But it’s not only Prague. From now on, her husband’s position allows her to mix with the Reich’s high society. Himmler is a long-standing friend, but she also knows the Goebbelses and the Speers, and she’s even had the supreme honor of meeting the Führer, who, seeing her on her husband’s arm, remarked: “What a handsome couple!” Oh yes, she’s part of the upper crust now. And Hitler pays her compliments!
And she has her own castle: a palace confiscated from a Jew, twelve miles north of Prague, surrounded by a vast estate. Wildly enthusiastic, she gets to work on doing it up. She is the lady of the manor but, like the queen in Sleeping Beauty, she is also a nasty piece of work. She treats her staff harshly, and insults everyone when she’s in a bad mood—and when she’s in a good mood, she doesn’t speak to anyone. In order to perform the enormous amount of work required for her princely home, she makes use of the abundant manpower supplied by the concentration camps. She doesn’t treat these workers any better than the camps do. She supervises the renovation work dressed as a horsewoman, a riding crop in her hand. Hers is a reign of terror, sadism, and eroticism.
Apart from all that, she looks after her three children and congratulates herself on how affectionate Reinhard is with them. He particularly adores the youngest one, Silke. So much so that he impregnates his wife for the fourth time. Long gone are the days when she would sleep with Schellenberg, his right-hand man. Long gone the days when he was never home. Here in Prague, her husband returns almost every evening. He makes love to her, goes horse riding, and plays with the children.
142
Gabčík and Kubiš are going home in a Halifax bomber. But before that there are certain formalities to be taken care of. From behind his desk, a British NCO asks them to undress. No matter where in the Czech countryside they land, it’s not a good idea to look like British parachutists. They take off their uniforms. “Completely,” adds the NCO as they stand there in their underwear. Used to discipline, the two men obey. So they’re stark naked when a choice of clothing is spread out before them. Without losing any of his very British, very military dryness, the NCO makes his pitch like a sales assistant at Harrods, proudly presenting his products: “Suits made in Czechoslovakia. Shirts made in Czechoslovakia. Underwear made in Czechoslovakia. Shoes made in Czechoslovakia. Please check your size. Ties made in Czechoslovakia. Choose a color. Cigarettes made in Czechoslovakia. Several brands available. Matches made in … Toothpaste made in…”
Once they’re dressed, the two men are given false papers with all the necessary stamps.
Now they are ready. Colonel Moravec waits for them next to the Halifax, whose engines are already running. There are five other parachutists in the plane with them, but they are going to different places on different missions. Moravec shakes Kubiš’s hand and wishes him good luck. But when he turns toward Gabčík, the little Slovak asks if they can have a quick word in private. Moravec cringes inwardly. He fears a last-minute withdrawal and suddenly regrets what he said to the two boys when he first chose them that they shouldn’t hesitate to tell him frankly if they didn’t feel up to the task. He’d even added that there was nothing shameful in changing your mind. He still believes this, but standing next to the waiting airplane is not the ideal time to hear it. He’d have to get Kubiš off the plane and delay the departure while he found a replacement for Gabčík. The mission would be postponed till God knows when. Gabčík begins with a few carefully phrased words that don’t bode welclass="underline" “Colonel, I’m very embarrassed to ask this…” But what comes next allays his boss’s fears: “I’ve left an unpaid bill for ten pounds at our restaurant. Could you possibly pay it for me?” Moravec is so relieved that he says in his memoirs he could do nothing more than nod. Gabčík shakes his hand. “You can count on us, Colonel. We’ll fulfill our mission exactly as ordered.” Those were his last words before disappearing into the cabin.
143
The two men wrote down their final wishes just before they took off, and I have these magnificent, hastily scribbled documents in front of me now. Covered in inkstains and crossings-out, they are almost identical. Both are dated December 28, 1941; both are divided in two parts; both have a few extra lines added to them, written diagonally across the page. Gabčík and Kubiš ask that their families be looked after in the event of their deaths. To that end, each gives an address—in Slovakia, in Moravia. Both men are orphans, and neither has a wife or child. But I know Gabčík has sisters, and Kubiš brothers. Both ask that their English girlfriends be informed if they die. Lorna Ellison is named in Gabčík’s will, and Edna Ellison in Kubiš’s. The two men had grown as close as brothers, so they went out with sisters. A photo of Lorna has reached us, slipped inside Gabčík’s military records—a young woman with dark curly hair. He will never see her again.
144
I have no evidence that Gabčík and Kubiš’s clothes were provided by the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). In fact, it’s more likely that this was dealt with by Moravec’s Czech services. So there’s no reason why the NCO who looks after them should be British. Oh, what a pain …
145
The general kommissar of Byelorussia, based in Minsk, complains about the actions of Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen. He deplores the fact that the systematic extermination of the Jews is depriving him of much-needed manpower. He also protests to Heydrich about decorated Jewish war veterans being deported to his ghetto in Minsk. He submits a list of Jews to be freed while denouncing the Einsatzgruppen’s indiscriminate killings. This is the reply he receives:
You will agree with me that, in the third year of the war, there are more important tasks for the war effort—both for the police and the security services—than running around trying to look after the needs of the Jews, wasting time drawing up lists, and distracting all my colleagues from more urgent business. If I ordered an inquiry into the people on your list, it would only be to prove—once and for all, and in writing—that such attacks are baseless. I regret still having to provide this kind of justification, six and a half years after the decree of the Nuremberg racial laws.
Well, you can’t accuse him of not being clear.
146
That night, at an altitude of two thousand feet, the huge Halifax aircraft roared out of the sky above the winter countryside of Czechoslovakia. The four airscrews churned through the drifts of low broken cloud, flailing them back against the wet black flanks of the machine, and in the cold fuselage Jan Kubis and Josef Gabchik stared down at their homeland through the open, coffin-shaped exit hatch cut in the floor.
This is the opening paragraph of Alan Burgess’s novel Seven Men at Daybreak, written in 1960. And from those first lines, I know that he hasn’t written the book I want to write. I don’t know how much of their homeland Gabčík and Kubiš could see at an altitude of more than two thousand feet in that black December night. As for the image of the coffin, I’d prefer to avoid such obvious metaphors.
Automatically they checked the release boxes and static lines of their parachute harnesses. Within minutes they were to plunge down through that darkness to the earth below, knowing that they were the first parachutists to come back to Czechoslovakia, and knowing also that their mission was as unique and hazardous as any that had yet been conceived.