His other colleagues in the department found a man unchanged in appearance and demeanor from the day before. He returned their sympathetic handshakes just the way he would have at daily meetings; anyone who dared to express condolences got at most a nod.
The women at Bartolom
jská, confirmed in their rejection of Operation Decoy, were especially shocked. Could this sorry young man really be that insensitive? The men were marginally impressed by his self-control, but it still seemed unnatural to them.
Morava understood what was happening. During that short nap by her bed, he had died along with Jitka. She had then sent him back to the living world to complete his task. During this temporary resurrection, he had resolved not to let anything impede his work.
Maybe it was the combined spiritual strength of all his ancestors, forged by unending blows of fate, that so mercifully numbed him. Otherwise, he knew, he would have gone mad.
He would have cried like a child, howled like a beast, stopped eating, given up sleeping; soon he would have set off aimlessly, half awake, half asleep, down the dark streets of a city ever closer to the front until, heedless of warnings, he would probably have been shot by German guards.
Instead, he resolved to forget that for three months there had been a woman he fell asleep and woke up with, constantly conscious of their child growing inside her, and decided to be only what he had been before: a criminal detective investigating the murders of Maru
ka Kubílková of Brno, Elisabeth, Baroness of Pomerania, Barbora Pospíchalová, Hedvika Horáková, Marta Pavlátová, Jana Kavanová, Robert Joná
, Frantiek ebesta, and Jitka Modrá.
He waited for Beran in his anteroom as if there had never been a third person there.
“Since we now know his identity,” he began with no preamble, “we can disband the special team. But I’d like to direct the investigation, and I want to start in Plze
.”
“Shouldn’t you get some sleep?”
“I’ve slept three months away already. I have to catch up.”
At first he didn’t know where he was. He felt refreshed, but all around was deepest darkness. Gradually he collected his thoughts until he could stand and grope his way to the blackout shades. A murky light passed listlessly through the dirty window and curtain. He thought of the neighbor who did the cleaning. Apparently she spent more time on the bed than in the rest of the apartment, except he couldn’t really imagine them…
He remembered the ferociousness with which his host had spoken about the Germans, soldiers and civilians alike, servants of the Reich sent to Prague and those who had been here for generations. From “exclude them” he’d progressed to “expel them” and then “exterminate them,” and he always added, “no exceptions!”
KRAUTS FOR HIM ARE LIKE THOSE WHORES FOR ME!
This discovery fascinated him. He had to learn more. The empty bathroom didn’t surprise him; the guy would certainly have snuck out through the living room so as not to wake him up. But the empty kitchen made his blood run cold. He tore into the front hall in his underwear and pressed the apartment door handle down. Locked. He dashed to the window. Mezzanine, at least six meters of sheer wall.
So, A TRAP!
Once again that awful feebleness overpowered him, the one he thought he had banished the day before on the strafed train; he could thank HER for it. As a child he’d developed it when he’d been IN UNLOVE. “Unlove” was HER worst punishment; SHE wouldn’t speak to him and would look right through him, as if he were thin air. He felt so abandoned, so humiliated that… he almost.. hated HER! Once he’d grown up, he confessed this to HER, and SHE was horrified that she’d made him feel that way. SHE never did it after that, but he never got rid of the reaction; in a crisis it would always sneak up on him and make the situation even worse.
WHAT NOW?
He realized in a panic that the guy was a provocateur and had gone to denounce him. At least he had time to break out and disappear! With shaking hands he put on his shirt and pants and prowled around the small apartment like a hunting dog until he sniffed out what he was looking for: A hatchet lay behind the top-fed wood stove. He slipped it under the handle of the front door and got ready to pry it open when he heard steps and the clink of keys. Fully on guard again, he sprang into the corner, where the open door would conceal him, raised the ax above his head, and waited.
The runt saw him and stopped dead in his tracks. His usual bovine smile turned to a desperate grimace, and he dropped his keys and string bag on the ground (fortunately there were only potatoes and bread in it).
“You ass!” his guest exploded as soon as he had slammed the door with his foot. “Didn’t you have orders?”
“I just… I thought___” He pointed pitifully at the floor. “I thought
Fd make you—”
“You entered my unit of your own free will; you’ll follow my orders to the letter! How was I to know you weren’t a traitor?”
Only now did he feel the pistol pressing against him in his pocket. Why was he waving an ax around when he could just as easily have shot? Shooting’s like riding a bicycle, Sergeant Králik had always said; you never forget how!
“I almost split your skull open so I wouldn’t alert the whole house!”
“Forgive me…. I’ll never, ever… I swear…!”
The half-pint was sincerely devastated. He brewed some rye coffee, and dutifully repeated what he could and could not tell his neighbor before going over.
“One more thing,” he asked the little man at the last moment. “Does she have your keys?”
“Yeah, she does.”
“Then get them back! I want to be sure no one comes in except you while I’m here.”
“Right, got it!”
When the door slammed shut, he began to sip the hot liquid carefully and reflect in peace.
WHAT WILL I DO WITH HIM?
He had never written with lipstick on a mirror before. “Love,” he began, “my greates—” The softened stick snapped. He looked at his uncompleted confession and was still amazed at how much had changed in him since yesterday. Although he had barely slept, a shower refreshed him completely; his brain was like a letter knife, smoothly opening problem after problem until it reached a solution.
He had to retain his post at all costs. And at no cost could he give up his official contacts with the Czech police. In an emergency they were the only ones who could protect Grete — and him as well.
There was no point sticking his head in the sand and waiting until Meckerle had it pulled out for him. He went straight to Bredovská. After all, he had been right, and the colonel must see that. Would Meckerle punish Buback out of sheer jealousy as the water rose around the two of them? With Hitler’s death the precariously balanced upside-down pyramid of the Third Reich had come crashing down. Who had seized the highest office; who held in his hands the fate of the German nation, the life and death of millions? Was it the mysteriously vanished Goebbels? Admiral Dönitz, brandishing a supposed last will and testament from the Führer? Or Reichmarschall Goring, who was supposedly exposed in it as a traitor?
Each of them, as Meckerle must know, was a potential protector for Buback. But even the light of the Protectorate’s former polestars paled before the brilliance of another contender. Although only a guest in this region, and until recently almost unknown, he commanded the million-strong mass of soldiers which now threatened to overflow their ever-contracting territory like dough rising in a bowl.