My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (28 page)

The truck screeched to a stop next to the plane. An SS trooper in green medical scrubs jumped out and started barking orders. “They picked you up on the radar! Hurry! Get in the truck! Keep the girl out of the sun!”

Wolf helped Eva into the truck and wondered how the SS knew about her. More importantly, he wondered
what
the SS knew about her.

As they settled into the back of the truck, the driver poked his head in. “We’ve been out of radio contact with Berlin for hours. Where is the security detachment?”

“The other plane got held up,” Heydrich replied.

“How far behind are they?”

“I am not sure how to put a timeline on burning bodies and pieces of airplane spread all over the
Tiergarten
.”

The driver frowned. “Very well. We will continue the operation without them.”

As the back door closed, Wolf leaned over and whispered. “
I didn’t realize that we still have ongoing operations in Czechoslovakia
.”

Heydrich smiled. “Only one.”

64

In April 1945, Prague was living through its final days as the Nazi “protectorate.”

It had been a shock to the Czechs when Hitler forced them to join in lockstep with the Third Reich. The
Führer
took control of the small country by summoning the Czechoslovakian President Emil Hácha to Berlin on 15 March 1938. In the meeting, Hitler demanded that President Hácha surrender Czechoslovakia immediately or the
Luftwaffe
would bomb Prague until there was nothing left but ash. The Czech president suffered a heart attack during the meeting, but Hitler’s medical staff kept him awake so the so-called negotiations could continue.

Threatened with the destruction of his beautiful capital city, President Hácha tearfully signed the document of surrender. A few hours later, German forces rolled into Czechoslovakia unopposed.

The next day, Adolf Hitler looked out upon the medieval city from a balcony in Prague Castle and formally declared that Bohemia and Moravia had become a German “protectorate.” The city of a hundred spires suddenly found itself stuck under a Nazi boot.

Although Prague was lucky enough to escape much of the bombing and devastation that other European cities had suffered during the war, the occupation had been difficult on the Czechs nonetheless.

To cement his gains, Hitler appointed the ruthless and evil Reinhard Heydrich as
Reichsprotektor
of Bohemia and Moravia. Pragmatically speaking, Heydrich was a dictator. President Hácha and his cabinet were stripped of most of their powers and remained in power largely as a figurehead government.

Reinhard Heydrich felt safe in Prague and often drove around the city in a black convertible Mercedes-Benz. In his mind, the Czechs considered him a benevolent king. He was convinced that he had nothing to fear in his beautiful city.

Allied intelligence took note of Heydrich’s lax security and worked with the Czechoslovak government in exile to plan an assassination mission. In December 1941, the RAF parachuted two agents into Czechoslovakia, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. The men soon learned that Heydrich had a meeting scheduled with Adolf Hitler in Berlin on 27 May 1942. They also knew that Heydrich had to drive past the point where the Dresden-Prague road merged with the road to the Troja Bridge to get to that meeting. That’s where they tried to kill him.

When the ambush erupted, Heydrich’s response surprised his assailants. He ordered his driver to stop the car. Then he jumped out and started shooting back at them, like a crazed gunslinger. As the battle intensified, Jan Kubiš threw a powerful IED at the car. The blast knocked Heydrich off of his feet, but it also badly wounded Kubiš.

Believing that the bomb had killed Heydrich, the agents fled back into the city. German troops eventually cornered them in the crypts of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. Rather than surrender and face endless torture at the hands of the Gestapo, Kubiš and Gabčík said their final prayers together and committed suicide in the church.

A week later, the Nazis announced that
Reichsprotektor
Reinhard Heydrich had died from injuries suffered in the assassination attempt. That’s when life under the Nazis got much more difficult for the Czechs.

On 10 June 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered all of the men in the Czech village of Lidice to be shot in retribution. After the executions were carried out, the Nazis shipped all of the women and children from the village to concentration camps, where most of them died.

Unbeknownst to anyone outside of a few select members of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, the
Reichsprotektor
was not dead. In fact, at the time of his death announcement, Heydrich had been undergoing cosmetic surgery in a secret location just outside of Budapest to dramatically alter his appearance.

The Allies had no way to know that bravery was not the reason that Heydrich jumped out of the car to fight off his Czech attackers. Point of fact, by May 1942, it had already become impossible to kill the wicked
Reichsprotektor
with mere bullets and hand grenades.

He had already turned.

65

Things were tense in Prague in the closing days of the war, but the Nazis were still in control. Despite the
Waffen SS
announcement on Radio Prague that any uprising would be drowned in a sea of blood, the Czechs took to the streets as rumors of the imminent German surrender spread. They wanted their city back.

Against this backdrop, the old Skoda truck wound through the narrow cobblestone streets of Old Town Prague. Just before the Charles Bridge, the driver approached a makeshift checkpoint that was manned by a dozen well-armed partisans. The Czechs were riled up and obviously looking for a fight.

The brakes squeaked as the truck rolled to a stop. In the back, Wolf and Axel readied their weapons as angry men with weapons of every kind surrounded the vehicle. A Czech held an American M1 rifle to the driver’s head and demanded papers.

“
Dobry den
,” the driver muttered as he nervously handed his travel documents over. The partisan eyed the papers suspiciously. Suddenly, he backed away from the truck with his hand over his mouth. He waved them on.

The truck rolled through the checkpoint and onto the Charles Bridge. Eva watched the beautiful stone angels, crosses and religious icons that lined the medieval bridge through a small hole in the side of the truck as they crossed the Vltava River.

Axel was astounded that they had gotten through the checkpoint without incident. “How the hell did you do that?”

“The Czechs are terrified of the epidemics that are breaking out all over Europe,” Heydrich replied. “The last thing they want to do right now is stop a truck full of typhoid patients.”

Wolf wasn’t convinced. “What if the partisans had opened the back of the truck?”

“Then all of them would be dead. That could have been inconvenient for us if one of them had alerted his friends to our presence before we got to Prague Castle.”

Wolf and Axel exchanged worried glances.

Prague Castle?

66

The SS guards snapped to attention as Heydrich entered. “Heil Hitler!”

Heydrich returned a quick salute then turned his attention to his guests. “Welcome to Prague Castle or
Prazky Hrad
as our annoying Czech friends call it; the former home of the King of Bohemia and a few Holy Roman Emperors. The Basilica of St. Vitus, founded in the 10th century, is also on the grounds. You won’t see it today, but I assure you that it’s quite picturesque. Once the war is over, you will have all of the time to explore Prague that you want.”

Wolf was in no mood to sightsee. “This city will be in enemy territory soon. After a few years of treating the Czechs like our goddamn house pets, this country is a powder keg. I don’t want to be here when the war ends, no sane German does. We need to go somewhere safe.”

Heydrich looked at Wolf with a condescending smile typically reserved for foolish children. “Major, please. Contain your emotions. Yes, it is true that we will soon be behind enemy lines. But this part of the castle has been fortified and prepared for this very contingency. Neither the Russians, nor the stupid Czechs, nor any of our men outside of these guards even know this area exists. And even if they did, these walls are two meters thick. General Chuikov and 2,000 Russian tanks could pull up to the front gate right now and they wouldn’t get in here in time to stop us.”