“No, I don’t. Would sinus pills help?”
I touched the spot on my head. It was not badly swollen, but still ached. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry we had to hit you.”
“It’s all right.” I glanced around. “Where are we, anyway?”
“A block from the castle. The house is empty. We have blocked off the basement windows so the light cannot be seen.”
“Are there more of you?”
“Just we four. And you? Did you come alone?”
“Yes.”
“From whom did you receive your orders?”
“I did not come under orders. It was my own idea.”
“To get the Butcher of Slovakia?”
“Yes.”
“What made you come?”
“I had family,” I said, “in Bratislava. Kotacek shipped them west. To Belsen.” I thought for a moment, looking for the right phrases. “I hoped to kill him myself, if I could. Or to see him hanged, at the least.”
“A great undertaking for one man.”
“Perhaps. And you? You came to take him to Israel for trial?”
Zvi’s eyes flashed. “We know better, thank you. Those fools in Tel Aviv would only succeed in making a hero out of him. They very nearly achieved that with Eichmann, you know. By the time he dangled from the rope half the world had summoned up pity for the devil. Kotacek will die in Prague.”
“He will have a trial,” Haim said.
“But I suspect he will be found guilty,” said the fourth, whose name I had not yet caught. “With we four as the jury-”
“We five,” Haim said.
“We five. With we five to judge him, it is to be expected that he will be found guilty. We have brought a rope.”
“Ah.”
“With which we will hang him. And then we will return to Israel, and it will be announced that the Stern Gang has tried and executed the Butcher of Slovakia. Of course we will deny it officially, but the world knows what to believe.”
“How did you plan to get to him?”
They looked at each other, then at me. “That is a difficult question,” Ari said. “Gershon here” – now I knew all their names – “thinks it can be done by force. Storm the castle, shoot the guards, grab Kotacek and get off with him.”
“The guards are slow,” Gershon said. “It would take them ten minutes to draw their revolvers. By that time-”
“We stand a better chance at the trial,” Ari insisted.
“They would not allow us in the courtroom.”
“But there is certain to be a way. He will be conducted from his cell to the courtroom and back again at the end of the day. We would seize him en route. And think of the dramatic effect!”
“But it would be too difficult.”
“And storming the castle would be easy?”
I said, “There’s another way.”
They looked at me.
“It would involve another person, a girl. She is not a member of our organization.”
“Who is she?”
“Actually, she is not even Jewish.”
“Oh?”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “she is German.”
“And you would use her in our plans? You must be mad.” This from Zvi.
“She could be very useful. I had planned to use her myself in this manner, but it might be very difficult – the plan calls for more than two. With six of us it would work very neatly.”
“And not with five?”
“With five, yes. Without the girl, no. She is essential.”
“You trust her?”
“Completely.”
“Why should a German girl help us?”
“She has deep sympathies for the Jewish people,” I said. “She saw Anne Frank and was deeply moved. The spirit of the Jewish race has probed the depths of her being and touched far within her.” That last, I thought, was at least true. “Believe me, she will help us.”
“What is her name?”
“Greta Neumann.”
“She will do what you tell her?”
“Yes.”
“And how would this plan of yours work?”
“We would take the Slovak from the castle,” I said. “Without firing a shot. We would go in after him and take him out and no one would be the wiser.”
“Do you know how well the place is guarded?”
“I just know of the three guards outside. How many others are there?”
“In the daytime,” Haim said, “dozens. At night, considerably fewer. The three which you saw, and one on post outside Kotacek’s cell, and two at the foot of the staircase. If only we could get Kotacek to cooperate, there is one plan we might try. You know how sick he is. Everything in the world is wrong with him. Diabetes, his heart, catalepsy – whatever that is.”
Catalepsy is a form of epilepsy, except the victim doesn’t thrash around during a seizure. He lies like a corpse, and usually wears a little silver tag around his neck begging undertakers not to embalm him by mistake.
“Everything wrong with him,” Haim went on. “So if he could pretend to be sick, and then one of us went into the castle carrying the little black bag of a doctor-”
“I don’t think it would work,” I said.
“No, we have abandoned it.” He shrugged. “If your plan is workable, we ought to hear it. What is it?”
I told them.
“I don’t know,” Zvi said. “It sounds… I don’t know. Do you really think it could be done?”
“Yes.”
“And the girl?”
“She is perfect for the part. You will be convinced when you meet her, but for now you may take my word for it. She is ideal.”
“And she would do it?”
“She will cooperate in every sense of the word.”
“She is here in Prague?”
“Yes, at a friend’s house.”
“You can bring her here?”
“She will be here tomorrow night. We can put the plan into operation immediately.”
“Let’s go over it again,” Gershon said. “I would like to hear it one more time.”
We went over it several more times. I wanted to get an idea of the position of our quarters in relation to the castle, so Ari took me upstairs to the attic. He carried a flashlight with a very thin beam. We climbed the stairs in silence, moved to the attic window. From there we had a perfect view of the front of the castle.
“When we planned to take the castle with a direct assault,” he said, “we thought of posting one man here with a rifle. But there are so few of us, that would leave just three to storm the place. It is a good view, is it not?”
It was an excellent view. He handed me a pair of binoculars and indicated Kotacek’s cell, in the left rear tower. From our angle I could see the light in his cell window but nothing more.
“We’d better go now, Evan. We all need sleep. There is an extra bed on the first floor, if you need it.”
“I slept most of the day. I’m not tired.”
“You’ll be leaving, then?”
“I could stand guard, if you’d like. I want to go for the girl, but I can’t get her until morning.”
“We usually stand guard in two-hour shifts.”
“I could take the whole night, as long as there’s something to read.”
“You wouldn’t fall asleep?”
“No. I’m not at all tired.”
We went downstairs, and they discussed it. They decided that they were all very tired and would be delighted if I would stand guard and let them sleep uninterrupted. I was glad of this, not because of any mad passion for guard duty but because I read their decision as a sign of trust. It was vital that they trust me. Otherwise I would have a devil of a time in betraying them.
They all slept in the basement, on mattresses which they had lugged down from various second-floor bedrooms. The house evidently belonged to some important Communist Party functionary who had been sent somewhere as ambassador. I sat in the same chair I’d been tied up in, facing the cellar stairs and reading with the aid of the pencil-beam flashlight. The basement windows had been so well masked off that I couldn’t even tell when dawn broke. My companions awoke one by one, and we had breakfast together, and then I left to collect Greta. It was midmorning by the time I reached Klaus Silber’s bungalow.