Nevertheless, Heydrich’s initial reaction must have disturbed Speer: Why would anyone want to kill Heydrich? As if there weren’t already enough reasons to kill Nazi leaders in general, and Heydrich in particular! Speer has no illusions about the popularity of the Germans in the occupied territories, and he assumes that Heydrich is the same. But this man seems so sure of himself. Speer can’t tell if Heydrich’s paternalistic tone, speaking of “his” Czechs, is just an idle boast, or if Heydrich really is as powerful as he claims to be. Call him a petit-bourgeois coward if you must, but in the open-top Mercedes inching its way through the streets of Prague, Speer doesn’t feel entirely at ease.
182
Colonel Morávek—sole survivor of the Three Kings, last remaining chief of the three-headed Czech Resistance organization—knows that he shouldn’t attend the meeting. It has been arranged by his old friend René, alias Colonel Paul Thümmel, Abwehr officer; alias A54, the most important spy ever to have worked for Czechoslovakia. A54 has managed to warn him: his cover has been blown, and this meeting is a trap. But Morávek probably believes his own audacity will protect him. Wasn’t it audacity that saved his life so many times before? This man who used to send postcards to the head of the Gestapo to tell him what he’d done isn’t going to let himself get scared now. Arriving in the Prague park where the meeting is due to take place, he sees his contact, but also the men who are watching him. He gets ready to run off, but two men in raincoats call out from behind him. I have never witnessed a shoot-out and I have trouble imagining what it would be like in a city as peaceful as Prague is now. But there are more than fifty gunshots during the chase that follows. Morávek runs across one of the bridges that span the Vltava (unfortunately, I don’t know which) and jumps onto a moving tram. But the Gestapo are everywhere—it’s as if they’ve been teleported. They’re even inside the tram carriage. Morávek jumps off the tram, but he’s been shot in the legs. He collapses on the rails and, completely surrounded, he shoots himself. This is obviously the surest means of not telling the enemy anything. But his pockets will talk: on his body, the Germans find a photo of a man who (although they don’t know it yet) is Josef Valčík.
This story marks the end of the last chief of the Three Kings. It proves a thorn in the side of Anthropoid, because at this date—March 20, 1942—Valčík is still closely involved in the operation. It also represents a double success for Heydrich: as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, he manages to decapitate one of the most dangerous remaining Resistance organizations, thus fulfilling his mission. And as head of the SD, he unmasks a superspy who is also an officer of the Abwehr—the secret service run by his rival and former mentor Canaris. For the Allies this isn’t the first setback and it won’t be the last, but March 20, 1942, is assuredly not a red-letter day in their secret war against the Germans.
183
In London they are growing impatient. It is five months now since the agents of Operation Anthropoid were parachuted into their homeland, but since then there’s been hardly any news at all. London does know, however, that Gabčík and Kubiš are alive and operational. Libuse, the only secret transmitter still working, sends information of this kind whenever there is any. So London decides to give the two agents a new mission. As ever, employers are obsessed by their employees’ productivity. This new mission adds to rather than replaces the previous one. But it also delays it. Gabčík and Kubiš are furious. They have to go to Pilsen to take part in a sabotage operation.
Pilsen is a large industrial town in the west of the country, quite close to the German border. Its famous beer, Pilsner Urquell, is named after it. However, London is not interested in Pilsner for its beer but for its Škoda factories. In 1942, Škoda doesn’t make cars—it makes armaments. An air raid is planned for the night of April 25–26. The parachutists have to light fires around the industrial complex to help the British bombers pick out their target.
So at least four parachutists travel to Pilsen. They meet up in town, at a place agreed on in advance (the Tivoli restaurant—I wonder if it still exists?), and, that night, set fire to a stable and a stack of straw near the factory.
When the bombers arrive, all they have to do is drop their bombs between these two bright marks. Unfortunately, all their bombs miss the target. So the mission is a total failure, even though the parachutists did exactly what they were asked.
Then again, Kubiš did get to know a young female shop assistant during his brief stay in Pilsen—a member of the Resistance, who helped the group fulfill its mission. With his handsome movie-star face—imagine a hybrid of Cary Grant and Tony Curtis—Kubiš was always a hit with the ladies. So, even if the operation was a bitter failure, at least he didn’t waste his time. Two weeks later—two weeks before the assassination attempt—he will write a letter to this young woman, Marie Zilanova. A careless thing to do, but luckily without consequences. I would love to know the contents of that letter. I should have copied it down in Czech when I had the chance.
Returning to Prague, the parachutists are very annoyed. They’ve been forced to risk compromising their principal mission—their historic mission—and for what? Nothing but a few big guns. They send London a sharp message suggesting that next time they send pilots with some knowledge of the region.
To tell the truth, I can’t even be sure that Gabčík was present for this mission in Pilsen. All I know is that Kubiš, Valčík, and Čurda were.
I’ve just realized that apart from one elliptic allusion in Chapter 178, I haven’t mentioned Karel Čurda before now. And yet, historically and dramatically, he is going to play an essential role in this story.
184
All good stories need a traitor. The one in mine is called Karel Čurda. He’s thirty years old, and I can’t tell, judging from the photos I’ve seen, whether his betrayal can be read upon his face. He is a Czech parachutist whose background is so similar that it could be mistaken for those of Gabčík, Kubiš, or Valčík. Demobilized from the army after the German occupation, he leaves the country via Poland and travels to France, where he enlists in the Foreign Legion. He joins the Czechoslovak army-in-exile and, after the defeat of France, crosses to England. Unlike Gabčík, Kubiš, and Valčík, he is not sent to the front during the French retreat—but this is not what makes him fundamentally different to the other parachutists. In England, he volunteers for special missions and follows the same intensive training. He is parachuted over the Protectorate with two other comrades on the night of March 27–28. As for what follows … well, it’s still too early to tell you that.
But it’s in England that the seeds of the drama are sown, because it’s here that it might have been avoided. Here, Karel Čurda’s dubious character gradually reveals itself. He is a heavy drinker. Not a crime, obviously, but when he drinks too much he says things that alarm his regimental comrades. He says he admires Hitler. He says he regrets having left the Protectorate; that he would have a better life if he’d stayed there. His comrades consider him so unreliable that they write to General Ingr, the minister of defense in the Czech government-in-exile, warning him about Čurda. They add that he has also attempted to con two English girls who were in love with him. Heydrich, in his day, was kicked out of the navy for less than that. The minister passes on this information to Colonel Moravec, who is in charge of special operations. And this is precisely where the fate of many men is sealed. What does Moravec do? Nothing. He just notes in the files that Čurda is a good sportsman with impressive physical capacities. He does not remove him from the list of parachutists chosen for special missions. And on the night of March 27–28, Čurda is dropped over Moravia with two other comrades. Helped by the local Resistance, he manages to reach Prague.