Still, the bloodhoundlike stubbornness Beran had admired on their last stroll told Morava that this was not their man, and that the true owner of these documents could not be far away. So what was Morava doing here?
He persuaded a reliable-looking sergeant to leave the victory celebrations and arrange for corpse thirty-five and everything belonging with it to be sent over to Pathology. Then he rushed back to the building. He headed up to the top floor and circled the halls, sticking his head into each room. He continued this way from floor to floor, trying to use his one advantage: He knew his prey, but his quarry did not know its hunter. He did not stop until he was out on the street again.
There were hundreds of faces, but none belonged to Jitka’s murderer.
The crowd’s confidence grew from hour to hour. Finally they had seen their occupiers humiliated. Furthermore, a rumor was circulating that the Americans had sent a tank division east from Plze
, which was due to reach Prague that night. Close to tears, Morava barely noticed them. Jitka, he’s here, so close I could touch him, but he keeps slipping away.
He would go see Beran and request a change of plans. Uprising or no uprising, they couldn’t let this monster go free.
On a hunch he turned to the closest cluster of onlookers and unfolded Rypl’s documents.
“Gentlemen! This man is missing. Has anyone seen him?”
“That’s him!” called a postman, his German helmet tied with a Czech tricolor like a hat with a bow, “the one who let ’em have it!”
One after another they told of a man with similar features who had fired into the throng of Germans granted free passage. According to their descriptions it was Brunát who stopped him.
“Mr. Superintendent,” said a boy with wire-rimmed glasses, mistakenly elevating his rank, “I met him earlier; he’s a moral degenerate who’s turning the uprising into a slaughterhouse! He shoots prisoners through the stomach and blows them up with grenades.”
“He called them right, though,” the postman countered. “They were carrying concealed weapons.”
Morava impatiently cut off the burgeoning argument with an urgent question.
“Where is he now?”
“He wasn’t alone,” said the bespectacled youth. “There were two guys with him. He said we were all cowards, and they’d go get themselves some jerries somewhere else.”
Where? Where?? Where???
If he had his way, he would have run off, prowling the streets like a hunting dog, but he could feel the sharp tug of his professional leash. With a heavy heart he set off for Bartolom
jská Street.
He and Ladislav, a stoker for the bakery firm Odkolek, understood each other from the first. Strangely enough, however, the others had disappeared by the time they returned from the washroom. Alone in the basement, of course, they had no chance of getting through, so they returned to the entrance. A pair of boot heels and toes now lay mute behind the garbage cans. The guns in the radio building were still quiet, but in the deadly silence the street seemed all the more menacing. Then two bullets struck the pavement. They hurled themselves to the ground next to the dead man and considered their options.
“Hello!” A cry rang out from the opposite side. They could see the outline of a man waving at them from the building’s hallway.
“If you want to run out, I can spray them.”
They exchanged glances, nodding to each other and then to him. Then they saw him raise his gun.
“I’ll count to three. Ready! One! Two…”
The last word was lost in the gunfire; he covered the side wall of the radio building in a long burst. They galloped over, wheezing; it seemed the street would never end. They nearly knocked the gunner over. Then they all chuckled.
“Thanks!” he said.
“No fucking problem.”
The stocky, balding man in a wildly checked pullover reeking of sweat grinned at them. Three ugly gaps broke his smile; he looked decrepit, although he could hardly be more than thirty.
“What’s happening?” he asked the man.
“Zilch. Waiting for the Americans, they say. I thought it’d be different.”
“How?”
“A chance to have some fun with the browncoats. I owe them.”
“They knock your teeth out?” Ladislav inquired.
“Yeah. Deployed me to Düsseldorf in the Totaleinsatz. I was gettin’ on real well with this German bitch. So they gave me this and the camps — for ’corrupting racial purity’—’cept then the Brits rolled in and threw the brig wide open. Couple of weeks I slept in ditches and ate last year’s potatoes. Wouldn’t mind a bit of Kraut, now.”
“We made two of them into grenade stew,” Ladislav bragged. “On the can! Shoulda flushed, y’know.”
The grenade wasn’t enough, he thought as he listened; you can’t see it up close and it’s too fast. Those son-of-a-bitch Germans deserve a drawn-out punishment, just like the widow whores. And suddenly he knew what it would be. The idea was…
ALL MINE!
And it was completely new. He made a mental note.
“Great!” The dental avenger was praising him. “Need another hand? Call me Lojza.”
The stoker repeated what was clearly his favorite question: What next, since the evening was still young? Then the deathly silence outside ended. Individual shouts soon merged into a joyous noise. Both the side streets and the main road, where Czechs killed at the beginning of the battle now lay, were swarming with people.
He and his companions set off for the intersection. Above the front portal of the radio building, strips of white tablecloths and towels fluttered from the first and fourth floors. An excited throng had formed an arc at a respectful distance from the main entrance. Through the broken doors a curtain of smoke still hung behind the barbed-wire barricades. For several long minutes nothing happened. The Czechs’ anticipation gave way to fear: Was it a trap? You could cut the silence with a knife; one shot, he felt, and hundreds of people would panic and flee.
Instead, a Czech policeman came out of the building, unstrapping his helmet and fingering a wayward lock of white hair. Then he picked up a megaphone.
“Citizens!” he rumbled. “The radio is ours. The Germans have capitulated.”
Fear turned instantly to intoxication; the crowd went wild.
He and his two companions waited curiously.
The policeman waved his megaphone around for a while until the throng quieted down.
“They have ceased their resistance under the condition that all Germans, employees and soldiers, are offered free passage without weapons down to the main train station.”
There were a few indignant shouts from the crowd.
“Citizens! This agreement was concluded at the behest of the Czech National Council. President Bene
has named a new Czechoslovak government, but until they can return here from Koice, which has already been liberated, the council is assuming control in Prague. We have been empowered to conduct similar negotiations with all German offices in the former Protectorate, first and foremost so that our beloved Prague can be spared the further ravages of war, and so that we can safeguard the fundamental human rights we will uphold again in the future!”
The cop was getting on his nerves more and more. Then he flinched when someone next to him whistled so loudly his ears rang. It was the balding Lojza, now shouting through cupped hands.
“Germans aren’t humans!”
He clapped along with Lojza and a couple of bystanders. They began to chant.
“Germans aren’t humans! Germans aren’t humans!”