In the gallery, three men are showered in a rain of stained glass. Yes, only three men—Kubiš of Anthropoid, Opalka of Out Distance, and Bublik of Bioscope—but they know exactly what they have to do: bar access to the staircase (Opalka is stuck with that job), spend as little ammunition as possible, and kill as many Nazis as they can. Outside, their assailants are growing wild with impatience. When the machine guns go silent, the next wave surges into the nave. Pannwitz yells: “Attacke! Attacke!” Short, judicious bursts of fire are enough to push them back. The Germans rush into the church and immediately rush out again, squealing like puppies. Between the two attacks, the German machine guns spit out long, heavy bursts of fire, eating into the stone and shredding everything else. Kubiš and his two comrades—unable to return fire, or to do anything but wait for the storm to pass—protect themselves as best they can, hiding behind thick columns. Luckily for them, the SS squadrons can’t expose themselves to this covering fire either, so the MG42s neutralize the attackers just as much as they do the defenders. The situation is extremely precarious for the three parachutists, but as minutes turn into hours, they continue to hold out.
Karl Hermann Frank arrives at the scene. He’d been thinking, perhaps a little naively, that everything would be over by now. Instead, he is stunned to discover the most unbelievable bedlam on the streets, with Pannwitz sweating in his civilian suit, loosening his tie, and yelling, “Attacke! Attacke!” The assaults crash against the church like waves, one after another. You can see the relief on the faces of the injured when they’re dragged from this hell and taken to the medical center. Frank’s face, by contrast, looks anything but relieved. The sky is blue, it’s a beautiful day, but the thunder of weaponry must have woken the entire population. Who knows what they’ll be saying about this in town? Things are not looking good. As is traditional in a crisis, the boss gives his subordinate a good dressing-down. The terrorists must be neutralized immediately. One hour later, bullets are still whistling from all directions. Pannwitz screams ever louder: “Attacke! Attacke!” But the SS have now realized that they are never going to take the staircase, so they change their tactics. The nest has to be cleaned out from below. Covering fire, assault, fusillade, grenades tossed upward until the most skillful (or the luckiest) grenadier hits the bull’s-eye. After three hours of battle, a series of explosions finally brings silence to the gallery. For a long time, nobody dares move. Finally, it’s decided to send someone up to see. The soldier ordered to climb the staircase waits, resigned yet anxious, for the burst of gunfire that will kill him. But it doesn’t come. He enters the gallery. When the smoke clears, he discovers three motionless bodies: one a corpse, the other two wounded and unconscious. Opalka is dead, but Bublik and Kubiš are still breathing. Pannwitz calls an ambulance. He never expected to get this chance; now he must take advantage of it. The men must be saved so they can be interrogated. One has broken legs and the other’s in equally bad shape. The ambulance tears through the streets of Prague, its siren screaming, but by the time it reaches the hospital Bublik is dead. Twenty minutes later, Kubiš, too, succumbs to his wounds.
Kubiš is dead. I wish I didn’t have to write that. I would have liked to get to know him better. If only I could have saved him. According to witnesses, there was a boarded-up door at the end of the gallery that led to the neighboring buildings, and which might have allowed the three men to escape. If only they’d gone through that door! History is the only true casualty: you can reread it as much as you like, but you can never rewrite it. Whatever I do, whatever I say, I will never bring Jan Kubiš back to life—brave, heroic Jan Kubiš, the man who killed Heydrich. It has given me no pleasure at all to write this scene. Long, laborious weeks I’ve spent on it, and for what? Three pages of comings and goings in a church, and three deaths. Kubiš, Opalka, Bublik—they died as heroes, but they died all the same. I don’t even have time to mourn them, because history waits for no man.
The Germans search through the rubble and find nothing. They dump the body of the third man on the pavement and bring Čurda along to identify him. The traitor lowers his head and mumbles: “Opalka.” Pannwitz is delighted. He’s struck lucky. He presumes that the two men in the ambulance are the two assassins, whose names Čurda gave up during the interrogation: Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. He has no idea that Gabčík is just beneath his feet.
When the shooting stopped, Gabčík realized his friend was dead. None of them would ever let the Gestapo take them alive. Now he waits alongside Valčík and his two other comrades—Jan Hruby of Operation Bioscope and Jaroslav Svarc of Operation Tin, the latter having just been sent by London to assassinate Emanuel Moravec, the collaborationist minister—for the Germans either to burst into the crypt or to leave without having flushed them out.