Nebe had already dispatched two senior detectives from the Alex – Horst Kopkow and Dr Bernhard Wehner – to Prague, to help with the investigation. The assailants were still at large and throughout Bohemia and Moravia a huge security operation was under way to catch them; everyone in Kripo – myself included – believed they would soon be arrested.
Nebe, who was now back in Berlin after murdering tens of thousands of Jews in the Ukraine, looked wearier than usual. But it looked as if these efforts had been appreciated: there were even more decorations on his tunic than I remembered, and in this respect at least he was beginning to resemble a South American Generalissimo. His long nose had turned a little purple, no doubt a result of the heavy drinking that was required to complete our historic German tasks, and there were bags under his eyes; he was smoking almost continuously and there were patches of bad eczema on the backs of his hands. The hair on his head was almost silver now but his eyebrows remained dark and overgrown, like the forest of briars in The Sleeping Beauty, shielding the enchanted castle that was his soul from the discovery of the outside world.
He came straight to the point.
‘Heydrich died at four-thirty this morning.’
‘He picked a nice day for it.’
Nebe permitted himself a wry smile.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Yes. I warned him to be more careful. But he wasn’t the careful type, I guess.’
‘I’m flying to Prague in an hour’s time. I’ll be part of an SS honour guard that will bring his body home to Berlin.’
‘I think you’ll find he was born in Halle, Arthur.’
‘While I am there I shall also be reviewing progress in the investigation. As a matter of fact, there isn’t any progress. It’s fucking chaos down there. Chaos of catastrophic proportions. The local Gestapo is arresting everyone.’
‘That’s one way of catching the murderers, I suppose.’
‘I need my own man. Someone whose abilities I respect. That’s why you’re coming with me, Bernie. To find some truth.’
‘Truth? You’re not asking for much, are you?’
‘We can argue about it in the car on the way to the airport. Anything you need while you’re there, you can buy.’
We drove straight to Tempelhof Airport where a Heinkel was already fuelled and waiting for us. We climbed aboard and took off immediately. From the air, Berlin still looked good. Flying over it was probably the best way to see the city, which looked green and natural, a decent place to live, like the old Berlin of my youth. You couldn’t see the corruption and the savagery from up there.
‘You’ll observe what’s going on. Nothing more than that. Observe and report directly to me.’
‘Bernhard Wehner won’t like that. As a commissioner he outranks me, Arthur. From the way he behaves I think he outranks Hermann Göring.’
‘Wehner’s not a detective, he’s a bureaucrat. Not to mention a cunt.’
‘Is he in charge?’
‘No. Frank thinks he’s in overall charge. And so does Daluege. The criminal inquiry is being handled by Heinz Pannwitz.’
‘I’m beginning to understand the problem. What’s Dummi doing there?’
Kurt ‘Dummi’ Daluege was the chief of Germany’s uniformed regular police.
‘Apparently he was in Prague for medical treatment.’ Nebe grinned. ‘Not a well man, it seems.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing trivial, I hope.’
‘Heinz Pannwitz. I don’t know him.’
‘He’s a Berliner, like you and me. And capable up to a point. But a bit of a thug, really. He’s been with the SD in Prague since 1940, so he has a fair bit of local knowledge.’
‘I wonder why I never met him.’
‘Yes, I heard you were down there last October.’
‘I had hoped never to go back.’
‘Rough, eh?’
‘Not for me. Not particularly. But there was a girl. Arianne Tauber. It was very rough for her.’
‘She’s the one who tried to blow up Himmler, right?’
‘Yes. The assassination attempt that no one talks about. Do you happen to know what happened to her?’
‘No, but I could probably find out. In return for your help in Prague.’
I nodded. ‘Fair enough. There was another fellow. The spy. Paul Thummel. What happened to him? Do you know?’
‘Difficult case,’ said Nebe. ‘You have two sides to that story. The Abwehr says that Thummel only ever pretended to spy for the Czechs so that he could obtain information about UVOD’s London contacts. The SD, however, insists he was the genuine Esau. And nobody wants to put him on trial so they can prove the case one way or the other. That would be embarrassing for someone important, either way. So Thummel stays in an isolation cell at the fortress in Terezin, under a false name, the poor bastard.’
When we arrived in Prague we found things were even more chaotic than Nebe had described. The streets were empty of everyone except lots of SS troops, who were reportedly trigger-happy, while the cells at Pecek Palace and the prison at Pankrac were full after the arrests of almost five hundred Czechs, nearly all of them innocent, of course. But the situation at Hradschin Castle was nothing short of laughable. Daluege was working on the assumption that the assassination was the beginning of an organized Czech uprising; he had called in police reinforcements from Dresden and declared a nine p.m. curfew. Most of the Czechs arrested had simply fallen foul of Daluege’s curfew.
Pannwitz and Frank were jointly of the opinion that the ambush was the work of a team of British parachutists, and these two had set in train a painstaking search of every single house in Prague in the hope of uncovering the assassins’ hiding place.
As soon as they saw Arthur Nebe, Kopkow and Wehner complained that there was little hope of catching anyone so long as revenge appeared to be the only order of the day, for as well as the five hundred Czechs who had been arrested, it seemed that the Gestapo had already shot more than one hundred and fifty men and women who were suspected of working for UVOD, including two witnesses to the actual assassination. Which hardly helped their investigation.
Nebe and I viewed the damaged car, the scene of the crime and other evidence, including a bicycle used by one of the assassins, and the coat he had been wearing; these were on display to the public in the window of a popular shoe store in the centre of Prague. Then we went to Bulovka Hospital to view Heydrich’s dead body and found the autopsy was still in progress. This was conducted by Professor Hamperl – who had also handled Captain Kuttner’s autopsy eight months earlier – and Professor Weygrich, who was also from the German Charles University in Prague.
Nebe, who had no taste for hospitals, left me there to speak to the two professors while he went to the Pecek Palace for a meeting with Frank and Pannwitz.
I did not enter the operating theatre. Although the whole floor was guarded by several SS-men – to me this looked like covering the well after the child had already fallen in – I could easily have entered the theatre itself; Nebe made that clear to the NCO in charge of the guard detail. But I didn’t go in to the autopsy theatre. Perhaps I just didn’t trust myself not to tell Heydrich that if he had listened to me then he would have been alive. Perhaps. But I think it’s more likely that I wanted to avoid finding the least bit of sympathy in myself for that truly wicked man. So I sat on a wooden bench outside the doors and waited for good news, like an expectant father.
When the autopsy finished, Hamperl was first out of the operating theatre, and he greeted me like an old friend.
‘So, he’s really dead, is he?’ I asked.