James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“Turn left in one hundred meters.”

It was the mechanical voice of the GPS. Hearing it made Jack think of fifty-pound notes wrapped in aluminum foil.

The fatal shooting of Habib Warsame Dhamac was ruled self-defense, even though it was clear to Jack that Chuck had his plan to avenge McKenna’s death, and Shada had hers. The fact that neither had known what the other was doing could have gotten everyone killed-which seemed like a metaphor for their marriage. Chuck was being held in the U.K. on weapons charges. Shada had much bigger problems with the law. Her attorney would surely build a classic “Patty Hearst” defense and argue that her involvement in the murders of Ethan Chang and Neil Goderich was carefully choreographed by the Dark to cement his control over her-more specifically, that she’d had no idea she was administering a lethal dose of anything to Chang, and that she’d played lookout for Bahena outside Neil’s office only because the Dark had brainwashed her into thinking that it was her last chance to learn the truth about Jamal Wakefield.

As for Chuck, he seemed more concerned that Shada get psychological counseling than legal help. A divorce was in the works, and his commitment remained Project Round Up. Nothing could have driven home the importance of that work more than seeing a teenage girl reunited with her family after months of the Dark’s psychological abuse. The bomb strapped to her body had been real, and she was still looking at long-term therapy, but one life had already been saved. Jamal’s uncle had played a big role in that rescue, even if her fears and brainwashing did drive her back to the Dark after Hassan had been hospitalized. Jack felt like he still owed him an apology for harboring those initial suspicions about him.

“You have arrived at your destination.”

The tiny village of Lidice dates back to the fourteenth century, and by the late nineteenth century it was a busy mining village in the rolling hills of the Bohemia region. The old village was destroyed during World War II, and the new village sits near the original town site, about ten miles west of Prague. Much of the thirty-minute drive is on divided expressways, two lanes in each direction, a far cry from the roads traveled by the Nazis on their way to Prague.

Jack’s grandfather had few possessions at the time of his death, and the most important provisions of his will dealt with the disposition of his remains. The instructions-worded more like a request-were to find a woman named Eliska Sokol in Lidice, who would know exactly where to spread the ashes. She wasn’t hard to find. Lidice has fewer than five hundred residents, and Eliska had lived in the same house since the complete rebuilding of the village after the war.

Jack knocked on the door. He had phoned ahead so that Eliska would expect him, and she answered the door herself. She was as he had imagined her on the telephone, frail and walking with a cane, but she had a bright and determined look in her eyes. She had to be in her late eighties, perhaps ninety. Her English was passable.

“You look just like Joseph,” she said.

“I’ve heard that from others,” Jack said, and he appreciated hearing it again.

Eliska apologized for being out of coffee, but Jack wanted to get to the spot anyway. He helped her on with her coat, and Andie gave her the front seat of their little rental car. It was a short ride to the site of the original village-now a memorial.

Mention of Lidice in Grandpa’s will had naturally prompted Jack to research it. It was the same piece of history that Grandpa Swyteck had shared with Andie in one of the last lucid moments in his life, while Jack was in London. Andie hadn’t told him until after the funeral, and Jack was moved to hear that his grandfather’s words had come back to her in the depths of her own torture, maybe even helped her survive at a time when every second mattered. It made the trip as important to her as it was to Jack.

They both knew the horrific story, but Jack let Eliska tell it in the voice of someone who had been there.

“After Nazis invade our country,” she said, her English less than perfect, “the Reich Protector of Bohemia was SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich. Second in command to Himmler in the SS branch responsible for the Final Solution.”

“A worthy target for assassination,” said Jack.

“Yes,” said Eliska. “The resistance thought same. They organized in London and pulled it off. Then the nightmare comes. Nazis search everywhere for assassins. Finally, Berlin say the assassins were aided by two families in Lidice.” Eliska paused, and her gaze drifted toward the passenger’s-side window, toward the snow-covered acres of the memorial. “The punishment was decided by Adolf Hitler himself.”

She stopped and breathed deeply, and Jack wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue or not. When she seemed ready, Jack came around to help Eliska out of the car.

Theirs was the only vehicle in the parking lot. The snow had stopped falling, but the surrounding hills were covered with a fresh white blanket. Eliska walked to the far end of the lot. With Andie at his side, Jack guided Eliska by the arm, but he let her take the last few steps on her own, sensing that she wanted to be alone for a moment. She stopped in front of a large bronze memorial. It was covered with snow, and in the late-afternoon shadows Jack couldn’t tell exactly what it was from this distance. But in the cold breeze, he could almost feel the history.

Eliska continued in an old voice that shook.

“Nine June, 1942,” she said. “Close to midnight. Nazis close all roads to Lidice. No way in or out of town. The Gestapo go house to house. They search everywhere. They push families out into streets and loot their homes. Men are taken to the Horak family barn. Biggest building in the village. Women and children are herded into the school building. Then, at five o’clock in the morning, the shooting starts.”

Eliska lowered her head, as if she’d said as much as she could say. Jack knew the rest from his research. All the men were shot dead by a firing squad. The children were taken from their mothers and, except for those selected for reeducation in German families and babies under one year of age, were poisoned by exhaust gas in specially adapted vehicles in the Nazi extermination camp at Chelmno upon Nerr in Poland. The women were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, which usually meant quick or lingering death for the inmates. The town was burned to the ground. Even its cemeteries were destroyed.

“These are the children,” said Eliska.

Jack and Andie came to her side, and now he could see through the blanket of snow and shadows. Eighty-nine bronze children were looking back at him. Eliska’s hand was shaking as she handed him a card. It was a list of names and dates. Two names were circled for him. Petrak, Miloslav: 1931. Petrak, Zdenek: 1933.

“They were nine and eleven when they were gassed,” she said.

The thought sent chills down Jack’s spine. “Is that the same Petrak that runs in my family?”

“Petrak is common name,” said Eliska. “But in 1942, it was very dangerous name.”

“Why?” asked Jack. But the moment he said it, he remembered Andie’s research on General Petrak, the leader in exile of the Czech resistance.

“Nazis knew General Petrak helped with assassination. No need to prove relations to be guilty.”

Jack’s gaze swept the memorial. Children of all ages, from one to seventeen. He was drawn to two, in particular, that looked to be the figures of boys aged nine and eleven.

“That way,” said Eliska, “about two hundred meters. That is your grandfather’s spot.”

Jack didn’t move. He still didn’t understand. “How do you mean, ‘his spot’?”