The Widow Killer

MAY

The little guy protected and threatened him at the same time. On the train, his bold openness had brought them together, but even at home he would not shut up. He was sure to tell his foreman at the locomotive depot in Beroun that he was hiding a parachutist. If he didn’t spill it to the other railwaymen himself, his boss would see to that. By evening some informer would know, and that night they’d seize him.

From the frying pan into the fire. MURDERER OR SPY? THE BLADE OR THE BULLET?

The warmed-over potato stew tasted of bad beer, but at least it filled his empty stomach; he chewed and listened to the tripe that his host served up.

“Give this to your signaler,” the runt was whispering urgently. “No, don’t tell me where he is, well all get together for a drink once it’s over, but the train schedules for the Protectorate could help the Allies considerably, couldn’t they?”

He realized swearing this man to silence would be useless. The runt would promise, but wouldn’t obey. This was a man who longed to live an interesting life, and finally his dream had come true — except it would be wasted without spectators.

Even so, he felt calmer already. The situation still wasn’t rosy, but he had averted the catastrophe facing him in Plze. And now he had time to think what came next, before the half-pint set off for work.

FIRST I HAVE TO GET TO KNOW HIM.

In case I need to stay a while: Inquire how he lives, what his habits are, his acquaintances, friends, who visits him, why and when.

His host’s temperament made it easy. Despite the late hour the guy kept talking, questions or no. He longed desperately to engrave himself on the memory and heart of his unexpected guest, who had accepted him into the Resistance.

The story matched the storyteller. It was primitive. In an hour he was sure.

I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM.

Karel Malina lived alone but carried on with his married neighbor, who — he winked knowingly — cleaned for him and fed him for free. Her husband was also a railway engineer who slept every other night in a different city, leaving Malina to warm his bed. Everything was taken care of; Malina was snug as a bug in a rug.

SO, THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR!

He knew, he told the runt, that for his own safety, Malina would need to watch his tongue. However, if Malina was going to hide him till the coup, he would have to mention the arrangement to his neighbor.

The guy shone with bliss.

Of course Malina couldn’t introduce them — parachutists need to keep a low profile — but he should tell her what was going on. That way she wouldn’t worry if she didn’t see her neighbor around for a few days, because… yes! He’d make Malina his contact with his signaler.

Now the guy nearly squealed with bliss.

Once Malina told her in the morning, he should come back to report how she took it, and then as usual set off for work. By the time he returned home, the first report, based on the information he’d given, would be ready. That evening they’d flesh it out and the next day Malina would fake illness to arrange its dispatch. From there they’d have to see.

The half-pint was in seventh heaven. He gave his guest his own bed and went to sleep in the bathroom, where he fit comfortably in the tub.

When he was alone in bed at last, in the quiet and the dark at the end of that crazy day, a single image occupied his mind: The slab of ice moving out of the cellar. What would happen when the hearts melted?

WILL THE DOVE-SOULS FLY OUT?

Nonsense, logic told him in those final moments; he’d killed them dead, time to forget about them…. Now he felt with every fiber of his being that another task was calling him…. But what was it?

He plunged into sleep like water.

Finally, at the tail end of the night after the day the world got rid of Hitler, Grete fell asleep, or more accurately fainted from exhaustion. Buback remained lying beside her, his senses aglow but his mind strangely clear, knowing that for the first time he was feeling the responsibility of love.

In his first life he and Hilde had been young and Germany had been different. Back then, values that had grown and matured since their bloody birth in the French Revolution still ruled. Hilde had imparted them to Heidi and Buback had guarded the laws that kept them safe. The generation that grew up during the Great War, and then Germany’s civil war, was firmly convinced that a battered and wise mankind would never put itself through hell like that again.

Even the prosperity following the Führer’s rise seemed to confirm this. New job creation schemes had instantly wiped out unemployment and given the Reich — among other things — the world’s most modern highway system, proof for many that an authoritarian government sometimes helps a nation more than parliaments full of idle, chattering humanists.

When Hitler built a massive army to defend the German miracle from an envious outside world, he placed love for homeland above love for individuals. Even Buback, who tried to be an instrument of useful ideas, could not control his family’s life. Its destiny was determined by the war, which played with his loves like a cat plays with mice, luring them into the idyllic land of vineyards to smite them with its paw.

Those endless seconds yesterday afternoon, when he thought the murderer had killed Grete, shook Buback’s emotions down to the very core of his being. Until that moment Grete was just what she had said: a wartime lover, linked to him by loneliness and a sudden flame of passion meant to cremate the dead in both of them. The threat of losing her opened a new dimension inside him. An icy emptiness surrounded him, as if he’d stepped across death’s threshold while he was still alive. And when he found the other woman was the victim, he felt an almost inhumanly cruel relief.

He had instantly regained control, trying to support the young Czech with his burden. Still, Buback was still deeply grateful that this time fate had passed over him. If Jitka Modrá had given him the hope that even after Hilde he might love again, Grete Baumann had fulfilled it.

He now knew that he was not here to participate in this dirty and hopeless war any longer, but rather to protect his love and lead her to safety. But how…?

The man who woke at five A.M. at the bedside of a dead Jitka Modrá was a completely different Jan Morava than the one who fell asleep beside her while she was still alive.

His nighttime despair and his contention with God were gone. He helped the nurses wash her and dress her in a clean white shirt, accompanied her on the stretcher to the pathology lab, kissed her on her still-warm lips, and then waited for an hour like an errand boy in a hallway reeking of disinfectant before he was permitted to see the examination results.

“Death from hemorrhaging into the mediastinum after a puncture wound to the aorta.“

Litera, who discovered him there, was the first person caught off guard. Before he could express his sympathy, Morava reeled off his plan for the day’s excursions, as if this were a morning strategy session after an ordinary night.

His other colleagues in the department found a man unchanged in appearance and demeanor from the day before. He returned their sympathetic handshakes just the way he would have at daily meetings; anyone who dared to express condolences got at most a nod.

The women at Bartolomjská, confirmed in their rejection of Operation Decoy, were especially shocked. Could this sorry young man really be that insensitive? The men were marginally impressed by his self-control, but it still seemed unnatural to them.

Morava understood what was happening. During that short nap by her bed, he had died along with Jitka. She had then sent him back to the living world to complete his task. During this temporary resurrection, he had resolved not to let anything impede his work.

Maybe it was the combined spiritual strength of all his ancestors, forged by unending blows of fate, that so mercifully numbed him. Otherwise, he knew, he would have gone mad.

He would have cried like a child, howled like a beast, stopped eating, given up sleeping; soon he would have set off aimlessly, half awake, half asleep, down the dark streets of a city ever closer to the front until, heedless of warnings, he would probably have been shot by German guards.

Instead, he resolved to forget that for three months there had been a woman he fell asleep and woke up with, constantly conscious of their child growing inside her, and decided to be only what he had been before: a criminal detective investigating the murders of Maruka Kubílková of Brno, Elisabeth, Baroness of Pomerania, Barbora Pospíchalová, Hedvika Horáková, Marta Pavlátová, Jana Kavanová, Robert Joná, Frantiek ebesta, and Jitka Modrá.

He waited for Beran in his anteroom as if there had never been a third person there.

“Since we now know his identity,” he began with no preamble, “we can disband the special team. But I’d like to direct the investigation, and I want to start in Plze.”

“Shouldn’t you get some sleep?”

“I’ve slept three months away already. I have to catch up.”

At first he didn’t know where he was. He felt refreshed, but all around was deepest darkness. Gradually he collected his thoughts until he could stand and grope his way to the blackout shades. A murky light passed listlessly through the dirty window and curtain. He thought of the neighbor who did the cleaning. Apparently she spent more time on the bed than in the rest of the apartment, except he couldn’t really imagine them…

He remembered the ferociousness with which his host had spoken about the Germans, soldiers and civilians alike, servants of the Reich sent to Prague and those who had been here for generations. From “exclude them” he’d progressed to “expel them” and then “exterminate them,” and he always added, “no exceptions!”

KRAUTS FOR HIM ARE LIKE THOSE WHORES FOR ME!

This discovery fascinated him. He had to learn more. The empty bathroom didn’t surprise him; the guy would certainly have snuck out through the living room so as not to wake him up. But the empty kitchen made his blood run cold. He tore into the front hall in his underwear and pressed the apartment door handle down. Locked. He dashed to the window. Mezzanine, at least six meters of sheer wall.

So, A TRAP!

Once again that awful feebleness overpowered him, the one he thought he had banished the day before on the strafed train; he could thank HER for it. As a child he’d developed it when he’d been IN UNLOVE. “Unlove” was HER worst punishment; SHE wouldn’t speak to him and would look right through him, as if he were thin air. He felt so abandoned, so humiliated that… he almost.. hated HER! Once he’d grown up, he confessed this to HER, and SHE was horrified that she’d made him feel that way. SHE never did it after that, but he never got rid of the reaction; in a crisis it would always sneak up on him and make the situation even worse.

WHAT NOW?

He realized in a panic that the guy was a provocateur and had gone to denounce him. At least he had time to break out and disappear! With shaking hands he put on his shirt and pants and prowled around the small apartment like a hunting dog until he sniffed out what he was looking for: A hatchet lay behind the top-fed wood stove. He slipped it under the handle of the front door and got ready to pry it open when he heard steps and the clink of keys. Fully on guard again, he sprang into the corner, where the open door would conceal him, raised the ax above his head, and waited.

The runt saw him and stopped dead in his tracks. His usual bovine smile turned to a desperate grimace, and he dropped his keys and string bag on the ground (fortunately there were only potatoes and bread in it).

“You ass!” his guest exploded as soon as he had slammed the door with his foot. “Didn’t you have orders?”

“I just… I thought___” He pointed pitifully at the floor. “I thought

Fd make you—”

“You entered my unit of your own free will; you’ll follow my orders to the letter! How was I to know you weren’t a traitor?”

Only now did he feel the pistol pressing against him in his pocket. Why was he waving an ax around when he could just as easily have shot? Shooting’s like riding a bicycle, Sergeant Králik had always said; you never forget how!

“I almost split your skull open so I wouldn’t alert the whole house!”

“Forgive me…. I’ll never, ever… I swear…!”

The half-pint was sincerely devastated. He brewed some rye coffee, and dutifully repeated what he could and could not tell his neighbor before going over.

“One more thing,” he asked the little man at the last moment. “Does she have your keys?”

“Yeah, she does.”

“Then get them back! I want to be sure no one comes in except you while I’m here.”

“Right, got it!”

When the door slammed shut, he began to sip the hot liquid carefully and reflect in peace.

WHAT WILL I DO WITH HIM?

He had never written with lipstick on a mirror before. “Love,” he began, “my greates—” The softened stick snapped. He looked at his uncompleted confession and was still amazed at how much had changed in him since yesterday. Although he had barely slept, a shower refreshed him completely; his brain was like a letter knife, smoothly opening problem after problem until it reached a solution.

He had to retain his post at all costs. And at no cost could he give up his official contacts with the Czech police. In an emergency they were the only ones who could protect Grete — and him as well.

There was no point sticking his head in the sand and waiting until Meckerle had it pulled out for him. He went straight to Bredovská. After all, he had been right, and the colonel must see that. Would Meckerle punish Buback out of sheer jealousy as the water rose around the two of them? With Hitler’s death the precariously balanced upside-down pyramid of the Third Reich had come crashing down. Who had seized the highest office; who held in his hands the fate of the German nation, the life and death of millions? Was it the mysteriously vanished Goebbels? Admiral Dönitz, brandishing a supposed last will and testament from the Führer? Or Reichmarschall Goring, who was supposedly exposed in it as a traitor?

Each of them, as Meckerle must know, was a potential protector for Buback. But even the light of the Protectorate’s former polestars paled before the brilliance of another contender. Although only a guest in this region, and until recently almost unknown, he commanded the million-strong mass of soldiers which now threatened to overflow their ever-contracting territory like dough rising in a bowl.

Buback had once learned to play poker. In the days when confessions had to be extracted without torture, Dresden detectives had used it to train in their craft, leading shysters down a false trail. One after the other, they showed how to bluff suggestively — for instance, that a criminal’s coconspirators had long since confessed. Today, for the first time, Buback would use this skill to deceive his superior.

He entered his office, slamming the door open, contrary to habit. Kroloff, in the anteroom, snapped to attention even more furiously than usual. By the time a sign of defiance appeared in his eyes, he had lost his chance.

“Get me Schürner’s adjutant, on the double! Move it, man!”

His commanding tone and the rank of the man he was calling made a deep impression on Kroloff, who was eagerness itself as he reached for the receiver.

Buback leaned back into the armchair and waited. He was convinced that a call from the Prague Gestapo headquarters would not go unanswered — correctly, as it turned out.

“Oberstleutnant Gruner. What can I do for you, Herr Kamerad?”

“Did Lieutenant General Richard von Pommeren serve with you?”

“Confirmed. But if you’re looking for him, you’re in the wrong place. He fell at the start of the Russian campaign.”

“It’s not about him, it’s about his spouse, who was brutally murdered in Prague. I’ve identified the killer with the help of the local detectives and now just need to catch him. Attempts are being made on our side to call off the operation, under the rationale that von Pommeren was not a notable military figure. Is your superior interested in having me see this through?”

“I’m surprised you need to ask. The field marshal is firmly convinced that the army is the last guarantor of German law and order. The opinion you have conveyed to me, whoever its author might be, is insulting and politically aberrant. Without even asking I can tell you that you should — no, you must — continue.”

“Thank you, Herr Kamerad,” Buback said, using the National Socialist title for the first time in his life. “In that case I request that you phone my superior immediately, so I’ll have a free hand for continued cooperation with the Protectorate police.”

“Let me take it down. His name?”

“Standartenführer Meckerle.”

“Christian name?”

“Hubertus….” Buback remembered.

“No! Hubertus the Great! He was the head clerk at my bank at home. And no doubt will be again some day. I’ll call him straightaway. Heil…”

Pause. And then, in sincere confusion:

“What do we say from now on?”

When Buback dropped in at his Czech office to pick up his hat and raincoat, Beran turned to Morava in surprise.

“Could I have been wrong? What could interest him more than the situation in this building? Not the case, certainly? Keep his nose to the grindstone; it’d be damned awkward having him around here when we have our own collaborators to watch. Best of luck, but if things heat up in the meantime, back to me on the double!”

He dismissed Morava without further explanation, wordlessly squeezing both his shoulders.

On the way to Plze, Buback informed Morava — as if nothing had happened in the meanwhile — about everything he had learned since yesterday.

“Fve had a couple of cases in my career where we uncovered what could be termed a ritual. The perpetrators picked a ceremonial method of killing, out of a conviction that they were acting in a higher interest. This is clearly Rypl’s case; he became his mother’s instrument of revenge. Maybe Rypl believes he’s ridding the world of trash, and that’s why he’s not a depressive maniac, the sort that give themselves away. His coworkers and neighbors in the building described him as quite a pleasant person. Most of those women opened their doors to him trustingly. His shy inconspicuousness and serious demeanor will no doubt continue to cover his tracks.”

They were in Plze just after noon and began by combing Rypl’s apartment again, looking for a portrait better than the five-year-old photo from his identity card application. After his mother’s death he had evidently had no one to take pictures for; they found absolutely nothing.

Then Morava assembled the entire theater staff and had them rack their brains. In vain. No, Rypl hadn’t gone to parties, when they were still permitted, nor had he gone on staff days out; no one had ever made up a staff photo album, or taken pictures at meetings, certainly not!

Buback spoke into the silence that followed.

“Was he ever in a performance?”

“No!” The manager dismissed this idea. “After all, he was a stoker and a jani — Wait a minute!”

He headed for the program archives, but before he had plowed through them the others remembered as well: To earn some extra money, Rypl had played a walk-on role as a servant just before the Czech theaters had been closed. A photo was found; it was sharp and those present agreed that it captured Rypl’s current likeness quite faithfully.

Two hours later, Plze policemen had spread out across the city with photos reproduced by the local criminal section. Working from a plan they drew up quickly with Morava, they covered the various crucial points at which the suspect could have been spotted. Meanwhile, the Werkschutz log at the theater door showed that on the days murders were committed this year, Rypl had been either on Vácation or supposedly running errands, but he always left and returned at times corresponding to train arrivals and departures.

“Why not yesterday?” Morava racked his brains. “Or did he come back and was warned? How? By whom?”

Buback was comparing the times as well.

“The ice,” he guessed. “He saw them carrying out the ice and figured they’d find the hearts.”

An hour later the supposition was confirmed by the conductor from the tram that had passed the theater yesterday. A bit later they had two witnesses, who recognized the picture: It was the man with nerves of steel, who sat through a bomb raid in the train without putting down his newspaper. Finally the railway ticket agent on the evening shift confirmed that a traveler he had previously seen only in the morning had yesterday quite exceptionally bought a ticket on the last train to Prague.

“So, back again,” Morava ordered. “The needle has returned to the haystack.”

“To Bartolomjská?” Litera asked.

“No, home.”

He realized two pairs of eyes were fixed on him, and for a moment despair overwhelmed him as he thought of the other half of his body and soul freezing in one of Pathology’s sliding drawers. Then awareness of his obligation resurfaced and sheathed him in its armor, protecting him from hurtful memories and thoughts. He checked that he had his old keys and specified: “Back to the dormitory.”

They rode back silently and swiftly. Their side of the road was empty, while an uninterrupted column of military vehicles dappled generously with staff cars and moving vans rolled westward toward them from Prague.

The yellowed centers of the blue-painted headlights passed by Morava, as indolent as the eyes of giant cats.

Judges!” Grete snorted contemptuously. “They judged humanity, but didn’t quite manage to hang all of it, so now they’re fleeing its revenge. Your neighbor, for instance, took to his heels as soon as it got dark, like a criminal. So, downstairs to his stores, love; we’ve drunk our reserves and I’m thirsty.”

“I don’t have the keys,” Buback responded confusedly.

“And don’t tell me: You’re a man of the law! Except this isn’t robbery; it was all stolen goods to begin with. Doesn’t matter, I’ll go myself. These might be the last treats we get.”

In the end, of course, he accompanied her down and broke the backdoor window with his elbow. Then they reached in and turned the key from inside. The open, half-empty cupboards and half-full drawers bore witness to a hasty departure. The judge either had not been a drinker or had taken the remaining alcohol with him. However, they found unbelievable riches in the icebox and the pantry: a hunk of Swiss Emmenthal, a slab of bacon, sardines, and nuts. Behind the teapot they finally discovered a bottle of English rum and two packs of American cigarettes. Buback shook his head. What a mockery of their insistence that all right-thinking Germans should hate the products of enemy civilizations!

They made themselves some grog with the rum and hot water, and their tension slackened; after the second glass they were pleasantly relaxed.

“Love,” she said, returning to her theme, “how long do you intend to stay here on this Titanic? Everyone’s already in the lifeboats.”

“Not everyone. A couple of people think once you’ve made your bed you should lie in it.”

“What bed did you make,” she flared at him. “You hunted criminals and murderers.”

“Wasn’t it you who pointed out that I let the biggest ones go unpunished? You were right; I even applauded them! Just last year I ruined my last visit with Hilde in an argument where I took the Führer’s side against her.”

She grinned bitterly.

“I’m a fine one to lecture you. I fought my battles in the bedroom. Buback, how could an entire nation fall so far so fast?”

“An epidemic of obedience. The greatest scourge of mankind. A couple of people think up a recipe for a happy future and shout it so loud and long that all the lost souls take up the cause. The careerists follow. And suddenly they’re a force that no longer clamors and offers; instead they demand and direct. Disobedience is punished, obedience rewarded: An easy choice for the average person.”

“And then comes the bill.”

“Yes. And once again it’s time to pay.”

“But haven’t the two of us paid enough, love? Don’t we have the right to get off the boat? Except it’s harder for you than for me, I guess; the military police are waiting for you.”

“That’s not the issue___What bothers me more is that suddenly I

don’t know what honor is and what’s disgrace.”

“Can we stop the riddles? I’m not in the mood just now.”

“Schörner intends to turn Prague into a fortress.”

“Then it’s high time to turn tail like the jackass downstairs. We both know what happens to fortresses. And you were assigned here; why can’t you go back?”

“To where?”

“For God’s sake,” she snapped, “couldn’t you think of something and arrange it?”

“Grete, you’ve had this German guilt far longer and harder than I have. Maybe I can mitigate it.”

“You!”

“I was born in Prague. And it’s the last city in central Europe whose beauty is still intact.”

“And you’re going to save it!”

“Calm down! Listen to me. I’m working with the Czechs, after all. I could warn them in time.”

She stopped short. Her aggressiveness ceased; the thought intrigued her.

“So do it.”

It’s not real till you say it, he chanted to himself for the last time, but now there was no way out.

“No matter what language you speak, that’s called treason, Grete.”

“Aha… and who are you betraying?”

“Well…”

Now he stopped short.

“Your homeland, maybe,” she snapped. “That lunatic and his henchmen betrayed it a long time ago. Their secret weapon was a con game for the softheaded from day one, and you’ll excuse me, but they’ve made a fuckup of the war — how long do you intend to keep this up, Buback?”

He felt awkward, but couldn’t not say it.

“I took an oath.”

“Loyalty to Führer and the Reich, right? But he’s stone dead and the Reich’s practically fallen apart. Anything else you’d like to die for? Or anyone? Maybe you’d care to show your devotion to the Nibelun-gen, to have the honor of falling in battle for Schörner and Meckerle? Now that’s what I call a disgrace! Disgrace? Try stupidity!”

She poured herself a nearly full glass of rum and topped it off with boiling water.

“If you think you can prevent those sons of bitches from destroying this city too, then you should tell this Morava of yours what you know; you made him out to be a decent person, and he looks it, but there’s got to be some give-and-take!”

He did not understand. She bristled again.

“Do you need me to point out the obvious? We’re in a lion’s den. All Prague knows this is the German quarter, and believe me, the lions will come — excuse me, did I say lions? More like hyenas! — as soon as they sense Germany is flat on its back. And for them you’re Gestapo and I’m a Kraut whore; there’ll be no mercy for us. My love, why leave me hanging here? Do you want me to end up like those widows?”

He was shocked by the thought.

“Why would you—?”

“The murderers’ holiday is already starting, love. They’re flying in, converging on the feast like bugs on a lamp; the killing is never better than when your nation has its moment in the spotlight, and Germany is proof of it.” Then she spoke calmly and practically, as he’d never heard her before.

“I’m a silly woman and can’t understand how a man of your position can and should act in this situation. But I’m depending on you to find a way to save us both in time. At the very least your Czechs owe me something.”

As if reading his furtive thought, she continued.

“It was fate’s doing, not mine, that she died; her death isn’t on my conscience, nor should it be on yours. Good night.”

She suddenly rose and headed for the bathroom.

“I want to hold you,” he said.

“Not today. Your weakness is catching. I need your strength, so I’ll have to hold off. I’d rather go home, but he might be there, so let me stay, but pretend I’m not here.”

He bounced up so quickly that he was able to block her way.

“Grete! Everyone has the right to weak moments. And that’s what the other person is—”

“Don’t count on it,” she said brusquely. “I have to be strong when I’m alone. When we’re together, it’s your job. That’s why I love you.”

Get up, Jan!” Jitka said. “Enough sleep; time to go to work.” He could sense the touch of her face, which had moved next to his, but he did not want to open his eyes; those morning visits with her in the unknown reaches of sleep were now the most important moments of his life. He had no idea how he could have ever woken up alone and spent whole days without knowing they would fall asleep that night together. “Jan,” Jitka called again, “time to get up, beloved; today’s a big day for you!” He pretended he was sound asleep, so she would use her tender wiles, brushing lips against lips and blowing on his closed eyelids. Instead, she said despairingly, “Jan, enough already; go find that monster — he did kill me, you know!”

He blinked. On the night table was a daily calendar, frozen in time at February 14. The woman he had escorted home and stayed with ever since was dead, and he was hugging his mother’s old featherbed in his dormitory room near Number Four. He stood up, so as to be entirely awake before hopelessness hit, did a couple of stretches, and let the cold shower pound into him. By the time he had finished brewing his mother’s rose-hip tea, his defensive armor had closed around him again, impervious to thoughts of the body in the dark icebox.

He was in her service and had to fulfill the task she had set him; then he’d see what happened.

He got only Matlak and Jetel for his plan and was satisfied. He didn’t see Beran or even look for him. Most of his colleagues, who would normally have been around, were absent. Even a simpleton could tell that the brain stem of the Czech police was securing itself against the danger of another attack.

He realized that he had not seen a single German uniform on his way over. He had seen the film The Invisible Man several times before the war, and it always gave him goose bumps. The Germans, hidden behind the walls of former schools, universities, dormitories, and hotels now serving as barracks and offices, were suddenly more malevolent than they had been in full view. It reminded him of the stony plain above his village, where what appeared to be an innocent heap of brushwood would in the blink of an eye become a tangle of attacking vipers. Prague now seemed much the same way.

He therefore agreed at once when Buback offered to come along; the German could vouch for them in any confrontations with his countrymen.

The four of them formed a chain as each train arrived from Plze, and questioned all the passengers. Most knew each other by sight from traveling to and from work. No one knew the man in the policemen’s photograph.

Between trains Morava sat on a bench beneach the roof of the first platform and stared straight ahead. The others left him alone, and he tried to distract himself by fixing his thoughts on the insignificant. He calculated the length and height of the buildings opposite, counted the crossties in his vision, concentratedly followed the crooked flight path of one of the birds in a flock circling above the station.

At noon the others brought him bread with some kind of spread, in the evening a warm potato pancake; after the last train they took him off to sleep and brought him back before the first one the next morning. All of this he sensed as if in a dream, one he left only when another train arrived from Plze. And no one, not one passenger, recognized that face.

“It’s the same people as yesterday,” Matlák said near evening.

Morava could see that himself. Rumors of the hunt for the widow killer had spread. When they saw the four men with photographs, the passengers would shake their heads or hands, and the men were stung by the first sharp retorts: Why were they still hanging around doing nothing? By now even that killer must know where they were. But Morava never raised an eyebrow or doubted his decision. The first thing Beran had taught him was patience.

That evening it paid off.

It was the novice Jetel who excitedly brought over an older man returning from his shift at the Beroun locomotive depot. Yes, he confirmed, he remembered the man well; on Sunday he had seen him waiting for the night tram with his coworker Karel Malina. He himself had waited behind a tree, because Malina was a well-known motor mouth. He’d been glad enough to be rid of him on the train; Malina had gone to look for matches and never came back. At the last moment, the railway worker had boarded the rear car of the tram and dozed all the way to the last stop. No, he didn’t know where Malina lived; surely the police could find out?

Malina’s other potential acquaintances had long since left the station. The only thing left to do today was follow up the lead. There were eleven Karel Malinas in Prague. When Morava began to plot a route for visiting them, Buback raised his first objection.

“It’s quite late and we could start a panic. They’ll think it’s the Gestapo.”

He stared in surprise at the German.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re right, thanks. Good night.”

In his room, it seemed he barely closed and opened his eyes only to find it was morning. He broke through the horrible moment of awakening when she died for him again, and set off on the trail of her murderer. As a good morning, Matlák and Jetel announced that only the German newspapers had published Rypl’s picture. The Czech papers had objected, saying that the Gestapo had used this method a few times already to try to catch Resistance workers; they could not risk taking the Germans’ bait in the eleventh hour.

As they left, Morava noticed a further gesture from Buback: he let the lanky Matlák have the front seat instead of himself, so he would not be cramped in the back of the car. Matlák took advantage of the language barrier to make a biting comment in Czech. “So they’ve finally decided they have enough ’living space’.”

At the depot they easily obtained Malina’s Prague address. Alarmingly, the repairman had not shown up for work yesterday or today, and had not notified them why. The personnel department clerk added that, sadly enough, this was a common occurrence these days; people find a thousand excuses, and this was probably just the beginning.

For Buback’s sake Morava conducted the conversation in German, and the clerk in his shirtsleeves suddenly wagged his finger at the liaison officer, like an old-fashioned teacher lecturing an unruly pupil.

“You promised Europe order, and you leave behind havoc and anarchy!”

Buback knew the four Czechs were waiting to see what he would say to this bold reproach.

He looked briefly from one face to the next, ending with the clerk’s.

“If an individual can apologize for a whole nation, then I hereby do so.”

No one said anything to that, and he was glad when Morava gave the order to leave. On the way back to the car he overheard another of Matlák’s sotto voce comments to Jetel.

“Is he that decent or just chicken?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s all right.”

“Don’t overestimate your bare hands.”

“They’re not bare.”

“What do you mean…?”

Now Jetel grinned as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I would have known!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PISTOL.

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

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

I’LL BE A SOLDIER!

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

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

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

I HAVE IT!

AND I WANT TO BE MYSELF!

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

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

That taste suddenly resurfaced after almost twenty years, but by then he was guided BY THE PICTURE. It had captivated him so completely in the country church that he had remained there largely for its sake.When he left, he had to take it with him, since he knew it was the PROTOTYPE.

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

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

So NEXT TIME!

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

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

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

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

“Somewhere in Tyrolia.”

“And there?”

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

“They said that!”

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

“And what does it really mean?”

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

“You think.”

“Everyone thinks.”

“And what do the others want to do?”

“Go, of course! Who wants to wait till it breaks? Come on, love, we talked this through two days ago. From there it’ll be clear what to do next.”

He could see in the distance that bridge blown off its foundations, hanging deceptively in the air.

“Yes. It’s coming soon. The only question is who’ll start it.”

“Exactly.”

She fell silent and looked inquisitively and inquiringly at him. He gathered his strength.

“I hope you’ll go,” he said.

“You want me to?”

“Yes.”

“Ah… that’s interesting.”

“Why so?”

“You mentioned something a while back about loving me.”

“Yes!”

“So that’s no longer the case?”

He could not let her get away with that.

“If I love you, how can I want you to stay? I want you to live, I want to have a reason to survive this. Once the battle starts, I could probably find you a hiding place, but I could hardly stay with you.”

“I know,” she said.

“Well, then.”

He felt the emptiness begin to open inside him, but kept his face and voice expressionless, so as not to evoke her sympathy. But why? Why not admit that without her he would be alone with the war, and his life would lose all meaning? Or should he give up this messianic complex of personal guilt and go with her? She was right: he was alone at work; he could issue his own marching orders.

“So you love me,” she said before he could speak again.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll let me leave.”

He steeled himself.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“What?”

“That you love me so much.”

He did not know what to say to this. He felt like he was slowly losing her; every word he said sounded weak or false. This was to be his punishment; could there be a worse one? His nation had visited immeasurable sorrows on the world, and he was sacrificing his personal happiness to redeem them. He wanted to know everything, quickly.

“When will it be?”

“This evening at six, suitcases packed, at the theater. Departure is precisely at seven.”

He looked perplexedly at his watch.

“But it’s eight ”

“I know,” she said. “You see, I love you too. So why should you die here alone?”

Jitka’s funeral took place the morning of Saturday, May fifth. Jan Morava had barely left the dormitory on Konviktská Street when he sensed a new mood in the air. Once again the city’s temper had completely changed. An almost awkward enthusiasm replaced the fear that had gripped it since the February air raids. Most of the German signs had disappeared. The stragglers removing the remaining few did not worry about appearances; they simply crossed out the German words with two strokes of a brush dipped in lime or paint.

This time it was the Czech police closing off the entrance to Bartolomjská Street. They looked quite exotic. For the first time in years, they wore their black helmets and officers’ belts with pistols and carried rifles. These men were clearly from another district, but they amiably waved him through without checking his documents; they must have known him from occasional contact with his office. Morava had only come in to announce that he intended to continue his search after the funeral, and was surprised when Beran told him that they would go to the cemetery together.

“I’ve made the arrangements,” he said. “I’ll just change quickly, and you should put on a uniform too; it’s important we all be seen today. And Morava,” he called after him, “pick up a pistol as well.”

For the first time in two years, since his promotion to assistant detective, he pulled his uniform down from the top shelf of the office wardrobe. The years of disuse showed. When he met the superintendent again they couldn’t help smiling. With training, Morava’s shoulders had grown, and his sleeves barely fit. Beran had lost weight in the bustle of the last few months and his shirt swam on him. Their holsters weighed them down; they kept wanting to cinch them up. The high cap with its badge crimped Morava’s head and settled on Beran’s ears. On top of this they smelled of naphthalene.

“Well, how-dee-doo!” a similarly dressed Litera summed them up. “One look at us and the Germans will pee in their pants and lay down their arms!”

That was his first and last joke for the day. They rode silently through Prague, watching the city painstakingly transform itself from a German metropolis into a Czech one, and trying not to dwell on the reason for their trip. This hysterical rush, Morava mused, was like trying to erase the traces of your own deeds, as if overnight the city could expunge— or at least will itself to forget — six years of meek acceptance too often verging on active collaboration.

The Czech activity had caught the Germans’ attention. Heavily reinforced military patrols were everywhere. Today they walked in threes or fours instead of in twos, and hand grenades with long hafts now jutted from their belts.

“Hey hey!” Litera pointed at a trio they passed underneath the railroad bridge.

The German army had always flaunted its orderliness and discipline in the occupied territories, but the cigarettes stuck in the corners of the soldiers’ mouths were a far cry from that image. For experienced warriors, apparently, Prague was already on the frontlines.

They reached the crown of the steep street alongside the Vyehrad ramparts and rumbled across the cobblestones to the church by the cemetery. There Beran surprised Morava for the second time that day.

“I got one for you, too,” he said, while Litera opened the trunk and removed two bouquets and a small wreath.

FOR JITKA FROM JAN — FOR JITKA FROM V. B. — FOR JITKA FROM EVERYONE said the ribbons. Red, white, and blue, they were the colors of the Czech flag, which until now had been strictly forbidden.

“Everyone wanted to come,” the superintendent explained, “but I’ m sure you’ll understand I couldn’t allow that, so I’m here both in a personal capacity and for them.”

Beran had arranged the simple ceremony after a short conversation with Morava on Wednesday. He had unsentimentally ordered that under no circumstances must it run late or exceed fifteen minutes. The police technician removed the decoy tablet with the name JAN MORAVA from the gravesite where the murderer had taken the star-crossed bait, and replaced it with a real one:

JITKA Modrá

The sexton and a vicar from the Evangelical Church of the Savior were waiting at the graveside. Next to them was a simple wooden coffin resting on planks. In a few sentences the vicar said a farewell for her parents and relatives, who were cut off from Prague by the front. Then he read the Lord’s Prayer, and for the first time Morava neither moved his lips nor even said it to himself.

Even now he could only think about the man he was after. How to find him now? Prague was coming to a boil, like a cauldron whose lid dances as the water threatens to spill over. The Czech newspapermen, overcome at the eleventh hour by sympathy for the Resistance, kept sanctimoniously refusing to publish the murderer’s picture. Morava had made a thousand copies of Rypl’s photograph, but only a few policemen in Prague had one, and they were already preoccupied, waiting to see whether the Germans would attack them again, this time more savagely, or whether they themselves would suddenly be forced to attack the Germans. Where could a man hide if he apparently had no relatives or friends here? And who would harbor a strange man at great risk to himself when it could still be a Gestapo trap? Unless… unless.. unless he thought he was hiding Rypl from the Germans!

Yes, if people who had called the Germans valued customers yesterday could turn about and publicly erase all the German signs today, wouldn’t someone who desperately wanted an alibi be tempted to hide a supposed… what? Maybe a persecuted patriot? But then it could be a whole family covering for him, or a whole building. Rypl wouldn’t even have to set foot outside.

In that case, the key character was this Malina. The murderer had almost certainly left the train station with him. Why should they accept the neighbor’s statement that he went to visit his mother and that there was no one in the apartment? No, he’d have it opened today on orders. .. He almost turned to Litera so as to be off without delay, when a movement disrupted his thoughts.

Four men in well-worn dark clothes skillfully tightened and then loosened the straps. The coffin began to descend into the grave he had designed himself and adorned with his own name, only to place his wife and unborn child into it. Just at that moment Jitka seemed to be physically present by him; he could see the shyness of her brown eyes beneath their lids, smell the country milkiness of her skin, feel her fingers, knuckles, elbows, sides, breasts.

For a moment that numb silence in his soul threatened to rip wide open; he nearly sank to his knees and wept bitterly, almost jumped into the pit to huddle on the wooden lid. He felt someone’s palm clasp his arm. It was Beran, guiding him to the lip of the grave. Together they threw a handful of earth on the coffin. And afterward, as he strode off down the grave-lined path toward the car, he heard a quiet voice behind him.

“Good work, Morava!”

Beran continued in the vehicle from the front seat.

“Today you’ll have to interrupt your investigation and be my personal adjutant for a day. I’ve become a commander in my old age. The Germans were right to hang that bogeyman Buback around our necks, you know.”

“Why didn’t you even hint to me that—”

“You’re not made for deception, or so I felt. I wanted you to keep your credibility. Jitka was all I needed.”

“She knew?”

“Of course. She was my right-hand man. I had to order her not to breathe a word to you until I gave permission.”

Grief wrung Jan Morava’s heart again; he’d barely begun to know the girl now buried deep in the stony soil.

“Live in the future, my good friend,” Beran said knowingly. “Your life is only beginning, even though you may think it’s already ended. May she have a long life inside you. Do you know how to use it?”

With no transition he nodded at Morava’s holster and pistol.

“No,” the younger man answered, complying with the change of subject. “I started right when Rajner lowered the number of employees approved to carry weapons.”

“Aha. Well, now we’re raising it again. Take it out of the holster and look straight ahead.”

He obeyed and examined the piece of steel as if it were an unfamiliar animal. Beran leaned over from the front seat, took the weapon and demonstrated.

“This is how you remove and replace the magazine. This is how you take the safety off and put it on. We won’t take it apart now. And then you just squeeze this. Try it.”

Morava obediently slid the magazine out and back in, flipped the safety off and then squeezed the trigger.

A deafening shot rang out and the interior of the vehicle filled with acrid dust.

Litera, shaken, careened onto the fortunately deserted sidewalk.

They stopped.

Morava blushed and stared at the upholstery of the front seat. A small black hole had appeared in it.

Beran bent over and picked up the cartridge, which had flown off to one side and rebounded to land on the floor.

“That was my stupid mistake,” he finally said. “At least you won’t forget that there’s one in the barrel. And never to point it at people. Ugh, what a fright!”

Love,” Grete said, “you’re going I don’t know where, and all I can do is cross my fingers for you. But when you’re doing I don’t know what, don’t forget there’s someone waiting for you who needs you. Just so you’ll remember to stay alive and not go belly-up.”

First Buback needed to stop at the central office. There he checked that his full powers were still in force; apparently Schörner’s star was still at its zenith. However, the commanders’ assembly, which had seemed so promising, was unlike anything he had ever seen before in that building. All the former masters of the world (as Grete had nicknamed them) and their flunkies were nervously chain-smoking and acting slightly demented. The colonel was still in a meeting at the Castle with K. H. Frank. The two of them were trying to contact Fleet Admiral Dönitz; as the Führer’s replacement, Dönitz would give them clear instructions on the course of the war and would resolve the jurisdictional dispute in the Protectorate, where overnight Mitte’s army seemed to have seized control. Buback heard the wildest rumors around him, and his head spun: which should he take seriously and pass on to the Czechs, if he truly wanted to make a difference? Finally Meckerle’s aide-de-camp entered.

“Achtung! Der Gruppenfuhrer!”

Everyone flew to their feet; there were a few seconds of tension— which lieutenant general had Berlin dispatched here from the remainders of the Reich? — and then surprise. In marched the old familiar colonel.

For the first time there was no Heil Hitler. Meckerle motioned them to sit with a sharp flap of his hand and curtly advised them that Dönitz himself had just promoted him. Then he laid out in just five minutes what Buback needed to know. Measures for a military occupation of Prague were to be implemented immediately. At noon, units stationed around the city would begin to secure strategic points, and that night the army vanguard would arrive. The latter would crush any resistance and secure the city, so that elite divisions and troops could use it as a transit point before the Russian pincers closed in on them from the north and south. They had chosen a time when employees of large firms would be headed homeward for Sunday, and most Czechs would be busy in their gardens. General Vlasov’s corps of former Russian war prisoners was pressing toward the capital of the Protectorate, and this complicated the situation even further. The Russians all faced charges of high treason at home, and they were wreaking havoc with the Germans’ plans by trying to break through to the advancing American army ahead of the Soviets.

“This will all be clarified in a new political doctrine which has just been decoded,” Meckerle finished. “It will be announced in a secret order at fourteen hundred hours. Dismissed!”

He disappeared without a good-bye. Buback, who sensed that they would be served up more fantasies and hot air that afternoon, already knew enough. Old dog or no, he could still learn a few new tricks; he would betray a regime he had sworn allegiance to, in order to uphold values that every normal, feeling person held dear.

His first reward was a dangerous surprise. While central Prague still seemed to be firmly in German hands, he met armed Czechs as soon as he turned off Národni Avenue. They were policemen, true, but their number and weaponry indicated that the Reich had not sent them here. His German caused a sharp change in their behavior.

“Hands behind your head!” said the sergeant in charge.

He obeyed and calmly looked on as they frisked him and studied his papers, which proved him to be a member of the Reich’s criminal police force with the rank of chief inspector. A moment before the Czech, Buback noticed for the first time a round stamp placed there in Bredovská Street when he took up his post: GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI PRAG.

“Gestapo!” said the commander of the security line, more in amazement than anger, but instantly Buback was among enemies. He had seen this sudden eruption of hatred in the other occupied cities he had hastily left, and knew where it would probably end. Guardians of public order, who spent years in the Germans’ pay suppressing their countrymen’s resistance, were often the first to take revenge on their old masters, either to avenge their former powerlessness or to secure their jobs under the new regime.

“Can we rough him up a bit?” asked an aggressive, pasty-faced kid.

“I’m a criminal detective and am cooperating with your colleague Morava from Number Four,” Buback said to the man who had called him Gestapo, trying not to betray any reaction to the Czech words.

“Don’t know him,” snapped the sergeant.

“He’s an assistant detective—”

“A spy!” chipped in another policeman. “He’ll tell them we have guns and they’ll send the tanks in!”

“No chance. Teplý! Votava!”

“Here!”

The new men surrounded Buback with practiced ease.

“Take him to Number Four. And if he’s lying, put him behind bars!”

“Why not just take him down to the cellar and bump him off?” the pasty face said.

Buback fixed his eyes on the sergeant’s; keep your fingers crossed, Grete, he thought superstitiously.

“I need to see Superintendent Beran,” he requested firmly. “I’m working with him.”

This name made an impact. He could see that they all knew it.

“Take him over there,” the sergeant ordered the two men, who had meanwhile locked elbows with Buback. “Make sure nothing happens to him until they find the superintendent. And if he’s feeding us a line, then do what you want with him.”

There were more surprises in store for Morava. The car did not return to the police complex on Bartolomjská. Instead, Litera swung off Na Pertýn Street into Husova Street and from there into a long, dark alleyway. They alighted in a small courtyard beneath the sign COLLIERY; the German equivalent was, of course, freshly painted out. A couple of grubby men smoking on overturned tubs greeted Beran like an old friend.

“Josef, you wait here,” the superintendent said to Litera. First names? With his driver? Suddenly Morava’s familiar world seemed utterly foreign.

“And you’re with me,” Beran called out to him.

They entered an office where two policemen sat with rifles and cartridge pouches. The men hastily stood, but Beran nodded for them to sit and headed down into the basement. From the firm’s giant wood and coal storerooms they slipped through a newly made hole in the wall into a small cellar for tenants. Wooden crosspieces divided the area into cells; the last one was open and empty, and an opening at the back led into the neighboring building.

In the next cellar, several policemen were unpacking weapons and ammunition from crates, carefully cleaning the rifles and standing them in rows against the walls, and placing the boxed cartridges and hand grenades on boards laid across sawhorses. The men took no notice of the arrivals, and Beran strode past them without looking around. Morava’s surprise grew. Was there another Prague, another police force, another Beran he knew nothing about?

Apparently so, for suddenly they were in an extensive vault with a Gothic ceiling, full of people in police uniforms and civilian garb; there must have been thirty of them in various corners and from various divisions. Morava recognized the faces of his department’s technicians. At the sight of the superintendent their conversations gradually trailed off, and in a few seconds silence had descended.

“How does it work?” Beran asked.

“So far we’ve only tried gramophone music,” volunteered Veselý, who on the surface ran the telephone and telegraph exchanges, pointing at an antique machine with a horn, “but they’ve confirmed that it comes out all over Prague. Now they’re checking the backup stations in Vinohrady and Nusle; once they’re done, we can start whenever we want.”

“Good work,” said Beran, “very good. Is Brunát here?”

“Hej!” affirmed the bearded sixtyish superintendent of the transit police, in the one word of Slovak left him after his prewar service in Slovakia. He had just appeared through a tunnel from the basement opposite. “Here’s the council’s resolution.”

Morava realized that a system of tunnels and escape routes must have been prepared in all the police buildings on Bartolomjská.

Beran read over the paper and then addressed the crowd in a steely voice.

“Colleagues, up till now we have introduced you into Resistance activities gradually and sparingly, so as not to needlessly threaten our conspiracy. All of you here enjoy my confidence and that of my friend Brunát, and we have now pledged our loyalty to a new political organization: the Czech National Council, which is the temporary representative of the Czechoslovak government, located for the moment in liberated Koice. In accordance with its resolution, I hereby absolve you of all obligations arising from professional oaths taken to the occupiers. The Czech police is the best organized and best armed civilian group — albeit modestly so — and has therefore been entrusted with a crucial task: to ensure the transfer of power with as few casualties as possible, protecting our people and our town. Now that peace is in sight, we cannot let Prague meet the fate of Europe’s other cities, a fate it has so far been spared. We are not to mount a headstrong, all-out attack — we don’t have the resources for it — but to engage in strategic and principled confrontation backed by careful use of force. There are as many possible variations as moves in a chess game; therefore we have decided not to commit ourselves to any in advance, and instead to retain flexibility of planning and reaction. The first announcement inaugurating our regular city radio broadcasts“—here he waved the paper in the air—“contains an appeal for calm, order, and reason that will be welcomed by the Germans. However, word combinations in the text contain hidden instructions to our neighborhood offices and primary Resistance groups, who will begin the immediate, unobtrusive isolation of German units and offices located directly in the capital.

Gentlemen, good luck with your instructions and I’ll see you at thirteen hundred hours, when we begin.”

He gave the exact time, and thirty men synchronized their watches.

“Brunát, Morava,” the superintendent called, and when both had come over he added in a low voice, “time for the three of us to give Rajner what he’s got coming.”

“You have an urgent visitor,” Brunát informed him.

“Who?”

“Your German inspector is here with an escort.”

“Gestapo?” Beran said warily.

“No need to worry. Our men brought him in. They assumed he was Gestapo; only the fact that he asked for you saved him.”

“What does he want?”

“To speak with you or Morava; he supposedly has news that can’t wait.”

“When did he arrive?”

“Not fifteen minutes ago.”

“Him first, then,” the superintendent said, picking up the pace. “Where is he?”

“You assigned him an office, didn’t you?”

A thousand arrests made, but his first time arrested! Buback grinned, but did not feel like laughing. He sat at his old, familiar desk, its surface covered with carefully arranged reports on the widow killer. The one very basic difference was that now the key, turned twice in the lock for extra security, was in the far side of the keyhole.

He had no one to call, but tried the telephone anyway. Of course they had disconnected it; they weren’t amateurs. At least he felt safer here than he had with those policemen, whose patriotism had begun to affect their judgment.

The Rubicon! Caesar’s fateful river came suddenly to mind. Now Buback was about to cross his own, and he knew that nothing would be the same afterward. He’d gone too far to stop or turn back, though, so he simply cleared his mind and waited. Soon thereafter, the key turned in the lock and the superintendent and his assistant entered. With them was an unfamiliar man who reminded him of an old but still powerful lion.

“Good morning,” Beran said in the same tone he had always used. “I heard you wanted to speak with us. This is my colleague Brunát; he and I have been temporarily entrusted with running the Czech police.”

“Nice to meet you,” said the lion, amiably baring his formidable teeth. “I might add that the former commissioner doesn’t yet know of his good fortune.”

Thus inspired and emboldened, Buback stepped out and over the imaginary river.

“Gentlemen, you may think I’m a coward betraying his own people out of fear, but I’d rather you believe that than prolong this war any longer and multiply its victims. Anyway, you, Mr. Morava, said you were betting there were Germans who would try to stop the worst from happening.”

“That’s right,” the young Czech affirmed.

Buback reeled off Meckerle’s information almost word for word. As he did so he felt his tension slacken, and as he finished, a feeling of calm settled on him. It was behind him, and he was past it. For the first time in years — maybe for the first time in his life — he was at peace, as both a German and a human, because he had suppressed his Germanity for humanity’s sake.

Both older men exchanged a long glance.

“I’ll inform the council immediately,” the second said and thereupon vanished.

“We’re very grateful to you, Mr. Buback,” Beran said, “and personally I think it took great courage. Will you stay in contact with us?”

“I’ll try. My assignment to cooperate with Mr. Morava is still in force. Of course, it’s linked with another task: ascertaining the plans of the Czech police.”

“I can’t imagine you discovered much.”

He decided to be forthright.

“No, not much.”

“I simplified your job by not telling Mr. Morava.”

Buback felt glad that at least he’d been right about the kid.

“I did not go to the funeral of Mr. Morava’s wife,” he said, “because today my participation would have seemed inappropriate in the extreme. However, his behavior and hers as well contributed to a change in my views, and led my companion and me to try to redeem at least some small part of Germany’s guilt. I’d like to continue, as long as a higher power doesn’t interfere to prevent it.”

“Herr Oberkriminalrat…,” Beran said, weighing every word, “risk for risk. I’ll give you a pass to confirm your cooperation with us in the investigation. We’ll be grateful for any further news. What can we do for you?”

He had understood Grete’s “give-and-take.”

“How about assistance for someone else who helped you at great personal risk?”

“You mean Mrs. Baumann?”

“Yes. Her theater has gone to American territory, but she refused to leave — on my account. At the moment she’s in my apartment in the neighborhood they call Little Berlin. I’m afraid what might happen to her there once emotions start to run high.”

“I’d be worried too.” Beran nodded glumly. “And we’re certainly in her debt. You can take her in our car, if you can manage your own people on the way. But where will you go?”

“That I don’t know,” Buback confessed. “Our homes and families are gone.”

He realized he was asking them for the impossible. Grete and he, like all Germans, were at the mercy of fate.

The superintendent seemed to feel the same way. At a loss for words, he glanced over at his adjutant.

The young man drew a key from his pocket.

“She’ll recognize it,” he told Buback. “It’s the key to the house. I don’t know if she can stand the idea; I moved out rather than go back. If she can, then take her there. And stay there yourself, if you like. The owners won’t come back till the front’s passed through; until then, only the two of us will know you’re there. And we’ll keep looking for a way out.”

Buback was deeply moved. How would he have acted if their roles were reversed, he wondered. The only proper way to thank them, he felt, was to reveal his final lie.

“Gentlemen, I have a secret advantage over you; it’s the reason I was put here. But your generosity compels me to give it up.” Then, finally, he broke into their common native tongue. “Umím esky — I speak Czech. Please forgive me!“

The commissioner’s office was just around the corner, so Beran, Brunát, and Morava walked over, but at times it was more like elbowing through a crowd. Bartolomjská Street was swarming with officers, all hurrying to and fro and saluting the two police chiefs. Morava kept shaking his head until the superintendent asked him why.

“All those cops running off at the mouth with Buback around ”

“Whatever he heard, he heard. In the end he did what he did. Maybe hearing those rumors helped.”

“The whole time he was deceiving us ”

“A military stratagem. And beautifully executed, I have to admit. I never even suspected.”

“Except you made sure I didn’t know anything.”

“Except for that,” Beran conceded with a smile.

Then they plunged into the corner building. The secretary transmitted their request for an interview. They waited silently for a few minutes; this was Rajner’s way of demonstrating his rank. Once admitted, they greeted him respectfully, took their seats, and were asked the reason for the audience. Only then did Beran request that the police commissioner formally step down.

Everything went so tactfully and the superintendent phrased his request so politely that at first Rajner completely missed its significance. Once he had heard it for the second time, his forehead broke out in sweat.

“Who… whom did… what were you…,” he stammered.

Morava knew the others had caught that whiff of fear as well.

“I’m authorized by the Czech National Council,” Beran explained to him matter-of-factly. “Brunát and I have been temporarily named to your post, with the responsibilities divided between us.”

Rajner tried to object.

“I don’t even know this council of yours!”

“It’s a new organ appointed by the legal government of the reconstituted Czechoslovak Republic — which you once swore allegiance to.”

“And the Germans… Did they agree to this?”

“When they learn about it, they’ll probably welcome it. At least they’ll have someone to negotiate a capitulation with.”

“But gentlemen…” Rajner’s voice almost cracked into a falsetto. “They have a huge advantage in numbers and strength! They’ll turn Prague to dust and ashes; is that what you want?”

“Actually,” Brunát said, stepping into the fray, “that’s what we’re trying to prevent. First of all, we can offer them an orderly retreat from the city. We’ll make sure they’re not attacked, and that it’s not attractive for them to attack. But just in case, we’ve taken measures. So you’d better get over to the interim internment wing, where we’ll be keeping collaborators until the courts can get to them.”

The door flew open and Rajner’s secretary ran in.

“Mr. Commissioner, sir! Turn on the radio!”

She did not notice the mood in the room at all and ran around the table to turn on the huge superheterodyne herself. The magic green eye was soon fully open and an excited voice filled the room, accompanied by distant gunfire.

“.. are murdering our people! I repeat: We call on the Czech police and all former soldiers, come immediately to the aid of the Czech radio; the Germans here are murdering our people! I repeat…”

“Morava!” Beran bellowed. “Captain Sucharda’s team is waiting at the garage. Go with them; you can translate and serve as my representative. Try for a truce, but first and foremost save those people and the studios. We won’t get all the city loudspeakers working; we’ll have to blanket Bohemia with our broadcasts. And Morava!” he called after him through the door. “Have them form up and send out more teams. If there aren’t enough cars, they can commandeer trams!”

The last thing Morava saw as he closed the door was Rajner’s frozen, waxy face.

He got to Sucharda in three minutes, and shortly thereafter fifteen men with carbines were jumping into the bed of a small truck driven by the garage manager, Tetera. Morava had to admit that once they had fastened their helmets beneath their chins, they looked quite imposing. He squeezed into the cabin behind Sucharda, and the vehicle pulled out of the courtyard and turned right. Through the open windows they heard dull thuds and curses; a few of the men in back must have fallen over like bowling pins.

Národni Avenue had changed. Any building not already flying Czech flags was unfurling them from the windows. For six long years under the Nazis, displaying red, white, and blue together had constituted a serious offense; where, Morava wondered, had they hidden those mountains of material? Crowds of people coursed along the sidewalks as if it were a national holiday, with tricolors in their lapels; who had made them so quickly? Groups sang; snatches of the former republic’s national anthem flew by. The truck full of armed Czech policemen was warmly greeted all along its path. The men up top were infected by the general enthusiasm and shouted back that classic Czech greeting from a generation before, when they had first shaken off the Hapsburgs.

“Nazdaaaaaaaar!”

Rypl might be waving to us too, Morava thought, but immediately turned his attention to the captain. Sucharda had been in constant telephone contact with colleagues who were unobtrusively monitoring the numbers of German guards at the radio station. At around eleven-thirty, however, a motorcycle detachment of SS forces sneaked into the courtyard so quietly that they managed to occupy the first through third floors of the building where the announcers’ offices and the technical equipment were located. Fortunately, Sucharda smirked, some clever fellow had hit on the idea of unscrewing all the directional signs and nameplates from doors, so the Germans were wandering around like Hansel and Gretel in the Black Forest.

“We’ve got to get past them and block off the broadcasting studios.”

When they turned onto Wenceslas Square it was as if they were suddenly in another time. The long, wide street was quiet and empty. They spotted the reason instantly. Starting at the intersection with Jindiká Street and Vodikova Street, a half dozen firing posts zigzagged up the square toward the National Museum, each manned by a trio of Wehrmacht soldiers. One lay on the pavement gripping the handle of a heavy machine gun, the second knelt next to him with the ammunition belt, and the third stood ready to give orders to shoot.

The garage manager slowed down.

“Should I turn around?” he asked huskily.

A tense silence descended on the back of the truck.

“Sir, the rifles—”

Morava did not need to finish. Sucharda was already bawling an order through the tiny window into the truck bed.

“Hide your guns!”

A prolonged clattering noise indicated that the carbines had landed on the floor.

“Halt!”

The truck hovered in the middle of the intersection about thirty yards from the first machine gunners’ nest. Its leader, an older German lieutenant and a reservist, by the look of it, had one hand threateningly raised. The police captain nudged Morava out of the truck with his shoulder so he himself could exit, and set off toward him. He saluted as he walked and barked over his shoulder at his guide.

“Translate for me! The security division of the Czech police asks permission to proceed through to assist in defending the radio building.”

The German was tremendously nervous; they could feel his isolation, a foreigner in the heart of an enemy city. Morava added pleadingly: “Let us through, sir; we want as many people as possible to survive this war. Not just ours; yours too!”

He could see the same wish in the eyes of both young gunners, and the lieutenant seemed to sense this; it probably matched what he was hoping as well.

“Weiterfahren!” he ordered them onward a bit louder than necessary, and cupped his hands to his mouth to inform the other stations.

“Let the Czech police through!”

Sucharda waved, and the truck moved forward.

“Don’t stop!” the captain warned the garage manager. He and Morava each jumped on the cabin step and held on by the window.

“Danke, Herr Leutnant. Viel Glück!” Morava wished him.

He hoped the German wouldn’t decide to examine the truck more carefully; the small arsenal might seem provocative.

They passed the remaining gunners’ nests at a leisurely pace, so as not to provoke a panicked reaction; at any point they could have been mown down. However, Morava felt more like an officer reviewing the anxious, frightened German troops, who were clearly reluctant to throw away their lives on the brink of peace. The policemen rolled uphill past them and heard the noise of battle.

“Morava!” Sucharda shouted at him across the roof of the cabin. “Let’s try the same number again. Men!” He called to the back of the truck. “Coats off, and wrap your rifles in them; don’t let the Germans see them till they have to.”

It was a bizarre sight: Fifteen men in helmets removing their long coats and fighting centrifugal force as the truck took the curve past the museum. Behind the concrete wall above the Vinohrady tunnel a couple of crouching men gave them a warning sign, but the excitable Tetera hit the gas instead. At Sucharda’s “Stop!” he braked sharply in front of the main entrance to the radio building, which was covered in rolls of barbed wire.

“Morava, let’s go! Men, get down!”

Behind him he could hear the thuds, snorts, and wheezes of the policemen, pressing the rifles wrapped in coats to their chests; he saluted for the first time in his life at two SS men, armed to the teeth, who nearly filled the entranceway with their bodies. Had he used the correct hand? A shudder ran through him.

“Grüss Gott,” he heard himself bellow at them in a tone of voice he couldn’t stand in others. “We’re the Protectorate police reinforcements here to defend the German employees!”

Miraculously the guards stepped aside for the handful of trotting men; uniforms, even foreign ones, still had an impact, and Morava’s curt announcement had made the right impression.

The garage manager disappeared in his truck around the corner.

“Follow me!” Sucharda ordered from the front and headed across a spacious hall where Germans stood frozen in surprise, facing the staircase. “Third floor, left and to the back, where the announcers’ offices are!”

He himself stopped at the foot of the stairs and slapped his men on the backside like sheep as they ran past. One of the last ones stumbled and dropped his bundle; the carabine fell out of the man’s coat and clattered down the stairs.

A major standing right opposite Sucharda was the first to realize what had happened; he ripped his pistol from its holster.

“Scheisst doch!” he roared at the others. “Shoot! It’s an invasion!”

He fired at Sucharda at point-blank range and hit him in the forehead; the captain keeled over like a felled tree.

Jitka, Morava wondered, is this all real or is it a new dream? And if it’s real, will I see you soon in our new home? He ducked, picked up the fallen rifle, and ran after his men in a hail of bullets that buzzed past him and opened dozens of small craters in the ceiling and walls.

Potatoes were coming out his ears, but he kept eating them, because he knew:

I HAVE TO BE STRONG!

For five nights he’d slept lightly so he’d hear them coming, and now he’d take a new leap into the unknown; it was too risky to stay. So he tucked into the food like a fattened goose and listened with one ear to the murmur of the radio connecting him to the outside world. Suddenly a melody practically bowled him over. It was the famous Sokol march, the anthem of the most patriotic Czech society, which had been outlawed the first day of the German invasion. Its message flew over airwaves censored till now by the occupiers, exhorting the occupied nation to move forward “with lion’s strength on falcon’s wings.”

Before he had time to wonder, the song was interrupted, and a voice cut through the ether. Now it sounded agitated, almost like a different person from the familiar announcer who had read out the correct time just a moment before, twelve-thirty — but ONLY IN CZECH, he realized belatedly!

“We call on the Czech police and all former soldiers: Come immediately to the aid of the Czech radio! The Germans are murdering our people!”

Along with it he heard a thumping he recognized as distant gunfire. The announcer repeated the call a second and a third time before he understood.

THEY’rE CALLING ME!

His hour had come, bringing him a NEW TASK, just the way he’d known it would that night in the train. Why just punish a few lusty hussies when there was an entire GUILTY NATION out there! He’d seen the Czechs’ and Moravians’ hour of glory once already, when he was fighting the Hungarians. Now once again his time had come, freeing him from his self-imposed imprisonment. With an iron will he scarfed down the rest of the potatoes.

I’M A SOLDIER AGAIN!

He pulled on the leather coat he liked the best from the wardrobe; to his surprise it fit him (did it belong to the cuckold next door?) and the pocket would hold his pistol. With an ear to the outside door he listened to the house’s murmurings to choose the right time for his exit. Suddenly he remembered.

THE GUY!

The decent thing would be to tell him he was leaving, thank him, and give him his freedom, so he could take off the straps…. The straps! The shorter two around the guy’s ankles were from his first schoolbag, a present from HER; the longer ones, binding his arms up to the shoulders, were a memento of imonek and Báreka, two angora goats he’d loved taking out to pasture. These strips of leather were scraps from the bootmaker’s workshop next door that SHE had used to make the shopping bags she sold. Now that the SOULS were gone, the straps and his beloved knife were the only witnesses to an important stage in his life, as he stood on the threshold of an even more important one.

He entered the bathroom. The half-pint rattled as he slept; the gag interfered with his breathing.

Wasn’t it awfully strange the way that runt had found him in the train? The way he’d risked his life to hide a parachutist in his home? Maybe the half-pint had something up his sleeve; maybe only his own presence of mind had foiled the guy’s plot. He didn’t have time to think it through, and so he followed his instincts again….

Afterward he carefully cleaned his knife, wound the long straps at his sides like an outlaw’s belt, and stuck the short ones into his pockets. He closed the door noiselessly, turning the key as the bolt reached the jamb so the neighbor wouldn’t hear when it clicked shut. Once again he met no one in the building. Doubtless they were all glued to their radios, listening to the battle.

I’M GOING TO FIGHT!

There were no trams, but it wasn’t far; he alternated quick walking and slow trotting — the “Indian run,” she’d called it a long time ago. “I’ll teach you everything he should have taught you, Tony, so no one will ever know you didn’t have a father….”

From Saint Ludmila’s onward he could definitely hear gunfire. Clumps of people had positioned themselves anxiously and defiantly within reach of the buildings’ front doors. At the Vinohrady Theater he came across his first fighters: a few men, mostly around twenty-five, dressed as the historical moment had caught them, one in a tram driver’s uniform, the others in overalls or civilian clothes, wearing hats they had no place to leave. They had two hunting rifles between them and kept a respectful distance from the corner of the sloping street.

“What’s happening?” he asked them.

“The radio’s down there,” one man said excitedly.

“So?”

“There’s a side entrance. I know how to get to the studios; I’m a sound technician.”

“So what are we waiting for?”

“A Kraut’s hiding behind the garbage cans,” one of the two hunters retorted, “and he keeps firing at us.”

Rypl, called Sergeant Králik from the depths of time; bob and weave the way I taught you and take that Hungarian down. If you’ve forgotten how, you’re done for.

Just like in Komárno, he pulled out his pistol and released the safety.

“Don’t be a fool,” said the tram driver. “He got two of ours already.”

“Once I take him out,” he told them all, “follow me fast!”

He lay flat on the ground, and then, lightning-fast, he stuck his head out and pulled it back. He had not lost his talent: The picture of the street was as clear in his mind as a photo in a frame, including the two motionless bodies and three garbage cans down by the radio station. Three doorways and an alley separated him from them. He retreated in the direction he’d come, diagonally across the roadway, until he could just see the first entranceway in the cross-street. They must have thought he’d given up, but all he needed was a running start.

He worked up enough speed that he hit the alcove of the doors opposite before the German could fire. No skill, he realized gratefully. Now he’ll be aiming at the middle of the street. He waited for the man’s hand to stiffen up a bit, took a deep breath, and hurtled toward the next house on his side. A shot cracked, but too late. His ragged breathing grew calm and he readied himself for the lookout trick again. The soldier had been firing through the chink between the garbage cans, and at some point he would have left the man’s angle of vision. So? Careful… head out, then back! And now he was sure: To hit him, the soldier had to straighten up and make himself a target. Still, the German had the advantage of a rifle against a pistol, which couldn’t aim precisely at this distance.

He hesitated. Because no one was covering him, he had to risk another leap forward into the alley or rot there until they picked him off; if the Germans sent a small counteroffensive from the building it might come sooner than he thought.

MOTHER, SAVE ME!

Her response came immediately.

I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF!

He threw caution to the wind; racing out along the side of the building near the garbage cans, he deliberately squeezed the trigger, trying to hit the chink between them: one, two, three, four, shit in your pants, Kraut, and stay back there, or you might just knock me off, five, six— then he reached the life-saving alley, spitting distance from the garbage cans, and suddenly he wasn’t running but flying through the air; dropping his gun, he splayed onto the concrete like a frog. Was he hit? No. Immediately he realized what had brought him down: he had tripped over a corpse without a face. The hand grenade that had opened these gaping holes in the alley walls had probably blown it off.

Why had he left those six whores’ faces on? Shouldn’t he have cut out their likenesses as well as their hearts? It could have been his own contribution to the inspirational PICTURE. Wait… maybe what he’d just tripped over was a SIGN meant for him. He ignored the German— let his nerves jangle for a while — and rummaged in the man’s clothing. There was an identity card unscathed in the breast pocket. Tensely he unfolded it and swallowed with gratitude: The faded picture showed a middle-aged man with average features, easily interchangeable with half of mankind.

INCLUDING ME!

He shoved his own papers into the man’s pocket and repeated his new name to himself.

LUDVÍK ROUBÍNEK.

Now he turned with renewed interest to the enemy. Pressed against the alley wall closest to the German he glimpsed the corner uphill where he had started. Those chicken-shits still didn’t dare come after him. But he didn’t need them; actually, he’d rather take care of the German himself and just hoped the Kraut wouldn’t run away like the Hungarians did at Komárno.

He HAD THAT TASTE again and intended to satisfy it. He called out to his prey.

“You there!”

The air vibrated with the shots and detonations still resounding from the radio building. He shouted louder, and in German.

“Sie dort!”

No answer.

“Your men won’t help you. They’re surrounded. Give up!”

Silence, humming with the nearby battle.

“I have a grenade; I’ll count to three. Put your weapon on the trash can, or it’s all over. Don’t be a fool and you’ll live to tell the tale. One… two…”

MOTHER, HELP ME, don’t let him call my bluff.

Metal clanged against metal. A submachine gun lay on the garbage can, gently rocking on the bent top of the lid.

YOU’rE DIVINE! But what about him?

Two fiercely trembling hands appeared. Slowly a cap and then a head emerged. The haggard kid in the SS uniform might have been twenty. BUT HE’s A GERMAN, SHE said sternly. AND YOU’rE A CZECH!

Yes, yes! He raised the hand with the pistol and went as close as he could, until only the garbage can divided them. The barrel touched the gray-green cloth in the region of the heart. No, that would be too fast a death for a German pig. The soldier licked his lips, but did not move when the gun slid diagonally down to his belly.

He’d give him time.

TIME TO REPENT.

Iwas waiting till I knew it was you, love,” Grete explained; he had been banging on the bolted door, but she would not open it until he began to call her name. “No, I’m not afraid, not in the least; I’m just a bit terrified, actually. But since you wanted me to go somewhere I wouldn’t go, and I decided instead to be terrified by your side, I really can’t complain. Tell me what’s going on; suddenly the radio only speaks Czech!”

Litera had explained why as they were leaving.

“They’re fighting over it.”

“And that means…”

“Probably the beginning of the uprising. And maybe of the assault on Prague.”

“Aha. And what about us?”

“I warned the Czechs, Grete. And I want to keep it up as long as I can.

“Good idea. What will they do for us in return?”

Her selfish directness made him doubt his reasons for changing sides again. She flared up at him as if reading his thoughts.

“Don’t try to be Saint Erwin, love. Since you’ve decided to save yourself, save both of us in the bargain! Why should the only Germans to survive the war be the criminals?”

“Morava offered me an apartment,” he responded. “The one where you and his wife… where it happened. Can you bear it there until we can see what comes next?”

“Will you stay with me?”

“I’ll do everything I can to stop in for you at least once a day….”

“Aha. ..”

She sounded disappointed. He wondered disconsolately how to respond if she suggested escaping together again.

“When?” she asked instead.

“Right away!” he said, relieved. “Pack what you need and I’ll bring all the groceries from the house.”

“What do you need?”

“Some underwear.”

Like a seasoned traveling artist she was ready before he was. They packed the baggage space with two suitcases of personal effects, two bags of food, and a rolled-up blanket in a fresh plaid cover with a pillow — after all, she opined, they couldn’t sleep in the same one that poor girl…

Then he remembered his pistol.

On the threshold, she kissed him.

“May we never be less happy than we are now!”

As it turned out, they had left Little Berlin at the last possible moment. At the intersection below the last house a Wehrmacht truck in the hands of the insurgents had blocked the roadway except for a narrow passage. A man in the moth-eaten uniform of a former Czechoslovak Army first lieutenant was directing a handful of civilians with tricolors pinned on. All of them had rifles.

The police driver and car satisfied the lieutenant; he saluted Buback as well, who was sitting with Grete in the back. Down by Stromovka Park a German guard unit had surrendered a small arsenal, he told them; they’d found a pile of guns there. They’d been sent here to comb through the villas, checking for any treacherous “werewolves“— German storm troopers — who might be hiding there.

“Take care,” Litera advised him. “The criminals will be right behind the war heroes. Everything’s public property now.”

“I’m no policeman!” The first lieutenant seemed almost insulted.

“And our men aren’t soldiers, but unlike you they’re already in battle. Happy hunting.”

He hit the gas and grinned at Buback like an ally.

“Mothballed soldiers!” Litera sniffed contemptuously. “We haven’t seen the last of ’em.”

On Mendel Bridge, where tar-paper signs had restored the Czech painter Mánes’s name, the crew of a German light cannon tried to drive them back. Buback took care of it. He easily negotiated passage around the large-caliber machine gun at the National Theater.

Litera slowed down again at the railway bridge to let two city buses move aside; they were blocking riverside traffic and the way south to Vyehrad. Prague seemed to be divided into Czech and German islands. On the former, celebration was giving way to resistance activities, while the latter were empty spaces guarded by jittery soldiers.

“I see we make a good pair,” Litera said to Buback after his performance at the theater, “so long as we don’t pull out the wrong piece of paper!”

Beran’s apparent involvement and Buback’s miraculously good Czech instilled in Litera a measure of goodwill toward the German, which was now growing into approval.

Grete was quiet as a mouse the whole trip, but the anxious grip of her fingers told him her true state of mind. At each control point he had to free himself from it forcibly, only to return tenderly afterward.

Only a few nights ago she had been amorous, uninhibited, an apparently superficial consumer of her own existence. In this dark hour, however, Grete’s character seemed suddenly different, contradicting her own confessions. Now she would suffer all the more as he abandoned her to an unknown fate for an indeterminate time, but she did not use any of the feminine weapons arrayed at her beck and call to force him to the decision she must be hoping for. Or would she try it at the last moment?

They arrived. He could feel Grete tremble at the sight of the house. The kitchen windows had not been repaired, but someone had boarded them up, nailing the planks an inch apart, so there would be light inside during the day. Litera carried their baggage in alone. The two of them shouldn’t be seen much in public, he said; there were only a couple of old geezers living around here, but just to be on the safe side! When he disappeared into the hall with the first load, Grete had her last chance.

Instead, however, she kept her grip on his fingers and stared motionlessly ahead. Once Litera had taken in the last bundle and was waiting inside to show her in, she kissed Buback gently on the lips and, surprisingly, made the sign of the cross on his forehead.

“Come back when you can, love. And ring or knock the fate theme: da da da dum…!”

How would he get back here? he wondered once she had disappeared into the house. And would he come back at all? The only thing he knew for sure was that he loved and admired her.

He and Litera retraced their journey. At the railway bridge two pot-bellied garbage trucks had joined the buses. Men in leather aprons were rolling heavy trash cans over from the nearby houses, but instead of feeding their contents to the metal stomachs, they made rows of them in front of the trucks. Litera stuck his head out the window.

“What’s it going to be when it’s finished?”

“City radio just urged people to set up barricades. The Germans are on their way from Beneov!”

Buback felt sure it was a consequence of his information — the first result of his betrayal… no! He remembered Grete’s words: he had simply tried to mitigate the effects of a grand treason his people had perpetrated on… on his people, yes…. what was he anyway? A Czech, like his mother, or a German, like his father? Wasn’t he a living example of the senselessness of nationalism? And therefore wasn’t he predestined by his heritage to….

A traffic policeman jumped out of the left bus and cut off his musings.

“You won’t get through along the embankment: the Nazis are there and now they’re shooting.”

Litera squinted at his neighbor. Buback said in reply, “We’ve done well so far together. I’ll cross the last German watchpoint with you, and once I’ve negotiated your way out, I’ll go back to Bredovská Street on foot.”

He saw the driver blink in shock.

“Tell Mr. Beran that I’m trying to talk to my supervisor, who was just promoted; I’m hoping he’ll agree to proclaim Prague an open city they won’t fight for. I’ll try to get back with fresh news as soon as possible; could you ask the chief to inform your guard posts?” “You’re asking for trouble, Mr. Buback, do you know that?” “Well, did you know I was born here, in Prague?” They passed easily through several checkpoints on Czech-controlled territory, getting as far as tepanska Street, where the German-occupied city center began. From there on no one stopped them; the presence of an employee from the Gestapo building must have been relayed by field telephone. Buback rode with him as far as the boundary formed by a row of machine guns; now Litera would easily be able to draw a plan of the German defenses. Am I a spy on top of everything else? Buback wondered.

When they parted and the car disappeared in the direction of Národni Avenue, he set off back toward Bredovská to the sound of detonations carried down from the radio on the spring wind. What chance, he wondered, did a small cog like he have of influencing the workings of this huge machine?

Jan Morava’s first direct military involvement in the Second World War lasted all of a few long seconds. By the time he had reached the bend in the staircase in a hail of fire that miraculously missed him, the fifteen policemen ahead of him had used the element of surprise to clear the Germans from the main halls of the second and third floors. The occupiers were now stuck in the side hallways, preventing the Czechs from breaking through to the broadcast studios, wherever they were. The newcomers moved to secure what they held to the left, the right, upstairs, and downstairs. SS troops still held the fourth floor, which was the seat of the German directorate; at noon they had driven the first group of Czech policemen up to the top floors, where they were still contained.

In both mezzanines and the mouths of the corridors, barricades of desks and file cabinets were going up all around Morava, while he racked his brain. How could he achieve the main task Beran had set him: ending the fighting?

The modern 1930s building was like a labyrinth; its hundreds of locked doors, all missing their plaques, would have been a tricky puzzle under normal circumstances, let alone with ricocheting bullets whizzing past like crazed bees. He knew the Germans must still be searching for the source of the broadcasts, which were being heard across Bohemia. If they found them, brave announcers and technicians would die, and Germany would inflict a heavy moral defeat on a citizenry trying to atone for the national shame of the 1938 Munich capitulation. Morava understood: The fighting had to be stopped or resolved as soon as possible. With Sucharda dead, the young detective was now in charge.

Fortunately the city telephones were still working and the radio’s switchboard had not been disconnected. The employees trapped there led him on all fours to a phone; a sniper was peppering the front of the building from an attic window opposite. They drew him a rough plan on the wooden tiles of the whole complex and a more precise map of the back wing where the broadcasts were coming from.

At Bartolomjská they either could not or would not bring Beran or Brunát to the telephone. Finally they got Superintendent Hlavatý, who had so brilliantly scented the widow killer’s trail in the Klasterec priest’s missive. He instantly grasped the urgency of the problem, and shortly thereafter Brunát’s voice came on the line. On the advice of two editors, former reserve officers, Morava requested that he send another armed unit through the attics of neighboring houses and across the flat roofs. With this assistance, the men defending the upper floors and those down below could clear the Germans from the middle and then the base of the building.

The Germans in the middle had fortunately run out of grenades and lacked Panzerfausts; like the Czechs beneath them, they were cut off from supplies on the ground floor. The first side to obtain reinforcements would break the stalemate.

“I’ll bring them personally,” Brunát promised. “The radio’s the key to everything now. But try to negotiate with the Germans; maybe they’ll fold of their own accord.”

“Depends whether Schörner’s set out already,” Morava replied. “How does it look?”

“For now it seems we’re ahead by a hair. The city radio’s sending out instructions on how to build barricades. Prague’s starting to become impassable; I’m afraid it’ll take us a while to get to you.”

“Try the way we went: up Wenceslas Square past the Germans— yes, they’re reserve officers and new recruits. If you wear police uniforms and formulate your request correctly, it gives them the option of saving their own skins without losing face.”

“Wait, Jan….” He heard Brunát give a muffled assent. “Beran says that in the name of the Czech National Council you’re to meet with Thürmer, the German radio director. You can offer free passage for German employees and soldiers, but careful: no weapons, period. Break a leg; we’ll be over in a jiffy to give them a good-bye kiss.”

They crawled out of the threatened office to plot how and when to proceed, shouting at each other in the hallway against the noise of the battle. Morava picked the two who spoke the best German and were least afraid to negotiate with Thürmer. The apparently insurmountable problem of how to contact him was solved again by the telephone.

“The director will meet with you,” his secretary responded after a short while, “if you’ll stop shooting and cease your hostile broadcasts from this building for the duration of the negotiations.”

Morava rejected the second condition. Thirty employees trapped unexpectedly by the turn of events were squashed with the policemen into a narrow space between the unreliable-looking wooden barriers. In a few cases, their nerves were in tatters.

“Why not call the studios and have them play music for a while,” suggested a pitifully pale woman slumped weakly on the tiles, her back propped against the wall. “Everyone’s heard the broadcast anyway, and we’ll never get out of here unless—”

“Chin up, Andula!” a colleague interjected. Another employee added, “The Germans know they won’t just be able to escape, not at any price; all of Prague is sharpening its knives for them.”

Finally the German fire began to quiet down. The phone rang; the director was waiting for them. The negotiators should put their hands behind their heads; they would be searched on arrival.

Morava left his pistol and holster and proceeded to the steps. His footprints remained in the fine plaster dust just like in snow. He was the first to crawl over the office-furniture stockade. The maneuver required both hands, but he was not afraid.

“At least,” he said to himself in a low voice, “I’ll be with you sooner, my love.”

When they finally ran up and showered him with praise for his amazing courage, he experienced a remarkable feeling. I DID IT!

It made him even happier that this time he hadn’t had to hide his deed; quite the opposite:

I CAN DO IT IN PUBLIC!

He was terribly sorry that SHE could not have seen it herself, but he was sure that SHE knew, if SHE hadn’t in fact been leading him.

Even the boy with wire-rim glasses who hurried over from the garbage can couldn’t spoil his mood.

“Sirs,” he said in a trembling voice, “he’s alive.”

In their ensuing silence they heard a weak moan from outside.

“Let him enjoy it, then!” he answered the kid. “Like we enjoyed living with them for six years. Or do you feel sorry for him?”

“Stomach wounds are extremely painful…. You see, I’m studying to be a doctor, and—”

Before he could think of a way to regain his new admirers, a well-muscled man in overalls grinned at the kid.

“Then finish school and cure him! Or finish him off, once you have something to do it with. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my ammunition on him. So what next?” The overalls turned to the group. “The evening’s still young!”

And he felt everyone’s eyes resting on him. They looked up to him the way he had once looked up to Sergeant Králik, he realized proudly.

I’M THE BEST ONE HERE!

It was time to consolidate his leadership.

According to the technician, the entrance by the garbage cans was thinly guarded because the Germans thought it only led down to the archives. But from there, he assured them, you could get upstairs to the broadcasting rooms where the calls for help were coming from.

He took one grenade along with the soldier’s submachine gun, which naturally fell to him; the other grenade he gave to the man in overalls, who, he learned, had also been in the army. Both rifle owners followed them into the basement; after them came a couple of empty-handed men hoping to find some weapons as they went.

The hallway turned two corners and then brought them to a narrow staircase leading upward. They walked so slowly and quietly that they heard the steps and German voices approaching from above before the soldiers found them. Was it just a coincidence that once again he and his men were ideally positioned for an ambush? The archive was overflowing with old tape recordings, and its hallways were lined with narrow shelving housing columns of round metal cases; here, just behind them, was an alcove they all fit into.

Rypl, his sergeant reminded him, in concrete your bullet will likely hit you on the rebound; a blade’s your best bet… After all, it was Králík who’d instructed him in the use of knives when they’d visited his brother’s slaughterhouse. ..

Today, however, he had another idea, his own. He motioned to his supporter to put his weapon down and, turning to the others, mimed grabbing someone by the throat.

There were two Germans, evidently convinced that the basement was still clear: Their submachine guns hung over their shoulders as they headed for the stairs to have a smoke. They had no chance against the half dozen or so men who suddenly fell on them. In a couple of seconds they felt their backs slam down on their gun barrels and gasped to find at least three Czechs kneeling over each of them.

He was crazy, he shuddered in retrospect, to jump on them practically empty-handed with a bunch of strange men; it could have backfired badly. And yet here they lay, rank-and-file SS storm troopers, both wide-eyed rookies.

Yes, Mother, TODAY IS MY DAY!

“What should we do with them?” he asked the one who had taken his side; now the man showed his hands, large as shovels.

“Tie ’me up and guard ’me,’ the tram driver said. “There are rules about prisoners, aren’t there?”

He knew them from even his own short war and momentarily considered using two of the straps girdling him — but would he definitely get them back? And after what happened to the poor runt who’d had to return them…. One thing was certain: They couldn’t drag the Germans with them, nor could they leave them here with inexperienced guards. So he made his decision.

“Where’s the toilet?” he said, turning to the man from the radio.

“We passed it as we came in.”

He left his regiment by the steps, guarded by two newly acquired submachine guns, and nodded to his new ally. The Germans went in front of them, hands crossed high on their backs, the way Králik had taught him. The best way to stiffen them up, Rypl, as every schoolteacher knows! The archive toilets were hidden in a small side hall. Beyond the urinal was a stall with a toilet bowl; the yellowed door ended about a foot from the ceiling. It was perfect for his next idea.

“Hinein!” He pointed the gun muzzle at them. “Both of you, inside!”

They squeezed into the narrow space; the second one chuckled uneasily. He slammed the door behind them and asked his guide, “Is there anything to wedge the handle with?”

The man reached into a corner and grabbed a broom standing in a bucket with a rag. Deftly he propped it between the stall door and the wall. Did he already know? He looked so eager!

He nodded for him to go out into the hallway first, and eyeballed the size of the gap above the stall door. Then he pulled the pin from the grenade, silently counted to three, and hurled it into the stall. He heard a double scream, but he had already slammed the washroom door and pressed himself against the side wall.

The explosion jammed the door shut. Too bad. He would have liked to look. An admiring smile crossed his companion’s face, and he made a further discovery.

I HAVE A FRIEND!

On the corner of Bredovská Street, which was guarded by two light storm-trooper tanks, Buback was assaulted by the pungent stench he had smelled during each post-Normandy retreat. In the courtyard, a huge pyre was burning; files with documents from various departments were heaped on it. Why, he wondered for the first time: Why burn the only proof that even in these infamous walls they had proceeded strictly according to regulation? Except that was the problem.

The German nation was not the only one ever to place its own interests above the legal norms of the civilized world. However, it seemed likely to be the first one condemned for applying its laws strictly and thoroughly, because ius germanicum, which allowed the death penalty for a critical word or a hook-shaped nose, had now thrown the greater part of a civilized continent back into the Dark Ages.

It had always consoled him that the paragraphs he enforced defended the time-honored values for which mankind created laws, even if they were part of that greater German legal code. He had been practically the only officer at all his previous postings who had not needed to cover his tracks. But was that enough to let him shrug off responsibility for what the burners were trying to hide?

What was his own part in his nation’s guilt? Could the two be separated? And more importantly: Could Germany’s guilt be redeemed? He kept trying to do just that, even though the Third Reich could still avoid total defeat, leaving ius germanicum the law of the victors. The newly announced German doctrine seemed to count on this possibility, at least in Kroloff s version. It took his breath away.

According to absolutely reliable sources, British prime minister Churchill and the new American president Truman were convinced that Stalin intended to establish Communist regimes in all the territories occupied by the Red Army, thus building a bridgehead that would let him quickly conquer the rest of Europe. The new German leadership planned to distance itself from the excesses of some SS units, which it would apparently disband, the skull head explained enthusiastically — as if the Gestapo would go scot-free! They would then offer the Anglo-Americans a partial capitulation and an assurance that Germany would carry on the battle against the Bolsheviks.

Field Marshall Schörner had assumed the high command over German staff, central offices, and services in the area controlled by Mitte’s armies, who would play a leading role in these plans. Certain persons had let the situation in Prague get temporarily out of hand; they would be punished and replaced. Lieutenant General Meckerle was sending his best men to provide political reinforcement in threatened areas. He, Kroloff, felt honored to be accompanying the chief inspector to Pankrác, a crucial neighborhood in the southeast of the city. There they would secure the beginning of the route that would let more than fifty thousand troops and their equipment leave Prague every day for the west.

Impossible, Buback marveled; they were sending him to Grete! Given the circumstances, he quickly reconciled himself to the change in plans. Anyway, he soon found out Meckerle was momentarily absent, and Buback could learn far more in the field than the gossip and fairy tales he’d heard here.

“How will we get there?” he probed. “As far as I can tell, we only hold the city center.”

“Armored transports will come for the authorized representatives,” Kroloff announced. “The Czechs only have light weapons.”

Among which is a Panzerfaust, Buback nearly said aloud. He would have to rely on Grete’s cross.

They waited almost three hours for the escort vehicles. The column commander seemed on the verge of shooting himself as he described how they had wandered around and around in some suburb, because the Czechs had repositioned all the road signage, even swapping the street signs around; the Nazis’ perfect maps were useless. Finally a German woman, a native of Prague, had saved them when she saw the convoy for the third time and had the courage to run out of her house, climb up to the cabin of his vehicle and guide them here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s his name?”

“Richter. Rudolf Richter.”

He looked but could not find the name.

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

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

“Rypl Antonín, b. 27 May 1900 in Brno, res. Plze.”

Jitka! Could he have gotten off that easily?

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

He untied the bundle. The identity card! Agitatedly he unfolded it. The face from the Plze police document stared out at him.

But everything in Morava that made him a detective protested. Why, out of all the dead, had this particular one lost his face? Was it an incredible coincidence? Or a clever ruse?

He bent down, piled the rest of the personal items between the prewar corduroy trousers (Careful! We’ll need the shoes and clothes to show Rypl’s colleagues and neighbors!), and put one item after the other on the napkin. A comb. A nickel-plate watch. A key ring (important for identification)! A wallet. Contents? A couple of banknotes and change. A half-empty matchbox. No cigarettes. A child’s fish-shaped penknife. A handkerchief. (Monogrammed? No….)

Still, the bloodhoundlike stubbornness Beran had admired on their last stroll told Morava that this was not their man, and that the true owner of these documents could not be far away. So what was Morava doing here?

He persuaded a reliable-looking sergeant to leave the victory celebrations and arrange for corpse thirty-five and everything belonging with it to be sent over to Pathology. Then he rushed back to the building. He headed up to the top floor and circled the halls, sticking his head into each room. He continued this way from floor to floor, trying to use his one advantage: He knew his prey, but his quarry did not know its hunter. He did not stop until he was out on the street again.

There were hundreds of faces, but none belonged to Jitka’s murderer.

The crowd’s confidence grew from hour to hour. Finally they had seen their occupiers humiliated. Furthermore, a rumor was circulating that the Americans had sent a tank division east from Plze, which was due to reach Prague that night. Close to tears, Morava barely noticed them. Jitka, he’s here, so close I could touch him, but he keeps slipping away.

He would go see Beran and request a change of plans. Uprising or no uprising, they couldn’t let this monster go free.

On a hunch he turned to the closest cluster of onlookers and unfolded Rypl’s documents.

“Gentlemen! This man is missing. Has anyone seen him?”

“That’s him!” called a postman, his German helmet tied with a Czech tricolor like a hat with a bow, “the one who let ’em have it!”

One after another they told of a man with similar features who had fired into the throng of Germans granted free passage. According to their descriptions it was Brunát who stopped him.

“Mr. Superintendent,” said a boy with wire-rimmed glasses, mistakenly elevating his rank, “I met him earlier; he’s a moral degenerate who’s turning the uprising into a slaughterhouse! He shoots prisoners through the stomach and blows them up with grenades.”

“He called them right, though,” the postman countered. “They were carrying concealed weapons.”

Morava impatiently cut off the burgeoning argument with an urgent question.

“Where is he now?”

“He wasn’t alone,” said the bespectacled youth. “There were two guys with him. He said we were all cowards, and they’d go get themselves some jerries somewhere else.”

Where? Where?? Where???

If he had his way, he would have run off, prowling the streets like a hunting dog, but he could feel the sharp tug of his professional leash. With a heavy heart he set off for Bartolomjská Street.

He and Ladislav, a stoker for the bakery firm Odkolek, understood each other from the first. Strangely enough, however, the others had disappeared by the time they returned from the washroom. Alone in the basement, of course, they had no chance of getting through, so they returned to the entrance. A pair of boot heels and toes now lay mute behind the garbage cans. The guns in the radio building were still quiet, but in the deadly silence the street seemed all the more menacing. Then two bullets struck the pavement. They hurled themselves to the ground next to the dead man and considered their options.

“Hello!” A cry rang out from the opposite side. They could see the outline of a man waving at them from the building’s hallway.

“If you want to run out, I can spray them.”

They exchanged glances, nodding to each other and then to him. Then they saw him raise his gun.

“I’ll count to three. Ready! One! Two…”

The last word was lost in the gunfire; he covered the side wall of the radio building in a long burst. They galloped over, wheezing; it seemed the street would never end. They nearly knocked the gunner over. Then they all chuckled.

“Thanks!” he said.

“No fucking problem.”

The stocky, balding man in a wildly checked pullover reeking of sweat grinned at them. Three ugly gaps broke his smile; he looked decrepit, although he could hardly be more than thirty.

“What’s happening?” he asked the man.

“Zilch. Waiting for the Americans, they say. I thought it’d be different.”

“How?”

“A chance to have some fun with the browncoats. I owe them.”

“They knock your teeth out?” Ladislav inquired.

“Yeah. Deployed me to Düsseldorf in the Totaleinsatz. I was gettin’ on real well with this German bitch. So they gave me this and the camps — for ’corrupting racial purity’—’cept then the Brits rolled in and threw the brig wide open. Couple of weeks I slept in ditches and ate last year’s potatoes. Wouldn’t mind a bit of Kraut, now.”

“We made two of them into grenade stew,” Ladislav bragged. “On the can! Shoulda flushed, y’know.”

The grenade wasn’t enough, he thought as he listened; you can’t see it up close and it’s too fast. Those son-of-a-bitch Germans deserve a drawn-out punishment, just like the widow whores. And suddenly he knew what it would be. The idea was…

ALL MINE!

And it was completely new. He made a mental note.

“Great!” The dental avenger was praising him. “Need another hand? Call me Lojza.”

The stoker repeated what was clearly his favorite question: What next, since the evening was still young? Then the deathly silence outside ended. Individual shouts soon merged into a joyous noise. Both the side streets and the main road, where Czechs killed at the beginning of the battle now lay, were swarming with people.

He and his companions set off for the intersection. Above the front portal of the radio building, strips of white tablecloths and towels fluttered from the first and fourth floors. An excited throng had formed an arc at a respectful distance from the main entrance. Through the broken doors a curtain of smoke still hung behind the barbed-wire barricades. For several long minutes nothing happened. The Czechs’ anticipation gave way to fear: Was it a trap? You could cut the silence with a knife; one shot, he felt, and hundreds of people would panic and flee.

Instead, a Czech policeman came out of the building, unstrapping his helmet and fingering a wayward lock of white hair. Then he picked up a megaphone.

“Citizens!” he rumbled. “The radio is ours. The Germans have capitulated.”

Fear turned instantly to intoxication; the crowd went wild.

He and his two companions waited curiously.

The policeman waved his megaphone around for a while until the throng quieted down.

“They have ceased their resistance under the condition that all Germans, employees and soldiers, are offered free passage without weapons down to the main train station.”

There were a few indignant shouts from the crowd.

“Citizens! This agreement was concluded at the behest of the Czech National Council. President Bene has named a new Czechoslovak government, but until they can return here from Koice, which has already been liberated, the council is assuming control in Prague. We have been empowered to conduct similar negotiations with all German offices in the former Protectorate, first and foremost so that our beloved Prague can be spared the further ravages of war, and so that we can safeguard the fundamental human rights we will uphold again in the future!”

The cop was getting on his nerves more and more. Then he flinched when someone next to him whistled so loudly his ears rang. It was the balding Lojza, now shouting through cupped hands.

“Germans aren’t humans!”

He clapped along with Lojza and a couple of bystanders. They began to chant.

“Germans aren’t humans! Germans aren’t humans!”

The white-haired man strode purposefully toward them, droning on through his megaphone.

“Masaryk, the founder of our state, taught us that humanitarian ideals do not admit the collective guilt of races or nations. These men were soldiers; they followed orders and in spite of them capitulated. We cannot change the decision of the Czech National—”

“Then they should fuck off!” Lojza shouted at him. “We shed blood and we want an eye for an eye!”

He almost laughed at Lojza for not saying “a tooth for a tooth,” but it made him angry to see the policeman gaining the upper hand among the crowd. THOSE BASTARDS ARE LISTENING TO HIM!

At that the first of the Germans exited the building, flanked by Czech guards. The foursome of ashen women in front — probably secretaries — caused some confusion, but the male employees, marked by white bands on their sleeves, drew whistles of derision. Their escorters smiled, as if acknowledging the onlookers’ annoyance, but implying the crowd must surely understand their position too.

Lojza was arguing wildly with the policeman; leaving them to their quarrel, he stepped forward to see better.

The soldiers had begun to come out. The orderly rows of men had neatly polished and buttoned their hated uniforms, and held their heads up as if on review. Their commander had made a mistake in thinking this would boost their morale; signs of defeat would have been more to their credit. Any feeble sympathy the onlookers might have had now disappeared.

Now, finally, there arose in him a strong, almost holy wrath against Germans, similar to the one his mother had instilled in him years ago against feminine infidelity.

Before anyone noticed, he raised his submachine gun, took aim so as not to threaten any of the Czechs, and began to squeeze the trigger. He heard another rifle at his side — must be Ladislav! — and in the corner of his eye saw Lojza fighting with the policeman.

The women shrieked, the whole transport dove against the pavement for cover, but shots rang out from it as well.

Those whore bastards had guns!

HE WAS RIGHT!

The irritable policeman with the wispy white hair immediately deflected his aim by shoving his gun barrel into the air, but in the ensuing chaos he had so many other problems that he was soon distracted; it was necessary to round the prisoners up again, look them over and send them and their dead away as fast as possible. The cop had managed, however, to infect a decent-sized group of people who instantly turned against the three gunners. Among them was the four-eyes who’d irritated him over by the garbage cans.

“Degenerate!” Now the kid was taunting him with this completely nonsensical word. “Go back to the nuthouse; this is a democratic revolution!”

You’re the crazy one, he wanted to shout back; and a TRAITOR TO OUR CAUSE, who deserves the same treatment!

SHOULD I JUST BLOW HIM AWAY?

This time right in the heart, so as not to horrify the more delicate bystanders…. He quickly came to his senses. Many in the crowd were just as well armed as he was.

In addition he remembered that he had a new name, but the same old face. There were clouds of police swarming about; what if by coincidence..?

“Men,” he said to his companions, “the fun’s over, anyway. The hell with these cowards; there are plenty of Krauts left in Prague.”

M’love!” Grete said. “Oh, my love, finally! It’s been forever since I saw you!”

Of course her time dragged, while his flew, it seemed only moments since he had left her at the house. In the meanwhile, however, yesterday’s city had changed into a jungle which even the natives did not recognize.

The neighborhood called Pánkrac, where he and Kroloff had been sent, was an exception; it was still firmly in German hands. A single barricade of derailed trams beneath the court building reminded them of the unrest; its builders had been driven down into the Nusle Valley. Immediately thereafter a merry-go-round of motorized watches went out, discouraging other potential barricaders.

Schörner’s heavy tanks would turn Pánkrac into an extensive operations base. From here they could roll over the barricades in the valley, opening a passage to the city center and onward to the west. Aside from sporadic fire from various directions, however, there was no noise at all, and even after twilight only advance men on motorcycles came through. They mentioned barricades sprouting in the villages and towns around Prague, saying the colonnades had had to detour around through fields. These could not have presented any real obstacles to such powerful equipment, and thus further rumors were born. The prevailing opinion was that the Americans were approaching, which made a German advance pointless. Kroloff eagerly spread that afternoon’s news: In his imagination the Protectorate was to be the launching point for a future western alliance, including the Reich, against the hydra of Communism.

“And that’s the secret weapon,” he kept repeating, “the truly brilliant secret weapon the Führer providentially left us!”

The headquarters was filled with commanders from various lower units. They had nothing to do beside organizing patrols; there was no word from the approaching army and the Prague division just checked in every hour to ask what was new. Buback thought of Grete, alone and helpless. It gave him an idea for how the officers could usefully fill their time. There were thousands of German civilians in Prague; why not concentrate the ones in this corner of the city under military control, at least until the army could guarantee their safe passage out or their right to remain?

His idea did not strike anyone’s fancy. None of the officers seemed eager to complicate his own life unless ordered to do so; not even Buback’s authority as a Gestapo emissary helped. It was Kroloff who dealt the plan a final blow. The Führer’s memory, he parroted, could be best honored by unflinching adherence to the principles of Total War. The German citizens of Prague had been offered the opportunity to arm themselves a long time ago. The ones who availed themselves of it must have realized that every German apartment here could become a fortress. The ones who failed to do so had only themselves to blame; they had cut themselves off from the fellowship of a brave warrior nation.

Buback reminded him about the German woman who had saved the armored transporters trapped in the web of suddenly nameless streets that afternoon. If any of her Czech neighbors had spotted her, she would pay dearly indeed. After all, they couldn’t expect civilians in their apartments to behave like soldiers under fire, if only because they had no unified command or clear orders.

Aha, Kroloff trumpeted triumphantly, but a civilian evacuation would confirm the Czechs’ false hope that the Reich was capitulating, and could provoke a real uprising — the recent attempts by extremists had fortunately been just a pale imitation. After all, they’d just learned that one airborne torpedo had put an end to the unfortunate episode with the radio!

Buback did not prolong the argument. Better to preserve his authority for a real crisis situation. He would have to meet with Morava or Beran again to warn them of the problem; the haunting image of a murderer’s holiday, which Grete had used, was seared into his brain. Grete! He had to see her, to put his mind at ease.

Two highly unpleasant events put a temporary end to the confused discussion. The same Czech announcer who had recently been cut off in midword during the successful German air raid now unexpectedly resurfaced, apparently from a replacement studio. And the telephone stopped working in the local pub the German command had occupied. The Czechs therefore controlled the city switchboard. Buback seized the moment.

“You stay here as long as necessary,” he ordered Kroloff. “I’ll try to get to Bredovská. We’ve completed our mission, but I don’t like the fact that we don’t have orders covering various possible developments. What’s important is not which of us is right, but what sort of general directives have been worked out in the meanwhile.”

“They won’t bring you back through at night, and there may already be more than one barricade in the valley.”

Buback was amused to see Kroloff s earlier outbursts of toughness give way to fear.

“I realize that. The surest way back is on foot.”

“But there’s a curfew.”

“All the better. I’ll take an escort as far as our outpost sentries. On the other side I’ll blend in in civilian garb.”

“How will you get back tomorrow?”

“The same way, unless a corridor has been freed up by then. You should know, Kroloff, why I was transferred here: I’m originally from Prague.”

The skull head was dubiousness incarnate, but as Buback’s subordinate, he had to accept the decision. His superior had them fetch the headquarters’ map of the district, which had the outposts marked. As he had assumed, the furthest was at the edge of Kaví Hory, not far from the little house. Once there, he nodded to his escort and to the sentries sheltering themselves against the beginning rain, turned up his overcoat collar, and set off into the darkness.

He shoved his work papers into his right sock, on the inside of the ankle and then into his shoe; the pass from Beran he hid in his left one. Just in case, he took the safety off his pistol. Swiftly he strode down the empty streets with their low houses. He stopped next door to check he was truly alone, and only then approached the house and pressed the bell as she’d requested: three short rings and a long one. He was caught off guard when the door opened immediately; swiftly he reached for his gun, but then he smelled her perfume, felt her hands pulling him inside, and heard her whispering voice.

At his request, she locked the door in the dark, but she did not let go of him. Before he could speak again, she pulled rather than led him up to the attic, telling him what she had been through. For hours she hadn’t been able to sleep, but neither could she wake up: Agitation followed exhaustion and then exhaustion overcame agitation again until she fell into a strange trance in which she could not move, but her visions seemed absolutely real. As if in a fever, she saw her whole life and finally her death, because suddenly she had become Jitka Modrá, who had so trustingly exchanged fates with her.

“Suddenly I was the one who was fatally wounded here, but I wasn’t dead — you just couldn’t see it, and I was there as you put me in the coffin and you didn’t notice as I tried desperately to give you a sign, and then the lid slammed down and they banged the nails in and they picked me up and lowered me in and finally I managed to scream, just as the soil drummed down on the lid, so I made one last effort — I gathered all my strength and swung upright so forcefully the lid flew open and I tried to stand up in a hail of dirt, but I was too late, you see, it took away my breath and consciousness, and suddenly it’s all over, but my head hurts and I’m standing at the door and you’re ringing. .. Where have you been so long, love?”

When he found out she had not eaten at all, he wanted to fetch her something from the stores in the cellar, but she went with him and would not let go of him, as if drawing energy from his touch, holding him by the hand even as he sliced the rock-hard bread and opened military tins of sausage and cheese. On the way upstairs his foot hit an empty gin bottle he had found in the judge’s bathroom as they fled. He realized she had drunk it while waiting for him and then fallen asleep by the front door.

He forced her to eat and meanwhile decided to stay until morning; it would be easier and safer to get to the center during daylight anyway. When he undressed and lay down next to her, he felt for the first time that she was not interested in him as a man; she clung to him as if she were freezing and only animal warmth could save her.

He began to stroke her, slowly and lightly, with just the balls of his fingers, along her back, her shoulders, and as she gave in and opened herself to him, he moved along her elbows, thighs, feet, not missing a single spot on her body. He had never done this before, but he could feel how deeply it touched her, how her fear and agitation abated, how she gradually calmed down and her confidence returned.

“Ah, my sweetheart,” she sighed, “this is even better than making love….”

Then she took his hand and as shots rang out here and there in the distance, she suddenly took up her story again, like in the old days that now seemed so idyllic to him.

After Rome, where they finally reconciled thanks to the mysterious Sicilian, a nasty surprise awaited them in Berlin. Martin’s former father-in-law, a high-placed Nazi, arranged their assignment to a theater touring the East Prussian frontlines. Although this was a part of the Reich, it was, under the circumstances, an extremely inhospitable place; the spectre of another Russian offensive hung over them constantly. The state of the German troops they performed for was ample evidence of what the Bolsheviks were like. These were no tanned sportsmen like in Italy, treating the war with the Anglo-Americans as a gentlemen’s competition even after their recent defeats. The East Prussian soldiers, in spite of their youth, reminded them more of old men. There was no thought of volleyball or soccer, and neither did they laugh at the famous comedian in their troupe; at camp they mostly slept or stared lifelessly off into space.

For Martin, the environment and sterile, pseudo-artistic programs reeked of degradation and humiliation. It all depressed him so deeply that one day he wrote to Berlin for their Jester. Martin had never been one for dogs, Grete said, looking back through the twilight into another time, but this one had caught his fancy. An infatuated fan had given Jester to him one opening night, apparently in the hope it would open the door to Martin’s private life for her. Grete was already ensconced there, but he kept the dog anyway. Jester was a delightful little mongrel — they found unmistakable features of at least five breeds in him — but he had inherited their best qualities, beginning with a rare good nature. He would draw his masters out of arguments — and Buback would just have to believe her — by laughing; yes, he would stretch his lips back just like a human until his teeth shone through, and grin and hoot with laughter. Who could resist him?

When Martin switched to doing tours and Grete was allowed to join him, his older sister was happy to take Jester home. Then they truly began to miss him. On each swing through Berlin they spent much of their time petting him; it was during their estrangement and Jester was the one thing that connected them. Her unused tenderness for Martin flowed through Jester, Grete said, as did his for her, or at least so he claimed later.

By the time they reached Köningsberg they no longer needed this service from him. The two of them were at the top of the world, their own personal Himalayas, as Grete called them (and here Buback finally felt that prick of jealousy again, reminding him of his humanity in that inhuman night), but she and Martin thought the sweet little animal would bring joy into the rest of their gloomy wartime existence. The single bright spot in the Prussian assignment was a spacious apartment in the house of a German teacher, who had worshipped Martin’s films for years and still could not believe his luck in having the actor under his own roof.

That hot summer before the first evacuation — Buback felt her shudder inwardly again, but this time her storytelling calmed her — the post office and rail lines were still running, despite the air raids. They called Martin’s sister, and had her send Jester in a small box with air holes, which they would pick up directly at the station. A vigorous dog who had been walked and fed should easily manage a seven-hour trip. His sister cried as she read off the train number to them.

The two of them were looking forward eagerly to his arrival; the little dog had become a sort of talisman for them, presaging their wild, crude world’s return to its original state of innocence. Their disappointment and fear was all the greater when they did not find the package as advised in the baggage car. They were on their way to the station agent so he could telegraph back down the line when Grete— on a hunch! — stopped at another wagon where they were unloading huge wheeled iceboxes carrying meat, butter, and eggs for the army. With the guards’ permission she went inside and immediately her eye lit on a small package with her address. In a trance, she carried it out and gave it to a pale Martin. Their fingers turned numb with cold. To this day she could see him holding the small bundle horizontally in both hands as he slowly tipped it: inside a dead weight slid back and forth.

They walked home silently, she said, shocked by this senseless, icy death. The creature who was supposed to bring them help had turned into a symbol of their own ruin. Neither of them had the courage to do the most natural thing: walk out past the town limits and bury the corpse. Bereft of reason, they brought the little coffin into their room and placed it on the table. The apartment was an oven in the afternoon sun, but they did not even open the window for a cross draft; instead, they sat broken-hearted at the table, helpless against this paralysis. It was like in the fairy tale, Grete said, where they all turned to stone until a miracle happened; she was sure that even three hours later they would never find the strength to get up and leave for the tour.

And then the miracle happened! They heard something like a hiccup from inside the box. Neither of them moved. When the sound came a second time, Grete saw Martin holding his breath to hear better; he looked as if he might suffocate, but now the wooden box trembled lightly and then shook with a blow, as if the object inside were scrabbling to get out. Martin let out a hiss; he flew into the front hall and returned from the kitchen with a wood axe. He pried sharply up; the lid instantly gave way and out flew a furry ball.

She had never seen anything like it, Grete marveled in this foreign house in an enemy city, as joyfully as if she were reliving this resurrection. Jester, restored from near-freezing by the room’s intense heat, tore around the room like a crazy dog, across and back, up and down, flying over the furniture with huge leaps, running a third of the way up the wall before falling back to earth in a somersault, only to defy gravity again on the other side of the room.

“It was like an explosion of life. We just sat there, holding each others’ hands awkwardly and watching his return from the dead: ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes went by, and he ran, jumped, barked, pulled and gnawed at us; he couldn’t get enough of this life, and we couldn’t get over his boundless, unfreezable desire to live, which infected even us, consumed as we were by our ongoing destruction.”

Grete smiled.

“It lasted until…”

Grete burst into tears.

It was grief, sudden and wild, and Buback realized that since he did not know its source, he could not console her with soothing platitudes. He just took her firmly in his arms, as if trying to prevent her from splitting wide open, and listened helplessly to her howls. As the sound weakened, his heart grew lighter; fortunately, even boundless despair eventually reaches the limits of our body and soul, and slowly blunts itself against them.

He said nothing, but began almost imperceptibly to rock her like a child. The sobs trailed off, her tense muscles loosened and slowly she relaxed. After a while she began to speak almost normally, as if beginning one of her many stories.

“The first retreat went fairly smoothly; the troupe set up camp and we went to walk Jester. We’d been on a horse-drawn cart all day; gas had to be saved for the army. A fire beyond the birch wood drew us over. It radiated a kind of serenity, and we completely forgot that border areas were strictly off-limits all over the Reich. Then we saw a strange group of soldiers, probably deserters, but it was too late. We tried to say hello and quickly turn around. But one of them had already picked Jester up and was playing with him. The dog gave him a smile, which made the rest of them laugh. And we laughed too; suddenly we weren’t as anxious. Then the soldier said in bad German that he’d be good for soup. Martin nervously passed this off as a bad joke, but the man wouldn’t let go of the dog; he held him in his left hand by the scruff of his neck. Martin tried to pull him away. And with his right hand the man pulled out a pistol and shot Martin through the temple. I saw his brain spatter. Then he threw Jester into the cauldron alive. The splash of boiling water scalded my face. I kicked off my boots and fled into the darkness, but went the wrong way. They chased me, but didn’t catch me. I don’t know how I survived that night. In the morning I left the forest. I found the remains of the campfire, but nothing else, not even a bone. Somehow I found my way to the road. Our camp was already gone. A military car stopped for me. It was carrying war correspondents; they had a lot of cognac. I drank and drank and told them jolly stories about the theater all the way to Berlin; it was like a dream. They roared with laughter. One of them fell in love with me and arranged to have me sent to Prague. And that’s all I know. Now I have to sleep, love. But don’t let go…!”

She fell asleep instantly and he held her, motionless; from time to time his lips touched the fiery scar on her neck, as if it could heal her burned soul.

The staircase confirmed that he was deadly tired. Today it had no end, as if they were adding on floor after floor. At last he dragged himself wretchedly up the final flight. Suddenly he was on his guard. What was it? A sharp line of light beneath the door of his room. He was sure he’d turned it off. Most of the dormitory’s residents were single policemen; none of them would enter his room. So who, then? Him, he realized! He must have been nearby when Morava had asked about him at the radio station, and had followed him back to Bartolomjska. But how had he gotten the address? And most important: what now? Go back for reinforcements? And if the killer got away in the meantime? Then Morava remembered the pistol he’d fired that time in the car, almost killing Beran in the process. He pulled it out and carefully removed the safety catch. If he were right and Jitka’s murderer was waiting for him, he would shoot once and only once, to kill. Wait…. did he really want to do that? Hadn’t he taught his recruits what Beran had taught him and generations before him? Never let yourself believe you’re the law; in all cases, gentlemen, you are its servants, and only it is sovereign! Behind the door, however lurked something only superficially human: it was pure Evil, and it mocked heaven by masquerading as a person in the presence of its victims. Could Beran’s principles apply to it as well? No, he decided, if it were waiting there, he would kill it. His only responsibility was to do his best, despite his inexperience, to kill it straight off, so that it would not suffer the way its victims had. He inched the key into the lock bit by bit, so as not to make the slightest noise. With his finger on the trigger he slammed the door open and immediately dropped his gun hand to his side, horrified. His mother sat at a freshly-laid table, smiling back at him, her hands folded peacefully in her lap. Now her smile froze. Child, you frightened me, why all the hullabaloo? Mommy! — he unobtrusively hid the gun, which she fortunately hadn’t noticed — what are you doing…? Well, didn’t you tell me to come if the war got too close? But, he stammered the Russians are already there…! Yes, they came sooner than expected. So how did you get past the front…? I don’t know how, child, the main thing is I’m here; aren’t you happy? Of course, mother, but… who opened the door for you? Who else, she laughed, you silly boy; your Jitka, of course!

Now he knew he was in the grip of a dream, but this deceptive condition was much nicer than full consciousness, which was gradually gaining a foothold. He tried to prolong the fantasy. Lying motionless, his eyes closed, he imagined the unrealized meeting of his life’s two loves. He could see his mother’s face and movements from his March visit: he called up images of Jitka from her last days and had a wonderful few moments when both of them were alive in his memory as if they’d known each other forever. For the first time since Jitka’s death her memory did not tear at his soul. And if his mother was alive, as he felt with every fiber of his being, then he had at least one fixed star in his universe.

At that he remembered the horrible beginning of his dream and the beloved faces faded as quickly as a rainbow. He was back in the bloodstained present. But how could he catch Rypl now, when overnight the killer had switched from widows to Germans and wrapped himself in the mantle of a patriot?

Morava could think of nothing else, even on the trip back from the radio to Bartolomjská yesterday. He had been there within a few minutes, since the city center was suddenly empty, as if everyone was celebrating at the station. However, by the time he reached the office, the revolutionaries had stopped broadcasting. A German turbine aircraft flying close above the roof had attacked the building in a daring raid; the torpedo plunged down precisely into the entrance hall, which Morava had just left. The explosion took many lives and disrupted telephone lines and broadcasting. Despite the chaos, the Czechs were working mightily to repair the transmitters and set up replacements, and Beran chased Morava straight back to prevent Brunát from broadcasting one particular proclamation, which he said could cause a split in the Czech National Council.

He had only recognized the white lion by his voice; a turban of bandages covered his mane. A piece of shrapnel had taken off a portion of Brunát’s ear before ramming into a concrete column. The man who had been talking to the commander in the hall was killed on the spot. Brunát read Beran’s paper, muttered something about pricks, and disappeared.

When he returned to Number Four, Beran finally called him to his old office for a report. He welcomed Morava in, saying he wanted a short break from all this soldiering. It was amazing how quickly his jovial old boss — despite a uniform he swam in like a scarecrow — had truly become a commander. Morava glossed quickly over his noon mission; it was old news. He described in detail how he had found Antonín Rypl’s trail, and put forth his request.

“Sir, this isn’t a personal vendetta, even if it could be seen that way….” They could both feel the emptiness of Jitka’s abandoned desk through the open door behind them. “I’m concerned about the purity of our revolution; it was supposed to put an end to this sort of barbarity. According to witnesses, he’s killed almost ten people since noon today: three sadistically and all of them without provocation, because they’d already surrendered. Anyone who says they were just Germans and brushes it off is making a terrible mistake. He keeps on murdering because he can get away with it. For some people he’s a hero, and apparently he’s found a few thugs with similar tendencies. And what if they become a murder squad? What’ll they do once they run out of Germans? Turn on their fellow countrymen? Start on the collaborators, real and imagined? And who after that? Sir, we have plenty of men who are better than I am at messengering, interpreting, and capturing radio stations, but right now I’m probably the only one who can catch him. It’s a point of honor for the police; he’s a self-appointed executioner and we can’t let him go free when peace comes.”

He’s looking past me at her chair; he can’t turn me down! Morava felt sure he had won.

Beran stood up and went to close the door. Then, unusually, he sat down on his desktop and stared through Morava at the wall. The detective had never seen his boss this way.

“It’s a point of honor for the police, if you’re interested, to protect Prague from both the Germans and its own citizens,” Beran began. “Using only our own modest forces we’ve met the demands of our political and military leaders: an impassable city, the Germans in it momentarily paralyzed. The sad thing is, the Czech delegation fell apart before they ever came together.”

He saw that Morava did not understand.

“I think of myself as one of a dying breed of civil servants, who stood apart from factions so they could serve the community. I’ve been involved in this for weeks, as you know, and, in my neutrality, I’ve been more and more horrified at what I see. It was clear to both sides that an uprising would increase the chances that Prague would be destroyed, and it had no real military value given the massive front movements. But there was still a political value in deciding whether to rebel. The winning side will be the one that’s best at anticipating the pious wishes of whichever Allied force ends up in control here. Finally, the democrats started it off; they bet on the Americans, encouraged by their quick advance, but now they’ve got the losing hand. At the moment the Communists hold the trumps, because the Western Allies have stopped outside Plze.”

“No…!” A gasp escaped Morava.

“Yes. The Big Three have apparently decided that the Red Army will liberate Prague. I take it I don’t have to tell you what the consequences will be.”

“I had no idea,” Morava admitted honestly. “When will they get here? It’s just a hop from Dresden and Linz; those claws would cut Schörner off from the rest of the Reich and that would end the war.”

“Remember the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings,” Beran answered glumly. “They let them bleed to death.”

“On purpose? But why?”

“A liberator never likes it when people free themselves first. They don’t get the gratitude they need to stay in power.”

Morava was shaken.

“So the Communists have renounced the uprising?”

“On the contrary. They’re trying to seize control of it.”

“How?”

“Very simply. They didn’t start it, and now they’re claiming they’re obliged to salvage what they can. If it’s successful they’ll be the ones who give the Soviets the keys to Prague. If we’re defeated, they’ll claim the democrats are soldiers of fortune who are responsible for needless losses and damage. Today they blocked the decision to offer the Germans an unhindered retreat to the west in return for capitulation. Suddenly they were calling it a separate peace that would disappoint the Allies — read: the Soviets. As a result we’ll be fighting a force that outguns us many times over.”

“So it’s a cynical game?”

“Why cynical? History proves that the worst atrocities are always committed by the keepers of a sacred truth, who truly believe in their mission. And that mission includes destroying all other truths — which, of course, are nothing but lies — along with anyone who supports them.”

The telephone rang.

“Good to hear your voice.” Beran sounded relieved. “When it hit I was really afraid for you. Yep, be right down.”

He hung up and gave a sad grin.

“Brunát is supposed to bring me to the council meeting. More bull… bullyragging, apparently.”

“I’ll hold down the fort here.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort; you’re going to sleep. Have you forgotten what a day you’ve had?”

He remembered. His wife and child’s funeral. And a bit of war. Suddenly an unbearable heaviness rolled over him. Beran took him by the arm almost tenderly.

“Get up, Jan… can I call you by your first name? I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, and I may not get the chance again. Get up and go lie down. You’re absolutely right; the best thing you can do for your country is catch him. I’ll give you Litera.”

Then a listless stroll past Jitka’s desk.

Then bed, and a fall into darkness.

Then the dream about Rypl, and his mother.

Then waking up with the picture of his mother and Jitka.

Now a sharp memory of his conversation with Beran.

And finally the hope that when he managed to fall back to sleep he would meet those two dear beings again.

Once they had cut a path through all the rubberneckers and cowards they found a skinny redhead tagging along, who had picked a Panzerfaust from the arsenal the Germans left.

” ’scuse me, can I come with you? You’re tough guys; you can make the Nazis swallow anything, hairs and all!”

“C’mon, you’re not even fifteen yet,” Lojza probed.

“Sure I am.”

“Don’t try it. If you wanna come, own up, we don’t take liars.”

“I will be in six months,” he admitted, “but nothing fuckin’ scares me.”

“Your parents let you go?”

“Pop bit it and my mom can go fuck herself,” he explained maturely. “She had her way I’d be wearing a skirt.”

This caught his attention.

“You an only child?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“She ever beat you?”

“Like to see her try! She knows I’d send her flying.”

He was confused.

“You’d hit her…?”

“Why not? Not like I asked to be born. And I don’t give a shit if I survive, either. So why should those fuckin’ Nazis live? Well, can I come?”

“Why not,” he said to the other two. “Maybe he’ll learn a few new words too.”

He would watch the boy. He had to figure out HOW HE GOT FREE FROM HER.

They were a scant two hundred yards uphill from the radio building when the crescendo of a motor caught their attention. At first he thought it was a tank and his eyes darted to the boy’s Panzerfaust, but when he turned around, he saw an unusual-looking airplane appear above the buildings. A large cigar separated from it and dropped toward the ground. Immediately a detonation rolled past, so powerful that it shook the cobblestones beneath their feet. Lime-white dust rolled upward from the radio building, and tiny bits of concrete whizzed through the air toward them.

“Good fucking show!” the boy rejoiced. “That’s what they get for taking the Nazis’ side.”

Everyone had to laugh at that.

Garlanded with guns, they trudged uphill along the main avenue side by side. The people hurrying downhill to help moved respectfully aside to let them pass. The fighters soon realized they would not have much fun that day. The citizens of Prague had gone crazy; their latest hobby seemed to be prying up and hauling around paving stones. Rain began to pour down, and in a wide area around the barricades the naked roadbed quickly changed into mud under the countless footfalls of their builders.

They were not dressed for this work.

“Where do we go for the night?” asked the youth, who had told them to call him Pepík.

“I’m from Brno,” he said, half truthfully. “I don’t have an apartment here.”

Ladislav lived on the opposite — and therefore inaccessible — side of the city, Lojza had found a new guy at his girlfriend’s, and there was no question of going to the boy’s mother’s. After a long while the caretaker on the embankment flashed through his mind. Why not finish him off and then stay there…?

“For God’s sake,” Lojza said, lighting up, “there must be loads of empty apartments from the Germans. I know one that’s pretty close, in fact. Belongs to the director of a glue factory — where I worked till the bastard handed me over to the Work Exchange. Everything that happened to me after that was his fault.”

“What if they’re still there?” Pepík inquired.

“Their bad luck. They kept a goat at their Vysoany plant and since I was the second watchman there, I brought them milk every day at noon. Twice I caught another guy in the apartment; I think my boss’s wife sweet-talked her husband into bringing the milk himself in the evening, so he cut me loose. I’d like to kiss that whore’s ass good-bye.”

The intimately familiar word grabbed his attention. He approved.

The turn-of-the-century street far from the main avenues was trying to pretend it had nothing to do with the rebellion. No one reacted to the night bell. The bald man swore regretfully.

“The evening’s still young. ..” The stoker repeated what was evidently his only joke.

He did not want to give up so easily.

“We can open it. Anything handy?”

“Could always blow the fucker open with the Panzerfaust.” The boy grinned.

No one even laughed. They were dragging an entire armory with them and it was useless. His years with the theater, however, had taught him that in a pinch anything would do. Now he remembered his knife. When he drew it out to its full length from the pouch tied around his body, Lojza whistled appreciatively.

“Nice poultry knife. You a butcher, by any chance?”

“No,” he said, “but I like butchering.”

The lock clicked on the first try. They lit matches. The apartment Lojza led them to took up the entire third floor. The doorplate had no name on it, understandably. They rang. Nothing. They gave a longer ring. From the depths of the apartment they could hear the bell. Still nothing.

“The blade?” the boy asked impatiently.

Then they heard a woman’s footsteps: When she opened the door, chain in place, and he shoved his foot between the door leaves, he felt the excitement. It grew as Lojza tried to persuade her. Of course she should let them in; they’d been sent to protect her and she knew him, after all, he used to bring her milk from the factory…

“Ick habba eenen tseegenmilk haulen, gnaydigga frau…”

From then on, though, everything was different. Lojza and Ladislav played with her for an hour like cat and mouse; they let her change out of her nightgown and bathrobe into the clothes she’d wear to the assembly point for Germans; of course she could take her valuables with her. She outdid them in obligingness, and his mouth began to water when she poured a half liter of scrambled eggs into a pan.

Slowly she regained some color, repeating ad nauseam how grateful she was to Mr. Alois (as she called Lojza), because he was a personal acquaintance of theirs. Her husband must have been delayed over in Vysoany; Mr. Alois of all people knew how decently they’d both treated the Czechs.

He ate his fill, but otherwise kept quiet. Conversations with women weren’t his specialty; after all, he’d only ever had one (that time in the train), and look how it had turned out. But what about HER? Wasn’t SHE a woman too? How does it work, he began to wonder: are mothers women to their sons or not? SHE clearly had been, and such a strong one that he’d never had room in his life for another. The one time he’d been curious what he was missing, that woman had mocked him. He punished her on the spot, and since then he had either hated other women or simply ignored them. Now, for the first time, he could observe how men treated them and what they might want from them. Only his hellishly tight self-control stopped him from gaping open-mouthed like the boy.

They let her wash the dishes — so the Czechs who would come to live here, the bald one urged her, wouldn’t think Germans were pigs— and then they all accompanied her as she went to make the bed. She continued to nod and obey them until Lojza gave her an almost friendly order to undress.

“Tsee dick aus!”

Once again she turned ashen and began to beg. He was very surprised that she chose him from among the four of them as her intercessor. Before he could react, Lojza’s sharp slap silenced her.

“See this mess?” He bared his half-toothless gums at her. “That’s your pig-husband’s fault, for sending me to the Reich. So now you’ll let us have some fun and we’ll call it even. Agreed?”

She stood as if turned to stone, making not a sound. And her horrified eyes NEVER LEFT HIM. Why?

“We’re not going to rape you,” Lojza continued. “As Czechs we’d never stoop that low; but we could give you fifty on your backside, which is more what you deserve.”

He pulled up his sweater and undid a thick belt. He cracked it with a whistling sound on the edge of the brass bed.

“You’ll sleep at least a month on your stomach with a sore ass, guaranteed. Or is my first offer better? Might be more enjoyable. What do you say?”

He raised his hand again, but did not need to demonstrate any further. She began to undress as meekly as she had earlier cooked and washed.

He was excited now as well. He had never seen a woman naked before and the effect was even stronger amid three armed men. He found it disturbing, the way she kept looking at him when she WASN’t EVEN TIED UP.

“A gag!” he suggested.

“Why?” Lojza joked. “This way she can tell us who does it best.”

“So she won’t shout….”

As if she’d understood the instruction, she let out a yelp, but a lot of water had gone under the bridge since that tart in Brno, and his skills had improved. In the twinkling of an eye he whipped out his handkerchief and stuffed it into her mouth, pushing her back onto the bed as he bent her legs. One hand held both hers in an iron grip, while the other fished under his coat for the straps. Then, with the help of the others, he tied all four limbs to the cornerposts of the bed. She lay stretched out like on a medieval rack, unable either to move or speak.

“You’re a fucking grenade,” Ladislav marveled belatedly.

“For that you can start her off.” Lojza offered appreciatively.

The boy just rolled his eyes and swallowed with excitement.

His cheeks flushed; he hoped no one would see it in the glow of the small night-lamp. He played for time, managing to laugh.

“She’s your girl!”

“No problem,” the bald man responded. “Anything for a friend.”

It’s crazy, the thought crossed his mind; it starts the same way.

MY TWO MISSIONS HAVE MET!

“So help yourself,” the stoker said, a bit impatiently.

He had already recovered and was ready.

“I’m sorry, but never with a German.”

“No cunt stinks too bad for me.” Lojza laughed toothlessly. “You don’t wanna, then leave her; I’ll start for old times’ sake, gnaydigga frau.”

He did not even take off his pants, just unbuttoned them, releasing an engorged member, and lay down on the German woman. For some time he moved up and down on her, grunted twice, and got up, satisfied, buttoning his fly.

“Take a number, step right up!”

Ladislav’s turn lasted longer and involved much heavy breathing. At the end he let out a few sounds resembling moos.

He was careful not to let them notice how closely he was watching. And was that all, he marveled. For this people get married and divorced, love and hate each other? Then SHE had been right — a hundred times right! — to protect him from it. This, these funny jerking movements, was what was called passion?

THEN MINE IS STRONGER!

It was the boy’s turn. He wiggled oddly on the prone figure.

“What’s wrong?” Ladislav inquired.

“I don’t feel anything…”

The stoker bent over him with evident professional interest.

“Lemme see… it’s not even up!”

“What the fuck am I gonna do?”

“Get off her.” Ladislav chuckled. “You’re impotent. Or a bugger.”

“What’s that?”

The toothless man, surprisingly, took pity on him.

“Leave the kid alone. Pepik, don’t worry about it, you’re still a bit too young. I say we leave her trussed like this until morning, gentlemen, and sack out somewhere else, there’s loads of beds here. Before we go we can have some more for breakfast.”

He leered at the boy.

“Maybe your willie’ll grow overnight, then wham, bam! You might even want some too, Ludva.”

He was still not used to the name Ludvík, much less to its nickname. And this boasting was starting to annoy him. Why did they think that was all there was to manhood? Even the youth would have sobered right up, if only he’d seen… But why not recruit the kid — or all of them — for his cause? Surely the world had never seen BIGGER WHORES THAN THE GERMANS?

And why was she still looking at him that way? Yes, she recognized him as her master!

“Once you’ve had your fun,” he decided, “I’ll show you what I do with a Kraut whore!”

He considered leaving while Grete was asleep, to spare both of them the good-byes. However, when he had made tea down in the kitchen and dipped his biscuit in it, he suddenly knew he couldn’t disappear without at least kissing her for good luck.

As he had held her, sleeping, in the crook of his arms long into the night until he himself fell asleep, he realized why she attracted him more than his wife ever had. His conclusion was unfair but true: he had been Hilde’s first; she had simply belonged to him, and never had any secrets from him. With Grete, the closer she supposedly brought them with her confession, the more mysterious she seemed. He had filled Hilde’s entire life; in Grete’s he was simply the latest man, or even one man too many. Sometimes he felt himself entirely superfluous.

He was wrong, she’d said once long ago (Long ago? They’d barely known each other seven weeks!), utterly wrong to make all his predecessors into rivals. You love once in your life, for your whole life, and that love simply takes on different names — but the final one is the sum and summit of them all, and that was him, as he knew full well; why brood over it?

He could not deny that he felt the same. As if he’d never loved anyone but her.

Anyway, why worry about it? Now the point was for both of them to stay alive.

He went back upstairs in his socks and tried to wake her by staring intently at her. She slept so deeply that finally he leaned over.

“My love…,” he whispered in her ear. “Do you hear me?”

She swam to the surface of consciousness remarkably quickly.

“Why did you wake me, Buback? You’ve never woken me before? Do you want to tell me you’re staying with me?”

“No….”

“Nor that you’re taking me with you?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then why? I could have not known for hours that you’d gone. That you’d left me in the lurch at the mercy of the first person to come. Maybe it’ll even be your murderer. Murderers like to return to the scene of the crime, don’t they?”

He was horrified.

“For God’s sake, Grete…. I tried to explain to you…”

An ironic gleam appeared in her sleepy eyes.

“Now you’ve convinced me, love. Of course you explained it. And of course I’d rather see you than wake up here alone. Now go, for real, and leave me alone. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Grete—”

“I don’t want to see you till I see you again!”

He collected his strength to leave.

“You’ll have to lock up after me….”

“Not now. Now I have you inside me and I don’t feel so abandoned, so I’ll try to sleep some more. Lock me in and keep the key. I won’t be entertaining visitors today. Good-bye, love.”

The bedclothes billowed. The last thing to register on his retina was the tiny flicker of a flame.

Grete’s face, that battleground of despair and passion, stayed with him the whole way to Gestapo headquarters. No one noticed him; there was no gunfire, and the barricades had become social clubs, where people hashed and rehashed the possible developments while they waited for the Americans to arrive. Everywhere snatches of conversation told him people were convinced the war was over, at least in Prague.

He did not meet his own men until close to Bredovska, but even here Czechs living on “German” territory walked freely through. In the building he found the document burning was over and the drinking had begun. The collapse of Germany’s self-declared millennial values and its leading characters was turning a national tragedy into a bloodstained burlesque. In his previous workplaces, a power elite directed by Berlin’s mighty pen had managed to arrange an orderly withdrawal. Here the pen had snapped and the Gestapo had disintegrated into a frightened crowd of men arguing when and to whom they should surrender. To Buback’s horror they were unanimous on one point: that all the prisoners in the underground bunkers should be liquidated first, so they could not inform on their interrogators.

Regardless of the state of their relationship, he had to speak to Meckerle immediately, and coincidentally he ran into his boss on the way. The newly minted lieutenant general was just leaving his antechamber; when he spotted Buback, he motioned to him with a finger and retreated back into his office. There he poured two large cognacs as he walked, drank his in a single gulp, and began to speak, standing.

“You were right, that SS moron’s raid was a colossal failure, and then he slept right through that fiasco at the radio station. Prague is lost and I’ve given up on Schörner. Do you still have a direct line to the Prague police?”

Is it a trap? he considered hastily; is Meckerle after revenge? Does he want my confession so all he’ll need is a quick field trial and an execution that’s more like a dog slaying? But if Buback had been followed the day before, then saying no would only confirm his guilt. So he hedged his bet.

“Yes. Neither you nor Schörner withdrew your orders for cooperation.”

“Perfect. If it amuses you, then keep looking for that deviant in this shambles, but help your countrymen while you’re doing so.”

For the first time, Meckerle gave that word preference over the Nazi term kinsmen.

“I’m happy to, assuming I can figure out how to proceed, and if it’s in my power to do so.”

“We need to get out of this trap, nothing more, nothing less, otherwise the Russians will sweep us up and put our backs to the wall. Yes, the western front has stopped. They could let us retreat toward it. We’ll need our guns, of course — otherwise every kid we see will want to take a crack at us — but we’ll give them up as soon as we see the first Yank.”

No! Could this be his chance?

“And what are we offering?”

“Not to turn their baroque buildings into piles of rubble; what more could they ask for?”

“I don’t think that will be enough. They have the upper hand.”

“Probably so. What would you add?”

“Their people imprisoned in Pankrac. There’s talk here of executing them.”

“People are afraid the prisoners would want revenge.”

Buback had an answer to this one.

“We’ll give them the keys to the building once we’ve been allowed to leave.”

“Done,” the giant said without hesitation. “Move, then, and see to it.”

Buback could not risk having the former bank clerk change his mind and overrule him.

“I request a written order.”

“Have them write it up next door and hurry!”

Buback did not move.

“I have one further wish, Mr. Meckerle.”

He deliberately neither phrased it as a question nor used his superior’s title. It was a risk, to find out how far he could go with the lieutenant general.

“Speak.”

Nothing more. So he’d mellowed.

“Have you already sent your wife home?”

The question hit the mark. Meckerle’s answer was defensive.

“You know perfectly well I don’t have a ’home.’ They blasted my villa into smithereens.”

“But she’s left Prague.”

Meckerle was starting to seethe, just like he used to.

“Yes. She’s at her sister’s in Bavaria. Is this an interrogation, Buback?”

“I think it’s a man’s first responsibility to take care of those close to him. In your position, all the German civilians in Prague should fall into that category.”

There was still no outburst. Instead, the newly minted lieutenant general poured both of them another glass. But he did not drink; he was working up to a question.

“She’s still here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Last time you found out and practically had her abducted.”

Once again he watched this powerful man practically drown in childish embarrassment.

“Well, all right. It’s in the past. We all have our weak points; don’t you? Anyway, she set matters straight right away. I should really lodge a complaint through you about excessive self-defense…. Keep your hiding place to yourself, but watch out for her; it’d be a shame to lose her.”

“I can do that as long as the Czechs don’t completely control the city. Then she and all the other Germans left will be at their mercy. There are recognized principles for dealing with soldiers that have to be upheld, even, more or less, in uprisings. But for civilians there’s only a general declaration, and so far hatred has swept it aside each and every time. Yesterday, at a meeting in Pankrác, I suggested that we concentrate all civilian personnel under our protection; they’d certainly rather hang about the barracks on a hard floor than wait in their comfortable apartments until someone breaks down the door with an ax. Kroloff convinced the other officers that every German residence in Prague should become a fortress.”

“Kroloff s a fanatic and a moron.”

“Kroloff claimed to be quoting you.”

“Now wait!” Meckerle was on the brink of exploding, but immediately regained control. “Until yesterday I had orders from the highest levels of the Reich to boost soldiers’ and workers’ morale at any price. But I depended on each of you using your own brain.”

I’ve got to ride this one out in silence, Buback thought. The statement’s author soon realized how absurd it sounded.

“Well, yes, all right….” He sighed again. “We dug the spurs in; now we’ll have to ride the horse till it throws us. You can convey your idea about the prisoners to the Czechs as my own offer. I’ll have our civilians watched, but I can’t promise much. Most of the city is no longer in our control, and to tell the truth I’m hoping none of our men get the bright idea to try to reconquer it; that would hurt us even more. Anyway, the Czechs have new allies. Vlasov’s Russian division has moved toward Prague in the naive hope that they’ll get a pardon from Stalin if they come to defend the Slavs against the Germans, even though it’s shutting the door once the horses have left the stable. But don’t tell the Czechs; it’ll just puff them up. Let me make myself clear: The Reich is over, and the Protectorate no longer exists. I have no idea what Schör-ner’s up to, and no inkling what’s keeping Frank busy, but I know what I want. I’ve still got a good few thousand men armed to the teeth here in the city center whom the Czechs would be glad to get rid of because, well, why take the chance? I’m offering a nice little capitulation, one that’ll be tolerable for both sides, in return for a retreat where we’ll take all the remaining Germans with us. Pass it on to your cops, see to it they give us the green light, and save yourself and her.”

He placed the glass firmly down, stalked off to his desk, and began to rummage through the drawers. Buback had the impression the hearing was at an end, and moved to leave.

“Wait!” Meckerle stopped him. “Does she have a way to defend herself when you’re not around?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you at least leave her with a gun?”

“No… I don’t think she’d know how—”

“What? You didn’t know she was crazy about guns? I think one of her lovers got her interested in pistols. She even knew how to take mine apart; just to be sure, I always unloaded it. Wait….”

Finally he found it. What he gave Buback was a small ladies’ revolver with a handle of inlaid pearl.

“This little jewel, which makes perfectly good holes, was going to be a present for her. If it doesn’t bother you, give it to her with my apology. She can shoot me with it later. That’s all.”

Buback could not think of anything better than to stick the thing in his pocket. From behind as he left he heard Meckerle say nostalgically, “Tell her I said hello… that pretty little bitch.”

He felt another of the stabs inside which love used to scare war away.

While the photographer made more and more enlargements, Morava sat writing notes. He was taking the first five hundred prints out to Litera’s car, wracking his brains over how to arrange transport around the shattered city without Buback’s help, when he spotted him. The chief inspector was walking toward him from a controlled crossing point, waving at him like a friend arriving for a social get-together. From up close he did not seem as relaxed; he urgently requested a meeting with Beran.

The latter, now ensconced in Rajner’s office, made time for him immediately and got hold of Brunát as well, whose turban had lost its snow-white color overnight. The injured man looked as if he’d been wandering the sewers, the former superintendent (now the other half of their commissionership) joked, and Brunát, to their surprise, confirmed it. He had been directing work on the sewage-main barricades, so they wouldn’t find themselves — as he put it — with visitors up their asses.

Buback described the mood at the Gestapo and then went through Meckerle’s suggestions in detail; at that they sent him into the antechamber. After what Beran had said the night before, Morava would have expected him to be pleased at the disintegration of the unified German command, but the serious faces of both men told him there was a problem: The end of the war, in Prague and all over Bohemia, was sliding out of control.

He was even more shocked at the political problem presented by Vlasov’s anticipated attack on his former allies. The outlaw Russian general was expected to turn on the Germans, a move that would greatly help the insurgents. According to Beran, an increasing faction within the council believed that any cooperation with Vlasov was tantamount to approving the Russian rebels’ original motive for fighting against their native country.

The commanders from the city’s southeastern edge were asking urgently for an explanation: Why couldn’t they accept Vlasov’s men as emergency protectors? They were exasperated to see the Germans’ death grip closing around them, and made it clear how little these breaking and re-forming political ice floes interested them.

However, both commanders thought the suggested German retreat from the area around the main train station — a dangerous reinforcement source if Schörner should attack Prague — should be accepted as a local decision not affecting the Allied principle of total and unconditional capitulation.

Beran and Brunát therefore decided to recommend that the Czech National Council accept a political resolution to the situation.

And what about Vlasov? Beran claimed — and Brunát backed him on it — that the Russian would not want to attack unless necessary. Then he reached for the telephone.

“If the Germans attack you,” he ordered someone, “Vlasov’s people can fight alongside you; I’ll take the heat for it.”

In the meanwhile, Buback would wait there, the chiefs decided in conclusion; they would guard him against the ever-growing numbers of patriots who were trying to set a sharper tone at Bartolomjská. Several colleagues, supposedly led by the garage manager, had adorned themselves with armbands marked RG, calling themselves the Revolutionary Guards.

How strange, Morava thought. Tetera — nicknamed “Pretty Boy” for his skirt chasing — never let a word against the Germans pass his lips; they’d always watched their words in his presence. But the young detective had already noticed at the radio station how quickly the cowards became heroes. After all, the woman called Andula (who, at a critical moment, had asked them to heed the Germans’ request to cease broadcasting distress calls) had become the first to compile a list of “radio station fighters.”

Finally he had finished his tasks. As he left, he agreed with Buback on three times and places to meet (just in case) and picked up Litera and the car in the courtyard. After confirming with the operations officer that, excepting the center, Bubene and Pánkrac, there were still contiguous bands of the city in Czech hands, he decided to wear his uniform so they would not be held up with constant identification checks. The others wanted to avoid Germans, but Morava now believed he might be able to reason with many of them. They could always ask to be taken to the Gestapo building; curiously, thanks to Buback, it might offer them the greatest degree of safety.

First they visited the caretaker. The house on the embankment was locked and they had almost given up ringing when unexpectedly something moved in the raised ground-floor window. The Germans had had guards here till Friday, he explained once he’d opened the door; yesterday they’d disappeared with a truckload of papers, so he was on his own. They still hadn’t caught the murderer? No, Morava admitted, and now they couldn’t even help the caretaker. Surely he could see what was afoot, so in future: Keep the door locked and don’t open it! Still, they would like to test his memory once more.

In putting nine other photographs chosen randomly from the archive on the table along with Rypl’s, he was satisfying the conscience Beran’s training had drilled into him, rather than his intellect; he had long since ruled out the caretaker as a reliable witness. Instantly he realized his error.

The shock of the murder, the bombardment and his resulting shameful bowel trouble must have temporarily clouded the man’s memory, but a few months’ distance had refreshed it; the caretaker pointed without hesitation to Rypl.

Finally, a state’s witness!

Could he move somewhere else for the meanwhile, Morava asked. Where, the man replied; the front would cut off his path to safety in eastern Bohemia any day now, and how would he get out of Prague, anyway? It occurred to Morava that he could requisition a guard for the man under the pretext of securing German secret offices; his boss had been right once again.

On the way over Morava had thought it strange he was fighting so hard for one witness while Rypl was conducting public executions. Or does murder stop being murder, legally, when the victim belongs to a stronger nation that forces its law on others through violence? And what does it mean when a new police force starts to form within the old one? Would the garage manager Tetera dare say he served the law better than Beran did? He persisted in his gloomy thoughts as they crossed a dozen or so barricades. Finally they were at the house where earlier he had come looking for Karel Malina, the Beroun depot employee.

“Take something we can pry with,” he suggested to Litera.

He headed straight for the neighbor’s bell. A bony man opened the door.

“Come in. Elika’s been expecting you.”

She greeted the policemen. Her cheeks burned with repentance.

“Why didn’t you tell us the truth?” Morava scolded her, although he was mainly angry at himself.

“You didn’t have uniforms—”

“I showed you my documents!”

“But there was a German with you—”

“From the criminal police. He’s helping us.”

“How was I to know?”

“I told you clearly we were looking for a murderer.”

Her husband had been studying Morava. Now he made a decision.

“Tell them. They don’t look like provocateurs. And it’s out in the open now anyway. What if something happened to Malina?”

“Karel…” She swallowed and corrected herself. “Mr. Malina came on Tuesday to tell me he was hiding a parachutist…”

No! Morava despaired; he’d been here — just one door away.

“… and that he’d be going away to meet the man’s contacts, so he might be detained. He took his keys back; I had to swear not even to tell my husband.”

“But you did tell him,” he reproached them both.

“Only yesterday. I thought it was taking too long, and by now it seemed a bit strange…”

“Have you heard anything from next door?”

“No. But a cop could have a peek, couldn’t he?”

“Not legally,” he said, chafing at the impotence of old-fashioned laws. “We have to have authorization for forced entry. I don’t know where I would get it in this situation, so I’ll take responsibility for it myself. But I need both of you as witnesses for the opening, search, and closure of the apartment.”

The engineer agreed for both of them. When Litera tried to pry the door open with a tire iron, the man brought a whole box of tools from his apartment and wedged a massive chisel in himself. At the second hammer blow the lock gave way. A stench hit them as if they’d opened a sewer.

It never ends, Morava thought, his heart sinking. Dumbly he exchanged a knowing glance with Litera, who no longer hid the pistol in his hand, and suggested to the woman, “Better stay here, ma’am. I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant.”

“Run along home, Elika,” her husband ordered.

Now the import of it hit her, but she could not obey. Collapsing against the staircase wall, she clutched her throat with her hands.

Piles of trash lay in the kitchen; an unmade bed and an open wardrobe greeted them in the bedroom. Morava pressed down on the last door handle, his hand wrapped — out of habit — in a handkerchief.

In the bathtub, on a checked blanket smeared with feces, lay a small man, dead less than twenty-four hours.

Jan Morava immediately remembered another body lying beneath a cover of soil and once again felt the touch of pure despair.

He was the first to wake up, thanks to his bladder. They had left the German woman overnight to “rest in peace,” as the bald and toothless Lojza jokingly put it. There were plenty of other guest bedrooms in the extensive apartment, but his wariness had led him to choose a maid’s chamber instead, where he could sleep alone and lock the door.

It was raining. Not hard, but persistently; in the misty morning the scrawny courtyard trees evoked the inhospitable mood of a chill winter’s end. Here and there a pop resounded, as if someone nearby had smashed an inflated paper bag; it didn’t sound at all like distant gunfire. The noises were so few and far between that suddenly he felt worried: maybe it was all over. THAT WOULD BE A SHAME!

Yesterday, he was sure, had been a milestone in his life just like the day he punished that floozy in Brno. With one difference: back then he had failed miserably, thanks to his own incompetence, and withdrawn into his shell for years; it took him from February until the black April day when they nearly caught him to crawl painfully out again. Still, since the uprising began yesterday he’d done better than he’d ever dreamed, and now he was awash in self-confidence, just like that rookie on the Brno shooting range years ago.

Most of all, he FELT GREAT. Although he had devotedly followed HER orders, he had always been prone to treacherous attacks of lethargy. Now he knew their source: society’s hypocritical morality had forced him to hide. It called righteous purges a crime and had him pursued like a beast, hoping to wreak its sorry retribution on his neck. The same society, however, had now declared open season on its occupiers, and he was its tool of punishment.

I AM THE NATION!

On the way to the bathroom he gave the others a military wake-up call; before he could shower, he found them blinking sleepily in the kitchen. Real coffee (which they’d found here, of course) revived them, and Lojza remembered the German in the bedroom.

“Anyone like seconds?” he asked.

The boy turned red as he shook his head; clearly he was afraid of any further humiliation.

” ’snot really my thing,” the stoker admitted. “I have to feel a woman all around me.”

“Well, I’ll just jump on ’er for a second and then we’re off,” the bald man said. “Sure you don’t want any, Ludva?”

This time he was ready.

“Actually I do,” he said, “but once you’re done, and my own way. Let me know.”

When Lojza reported a short while later that he’d had his fun and was looking forward to the show, even the others could not hide their curiosity. The night had not been kind to the German; she certainly hadn’t slept and the uncomfortable position had exhausted her perhaps even more than the men’s lust. When all of them entered the room again, she did not even open her eyes.

“I know,” Ladislav guessed. “You’ll do her dressed, so you won’t get dirty.”

He grimaced ironically at the stoker.

“Look at me!” he ordered her in German, the way he had done to the baroness in February, and to the rest in Czech thereafter.

So she listened, and he once again saw in her eyes animal fear splintering into humble resignation, as if he were her only hope.

Suddenly he was hungry to SHOW THEM ALL OF IT. In the theater where he’d worked, he had never understood how a grown man could take satisfaction in performing, but now it was exactly what he longed for. Of course it was primarily the boy he wanted to see it, Pepík might be his first apprentice.

WATCH OUT!

A red light flashed in his brain. Was he really out of danger? Someone might recognize him and try to make him into a run-of-the-mill murderer. With one witness still at large (whom he couldn’t forget), could he afford to hang three more around his neck, including an adolescent?

I’M NO FOOL!

After all, he could show them another way, similar, but a bit more ambiguous. He’d just neutralize that perfidious dove, where her depraved soul would try to hide!

He checked that her mouth was still well gagged, and placed the point of the knife beneath the nipple of her breast.

“This is how I do it,” he said.

He began to press, gently but insistently. The sharp blade broke the skin, leaving only a red line. Her body tensed as far as the straps permitted; the sound that emerged from under the gag was more like a long brass tone with a mute.

Yes, now he was really aroused, truly aroused like a man who determines life and death, but his hand remained firm, pressing evenly on the haft even while the woman struggled ever more fiercely. Her eyes seemed to flow over, but so did those of the men, he noticed with satisfaction. No one breathed a word; motionless, they followed the slow plunge of steel into her breast.

Then, finally, his sense of touch told him the tip of the knife had reached her heart. Normally he stopped here to come back to it after he had finished the rest. He paused now as well, but only to release his fist for a moment and show them the blade stuck firmly in her flesh. The German had meanwhile closed her eyes; she was trying to escape, to flee from him in spirit.

The other three men were pale. He could not risk it; their wonder might turn into disgust. He grasped the handle again with his fingers and guided it in as deep as it would go. The body immediately slackened. He ripped out the knife, and to his surprise, there was not a drop of blood on the blade.

“What the…,” Lojza whispered.

That was all anyone said.

As he undid the straps to wrap them back around his waist, all of them solicitously helped him, one at each corner of the bed. Then it was he who used the stoker’s joke:

“Well, the morning’s still young!”

To dispell the shock, he had them count up their money. When he’d left the runt’s yesterday for the radio station, he’d completely forgotten he was broke. Events had taken the other three unawares as well; the older two had a couple of crowns, the boy not a coin to his name. They searched the apartment, but the Germans had cleverly removed their marks and jewels to a safer place in the Reich. In the woman’s purse they found a handful of crumpled Protectorate crowns; it would have to do for the time being.

“So what,” he reassured them. “The harvest’s just starting; we’ll do our reaping somewhere else.”

As they were putting on their guns in the entrance hall, the bell rang. His throat caught, but immediately he realized the advantage was on their side. He nodded to Ladislav and Lojza to stand with him opposite the front door, and to the youngest to go open it. The boy showed his cleverness; as soon as he had done so he dropped lightning-fast to the ground to give them clear aim.

The two men in front of them, one in a police uniform, the other in civilian clothes adorned with a helmet and bayonet, were suitably horrified.

With the reaction of his comrades to the bedroom scene, he felt confirmed as their leader.

“What do you want,” he asked sharply.

The civilian could not stop shaking, but the uniformed man was not as green and quickly found his tongue.

“We’re securing German apartments. And what are you looking for here?”

“Nothing. Quite the opposite. My friend had to pay back a debt.” He turned to Lojza, who bared his gap-toothed jaw.

“So you’re the council for the protection of Krauts,” the bald man spat.

“We have no interest in protecting them,” the policeman retorted. “Our job is to secure property and deliver the Germans with any necessary belongings to Girls’ High School, where they will be concentrated for the meantime.”

“Best this lady can hope for is concentration in a mass grave.” Lojza laughed.

The man remained businesslike.

“I am required to uphold certain directives. The Red Cross will take charge of German civilians in Prague, according to international—”

“Where was your Red Cross when those pigs kicked out my teeth,” Lojza shot back angrily.

“The newly resurrected Czechoslovak Republic will be a country of law. Private reprisals have no place here,” the policeman insisted.

He knew the other three were waiting to see what he would say or do, and it made his blood boil to hear these platitudes again.

“This lady knew she was guilty. She committed suicide.”

“How?” The pest would not be satisfied.

SHOULD I DEMONSTRATE ON THEM?

He suppressed the temptation. There might be more of them hiding here; only the STRUGGLE AGAINST THE KRAUTS could give him and his men a sacred mission, and he did not want to lose it.

Now the boy answered.

“She impaled herself on my knife,” he announced. “The fucking whore tried to seduce me, and I showed it to her, like this, told her to get dressed, and suddenly she ran at me like a crazy woman. A second later it was all over.”

“Where’s the knife?”

“I was so scared I threw it out the window. It’s somewhere in the vegetable patch.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No.” Now he cut the kid off. “And if necessary he’ll have three witnesses right away.”

The uniformed man could see he was on the losing side, but wanted to save face. He addressed the boy.

“Your papers.”

“At home,” Pepík said. “How could I know some Czech cop would want to see those fucking German papers?”

“If mine will be enough,” he offered on a whim, “here.”

The others gaped while he enjoyed watching the fool copy down Ludvík Roubínek’s address. When the policeman wanted more names, though, he put an end to the comedy.

“One witness is enough for a Hitler whore; no one could care less about her. Enjoy playing Samaritans and detectives; we’re going to join the fight.”

The adventure had an unexpectedly pleasant finale. A large Mercedes stood in front of the house; it had Berlin plates, but Czechoslovak flaglets adorned its windows. A handsome mustached man in an Afrikakorps cap with a tricolor pinned to it was slumped behind the wheel.

OUR STRUGGLE DEMANDS TRANSPORTATION!

He did not bother checking with the others.

“You’re waiting for your colleagues.”

“Yeah….” The driver perked up.

“You’re to take us there first.”

“Where…?” He seemed doubtful.

“To Girls’ High, of course. But we’ll stop on the way for a stool pigeon.”

Interestingly enough, none of his men so much as opened their mouths. He could sense why: Before they’d felt RESPECT for him, but that German lady had infected them with her FEAR. He was quite satisfied with this development.

The chauffeur shrugged and started the engine.

“Whatever you want. Where to?”

“Can we get through to the Vltava?” For now.

Not much had changed in Prague overnight. The war was only an occasional distant drumbeat, and the ants were still diligently hauling paving stones to raise the barricades. There were more guns and unshaven men trying for a fighter’s look.

He too was sprouting stubble; it had been stupid of him to shave at the runt’s house when he could have had a new face to go with his new name. So, onward! From the front seat he laid out the plan. They were after a caretaker who’d betrayed a Resistance contact man and a parachutist to the Gestapo. He intended to get more information out of the caretaker, but must not be recognized beforehand. The other three would pick the man up and blindfold him. Than they’d all take him down to the rafting yard and he’d put the pressure on him. If the traitor confessed, they’d take him up to Girls’ High with the other Germans, where he belonged.

“And if not?” Lojza wondered.

He threw the bald man’s line back at him.

“His bad luck.”

Their target played dead for a few minutes. Just as they had decided there was no sense in ringing again, there was a flutter of dirty curtains as the old man tried to check inconspicuously who wanted him. The boy climbed up on the stoker’s back and rapped on the high first-floor window. The caretaker’s nerves failed him, and he went to let them in.

Shortly thereafter they led him out blindfolded; a woman passerby took it as she was supposed to and spat distastefully. As they crammed into the backseat with him, a foul stench filled the car. The confused driver crossed the intersection as ordered and turned down the ramp to the river’s edge.

“Where are you taking me, sir?” the caretaker asked fearfully.

“Just a bit further,” the stoker reassured him.

He observed the two streaks dribbling from under the kitchen towel that covered the man’s eyes, and began to have doubts: Was he truly dangerous? The wretch had only seen him for a couple of seconds three months ago. He was a man, and a Czech.

HE WOULD GIVE HIM A CHANCE!

He ordered the driver to stop just short of the bridge’s arch, and had the other three take the caretaker out. The booming echo of their steps frightened the man even more.

“What do you want from me?”

“We just need to ask a few questions,” Lojza said.

He pondered how to arrange it so he’d be alone with the caretaker for a while. A sudden sound and movement gave him his chance. The starter sounded and the Mercedes began to crawl back up toward the embankment. The bald man was first to understand.

“He’s giving us the slip!”

Without waiting, he tore off, the stoker and the boy behind him. Now the caretaker would get his chance.

“Take it off.”

The trapped man relaxed a bit as he untied the rag with trembling fingers. His eyes squinted as they got used to the light again. A few paces away the car’s motor had shut off; Ladislov and Lojza were arguing with the driver.

He asked the caretaker, “Do you know me?”

What he saw sufficed. The man before him began to shake his head when suddenly his face twitched. He was not clever enough to mask it; he froze in recognition.

NOTHING TO DO, THEN, BUT…

“Pepík!” he shouted at the car.

The boy ran over.

“Here!” He gave him a submachine gun, safety off. “He confessed. He’s yours.”

The excited Pepík almost dropped the Panzerfaust on the ground. For safety’s sake he took it from the boy and set out toward the car stopped halfway up the slant of the embankment. Behind him he heard the caretaker’s wheezing.

“Let me go! I’m a witness, he’s a murderer, the police are protec—”

A long fusillade cut off the last syllable; the kid doesn’t know what moderation is, he’ll turn him into a sieve!

But he did not turn around, just slowed down to let the boy catch up before he reached the petrified group at the Mercedes. Wordlessly he exchanged Pepík’s weapon for his own.

“Thanks, Mr. Ludvík,” the boy said enthusiastically. “You can count on me!”

In the two hours he spent in the police commissioner’s office, Buback found the Czechs were having similar problems with the uprising: Things were not going smoothly, and skirmishes between local Resistance factions were hindering their struggle against the occupiers.

The military situation in Prague and the rest of Bohemia had not changed significantly overnight, but Buback knew it was just the calm before the storm. Right now the Germans were determined to wait for the Americans, but sooner or later that would give way to their fear of the Russians. And once that giant mass of frontline soldiers and war machines moved, it would pour like molten lava over everything in its path. The only way to prevent it was for the Czechs to open the barricades and let the Germans retreat westward, except that the Czechs could not get a political consensus on this point.

Forgotten in a corner of the antechamber as policemen, soldiers, and civilians ran in and out, Buback could overhear snatches of heated arguments and wondered whether Beran trusted him or was simply careless. Finally the new commissioner emerged and explained it himself.

“I don’t think there’s anyone else in Prague with as good a chance as you, Mr. Buback. That’s why I want you to have a clear picture of us. You didn’t get any military secrets here today, just an impression you can take back to your superiors. I’m hoping they won’t react the way they’ve done at the front or in other occupied countries. The fighters in Prague don’t take orders from us or any other centralized authority. All we can do here is try to bring some order to what’s already happened, or what’s happening now without our knowledge. But if the Germans preempt the council’s decision by attacking, that fractiousness and unpredictability will work against them, because then they’ll be at the mercy of each and every barricade commander. I’d caution you strongly against risking it.”

Beran added that the Czech National Council was trying to contact the Koice government by radio, but they were not expecting a response before evening; there was no sense wasting Buback’s time. A new letter of transit with a minor Czechification of his identity would open a path through Czech Prague for him….

He took it and read his Czech name.

ERVÍN BUBÁK.

In the middle of the city the barricades were still up; the German guards were letting local residents past, and Buback got through with them on the way to and from Bredovská Street. He wrote the absent Meckerle a short but emphatic note and then set off for Grete with the lieutenant general’s present. Ever since he got the pistol he had been berating himself for not thinking of it on his own. But how could he have known she was a crack shot?

Meanwhile, May turned rapidly into a dank autumn; it began to rain again and the temperature continued to drop. Yesterday’s enthusiasm had evaporated from the streets. The long wait had divided Praguers into two camps. For one group, the war had ended, and they grumbled that the rest kept playing soldiers and tearing up the streets; who would fix things afterwards, and when? The others were busy fortifying and strengthening the barricades.

The dead-end street was devoid of life again; did anyone live here? This time he went straight to the door without stopping and confidently unlocked it; it seemed the least conspicuous entrance. He knocked their agreed signal inside on the wooden banister, but his heart leaped into his throat when Grete did not respond. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, all the while ruing leaving her alone in this murder-stained house.

“Grete!”

Silence. Would she too be lying on the floor just through the kitchen doors? He whirled in panic and might have injured himself on the steep steps if her muffled voice had not stopped him.

“My love…!”

She crawled out from beneath the bed like a small animal from its lair.

“If you didn’t know I was here, you’d never find me, would you?”

She must have seen the horror in his eyes.

“Don’t be angry at me, love.” The words tumbled out of her. “I just wanted to be sure; strange, I’ve known for so long that this war was wrong and that Germany would lose it, but only now did I realize what that’s going to mean for me — that charlatan Hitler seemed so strong that even I was fooled; I thought after his defeat the curtain would fall and we’d simply start a new number without him. .. It never occurred to me that a time would come when Europe’s hatred would turn against me, personally, that it would be I, Grete Baumann, who would foot the bill for the Germans who murdered; I should think it’s only just, but I feel it isn’t, my love… and now, when I have you, I’d finally like us to have a couple of happy years together, until… Look what’s happened to me!”

He watched, distressed by her fear, as she quickly unbuttoned her long linen dress and pulled down her stocking. Baring a long, slender leg up to the hip, she pointed blindly with a finger, never letting her pitiful glance leave him.

“Here…!”

“I don’t know what you mean….”

“Can’t you see,” she practically moaned at him.

He brought his eye down to the place and finally spotted something: dark blue lacework delicately embroidered on a small square of lighter skin.

“And what is it…?”

“My veins have burst!”

He was so relieved he dismissed it with a wave.

“If you hadn’t shown it to me…”

“Buback! If the world weren’t falling apart around us and you had time to observe my legs the way you used to, you’d have caught it yourself. That’s how it all starts. Take it from a former dancer who’s seen the crippled legs of colleagues cut from the troupe before forty, except I wasn’t even twenty at the time and thought I was immortal.”

Now he understood: In her precarious solitude the theme of age had become a bulwark against the fear of death. Gratefully, he too switched gears.

“Did you find anything else?”

“Yes.” She slid out of her dress, stripped off her white shorts, and turned her back to him. “Here!”

He scoured her beautiful figure but could find no flaw in it, and told her so.

“Come closer.” She pulled him by the hand to the angled window. “Do you see those shadows?”

Logically there had to be some.

“Yes, so?”

“You see, you do see them!” she tormented herself triumphantly. “They weren’t there not long ago. My flesh is sagging.”

“What else?”

“My chin. It was totally firm. And now…” She pinched the skin under her chin between her fingertips. “Watch me pull on it!”

“You can stretch even the firmest skin that way.”

He demonstrated on his wrist.

“We’ll have to make love more often again,” he said, “and you’ll be even prettier all over, with your veins and wrinkles and everything else.”

“Where do you see wrinkles?” she snapped, wounded. “I don’t have any wrinkles!”

This spontaneous manifestation of female vanity made them both laugh.

“Except there’s a catch, love,” she quickly turned serious. “I can’t now, not much. Suddenly I can barely feel you. I can’t relax. First we have to survive the war. That means getting out of here. And if we’re separated, finding each other again.”

Now she was speaking from her heart.

“Do you have an idea?”

“Yes, I have a plan.” She was animated again; the image of their meeting had banished thoughts of farewell. “The train station. The railways will be the first thing they repair. It’s the easiest place to reach and the safest place to wait; there are always lots of people there.”

“But where?”

“You choose.”

“Do you have any relatives?”

“You’ll be the only one, if you ever marry me.”

“Likewise.”

“All the easier to choose. Hamburg’s too far, Berlin and Dresden blown to smithereens and nothing but sad memories. What’s closer and not completely in ruins? Munich! Yes, love, we’ll meet in Munich, what do you say? I’ll be there a week after the war ends at latest, and won’t move from the station until you appear.”

Naked from displaying her supposedly aging body to him, she shuddered from the cold. And once again sorrow broke through his love and tenderness, sorrow that even together they were so alone against the war, and that despite his efforts and her hopes this might be the last time they would see each other.

“I’ll do everything I can,” he began carefully, “but I might be delayed longer than you think…”

“A month? Two…?”

He would have to tell her.

“Defeated soldiers will face imprisonment.”

“But you’re not a soldier!”

“All the worse for me that I am what I am. It could take a while before the Allies are satisfied that not everyone in the Gestapo building worked in the Gestapo.”

“How long, then?”

He did not have the heart to say what he really thought.

“Half a year, a year…”

Even that was enough to horrify her.

“No!”

“You know what?” He tried to reassure her by focusing again on their reunion. “If I don’t return in four weeks, and you find work and an apartment somewhere else, look for me in Munich at the station the first Sunday each month at twelve, agreed?”

“The first and third Sundays!” she announced.

He nodded, but couldn’t imagine in his wildest dreams that Grete, with her physical nature, could hold out alone for long, much as she might want to. He and Hilde had not needed to be close by. Even across the boundaries of distance and time their memories held them together. Grete’s love demanded animal warmth; without it she would cease to exist. Her confession was foremost a warning not to leave her alone. But he loved her for this weakness as well.

Once again he longed for her. So instead he stood up.

“Agreed.”

“What is it, love?” She panicked. “Are you going already?”

“I don’t want to, but I have to ”

She did not make it harder for him.

“I know,” she said, and he could hear the fear through her courage. “Just tell me you’ll come again tonight. You will, won’t you?”

He did not believe he could manage it again today.

“I’ll try, but—”

“Try, no buts! Keep the key.”

“Yes….”

“Maybe you’ll even take me with you.”

“Maybe… oh! I have something for you.”

He pulled out the small pistol and was amazed to see how eagerly she reached for it, and how skillfully she checked that it was loaded.

“It’s perfect! Thanks.”

“I had no idea you were so attracted to guns.”

She stopped.

“So why did you….?”

He repeated Meckerle’s words to her.

She gave a husky laugh.

“You see, I want to have my life in my own hands, love. I’m glad your male vanity didn’t stop you from giving it to me. But you don’t have to worry. I won’t be afraid anymore; if anyone tries to hurt me, I can just as quickly and easily turn him into dust.”

The needle hunt in a haystack — there was no better term for it— went more sucessfully than Morava expected. The Czech police vehicle crossed the barricades without incident; at each point they tarried just long enough to find the person in command, usually a former officer, sometimes a colleague, and more and more often ordinary citizens determined to protect Prague even at the cost of their own lives. They would pass out two or three pictures with a caption, warn the recipients to be extremely cautious, and move on one block further.

On a city map, Morava marked barriers and their apparent permeability. He and Litera worked outward from the radio building, combing nearby areas in the hope that the murder squad had found the city center congenial; later it occurred to Morava that they would probably have headed for the Czech-German flashpoints, where they could continue their hunt. The first batch of photographs was running out and the second would be ready that afternoon. As Litera drove, he groped along the shelf under the wheel in the hopes of finding a cigarette butt. A key skittered off the shelf and onto the floor; Morava picked it up.

It belonged to Jitka; the last time she had used it was to open the door for her murderer, and it fell out of her skirt pocket on the way to the hospital. Litera had found it, put it away, and forgotten about it. Now Morava had this cold piece of metal in his palm, and the memory of their time together flooded back into his heart, when all he had to do was unlock the door to step out of the world of murderers (uniformed and otherwise) and into the small but boundless world of their love.

How can it be, he despaired again, that she’s gone and her killer is still alive?

Then Morava caught Litera’s sympathetic glance and turned to steel again. He would force himself through the door he had avoided ever since that day, and rid himself of that final weakness. His driver understood and agreed when Morava suggested they take Buback’s thin German woman something fresh to eat; if the detective happened to be with her, they’d bring him back down with them. In the police canteen they gave Morava an enamel milk can filled with potato soup along with a quarter-loaf of bread. As usual they drove along the bank of the Vltava to the last tram stop, where they snaked up the hill on a narrow, wooded road. At the second bend some SS men unexpectedly stopped them.

“Hände hoch!” an angular sergeant bellowed at them. “Hands up! Out of the car!”

Their police uniforms had no effect this time; they were dragged rudely out of the vehicle, disarmed, and shoved onto the sidewalk: Morava tried to negotiate with them.

“We work for the criminal police, which is cooperating with the Prague Gestapo on—”

“Halt Maul! Shut up!”

The petty officer ignored them; he was completely absorbed in directing his men. Small groups of SS were bashing their rifle butts against the doors of the low houses.

The whole time he had lived in this corner of Prague with Jitka, Morava had rarely seen other people, only the occasional old ladies shuffling arduously out for a walk or to the store. Now for the first time all the inhabitants appeared on the street; it was a sorry sight, as if they were emptying out the old-age home and the poorhouse. An exception were the two youths they led out of the nearest house and put with the policemen. No one was paying attention to the foursome with raised hands at that moment; the SS troops were surveying their catch, driving the especially unsteady ones back into their houses.

“Who are you?” Morava whispered.

“Students. We ran from the Totaleinsatz, the work deployment. What do they want with us?”

“I don’t know.”

“We could run again,” suggested the other, a vigorous blue-eyed blond with a handsome face. “They’re not watching!”

He set off, bounding with long strides down toward the curve in the road. The sergeant turned almost casually and pressed the trigger of his automatic rifle. They could see the shots slam into the student’s body, which kept running for several more seconds before starting to fall; even on the ground its legs jerked in a left, right rhythm. The horrible movement stopped only when the SS man walked slowly over to the dying boy and mercifully gave him one more shot… mercifully! Morava trembled. What a mockery of the word…

“Amen….” a pale Litera breathed.

The remaining student was about to faint. His arms began to fall.

“Keep them up!” Morava hissed at him.

The ease of that killing was a warning: These Germans were past caring. Then the shooter approached, looked at their hands and asked with what almost seemed like concern, “Does it hurt?”

Morava expected further savagery, but instead heard a piece of almost friendly advice.

“Put them behind your head, then!”

He remembered his dream. Even this death machine looked like a person and could probably act like one as well. How could he recognize him — or any of them — if they managed to escape, put aside their uniforms and become what they had been before? He had spent three months tracking a single murderer, trying to bring him to justice. But what about the thousands upon thousands like him? They murdered people as anonymously as this man here had, and at a moment’s notice they could turn into upstanding teachers, shopkeepers and workers. How could anyone possibly prosecute the senseless death of the handsome, blond, blue-eyed boy? Was it moral to let them withdraw in peace? Were the Communists right this time, and not Beran?

He was still thinking about it when the SS assigned six older men and women to their group and led them away, leaving the dead boy and the police car behind.

Before they reached the top of the rise, they grew by a few more handfuls of Czechs and a heavily armed escort.

There were several dozen of them in the web by the time they reached the rows of modern houses ringing the Pankrác plateau. Across the valley, a stupendous view of the castle opened before them, but their attention was riveted on the drama they had been sucked into. Another SS company was driving younger men and women, some with children, from their houses.

The young Totaleinsatz refugee, still in shock from his friend’s death, kept stumbling. Morava and Litera were practically carrying him.

“We’re hostages, aren’t we?” The boy’s voice trembled.

The arrival of a staff car seemed promising; the lower officers saluted at attention and the remaining men stopped to look. But the pair who got out stripped Morava instantly of all hope. The tall SS officer with a pock-scarred face and the civilian with a skull-like shaven head were remarkably good personifications of a regime which, in its death throes, was baring its true nature again.

“Report,” the pock-marked man requested in a half-whisper.

Despite this all the subcommanders heard him and rushed over to announce crisply that they were already finished. Except for one.

“I’m not done yet, major. They managed to lock themselves in the air-raid shelter. The building used to be a bank; it has steel doors.”

“Are all of them down there?”

“One didn’t make it.”

“Bring him here.”

They instantly hauled a middle-aged man forward; although it was afternoon, he was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. Asked how many people were down below, he counted nervously in passable German until he arrived at six men, ten women, and eight children.

“Is your family there too?”

“Yes, a boy and a girl… my wife and mother-in-law…”

“Draw me the shelter!”

Shakily he drew a simple rectangle and a staircase with several turns on the back of some sort of receipt the officer found in his breast pocket.

“Where does the air come from?”

“There’s a vent from the ground floor…” He drew it. “The garbage cans cover it.”

“Will they hear you if you call down to them?”

“Probably.”

“So do it!”

“What should I…”

“That I’ll give them precisely three minutes to open up, otherwise I’ll have you shot.”

A hot flush appeared on the Czech’s face, reminding Morava of the Klásterec priest, but the man gathered enough courage to ask a further question.

“And what will you do with them… with all of us then?”

With a gesture of his head he took in the whole street, full of exiles.

“Your people down in Nusle have blocked our way through the city. You’ll walk in front of my soldiers as a human shield.”

“But I can’t tell… I can’t just ask them…”

The scarface pulled a large pistol out of its holster.

“Go!”

My God, how can You let… Morava cut himself short: after all, that’s exactly why he’d given up on Him last week. His heart ached for the unfortunate man, who had no choice. And it always works, every time; despite the faith, love, morality, and honor we acquire so painfully in our lifelong struggle for self-betterment, in moments of crisis what triumphs is a blind instinct for self-preservation. In that respect we humans are worse than animals, who defend their pack until torn to bits.

The man’s gaze wandered to the Czech police uniforms. At that moment, Morava’s stiff arms behind his neck stopped hurting him; he was glad that even in this garb he was treated no differently from the other hostages. However, the man suddenly smiled sadly right at him.

“If you survive, tell them that I loved them.”

“In German!” boomed the major.

“You have no right!” the man retorted in that language. “We’re civilians. You’ll be punish…”

A shot ended the sentence.

The scarface stuffed his gun back and handed the sketch to his unsuccessful subordinate.

“Somewhere here is the opening. Throw a couple of sticks of dynamite in, and if they don’t open up, a few grenades. Everyone else, on the double!”

With shouts and shoves, small groups of men, women, pensioners, and children were put together and the cordon of soldiers tried to goad them onward, but soon it was clear that many could not keep up the pace. At the nearest square the Germans weeded out the old and the very young. Morava helplessly watched parents’ heartrending attempts to protect their children; some took them in their arms or on their shoulders, while others shooed them beyond the line of guards, calling out the addresses of relatives or friends.

The new groups trotted a few hundred yards further to the court building. At the crown of the street, which sank down into the Nusle valley in a long curve, tractors were shoving the last incinerated tram wagon from the German-captured barricade over to the edge of the carriageway; it was a rear car, and the pock-marked SS officer climbed up on its middle platform with the bareheaded civilian.

“An interpreter!”

The Czechs’ experiences so far quashed any impulse they may have had to step out of the crowd that had become their last refuge.

On the second call, Morava volunteered. The officer indicated he was to join them on the tram, and nodded to his guide.

“Your fellow citizens have lost all reason,” the skull roared at the throng. “They have blocked the path of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers who are defending Europe against Bolshevism. Since they did not let us pass, you will have to convince them; it is our right and your responsibility! Translate!”

Morava deliberately translated in the third person, making it clear he was not one of them.

“Anyone who insists you are civilians is lying. A handful of bandits have made all of you rebels, meaning you are not subject to protection. If we bleed needlessly, then so will the Czechs. Once your people cease their resistance, we will once again treat you as ordinary citizens under international law. That is all. Translate!”

When he had finished, he asked the commander, “May I add something?”

“No!”

“It would be in your interest for these people not to panic. I wanted to tell them an assault might not be necessary, because Colonel Meckerle is negotiating with the Czech National Council.”

Both Germans were visibly shocked, each in his own way.

“How do you know that?” the SS man asked.

“How do you know him?” the civilian inquired.

“I told your men when we were detained that we are both“—he pointed to Litera—“members of the local criminal police working in close cooperation with your officers. This morning I was present at a meeting between my superior and a Gestapo representative; they’re looking for a way to prevent further fighting. It’s not in your interest to cause more pointless losses of life!”

They conducted the conversation on the tramcar platform, tensely followed by hundreds of Czech and German eyes. The major was evidently wavering.

“I’m also a confidante of Lieutenant General Meckerle,” the civilian said, emphasizing the title. “Who was this envoy?”

“Chief Inspector Buback,” Morava said and immediately realized he had made an error.

“Didn’t I tell you?” The shaven head crowed triumphantly. “The Lieutenant General would never have entrusted a traitor — a deserter! — with such a task. Buback’s authority has automatically devolved to me, and therefore my orders are still valid: clear a route!”

If Morava had briefly thought he could convince the SS man, the German’s eyes soon disabused him of the notion. They clearly had only one goal: to get as far as possible from the scene of their crimes. The man turned to his officers.

“Get moving.”

In a few moments the attacking tanks’ motors roared to life. The hundred-strong Czech crowd was shoved into the wide, sloping street. One last gesture of false nobility awaited the policemen.

“I’ll treat you as negotiators,” the major announced. “You’ll be returned to where you were detained.”

Morava saw in his mind that ordinary man who had sacrificed himself for his family. Futile or not, his deed was a challenge. He glanced at Litera and saw agreement in his eyes.

“We’ll go with them,” he said. “Maybe a solution will be found… so long as you don’t order them to fire prematurely.”

“It all depends on your side,” the officer retorted, and motioned genteelly to them to climb down first from the tram platform, as if he were waving them through a cafe door.

The tanks rode close behind them. Morava and Litera had to run again to catch up to the Czechs, who were now spread across the width of the street. Behind them were SS men with guns at their sides. The soldiers and Czechs were surprised to see two police uniforms pushing their way through them to get up front. The two of them did not speak the whole way down; talking was beside the point.

Why am I doing this, Morava mused: Jitka, my beloved, am I looking for the quickest route to you? Or do I want to give life without you some other meaning? But why am I dragging poor Litera with me? He shuddered; Litera dotes on his family as much as they do on him! Too late now….

The scene was all the more unbelievable for taking place in broad daylight in a metropolis virtually unscarred by war. Two rows of lifeless, locked-up apartment buildings formed a channel, and a multitude of people who, a short while earlier, had been living quite ordinary lives in similar houses now filed along it toward an inescapable fate. Tanks rumbled behind their backs, their treads scraping along the cobblestones and tram tracks.

The front row reached the place where the sloping avenue turned right. A barricade about three hundred yards distant appeared around the bend. Tramcars placed end-to-end formed a sizable barrier just as they had uphill; here, however, they were reinforced by a high, impassable mound of cobblestones. Above them flew the Czechoslovak flag.

The Czechs stopped. Surprisingly, the soldiers made no immediate attempt to drive them forward. Gradually even the din of the tank treads subsided. In this place full of men and machines silence reigned, broken only by a strange sound Morava had never heard before. Then he realized he was breathing loudly to calm the wild beating of his heart. The unfamiliar sound was the agitated crowd’s collective breath.

It had started to rain, but no one noticed.

The barricade too was silent. But they have to shoot; they have to risk it! Strange, Morava thought, now I have time to face the fact that in a few moments my life will be over, but I’m still not afraid. Did my sense of self-preservation — all my feelings, for that matter — irretrievably disappear when you did, Jitka? Or is it merely resignation, a consequence of realizing that once God is lost life itself has no meaning, since it can end so capriciously and stupidly time after time? A voice broke into his thoughts.

“Shouldn’t we scatter? It’ll open up the Germans and our side could shoot.”

It was a very young girl to his right asking.

Why didn’t I think of that, he wondered; she’s right!

Before he could answer, fighting broke out from a completely different direction than they had expected; a wild cannonade and machine-gun bursts rang out behind their backs, somewhere up on the hill they had just left. Everyone, captives and captors, turned that way. They saw a tangle of sparks striking the treads of the rapidly turning tanks, and then confusion in the German ranks. The SS men left the hostages to their own devices and scurried behind the metal colossi.

“The Americans!” someone cheered.

Vlasov’s men, Morava thought; thanks, Mr. Beran!

Many apparently had the same idea as the girl; suddenly they scattered toward the barricade, dragging the rest with them.

Immediately the barricade began to shoot past the fleeing hostages, but the Germans aimed their retaliatory fire right at their own prisoners.

Panic broke out. Some of the hostages flung themselves on the ground, others kept fleeing toward safety. Screams nearly drowned out the fire. The girl tripped on a body, lost her balance, and fell. Morava went back for her and picked her up. Suddenly he saw red. He blinked in vain. Then his forehead began to burn sharply. He reached up to it and felt a sticky liquid. Instantly strong hands pulled him forward and from somewhere he heard Litera.

“Come on, Jan, just a little bit further!”

He came to on wet sand originally covered by paving stones. The girl was binding his head.

“You sure got lucky, Mr. Policeman. Skin of your teeth!”

The distant battle still raged; here men and women were waging a noisy argument in its place.

His forehead burned agonizingly and his head would not stop humming, but at least he could see. He tried to look over his shoulder.

A familiar face leaped out from a small group of armed men arguing with an indignant crowd. He could not believe his eyes.

“Mr. Litera…” He looked around for him. “Josef…!”

“Lie down,” the girl insisted. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Your colleague is hunting up a car.”

He strained his eyes.

It was him.

Rypl!

Then the image dissolved again like a phantasm.

The pretty boy behind the wheel of the Mercedes looked glassily toward the bridge; his chalk-white cheeks made the violet bruise under his right eye all the more noticeable.

“I hear he doesn’t like us anymore,” Lojza explained. “Should we give him to Pepik too?”

The driver’s mustache trembled noiselessly like a guinea pig.

“Or what should we do with him, boss?”

The title warmed him.

DID YOU HEAR THAT, MOTHER?

“Any of you know how to drive?” he asked his men.

They shook their heads in unison. He repeated Lojza’s phrase.

“His bad luck, then. He’ll have to put up with us until we get a replacement. Pepik!” He handed the boy the pistol he had confiscated on the hill from that stupid cop in civvies. “The next one’s yours as well. Forward!”

Then he looked at the bridge and was unpleasantly surprised.

“Where’s…?”

“I sent him over the edge,” his boy crowed proudly. “He’s gone for a swim!”

Over by the towpath’s stone wall, the caretaker’s body bobbed and floated close under the black tower, just above the weir. With this slow movement the past closed behind him.

NOW NO ONE CAN PROVE ME GUILTY!

Meanwhile the rain and the distant gunfire intensified. He decided to follow the battle’s voice. However, false echoes plagued Prague’s hills and valleys, and they were no closer to the uprising when they reached the last barricade in the Nusle valley. Here they were leery of turning up toward Pánkrac, which was supposedly swarming with Germans, and he was just about to turn around when the messengers brought two pieces of news.

The first brought murmurs of horror: the SS were driving whole blocks of residents uphill as human shields. They were trying to break through to the city center, and that meant going through Nusle. The second seemed too wonderful to be true, but because enough telephones were fortunately working, several randomly dialed extensions in the suburbs immediately confirmed it.

Yes, they insisted one after the other enthusiastically, they were already celebrating; an hour ago the Russians had liberated them, or more precisely some Russian units disguised as Germans — no one really understood it, but the soldiers were definitely moving onward to clear Pankrác.

He ordered that the Mercedes be left in the next side street, so that in an emergency they would have it at hand, unscathed. The boy took the keys; the driver had obeyed him like clockwork since the incident with the caretaker.

MY APPRENTICE!

Not that he didn’t trust the other two, but he felt absolutely sure he could always trust the boy with his back.

As the four well-armed fighters approached, a man in the uniform of a prewar staff reserve captain hurried over and welcomed them to his unit. He was trying, he explained eagerly, to bring some order to yesterday’s chaos by securing an effective defense at the price of minimal losses in at least this one place.

Were any of them officers? He was the only one to come forward. Yes? And what rank? He remembered Brno and conferred on himself the rank Králik had been preparing him for.

“Sergeant.”

“No!” The captain was overjoyed. “Heaven must have sent you!”

Taking his new sergeant aside, he confided that even after repeated requests for reinforcement, he still had no experienced men here, despite their strategic location. The sergeant’s arrival had increased the barricade’s firepower almost twofold; otherwise all they had was a light machine gun and a couple of ordinary rifles. The captain was nevertheless determined to defend the barricade and expected the sergeant to insure the precise execution of all his orders.

Once he had gotten rid of the old fool, he told his men, “My grandma knows more about war than that office boy. I’ve seen battle. Keep an eye on me. When I leave, we’ll meet right away at the car.”

“Watch it!” the boy warned the drooping mustache. “Run off early and I’ll mow you down!”

To their surprise, a nearby pub brought them out some quite decent pork, dumplings, and cabbage, but afterward there was just more waiting and boredom. Meanwhile, they heard that reinforcements had gotten through to the Germans in the city center, the other central train station had fallen into their hands, and a new attack on the radio station was expected. He had already begun to consider heading in that direction when the captain hurried over. The Germans on the hill had moved, he announced breathlessly, and were driving Czech civilians in front of them as hostages, but in a short while — on good authority! — they would themselves be attacked from behind by General Vla-sov’s Russian corps. Their task on the barricade was to hold their fire and let the hostages approach, so they would have a chance to escape behind the barricade. He would remain at the telephone, while Sergeant Roubínek would see to it that there was no premature firing or a premature retreat.

The now-sergeant nodded at his men to indicate the final decision still rested with him.

A rumble reached them that could only be tank treads. The roadblock here was more than solid, a core of tramcars strengthened with various construction materials rising to the second floor of the corner buildings. Tanks could not roll past without partially clearing it first. He could imagine, however, what one tank grenade could do: Paving stones from the barricade would fly in all directions like huge fragments of shrapnel. Where would he aim, he mused, if he were their gunner? Over there, where the outlines of an openable passage were visible. He therefore selected a post on the opposite side.

The captain, he had to admit, had had his cement-bag gunners’ nests atop the barricade built straight by the book; now he lay down behind them between Lojza and Ladislav. The boy kept watch on the mustache down below and — just in case — covered their backs.

In that strange suspended time that vibrated with an ever-louder rumbling, he could finally think over everything that had happened since morning. He had long known that nothing in his life was an accident. For years SHE had given him inspiration; from that other world it was even stronger than when SHE had been alive. Sometimes, when his strength unexpectedly deserted him, he had doubted himself. Now he knew SHE was with him again, showing him a path he had almost given up on.

FROM SHADOW INTO THE SUNLIGHT!

Antonín Rypl was dead, killed in the battle for the radio, and would never be reborn; he could not let a few whores threaten the new avenger of Czech shame. Not even Ludvík Roubínek, who had lent him his name and face, was a final solution. The man’s unknown life concealed unknown people who might come looking for him. Mere exchanges would not help in the long run.

I NEED A BRAND-NEW ME!

His experiences yesterday and today showed, unfortunately, that even if a brand-new Czech state arose from the ashes of the Protectorate, its pillars would be the very same policemen. The fact that he was not alone gave him hope; for just under twenty-four hours he had led a small but determined company, which had now become the fighting core of this barricade. His inner voice told him something significant would occur here, placing him one step closer to his final goal:

To TAKE POWER INTO MY OWN HANDS!

No, he didn’t want to play the hero and perish senselessly on this godforsaken watch, but he definitely had to risk something to seize control and widen his power base. Then his NEW SELF would be born: a refugee from the Totaleinsatz, a freed prisoner, a partisan (or whatever, there was time to figure that out). The timid office mice of the new regime wouldn’t dare question his past; they would give him any papers he asked for.

The din of steel treads grew stronger and the victims appeared around the bend of the road, a long line of men and women, and a second, third, and further one behind it. From several hundred yards away he could not make out the expressions on their faces, but their gait was the very picture of powerlessness and fear: some were holding hands, others had arms around their neighbors’ waists, and their slow, loping motions betrayed the weakness in their legs.

The barricade defenders let out a loud, simultaneous gasp.

“Jesus Christ…,” he heard from one close by.

Now the first row of SS had appeared; they marched almost in step, guns held two-handed at their sides like hunters on the chase.

“What do we do?” the same voice asked, horrified.

The captain appeared again and tried to shout over the din.

“Retreat! Retreat to the next barricade! Vlasov is on the move, he’ll be on them before we know it.”

Lojza and Ladislav glanced at their leader. He was still down behind the embrasure and called to the officer, “So why drop back?”

“For the hostages’ sake! Come down, Sergeant!”

“Stay!” he told his companions.

The boy was waving his weapon from below.

“Should I get my ass up there with the Panzerfaust?”

“No!” he roared. “Keep an eye on the car!”

The others were already clearing out.

“Sergeant! Didn’t you hear me?”

“I want to cover them with my fire!” he shouted to him and his own men.

“Men, that’s an order!”

The hostages and soldiers had just come within range and the first tank had crawled around the bend when the sky ripped open on the hill above them. Something there had evidently taken a direct hit and flown up in the air. A frenzied crossfire of light and heavy weapons followed.

The Germans stopped first, turning around hesitantly; their formation collapsed. The Czechs turned as well, but some inertia drove them onward; from the top of the barriade it was clear that in doing so they had opened up the Germans.

This was a target to die for!

A few paces away the machine gunner was also wavering. He clearly did not want to leave either and had taken aim at the Germans. It was time to decide.

“Fire at the Krauts!”

Three tommy guns and a machine gun carved deep swaths in the ranks of the SS. Through the deafening roar he could hear wild screeches. They came from the Czech crowd, which had run forward and scattered. The remaining German soldiers were lying on the ground, partially covered by the fallen, and firing like mad. Not seeing the gunners, the Germans had set their sights on the fleeing hostages.

“Stop firing! Stop firing!”

In the corner of his eye he could see the captain trying to pull the gunner away from the machine gun. Just then the other barricaders reached him, along with the first prisoners lucky enough to make the barricade.

“For God’s sake, don’t shoot!”

He stopped grudgingly because the Germans were in a blind retreat; the tank went first — he could have taken them all down! But with both superficial and more serious casualties among the Czechs — probably including a few deaths — the fuss was even worse than the one at the radio building.

The sergeant and his men had acted against explicit orders, the captain said, asking others to confirm it, like a little sneak. No, they acted like soldiers being led by a chickenshit, Lojza thundered at him, and the machine gunner agreed: It was their sacred obligation to attack Germans. The war wasn’t over and every dead one counted; who knew how many other lives they’d saved? A few hostages shared this point of view, but the majority were insistent. There was no point staying here any longer.

“Pack up!” he told his men. “We’ll get our payback somewhere else. Anyone want to come with us?”

Out of sudden instinct he turned to the machine gunner.

“Sure!” the man responded eagerly; a remarkably pale fellow, he looked too skinny and weak to handle the long weapon on its tripod.

“You must be crazy!” the officer snapped at him. “Without you we can’t hold the barricade.”

“Then drop back,” the man scowled. “This gun nearly cost me my head yesterday and I don’t lug it around to shoot rabbits for fun. You don’t need weapons to retreat, anyway!”

“Cowboys!” the captain shouted at them, tears of rage in his eyes. “Just shoot up the town and move on, is that it? Our dead are on your conscience; there was no reason they had to die!”

A clearly audible “Hurraaaaaaah!” carried down from the hill.

As he led the way across the wet soil beneath the barricade, he nearly stepped on a Czech policeman whom a muddy young girl was trying to resuscitate. Drop dead, he wished malevolently.

The rain grew stronger as the battle slackened. And why not go uphill, it occurred to him. There’d be plenty of Germans to smoke out of their hiding places. In addition, the Czechs up there had just lived through an SS massacre and wouldn’t be as squeamish.

Then he remembered another place they could dry out in peace and quiet and maybe even repay another debt….

Like a fire that suddenly flares up from charred rubble, the war reappeared to surprise Buback again. He was taking a shortcut, a trail that led down beneath the old fortress to a railway bridge, when the previously isolated gunshots melded into the cohesive hum of battle from several directions.

Standing in the rain, he wondered whether he should go back; everything in him wanted to be with her. Logically, though, it would not solve anything. On the contrary, it meant forfeiting control over their lives and entrusting them to luck. Logic won out, but his inner turmoil remained; part of him could not stop feeling her fear.

This time he needed his letter of transit at nearly every barricade, and twice the bedraggled revolutionaries shook their heads over it before giving in. He would not be lucky enough to get there and back tomorrow as well. If he was to save Grete, he had to arrange it today.

On the way he listened closely for rumors. The most credible one was that a couple of German units billeted in Prague, whose commanders had formally capitulated in return for a promise of free unarmed passage out of the city, had feared revenge from a now armed populace, and tried to force their way through to a safe retreat.

In front of the police commissioner’s office he came across a familiar face. A broad-shouldered man looked inconspicuously around and informed him sotto voce that he was Mátlak from Morava’s group and was waiting here, at Beran’s orders; Buback should follow him at a distance. Soon they were alone under the shelter of a crooked Old Town passageway, and Matlák poured out his story.

Berán and Brunát, he revealed to Buback, had been removed from their post and placed under some sort of house arrest. Why? Buback was flabbergasted. Because! The Communists had taken over the Czech National Council; they claimed Beran’s acceptance of Vlasov’s help was a gamble deliberately meant to insult their Soviet allies, as were Beran and Brunát’s local agreements with the German commanders, which the Germans had broken without a moment’s hesitation. Beran’s message to Buback was that he could no longer do anything for him, his lady friend, or any other Germans. However, he still approved of any attempt to defend those decent and innocent German civilians, and hoped the majority of them would live to see peace without harm.

Could he speak with Beran’s replacement, Buback asked despairingly. The broken truces were no doubt provocations by dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, who thought nothing of saving their own skins at the expense of their defenseless fellow citizens and exposing them to the enraged Czechs’ vengeance. Matlák warned that it wasn’t advisable. The garage manager had been named revolutionary police commissioner; since yesterday Tetera had taken the hardest possible line against the Germans and their Czech helpers.

The garage manager, realized Buback; my God, our informant is now in charge! But who can I tell?

Matlák informed him that on both sides, the radicals had simply swept out the moderates. All they could do now was try to prevent the worst from happening. He was among the few who had learned to appreciate Buback; therefore he was risking this conversation and would be glad personally to keep helping him as long as he was able. I need to get hold of Detective Morava urgently, Buback requested. He went somewhere with some soup; yes, Matlák repeated to the amazed German, he had been there in the canteen when Morava and Litera had picked up a canister of soup and bread to take to someone.

Buback, of course, knew whom it was for. They must have just missed each other, so they would be long since gone from Grete’s, but he was grateful all the same. He would risk one more trip to Bredovská for fresh news of the German side’s intentions and then head back to Kaví Hory; he couldn’t leave her alone any longer.

“Please,” he finished, “if you believe we’re among those ’other Germans’ who want to atone for the havoc Germany has caused, tell Mr. Morava as soon as possible that I’ll be waiting for him at a familiar place.”

“The house on the hill?” Mátlak asked, and, seeing Buback startled, tried to calm him down. “I’m sorry, it just occurred to me; I’ll forget it right away. ..”

What occurred to Matlák could occur to others, said a fearful voice inside his head as he marched onward, showing the letter of safe conduct with its already invalid signature. At any cost he had to get Grete out of that place; it could become a deathtrap at any moment, and his only hope was Morava. Only? What about Meckerle?

Immediately he felt ashamed. Had he already sunk so low that he’d switch sides again? What set him apart, then, from Vlasov’s traitors, whom he’d found so contemptible? But was this really a defection? Didn’t he have the right, even the responsibility, to use any means available to save his love? If Meckerle could extricate himself and his men from this siege, the giant couldn’t refuse to take her along. But then if Buback wanted to appease his own conscience, there was only one way: He had to stay to the bitter end, whatever it might be.

Mired in thought, he reached Wenceslas Square. The last Czech crossing point not only accepted his pass, but even tried strongly to dissuade him from continuing. The Germans had gone on the rampage, picking up every Czech who appeared on the street. And a hidden sniper was firing on anyone who tried to cross over. Buback bet on speed and luck to avoid him, and won. Around the corner, however, he was arrested.

What should have been a trifling problem for Buback, of all people, turned into a surreal scene with an ever wilder script. Before he could even speak, two SS men tackled him like butchers grabbing a meat calf and shoved him over toward a handful of men they had evidently picked up before him. He could not find the courage to dig his Gestapo identification papers out from his socks and shoes in full view and decided to remain anonymous until a less awkward opportunity presented itself. Besides, personal testimony of how Germans treated Czechs in these critical hours could prove exceptionally valuable in his coming conversation with Meckerle.

Shortly thereafter a covered truck pulled up and the prisoners were herded under its tarpaulin. None of the Czechs made a noise, and their escort was menacingly silent, although the Germans’ gun butts proved more demonstrative. Buback sustained a sharp blow to the shoulder, but this only strengthened his determination to stay and observe what his kinsmen were doing.

Grabbing hold of each other to avoid falling over on the curves, the prisoners careened along the slippery pavement toward an unknown goal that could not possibly be Bredovská. Buback realized despondently that this was precisely how all Europe had come to know his people in the last five and a half years: as armed robots choosing victims at random, imposing their divine will on nations they judged less worthy. Anywhere else in the world, Buback’s job would have been a perfectly respectable one, but here he belonged to these robots, was one of them, and bore full responsibility with them for each and every one of their deeds.

He had spent the whole war tracking cheats, criminals, and other wrongdoers in the Germans’ own ranks. The front he knew only from rumors; as soon as they burned their evidence, they moved him one country further. Was that why he had been so sure his hands were clean? Blaming the German catastrophe on these blank-eyed savages, who had seen too little good or too much evil in their lives, was like blaming the hands of a clock for the time it shows. He, however, had been part of the mechanism — at first enthusiastically, later less so, but nonetheless an obedient cog in the workings of the Führer and Reich clockmaker.

Oh, Hilde, why didn’t you argue with me years sooner?

Oh, Buback, maybe in your blindness you’d have left her….

Oh Grete, if only late repentance could restore us to grace!

But who now would bestow it on the Germans? Even at this late hour, when all their lies were revealed and the Reich had reached the end of the line, they were loading inhabitants of a foreign city onto a truck like cattle destined for slaughter. What would come next? The only thing that made sense was to exchange them for Germans fallen into Czech hands. If that happened, he would offer to mediate under the condition that the SS finally start to behave in a civilized manner.

The truck stopped and the escort began to shove them out of the back. Anyone who misjudged the height or lacked agility landed on all fours. One older man could not stand and keened in pain; he had taken a bad blow to the knee. Buback looked around for the commander — now would be the time to step out of anonymity — but saw no officers in the circle around them. Two of the Czechs were already picking up the moaning man, their hands locked to form a seat beneath him, and carried him off after the others to a hall Buback knew well.

It belonged to the terminus railway station. International runs had never stopped here, only trains bound for the smaller Czech towns. In earlier days, it was the departure point for Prague children during the summer holidays. Despite the circumstances a memory of his mother caressed him: She pressed his teary face against her fragrant blouse and promised him that in seven days she and Daddy would come to visit. And he could even taste the mandarin oranges they always gave him for train trips to ward off thirst; oh, where are the snows of yesteryear?

The vast turn-of-the-century hall bore traces of recent fighting and swarmed with uniforms, overwhelmingly black in color. They pulled the prisoners at a swift pace to the front of the first platform. Strangely enough, there were no trains around, not even outside the hall where the tracks fanned out. And then, from out on the rails, a noise rang out like the cracking of an enormous whip. He realized what it was when they pushed the Czechs into long rows and began to count them off: one, two, three, four, five. Every fifth one was forced to jump down from the platform onto the rails; the four before him were herded between rows of guards into the parcel post storerooms.

As he waited among the last for them to get to him, a new salvo crackled from up front and he made a firm decision. It was barbarous of his countrymen to execute people this way when peace was just around the corner. As a German, he could only compensate for it by putting his own life on the line. If he were fifth, he would not speak up! To escape by condemning another man to death was beyond the bounds of humanity; he would cease to be himself.

If the worst happened, he would be sending his love to her fate as well, and would die with her in his thoughts.

All the Czechs knew what was happening — he could read it in their faces — but no one gave the slightest sign of despair. They all seemed to understand that their personal honor was the only thing they had left, and all their efforts were focused on preserving it. The foursomes not selected suppressed their relief, the fifth ones concealed their deathly fear. Buback had always found Czechs to be too cunning, too evasive, too openly selfish for his taste, but in this fateful test that arbitrarily consigned them to life or death, they seemed to him almost noble.

The Nazis were shifting the man with a wounded leg down to the tracks; a bullet would now end his pain. When the Germans reached Buback, he straightened up like the rest and stared them in the face. He saw nothing there but the effort to keep correct count. O German justice, point at me! He was fourth.

As they tried to drive him down to the storerooms, he finally reached down to his right sock and addressed his SS guard so imperiously that the man did not even check his documents, but hurried with him, as directed, out to the track branching. The guard obediently broke into a trot when Buback pressed him to overtake the condemned men from his own group.

From the end of the platform he could see the carnage. They were shooting the Czechs in front of the engine-shed wall, placing each new row a body’s length in front of the one before. The dead formed an extensive, multicolored field in which red predominated. As another platoon of executioners stepped forward, the gunners just relieved all lit their cigarettes at once. Behind them, another dozen victims were arriving, among them men from Buback’s truck.

The closest officer was a sergeant who seemed to be directing the executions. Buback pressed his document into the man’s hand and quite exceptionally made use of his borrowed military rank.

“Sturmbannfuhrer Buback, Prague Gestapo! What is going on here?”

The man turned his equine face toward him. Despite its expressiveness, two empty eyes once again stared out from beneath the helmet. After a brief pause he simply greeted Buback.

“The executions are to warn bandits.”

“These are random pedestrians! I know because I was detained along with them. Stop this immediately; I will bring this case to the attention of Lieutenant General Meckerle!”

“You won’t have far to go,” the man said, pointing at a group of officers in conversation, protected from the rain by the switch tower’s awning. “He’s over there.”

The giant had already spotted him and was striding over.

We’re almost there, beloved, his mother said; she was sitting in the driver’s seat because when he had begun to choke, his father was at the castle (they’d fired up the furnace there to shoe the lord’s horses, so they would not have to brave the snowdrifts), but his mother knew how to hitch the sleigh and the horse ran just as well for her as for Papa — breathe through your nose, beloved, she called out, worried, over her shoulder to where she’d balled him into a thick blanket.. that word, Jitka was the only person to call me beloved, he thought, bewildered despite the burning pain in his forehead; why should my head hurt when it’s my tonsils…. now she turned to him from the driver’s seat, and it was Jitka, but he was already deep in his fever.

Then the sleigh stopped and he knew in a moment the kindly face of Doctor Babrek would appear over him. So he opened his eyes and saw Litera.

“Lie down, Jan,” the driver insisted solicitously. “We ran over some glass shards; we’re changing the wheel.”

By the time they finished, he had come around and remembered everything. And when he realized they were in another police car, taking him to have his dressings changed properly, he stopped them immediately.

“We have to arrest him!”

“Jan,” Litera cautioned, “it might have been your imagination after that bang you took. I didn’t notice him.”

Morava halted; yes, after all, he’d just seen his mother and Jitka… but his detective’s memory rebelled.

“It was him! Rypl and his gang. And they’re probably still there; turn around, we have to go back right away.”

“You could get blood poisoning.”

“If he gets away from me again, I’ll have soul poisoning!”

Seeing that he was resolved to return on foot if necessary, they obeyed him.

They were too late; the gang was gone, but from the barricaders’ stories and the descriptions of the foursome they realized Morava had been right. Strengthened by the addition of the machine gunner, the suspected Ryplites had headed up toward Pankrác in a Mercedes with Berlin plates as soon as it was confirmed the SS were on the defensive.

Morava instantly set out after them.

The square by the Pankrác court building, where two tanks were burning, proffered an unbelievable image of Czech and German brotherhood. The soldiers in Wehrmacht uniforms were, of course, the infamous Russians of General Vlasov. Their thick Slavic accents were ample proof for the Praguers, who had just lived through a day of horrors and celebrated them as liberators in their hour of need. Thanks to Beran and Buback, Morava knew these ovations would only deepen the soldiers’ despair, since nothing now could save them. One of them was playing a wild melody on the accordion while the others danced a bravura display. They wore the faces of guests at their own funeral.

Morava caught these images in passing. All his senses were focused on his prey. He soon realized that they could go no farther without Rypl’s picture, and sent the new driver off for another batch of portraits from Bartolomjská.

“If anyone’s at the department, bring him along as well,” Litera suggested. “Matlák’s sure to be there; he’s a crack shot. We can’t go after them barehanded. And if there are any decent German submachine guns lying around…”

Morava acceded, and because there was a first-aid ambulance a few paces along, Litera coaxed him into letting them have a look. He was glad in the end; the unsightly bullet wound, which had removed the skin, had dried. Soon, a large bandage had replaced the turban so similar to Brunát’s. Then he began combing the streets again, stubbornly convinced that Rypl would come into his own in exactly this sort of anarchy.

Confusion reigned on the square and the surrounding streets: Explosions of joy at surviving the day and perhaps even the whole war mingled with laments for lost loved ones. There were rows of cellars the SS had emptied with hand grenades. Volunteers carried the disfigured corpses out into the unrelenting rain and laid them temporarily on canvasses in front of the buildings. The victims were predominantly women and children.

Then a murmur rippled through the populace. A group of rebels wearing RG armbands, all with trophy weapons, marched down the middle of the thoroughfare. In their midst was a small crowd of German civilians, mainly women and children. In one hand the Germans carried suitcases and bundles, as much as each could hold; the other hand was raised above their heads. As their exhaustion grew they shifted hands more and more often. The Czech onlookers left their dead in front of the houses and realigned themselves along the procession route. Two columns of frosty silence greeted the parade of pale faces.

What do I feel toward these Germans, Morava wondered, and was suddenly surprised to find: nothing. The innocent rain-drenched victims on tarpaulins ruled out regret. But neither could he feel hate; these were defenseless and horrified people paying for what were by and large the sins of others. Most of all, he felt like packing every one of them — even those who were born here — off to the ruins of their ancestral homeland. Germany had unleashed this hell with their blessing, and he never wanted to see or hear them again.

Suddenly one of the Czechs, to judge by her expression half crazed with grief, slipped through the escort and fell upon a tall German woman with a blond braid, who even in her humbled state reminded Morava of the Nazi ideal of Germanic beauty as extolled in films and posters. As if lashing out at all Germans through this one, she scratched the woman’s face with her nails and lacerated her skin. The victim cried out in pain, dropped her overflowing bag, and covered her face with both hands; two little girls beside her burst into tears.

Instantly two escorts were there; they pulled the attacker off and tried to return her as carefully as possible to the sidewalk, but just then pure hatred erupted. There was a forest of menacing fists, insults, and threats, gobs of spit flying over the guard’s heads and onto them as well. Morava could see lunacy in many of the onlookers’ eyes and realized he might have behaved just like this after Jitka’s death, if his task had not imposed an iron self-discipline on him.

When stones started to fly, the escort commander drew his pistol and fired into the air. This drew a deafening whistle of contempt from the crowd; the threatening guardsmen began to fire as well, and a massacre seemed inevitable. Morava quickly formulated a plan.

“Litera,” he shouted, “you take the back!”

Meanwhile, he pushed toward the front of the escort, where the commander was, and made himself heard over the restless crowd.

“Clear the way! In the name of the law! Offenders will be prosecuted! Clear the way for the law!”

Surprisingly, the presence of two uniformed policemen had the desired effect; the more levelheaded members of the throng helped calm the distraught ones. The German woman obediently hefted her baggage again. Seeing the bloody slashes on her face and the sobbing children helped the crowd’s fever die down. The people returned to their dead, walking awkwardly past the attacker, who was now crying bitterly on another woman’s shoulder. Morava sensed that for many of them — him included — the need for retribution clashed with the fear of becoming just like the men who so recently murdered their loved ones.

This brought him back to his original question: What would follow this war with the Germans? It was a wonderfully seductive picture: Czech would be the only language of Bohemia and Moravia, and the time bomb that had twice destroyed the Czech state would disappear.

However, it implied a new danger. Antonín Rypl was a Czech too— and now a national avenger. The killer’s latest move unfortunately proved that despite his insane depravity, he was gifted with extraordinary intelligence and intuition. Morava longed for a quick meeting with Beran to try out his newest hypothesis:

Rypl had discarded his old identity upon finding the unknown corpse and was founding his own armed force. With their help, he would compel goodwill toward himself on the street and in the new revolutionary organs through exceptional brutality against Germans, thereby cementing his new persona.

Instead of just “Good work, Morava,” he wanted to hear that Police Commissioners Beran and Brunát understood this terrible threat to the future of the free republic and would mobilize all the police reserves, even in the current situation. Once the country was cleansed of Germans, they could not allow a new bunch of scoundrels to occupy it just because they spoke the local language.

He learned from the grateful escort commander that for now they were rounding up the local Germans at a nearby primary school. This information triggered an instinct that was often more reliable than logic. The widow killer’s choice of victims had never made the slightest sense, so why should the mass murder of Germans be any different? As the superintendent had once told him, intuition carries the same weight in police work as a lifetime’s worth of experience, good organization, and dedication.

Why would Rypl, why would his hatchetmen leave this Eldorado, where the sort of mass psychosis he’d just seen would be congenial to butchers with primitive notions of revenge? Yes, he felt, they were here somewhere, but as he drew closer he realized it would be easier to find than to catch them. They must not frighten the gang away prematurely.

In front of the school where the column had disappeared, he instructed Litera to go wait for their reinforcements at the designated spot and bring them here as inconspicuously as possible.

Then Litera grabbed his sleeve and whispered excitedly, “There!”

“What…?”

“A Mercedes… didn’t they say it had Berlin plates?”

“Yes….”

The car stood right opposite the entrance to the school, which was guarded by two youths; the policemen decided not to approach them.

“You go ahead,” Morava urged. “Meanwhile I’ll figure out what to do first.”

“Don’t you want to wait for us? So he doesn’t kill you first?”

“He doesn’t even know me. At most I’m a policeman he saw at the barricade.”

“Do you have your pistol?”

“Yes.”

Both simultaneously remembered the shot he had loosed by accident in the car. Morava laughed.

“No fear. In an emergency I’ll try to bite him first.”

Litera did not find it as amusing.

“He’s got a small army with him.”

“That’s why I have to try to find out unobtrusively what their role is here. One advantage is that people will hardly join forces with a depraved murderer of Czech women.”

“But how will you convince them?”

“I’ll worry about that later. You’d better move along; our men might be there already.”

Litera hurried off. Morava then slowly moved toward the Mercedes. Crossing the street next to it, he inconspicuously peered inside. Nothing caught his eye.

At the gates, he was shocked to find that the two guards, SS-gun-toting Czech youths in white armbands painted with the large letters RG, would not let him into the school.

“Who instructed you not to admit the police?” he asked incredulously.

“Our commander,” the left-hand one said.

“Call him out here!”

“Get lost, you kolou,” the right-hand one advised him, “before we blow you away!”

What’s a kolou? he wondered, baffled.

Mlove,” Grete said, “know what I’ve decided?” “No….”

Buback could still see the horrible scene at the train station of his childhood, and the trek behind him had pushed him to the limits of his strength. He had seen unmistakable signs of the coming hunt for German civilians and avoided the last barricade by clambering over courtyard walls.

“Guess!”

He had found Grete lying prone on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and let her be. He looked quickly around for an empty bottle before remembering that there was not a drop of alcohol left.

“I give in…”

“I’ve decided how we’re going to live until, as they say, death divides us.”

What must go through her head here, alone in this dilapidated hideout! He threw off his wet raincoat and then his soaking jacket, lay down beside her, and tucked his arm beneath her head. For the moment he tried to put his recent experiences out of his head.

“Tell me. How?”

“We’ll go to Sylt together.”

“Aha… and why precisely…?”

“Because that was the last place you were happy in peacetime. And a little way from there, in Hamburg, mussels from Sylt kept me happy for years. We’ll go back there to recapture that happiness, and once we find it together, you’ll take a picture of me in the same place you photographed them. The circle closes, and another begins. We’ll be in Germany, but almost not in Germany. Trying to be different Germans than we were before.”

It relieved him that she was not cowering in fear, but this strange state of peace disturbed him as well. She laughed dreamily at the ceiling.

“We can start to give humanity back the greatest thing we took away.”

“Which is…”

“Goodness. At least you fought wickedness a little bit; I never even tried. As a nation, we Germans gave the world great music, great literature, great laws, and great evil. Evil became our music, our language, and our laws, until finally it came to embody Germanness. Humanity has a short memory; usually it fades in a few generations, but we’re imprinted on it for all eternity. I’ve always regretted that I don’t have children and never will, and now? You know what?”

“Now you’re glad?”

“Now for the first time I’m truly unhappy as a result, can’t you see? We’ll never be able to make restitution for what was done in our name; our children’s children might have a chance.”

He closed his eyes and again saw that carefully arranged German harvest, a perfectly formed rectangle of freshly reaped bodies.

“You’re right….”

“We, and they after us, will have to replace that stolen goodness.”

“But how?”

Now she smiled victoriously like someone who has solved an impossible puzzle.

“Each of us will have to find his own way. I’m going to dance again.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you like it when I danced for you? Didn’t you like it so much there were tears in your eyes? Germans have had their fun, shouting and shooting, so now I’ll dance for them. I’ll go, stop somewhere, dance, and move on. Don’t you think they might like it too? And maybe they’ll be better for those tears than they were before.”

Now he bent worriedly over her and saw that her usually clear eyes were cloudy and runny.

“Grete, what’s wrong?”

“What do you mean, love?”

Finally he thought to touch her forehead. It was burning. What frightened him, though, was that her cheeks were their normal color.

“Are you ill?”

“No, no….”

“It’s as if you have a fever!”

“But I don’t. So what do you say, love? Are you looking forward to Sylt?”

On a hunch he jumped up and gave the room a routine once-over. Nothing. There was a trash basket underneath the sink. He emptied it onto the floorboards and combed through the contents, picking up a cobalt blue bottle. It gleamed empty against the light. He uncorked it and sniffed. There was a faint smell of camphor. In a second he was at Grete’s side.

“What is this?”

“What…”

“What was in this?”

Her eyelids closed heavily.

“Grete, speak to me!”

He slapped her cheeks, at first lightly, but when she didn’t react, harder and harder until the pain brought her back to consciousness.

“Ow!”

His right hand did not stop.

“Ow, Buback, it hurts….”

“Tell me!”

“Pills. ..”

“What kind?”

“Sleeping pills…. Swiss ones… he gave me some from his…”

“Who?”

“You know… Meckerle….”

“How many did you take?”

“What was left….”

“How many?”

“Dunno… maybe five… or ten…”

“Or more?”

“Or more..”

He considered the matter quickly. However many she’d swallowed, her condition indicated that they had not yet dissolved completely. There was only one thing to do.

“Get up! Up!”

He grabbed her by the hands and pulled her up forcefully.

“Ow! Brute!”

He hauled her over to the sink so as not to have to drag her down the stairs to the toilet.

“Put your finger down your throat!”

“Leave me alone!”

“Do it!”

“I won’t, you bastard!”

He stuck his own in. She bit him. Suppressing a scream, he managed to lock her in a vise grip with his left hand while forcing a toothbrush down her throat with his right.

At that moment she stopped resisting and drooped. It was all he could do to grab her with both hands around the waist before she collapsed, but she vomited obediently until he let her stop.

Then he laid her down on the bed again and sat next to her.

Her gray eyes slowly cleared and sharpened, but her mouth remained mute.

“Why?” he asked her. “For God’s sake, why?”

“That dream…,” she whispered, “where I died, you know. It was so awful that yesterday I got drunk… and today at noon I had an even worse one….”

“At noon?”

“I sleep constantly. What else can I do to keep from going mad?”

The unintended reproach stung him.

“And how was it worse?”

“They killed you. In front of me too. Then I woke up, and worst of all, I felt sure it had happened.”

He attempted a smile.

“And did they kill me?”

Almost, he acknowledged, but did not say it, amazed that she had experienced his death at the same moment it had actually touched him.

“No. But they will!”

There was such despair in her shout that he trembled, as if only now feeling that elemental fear he had missed as they counted off.

“What do you mean?”

“Buback…,” she answered weakly in that gruff voice which had captivated him in the German House shelter, “my love, you and I have about the same chance of surviving as two goldfish in a pike pond. Don’t you know that with each trip to and from I don’t know where, you put your head on the chopping block? And once you lose it, as you undoubtedly will, I’m lost as well. I wanted to escape what they’d do to me then….”

These were her most intimate fears, but he stubbornly rejected them. To accept them was to demolish the last barrier standing between man and death: hope.

“My love/’ he countered, addressing her with her own epithet, “it’s no news that our lives hang by a thread, nor that you’re worse off for it than I am. But our chances of getting out of here with our skins intact can’t be less than one in two. How could you condemn me to go on living when you die? What kind of a life would that be, without you? Let’s make an agreement: I won’t leave you again to go you don’t know where; I’ve learned that the best I can hope for is to save you alone, and that’s what I intend to do. I believe Morava will come for us in time and find a solution; in fact, I’m counting on it. And if he doesn’t ”

Then Meckerle will arrange it, he hesitated to say. He recalled the bloodstained bank clerk explaining awkwardly that he had no influence over the executions because State Secretary Frank had ordered them as retaliation for the shooting of imprisoned German soldiers. He hoped at least to spare her that.

“If he doesn’t come,” he said instead, “and they get me first, you’ll pull the trigger on your sweet pistol, agreed?”

“You’re right, love,” she said almost joyfully, yawning with exhaustion. “That way I can think of you right up till the end. But just now I’ll have a little nap. I still owe you something… lots, actually…. more than…”

The primary school was the usual solid structure from the mid-twenties: Two wings, boys’ and girls’, were linked at the back by a building with a gymnasium and large auditorium. At the front was a courtyard with heavy bars and a barred gate guarded by sentries. While Morava stood ignominiously on the opposite sidewalk under the malevolent glare of both youths, they admitted another group of Germans and their escort, who were also adorned with RG bands.What Morava had earlier dismissed as the invention of a few flag-waving patriots from Bartolomjská turned out to be a well-developed organization. Where had it come from in this part of the city, which until recently had been firmly under SS control?

A man in an old Czechoslovak Army lieutenant’s uniform and an accompanying sergeant of the former Protectorate Government Forces were turned away from the entrance shortly after he was. Spotting Morava, they approached him.

“Sir.” The officer saluted him. “We’ve been sent from city command to organize the concentration of German civilians as called for in the Hague Convention; once the battle ends, their deportation will be arranged. Could you direct the guards to let us in?”

“I’m sorry,” Morava said, “but I’m not wanted here either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And what’s the ’rG’?”

“I think it stands for Revolutionary Guards.”

“I’ve never heard of them. Who are they under?”

“I have no idea.”

A man came running across the schoolyard to the gate; from up close, Morava recognized the man who had brought him there, the leader of the RG escort. Seeing the uniforms, he hurried across the street to them. He was pale, and fear shone in his eyes.

“Please, do something!”

“What’s happening?”

“In there.. they’re.. beating and…”

For a moment he was unable to go on.

“Who?”

Mutely he pointed to his armband, slipping it off the sleeve of his leather jacket. Only then could he finish his sentence.

“… and killing….”

“What should we do?” the lieutenant asked helplessly.

“I’m expecting reinforcements,” Morava said, “but now I don’t know if there will be enough of them.”

A car swerved sharply into the street and stopped directly in front of the guards. Three armed men in camouflage with RG armbands got out, as did a tall man in a black overcoat and hat; sunken black eyes ruled the man’s thin face and black goatee. Why did he look familiar? Morava knew immediately: This was how he’d always imagined the medieval Czech martyr, Jan Hus. He stepped across the street.

“Hello,” he called, drawing their attention.

The four of them stopped.

“What do you want?” the smallest snarled, bristling; what he lacked in height he made up for in energy, like a coiled spring.

“Do you have access to this building?” Morava asked.

“Why?”

It sounded like a bark. The other two soldiers and the shaken man with the armband in his hand came to join Morava.

“The lieutenant is supposed to prepare the Germans for deportation, but can’t get into the building. They won’t even let me in.”

“They’re following orders. Which say: no servants of former regimes.”

For the first time in a long while Morava felt himself turn red with embarrassment; just like little Jan from the Bartered Bride, Beran had always laughed.

“I’m from the criminal police,” he defended himself, “and the lieutenant served the republic, not the Protectorate….”

“A republic of exploiters and capitulators,” the coil announced. “But its time is up, and yours is too. We’re the security forces of the future Czechoslovakia, where the workers will rule.”

The lieutenant had meanwhile collected himself.

“Czechoslovakia will remain a democracy, represented by President Bene and the government in Koice; I’m here at their orders. Are you planning a putsch, gentlemen?”

“Of course not,” the man in black very quietly interjected, and it was immediately clear that he was in charge here. “We’re also here from the legitimate government via the Czech National Council. Here.”

He pulled out, unfolded, and displayed a sheet of paper.

“I have one too!” The lieutenant dug frantically through his pockets, finally finding it. “Are there two national councils, then?”

“Of course not,” the tall man repeated, now reminding Morava of a patient teacher, “but there are different factions; democracy is being restored and we represent the political forces that have obtained a clear majority in the council. In accordance with its resolutions, we are creating a new revolutionary militia from people untainted by the past. Its task here is, among others, to prevent collaborators from the ranks of the domestic bourgeoisie and bureaucracy from eliminating German witnesses to their treachery.”

“But that’s exactly what’s happening,” the runaway guard member exclaimed.

“What?”

“They’re torturing them!”

“Who? Whom?”

“Your people! Are torturing Germans. Civilians! Take it back….” He stuffed his armband into the man’s hand. “I don’t want to be like the Nazis.”

Another car pulled up behind Morava’s back; its door slammed. Warily he turned and his soul leaped. Matlák and Jetel were there behind Litera; both of them had submachine guns. The forces were now balanced, and Morava quickly roused himself to action.

“Is torture one of your ’tasks,’ then?” he asked sharply.

“Nonsense!”

For the first time, the black-suited man was upset and spoke loudly. Morava did not back down. He showed the man his badge.

“A charge of serious criminal activity has been made and we“—he pointed to his foursome, including the new police driver—“are detectives. If it’s true, then the international convention on treatment of civilian prisoners—” Grete Baumann! A thought flashed through his head: How is she? Got to check as soon as possible! Then he continued, “is being violated as well. And if we’re all part of one and the same government, then I appeal to you: Honor the reinstated law of this land and investigate the accusation together with us!”

The wiry one was about to object, but the man in the hat silenced him with a gesture.

“We have nothing to hide. But if it’s a lie, then you’ll prosecute him“—he pointed to the breathless man—“for slandering the revolutionary authorities.”

Although the boys at the gate played soldiers for them again, no one paid them any further attention. The excited lieutenant hurried ahead toward the left and apparently main entrance, but once there timidly stood aside, despite the fact that it had started to rain again. The black-clothed man entered first, with Morava behind him. A stench from his childhood assailed his nostrils, the identical smell of primary schools everywhere: a pervasive mixture of dust, sweat, and disinfectant wafting from the toilets and the open cloakrooms lining the school classrooms. When they reached them they stood stock-still in amazement.

The lockable cubicles surrounded by metal grillwork were filled with people. Displayed before their eyes like animals in a zoo, but packed as densely as in an overfilled tram, the cage’s silent inhabitants were primarily women, children, and the elderly. Occasionally one of the children would sob, and the newcomers would catch the fleeting movement of an adult hand covering the small mouth.

Only now did they notice the distant murmur of male voices. It suddenly intensified as the doors at the end of the hallway opened and three Revolutionary Guards entered. Seeing the police and army uniforms, the men rushed toward them, shouting hysterically, “Stop! Who let you in? What do you want?”

The man in black stepped forward in front of Morava, this time making no effort to back up his statement.

“My name is Svoboda; I’m a member of the Czech National Council and of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Who are you?”

The bristling trio drooped; their spokesman was almost embarrassingly unctuous in response.

“Excuse me, sir… I mean, comrade… I’m Lokajík, assistant to the local commander….”

The black-clad man interested Morava more and more. He remembered his grandfather, father, and all their neighbors sitting in the taproom after Corpus Christi service, pointing at a diminutive man who stood at the bar, sipping plum brandy. Look over there, his father nudged little Jan, who had been teasing the house cat under the bench and was already a mass of scratches; that’s a Communist! What’s that, Jan had inquired, and he had learned: He doesn’t go to church and wants to take everything we own away from us.

He had timidly watched the unshaven man with his luxuriant forelock, but the Communist’s stubborn aloofness somehow attracted the boy at the same time. Whenever Morava heard or read about Communist crimes during the war he thought of this man, a black sheep in a pious and pitifully barren land.

The prisoners, crammed into children’s cloakrooms, observed the scene mutely. It was as evidently unpleasant for the Communist as it was for Morava.

“Let’s move along!”

They went around the corner into the entrance hall.

“Why haven’t they been split among the classrooms?” he asked Lokajik quietly. “For God’s sake, whose idea was it to lock them up like animals?”

“The team decided…” the assistant commander said defensively. “Well, they were acting like animals earlier!”

One of his escorts flared up.

“Do you know what they were doing? Throwing grenades into shelters with children in them! Chasing us with tanks!”

“These people?”

“A German’s a German!” the man countered angrily. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! And for the record: I’m a Communist too.”

“Is that so?” Svoboda answered icily. “Then instead of the Bible, quote this: ’Hitlers come and go, but the German nation remains.’ Do you know who said it?”

Once again Svoboda was a teacher, and the man stumbled like a pupil caught unprepared.

“No….”

“Comrade Stalin. And if you’re really a comrade, you should employ a class approach, not a nationalist one. Listen up!” Svoboda addressed the guardsmen, police, and soldiers, trying to rally the motley bunch around a common task. “Any Germans who have committed crimes will be punished severely and mercilessly, but we are depending on the German workers to help us bring about a worldwide socialist revolution. This human menagerie,” he pointed to the hallway, “is a stain on our ideals. Comrades, transfer them into classrooms immediately, men apart, women with children!”

“Yes…,” his men chirped, including the rebel.

“And what’s happening there?”

Svoboda pointed, and Morava could hear a clamor of men’s voices in the distance. The trio were even more hesitant.

“There…” Lokajík forced the words out, “that’s where they’re interrogating—”

“Who, whom, and why?”

“Our men are interviewing the Germans… about hidden valuables. ..”

The high functionary headed toward it. The rest of them followed him wordlessly down that depressing hall past the cages, where only the sniffling of a child’s nose could be heard. The din grew louder until only a door separated them from its source.

“You first,” Svoboda ordered the three locals.

They proceeded behind him into the school gymnasium, so similar to the one where young Jan Morava had trained his muscles. It had never occurred to him that a gym could serve admirably as a torture chamber.

Like school classes practicing in teams on various contraptions, groups of guardsmen were gathered around the equipment. One of them always had a notebook, pad, or piece of paper in his hand, as if grading their efforts. The focus of their attention however, was not gymnasts, but half-naked men, each tied to an apparatus: one to the handles of the pommel horse, another to the crosspieces of the wall bars, a further one to the grips of the Swedish box. The fourth, on a diagonal ladder, was stretched out by his hands and feet, like in the dungeons of old. The final man was swinging, arms and legs bound, from low-hanging rings.

The outsiders’ entrance attracted no attention; the guardsmen were apparently engrossed in the task at hand. On the rings nearby, the hanging man had just gotten a slap hard enough to start him swinging again.

“Make sure you remember all your stashes,” the man with the paper encouraged him in German. “If we find any more in your apartment you can kiss good-bye to any hope of ever seeing your family again.”

“We had all our valuables with us,” the swinging man rasped brokenly. “You already took those….”

Morava forced himself to suppress his emotions and scour the ghastly scene for his man.

It was clear that Svoboda was also on the brink of exploding.

“Put a stop to it,” he ordered Lokajík. “Have them unbound and taken away. Then I want to have a talk with all the Czechs. And introduce me!”

The surprise order was not welcomed, but it was carried out. Morava, however, was already sure that Rypl was not in the gymnasium, and Litera, Mátlak, and Jetel shrugged in unison as well. However, he saw an unfamiliar bald man hastily leave the room through the doors opposite. There had been someone similar in the radio station gang….

“Where do those doors lead?” he asked Lokajík.

“To the stairs to the auditorium, to the cellar and the toilets….”

“Have a look there,” he requested Litera, “but be careful….”

When only the Czechs were left and Svoboda had been introduced to them, he repeated roughly what he had earlier said in the entrance hall, but this time his voice rang sonorously through the large gymnasium; he must have been wonderful at political rallies. Morava noticed admiringly that even with these frustrated torturers the Communist did not mince words.

“Instead of revolutionary justice,” he finished, “youVe reintroduced the rule of torture, like in the Middle Ages!”

The guardsmen’s initial respect for his position and appearance dissipated; they progressed from muttering to open disagreement. Even then the man in black managed skillfully to keep control.

“I am stopping all interrogations in this form. Procure some water and food for the interned. Then take personal details and question them, but in a civilized fashion. The guards we send to confiscate items from the apartments will find everything anyway. Or was anyone planning to make a private visit?”

Morava watched the gymnasium quickly divide into three camps: One group was visibly ashamed, another was hissing like wounded geese, and a third seemed deeply indignant.

“Look here.” One of the note takers shoved his papers at Svoboda. “Every German mark, every ring, everything is recorded; I’m no criminal, I’m a patriot, and this is justified retribution!”

“Maybe not you, comrade,” Svoboda responded, “but opportunities like this make criminals. We Communists will not permit people to muddy the waters and then go fishing in them for property that rightfully belongs to the whole nation.”

To further his own goal, Morava quietly asked him, “Where’s the commander?”

The black-garbed man rephrased the question. “Who’s in charge here?”

“Captain Roubínek.”

“They didn’t tell you the RG doesn’t take old officers?”

“He was a partisan. He brought a whole group here from the forests.”

“And where is he?”

“They’re in the cellar… interrogating Germans….”

He! They! Now Morava was sure, but suddenly he felt nervous: Where was Litera? Why wasn’t he back? He had RypPs photos too!

“Should I go fetch him?” Lokajík asked ingratiatingly.

“We’ll drop in ourselves,” the envoy decided. “Meanwhile put things in order here, comrades!”

His speech had impressed Morava.

“Could I ask you for a couple of words in private,” he requested of the Communist.

“Of course,” Svoboda answered, still a bit defensively, “but quickly.”

A few steps were enough to give them a noisy solitude. Morava looked him straight in the eyes.

“Call me a kolaborant, or a kolou, as they now say, but for the last three months my only ’collaboration’ has been hunting a depraved murderer who sadistically tortured six women to death, killed three more people, and is now murdering Germans on a conveyer belt. That lieutenant of yours claimed that they’re killing people here as well; I think we’ll find the perpetrator in the cellar masquerading as one Captain Roubínek.”

Svoboda listened intently to him without interrupting.

“I want to secure him and present him to our witness so he can be convicted. But he’s already in charge of his own well-armed gang and has infiltrated your peacekeeping forces, apparently all the way to the top. Will you help us?”

The Communist tried to digest this.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“That’s terrible ”

These new Job-like tidings shook Svoboda, coming so soon on the heels of everything he had observed in his short time here, but he appeared to accept them.

“What do you suggest?” he asked, practical once again.

“He’s the only one we know by name; we just have descriptions of the rest, and by now there may be more of them. The killer must have a diabolical charisma that attracts anyone who, deep in his soul, is a deviant; he knows how to unleash their blood lust. Mr. Svoboda… I don’t know how to address you, I’ve never been interested in politics, but at the beginning of the Nazi era, all the psychopaths who had been waiting for their moment suddenly ran riot. I’m afraid now the stench of bloodletting is luring them here, even if many don’t yet know they have it in them. What will it do to my homeland? And to your ideals?”

The dark-eyed man watched those leaving either nod respectfully or look angrily past him.

“I approve of any action that will remove this threat,” he then said. “But what’s the best way to carry it out?”

“Are your escorts reliable?”

“I’ll vouch for them. Comrades from the Resistance.”

“Then with us, my men, and those two soldiers“—he added them to the group as if it were self-evident and met with no objection— “that’ll be enough. My colleague went off to find them; once he returns, we can decide how to take them.”

The gymnasium had meanwhile emptied out; those who had not cleared off in a huff were busy shepherding the Germans from the cloakroom cages into classrooms. Only the group that had first met out on the street remained. Litera was still missing. Morava repeated his news for the rest of them in more detail, and Svoboda added a fiery conclusion.

“On the threshold of our revolution, which will secure peace and prosperity for our people without exploitation, we have met a great danger, one which has destroyed many progressive movements before us: Parasites and even ordinary murderers have slipped into our ranks amid the warriors. Despite the differences of opinion among us, I believe we are all of one mind on this matter. Where is your colleague?’’

Litera was still absent.

“I don’t know,” said Morava uneasily. Suddenly a foreboding gripped him.

“I’ll go have a look,” Mátlak offered, removing his safety catch.

“No.”

“Why not?”

I’ve already risked too much, he feared. And someone else’s hide,

at that

“We’ll all go; can I lead?” the sergeant asked. “I’m trained in house-to-house fighting.”

Spring man was about to object, but Svoboda cut him off.

“Lead on.”

Morava appreciated the Communist more and more. Unexpectedly he’d found a firm supporter in this man.

The sergeant described to them briefly how they should cover each other.

“If they fire first, let’s hope we have better aim,” he finished simply. “And if they don’t fire?” He turned to Morava. “What then, Inspector?”

“I’m not an inspector,” he corrected the sergeant, “but I still have to say that sentence.”

“What sentence?”

“You know: ’I arrest you in the name of the law.’ ”

It sounded like something out of the good old penny dreadfuls. Everyone smiled, even Morava.

“Except…,” he admitted glumly, “I made a major mistake…. What if they’re holding our colleague as a hostage?”

He met Matlák and Jetel’s shaken eyes and had to answer his own question.

“Then we’ll have to let him run….”

No, there was no other possibility, and their only hope was that Litera, whom none of the murderers could know, had kept the gang in the dark until reinforcements could arrive.

“You’ll arrest him later; we’ll help you,” the Communist said un-derstandingly. “We’ll hunt him down.”

My new Beran, Morava thought gratefully. It was the second time in his life someone had won his trust completely. Once it’s all over I have to introduce them, these two thoroughly different sides of the coin called a virtuous character.

The sergeant put himself at the front of the formation with Jetel’s automatic weapon. Leaving the gymnasium, they found themselves at the foot of a ceremonial staircase. A sign in Czech announced that it led

K AULE

with an arrow pointing toward the auditorium. The part reading

ZU DER AULA

in German had for now simply been crossed out. The sergeant arranged the men with pistols — Morava and Svoboda — at the end. As they quietly ascended he demonstrated mutely how they could cover each other by firing if things turned ugly.

The double doors above the staircase’s horizon were ajar; the great hall was empty.

They went back down, and the sergeant and Matlák checked the toilets, just to be sure. Nothing. Behind the staircase they found a door where wide, well-lit steps led to the cellar. The sergeant crossed the threshold and listened.

“Silence…,” he whispered encouragingly to the others.

Morava already knew it was the worst thing they could have heard. Meanwhile he checked the main door into the courtyard; it was not locked.

The bald one, he remembered. He warned them. Rypl has escaped again!

And Litera? He must be on their trail, of course, so the hunt could continue immediately. Beran’s favorite driver was a policeman’s policeman after all his years with the superintendent, a handy, wily Czech who could get himself out of any can of worms. Morava thought it unlikely that Litera would underestimate the danger and pounce on the bait.

His heart a bit lighter, he set out with the others to examine the cellar. The sergeant ordered them to maintain a decent interval between entrances. Morava was once again last, and halfway down the steps he could already read what awaited him in the posture of those who reached the cellar first. The arms with weapons ready slowly sank to their sides; the men stopped and looked wordlessly before them.

He held his breath and followed them in.

On the cellar paving stones lay a row of women bound with wire, all apparently sleeping; at first glance there were no visible wounds. Only the closest still had a long, thin knife sticking into her chest.

Despite this horrid sight he felt relief. Dear God, thank You for at least sparing…

Then he noticed that everyone else was now looking diagonally behind him, and turned around.

In a hidden corner next to the entrance Litera lay in a pool of blood next to a good-looking fellow with a mustache. Both throats had been cut.

SHE’S STILL WITH ME! Lojza had popped into the gym just when the whole criminal squad came marching in, and he’d recognized the policeman who’d been pretending to be seriously injured down at the barricade. It could ONLY be HER doing!

They were in the middle of working over a rich lady; she had already confessed that she’d buried her jewels in the garden, and all that remained was to make her divulge the precise locations of her stashes. He immediately sent Pepík upstairs to sound things out. The boy ran right into the arms of the spy they’d sent, and handled things admirably: He’d poured out a story about some guy downstairs torturing a German woman while he ran for help. Then the fool drew his pistol and ran downstairs. The boy followed and managed to trip him halfway down the flight.

He could see it in the guy’s eyes, just as he’d seen it in the caretaker’s: The man knew he was Rypl. There was no choice; he had the man’s hands bound. The cop even tried to frighten them.

“I’m in uniform! You’ll get the rope for murdering a policeman!”

He taunted the cop with the new word he’d learned.

“But we’ll get a medal for executing a kolou!”

As a reward, he let the boy cut his throat. Pepík did it enthusiastically with a single stroke. Lojza did the driver, less expertly but with pretty much the same result. The chauffeur was clearly eager to turn them in, and as it turned out, the machine gunner, a chimney sweep in civilian life, knew how to drive. They finished on a sour note; Ladislav, who was already nervous, panicked and stabbed the last and most promising old hag before she could give them her address.

They left the school through the courtyard exit without any problems. The sentries greeted them, and a couple of fellows asked if they could come along; some big shot inside was getting on their nerves. Unfortunately, at the moment unfavorable conditions prevented him from recruiting a full-fledged detachment.

BUT I HAVE A PLAN!

Those three hours running the show here, where he had been welcomed by the leaderless horde, had given him new ideas. The Germans in Prague were just an appetizer for the meaty morsel that, by all accounts, awaited them in the Sudetenland. The sharper kids in the Revolutionary Guards predicted that the former border regions would return to the Czechoslovak motherland, and the Germans living there would be expelled (heim ins Reich with them!). In all probability the Krauts would only get to take what they could carry, just like in Prague, and then what would be left…?

One man at the school had been expelled this way from the Sudetenland by the Germans in ’38, after they shot his brother, a reserves member. He’d always thought he’d never hurt a fly, he told them, but now a need for vengeance had erupted in him. He’d take what they’d taken from his family, and something on top for damages. And if they so much as opened their mouths, he’d blow at least one of them away too!

The effect it had on the men was electrifying. A gold rush, Lojza gasped; didn’t the boss think maybe they were needed there? He did. They were finished in Prague, he had to admit; even with an uprising going on, those damned Sherlocks had nothing better to do than chase him. They must have his description, probably even a photo, and he could not count on maintaining superior firepower.

THE SUDETENLAND IS MY CHANCE!

Once the Krauts in Prague were liquidated — and this was a question of days or hours — he and his men would take their Mercedes, move to a larger German nest, and seize power there. He was sure it would be as easy as it had been in this lousy school.

I’M A BORN LEADER!

By the time Prague could send out its official rats, he’d have his own bureaucrats, and policemen from outside would get sent right back to their mothers by his personal guard. It would consist of his most faithful men, who’d teach everyone to jump when he whistled, so long as he let them make the rest jump on their signal too.

For now he ordered them to drive just a couple of blocks further; the cops weren’t organized enough to comb the whole city in this confusion. Here in Pankrác there were more Russians in German khakis than local inhabitants. They hung from tank turrets and hid behind the shields of cannons and machine guns, oblivious to the prolonged downpour that had driven even most of the insurgents to shelter, their tense alertness a sign that the fight went on.

No, the war was not over, and it would be crazy to leave Prague prematurely; being first in the border regions could mean being first to die, and that definitely wasn’t what he had in mind. But where could they wait? Sleeping in the Germans’ old apartments meant risking discovery; covetous neighbors or official confiscators might find them. He was about to ask the boy to take them home — at least he’d see how the kid handled his mother — but then a new idea hit him.

RIGHT UNDER THEIR NOSES!

The last places they’d look were where he’d punished those whores. The embankment suited him best, except the dead caretaker was floating just beneath it, maybe even caught in the weir. The closest was the apartment where he’d spindled those two lesbians, but as they pulled up they saw a gaggle of people carrying the dead out of the house; well, there you go, in this case he’d just beaten the SS to the job! Of course, this morgue was now too lively for a hideaway.

Then his idea ripened as he remembered what flashed through his mind on the barricade.

THAT HOUSE!

That grubby house on a dead-end street where they set their trap for him! Whether it belonged to a policeman or someone who lent it to them for their dirty tricks, he’d see they got their deserts. First, though, the guilty party could be of use to him, like the half-pint on the train.

Of course, he didn’t tell his foursome the whole story. HE didn’t have to explain.

“Some kolousi live there,” he informed them tersely. “If they’re not home, we can catch a few winks till our clothes dry out, and if they are home it’s their bad luck!”

He found the house by directing them to the cemetery and from there recalling step by step how he’d followed that whore a week ago. It was satisfying to approach it this time not as a foolish fox blindly chasing the bait into a trap, but as a victor and avenger. An idea for a new punishment was growing in his mind as well. He’d thought of it this morning for the first time, but it had already captivated him as completely as the picture in the rectory once had.

IT’s MINE! ALL MINE!

A work of his own imagination. And this morning, when he saw a gas canister attached to the Mercedes’s mudguard, he knew it was foreordained.

Although hastily boarded up, he could see through the window that the house was lived in. All the better! He got out of the car first and rang the bell. When nothing happened, he rang twice, and, after another pause, thrice, pressing the bell somewhat longer each time.

He could feel their curiosity behind him, but also their deference.They simply waited. And he did not hurry. He remembered, long ago, the way SHE had read him the fairy tale about the boy and the giant.

FEE FIE FOE FUM!

Four long rings. Suddenly the drumming of the rain ceased and footsteps resounded from within.

What could she owe me, he mused, once Grete had fallen swiftly into sleep. As he lay by her side and gradually recovered from the day’s events, he fought a fatigue so strong that at times it robbed him of consciousness. Had time stopped? This day seemed as long to him as the whole war.

He forced himself to stand and noiselessly opened each drawer in the attic, until, to his surprise, he found what he needed: paper, even writing paper! And the fact that it was pink and decorated with a rather precious forget-me-not bothered him least of all.

He had never dared capture in words anything other than facts for work reports; thus he had never in his life written a love letter. When the war separated him from Hilde, his letters from the field contained only the superficial events of his life; the law of military confidentiality made this the easiest course. They both left their feelings for personal meetings.

Hilde’s unexpected death taught him painfully that these might end with no warning. How terribly he had later missed those lines that might have given him back the sound of her words, breathed life into a dead photograph. And so he felt dogged by the need at least once to write Grete what he hadn’t been able to tell her.

“My love,” he began with Grete’s favorite appellation, “my briefest and yet greatest love! Even though I can never understand why of all the men who admire you, you have chosen me, I am happy. If by some chance I pay that highest price for Germany’s debt, I want you to know—”

“What are you writing?” he heard her say.

She looked sickly, but tranquil; only there was an unfamiliar gleam in her eyes, as if she were preparing herself for something exceedingly grave.

“A letter…,” he answered, confused.

“To whom?”

“To you,” he confessed.

“Aha… and what are you writing to me?”

“You can read it. But not right now.”

“I understand,” she said, “yes, I understand…. But you should know first what I was really so afraid of that I tried to leave you and go I don’t know where. ..”

“What was it?”

“That we’d both survive.”

He thought he had misheard.

“That we both wouldn’t survive. ..”

“No, the opposite! That we’d survive, and you’d finally learn…”

“Learn what?”

“Buback.. love! You listened so patiently to my stories for so long, try just once more not to interrupt, no matter how much you want to. Promise me!”

It was less than fifty days since he first furtively scrutinized her in the sharp light of the German House air-raid shelter. An eternity seemed to have passed since that meeting. Fifty days ago, he admitted shamefully, he’d still believed in the possibility, however small it might be, that Germany could avoid a total and dishonorable defeat. And when he had despaired on realizing the truth, Grete had led him away from the pistol that would have ended his pain. Today it was she who had reached rock bottom.

“I promise!” he said.

“My love… as we were on our way here — it was only yesterday, but I’ve aged since then — I noticed that view, those breathtaking towers, and imagined the stony desert that awaits us at home; Germany lies in rack and ruin, defeated and humbled for generations, because revenge is sweet and the world is itching to enslave us as punishment: poverty, cold, and bondage will dog us till the end of this century and beyond, and I, unfortunately, am one of the many German women who let our men degenerate into barbarians that make your widow killer look like an amateur… now I can’t remember which Greek poet said withholding pussy can become a weapon, forcing men to give up war so they can fuck again — what rubbish! — after all, millions of German women quivered with impatience to see whether their men would send French perfume or Russian furs from the occupied territories, and millions more, like me, convinced themselves they lived only for love, and hate had no place in their lives, so I too played my part in the destruction of our world, and now I’m going to fix it by dancing on Sylt?… oh, love — and pay attention now— that too was the fruit of my sick imagination, just like all the tales I fed my best lovers, so they would keep me as their femme fatale: the tale of the loving young husband, the tale of the mysterious Giancarlo or Gianfranco, whatever it was, and the tale of my tragic love for a theater star — because, you see, Hans finally chose his boyfriend over me, and if they haven’t perished then they’re still secretly in love; that mafioso Gianwhateverhisnamewas from Rome slept with me once in his elegant hotel and then disappeared, while I spent the remaining nights with the hotel chauffeur, who would bring me back after midnight to the pensione in a silver Lancia to the envy of my colleagues, but not, unfortunately, of Martin Siegel— to my sorrow he loved his beautiful wife from the very beginning to the bitter, dogged end, which his devastated spouse described to me so vividly that those adventures gradually became my own past, the kind I wished I had; I was so wild with grief that when this wound on my neck came up I completely blocked out my father the tinsmith, who when I was a child accidentally burned me with a blowtorch — yes, love, this truly is the truth, and in the end I served up all these lies to the first man I ever called my love, because he was the only one worth it, the only one who persuaded me to give up the sure for the unsure, and now, finally, has convinced me to entrust him with my true fate: that of an unsuccessful wife and a dime-a-dozen dancer— when I realized you were the only one who ever really loved me, and as your debtor I decided — and listen closely — to be worse in your eyes than I made myself out to be, so I could therefore be better than I am; do you understand me, love?”

She fell silent, but the question shone on in her gray eyes.

He had to answer, he wanted to, but he didn’t have the right words, the ones that would express the feeling now filling him: that in her confession of false confessions he had found, after all his losses, the only worthwhile trace of his earthly wanderings.

“You don’t respect me at all any more, do you…” she blurted, shattered, “but I simply had to…”

At that moment he knew precisely how to say it, but before he could speak, the bell below jangled.

“Who is it?” she asked fearfully.

“I don’t know….”

“Does Morava know our signal?”

“He might have forgotten….” He wanted to calm her down, but did not believe it himself.

Someone gave the bell two long rings.

He could see fear taking hold of Grete and took action.

“Clothes! Quickly! And under the bed, with the pistol. Don’t show yourself until I tell you to.”

“But what if they—”

“I’ll manage.”

“But…”

A triple long ring.

“Do it!”

“Yes….”

“And no panicking. You’ve got a weapon.”

Yes

He waited for her to dress lightning-fast and disappear beneath the bed, which he managed meanwhile to make up. Anything of hers he saw he shoved over to her with his leg. Finally he was satisfied nothing would give away her presence.

The fourth ring caught him on the steps. Only now did it occur to him that they hadn’t said farewell. But why should they have — why did he even think of it — he’d be back with her in a moment. It might be Morava’s driver, probably with the food, but if not, both Buback’s documents would, after a certain time, secure his safety with either side.

He opened the door wordlessly, waiting to see whether he should speak German or Czech.

When he saw the man at the bell, he knew it did not matter.

Morava cried as they brought Litera out. The tears he had held back since Jitka’s death, so completely that some were scandalized, now streamed down his face; he could not see the steps and had to hold on to the cellar wall.

He felt his colleagues gradually take him by the shoulders and try to calm him, but the dam inside him, built with all his strength to fend off precisely this limitless despair, had finally broken.

The reason for his disintegration was simple shame. He had betrayed Litera because he had failed in his craft, acted like a rookie in sending an unsuspecting man to a pointless death.

Now he had found a powerful ally willing to set all the loyal Communists in Prague on RypFs trail to stop his rabble from cropping up somewhere else. But instead of rejoicing, he was mourning the third death on his conscience. And three times, he repeated to himself in shock, three times the killer had been within his reach. Who else would pay for his incompetence?

Instantly he thought of Buback and Grete. Morava knew he was their only hope against the coming fury. And a new horror seized him.

To his own amazement, he had seen an old saying confirmed several times: A murderer does return to the scene of the crime. If so, Rypl too might be tempted to hide his band in the apparently deserted house….

Eyebrows rose as what a moment ago had been a broken man now straightened up and called out to Svoboda.

“It’s an emergency! Two cars and ten men!”

At first he took him for a copper still sniffing around for something, and he’d have had his knife ready if that idiot of a stoker hadn’t panicked and left it in the lady. Then they took a good look at the guy and gaped: They’d caught a rare specimen, a real Gestapo officer!

From the first the German was stonily silent, but he had no intention of asking any questions. The less his men knew, the better; at any rate they’d see living proof that the Krauts had been hunting for their leader.

The loss of his knife was a symbol that the olden days were over. He wanted to use this creature for his latest idea.

A NEW PURGATION.

He would reenact the words of Scripture that SHE used whenever SHE remembered the Hungarians who had wounded him.

BURN THAT ROBBERS’ DEN!

Why not extend it to Krauts as well? Why not frighten away the darkness they had brought here — with their own torches?

He had the Gestapo killer bound with his straps, unwinding them for the last time from his body; they too deserved a fitting farewell. Then the men gasped as he strung the Kraut up by the feet from the lamppost, which stood rusty and bulbless in a time of blackouts.

Darkness had just begun to fall on this long day, and he looked forward to seeing all of them and the whole neighborhood nicely lit.

“The canister,” he ordered.

The pain quickly passed from his bound ankles, which bore the weight of his whole body, and the blood thrummed more and more pleasantly through his head as it hung toward the ground; strangely enough, he felt curious, as if this were not happening to him, but to someone who would not be harmed by it.

As he turned slowly there and back, there and back, he glimpsed unusual scenes from this birdlike, froglike perspective: there — above his head, the pavement moved, shimmering after the rain; now back— he made out a distorted lilac bush, whose flowers had just begun to emerge; there again — he spotted guns leaning against the wall of the hallway; back — he saw one man working as the rest stood guard.

The pleasantly sharp smell of wet earth and greenery was supplanted by a pungent stench. He could guess its purpose, and because they had not gagged him, he was curious whether or not he would scream. The fumes made him feel dopey and light.

The only real surprise was that there was nothing especially noble about the end of his life. He should think about someone, that was it!

But he couldn’t remember a name or even a face….

He slopped all the gasoline carefully on the rolled-up pants legs, the flannel shirt, and finally the hair.

Everything was ready, but he deliberately drew out the ritual so as to appreciate every detail.

That time in Brno, at the rocky beginning of the road that led him here, he had been so anxious and hasty that later he only remembered the disgusting parts.

He wanted to remember what made today festive and unique. He wasn’t just a flunkey from the theater cellar anymore; now he stood on the stage, admired and feared, with a show far beyond what anyone here had ever seen.

I’VE REACHED THE GOAL, MOTHER!

“Matches!” he requested, and was even pleased that no one obeyed; they were all rooted to the spot.

He pulled out the box he had found in the kitchen.

He swung around to face the man who had stood in the doorway. From up close he followed the fingers as they removed a single match from the box, closed the box again, and put the tip to the striking strip.

Then something moved in the doorway, someone — his eyes were smarting, and he couldn’t see who it was — left the house and came toward him.

Scrape. The match head leaped dazzlingly into flame at his side. Somewhere nearby the men shouted a warning.

The figure raised a hand with something gleaming to the man’s head.

In that endless second before he burst into flames, Buback saw a brain splatter.

What Morava saw from the car looked like a giant gas cooker gone up in flames with a bang. Then he saw a burning spindle, a woman shooting, and four men in flight. In the clear flame a figure appeared, as if dipped headfirst into glass.

Now they were out of the car and could hear skin crackling in the deathly silence of the fire.

Grete Baumann, the gun still clutched in her outstretched hand, stared motionless into the flame.

The body in it began to shrink, moving twitchily about as if it were exercising. When the straps burned through, it jumped down and smothered Rypl’s corpse in a glowing embrace.