“I’ve made the arrangements,” he said. “I’ll just change quickly, and you should put on a uniform too; it’s important we all be seen today. And Morava,” he called after him, “pick up a pistol as well.”
For the first time in two years, since his promotion to assistant detective, he pulled his uniform down from the top shelf of the office wardrobe. The years of disuse showed. When he met the superintendent again they couldn’t help smiling. With training, Morava’s shoulders had grown, and his sleeves barely fit. Beran had lost weight in the bustle of the last few months and his shirt swam on him. Their holsters weighed them down; they kept wanting to cinch them up. The high cap with its badge crimped Morava’s head and settled on Beran’s ears. On top of this they smelled of naphthalene.
“Well, how-dee-doo!” a similarly dressed Litera summed them up. “One look at us and the Germans will pee in their pants and lay down their arms!”
That was his first and last joke for the day. They rode silently through Prague, watching the city painstakingly transform itself from a German metropolis into a Czech one, and trying not to dwell on the reason for their trip. This hysterical rush, Morava mused, was like trying to erase the traces of your own deeds, as if overnight the city could expunge— or at least will itself to forget — six years of meek acceptance too often verging on active collaboration.
The Czech activity had caught the Germans’ attention. Heavily reinforced military patrols were everywhere. Today they walked in threes or fours instead of in twos, and hand grenades with long hafts now jutted from their belts.
“Hey hey!” Litera pointed at a trio they passed underneath the railroad bridge.
The German army had always flaunted its orderliness and discipline in the occupied territories, but the cigarettes stuck in the corners of the soldiers’ mouths were a far cry from that image. For experienced warriors, apparently, Prague was already on the frontlines.
They reached the crown of the steep street alongside the Vy
ehrad ramparts and rumbled across the cobblestones to the church by the cemetery. There Beran surprised Morava for the second time that day.
“I got one for you, too,” he said, while Litera opened the trunk and removed two bouquets and a small wreath.
FOR JITKA FROM JAN — FOR JITKA FROM V. B. — FOR JITKA FROM EVERYONE said the ribbons. Red, white, and blue, they were the colors of the Czech flag, which until now had been strictly forbidden.
“Everyone wanted to come,” the superintendent explained, “but I’ m sure you’ll understand I couldn’t allow that, so I’m here both in a personal capacity and for them.”
Beran had arranged the simple ceremony after a short conversation with Morava on Wednesday. He had unsentimentally ordered that under no circumstances must it run late or exceed fifteen minutes. The police technician removed the decoy tablet with the name JAN MORAVA from the gravesite where the murderer had taken the star-crossed bait, and replaced it with a real one:
JITKA Modrá
The sexton and a vicar from the Evangelical Church of the Savior were waiting at the graveside. Next to them was a simple wooden coffin resting on planks. In a few sentences the vicar said a farewell for her parents and relatives, who were cut off from Prague by the front. Then he read the Lord’s Prayer, and for the first time Morava neither moved his lips nor even said it to himself.
Even now he could only think about the man he was after. How to find him now? Prague was coming to a boil, like a cauldron whose lid dances as the water threatens to spill over. The Czech newspapermen, overcome at the eleventh hour by sympathy for the Resistance, kept sanctimoniously refusing to publish the murderer’s picture. Morava had made a thousand copies of Rypl’s photograph, but only a few policemen in Prague had one, and they were already preoccupied, waiting to see whether the Germans would attack them again, this time more savagely, or whether they themselves would suddenly be forced to attack the Germans. Where could a man hide if he apparently had no relatives or friends here? And who would harbor a strange man at great risk to himself when it could still be a Gestapo trap? Unless… unless.. unless he thought he was hiding Rypl from the Germans!
Yes, if people who had called the Germans valued customers yesterday could turn about and publicly erase all the German signs today, wouldn’t someone who desperately wanted an alibi be tempted to hide a supposed… what? Maybe a persecuted patriot? But then it could be a whole family covering for him, or a whole building. Rypl wouldn’t even have to set foot outside.
In that case, the key character was this Malina. The murderer had almost certainly left the train station with him. Why should they accept the neighbor’s statement that he went to visit his mother and that there was no one in the apartment? No, he’d have it opened today on orders. .. He almost turned to Litera so as to be off without delay, when a movement disrupted his thoughts.
Four men in well-worn dark clothes skillfully tightened and then loosened the straps. The coffin began to descend into the grave he had designed himself and adorned with his own name, only to place his wife and unborn child into it. Just at that moment Jitka seemed to be physically present by him; he could see the shyness of her brown eyes beneath their lids, smell the country milkiness of her skin, feel her fingers, knuckles, elbows, sides, breasts.
For a moment that numb silence in his soul threatened to rip wide open; he nearly sank to his knees and wept bitterly, almost jumped into the pit to huddle on the wooden lid. He felt someone’s palm clasp his arm. It was Beran, guiding him to the lip of the grave. Together they threw a handful of earth on the coffin. And afterward, as he strode off down the grave-lined path toward the car, he heard a quiet voice behind him.
“Good work, Morava!”
Beran continued in the vehicle from the front seat.
“Today you’ll have to interrupt your investigation and be my personal adjutant for a day. I’ve become a commander in my old age. The Germans were right to hang that bogeyman Buback around our necks, you know.”
“Why didn’t you even hint to me that—”
“You’re not made for deception, or so I felt. I wanted you to keep your credibility. Jitka was all I needed.”
“She knew?”
“Of course. She was my right-hand man. I had to order her not to breathe a word to you until I gave permission.”
Grief wrung Jan Morava’s heart again; he’d barely begun to know the girl now buried deep in the stony soil.
“Live in the future, my good friend,” Beran said knowingly. “Your life is only beginning, even though you may think it’s already ended. May she have a long life inside you. Do you know how to use it?”
With no transition he nodded at Morava’s holster and pistol.
“No,” the younger man answered, complying with the change of subject. “I started right when Rajner lowered the number of employees approved to carry weapons.”
“Aha. Well, now we’re raising it again. Take it out of the holster and look straight ahead.”
He obeyed and examined the piece of steel as if it were an unfamiliar animal. Beran leaned over from the front seat, took the weapon and demonstrated.
“This is how you remove and replace the magazine. This is how you take the safety off and put it on. We won’t take it apart now. And then you just squeeze this. Try it.”
Morava obediently slid the magazine out and back in, flipped the safety off and then squeezed the trigger.
A deafening shot rang out and the interior of the vehicle filled with acrid dust.
Litera, shaken, careened onto the fortunately deserted sidewalk.
They stopped.
Morava blushed and stared at the upholstery of the front seat. A small black hole had appeared in it.