The Widow Killer

“How does it work?” Beran asked.

“So far we’ve only tried gramophone music,” volunteered Veselý, who on the surface ran the telephone and telegraph exchanges, pointing at an antique machine with a horn, “but they’ve confirmed that it comes out all over Prague. Now they’re checking the backup stations in Vinohrady and Nusle; once they’re done, we can start whenever we want.”

“Good work,” said Beran, “very good. Is Brunát here?”

“Hej!” affirmed the bearded sixtyish superintendent of the transit police, in the one word of Slovak left him after his prewar service in Slovakia. He had just appeared through a tunnel from the basement opposite. “Here’s the council’s resolution.”

Morava realized that a system of tunnels and escape routes must have been prepared in all the police buildings on Bartolomjská.

Beran read over the paper and then addressed the crowd in a steely voice.

“Colleagues, up till now we have introduced you into Resistance activities gradually and sparingly, so as not to needlessly threaten our conspiracy. All of you here enjoy my confidence and that of my friend Brunát, and we have now pledged our loyalty to a new political organization: the Czech National Council, which is the temporary representative of the Czechoslovak government, located for the moment in liberated Koice. In accordance with its resolution, I hereby absolve you of all obligations arising from professional oaths taken to the occupiers. The Czech police is the best organized and best armed civilian group — albeit modestly so — and has therefore been entrusted with a crucial task: to ensure the transfer of power with as few casualties as possible, protecting our people and our town. Now that peace is in sight, we cannot let Prague meet the fate of Europe’s other cities, a fate it has so far been spared. We are not to mount a headstrong, all-out attack — we don’t have the resources for it — but to engage in strategic and principled confrontation backed by careful use of force. There are as many possible variations as moves in a chess game; therefore we have decided not to commit ourselves to any in advance, and instead to retain flexibility of planning and reaction. The first announcement inaugurating our regular city radio broadcasts“—here he waved the paper in the air—“contains an appeal for calm, order, and reason that will be welcomed by the Germans. However, word combinations in the text contain hidden instructions to our neighborhood offices and primary Resistance groups, who will begin the immediate, unobtrusive isolation of German units and offices located directly in the capital.

Gentlemen, good luck with your instructions and I’ll see you at thirteen hundred hours, when we begin.”

He gave the exact time, and thirty men synchronized their watches.

“Brunát, Morava,” the superintendent called, and when both had come over he added in a low voice, “time for the three of us to give Rajner what he’s got coming.”

“You have an urgent visitor,” Brunát informed him.

“Who?”

“Your German inspector is here with an escort.”

“Gestapo?” Beran said warily.

“No need to worry. Our men brought him in. They assumed he was Gestapo; only the fact that he asked for you saved him.”

“What does he want?”

“To speak with you or Morava; he supposedly has news that can’t wait.”

“When did he arrive?”

“Not fifteen minutes ago.”

“Him first, then,” the superintendent said, picking up the pace. “Where is he?”

“You assigned him an office, didn’t you?”

A thousand arrests made, but his first time arrested! Buback grinned, but did not feel like laughing. He sat at his old, familiar desk, its surface covered with carefully arranged reports on the widow killer. The one very basic difference was that now the key, turned twice in the lock for extra security, was in the far side of the keyhole.

He had no one to call, but tried the telephone anyway. Of course they had disconnected it; they weren’t amateurs. At least he felt safer here than he had with those policemen, whose patriotism had begun to affect their judgment.

The Rubicon! Caesar’s fateful river came suddenly to mind. Now Buback was about to cross his own, and he knew that nothing would be the same afterward. He’d gone too far to stop or turn back, though, so he simply cleared his mind and waited. Soon thereafter, the key turned in the lock and the superintendent and his assistant entered. With them was an unfamiliar man who reminded him of an old but still powerful lion.

“Good morning,” Beran said in the same tone he had always used. “I heard you wanted to speak with us. This is my colleague Brunát; he and I have been temporarily entrusted with running the Czech police.”

“Nice to meet you,” said the lion, amiably baring his formidable teeth. “I might add that the former commissioner doesn’t yet know of his good fortune.”

Thus inspired and emboldened, Buback stepped out and over the imaginary river.

“Gentlemen, you may think I’m a coward betraying his own people out of fear, but I’d rather you believe that than prolong this war any longer and multiply its victims. Anyway, you, Mr. Morava, said you were betting there were Germans who would try to stop the worst from happening.”

“That’s right,” the young Czech affirmed.

Buback reeled off Meckerle’s information almost word for word. As he did so he felt his tension slacken, and as he finished, a feeling of calm settled on him. It was behind him, and he was past it. For the first time in years — maybe for the first time in his life — he was at peace, as both a German and a human, because he had suppressed his Germanity for humanity’s sake.

Both older men exchanged a long glance.

“I’ll inform the council immediately,” the second said and thereupon vanished.

“We’re very grateful to you, Mr. Buback,” Beran said, “and personally I think it took great courage. Will you stay in contact with us?”

“I’ll try. My assignment to cooperate with Mr. Morava is still in force. Of course, it’s linked with another task: ascertaining the plans of the Czech police.”

“I can’t imagine you discovered much.”

He decided to be forthright.

“No, not much.”

“I simplified your job by not telling Mr. Morava.”

Buback felt glad that at least he’d been right about the kid.

“I did not go to the funeral of Mr. Morava’s wife,” he said, “because today my participation would have seemed inappropriate in the extreme. However, his behavior and hers as well contributed to a change in my views, and led my companion and me to try to redeem at least some small part of Germany’s guilt. I’d like to continue, as long as a higher power doesn’t interfere to prevent it.”

“Herr Oberkriminalrat…,” Beran said, weighing every word, “risk for risk. I’ll give you a pass to confirm your cooperation with us in the investigation. We’ll be grateful for any further news. What can we do for you?”

He had understood Grete’s “give-and-take.”

“How about assistance for someone else who helped you at great personal risk?”

“You mean Mrs. Baumann?”

“Yes. Her theater has gone to American territory, but she refused to leave — on my account. At the moment she’s in my apartment in the neighborhood they call Little Berlin. I’m afraid what might happen to her there once emotions start to run high.”

“I’d be worried too.” Beran nodded glumly. “And we’re certainly in her debt. You can take her in our car, if you can manage your own people on the way. But where will you go?”

“That I don’t know,” Buback confessed. “Our homes and families are gone.”