“Whether he’s hiding there or not,” Morava began in Czech, “he has 
ebesta’s pistol, and yours were taken in the raid.”
Angular Matlák turned toward the back and waved a powerful paw dismissively.
“That’s all right.”
“Don’t overestimate your bare hands.”
“They’re not bare.”
“What do you mean…?”
Now Jetel grinned as well.
“They left us our gun permits, so we dug into the old reserves, as the super—”
“That’s enough!” Morava warned them almost casually.
He doesn’t trust me, Buback realized, noticing only now that his companions’ jackets bulged gently. So they’ve opened the secret cache! Meckerle had sensed it, while they’d managed to lead Buback away from it from February till now. But maybe he’d let them succeed. Had he already given up the Germans’ war when he got to know Jitka Modrá and the young man beside him? The Czechs’ brief conversation yielded one important fact. Morava had not disappointed him; even his own people, the Czechs, knew he was a “lotus flower’’ incapable of deceit, so for safety’s sake they had isolated him from all information. How should he treat his relationship with Morava and the whole confounded situation now, after his last conversation with Grete?
He never finished the thought. They had come to a halt in front of a house that stood out like a poor relation in this well-to-do neighborhood, which bore the name Královské Vinohrady—“Royal Vineyards/’ On the crumbling facade of the late-twenties apartment building was a barely legible stucco sign: RAILWAY HOUSE.
The lady caretaker, clucking like a chicken at the police’s arrival, informed them in one long sentence that the man they were looking for lived on the third floor, number fourteen; was orderly and friendly; paid her, without arguing, to unlock his door when he forgot his key; and was a bachelor, so the wife of his friend Mr. Kratina in number fifteen looked after him, cleaning and doing his laundry. No, she herself hadn’t seen Mr. Malina since Sunday and didn’t know the man in the picture.
The card on the apartment door read MALINA and was handsomely executed in prewar style, with India ink. Morava motioned to his subordinates to wait on the stairs below the landing. Buback understood he was worried about the peephole, and retreated. He watched Morava expertly press his ear to the door before ringing, to catch any possible reaction, but the building was too noisy. Two more rings and still no reaction; Morava stepped over to the neighboring apartment.
An attractive forty-year-old woman opened the door in her apron; she looked feisty, but the foursome made an impression on her. Like a schoolchild called on in class, she answered them in complete sentences. Mr. Malina? Yes, she knew Mr. Malina; she earned some money helping him with the housework. The keys to his apartment? She only picked up the keys to his apartment on Wednesdays, she didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s home these days, she’s sure they understood why. Yesterday? Yesterday she saw Mr. Malina when she returned the keys to him; he’d mentioned he might go see his mother. Where? She didn’t know where, maybe Kladno, west of Prague… or was it Kolin, to the east? Someone else in the apartment? No, there was no one else in the apartment; she’d been there to clean, after all!
When Morava began to translate for Buback, the German could not help noticing that the woman was trembling with nervousness. As a Czech she was certainly within her rights to do so. Involuntarily her eyes strayed over to him; she averted them instantly and turned back to the assistant detective.
“Sir, he… Karel… I mean Mr. Malina sometimes talked too much, but he wasn’t the type to get involved in anything, especially anything political!”
“He wouldn’t have let anyone stay over here, by any chance?” Morava asked.
“I would have known!”
“Just so we understand each other: I’m asking in his own interest. We’re looking for a man he was seen with the day before yesterday, that evening at the train station. The man is most probably a murderer we’ve been tracking; he could easily kill Mr. Malina as well.”
“Do you really believe I’d want that on my conscience!”
She’s got something with him, Buback sensed. Morava was apparently thinking the same thing.
“Listen to me, then,” he said, giving her Rypl’s photograph. “As soon as he returns, send him immediately — day or night — to number four, Bartolom
jská Street; my name is Morava. If he did meet this man, he has to tell me everything he knows. You’re sure you’ve never seen him?”
“No!” she said plainly and convincingly, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her. “As God is my witness, on the lives of everyone I love, never!”
It was all worked out and rehearsed in advance. For two long days he’d done nothing besides listen to the building. He heard the steps of four men on the staircase at that odd hour and was at the door in his rubber-soled shoes before they rang. SHE had taught him to plan for the worst: Life stinks, Tony; it’s always got more lousy tricks up its sleeve! The runt had probably opened his big mouth on his morning grocery run and now someone had blown his cover.
After Malina returned from his neighbor’s, he had forced the terrifled runt to bind his own legs at gunpoint with the straps. The poor half-pint still believed that his disobedience had aroused the parachutist’s suspicions, and swore up and down that he was a true patriot. Obediently he put his hands behind his back, so he could be more easily tied up, and even nodded appreciatively when told that the Resistance hero would have to secure him temporarily; of course, he would release his host with honor as soon as it was possible.
When it came down to it, this motor mouth posed a real danger to him. Now that he’d resolved to take revenge on the Krauts he had THE RIGHT TO A TACTICAL DECEPTION.
He explained his reasoning to the half-pint quite convincingly. After a while Malina stopped squirming and resigned himself to his unpleasant fate, lying bound and gagged in the bathtub bed he had made for himself the day before. During the day the bathroom door was unlocked, and he was allowed to signal with a muffled knock that he needed facilities or food. Eventually the half-pint’s hunger passed. At least we’ll save on food, his captor thought; for the moment there was nowhere else to go and supplies were running low. At night he locked the bathroom so he could sleep in safety. If you even think about knocking on the wall to your neighbor… He had left the sentence unfinished and put his long, slender knife up to the guy’s throat.
It was strange that now, when the only thing keeping him safe was the thin wooden panel of the door, his heart wasn’t even racing or his knees knocking! In the space of a few dozen hours, something had happened to him in that apartment, and it was evidently connected with his NEW MISSION. But there was something else, something he had automatically grabbed at home and hidden to use later as bait, and now, as he felt it, it brought back the best moments of his life.
THE PISTOL.
He could still remember the marvelous happiness he’d felt on the Brno shooting range. In 1919 he had joined a regiment of fresh recruits for the brand-new Czechoslovak Army. SHE tried to derail his application, but failed: he was absolutely healthy, and greenhorns were just cannon fodder anyway.
Seasoned legionnaires from France led the exercises; they worked the recruits so mercilessly that he had no time for homesickness during the day, and evenings he simply collapsed from exhaustion. The Hungarian invasion of Slovakia made time of the essence. On the seventh day they marched over to sharpshooting, and that was where it happened. He was the only one in his unit to hit all the targets and was singled out in the orders for his unforeseen talent. He had never been the center of attention before. It was no surprise that he now set his sights on the army.