Frank is persuaded by these arguments and decrees an amnesty for whoever provides—within five days—information leading to the capture of the assassins. After that he won’t be able to contain Hitler and Himmler’s lust for blood any longer.
As soon as she hears this news, Mrs. Moravec understands what it means: the Germans are staking everything. If, after five days, nobody has denounced her lads, they will be free from any further fear of informers and their chances of survival will increase considerably. Because, once the amnesty has expired, nobody will dare to go and see the Gestapo. Today, June 13, 1942, a stranger turns up at Mrs. Moravec’s apartment, but there’s nobody there. The man asks the concierge if Mrs. Moravec has by any chance left a briefcase for him. He is Czech but he doesn’t give the password, “Jan.” The concierge says he knows nothing about it. The stranger leaves. Karel Čurda has almost resurfaced.
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Aunt Moravec has sent her family to the countryside for a few days, but she herself has too much to do in Prague. She washes and irons clothes, and she runs errands all over the place. In order not to attract too much attention, she is helped by the concierge’s wife. They mustn’t be seen too often carrying packages, and naturally the parachutists’ hiding place must remain secret, so the two women arrange to meet in Charles Square, surrounded by flower beds and crowds of people. After that, the aunt walks down Resslova Street, enters the church, and disappears. Another time, they get on the same tram but the concierge’s wife gets off two or three stations earlier, leaving her bags, and the aunt picks them up. She brings the men cakes still warm from the oven, and methylated spirits for their old stove. She also brings them news from the outside world. The lads are all a bit under the weather, but their morale has improved. Heydrich’s death cannot erase the memory of Lidice, but gradually they come to realize the significance of what they’ve done. Aunt Moravec is welcomed by Valčík in his dressing gown. He looks a bit peaky, but he sports a thin mustache these days—and, my word, how very distinguished it makes him look. He asks for news of Moula, his dog. Moula is fine: he has been adopted by a family with a large garden. The swellings on Kubiš’s face have gone down, and even Gabčík has recovered a bit of his old joie de vivre. They are beginning to get organized, this little community of seven: they’ve improvised a sieve from an undershirt and they’d like to try to make coffee. The aunt promises to find some. Meanwhile, Professor Zelenka is working with the Resistance on some very hypothetical plans to get the parachutists out of the Reich. The problem is that Anthropoid was really designed as a suicide mission, so nobody gave much thought to the question of their return. First of all, they must be smuggled into the countryside, but the Gestapo is still under great pressure to arrest them and the city is in a state of maximum alert—so this will have to wait. It will soon be St. Adolf’s day, and as they wish to celebrate this (because, to be clear, Lieutenant Opalka’s first name is Adolf), Aunt Moravec is going to try to get hold of some veal scallops. She’d also like to make them a broth with chunks of liver. The lads no longer call her “Aunt,” but simply “Mom.” These seven highly trained men are now reduced to a state of total inaction, as vulnerable as children, cloistered in this damp cellar and wholly in the hands of this little lady who cares for them like a mother. She keeps repeating to them: “We just have to get through to the eighteenth.” Today is the sixteenth.
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Karel Čurda stands on the pavement at the top of Bredovska Street—today renamed the Street of Political Prisoners—which comes out at the central train station. On the opposite corner is Peček Palace, a dour and menacing presence in gray stone. This huge pile was built after the First World War by a Czech banker who owned almost all the coal mines in northern Bohemia. Perhaps the anthracite-gray façade was designed as a reminder of the origin of his fortune. But the banker gave up the mines and the palace to the government, prudently deciding to leave the country for England just before the German invasion. Even today Peček Palace is an official building—home of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. But in 1942 it is the headquarters of the Gestapo for Bohemia and Moravia. Nearly a thousand employees work here at the blackest tasks, in rooms so gloomy it looks like night even in the middle of the day. Located in the heart of the capital and equipped with the latest technology—a printing works, a laboratory, a pneumatic postal service, and a telephone exchange—the building is, from a functional point of view, absolutely perfect for the Nazi police. Its many underground chambers and cellars have been cleverly converted for the Gestapo’s particular needs. The head of the police here is a young Standartenführer called Dr. Geschke. I’ve seen only one photo of this man, but—with his scar, his womanly skin, his mad eyes and cruel lips, his side-parted hair and half-shaved skull—it was enough to freeze my blood. Anyway, Peček Palace is the very incarnation of the Nazi terror in Prague, and you need a certain courage just to stand in front of it. Karel Čurda does not lack courage, but he is motivated by the thought of twenty million crowns. Though, to be honest, it does take courage to denounce your comrades. You have to weigh up the pros and the cons, and there is no guarantee that the Nazis will keep their word. Čurda is playing double or quits with his own life: either wealth or death awaits him. But he’s an adventurer. That’s why he joined the Free Czechoslovak army; that’s why he volunteered for special missions in the Protectorate: because he has a taste for adventure. He hasn’t enjoyed this return to his homeland because, ultimately, the clandestine lifestyle isn’t very appealing. Since the assassination he’s been living in the provinces with his mother, in the little town of Kolín, forty miles east of Prague. Before this, though, he did have time to meet many people involved in the Resistance, among them Kubiš and Valčík—they worked together in the Škoda operation at Pilsen—and also Gabčík and Opalka, whose paths he crossed several times when they were switching hideouts in Prague. He knows the apartment of the Svatoš family, who supplied a bicycle and a briefcase for the assassination. And above all he knows where the Moravec family lives. I don’t know why he went there three days earlier. Was he already thinking of betraying them? Or was he attempting to get back in contact with the network because he’d had no news of them recently? But why come back to Prague, if not for the reward? Wasn’t he safer with his mother in picturesque little Kolín? Actually, he probably wasn’t: in 1942, Kolín is a German administrative center, where the Jews of central Bohemia are rounded up, and its train station is a rail junction for deportations to Terezín. So it’s possible that Čurda no longer wished to endanger his family—he had a sister in Kolín as well as his mother—and that he came back to Prague to seek support and refuge with his comrades. How important, then, was the closed door he found when he went to call on the Moravecs? And yet, Aunt Moravec was expecting him, because when the concierge told her about the mysterious visitor, she asked if he had come from Kolín. But she’d gone out … We can never know why things turn out the way they do—malicious and mischievous fate, or the powerful forces of some higher will. Still, by Tuesday, June 16, 1942, Karel Čurda has made his decision. He doesn’t know where his comrades are hiding. But he knows enough.
Karel Čurda crosses the road, presents himself to the guard standing in front of the heavy wooden gate, and tells him that he has important information to provide. Then he climbs the wide steps covered in red carpet that lead up to the vast entrance hall, and he is swallowed by the stone belly of the black palace.