worst one yet. He’d latched onto her by the cemetery as she hurried off to satisfy her lust. She was quiet as a mouse, the way she’d retreated so obediently, cowering with the knife at her throat. Then she did something he hadn’t expected. She threw open a door. Through it he could see a bed.

“Robert!” she shouted, and jerked away from his hand with such force that he dropped his knife. At the same time a man emerged from under the featherbed, naked but amazingly tall and with good biceps.

He broke out in a sweat; panic crippled him and drowned out everything else. Fortunately, it gave him time to realize the guy had no idea what was happening. Meanwhile, the woman, in an awkward retreat, tripped over the low footboard and fell on her back.

That was enough to allow him to bend down, grab the haft of his knife just below the long, thin blade, and then just stab. He reached the man’s heart in the first blow. It took three, maybe four for the woman; he didn’t count them. He managed to kill her even before the man’s body collapsed across hers. Interestingly enough, neither of them screamed.

He made sure he was in no danger from either of them and then sat down beside them on the bed. Eventually he caught his breath and stopped perspiring. All the while, he muttered curses at himself. Why did he lose his head so often? Where did the soldier in him go? He used to keep his cool even under fire. He’d have to get back on track….

On the other hand… how could he have known she’d already have a new stud in the bedroom?

He looked at the dead man’s face now and realized it wasn’t that of an adult. The height and broad shoulders were deceptive; the face was almost childlike, unmarked by great tragedies or passions. Suddenly he felt sorry.

THAT WASN’t WHAT I PLANNED!

This was a depraved relationship, and the boy was clearly the victim; that was why he was PUNISHING THEM. And he would not stop…

UNTIL I WIPE THEM OUT!

A while later he threw off the cape and put down his postman’s bag. Methodically he proceeded through his task. The unfortunate boy he laid out in the bed, covering him up to his chest with the featherbed, unstained side up. He closed the boy’s panicked eyes so that it looked as if he were still asleep.

As he put the cursed SOUL into his satchel next to the unused straps, he decided to change his appearance again. Someone might wonder why an unfamiliar postman had been in the building so long. Then he remembered the caretaker on the embankment, still the only person to have gotten a good look at him. Maybe he should stop by today? No, not worth the risk; they might be watching.

I WILL GET HIM, ONE OF THESE DAYS!

After a short search he found a ball of hemp rope. He turned the cape inside out, wrapped the satchel in it, and tied it up, crisscrossing it with the twine into a shapeless bundle like the ones carried by countless Eastern refugees wandering across the Protectorate. He could not change his postman’s pants, but the boy’s jacket, with the sleeves turned up, obscured its origins.

As usual, he met no one in the building and felt sure the passersby outside were paying no attention.

As he finished his paper in the train, he was more interested in what they would say about him tomorrow than about the course of the war after Roosevelt’s death. However, he was sure of one thing: the decay of morality had spread so far — he’d witnessed it personally today— that he had to change his plans.

I’ll punish them EVERY WEEK!

Once again he felt an unpleasant tingling as he got off in Plze. Recently, food inspections had become more frequent on trains from the countryside. He hadn’t yet met one on an express from Prague. Fortunately the platform was empty. And anyway, he grinned to himself, what could be so interesting about a single solitary PIG HEART?

Between lovemaking and her stories they sipped champagne; right at the beginning she’d hauled three cases of it over in a taxi, Meckerle’s entire stock. He set up a military storehouse at my place, she said mockingly, and Buback did not dare to ask the next logical question.

She was sitting on the bed again, hugging her knees, wrapped in a large white towel as usual. He realized from the beginning that she was obsessed with cleanliness; she showered several times a night, and taught him to do the same. How had she done it near the front? he’d asked. She always chose lovers with running water, of course! And during the retreat? Suddenly she turned ashen.

“I told you I’d rather die than talk about that.”

He would have been glad to be finished for the night; the role of confessor, hearing the details of her love life, was mentally exhausting. He did feel honored, but at times her directness seemed almost cruel. She evidently wanted to emphasize the casual nature of their relationship, but why so bluntly? That night she seemed determined to finish the story whose beginning he already knew.

Grete managed to make Martin Siegel fall in love with her a second time and after a short tempestuous affair he even divorced on her account. Her own marriage had a catastrophic ending: amiable Hans, who up till the last believed he and Grete would reconcile, fell under a subway train on the way back from family court. She could only guess as to whether it was an accident or suicide — it happened while she was riding up the escalator. She was so in love with Martin, though, that this shameful tragedy affected her far less than the sudden change she saw in her relationship with Martin.

The banal story’s sudden change into drama managed to raise Buback’s weary eyelids.

“What change? Did he find someone else?”

“No, that wasn’t it. During our whole time together he never deceived me, not once. But I was the last in a line of conquests that always ended with him returning to his true love, the theater. I should have seen how easy it was to pry him away from his wife — it was more like I set her free. When he was learning and playing a big part, it was as if I didn’t exist. Othello and Mercurio occupied him far more than any passing fling could; a woman I could have buried, like any other competitor. Martin, that fantastic lover, stopped needing to make love when he was with me. Fleeced a second time! And what’s worse, I was still just his mistress; ’we’ve both had our marriages already,’ he’d say, ’haven’t we, darling?’ ”

Then war broke out for real. Actors of Martin’s caliber did not have to enlist so long as they joined troupes entertaining German soldiers behind the front lines. Grete forced him to arrange for her to go as well, singing in a group with the depressing name Freudenkiste—“Box o’ Joy.” She thought that, removed from the surroundings where he was king, he would come to appreciate her presence. They could return to their starting point, those rapturous nights in Hamburg. The director of the group, however, soon struck Martin’s modest handful of famous monologues, which had been his substitute for performing the classics; they bored the soldiers. Instead, he was condemned to recite trite little verses, meant to give men who used traveling whorehouses for sex an analogous replacement for emotions.

Martin was unbearable. Because he couldn’t punish that Nazi, she said — lighting a new cigarette while Buback rubbed his eyes quickly, so she wouldn’t see — he tormented her instead. He must have known how she longed for him and he must have wanted her himself at times, but he had an inhuman self-control; crawling into bed, he would turn away from her and fall asleep without so much as a good night.

Desperate and vengeful, what else could she do but have an affair— but with whom? Even after days of bathing in the Lido, the soldiers and officers currently recuperating in Rome after their Sicilian battles stank of God knows what, most likely death. And she would rather have died than sleep with a troupe member. Then she saw her chance.

After a performance for their Italian allies, she received a bouquet of roses. A calling card in it requested her to accept a supper invitation: they could meet at the Hotel Dei Principi, a chauffeur was waiting outside in a silver Lancia—cordialementeGianfranco Bossi. Ordinarily she would have refused, if Martin had not remarked that she ought to go; this might just be the supermale who could finally slake her nymphomania. She changed and went.

The driver in livery delivered her to the doorman, the doorman took her to the concierge, the concierge brought her personally to the head-waiter. She ended up at a table where a slender, dark man with unbelievably green eyes rose to greet her; he could have been thirty or fifty. If she would like, he said, kissing her hand, they could take dinner together here. With her consent, of course, he would be pleased to invite her for dinner at his home. She liked what she saw, and, furious at Martin, she accepted.

Home, she continued raptly, as if seeing it once again, was in an old palace filled with servants, whose silence reminded her of ghosts: a scene from a film, with silver, candles, the music of a hidden quartet. And after a feast like that, there would have to be a canopied bed…. Was she boring him, she asked Buback. Of course not, he said swiftly, for fear of being left alone the next evening.

The Italian remained virtually silent; he ran the dinner with gestures of his handsome fingers. She did the talking: about Hamburg and Berlin, about books and the theater, ever more intrigued to know how this man, evidently an aristocrat, would negotiate the next bend in the road toward their evident goal.

He did it quite differently than she expected. At a certain point he stood up, walked over, helped her pull out her chair, and offered her his arm. Then he led her out past the entrance hall to the door of the palace, where the blacked-out vehicle was waiting to take her back.

He invited her night after night, four evenings running; only the food and music changed. Once the last cup had vanished from the table, the music disappeared as well. From the hallway, the sounds of a small fountain burbled into the dining room. He no longer moved, just gazed at her. Confused, she spun the conversation onward alone, until he rose from the table.

They had two days remaining in Rome when it dawned on her: the moment silence descended, she fell quiet as well. They looked at each other mutely for several long minutes.

He knew she was leaving in two days’ time he remarked suddenly; he would return to Sicily the next day. But the Allies are there already, she replied, shocked. Oh really, he smiled; what’s the difference, a change might be nice. He would like her to accompany him. As? As his betrothed.

She was flabbergasted. But she was here with her husband!

The Italian was apparently well informed. The actor wasn’t really her husband, though, was he? No, not officially; they hadn’t felt it necessary to formalize things, but she had been with him several years already. So why did he let her go out at night with a stranger? If she were Sicilian, her brothers would have killed him long ago. He meant his offer seriously and would prove it by confiding in her: he was a member of an old noble family here on a secret military mission. Couldn’t she stay here with him? Early tomorrow he’d arrange for her luggage and documents.

No, she said, no, she was truly sorry. No tonight or no forever? he asked. He is my fate, she whispered. Only death can release us. In a rush of emotion she then asked if he would like her to stay tonight, at least. He nodded almost solemnly and led her up a marble staircase and along hallways with ancestral portraits; the palace was desolate— and then there it was, the canopied bed, and she felt an indescribable gratitude to him for the way he had exalted her and confirmed her uniqueness. She had never made love more passionately — to be precise, she corrected herself, she had never pretended passion more expertly.

Before she began to get dressed, the Italian made a cross of kisses on her mouth, breasts, and lap.

At home she woke Martin. She repeated everything that was said in the dining room and waited to hear what he would say. And he… even now she swallowed angrily and fumbled for another cigarette— he congratulated her and asked if she needed help packing.

“And I began to hit him, Buback! I hit and kicked him. Until it hurt me just as much. I was punishing part of myself in him too. For the fact that together we killed such a perfect love. He defended himself; he was strong, so he quickly got me in a lock on the ground. Except that I can’t be tamed, you know that. I spat, scratched, even bit him. He howled, and I was sure he’d wound me too. But suddenly he let me up, opened himself to my blows and whispered, Thank you, thank you, until I screamed furiously, for what? And he said: for still caring that much. At that I burst into tears. And then we made love till morning like in Hamburg.”

Early the next morning the chauffeur woke her; he had brought a ring from the Sicilian. A large diamond was set in platinum between two emeralds the color of his eyes. She knew it cost more than all the money she had ever earned. For the few minutes she held it in her hand, she felt the way she had always longed to feel: the chosen one among women. Then she showed it to Martin and sent it back.

As if this last memory exhausted her more than her whole life story, she laid her forehead on her knees. Buback’s tiredness, meanwhile, had completely fallen away.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why did you return the ring? It’s not as if you deceived him. On the contrary…”

And then he realized he was jealous of both the Italian and the actor.

“That’s odd….” She shook her head.

“What’s odd?”

“Martin asked the same thing. Typical that you’d ask as well.”

“Why is it typical?”

She yawned, threw off her towel, and slipped under the quilt, without even a longing glance at the bathroom.

“Think about it, Buback. Or sleep on it; with you it amounts to the same thing. Good night, love.”

The woman’s newly widowed sister found the corpses. Despite their ghastly appearance, she kept her head; instead of fainting or raising an alarm, she relocked the apartment and went down to the police. Jan Morava, accompanied by all the free men in his group (and by Buback) was for once able to arrive on the scene of the crime first and secure the evidence. Soon Beran arrived, called by a pale Jitka out of his latest useless meeting with Police Commissioner Rajner, who was agonizing over how long to keep serving the occupying powers.

The three men on duty yesterday at the graveyard were there too. ebesta remembered the murdered woman well; he had seen her hurry off through the side gate toward the embankment. He swore solemnly that no one had been following her, and Morava spotted a gaping hole in his net: the murderer would have taken Jana Kavanová for a widow by her clothing, even outside the cemetery.

Jana’s sister cleared up the mystery of the dead youth. His flight from the trenches could no longer harm anyone.

The perpetrator had as usual chosen a time for his attack when men were away at work, children at school, and women at the stove. According to the witnesses, only the garbagemen, coalmen, a policeman, and a postman had come down the street since morning. These testified to seeing only a pair of housewives. Once again the unidentified killer had left no trace. He appeared and then vanished into thin air.

Morava had to summon all his strength to keep on track. Outwardly he seemed fine, but inside he was in utter despair. There was one person, however, who did notice. When the German finally left to inform his office, the superintendent clapped his adjutant on the shoulder.

“Take me along with you.”

Morava was so crestfallen that he fell speechless. He waited, suffering, for Beran to say the inevitable words. Halfway across the bridge from Újezd to Národní Avenue, the superintendent turned to the driver.

“Stop here, Litera. We’re going for a little walk.”

Morava saw the driver cast a sympathetic glance his way. He followed the superintendent down the stairs to Stelecký Island like a condemned man. At the bottom, Beran strode along the path for a while in silence, stopping finally at an old oak. He ran two fingers along a slender twig sprouting from it that was dusted with miniature greenery.

“Nice progress since last time, don’t you think?”

Of course, Beran did not expect an answer; he understood his companion’s mind was elsewhere.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you? I have to say it, though. Yes, I’m taking this case away from you.”

Morava must have been the very picture of misfortune.

“Don’t act like you’ve been betrayed and abandoned, Morava,” Beran snapped irritably. “You did nothing you shouldn’t have and everything you should have. Personally I can’t find fault with you, because I’m no idiot. We’re hunting a treacherous predator. For now he has the upper hand, but you’ve set a ring of hunters on his trail, and the noose will eventually tighten around him, as long as he keeps to his habits. At the moment yes, the murderer is fixated on widows and the Vyehrad cemetery. I wanted to tell you clearly, face-to-face, that you have no reason to criticize yourself. I’m taking over the case so that they won’t ask for your head; Rajner is scared out of his wits and is looking for a sacrificial lamb.”

Morava found his tongue.

“And you think you’re a better target because your surname means ’ram’?”

“He won’t touch me, because he knows the whole operation would shut down without me. They executed my potential replacement, and the next best person would be you.”

Morava stared, dumbfounded, at the man who had just demoted him and then paid him the very compliment he’d desperately longed for.

“Yes, Morava, I sense a talent in you, the same kind — all modesty aside — that I once had. And you’re just as tenacious. There are dogs who won’t let go of their prey even if you swing them round in the air by their legs. You’ll get that monster!”

“But how, if I’m not—”

“I don’t have the time to reinvent the wheel, and fortunately I don’t need to. I will officially conduct the meetings of the investigative team, but will always ask you first, one on one, how to do so.”

“But—”

“Don’t try to make my life any harder than it is already, or yours any easier. In public I’m taking responsibility away from you, but in private you will run things for me. Now, listen closely. I’m convening the team for two this afternoon to take charge myself. Fifteen minutes before that I want you to give me a precise plan of action and tomorrow’s task roster — for everyone, including yourself. Take two more laps around the island to clear your head; in the meanwhile I’ll inform Rajner and the Germans.”

As he left, he turned around once more.

“You can let your beloved in on our little secret this evening. Just so she doesn’t think she’s marrying a good-for-nothing.”

As directed, Morava set off around the sandy oval, trying to make sense of his public fall and private resurrection. He knew he had not made any mistakes, but also that this meant precious little. One of Beran’s first pearls of wisdom, which Morava had written into his notebook, was that a seasoned detective had to do more than just what was necessary; he had to think one step further.

He felt sure the superintendent would want a fresh idea from him at a quarter to two. A new, more urgent message for the newspapers? He doubted strongly that widows would read it. A further appeal to a wider circle of specialists, maybe with a photograph of one of the horrid death altars? He remembered Beran’s solemn warning. Reinforced surveillance of the cemetery? He knew the team was stretched to its limit; the criminal police could barely keep up as it was. Stretch them any thinner, and Prague would become a playground for thieves, robbers, and “ordinary” murderers.

He rounded the tip of the island for the second time. Leaning against a tree, he looked out across the water. Charles Bridge, the castle — this scene always raised his spirits, but now he barely noticed it. The worst thing, he admitted to himself, was that he had lost his spark, lost the thread, couldn’t even concentrate; he caught himself thinking in turns about his mother, Jitka, their child — treasures the war would threaten far more than the widow killer ever could.

A long object slid into the corner of his vision; a barge drifted down the Vltava, with a solitary fisherman and two rods attached to the stern. Slowly and silently it floated down toward the nearby weir as a weak wind carried the rumble of falling water off toward the Old Town bank.

Morava knew how deceptive an idyll like this could be. Since their March expedition to Moravia, the images of a powerful German army massing to the east had never left him. He sensed that despite all the defeats of the past two years, there was enough destructive strength in those soldiers to turn the Protectorate into a vast wasteland. In the upcoming conflict of responsibilities, how come he hadn’t chosen his personal ones? Why wasn’t he on one of those final trains right now, bringing his mother back here? Why hadn’t he found her and Jitka’s parents a place to rent long ago, maybe with farmers outside Prague? Was it the unholy sum it would cost? And what was he saving for, if not to protect his own family? Why hadn’t he refused Beran right off?

Out of solidarity with him? Should it take precedence over solidarity with his family? Or out of fear for himself? But Beran had seen to that when he claimed the case as his own cross to bear. So then? Had Morava’s gloomy craft become so crucial to him that he would risk endangering his loved ones for it?

Yes, he answered himself, but not for the sake of his career. Catch that monster, Jitka had told him; he frightens me more than Hitler does. He understood what she meant. Adolf Hitler was the product of a deranged nation’s political will, horrible but explicable, and therefore defeatable. The unknown and unpredictable widow slaughterer stripped the thin veneer of civilization from mankind and threatened to return humanity to its savage prehistory.

The fisherman rowed closer; he lifted both lines from the water, opened an old can, and spindled wriggling earthworms on the hooks. Then he flung his arm wide and the floats whistled down between the dinghy and the shore. The man in the boat waved to him, but Morava just stared dumbly back.

He had his idea.

All the heads of department marched into Meckerle’s office. They ran out of chairs; the assistants brought more in from the anteroom and the hallway as well. There was no food, no one thought to light a cigarette, nobody spoke, everyone sat clenched as stiff as a ramrod. A puppet theater, Buback thought to himself. It seemed inconceivable to him, but not long ago he had been one of those figurines.

Yes, Grete had freed him from servitude to the war. True, it was their unceasing and unflagging lovemaking that bound them together — interrupted by her stories, which merged with his deliriously exhausted dreams — but he realized that at some point he had dropped out of this society of soldiers, and now he was hers alone.

Had she truly freed him? Or had she deprived him of his foundations, his sources of equilibrium? She had exposed him — for better or worse — to emotions and passions; had she also transformed him into an animal, unprincipled, unwilling, and probably even incapable of defending an ideal?

But without her, without the woman who had stepped unexpectedly into Hilde’s shoes, what sort of ideals would he have to defend? The ones that had deformed German culture so completely? Weren’t the murderers sitting here today all the more monstrous for the fact that they massacred innocent victims left and right from the comfort of their desks, often by telephone? Without moving his neck he surveyed them in his peripheral vision, face by face. Was he the same as them? Probably not, so long as it seemed more important to him that he spend the next night with Grete.

The way she had detached him from Hilde was a more serious matter. A month ago, he had convinced himself that his dead wife had sent him the Czech girl as her own reincarnation, to cure his loneliness. Now he felt equally sure that she would not approve of Grete; Hilde would have found the actress’s emotionally turbulent life contemptible. After all, it even bothered him. But why? Hadn’t he become part of it?

The colonel appeared in the doorway, and all present snapped to attention. Meckerle whipped his right hand into the German salute and simultaneously motioned them to sit down. Then, as if he were alone in the office, he began to study the papers in the folder an assistant had just placed on his desk.

Buback remembered he had a letter for Meckerle in his breast pocket, and felt a new pang. Why had she left the colonel, anyway? And had she, in fact? What was she writing him about? The benefits of her relationship with Meckerle were evident; surely it was only a matter of time before the rift was healed and he, Buback, would become another of her episodes, one that would not even yield a good story. Advance nostalgia overwhelmed him.

“Gentlemen!” Meckerle slammed the leather binder shut with an audible crack. “The final battle has begun. Last night the whole eastern front shifted, from the Balkans to the Baltic. Vienna has fallen, and it seems the main defensive line on the Oder has been broken. There is no doubt that the main goal of the offensive is Berlin.”

The meeting’s participants neither moved nor breathed. Everyone except Buback seemed to know already. Had Grete’s wiles even dulled his interest in the final days of the Reich (which might be his own as well)? Maybe it was time for him to loosen Grete’s grip before she became a drug he couldn’t give up.

“From this day forward,” Meckerle pronounced, “the military leaders are following the Führer’s strategic plan. Our goal is the defense of Bohemia and Bavaria as the launching point for our final victory. Mitte’s army units have enough men, military machinery, munitions, and fuel to fulfill this historic task. Our job here is to insure absolute tranquillity behind the front lines. We will not declare martial law, as it might provoke the more militant domestic elements to resistance; nevertheless, it is in force from now on. Every act of sabotage or incitement hostile to the Reich — whether directed against soldiers or civilians — must be nipped in the bud, suppressed, and punished with Draconian severity.”

A blow. This time everyone twitched. Meckerle’s elbows had again come down on the tables. Buback’s stomach cramped. Yes, no wonder Grete liked this Tarzan. .. He regained control when his brain came to his aid. The Empire was dying, and he was jealous! Of a blabbering Gestapo agent and a woman whose life creed was infidelity!

“I want to warn all of you — and you must warn your subordinates as well — that a line of troops lies between us and the western front. Many will find this situation tempting, but anyone suspected of desertion will be swiftly sentenced in court to death by hanging. With no pardons! Prague is the primary railway and highway center of Bohemia, and we will defend it if necessary, even at the cost of its total annihilation. Why should it fare better than our lovely Dresden did?”

Buback remembered how Meckerle and his wife had described the destruction of their villa. A few hours later, the mysterious woman who sat next to him that night turned his life upside down. Wasn’t it time for him to become his own master again, before his freedom became a new sort of slavery?

Before he could think this assertion through, he was dragged into the sudden motions and sharp noises all around him. Force of habit catapulted him out of his chair along with the rest, who were hastening to flee Meckerle’s office. He moved along with the flow; having missed Meckerle’s last sentence completely, he had no idea what the order was. Then he heard it again.

“You stay, Mr. Buback.”

The head of the Prague Gestapo occasionally respected Buback’s civilian status and addressed him according to the old ways.

“Your order, Standartenführer,” Buback responded.

“Did you give her my letter?”

The last officer was closing the door behind him; the two of them were left alone. His boss mostly seemed embarrassed.

“Of course. ..”

Buback reached into his pocket and dug out the answer she had written that morning while he was shaving. He felt like the worst sort of liar.

And that too was her fault.

He handed over the envelope, resolving to end this awkward comedy.

“Permission to leave, sir.”

“Wait a minute.”

Meckerle ripped open the envelope and read the letter standing up. Buback’s mind raced. What should he say if Meckerle asks about her? That he sees her from time to time? Where, when, and how? God, why hadn’t they at least agreed on the details, if she was going to keep up the deception? The giant raised his eyes. Buback saw surprise.

“Did she let you read it?”

“No.”

“That’s just like her… damned like her. Have a seat.”

Once again he brought over the bottle of cognac and the rounded glasses single-handedly, and poured them almost to the rim.

“Cheers!”

The colonel drank half his glass in one gulp and then bemusedly scratched his head some more at Buback, as if he could not quite place who he was. The detective drank cautiously, looking in vain for a hint of what was going through his boss’s head. Meckerle gave a bitter laugh.

“Messengers like you used to be thrown to the wolves; thank Lady Luck that you’re living in a civilized country.”

A brave assertion, Buback thought; Germany hasn’t done very well on that count. He wanted to see what would come next.

“She’s given me the sack.”

No…!

“She writes that she’s cutting me loose, because my behavior is insulting. Even though I explained that some idiot wrote my wife about her, and that I’m looking for a solution.”

Hmm… maybe the murderer could help…?

“She says that naturally, under the circumstances, she’ll find someone else.”

Meckerle lightly swirled the remains of the viscous liquid in his goblet, stared at the letter, and melancholically nodded.

“And do you know what the strangest thing is?”

Here it comes, Buback thought. Why had she put him in such an impossible situation?

“The strangest thing,” the giant answered himself, “is that I feel relieved. I do! I’ve always been lucky with women, but she was a colossal mistake, do you believe me?”

Buback did not respond, but no response was needed; Meckerle had to talk through this to get it off his chest.

“Before she chased me down — and she did the chasing, that cunning beast! — I noticed her in the troupe. She looked like a schoolgirl in a bunch of Brunhildes, but I sensed she’d be a passion bomb. Before she was firmly in the saddle — and yes, eventually she was — she’d heat me up white-hot, but wouldn’t give it to me, the vixen; every German in Prague knew I was sleeping with her, only I wasn’t. Till she got the apartment keys. And then it happened….”

He waved his hands and fell into a reverie.

“The first time was sensational. Like drumfire!”

By now Buback’s stomach was definitely hurting.

“But then it was over. A fish.”

“Fish?” Buback repeated involuntarily.

“A Pisces. By sign and by nature — a spoiled kitten. In public, by my side, she’d make eyes at everyone and anyone until I… well, I was mad with jealousy. Then back in the apartment she was a wet rag. Each time I had to prove myself again, or so she said. She smoked exclusively Egyptians, drank champagne like it was going out of style, listened only to that crazy nigger music, which I’d get for ungodly sums from Switzerland, and wanted her feet massaged every evening. Yes, she turned me into a masseur. It was unbelievable the way she pushed me around. When she disliked something I did — and often she wouldn’t even tell me what, I was supposed to guess — she’d turn into an icicle.”

It was too much for Buback to accept.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Meckerle continued. “Pretty soon I had to ask myself: Why do I keep her, especially in this city, where all I have to do is.. ”

He snapped his fingers loudly.

“But each time I wanted to slam the door behind me, she’d sense it a moment earlier and find a way to make me stay on. She’s a truly fateful woman, Buback, a femme fatale. The glow that tempts you to love her is real, but then she expects the same in return. With me she finally realized that she would always be third: after my work and my wife. So she held me like a hostage until she could find the man who’d give her what she lacked___”

The head of the Gestapo sighed. “That bitch! That goddamned bitch! And I can’t even destroy her, that beautiful little bitch!”

He downed the rest of the cognac.

“Or you, Buback….”

His gaze pierced the detective, sharp as an interrogation. As chills and hot flushes raced through him, Buback decided silence was still the wisest option. Meckerle raised the hand with the letter in it.

“That’s right, she presents you as my replacement. Handpicked, with my own stamp of approval. Because she guessed — correctly — how furious I would have been if my men had reported you to me. Of course it makes my blood boil, but…”

He rose, towering over Buback, and angrily shred the paper into tiny pieces.

“Get the hell out of here! Go hunt that pervert with your Czechs, snoop around in their drawers, and stay out of my sight. Heil Hitler!”

Morava ran into Bartolomjská Street breathless, but in time to catch Beran before he sent off his message.

“Mr. Beran,” he pleaded, “I know you want to cover for me, but please, hold off for a while. This is a demanding plan; it’ll be hard for you to find time for it.”

When he finished his brief explanation, he heard the words that made his heart soar.

“Good work, Morava.”

A minute before two, Chief Inspector Buback arrived with today’s interpreter; now they had a political quorum as well. They were all there, even the Vyehrad team, and Jitka was taking notes.

“Bait!” Morava announced to the assembled men. “We’ll throw it to him day in, day out, until he bites. And then we’ll reel him in.”

In his typical style, he laid it out for them, point by point.

Point A: Tomorrow, in a convenient free spot in the Vyehrad cemetery, a false grave would be installed, where the technicians would place a marker with the name of a newly deceased man.

Point B: An apartment under the same name would be designated appropriately close to the cemetery.

Point C: Several female volunteers would be chosen from the ranks of the Prague police staff to play the role of a grieving widow who visits the cemetery twice daily.

Point D: During her visits, the apartment would be occupied by two men, armed with pistols.

Point E: The “widow on shift” would not lock the front door, and if someone rang or knocked, she would call from the kitchen that it was open.

Point F: As soon as the perpetrator entered the kitchen, he would be seized and disarmed by the hidden policemen.

Morava snapped his notebook shut.

“Of course, we will continue to review any reports that come in, but this trap should be flawless. There must be a compelling reason behind the killer’s routine, since so far it has outweighed the risks he’s taken. We have good reason to think he’ll take the bait. If any of you have a lady colleague in mind, please bring her to me.”

He turned to the German.

“Does the chief inspector have any objections or comments?”

When it was translated, Buback shook his head.

Morava then opened his notebook again and read out the roster of tasks.

“Any questions?” he asked in closing.

The technician in charge of the grave plaque spoke up.

“What about the name on the grave?”

“Whatever occurs to you.”

“Nothing occurs to me,” the man insisted.

“How about Jan Morava?”

He noticed Jitka’s sudden start and tried to reassure her.

“Superstition says grave owners live the longest.”

The technician had already written it down.

“Where will we find an apartment?” ebesta wanted to know.

Morava’s eyes once again met Jitka’s, this time questioningly. It buoyed him to see her nod back immediately.

“Jitka Modrá rents a room in a house in Kaví Hory that fits the requirements quite well. The owners are away from Prague; if they return, we’ll show that it’s in the public interest and possibly pay them.”

The technician wrote down the address for the plaque on the door.

“Anything else?”

The team already looked like runners crouched at the starting line. Beran, however, spoke up for the first time in that half hour.

“Be sure to tell your lady colleagues the whole truth: We’ll give them the best protection we can, but at certain points the murderer will be closer to them than any assistance we can give, and his behavior might unexpectedly change. Any women who volunteer in spite of this will immediately be elevated to a higher service grade, but they must be aware that they are voluntarily exposing themselves to a degree of risk. I’ll want to speak with all of them personally at four as well;’

These three sentences instantly deflated their hunters’ euphoria. They dispersed in a pensive mood. Beran asked Buback to remain behind with Morava. He dismissed the interpreter and led the discussion in German.

“Herr Oberkriminalrat,” he said to Buback, “I’d like to personally convey to you some information I’m sending to the police commissioner. The case of the widow killer will continue to fall under the jurisdiction of Assistant Detective Morava, but all his activities — including this most recent one — have been cleared with me, and I am therefore responsible for them.”

“I will pass it on,” the German said, and added unexpectedly, “along with the fact that I approve of the plan. In this phase I will continue to be at your disposal in my office here.”

As he and Morava proceeded through the anteroom, where Jitka was alone at her desk again, he stopped and asked her, “How is your father doing?”

It was the first time Buback had spoken to her since their dinner together, and Jitka, surprised, stood up as if reciting in school.

“Danke___”

“Please, sit down. Is everything all right?”

“Nothing happened to him…. Almost nothing,” she added in her forthright way, “just a couple of bruises….”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh,” she replied quickly, as if approving the deed, “they weren’t the first ones he’s gotten. And at least he survived. We’re all very grateful to you.”

“Good,” said Buback a bit absentmindedly, “very good. Well then, good luck. To you, your family, and your fiancé. Who is it, by the way?

Morava could sense Jitka’s unease at having deceived the German. Hesitantly she answered, “The assistant detective

When Buback still seemed puzzled, she pointed at Morava.

The German stared, flabbergasted, first at him, then at her and back at him. For the first time they could remember, he laughed out loud.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”

He took her by the left hand and him by the right, and shook both their hands simultaneously. The warmth of his response seemed completely sincere.

“My heartiest congratulations! My heartiest congratulations!”

With that he let go and left them, still laughing. Morava and Jitka were equally dumbfounded.

What has happened to him? Morava wondered.

He knew there was no way to find out, so he gave Jitka a kiss and set off on his way. The rest of the day did not go nearly as well; later that afternoon in Beran’s office a dejected Morava had little good news to report.

“At your suggestion, Mr. Beran, we gave briefings in all our departments, but not a single female employee volunteered.”

“That’s not surprising,” said his superior, “but they’re not the only women in Prague, after all, are they?”

“No,” Morava sighed, “but where can we look? We need some sort of assurance….”

“Relatives of the victims,” Beran suggested. “The last one had a sister, maybe the other ones did as well. Or jailers; there’s a few sharp girls among them.”

“Actresses….” The German surprised them again.

“But of course,” Beran concurred. “Morava, put your men on it.”

“I sent them home,” Morava confessed, deflated. “They haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week.”

Before Beran could rebuke him, Jitka walked in through the open door.

“Tomorrow I’ll go, Mr. Beran,” she announced simply. “It’s my house and Jan will certainly protect me best, don’t you think?”

She sat, wrapped again in a large white bath sheet, legs crossed beneath her in his only armchair, laughing her head off as he told her about his conversation with Meckerle.

“Don’t you know Hamlet?“

“I remember it vaguely from school

“They send him to France with a letter requesting his execution.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“Come on, love! Big Mecky explained it himself, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“He had to learn about you from me, and in your presence, no less. He’s proud — as I’d expected — but he does have some sense. He’d been wondering what to do with me anyway.”

“He tried to tell me something of the sort.”

“You mean he confided in you?”

Buback attempted to reproduce in his own words Meckerle’s description of her as a femme fatale and his regret that he couldn’t destroy either of them.

“I’m inclined to believe it,” she remarked. “He’d never had it like that before, so he should be grateful.”

She said it quite matter-of-factly, as if they were talking about the weather, and Buback once again felt how deeply it pained him.

“Like what?” he managed nonetheless to ask.

“Come on, you saw his wife. If you want to know a man, look at his spouse. He tried to impress me by bragging about his mistresses, but I saw one of them and that confirmed it: yet another peasant. I taught him what royal lovemaking is.”

Buback felt worse and worse but still could not stop this new confession. He wanted finally to understand completely whom she chose and how, so he could find the strength to end their relationship.

“I don’t understand. He told me you were uncommunicative and chilly. Like a fish.”

“You’re joking. Were you that open with each other? That should have pleased you, shouldn’t it? That you know a different me?”

“I was more surprised than anything. And now you tell me that he—”

“What don’t you understand? After all, I admitted, he did impress me a bit. So I gave him the opportunity to find himself through me. Don’t let his appearance fool you; he’s not much of a lover. I taught him that in bed, rank, weight, age, and responsibility don’t matter. With me — and only with me — he learned that there’s more to love-making than a bit of grunting and thrusting. I stimulated his imagination, because I didn’t fuss over him. Instead, I made him win my favor on his own.”

Buback was so visibly upset that she suddenly turned petulant.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you pleased I’ve decided to sleep only with you?”

“You know I am!”

She let the bath sheet drop past her chest and hips.

“So then, love, what are you waiting for?”

Two hours later, she was resting again in utter self-surrender, her head on his “wing,” as she called his shoulder, her right leg beneath his knees and her left on his belly. In this tangle of limbs, she began to describe how she and Meckerle had met. She’d recuperated a bit in Berlin after that horrible retreat through Prussia… but she didn’t want to and wasn’t going to talk about that. Through connections she’d gotten herself assigned to peaceful Prague. After her first appearance in the German Theater’s troupe, two Viennese petty officers were waiting for her afterward by the back door, offering her an evening out. She had already learned from her colleagues who the master of Prague was. They would have to ask Colonel Meckerle, she told the two of them with a frosty smile and they disappeared into the darkness.

She used the same answer on subsequent days to more and more new suitors. Theater fans followed the troupe’s membership closely, and apparently she was unmissable. As interest rose so did ranks; soon she was rebuffing generals’ aides-de-camp with the same line. As she had anticipated, she said cheerfully to Buback, a month later Meckerle personally appeared in the auditorium. During the intermission, she— and not the soloists of the Magic Flute—was invited secretly to his box so he could ask her if it was true she had linked herself to him.

She asked for his pardon; having lived through war and personal hell in the East, she wanted to stay clear of these heartless meddlers, she said. The imperial protector and the state secretary did not look like the type to have mistresses, so she had decided unilaterally to put herself under the protection of the third most powerful man in the Protectorate. That swelled his head a bit, of course, and not only his head, she laughed gruffly. When she guiltily promised him that she’d stop immediately, he relented and gave her permission to continue.

Then she cut off the confidences until, as she said, he was in rut. On principle, she refused to meet with him in his apartment or a hotel, because she knew full well that he absolutely could not visit her in the German artists’ dormitory. Anyway, she hated the place, because living there marked her as just another a dime-a-dozen troupe member. It was true, though, she admitted to Buback; she was a dancer, had never studied singing, and still did not know how to read music. She had been accepted into the first troupe for Martin’s sake, so she could accompany him. Only later did it become clear that she had more talent than many of the trained singers.

She had correctly calculated, she continued during her next cigarette — which she managed to find, settle in its holder, light, and tap on the rim of an empty glass without changing position — that here in Prague, only Meckerle could raise her from the abyss to the heights she’d scaled five years earlier with Martin in Berlin. Once again she would be admired and envied for catching the biggest fish in the pond (then, a star of the stage; now, a warlord).

Meckerle, she said, returning immediately to the story, procured a suitable apartment for her as she had expected. To thank him, she presented him there with a feast for the senses. Not a real one, of course, but a perfect replica, she assured Buback, as if this would comfort him. She’d done it so that, for once in his life, he’d have some inkling of what it could be like. After that he would have to get there on his own. Did Buback understand?

She finished her cigarette, wound her slender hands about his head, and kissed him passionately again. He was happy to hold her, but her merciless tale had been depressingly similar to Meckerle’s. For the first time since he had known her — for the first time in his life, really — he felt he was about to explode. She really was a better sort of whore! But then for God’s sake, why had she chosen him?

He knew that if he asked, she would be packed and gone in five minutes, never to return, and the emptiness that would remain after her flooded over him almost physically.

Only a bullet could fill that gap.

He swallowed his shout so forcibly that his Adam’s apple must have moved. Instead, he asked a question.

“So why risk his anger now?”

“First of all, there won’t be any,” she announced convincingly. “You should have realized that today. He knows he got what he deserved. Most likely he’s hoping that he’ll win me back. And second? Figure it out for yourself, Buback; you have a splendid imagination in bed, but in other areas it’s sadly lacking. Use the opportunity while it lasts.”

An hour later she was again lying blessedly in his arms. She still could not sleep and would not let him drift off either.

“Now it’s your turn to talk,” she ordered him, “but not about women. I don’t want to hear that you’ve ever had anyone else.”

“But you—” he finally objected.

“I want you to know me as I am,” she interrupted.

“So then why do you refuse to know me?”

“Why, why, why! Why don’t you tell me what you do? As a child I thought policemen protected the world. So what do you protect now that the world’s coming to an end?”

His work was the one thing that had always upset Hilde. She was constantly afraid for him, and they had tacitly agreed he would not speak about it to her. Now he tried, and surprised himself: His description of the case of the widow killer was brief and dramatic. Grete even sat up in excitement, hugged her knees with her elbows, and propped her childlike breasts on them (for a week now she had insisted that with his help they were finally starting to grow). She was listening so intently that she even forgot to light another cigarette.

When he finished the most recent episode, in which Beran’s secretary insisted on serving as the decoy, Grete asked, “Is she your lotus flower?”

“Please don’t get angry again,” he pleaded panicking.

“I’m not angry. It’s an act of womanly solidarity. And I’m surprised you didn’t offer me the chance.”

“Where did that come from?”

“She’s helping her fiance; why can’t I help you, love? I’ll never make a good wife, let alone a good widow, but surely I can play one as well as your little goddess, don’t you think? But you’ll have to let me go to

sleep earlier. Not tonight, though; not tonight. . Remember how that

first morning you asked me what had happened? Well, here’s what it was: Your sex touched my soul.”

Morava was getting to know a new Jitka. Where had that touching shyness gone that made him long to protect her unto death? Now he could only see it in her as she slept. It was as if incipient motherhood had brought out features rooted deep in her bloodline, which had survived centuries of catastrophes wreaked by mankind and nature in that wide-open land.

He often felt that despite his enthusiastic embrace of city life, he was still a part of that natural landscape, even though he had only spent his childhood there. At certain points, especially crises, he found an inner strength that was not his own. Then he would always remember the strange exhilaration he had felt at his grandfather’s and father’s deathbeds. Even today he did not dare to express it — it seemed too odd — but he believed that at the time some immortal part of their being had passed over to him.

The family smithy, as renovations revealed, had burned down at least twice during the Swedish or Turkish wars. Even the anvil was no more than fifty years old. No one knew where the previous ones had gone, along with the bones of all the local blacksmiths, since only the last three Moravas rested in the town cemetery. Once, while digging, they found a horseshoe, which might have hung over the entrance at some point. It appeared to bear the date 1621 (a tragic year for the Bohemian and Moravian nations), thus proving the existence of at least thirteen generations of blacksmiths on that spot.

The closely written leaves of Jitka’s family Bible suggested that they had lived a few steeples away for at least as long. In her family, the women held sway, since according to records the imperial and royal press-gangs had taken most of their men and never returned them. What Morava now saw in Jitka seemed to be the reincarnation of her female ancestors. It was as if his future wife had in the course of several weeks taken on the combined strength of all of them.

When she overheard the men’s conversation in Beran’s office and stepped in to offer herself as human bait, Morava had counted on the superintendent’s refusal. Beran did try to dissuade her, but stopped short of forbidding her once he had heard her out.

“Gentlemen,” she addressed them in German, and Morava could not shake the feeling that she was playing for Buback’s support, “you knew the risks, and yet you decided to find a woman who would come forward in the interest of the cause. I’d hate to think you’d be less concerned for another woman than you would for me. Therefore I have to assume you’ll give your consent.”

You’re expecting a child, he thought, but did not dare say it aloud. Buback’s presence still discomforted him, even after his unexpectedly warm congratulations. As if in response, Jitka said, “It’s not as if I want to make a career of this; once you find someone else, I’ll stop, or we can alternate. You can count on me tomorrow, though, so start making preparations.”

Beran shrugged, Buback was silent, and Morava had to give in. He set to work even more intently on the details of his plan. It had to run at least twice daily, and at any time and place the unknown butcher might take the bait. That night he tested the most dangerous scene in the kitchen with Jitka, confirming for himself what she had known from the start: This trap could not fail.

As soon as his people gathered at the cemetery the next day, he ran a test. Jitka stood over the false burial site in the light April rain, dressed in a rubber raincoat; they were still hunting for black clothes and a mackintosh for her. The technicians and the sexton had placed the grave on one of the side paths, just like the ones where the murderer had snared his victims. The baby of the group, Jetel, played the killer; he followed her at a distance without even noticing that ebesta kept him constantly in view from a safe remove. The slow walk home took Jitka nearly fifteen minutes. Once there, she opened the door with two pronounced turns of the key, emphasizing her solitude to the stalker.

When Jetel rang, he heard her answer that the door was open. Entering the unfamiliar hallway, he looked around. To his left he saw stairs leading up, and to the right three doors, the farthest a crack open.

“Where are you?” he now called out, as most people would have done in that situation.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Jitka responded. “Come on back!”

He took about a dozen steps and from the foot of the staircase glanced into the kitchen. Jitka stood at a large dining table, her back to him; she was pouring milk at the stove.

“One moment,” she said. “It’s almost ready for you, Mr. Roubal.”

Jetel drew his ruler, which they had armed him with instead of a knife, looked through the door again, and quickly crossed the threshold. Instantly he found himself in a lock from behind that immobilized him.

“Good work, Jitka; good work, gentlemen,” Beran said a moment later, satisfied.

Pinning Jetel were Morava and Matlák, the former freestyle wrestling champion of the St. Matthew’s Day carnival. Buback followed a step behind. The four of them had been packed into the dark alcove under the steps, and Jetel had not even noticed them. Less than a minute later, ebesta, their last piece of insurance, barged in.

They thanked the somewhat shaken young man and evaluated the trial run. It had been a success. Even Morava was relieved to see that everything ran like clockwork and his dear decoy was in practically no danger. Still, he tried once more to dissuade her from her decision. As the others discussed the incident, he reminded her in lowered tones, “You’re not feeling well, after all…”

As if she had expected this objection, she answered just as quietly, “Both our mothers were right; I felt fine this morning when I got up. Maybe I needed this mission to stop me from being so preoccupied with myself. Believe me, it’ll be good for the little one as well.”

As had happened several times recently, the German then surprised them with an offer.

“The Reich’s criminal police will not be mere observers in this task. Miss Modrá will share the role, on my authority, with Marleen Baumann, a member of the traveling German Theater of Prague who is willing to take part every second or third day.”

He then disappeared in his official car to return in half an hour with a creature everyone at first took for a young girl. However, a second close look told them otherwise. Marleen Baumann’s type always baffled Morava — he was still a country boy when it came to the fair sex — but he was grateful to her for bearing part of Jitka’s cross, and she flew through the test just as successfully. The few necessary Czech phrases she committed swiftly to memory, pronouncing them with an accent, but comprehensibly.

When Buback took her back, the remaining Czechs convened around the table for a last consultation.

“Children,’ the superintendant began, once he had asked for a cup of the nettle tea Jitka had laid in last summer, “there are five — including the Brno woman possibly six — dead women and one young man, who was an accidental bystander. Our experience from the prewar years gives us hope that the compulsions driving this monster will work the same way next time. But since he has left so few traces behind so far, you must be on your guard constantly. We are dealing with an exceptional criminal intelligence. Never underestimate him, not even for a moment, or you will cause a tragedy, and this time, we will be the victims. The ladies helping us aren’t the only ones in danger; anyone the murderer thinks is in his way is at risk. He will kill him without hesitation, just as he killed that boy.”

For now, they left Jitka at home and found a rental shop which could round out her widow’s wardrobe. Morava returned with Beran to Number Four and quickly ran through all the investigations. Every suspect had a reliable alibi for most of the dates in question. He pulled some newly arrived reports for further investigation and came across a second note from the Kláterec priest requesting that they contact him about a stolen and returned (so what’s the problem then?) picture of a saint with the exceedingly odd name of Reparata.

He had the novice Jetel walk the letter down to the appropriate department, and on a whim stopped in at Buback’s office. When the German unlocked the door for him — these days he always kept it locked — Morava requested a short consultation and was amicably let in.

He wanted to thank Herr Oberkriminalrat for the moral and material support he had given the whole group — and especially him — in the last few days. Would it be possible to expand their cooperation? Morava saw, for example, that there was no interpreter present; had they failed to honor the agreement? Should he go over today’s reports personally with Mr. Buback?

No, Buback countered quickly, the translator was perfectly adequate. As Morava could see — the German pointed to the carefully stacked sheaf on the desk — he had finished with this lot and unfortunately had come to the same conclusion: The murderer had managed to steer clear of their net. It seemed, he mused (and Morava silently agreed with him), that it was precisely his inconspicuousness that made the widow killer a continuing danger: He was a dime-a-dozen type trying to make himself stand out. A baited trap did seem the most effective of ineffective methods.

Morava asked him to convey his thanks to Mrs. Baumann. Given the reaction of the female workers in the police department, he thought it was brave of her to volunteer. Of course, his gratitude had a purely personal motive as well, he admitted, since she was sharing the risk with his fiancée.

“Believe me, I know what you mean,” Buback said, closing the conversation. “After all, Mrs. Baumann is my close friend.”

“I just don’t know what to think about him anymore,” Morava reported to Jitka that evening, shaking his head. “I do believe Beran that Buback has other reasons for being in our department; a month ago I even feared him at times, but I don’t think his sincerity is entirely false. Any thoughts?”

“You said it yourself.”

“What?”

“A month ago he was alone; now he isn’t.”

“The phrase ’close friend’ doesn’t have to mean…”

“I saw the way she looked at him this morning.”

“How was that?”

“Like this.”

Jitka’s adoring gaze warmed him, but only briefly.

“Meanwhile he looked here and there, just the way you do when other people are around.”

“Wait a minute, what are you trying—”

“Come on, Jan! Men are naturally ashamed to show their feelings in public. In any case, this Marleen has decided he’s hers. And in his loneliness, he’s taken a step in her direction, whether he knows it or not.”

All the while she gazed at him with her big brown eyes until he could no longer stand it and went around the kitchen table to kiss her. Then he asked her a favor: “For God’s sake, take off those widow’s garments. I’ll be crazy with fear every time anyway. If it works out, I’ll come guard you personally along with Matlák. But be awfully careful, my darling!”

“Don’t worry. You’ll protect me, and God will protect both of us; what could possibly happen?”

Kroloff’s behavior was merely the most graphic example of Buback’s fall from grace in the department. The skeletal figure had clearly noticed that at a certain point — after his confrontation with Buback, in fact — the colonel stopped calling personally and began sending all his messages through Kroloff.

Now Kroloff relayed another one: Buback was to report immediately to the head of the SS special units. The tone in his voice betrayed his glee at his superior’s evident humiliation. The detective could see that Kroloff had never truly reconciled himself to the way he had been shunted aside since Buback’s arrival; Buback sensed a rancor in him that at the first opportunity would erupt into revenge.

He forced himself to react casually, accepting the order and Kroloff’s behavior with apparent indifference. The mental discipline he had learned as an interrogator came as naturally to him as the multiplication tables. He pulled on his overcoat and directed Kroloff with a short glance to open the door for him as always. Then he turned around.

“Kroloff?”

“Yes…?”

“Tell the colonel I said thanks for the fish.”

He watched the skeleton’s jaw drop, and hid his grin. Would Kroloff convey the message? And what about Meckerle? Would he swallow it, or explode? Grete insisted that despite all his bad qualities, the giant did feel a need to preserve his masculine honor. However, these were purely personal problems of the chief’s own making; there was nothing honorable about disgracing Buback publicly. It was high time the colonel realized who he was dealing with. Buback was, after all, a specialist; technically, he answered not to Prague but to Berlin.

His defiance grew stronger when the SS officer led him into the room on the second floor of the former Czech law faculty. Judging by the spaciousness and mahogany paneling, it had been the office of at least a university rector. Instead of standing up or motioning him to sit down, the pockmarked SS major snapped out his right hand in a greeting.

“Heil Hitler! Your orders were to determine and report locations from which the Prague police might direct a rebellion against the great German Reich. Is this correct?”

Buback knew the type. He would have to put a stop to this arrogance straightaway or the man would wipe the floor with him. After all, Buback’s borrowed rank made them equals. He put his hand on the nearest chair.

“May I?” he asked as he pulled it up to the table. Without waiting for a response, he sat down face-to-face with the major.

The scarred face twitched, but that was all.

“You are correct,” Buback affirmed, “and my report, as I see, is in front of you.”

The SS man knew he had met his master; he changed his tone.

“We have worked out a plan of action that will let us occupy communications hubs and potential foci of resistance within two hours of an alert. You are to give me crucial information on when we should put it into effect. Tomorrow, today, yesterday even?”

Now he whinnied, displaying a mouth tiled with gold.

“I warned the colonel,” Buback said, “that shutting down the city radio station prematurely will prevent us from warning the German population of air raids and passing on other information important for their survival.”

“We don’t intend to destroy the machinery,” his opponent objected, “just get the Czech workers out. Our men can broadcast in German.”

“And do you have twenty free radio technicians?”

“If we occupy the central office, one person can do it, right? Or two, to allow for bathroom breaks.”

“The Czechs can broadcast from any of the nineteen local stations.”

“We’ll lock and guard all of them.”

“But we should be using them to direct emergency operations; otherwise they’ll be totally crippled.”

“Fine, we’ll take forty technicians from some regiment or other.”

“And forty translators, so they can figure out what’s going on?”

The SS man grappled with this.

“You’re saying we should let them stab us in the back?”

“An uprising doesn’t come out of nowhere, Major — you know, by the way, that we have the same rank! — an uprising spreads, and it will take at least a couple of hours before things get out of hand. This country is thoroughly occupied and we have a powerful presence in Prague, both in the police and with the army. We couldn’t possibly miss the first signals. If you’re really capable of striking within two hours, we should wait. Otherwise we might bring an avalanche down on ourselves for no good reason. Will you take responsibility for this decision?”

Scarface was on the defensive again.

“Will you take responsibility for seeing we’re informed in time?”

“Yes.”

Buback felt confident of this; yesterday he could feel how much closer Grete’s offer had brought him to the Czech policemen. And he knew them well enough to spot any suspicious behavior.

The commander of the special units asked him a couple of routine questions about the Prague police’s weaponry. Assured it was a risible quantity of closely controlled pistols and rifles that were not worth the price of a politically damaging raid, he released Buback, even shaking his hand.

Buback then skipped lunch and headed straight back to Bartolomjská Street to find out for himself — and for Grete — how the first hunt had gone. Morava excitedly told him how he had hidden under the staircase for the first time. He described the tension that seized him when he heard the keys and steps, caught sight of Jitka’s black boots over the kitchen threshold and then the endless seconds where the pounding of his heart drowned everything else out. How much worse it must be for her, the young detective sighed.

To his horror, he recounted, the door handle clicked a second time. He and Matlák instinctually seized each others’ hands in a painful grip, each hoping to prevent the other from giving the game away prematurely. The shuffling footsteps approached, and he fought the temptation to step straight out, so powerful was his fear of missing his chance.

“Hello,” the visitor then called out, “it’s me, ebesta. Not a single man at the graveyard or on the way here.”

Jitka decided to set out right away for a second round and then again that afternoon.

“She’s right,” Grete said that evening. “In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m going at least twice tomorrow; we don’t leave for the Beneschau SS garrison until four.”

Before heading home to find her, Buback had had the newly arrived reports translated for him. Of course, he could read them far faster than the day’s interpreter could stammer through them, but he had a game to play and found that in any case he paid closer attention that way. The repeated message from the Kláterec priest caught his eye as well. Had it been dealt with, he asked; yes, he heard, it had been passed back to their colleagues in Burglary and Robbery.

Sitting in the small wicker armchair by the bathtub, he told Grete about his day’s experiences. He realized with a shock that he was betraying official and military secrets with conveyer-belt speed to a woman he had known less than a month. Her daily ritual mesmerized him: Each evening, she rinsed off her exhaustion by holding the showerhead motionless with both hands just over her head, and the water ran down her body like a fountain pouring over a statue. He never ceased to wonder at the unbelievable femininity of her slender body, and later at the inexhaustible energy she could unleash as they made love.

She washed him clean of the stains the day left behind; she freed him from the horrible war and his work without enslaving him to new needs, the way he had feared at first. How can I fall for her so completely, and still feel so free? He did not understand, but soon he stopped thinking, period, and enthusiastically lost himself in her over and over, until it was the only thing that gave his life meaning.

Hunger regularly hit her after midnight, and he could not open the cans of military rations fast enough; mornings he would make her cocoa at the signal of her fluttering eyelids or, when he could not wait for her, he left it in a thermos. Gradually he took on other functions in her life, things he had never done when married: he kept her diary, picked up their grocery rations, and took care of the laundry. His reward was the childish pleasure of her whimpers as she slowly roused herself in the mornings.

“You’re the best, Buback, because you never wake me or pressure me…”

She made up for their lovemaking hours with a sleep that was strenuous in its intensity, while he thanked his age and military training for keeping him alert during the day. Today, however, after her midnight snack, she did not take him into her arms again.

“Let’s be good tonight,” she decided. “Tomorrow I want to be a widow that shark will sense from halfway across Prague!”

When a Werkschutzer ordered him to report immediately to the building director, he was rattled. Was it a TRAP? Would THEY be waiting for him? The fat man with a pistol under his paunch, however, showed no inclination to accompany him upstairs, and as he went up the service staircase his pulse surprisingly slowed. He was all the more devastated when Marek — as always, without even a greeting or an introduction — thrust a new task at him.

“The Luftschutz has decided to enlarge our shelter, in case there are more air raids on Plze. See that it’s taken care of.”

“Who’s it for? We’re not even open; there’s room for all the staff as is.”

The theater had been closed for two years now. The actors were weaving bast wrappings for grenades, the stagehands had been conscripted in the Totaleinsatz mobilization and only a half dozen rejects and cripples were left to ensure that the building did not leak, the pipes did not burst, and the sets and costumes were not eaten by moths before better times came. He was one of those who stayed, partly thanks to his old head wound, but also because he was skilled and extraordinarily intelligent for an ordinary laborer.

“They say there may be fighting in Plze, so we need a public shelter for three hundred people. Get a team together and clear it out.”

He could only think of one thing.

WHERE WILL I PUT MY SOULS?

“Can we leave at least a few lumps of ice down there? Once it gets warmer the beer’11 be swill.”

For a year now the theater canteen had been open to the public, partially offsetting the lack of ticket receipts. Pensioners especially were lured by the chance of getting some horsemeat stew alongside their still passable pilsner without needing to dig into their meager ration coupons. Marek dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand.

“I’ve tried that already, of course. They just said that starting Monday they’ll take ten thousand for each day we delay. And what’s more, they could imprison me for sabotage. So beer or no beer, take it out to the canal-side courtyard.”

Four days left until Monday. And he had no time tomorrow. TOMORROW MAKES A WEEK! An idea came to him in his hour of need.

“Easy as one, two, three! Before then I’ll try to visit a couple of pubs, see if someone’ll buy it from us. If not, we’ll do the job Sunday.”

By then THERE’lL BE A SIXTH ONE! And he’d have time to think where to put them. He willed Marek to nod.

“Fine, try it. But on Monday the cellar’d better be empty and clean as a whistle — it’s up to you, you hear?”

Without even a dismissal his boss bent back over his files.

Cheapskate, he thought on his way out. If only you knew! Still, he was grateful the man had unknowingly given him the opportunity to disappear the whole next day. He’d forget about buyers for the ice, take two slabs back to his own cellar, and secure his treasures for at least another two months.

He realized that the sixth one was still beating in some sinner’s breast, and broke out in an excited sweat at the thought:

THIS TIME TOMORROW IT WILL BE MINE!

What should he go as? He remembered the Werkschutzer.

But wasn’t it time to change cemeteries? Through the veil of years he saw HER showing him the graves of their national heroes. Someday you’ll lie here, my little Tony, respected by our whole nation…. Well, maybe ONE MORE TIME!

Slowly but surely Morava calmed down. Jitka had three shifts behind her already, as they’d had to note in their record book, during which she made the trip from Vyehrad to Kaví Hory seven times. Buback’s girlfriend had alternated with her; she’d played the bait (as she called it) four times all told.

Neither the women nor their guards had noticed even the slightest sign of interest. The men appearing at the cemetery were for the most part older widowers; many they recognized after a couple of days as regular visitors of their wives’ graves.

One day, a hale and hearty forty-year-old newcomer caused a commotion. He was so evidently interested in Jitka that all three watchers simultaneously latched onto him as he traipsed behind the girl at a dangerously short remove. ebesta, who was in charge in an emergency, finally decided there was no danger of attack just yet if the perpetrator was after his usual goal.

The man, who politely addressed Jitka after a short while, turned out to be a stonemason from Kolín near Prague who was looking for customers. He had noticed, he explained, that her grave lacked a fitting stone; he had a wide assortment at home and would give her a good price. He showed no interest in accompanying her back, but just to be sure they brought him in and, with Morava’s aid, presented the horrified man to the caretaker on the embankment. The old man was surprisingly sure that he had never seen the stonemason, and later the suspect produced airtight alibis for all the dates in question.

Five unsuccessful days brought nonetheless one encouraging result: The five policemen — three on the street and two in the house — calmed down and learned to work together.

“If he makes a move, we’ve got him,” Morava announced cautiously to Beran, who had requested a report each time “the hook was cast,” as he said.

“Just so you don’t get too comfortable,” he said to Morava, explaining his unwearying interest in the operation. “I have to keep reminding you that he’ll appear right when your attention wanders. And Morava: I assume you’re following the rules just as strictly when the German woman’s on shift.”

He saw the red seep into the adjunct’s face, and immediately soothed him.

“Forgive me; that was out of place. At least you see that even old age is no guarantee against stupidity. I was thinking about her disadvantage, not knowing Czech.”

Of course, Morava took the warning seriously enough to visit Buback again about Marleen Baumann.

“Thank you for your consideration,” the German said. “Grete— that’s her real name, by the way — is aware of the problem. In an emergency she’ll rely on voice intonation to figure out what’s happening. She thinks she’s quick enough to manage it.”

“Please tell her that I admire her. We’d like — my fiancee and I — to invite her — and you too, of course — to dinner sometime….”

What am I saying, he wondered belatedly.

Buback could not conceal his surprise.

“Aren’t Germans risky guests for you these days?”

“Well yes, that’s true…,” Buback had said exactly what Morava was thinking, but the Czech’s resolve did not fail him. “Except since they’re both putting their lives on the line, they should get to know each other a bit. And we’re part of it as well….”

“I’ll pass it on,” Buback said after a short pause. “In any case, thank you again. By the way, she’s quite fond of your fiancee… as am I…”

Then his eyes slid quickly to his watch.

“Will you excuse me? I still have some work to do. Grete is on duty at the cemetery tomorrow and Sunday; would some time after that suit you?”

“I’ll pass it on,” Morava repeated, for a change.

They parted with a hearty handshake. What had caused this shift, he wondered on his way back to the office. The two women, he realized; mine and his. Strange, very strange. Can ordinary human sympathy really scale these moats and barriers?

With this thought fresh in his mind he went to see Jitka. Beran was at another senseless meeting with Rajner and had sent her home, saying she had done her share. Jitka, however, refused to see her “two spring strolls” as a full day’s work.

“I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors, anyway,” she explained to the superintendent. “You’d make such a mess of the paperwork that I’d have to come in Sundays to sort things out.”

When she heard Morava’s embarrassed confession how in her name he invited Buback and Grete to her house, she was quick to respond.

“They’re the enemy, no doubt about that. Their nation has caused mankind so much suffering that they have to accept part of the blame. But in a couple of months they’ll be defeated, and there’ll still be fifty million of them. And what then? My papa once tried to imagine how he’d behave if he met a German on the street after the war. ’Out of my way, German,’ he wanted to say; ’sidewalks are for human beings.’ I don’t believe he’s changed, even after what just happened to him. Now, I don’t know about Buback — by the way, he’s started to behave quite decently — but his Grete doesn’t seem to have anything in common with the Nazis other than their German ancestry.”

“Except people“—he could not help saying it—“might say we’re collaborators.”

“Yes.” She nodded seriously. “And after all, it’s possible they both have other motives, like he said.” She pointed toward Beran’s office. “But what if they’re just people who have finally come to their senses? What if they’re seriously trying to atone for their sins? Should we reject them just because we’re afraid of being slandered or mistakenly fingered? We’ll just watch what we say.”

From the hallway Superintendent Hlavatý stepped in. A couple of years earlier he had been one of Morava’s first instructors. His department was theft, and he was the bane of Prague’s pickpockets.

“Hello, Jitka; hello, Morava,” he addressed them both before turning to the detective. “Why do you keep shoving that stolen saint at me? The picture was returned a long time ago and criminal charges retracted.”

“Sorry about that,” Morava said guiltily. “I didn’t know what to do with it, and the priest had written twice already….”

“He didn’t get your announcement, by any chance? I mean the description of that deviant?”

“We did send it to priests.” Jitka now turned to Morava as well.

He still could not see the point.

“But what does it have in common with—”

“I had no idea“—Hlavatý winked at him, as if preparing him for an excellent joke—“so I had a word with my experts. The Romans supposedly disembowled Saint Reparata alive, and cut off her head and breasts. Her heart, however, escaped in the shape of a white dove.”

“Oh my God…,” Morava breathed. “Oh my God!”

Before leaving for home with Jitka, he first called the emergency number Buback had given him. He left a message for the German that a fresh trail had been found, and Assistant Detective Morava would be waiting the next morning to hear when and where to pick him up.

In the house at Kaví Hory he heated pots of water for Jitka’s bath. When he had poured the fifth and last one into the battered enamel tub, he retired to the kitchen while Jitka undressed and plunged in; with the exception of the moment when she had asked to bear his child, she was still too shy to be naked around him.

Afterward he brought in the kitchen stool and sat down, half turned away from her. They decided to put off the wedding, gossip or no gossip, until this hunt — and maybe even the war itself — was over, and then they dreamed together in a confidential half-whisper of the things that awaited them in ten, twenty, and many more years. For a short while neither the monstrous murderer nor the fiery steam-roller of war that had separated them from their loved ones (may the Lord protect them) could threaten them.

They prayed once more together, aloud, for themselves, their family, and their child who was there with them. In their attic bed their conversation gradually slackened and grew quieter, until, overcome by fatigue and hopes, they fell asleep in each others’ arms almost simultaneously, he with his chin in her hair, she as if nursing, her mouth at his breast.

Ahillock with a church, rectory, and cemetery hid the market town of Kláterec from their view, bulging out of the north Bohemian plain as if it had been artistically inserted there to soften the dramatic backdrop of extinct volcano cones. The parish priest and his cook, an older woman, seemed to step right from the pages of a color calendar, from their rounded bellies to their rosy cheeks. He was close to sixty and spoke passable German; Morava did not have to translate.

The two policemen wanted to see the picture first. The priest unlocked the church with a large key, drawing it forth from his cassock, where it hung around his neck. God’s tabernacle in Kláterec was not especially beautiful or luxurious and spoke of a land neither wealthy nor pious. The only adornments on the walls were the Stations of the Cross, garishly cheap and vulgar in execution. Seeing their searching glances, the priest explained that they would find Saint Reparata in the sacristy.

“It’s the only valuable item we have, but it hung there even before it was temporarily lost. Right after the death of the baron who bequeathed it to us, some of the parents requested we hang it where their children wouldn’t see it.”

They understood as soon as they saw the picture. The baroque painter had rendered in oil with shocking accuracy what Superintendent Beran had scrupled to show the public at large. In front of them was essentially the same altar of death the widow killer left at the scene of the crime, albeit with a classical backdrop. The tortured saint had both breasts cut off and her intestines were being wound on a windlass. The artist had added to this a snow-white dove flying from the bloody wound below the severed head.

Morava’s eyes met Buback’s in mute awe. The explanation was here in front of them. They would need the priest, however, to interpret it for them.

“Father,” Morava began, once the vicar had poured them some quite decent coffee back at the rectory and it was clear the German was letting him take the initiative, “I apologize for not understanding your message right away. I’m not a Catholic, and the point of it escaped me. It’s highly probable that the man who has so far tortured six women to death was inspired by this work. You wrote us that it was lost and then returned; please tell us more about this.”

The old man had seemed quite eager when he first saw them, but now he seemed equally hesitant. His hands were folded; the balls of his fingers pressed against his knuckles until his nails and skin turned white.

“The theft occurred before the war… if you can call it a theft. When the man in question returned the picture personally, he asked me to believe he’d only borrowed it.”

“Which man in question?” Morava asked almost casually.

The priest did not fall for the snare.

“If you’d permit me, I’d like to describe the whole episode for you first….”

Morava nodded, even though it required superhuman self-restraint to put off the moment when they would learn the man’s name.

“I knew him because—” The priest once again halted and looked for the right words. “Well, let’s just say I knew him well. He was a brave and pious man who had one single but fundamental problem: He could never escape the clutches of his domineering mother. His father — her partner — left her before he was born. What hurt her most of all was that he took up with a much older widow.”

Yes! Morava was already sure: It’s our man! He glanced fleetingly at the German, but Buback still wore the impersonal mask of disinterested officialdom.

“I’m not an expert on women’s minds“—the priest opened his childishly chubby hands apologetically—“but from experience I know that women like that make their child — especially if it’s a man — the single focus of their lives, their so-called alpha and omega. He’s supposed to restore her trampled honor, become a sort of avenging knight for her.”

Very accurate, Morava thought admiringly; it fits like a glove. If only he’d tell us already who it is!

“The son’s attempt to break free began successfully. He enlisted in the new Czechoslovak Army; he had a promising career ahead of him. However, he suffered a severe concussion on the Hungarian border after a grenade explosion. He was discharged and remained dependent on his mother until almost forty. Then, for the first time, he met a girl when he was out of town on his own. It was a passing acquaintance on a train; no normal man would have attached any significance to it, but he was so inexperienced that he did exactly that. She too was a recent widow, still in black, and unfortunately she gave him her address.”

“Was she from Brno?” Morava blurted out.

“Yes,” the cleric said, stunned. “How did you know?”

“Please continue.”

“He finally confessed his love-at-first-sight to his mother, who was enraged at the thought of losing him to a widow. She tried to make him see the vileness of it — creatures still in mourning who stole honest women’s husbands and sons. She reminded him about his father, whose lover abandoned him soon after, driving him to suicide. She wished the fate of Reparata on those widows. For the first time, though, he found the courage to stand up to her and leave. Unfortunately it was for a love he had dreamed up out of thin air.”

“She wasn’t alone,” Morava guessed.

“Unfortunately, on that evening she was. And when a man she didn’t even recognize asked for her hand at the front door, she mocked him….”

The priest flushed and fell silent. He seemed to be fighting himself as to whether or not to continue. This time Buback spoke.

“Did he confess to you that he’d killed her as well?”

“Yes…,” the priest whispered in a rasp, “he did… didn’t he….”

“And when did he—”

“Two years later. Our country was already occupied—” He halted and glanced fearfully at Buback. “I mean taken under the Reich’s protection. ..”

The German smiled understandingly.

“He appeared out of the blue as a voice in the confessional. ’Father,’ I heard, without even recognizing him, ’ leaned your picture against the door to the sacristy.’ Then he told me this story in detail….” Sweat broke out on the cleric’s forehead. “An awful story — that he had punished her, for his mother’s sake as well, just as the executioners punished that poor martyr…. I didn’t know what to say, much less what to do….”

It was as if he were lost in his memories; both detectives ceased to exist for him. They all sat motionless for several long seconds before Buback sensibly asked, “And finally you…?”

“The confessional was stifling; I ran out and over to him….”

“To whom?” Morava tried.

The narrator was present in space, but not in time.

“I locked the church and dragged him and the package into the sacristy. He looked the same as always: vigorous, keen. His problem wasn’t at all obvious, except for a certain shyness toward women; I was probably the only one who knew about it, from confession….”

He halted, as if he’d said something inappropriate, and was once again back with them.

“He said he didn’t tell his mother, of course, but when she was hit by a car and died, she must have found out up there, because she praised him and urged him to continue his work of purification. And he told me all of this as if it were a perfectly everyday occurrence. Yes, I thought just what you’re thinking now: the grenade wound. I begged him to see a doctor. He shouted and got so angry that it frightened me. As a priest, he said, I should believe in life after death, and anyway, he’d come to confess, not to turn himself in; why didn’t I just send him to the police? All I could do was refuse him absolution until he could tell me that he deeply regretted his deed and would never again spill blood. He kissed my hand silently and went…. I never heard of him again, nor of any horrors like the ones he told me about. In time I convinced myself that this picture of ours had conjured up a monstrous fantasy in him, and therefore he returned it to us… until the local policeman brought me the news….”

“Father,” Morava addressed him once he realized the man had finally finished, “we’re deeply indebted to you for this information, because — and I’m convinced of it — it frees us from the darkness. We’ve been looking for a needle in a haystack, and now we know where it is. Or we will know, once you tell us his identity. He knew the picture. Does he come from around here?”

The old man’s hands shook.

“That’s the thing… that’s my problem. I’ve lived with it ever since. My church is consecrated to Saint Jan Nepomuk, who was tortured rather than betray the secrets of the holy confessional….”

“Excuse me, sir.” Morava could no longer contain his outrage. “This is a fanatical killer you’re talking about — a butcher of defenseless women. If you’d come forward to the police earlier, you could have saved six lives.”

“I know,” he wheezed like an asthmatic. “I know, gentlemen, and this is my mortal sin, which I will answer for one day. But surely you can understand I don’t want to compound it—”

Before Morava could boil over, the German interceded in a calm voice.

“In cases such as these, won’t the church grant some sort of dispensation?”

“I’d have to request it…,” the priest responded.

“Why didn’t you do it long ago?”

The cleric was struggling to undo his collar, but his fingers would not obey him.

“I guess… out of shame that a holy picture could lead someone to such a monstrous act…. Could you please open the window?”

Morava stood up to grant his request, but remained merciless.

“So why are you telling us now?”

“Those horrible murders…. How could I live with it…?”

“And how will you live with what he does next? If we don’t catch him in time, he’ll do it again soon. The conditions are perfect for it.” Yes… yes….

He’s having a stroke, Morava realized, his heart in his throat, but he did not feel even an ounce of compassion, only a powerless rage that that human animal would wreak further havoc, unpunished and unrecognized. The crisp April air streamed into the room, but the priest’s face had turned the color of ashes.

“Your Reverence,” Buback spoke almost soothingly, playing the time-honored role of “good cop,” the carrot to Morava’s stick, “do you think you could ask for that dispensation today from your diocese? I’m sure they’d be glad—”

At that the priest of Kláterec truly fainted. Neither of the policemen managed to catch him as he fell. They summoned the housekeeper, who calmly sat down, crossing her bowling-pin legs by his head and placing it on her lap. Gently she slapped his cheeks.

“Venda! My little Venouek! Don’t worry about it, you had no choice!”

A scene from a mediocre anticlerical farce, Buback thought to himself, but quickly realized his error. The housekeeper turned out to be the priest’s sister, who had come to work here after her husband died. She told Buback that her sorely tried brother had asked her whether he should go to the police or not, but had not even told her that the murderer and the thief were one and the same.

They helped move the priest, who soon came around, into the bedroom, and then had to bow to her insistence that they leave him in peace today. He had high blood pressure, she insisted, and further disturbance could strain his heart; they could probe more later. Of course, she was right, and so they agreed with her over the remains of their now cold coffee that they would come again tomorrow, either to take him to the diocese or bring someone from there to him.

On the way back they were mostly silent; both knew that it was pointless to talk until the next day. The younger man, sitting beside Buback in the back seat, was obviously suffering from a deep depression. Buback could certainly sympathize: Grete was today’s bait. Her spontaneous offer and his efforts to insure the trap was safe had made him assume she found it an exciting role, and nothing more. Only early this morning had she confessed that each time she walked through the cemetery gates she could feel her backside clench — she showed him her closed fist — this tight!

“Come on, why?” He tried to reassure her. “You know how thoroughly we’ve tested the scenario.”

“Too thoroughly, if anything.” She grimaced. “What if this show doesn’t run the way you’ve written it?”

“He’s the one who wrote it — five times already,” he objected. “They all opened the door themselves. You won’t even come into contact with him.”

“You don’t think so? I hope you’re right.”

“Then there are still two men inside with pistols.”

Grete freed herself from his embrace and went to light up. Sitting in her favorite position — knees against her chest — she exhaled the smoke and laughed awkwardly.

“Today I imagined that for some reason they weren’t there.”

“You have a sick imagination,” he rebuked her, and was instantly afraid he had insulted her.

“Forgive me. It was silly and mean of me to take it for granted. It never occurred to me what must be going through your head. I’m an idiot.”

“No! You’re wonderful both as a lover and a person. You really have only one flaw.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, love, I told you before: think it over.”

Now Buback turned to his companion. Their driver, Litera, knew barely enough German to say Gootin tock or Owf weeder zane, so he did not worry about him understanding.

“Mr. Morava,” he said, addressing him as a civilian, “does your fiancee ever feel frightened as she plays the widow?”

Surprise reflected from his neighbor’s face.

“I was just thinking about that.”

“So she does, then.”

“I don’t know. She says not, but maybe she just wants to reassure me. Does Mrs. Baumann?”

“Today she told me she’s afraid the safeguards will fail.”

“How could they?” Morava was uneasy again.

“I’m with you; I don’t think they can. Anyway, she let it pass.”

Buback remembered how, and was filled with joy at the thought that tonight he would hold her in his arms again.

“Still, I’ve got three people to worry for,” the Czech said. “We’re expecting a child, you see. ..”

Buback was amazed. How could they do this? An apocalypse was coming, and these two were having a baby right in the middle of it. With Jitka promenading herself every other day as bait for a murderer? He gazed into the young, tense face and was surprised how deeply touched he was by another man’s problems.

“When?” he asked, so he would not just be staring.

“By all the signs, just before Christmas.”

Sometime between today and Christmas — probably sooner rather than later — the battle of battles would take place. Did the boy have any idea? And what did he expect from it personally? Why not ask him? He could answer as he liked.

“Do you think it’ll be born in peacetime?”

The Czech stared right back at him.

“Yes.”

“Any feeling how the war will end?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“Yes,” his neighbor repeated for the third time. “I think the Reich will collapse fairly soon.”

“And aren’t you afraid it might be disastrous for your people? They say dying horses kick the hardest.”

In return he got an unexpected counterquestion.

“Don’t you want to live?”

“Of course I do,” he said without thinking, and again remembered Grete at night.

“Well, I think it threatens Germans more than Czechs. You’re the only German I know to any degree, but you can’t be the only one who feels that way. I’m counting on people like you to prevent it.”

“Aha… but how?”

“By capitulating in time, how else?”

Morava expressed this without the slightest embarrassment or hesitation. Buback was at a loss for words.

“Do you really trust me that much?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Sometimes a person just has to decide. And I’ve decided to believe you.”

“But why?”

The Czech was ready with an answer; he seemed firmly convinced of what he was saying.

“My fiancée — actually, she’s already really my wife, it’s just we haven’t gotten married yet on account of the war — she says that a man’s partner is a reflection that doesn’t lie. Both she and I are very fond of Mrs. Baumann.”

“Aha….”

He could not think of anything better, but what was there to say anyway? His Germany was locked in a life-or-death battle, and what was the Czech’s sympathy worth, anyway, if he didn’t even bother to hide his allegiance to the enemy?

“His” Germany! Yes, unfortunately so.

In his mind’s eye he saw Hilde in the Franconian vineyards and once again heard her question: Wasn’t it the Führer who had lost touch with his people rather than the other way around? At the time — not all that long ago — Buback had babbled confidently about the iron will of all Germans. Today remorse stung him as he realized that hers could not have been the only voice in the wilderness. After all, it anticipated his own doubts as well. And Grete? Was it just the natural cynicism of a generation come of age in wartime that made her avoid any mention of it? Was her obsession with passion and love a woman’s only way of resisting this type of Germanness?

Buback had broken off the conversation after leading it down a figurative blind alley. Now the car approached an actual one. A large sign directed drivers to turn off the main road for a detour. They had used it this morning on the way from Prague, arcing around the forbidden zone where, as the signs cautioned, guards would shoot without warning.

“Tell him to go straight,” Buback ordered on a sudden impulse.

Morava immediately translated it, but Litera stopped the car.

“Is he crazy?” the driver asked in Czech.

The assistant detective translated it as a polite question: Could they really do so?

“Tell him to go,” Buback repeated. “I’ll deal with it; it’ll save us half an hour.”

He assumed both Czechs had some idea what hid behind the walls of the Theresienstadt fortress and former army base. At the stone gates, a barrier and men in SS uniforms stopped them. They studied Buback’s document much more closely than the military police had done that March in Moravia, and demanded the police IDs of both Czechs as well, but finally let them pass without a word.

The road led into streets that at first glance looked almost normal. The only surprising details were the barrackslike appearance of the buildings and the throngs of people that immediately surrounded the car. Buback had been through here quickly once before, investigating a case last winter: the deputy commander of the so-called Lesser Fortress had been robbing other officers. Thanks to Buback, he disappeared into a chain gang out east. That time too Buback had only driven through the fortified city, but the images of the strange anthill were unpleasantly fixed in his memory.

During their visit no one had attempted to explain to either him or his deputy Rattinger whether this was a permanent population or not, whether this was a practice run or a test of how Jews would get along in the victorious Reich, or whether this was just a way station on a journey somewhere else. No information was forthcoming, not even a hint, and asking questions was a violation of military secrecy.

From comments heard here and there in the Gestapo building, he had nonetheless formed his own picture. The most logical one seemed to be— and his first cursory visit to Theresienstadt confirmed him in this belief— that the Jews had been resettled in this way here and there, primarily in the East, where they had always been more common. It therefore shocked him when Grete laughed rudely at his recent mention of it.

“Buback! Are you really that naive, or that cunning?”

“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked, stunned.

“Nothing at all. If you’re that cunning, I don’t need to tell you anything, and in the other case I don’t want to deprive Germany of its last lotus flower. I’ll admit, I’m an ostrich with my head in the sand.”

Nothing could persuade her to explain herself, and for the first time he had the impression that she did not completely trust him.

For God’s sake, it wasn’t as if Himmler’s executioners were really liquidating them, as he’d heard in those anonymous rumors that refused to die! Of all the things his lover had offered him since that first night, her joyous levity fascinated him most. His early bad experiences taught him to avoid disrupting Grete’s now continuous sunny weather, so he swallowed her mockery this time as well. The day before yesterday he had heard a reliable report in Bredovská Street that a Red Cross mission led by Count Bernadotte of Sweden was operating in this very ghetto. It confirmed his cautious optimism: Otherwise they’d never let in a prominent neutral power, which could report any crimes they found to the world. However, he decided not to mention it to Grete….

As opposed to his last visit, the winter coats, blankets, and rags of various origins that protected their wearers from the cold had vanished from the streets, as had the infamous yellow stars. Neither did they see a single German uniform. The Jews — for Jews they clearly were — plied their trades, bought and sold, but also kept the peace. Even an exacting Swedish eye could hardly find fault with this picture, so why did he find it even more disturbing now than last time?

The answer was obvious: Suddenly he was seeing it through the eyes of the two astounded Czechs. The crowd fell silent, doffed their hats, and pressed to the side of the road at the mere sight of three civilians in a car — only the threat of imminent death could strike this sort of dread into people’s hearts. Yes, Hilde had sensed the truth and Grete probably knew it directly from Meckerle. But simpleminded little Erwin had stayed faithful till the bitter end, the slave of a regime embodying the very opposite of the values he thought he had spent his life serving.

He was so deeply depressed that his companions sensed something was wrong. Why had he treated them to this spectacle, which he was supposed to hide from them? The human mobs suddenly ended at the exit gates. The guards let them pass without notice and the car rolled past the ramparts of the Lesser Fortress and out into the open countryside. Suddenly he knew why he had done it. He turned to Morava.

“I want you to know that I don’t agree with that.”

And when his neighbor did not respond, he added, “Take it as a confidence, in return for yours.”

They did not speak the rest of the way back to Prague. He had no idea what the two Czechs were thinking, but felt relieved anyway. At last he had done and said what he should have a long time ago.

He caught himself thinking intently about Grete again. What did she mean to him? For some reason he couldn’t see in her the one thing he’d wanted so desperately from the Czech girl: a future. But what was so strange about that? It was probably why Grete did not want to hear his story. Only the present could link a man and woman whose destinies and personalities were so different; a deeper feeling and a more serious relationship would cost them both too much. Wasn’t it significant that neither had thought to ask the other what to do if the unthinkable happened? A volcano could erupt under them any day now, and they had not even discussed where and how they’d find each other afterward.

“Where to?” the driver asked in Czech, and Morava repeated it in German.

The car was approaching downtown Prague. Buback glanced at his watch. Past two. Grete was finished with widowhood for today, and was probably catching a nap before the afternoon trip out to the troops. He’d see her later, he was sure of that: She no longer missed a day.

“I’ll go with you,” he decided. “Let’s contact the diocese right away, so we don’t waste time tomorrow.”

The surprise at Bartolomjská Street hit Buback harder than Morava. A chain of SS forces had closed off the road. Their car was immediately surrounded by heavily armed giants and they were ordered to leave the vehicle. He pulled out his papers again.

“What’s happening here?”

The corporal lowered his weapon and clicked his heels.

“Raid on the Czech police.”

“When did it start?”

“Once the workday was under way.”

Buback’s throat closed up. Grete’s nightmare!

“Come on,” he shouted at his companions. “Quickly! To Kaví Hory!”

He kept running, even when he rattled and gasped for breath and his blood threatened to burst his arteries; he swerved from street to street, always heading downward, seeing no one behind him, meeting no one, and still in the back of his mind loomed the fear that they would catch him. Idiot, I’m an idiot! The words echoed in his ears, idiot, idiot, IDIOT!

Why didn’t the whore’s walk tip him off, that strange walk, too slow for such a young woman; why didn’t the location of the house, that street ending in a steep craggy slope, make him think twice; why didn’t the unlocked door and the way she called “come in” warn him off?

Half a dozen chickens in his roaster had spoiled him, made him overconfident; without a moment’s hesitation he’d walked in, convinced this would be the easiest catch of all — and meanwhile he’d practically put his head under the blade!

When he finally looked into her face from the kitchen threshold, he realized immediately she’d been waiting for him, that she must have known, that she’d led him here TO BE TRAPPED! Then it happened again: He froze, seized up, and turned to stone in the kitchen doorway, knowing their strong hands were about to grab him.

He knew that DEATH HAD COME for him, and just like the last time, when the grenades had fallen all around him, he felt anger seeping into his fear. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED, MOTHER?

Then a miracle happened.

Fear crept into her eyes, the sort he was used to seeing.

Their plan had clearly gone wrong….

“He’s here,” she screamed, “he’s here! Where are you?”

Instantly he came to, pulled his knife from the sheath, and sprang at her.

AT LEAST I’lL GET YOU!

She did better than he had counted on. As she fled around the table, she grabbed a porcelain vase with flowers in it and hurled it at the window with such force that it broke through both the inside and outside panes.

so THEY’RE WAITING OUTSIDE!

Before he dealt with them he had to silence her. Otherwise he wouldn’t be safe for long.

Don’t let her distract you! He leaped back to the kitchen doors, cutting off her escape, and stabbed her in the back. She fell instantly as if cut down.

ONE DOWN!

His brain was still working. From the kitchen door he spied a dark alcove under the stairs and nipped into it a fraction of a second before someone ran in off the street.

A moment later he spied the back of a man bent over the woman. The man’s right hand curled round a pistol. Time for a risky move.

As he jumped he swung wide and buried the long knife up to the hilt beneath the man’s left shoulder blade.

The other twisted around and in doing so almost pried open his hand; still, he managed to get the knife out of the man’s back and stab him a second time right in the heart.

TWO DOWN! WHAT NEXT?

He had no idea how many of them were still left, but now he had a pistol too, which he easily ripped from the man’s enfeebled palm. He felt sure he was still a pretty good shot.

THANK YOU, MR. POLICEMAN!

A look at the two of them told him they’d cause him no trouble. No regrets on account of the policeman. Shame, though, that he’d have to leave THAT NASTY DOVE.

His pistol drawn, he looked carefully out the doors the kid had not closed onto the street.

NO ONE, NOWHERE!

He went out slowly, hiding the weapon under a hat that had fallen off the dead man’s head. He felt relieved when he reached the first cross-street where he could head downhill. The hat he simply tossed aside; it didn’t go with the canvas overcoat of the Werkschutz. A gust of wind blew it alongside him for a while until he changed its direction with a kick. He shoved the pistol into the front pocket of his pants, but it was uncomfortable there, so finally he moved it and the knife to his briefcase (a miracle he hadn’t left it there in the confusion). Now he was trotting along the surprisingly deserted street that linked up with the riverside road below. He was puffing like a steam engine; it was a good thing he heard the car coming.

The squeal of tires racing up around the curves wasn’t a normal sound for this corner of the city. He halted, rooted to the spot, and looked wildly around for cover. There were no passageways between the houses, the garbage cans would not hide him, and it was a good hundred yards to the sparse copse beyond. Once again he improvised. He sauntered off downhill along the sidewalk, suppressing with all his might the ragged heaving of his chest as his lungs gasped for breath.

Suddenly a car loomed up in front of him. He caught sight of three men in civilian garb inside, but the way they roared past betrayed what they were after. He managed to pull out his handkerchief in time and pretended to blow his nose so they wouldn’t see his face, but once again he felt his strength ebbing away.

He was sure this was a HUGE TRAP they had laid for him. Today he’d escaped it by a hair, but now they were drawing the net closed and he had no idea how tight it was. The fact that the car hadn’t stopped didn’t mean there weren’t more waiting below, and here he was, caught in this treacherous, craggy defile like a cork in a bottle.

WHAT NEXT?

He certainly couldn’t go back, so he trudged on aimlessly. His evident exhaustion made him as conspicuous as an autumn bumblebee. And as his conviction grew that SHE HAD BETRAYED HIM, he turned, after years of silence, back to HIM.

You above all know I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING HER ORDERS. I wanted to IMPROVE YOUR KINGDOM, not destroy it; save me and I swear I WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN, and that I’ll serve you AS YOU COMMAND ME TO!

In answer he heard a ringing sound.

The tram terminus lay before him. The empty vehicle’s driver was urging him to hurry.

Morava knew they were in an awful mess, but the first thing he felt was relief: Grete Baumann was at the cemetery today. His Jitka was protected by that very same impenetrable cordon of SS men. How absurd!

He knew he ought to be ashamed of himself, so he tried to feel some of the anguish of the man sitting next to him. It was evident in Buback’s face, and he did not even try to hide it.

They barreled along the embankment; Litera overtook other cars whenever he could. Once Morava could think again, their panic seemed unreasonable. He tried to calm his companion.

“Mr. Buback! It would have to be an awful coincidence for him to strike today of all days.”

The German gave no reaction; his eyes remained fixed on the pavement in front of him, as if concentrating could increase their speed.

“And ebesta would have gone after her; the three of them were supposed to start their shifts there.”

At this Buback finally nodded weakly and fell silent. He did not move or speak again until Litera veered full speed into the narrow street that led from the tram terminus up to Kaví Hory. The turn threw him across the seat into Morava.

“I know…,” he said, and shrank back into his corner.

Morava thought of his recent conversation with Jitka. So he loves her too, he realized; he wouldn’t be so worried about a passing acquaintance. In the end, that wave of fear will join him to her. Jitka will be pleased….

Careening through a short, sparse wood that stretched along the rocky hillsides toward Pankrác, they reentered the city they had barely left. The street here was lined with low buildings; originally temporary workers’ houses from more prosperous times, their term of service had been extended when the Depression hit. The car jolted over the bumpy cobblestones. They passed a solitary pedestrian, plodding down to the tram lines below; just then Morava and Buback had to brace themselves to avoid being thrown together.

They swayed even further around the next curve, when Litera swerved around an item near the edge of the roadway. A hat, Morava thought, surprised; what was it doing there? He instantly put it out of his head as they turned into their street. Then he almost yelped in pain as he felt Buback’s nails dig into his wrist.

Litera was already braking by a large glistening puddle. For a moment all three of them looked at the shards of glass and porcelain, scattered amid the carnations…. From me, Morava realized.

They scrambled out of the vehicle.

The chief inspector was unbelievably fast and managed to enter the house first.

It was already clear that the unthinkable, impossible, and inhuman coincidence had come to pass.

A corpse in a checkered suit slumped from the kitchen into the hall. ebesta’s glassy eyes stared wide at the ceiling.

Morava saw the blood suddenly drain from Buback’s face. Like the priest, he remembered.

Has he lost his second love as well? What a horrible fate!

They stepped over the dead body and were in the kitchen.

Between the door and the table lay Jitka.

Buback put his experience from past German retreats to use.

The girl was alive; the wound must have barely missed her heart. They had to get her on the operating table as soon as possible.

While her fiance applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he and Litera removed the sideboard’s narrow door.

Using it as a stretcher they carried her out to the street and gently laid her on the back seat of the vehicle.

The young Czech squeezed himself into the narrow gap next to her, rubbed her pale cheeks, and willed her to live.

Litera drove like a madman again; they made it to General Hospital in under a quarter hour.

As they took Jitka Modrá away, Buback allowed himself to stroke her hand. It was warm.

“She’ll live,” he said to the Czech, as if trying to persuade himself as well. “She will live!”

The youth nodded absently and without a word followed the orderlies off.

Buback arranged for ebesta’s body to be removed. Then Litera drove him back to Bredovská Street. As he got out, he instructed the driver: “Return to the hospital and remain there at Mr. Morava’s disposition. Don’t go back to headquarters yet; they’ll just detain you. I’ll call the superintendent.”

He couldn’t possibly have understood me, Buback realized a bit later, but by then he had already raced into the colonel’s anteroom, stormed past the adjutant there, entered Meckerle’s office, and slammed the door behind him.

The giant sat awkwardly half-hunched in his chair, with a pained expression on his face. At the sight of Buback he practically cringed, as if expecting his subordinate to hit him.

“It’s all right…,” he said weakly. “Calm down, man, nothing happened to her.”

“You call that nothing? She’s fighting for her life!”

Meckerle abruptly stood up and winced even more, holding his right hand over his crotch as if he had a terrible pain there.

“Grete…?”

“Fortunately not! But only because she switched shifts,” Buback shouted into his face. “We had him, he ran right into our trap, except our ambush wasn’t there. As a result, he severely wounded the other woman and killed a policeman. And got away! Who ordered the blockade of the Czech headquarters?”

“I did.”

“And why?”

The colonel was rapidly regaining control; if he had any pain, his anger drowned it out.

“I explained that at the last meeting, and it was clear to everyone, except possibly you. Fuck you and your murderer; you’re not up to the job I gave you!”

“You approved my report.”

“Which blocked the SS special units from doing their job.”

“They won’t find any weapons there unless they plant them. Now we’ve thrown away the advantage of surprise — all for a couple of pistols and rifles that were already registered!”

Meckerle was himself again. Now hell let me have it, Buback thought, seeing the familiar crimson vein throbbing at his temple.

“I’m the one who decides what the right time is. And what’s more, I didn’t appreciate your cheek in thanking me for the fish. You’re getting too big for your breeches, Buback. Dismissed! I’ll inform you shortly of your new posting.”

Buback turned and marched out of the room, pressing his lips closed. Any more slips would just hasten his descent. No, Meckerle had not yet formally ousted him from his post. He had a couple of hours left to catch that murderous beast.

Just to be sure, he avoided his office and went straight to the head of dispatching. Bureaucratic inertia got him a jeep on forty-eight-hour loan with an armed soldier at the wheel.

On the way he stopped at home, expecting to find an explanation. Inside he found a note.

“They came here to pick me up; an unexpected special engagement, they say. M. apparently gave them your address. Will stop at J’s, see if she’ll step in. Take care, love. G.”

He turned the page over and wrote on the back side.

“Your nightmare came true. He found her alone and badly wounded her. I’m going after him, I hope. B.”

And then added: “I was horribly afraid it was you!”

Morava held Jitka’s right hand as it lay beside her body. It was still moist and his thumb fearfully tracked the weak, slow pulse in the vein of her wrist.

The surgeon who had operated on her came back and measured her pulse and temperature. He had done what he could, he explained: a pneumothorax and stitches. Her blood was still flowing bright red from the drainage shunts.

Morava finally dared to ask the question that had been torturing him for hours.

“And the child…?”

“Will survive if she does,” the doctor said, and left.

Was he trying to encourage him or prepare him for the worst?

He drew hope from the expression on her face. Instead of horror, he saw a glimmer of the shy smile that had captured him forever at their first meeting.

Forever?

My beloved, my beloved, stay!

God, how could you do this?

At the end of the platform the abandoned concrete piping seemed to grow out of the bushes rather than vice versa. Sidling up to it, he pretended to be urinating in secret and placed his briefcase inside one of the pipes. He’d risked enough today!

He was the first one here and would have to wait; as usual he read the newspaper. As the front withdrew, the German units had deserted Brno. Il Duce Benito Mussolini had been treacherously ambushed by partisans, then shot and hung by his legs from a gasoline pump. From his battle headquarters in Berlin, the Führer and Reich chancellor had commended the members of the Hitlerjugend.

He stared at the picture of the children in their oversized military raincoats: A man with a demented expression was pinning Iron Crosses on them. In his mind, however, he saw other pictures: The eyes of that whore shining with fear, and the surprise of that cop as he ambushed him.

The train picked up speed, clattering down the battered rail ties. The carriages emptied out as Prague receded and filled up again as they approached Plze. Near Rokycany they braked with a crazed screech. A whistle shattered the air. With detached reserve he watched his fellow travelers rush out of the carriage and across the plowed field to a nearby copse.

He knew that train passengers often died in buzz-bomb attacks, but he remained seated, with his newspaper open. A sudden decision strengthened his will.

I WILL SURVIVE IT!

AND THEN I WILL NEVER FEAR AGAIN!

The airplane motor roared nearby, a machine gun barked, and there was a loud hissing.

Despite this he did not budge, and was richly rewarded: The engineer fooled the attacker by loosing a geyser of steam to indicate they had been hit.

When the passengers returned, they showered the cool-headed reader with admiration. He merely shrugged his shoulders, although inside he was rejoicing.

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

At the Plze train station he finally fell into the clutches of the food inspectors and thankfully could show them empty hands. His worries happily behind him, he was about to jump off the tram at the theater stop when he spotted a long white shape emerging from the side gates.

THEY’rE CARRYING OUT THE ICE!

New passengers pushed him against the rear windows as they boarded; from there he watched his colleagues unnoticed as they lifted the gleaming beams onto the back of a truck.

THEY SOLD IT THEMSELVES!

He couldn’t tell how far they had gotten, but it didn’t matter. There was no way to stop them from finishing the job.

AND THEN THEY’LL FIND THEM!

At first they probably wouldn’t realize what they’d found, but someone would undoubtedly get curious and refuse to leave well enough alone.

AND THEN THEY’lL FIND ME!

The conductor tugged the bell strap, the tram screeched off, and the theater receded into the distance.

He realized he couldn’t go home either; they might be waiting for him. And he had no one else on this earth except HER. His sulk evaporated, and he implored HER to help him again.

WHERE SHOULD I GO?

The priest managed to disappear from the garden before they arrived, but Buback had sharp eyes. When the housekeeper tried to convince him her brother had not budged from his bed since morning, he pointed at the two small hoes in the half-raked vegetable patch. To make a suitable impression, he had taken the driver with him up to the rectory; the man’s black uniform and accompanying giant pistol had the desired effect. She sat them down in the parlor, and in a few minutes the cleric arrived. He was nervous but seemed even firmer in his conviction than before.

Buback began the attack without delay.

“My young colleague — the Czech fellow I was here with this morning — had a wife, and was expecting a child with her. Three hours ago, she and another person became the latest victims of the murderer you are concealing. Yes, I said ’concealing’; you can’t deny that you’re personally responsible for what could be three unnecessary deaths. Your Saint Jan Nepomuk kept the secrets of the confessional at his own expense, while you let others pay with their lives. I’m ordering you to reveal everything you know, dispensation or no, about the man who confessed to the Brno murder.”

He wanted to threaten the man with imprisonment, but could not imagine what he would do with him. Bartolomjská Street was out of commission for now, and taking him to Bredovská, the heart of the enemy’s camp, could bring on a stroke. His speech and his escort, however, were enough for the man’s sister.

“Venda,” she beseeched him, “you’ve got to tell them!”

Buback seized the opportunity. “What’s his name? How old is he? Where does he live? What does he do? I won’t rest easy — and neither will you — as long as he’s free, so out with it!”

The housekeeper, no longer the meek little mouse, now showed herself to be the real ruler of this small household.

“Come on, Venda, tell him! Would God hide a villain like that? Why claim that right for yourself in His name?”

As if that decided it, the priest cast an almost thankful glance at her, turned to Buback, and poured forth a sentence he clearly knew by heart.

“Antonín Rypl, born 27 May 1900 in Brno, nationality: Czech; marital status: single; trained as a heating mechanic, then as a soldier; temporarily on an invalid’s pension after a war injury; employed here in Kláterec the last four years before the war as a sexton while his mother was a cook; mentioned during his visit in 1940 that he’d been living in Plze since her death…. That’s all I know….”

Buback wrote it all down and stood up so sharply that his escort automatically reached for his pistol. The detective nodded to him that everything was in order, but did allow himself a parting shot.

“Before you start your repentance for violating the sacrament of confession, why not do something more useful: pray that the young woman and her child survive.”

Outside he ordered the driver: “To Plze!”

At some point during the evening — Morava had lost track of time — Beran appeared in the hospital room. The bags under his eyes were heavier than usual; today more than ever he looked like an old Saint Bernard. He did not ask about Jitka; he must have spoken with the doctors himself. Standing motionless behind Morava’s chair, he sadly observed the girl, her hand tightly clasped in the young detective’s. Then he gently clapped him on the shoulder.

“Come with me for a moment….”

Morava seemed eager to obey, as if this experienced and wise man, his teacher, advisor, and second father, could make sure that their beloved Jitka returned from death’s door. The superintendent took him by the arm and silently led him down the hall into another room. On a conference table in the doctor’s office stood Beran’s personal thermos, the one Jitka filled over and over with fresh rye coffee.

As if reading his thoughts, his boss said, “Unfortunately I made this myself, but it’s better than nothing. You have to get something into your stomach.”

Like the mysterious old man in fairy tales, he unwrapped some baked dumplings from a small sack.

“Matlák’s morning snack. He lost his appetite during the raid and is sending them over as… well, just because, what can I say? Eat.”

“I can’t,” Morava blurted.

“You have to. I’ve arranged for you to stay here; this bed is at your disposal, try to nap from time to time when your head feels heavy. And eat.”

Obediently he bit into the dough, chewed, but could not taste the filling. He froze and looked up at Beran.

“And it was my idea….”

“It was, and you did an excellent job. If it hadn’t been for the SS you’d have won.”

Then the superintendent did something no one had ever seen him do before. He stroked Morava’s head.

“Buback says hello,” he continued, practical as ever. “A strange man. He apologized on the phone for the Germans; he had no idea about the raid. The priest gave him the name. Rypl. Antonín Rypl. Buback is in Plze and hopes he’ll find him. Eat….”

“Why?” He spat the word out in his hopeless misery.

“What, why? Eat to stay alive.”

“But if she dies, I don’t want to live!”

“I thought you believed in God.”

“How can I believe in God if she dies?”

Beran’s hands rested on his shoulders.

“I can’t tell you that, kid. I’m not a believer. But every once in a while I force evil to a standoff, and that gives me a higher purpose. Maybe it seems I know more about life than you, but right now, next to you, I feel like a schoolchild. I’m alone because I never dared link my fate to anyone else’s. I felt less vulnerable that way, and stronger. But today, by your standards, I’m a poor man. You suffer because you love in a way I never have, and that makes you more experienced than I am. And it’ll make you even stronger in your fight against evil. Eat; now you just need to eat, to make it through.”

Morava obediently bit into the dough again, even though the dumpling was salty with his tears.

“Good work, Morava,” Beran praised him, “good work, good work.”

It was long since dark and noticeably cooler; he cursed himself for choosing a thin overcoat today. On the other hand, it made him blend in; these coats were popular in Plze, and both office staff and the koda factory workers wore them.

Worst of all, since February he’d been taking his own success for granted. Today he’d only taken enough money for the train and lunch. He hadn’t eaten, but even so he could barely afford the ticket back to Prague.

AND WHAT THEN?

During his years in Plze he had lost contact completely with the rest of his family, who had always been suspicious of the almost matrimonial relationship between mother and son. He greeted everyone here in his building politely, and at work they all acknowledged how handy he was, but aside from HER he had never found another kindred soul.

SHE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO EVER LOVED ME!

His intoxicating successes these past few weeks had clouded his reason. The distance between himself and the rest of the world had become proof of his own superiority. Now, at the end of the vicious circle, he stood shivering and hungry at the train station again, and an old fact hit him with renewed force.

I’M ALONE!

What he still had, he realized, was a knack for self-preservation, which had saved him this morning in Prague. And he still had his luck, he remembered; without it he would have walked blindly into his own destruction.

So THERE IS SOMETHING!

He was amazed how little it took to shake him free. And he knew where his strength came from. How awful he’d been this morning, cursing HER memory as he fled!

MOTHER, FORGIVE ME!

Now he knew what to do. He bought a ticket to Prague from the sleepy cashier. If they weren’t waiting for him here, they’d hardly be waiting there.

AND FROM THERE I’LL MANAGE!

At the documents division of the Plze police they gave Buback everything he needed in a few minutes. If Germans have taught mankind one thing, he thought bitterly, it’s how to track civilians.

From there he called Superintendent Beran. He learned that the raid had ended ingloriously shortly after noon. Not a single extra weapon was found on Prague police premises.

Buback informed Beran where he could find Jitka, Morava, and Litera and requested that he tell the assistant detective he was still on the trail. The superintendent then had a word with the Plze police, which they correctly interpreted as orders.

Eight men in two cars formed a small convoy; in between them Buback rode alone with his SS escort. He decided not to bring in the local Gestapo, in case they decided to report the expedition to Prague; what if Meckerle sent Rattinger or even Kroloff here after him?

On his way to catch the murderer who’d almost killed Jitka Modrá, Buback read through the man’s extensive card file. As a seventeen-year-old apprentice Antonín Rypl had been found unfit for service in the Austrian Army, but a year later was accepted as a volunteer for the new Czechoslovak forces. When the doctors’ board questioned the sudden change in his health, he explained that his mother had made him drink a coal brew to keep him off the front. He thus fell right into a smaller war; as a new recruit, he was sent to cleanse southern Slovakia of Hungarians. He was seriously wounded in action and was granted a temporary pension. Later he worked in his native Brno at a large heating installation firm until it closed during the Depression. After several years apparently spent living on support or off his mother, the Kláterec rectory hired him as a sexton. When war broke out in 1939, he moved to Plze and found work as a stoker and janitor at the city theater.

They opened the garret of the apartment building on Praská Street without any trouble. Inside, it was as clean and orderly as a military sitting room. Or the bedroom of an exemplary little boy, Buback thought. A large photo of a woman approximately forty years old hung on the far wall. The deeply carved features spoke of severity, but certainly not coldness. She must have been an extraordinarily passionate woman! When she was photographed, she fixed her eyes right on the lens — so her son would never be able to escape her gaze? Buback could imagine how here, through this picture, Rypl had begun to talk to her….

Their search revealed nothing. They left an ambush team behind and continued on to the theater; in the meanwhile the local police had surrounded it. The business manager sent for Rypl, but no one had seen him since early that morning. He then took Buback and his escort to the furnace room; it had been closed since February, when the German military hospital had requisitioned their remaining supply of coke fuel. There too there was perfect order in the desk and the tin locker, and not even the slightest clue.

On the way upstairs they had to stop and press against the wall of the staircase as two technicians dragged the last dripping slice of ice past them.

A third man followed them rather perplexedly, carrying five small frozen objects wrapped in wax paper.

Morava mechanically finished the dumplings without tasting them; he drank the coffee, forgetting to sweeten it. The bed went unused. As soon as Beran left he returned to Jitka’s bed, holding her motionless hand and silently watching the nurses and doctors go just as mutely to and fro. He did not ask. He knew that they would tell him if there were any good news.

They came more frequently now with injections, and her breathing became still louder and more ragged. Morava felt himself swimming up out of a shocked numbness; his grief seemed almost a physical ache. Yes, Beran had been right; his suffering was as great as his love for her. But he could not imagine surviving her, or more importantly, wanting to.

At the thought of her death, the whole long life they had dreamed about together the night before was suddenly, unexpectedly, and irrevocably cut short, and none of its possible replacements could hold a candle to the project they had embarked on together. What would he do then? Redouble his fight against evil, as his mentor expected? But how, when he’d already lost the decisive battle? Evil would laugh as he mourned her.

At moments an intolerable pain twisted his heart and stomach. He tried to staunch this new hopelessness, willing himself to the faith he had always used since childhood to quell his fear of death. For minutes at a time he would emerge from his gloom; surely Jitka could not resist his stare, and any moment now would open her eyes. As soon as it happened, he would easily pull her back among the living.

However, her eyes remained shut and her face began to change, as if once again she were facing unimaginable horrors. He returned to the question that had oppressed him since Beran’s departure.

Why, in all this time, hadn’t he asked God for help?

Because, he admitted, for the first time he was angry with Him. If this was punishment for his sins, then why Jitka and not him? Or was it a test of his humility? In which a pure creature, carrying a child untouched by sin, would meet a cruel death?

The certainties he had grown up with now left him. Doubt filled the void.

Maybe there is no God. What a frightening thought.

Or what’s worse: maybe God exists, and would let Jitka and their child die, leaving him alive.

I don’t want a God like that!

Inwardly he flinched. Would this bring His wrath down on them? Then his resolve hardened: it was the only way to save her.

If He were as just and loving as the Scriptures said, He would be appalled by what was happening and save her.

Three faithfully devoted sheep, or none at all. He would have to decide for Himself.

At the height of his agitation, Morava fell asleep on his uncomfortable chair.

SHE WAS STILL WITH HIM!

Only SHE could have led that guy to his compartment, of all the ones in the almost empty train.

The little fellow was looking for a match to light his cigarette, but failing to score one, he stayed on for a chat.

When he spoke, it was one long salvo of insults against the Reich and its Führer.

At first he thought this half-pint had to be a provocateur, but soon he came around. This was no stool pigeon, just a person who, after six years, had had enough.

IT’S STARTING TO BREAK!

At first he listened, then grunted his assent, and after a while they were talking heart-to-heart; he felt himself being drawn in, and waited for HER sign. Finally it came. Light filled the cabin, like a ray from heaven.

He saw his old sergeant, Kralik, giving him the thumbs-up as he had done on the Brno shooting range.

I’M A SOLDIER, AFTER ALL!

He remembered the incident on the bombarded train.

AND I HAVE NERVES OF STEEL!

AND IMAGINATION!

Immediately, he confided to the guy in strictest confidence who he really was. The story was so convincing that he believed it himself. With his military background, it was easy to create the impression that he was still active in the now-illegal Czechslovak Army.

By the end of the trip, the runt was bursting with pride. After all, he was sitting in the same compartment as a real parachutist, just back from England!

At Smíchov station, he pulled the contents of his bag out of the concrete pipe in the guy’s presence, dispelling any remaining doubts. Of course, he was taking a risk, even there on the deserted railway platform, but now he was sure he was back on track.

HER HAND PROTECTS ME!

His old army pistol clinched the deal. The guy — naive beyond his years! — enthusiastically promised to hide him in his own home.

THANKS, MOTHER!

Jitka Modrá died at exactly five A.M., and with her died what would have been her child.

The firm grasp of a man’s hand accompanied her on her journey into oblivion.

Jan Morava slept soundly through it, waking only later to Erwin Buback’s sympathetic hug.

The sun had just peered over the crown of the nearby hill, silhouetting the stadiums against the morning sky, when the car pulled up outside the house.

Buback could hear the music even over the noise of the motor. A raucous melody split the air, one that supposedly had the whole American army grooving wildly on the dance floors. It was the Glenn Miller Orchestra playing boogie-woogie; Grete seemed to think this Miller fellow was some sort of god.

The young driver in the cap with skull and crossbones listened carefully. When his eyes met Buback’s, he smiled almost conspiratorially.

Throwing custom and protocol to the winds, Buback slipped the driver a fifty-mark note. The SS agent took it as calmly as a waiter would a tip.

Now I know the war is ending! The thought pleased Buback, but he immediately remembered the living man and the dead woman he had just left. Evil, however, goes on….

The staff car vanished around the curve below. Upstairs, the noise went on unchecked, a testimony to the gradual depopulation of Little Berlin. However, as he rummaged for his keys on the sidewalk, the house’s front door opened, revealing the judge. Dressed already, at this early hour? No. The man’s unshaven cheeks suggested that he had not yet gone to bed.

“There’s no need to go around the back, Herr Oberkriminalrat, come this way….”

From up close he confirmed that the radiogram Grete had recently moved to his place was even louder here than outside. Evidently it was now set to its highest volume. He realized it had undoubtedly kept the judge up, but he did not feel the slightest desire to apologize.

“Thank you, but I’m used to it by now.”

“What are you going to do,” the judge wailed after him in despair.

Buback tried to imagine how many anguished howls this pitiful, sleepy figure had caused, screams torn from the throats of countless men and women before the bullet or blade reached its mark. He responded with barely disguised glee. “Apparently, we’re going to dance.”

On a volcano, he thought, climbing the winding back stairs that shook with the syncopations of degenerate music. As he pressed down the door handle, it flooded over him as if he had opened the sluice gates.

Grete half lay, half sat on the bed in black ski pants and a black T-shirt; its long sleeves gripped and further flattened her chest. One hand clutched a cigarette holder, the other curled around a glass; all around her were stains and cigarette butts from an overflowing ashtray. Her eyes were unfocused; she was so engulfed in the melody, humming along wordlessly with it, that it took several seconds for her to realize he was home. First she smiled dreamily at him, then flung away the holder, cigarette, and glass, and, jumping up, threw her arms around his neck.

“The bastard croaked,” she exulted, “bit the dust!”

And so he learned of the death of Adolf Hitler, who supposedly fell in the defense of Berlin.

Once she cooled down a bit, he extinguished the smoking carpet and prevailed on her to turn down the gramophone — not because of the judge (who had no power anymore), but so that they could hear each other speak. She listened to his story so intently that all the alcohol seemed to evaporate from her completely; her gray-green irises stared at him without blinking, like the eyes of a beast of prey. When he reached the part where they found the dead policeman and the wounded Jitka, she interrupted him with a shout.

“No! That son of a bitch saved me?”

She was clearly still tipsy; forgetting about his story, she launched directly into her own. There hadn’t been any performance, she said, pointing to her morning message still lying there with his afternoon postscript. That son of a bitch, she repeated, that pig Meckerle had her brought over like a cheap whore to a hotel outside Prague, one she knew the officers used as a high-class flophouse, but she didn’t realize what was happening even when the unfamiliar driver took her to the suite and told her to wait there for her colleagues and wardrobe, until she entered the bedroom (“stupid cow,” she fumed), where the colonel was waiting for her (“naked, the swine!“) in a state of drunken anticipation; he locked the door and threatened to rip off her clothes if she wouldn’t undress herself, and that really made her blood boil: She grabbed him, threw him down on the bed, and then went from his head to his chest past his belly down to his lap, and then…

“I bit him as hard as I could!” she grinned. “Right in his stiff dick!”

She said he’d let out a dreadful scream; he must have thought she’d bitten it off, she continued, shaking with laughter, but he wasn’t even bleeding, and when she thought he’d regained enough strength to beat her to death…

“Then I started to shriek; I never knew I could make such a loud noise, and he was so terrified that he just fled, naked, in a panic.”

Buback remembered Meckerle’s painful grimaces that afternoon and marveled that he had escaped his superior’s office alive.

Leaving the hotel room, Grete had gone down to the reception desk, where they pretended they had never seen her before. No, they didn’t know what happened to the car that brought her, and there were none available, but she’d certainly have no problem hitching a ride along the road with a German officer. By the time someone finally stopped, she had practically walked back to Prague.

“But it was worth it to hear that the bastard of Berlin had snuffed it.”

And she nearly paid the officer back with a slap when he tried to force his way upstairs with her.

” ’to grieve together,’ he suggested; not a bad-looking guy, but with one basic flaw: He wasn’t you.”

And then she had waited, longing impatiently for him, reading his message over and over, shaken by the fact that she could have been the murderer’s victim.

Now she bent forward, stretched out her hands to him and pulled him toward her.

“Love! My love! Where were you all my life? Why did you let me wait and lie for so long?”

She held his head in her outstretched arms and then pulled him close, covering his forehead, temples, eyes, and chin with almost childlike kisses.

He held her and wished it would never end. Slowly he felt their passion dissolve into tenderness.

“Come to me,” she whispered after a long while. “I want you so much! No, wait….”

She slipped away from him to the gramophone, where the record crackled at the end of the last track. She replaced it and then stopped short.

“How is she? You must be sick to death of my interruptions.”

He took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt.

“She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She died an hour ago.”

He sat down on the bed and everything he had been through since that morning suddenly hit him.

Grete stood motionless. She glanced at the gramophone as if she could see and feel on her body the slow, heavy melody she had chosen for their lovemaking. When the piano and percussion began their variations, she lifted both hands and swayed into the rhythm. Her supple arms drooped to the floor and encircled the lamp overhead. Then her long legs joined in, and the slender figure in black seemed to fill the entire space.

It was as if the music were dictating thoughts to Grete, and her motions turned them into words of sorrow and hope.

As he watched her, captivated, his sorrow and revulsion dissolved. Two unbelievable gifts of fate shone brightly above the filth and blood of the miserable world.

He was alive.

And he had her.

She stopped and knelt down at his side.

“And why were you so horribly afraid when you thought it was me?”

“Suddenly I realized I loved you….”

“Oh, Buback! Now you really are perfect!”