The Widow Killer (50 page)

He learned from the grateful escort commander that for now they were rounding up the local Germans at a nearby primary school. This information triggered an instinct that was often more reliable than logic. The widow killer’s choice of victims had never made the slightest sense, so why should the mass murder of Germans be any different? As the superintendent had once told him, intuition carries the same weight in police work as a lifetime’s worth of experience, good organization, and dedication.

Why would Rypl, why would his hatchetmen leave this Eldorado, where the sort of mass psychosis he’d just seen would be congenial to butchers with primitive notions of revenge? Yes, he felt, they were here somewhere, but as he drew closer he realized it would be easier to find than to catch them. They must not frighten the gang away prematurely.

In front of the school where the column had disappeared, he instructed Litera to go wait for their reinforcements at the designated spot and bring them here as inconspicuously as possible.

Then Litera grabbed his sleeve and whispered excitedly, “There!”

“What… ?”

“A Mercedes… didn’t they say it had Berlin plates?”

“Yes…”

The car stood right opposite the entrance to the school, which was guarded by two youths; the policemen decided not to approach them.

“You go ahead,” Morava urged. “Meanwhile I’ll figure out what to do first.”

“Don’t you want to wait for us? So he doesn’t kill you first?”

“He doesn’t even know me. At most I’m a policeman he saw at the barricade.”

“Do you have your pistol?” Yes.

Both simultaneously remembered the shot he had loosed by accident in the car. Morava laughed.

“No fear. In an emergency I’ll try to bite him first.”

Litera did not find it as amusing.

“He’s got a small army with him.”

“That’s why I have to try to find out unobtrusively what their role is here. One advantage is that people will hardly join forces with a depraved murderer of Czech women.”

“But how will you convince them?”

“I’ll worry about that later. You’d better move along; our men might be there already.”

Litera hurried off. Morava then slowly moved toward the Mercedes. Crossing the street next to it, he inconspicuously peered inside. Nothing caught his eye.

At the gates, he was shocked to find that the two guards, SS-gun-toting Czech youths in white armbands painted with the large letters RG, would not let him into the school.

“Who instructed you not to admit the police?” he asked incredulously.

“Our commander,” the left-hand one said.

“Call him out here!”

“Get lost, you kolous,” the right-hand one advised him, “before we blow you away!”

What’s a kolous? he wondered, baffled.

“My love,” Grete said, “know what I’ve decided?” “No…”

Buback could still see the horrible scene at the train station of his childhood, and the trek behind him had pushed him to the limits of his strength. He had seen unmistakable signs of the coming hunt for German civilians and avoided the last barricade by clambering over courtyard walls.

“Guess!”

He had found Grete lying prone on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and let her be. He looked quickly around for an empty bottle before remembering that there was not a drop of alcohol left. I give in…

“I’ve decided how we’re going to live until, as they say, death divides us.

What must go through her head here, alone in this dilapidated hideout! He threw off his wet raincoat and then his soaking jacket, lay down beside her, and tucked his arm beneath her head. For the moment he tried to put his recent experiences out of his head.

“Tell me. How?”

“We’ll go to Sylt together.”

“Aha… and why precisely… ?”

“Because that was the last place you were happy in peacetime. And a little way from there, in Hamburg, mussels from Sylt kept me happy for years. We’ll go back there to recapture that happiness, and once we find it together, you’ll take a picture of me in the same place you photographed them. The circle closes, and another begins. We’ll be in Germany, but almost not in Germany. Trying to be different Germans than we were before.”

It relieved him that she was not cowering in fear, but this strange state of peace disturbed him as well. She laughed dreamily at the ceiling.

“We can start to give humanity back the greatest thing we took away.”

“Which is…”

“Goodness. At least you fought wickedness a little bit; I never even tried. As a nation, we Germans gave the world great music, great literature, great laws, and great evil. Evil became our music, our language, and our laws, until finally it came to embody Germanness. Humanity has a short memory; usually it fades in a few generations, but we’re imprinted on it for all eternity. I’ve always regretted that I don’t have children and never will, and now? You know what?”

“Now you’re glad?”

“Now for the first time I’m truly unhappy as a result, can’t you see? We’ll never be able to make restitution for what was done in our name; our children’s children might have a chance.”

He closed his eyes and again saw that carefully arranged German harvest, a perfectly formed rectangle of freshly reaped bodies.

“You’re right…”

“We, and they after us, will have to replace that stolen goodness.”

“But how?”

Now she smiled victoriously like someone who has solved an impossible puzzle.

“Each of us will have to find his own way. I’m going to dance again.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you like it when I danced for you? Didn’t you like it so much there were tears in your eyes? Germans have had their fun, shouting and shooting, so now I’ll dance for them. I’ll go, stop somewhere, dance, and move on. Don’t you think they might like it too? And maybe they’ll be better for those tears than they were before.”

Now he bent worriedly over her and saw that her usually clear eyes were cloudy and runny.

“Grete, what’s wrong?”

“What do you mean, love?”

Finally he thought to touch her forehead. It was burning. What frightened him, though, was that her cheeks were their normal color.

“Are you ill?”

“No, no…”

“It’s as if you have a fever!”

“But I don’t. So what do you say, love? Are you looking forward to Sylt?”

On a hunch he jumped up and gave the room a routine once-over. Nothing. There was a trash basket underneath the sink. He emptied it onto the floorboards and combed through the contents, picking up a cobalt blue bottle. It gleamed empty against the light. He uncorked it and sniffed. There was a faint smell of camphor. In a second he was at Grete’s side.

“What is this?”

“What…”

“What was in this?”

Her eyelids closed heavily.

“Grete, speak to me!”

He slapped her cheeks, at first lightly, but when she didn’t react, harder and harder until the pain brought her back to consciousness.

“Ow!”

His right hand did not stop.

“Ow, Buback, it hurts______ ”

“Tell me!”

“Pills…”

“What kind?”

“Sleeping pills… Swiss ones… he gave me some from his…”

“Who?”

“You know… Meckerle…”

“How many did you take?”

“What was left…”

“How many?”

“Dunno… maybe five… or ten…”

“Or more?”

“Or more…”

He considered the matter quickly. However many she’d swallowed, her condition indicated that they had not yet dissolved completely. There was only one thing to do.

“Get up! Up!”

He grabbed her by the hands and pulled her up forcefully.

“Ow! Brute!”

He hauled her over to the sink so as not to have to drag her down the stairs to the toilet.

“Put your finger down your throat!”

“Leave me alone!”

“Do it!”

“I won’t, you bastard!”

He stuck his own in. She bit him. Suppressing a scream, he managed to lock her in a vise grip with his left hand while forcing a toothbrush down her throat with his right.

At that moment she stopped resisting and drooped. It was all he could do to grab her with both hands around the waist before she collapsed, but she vomited obediently until he let her stop.

Then he laid her down on the bed again and sat next to her.

Her gray eyes slowly cleared and sharpened, but her mouth remained mute.

“Why?” he asked her. “For God’s sake, why?”

“That dream…” she whispered, “where I died, you know. It was so awful that yesterday I got drunk… and today at noon I had an even worse one…”

“At noon?”

“I sleep constantly. What else can I do to keep from going mad?”

The unintended reproach stung him.

“And how was it worse?”

“They killed you. In front of me too. Then I woke up, and worst of all, I felt sure it had happened.”

He attempted a smile.

“And did they kill me?”

Almost, he acknowledged, but did not say it, amazed that she had experienced his death at the same moment it had actually touched him.

“No. But they will!”

There was such despair in her shout that he trembled, as if only now feeling that elemental fear he had missed as they counted off.

“What do you mean?”

“Buback…” she answered weakly in that gruff voice which had captivated him in the German House shelter, “my love, you and I have about the same chance of surviving as two goldfish in a pike pond. Don’t you know that with each trip to and from I don’t know where, you put your head on the chopping block? And once you lose it, as you undoubtedly will, I’m lost as well. I wanted to escape what they’d do to me then…”

These were her most intimate fears, but he stubbornly rejected them. To accept them was to demolish the last barrier standing between man and death: hope.

“My love,” he countered, addressing her with her own epithet, “it’s no news that our lives hang by a thread, nor that you’re worse off for it than I am. But our chances of getting out of here with our skins intact can’t be less than one in two. How could you condemn me to go on living when you die? What kind of a life would that be, without you? Let’s make an agreement: I won’t leave you again to go you don’t know where; I’ve learned that the best I can hope for is to save you alone, and that’s what I intend to do. I believe Morava will come for us in time and find a solution; in fact, I’m counting on it. And if he doesn’t…”

Then Meckerle will arrange it, he hesitated to say. He recalled the bloodstained bank clerk explaining awkwardly that he had no influence over the executions because State Secretary Frank had ordered them as retaliation for the shooting of imprisoned German soldiers. He hoped at least to spare her that.

“If he doesn’t come,” he said instead, “and they get me first, you’ll pull the trigger on your sweet pistol, agreed?”

“You’re right, love,” she said almost joyfully, yawning with exhaustion. “That way I can think of you right up till the end. But just now I’ll have a little nap. I still owe you something… lots, actually… more than…”

The primary school was the usual solid structure from the mid-twenties: Two wings, boys’ and girls‘, were linked at the back by a building with a gymnasium and large auditorium. At the front was a courtyard with heavy bars and a barred gate guarded by sentries. While Morava stood ignominiously on the opposite sidewalk under the malevolent glare of both youths, they admitted another group of Germans and their escort, who were also adorned with RG bands.

What Morava had earlier dismissed as the invention of a few flag-waving patriots from Bartolomejska turned out to be a well-developed organization. Where had it come from in this part of the city, which until recently had been firmly under SS control?

A man in an old Czechoslovak Army lieutenant’s uniform and an accompanying sergeant of the former Protectorate Government Forces were turned away from the entrance shortly after he was. Spotting Morava, they approached him.

“Sir.” The officer saluted him. “We’ve been sent from city command to organize the concentration of German civilians as called for in the Hague Convention; once the battle ends, their deportation will be arranged. Could you direct the guards to let us in?”

“I’m sorry,” Morava said, “but I’m not wanted here either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And what’s the ‘RG’?”

“I think it stands for Revolutionary Guards.”

“I’ve never heard of them. Who are they under?”

“I have no idea.”

A man came running across the schoolyard to the gate; from up close, Morava recognized the man who had brought him there, the leader of the RG escort. Seeing the uniforms, he hurried across the street to them. He was pale, and fear shone in his eyes.

“Please, do something!”

“What’s happening?”

“In there… they’re… beating and…”

For a moment he was unable to go on.

“Who?”

Mutely he pointed to his armband, slipping it off the sleeve of his leather jacket. Only then could he finish his sentence.

“… and killing…”

“What should we do?” the lieutenant asked helplessly.

“I’m expecting reinforcements,” Morava said, “but now I don’t know if there will be enough of them.”

A car swerved sharply into the street and stopped directly in front of the guards. Three armed men in camouflage with RG armbands got out, as did a tall man in a black overcoat and hat; sunken black eyes ruled the man’s thin face and black goatee. Why did he look familiar? Morava knew immediately: This was how he’d always imagined the medieval Czech martyr, Jan Hus. He stepped across the street.

“Hello,” he called, drawing their attention.

The four of them stopped.

“What do you want?” the smallest snarled, bristling; what he lacked in height he made up for in energy, like a coiled spring.

“Do you have access to this building?” Morava asked.

“Why?”

It sounded like a bark. The other two soldiers and the shaken man with the armband in his hand came to join Morava.

“The lieutenant is supposed to prepare the Germans for deportation, but can’t get into the building. They won’t even let me in.”