In both mezzanines and the mouths of the corridors, barricades of desks and file cabinets were going up all around Morava, while he racked his brain. How could he achieve the main task Beran had set him: ending the fighting?
The modern 1930s building was like a labyrinth; its hundreds of locked doors, all missing their plaques, would have been a tricky puzzle under normal circumstances, let alone with ricocheting bullets whizzing past like crazed bees. He knew the Germans must still be searching for the source of the broadcasts, which were being heard across Bohemia. If they found them, brave announcers and technicians would die, and Germany would inflict a heavy moral defeat on a citizenry trying to atone for the national shame of the 1938 Munich capitulation. Morava understood: The fighting had to be stopped or resolved as soon as possible. With Sucharda dead, the young detective was now in charge.
Fortunately the city telephones were still working and the radio’s switchboard had not been disconnected. The employees trapped there led him on all fours to a phone; a sniper was peppering the front of the building from an attic window opposite. They drew him a rough plan on the wooden tiles of the whole complex and a more precise map of the back wing where the broadcasts were coming from.
At Bartolom
jská they either could not or would not bring Beran or Brunát to the telephone. Finally they got Superintendent Hlavatý, who had so brilliantly scented the widow killer’s trail in the Klasterec priest’s missive. He instantly grasped the urgency of the problem, and shortly thereafter Brunát’s voice came on the line. On the advice of two editors, former reserve officers, Morava requested that he send another armed unit through the attics of neighboring houses and across the flat roofs. With this assistance, the men defending the upper floors and those down below could clear the Germans from the middle and then the base of the building.
The Germans in the middle had fortunately run out of grenades and lacked Panzerfausts; like the Czechs beneath them, they were cut off from supplies on the ground floor. The first side to obtain reinforcements would break the stalemate.
“I’ll bring them personally,” Brunát promised. “The radio’s the key to everything now. But try to negotiate with the Germans; maybe they’ll fold of their own accord.”
“Depends whether Schörner’s set out already,” Morava replied. “How does it look?”
“For now it seems we’re ahead by a hair. The city radio’s sending out instructions on how to build barricades. Prague’s starting to become impassable; I’m afraid it’ll take us a while to get to you.”
“Try the way we went: up Wenceslas Square past the Germans— yes, they’re reserve officers and new recruits. If you wear police uniforms and formulate your request correctly, it gives them the option of saving their own skins without losing face.”
“Wait, Jan….” He heard Brunát give a muffled assent. “Beran says that in the name of the Czech National Council you’re to meet with Thürmer, the German radio director. You can offer free passage for German employees and soldiers, but carefuclass="underline" no weapons, period. Break a leg; we’ll be over in a jiffy to give them a good-bye kiss.”
They crawled out of the threatened office to plot how and when to proceed, shouting at each other in the hallway against the noise of the battle. Morava picked the two who spoke the best German and were least afraid to negotiate with Thürmer. The apparently insurmountable problem of how to contact him was solved again by the telephone.
“The director will meet with you,” his secretary responded after a short while, “if you’ll stop shooting and cease your hostile broadcasts from this building for the duration of the negotiations.”
Morava rejected the second condition. Thirty employees trapped unexpectedly by the turn of events were squashed with the policemen into a narrow space between the unreliable-looking wooden barriers. In a few cases, their nerves were in tatters.
“Why not call the studios and have them play music for a while,” suggested a pitifully pale woman slumped weakly on the tiles, her back propped against the wall. “Everyone’s heard the broadcast anyway, and we’ll never get out of here unless—”
“Chin up, Andula!” a colleague interjected. Another employee added, “The Germans know they won’t just be able to escape, not at any price; all of Prague is sharpening its knives for them.”
Finally the German fire began to quiet down. The phone rang; the director was waiting for them. The negotiators should put their hands behind their heads; they would be searched on arrival.
Morava left his pistol and holster and proceeded to the steps. His footprints remained in the fine plaster dust just like in snow. He was the first to crawl over the office-furniture stockade. The maneuver required both hands, but he was not afraid.
“At least,” he said to himself in a low voice, “I’ll be with you sooner, my love.”
When they finally ran up and showered him with praise for his amazing courage, he experienced a remarkable feeling. I DID IT!
It made him even happier that this time he hadn’t had to hide his deed; quite the opposite:
I CAN DO IT IN PUBLIC!
He was terribly sorry that SHE could not have seen it herself, but he was sure that SHE knew, if SHE hadn’t in fact been leading him.
Even the boy with wire-rim glasses who hurried over from the garbage can couldn’t spoil his mood.
“Sirs,” he said in a trembling voice, “he’s alive.”
In their ensuing silence they heard a weak moan from outside.
“Let him enjoy it, then!” he answered the kid. “Like we enjoyed living with them for six years. Or do you feel sorry for him?”
“Stomach wounds are extremely painful…. You see, I’m studying to be a doctor, and—”
Before he could think of a way to regain his new admirers, a well-muscled man in overalls grinned at the kid.
“Then finish school and cure him! Or finish him off, once you have something to do it with. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my ammunition on him. So what next?” The overalls turned to the group. “The evening’s still young!”
And he felt everyone’s eyes resting on him. They looked up to him the way he had once looked up to Sergeant Králik, he realized proudly.
I’M THE BEST ONE HERE!
It was time to consolidate his leadership.
According to the technician, the entrance by the garbage cans was thinly guarded because the Germans thought it only led down to the archives. But from there, he assured them, you could get upstairs to the broadcasting rooms where the calls for help were coming from.
He took one grenade along with the soldier’s submachine gun, which naturally fell to him; the other grenade he gave to the man in overalls, who, he learned, had also been in the army. Both rifle owners followed them into the basement; after them came a couple of empty-handed men hoping to find some weapons as they went.
The hallway turned two corners and then brought them to a narrow staircase leading upward. They walked so slowly and quietly that they heard the steps and German voices approaching from above before the soldiers found them. Was it just a coincidence that once again he and his men were ideally positioned for an ambush? The archive was overflowing with old tape recordings, and its hallways were lined with narrow shelving housing columns of round metal cases; here, just behind them, was an alcove they all fit into.
Rypl, his sergeant reminded him, in concrete your bullet will likely hit you on the rebound; a blade’s your best bet… After all, it was Králík who’d instructed him in the use of knives when they’d visited his brother’s slaughterhouse. ..