Lawrence Block - The Canceled Czech

“Help? From them?”

“They helped me rescue you. I had to use them, and then I had to trick them to get you away from them.”

“But look what they have done to me!”

“You won’t miss it. And would you rather have hanged?”

“I have been mutilated!”

“But you’re alive. And you can still devote yourself to the cause.”

“That is true. You have performed a service to the Reich, Major Tanner. I will not forget that.”

“I’m only a captain.”

“I promote you. An on-the-field promotion.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t last. “The Jews escaped?”

“I’m not sure that’s the right word. But yes, they’re gone now.”

“You let them go without killing them?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it could not be helped.” He looked down at Greta. For a moment he simply stared at her, and then his gaze changed to something beyond simple observation. “This girl,” he said, rolling the word lovingly on his thick tongue. “Who is she?”

“A German girl.”

“Of course, what else could she be? Such purity of features, such true wholesome beauty. What were you doing to her?”

“We were discussing philosophy.”

“Do not make jokes, Captain Tanner.” He lowered himself onto one knee, peered intently at Greta’s breasts. “Like cream,” he said. “Like silk, like satin.”

He reached out a hand to touch her, and I kicked it out of the way. He looked up at me, puzzlement and fury mixed in his eyes. “What is wrong with you?”

“Don’t touch her.”

“Are you mad?”

“I made a promise to her father,” I said. “I told him I would not permit you to lay a hand on her.” It was only fair, I thought, that I should keep at least one small portion of the promise I had made to the crippled little dwarf. I had taken the fullest possible advantage of Kurt Neumann’s hospitality, and I had not paid him back as well as I might have. If nothing else, I could keep the old Slovak’s hands off his sweet and pure daughter.

“You talk as if she were a virgin,” Kotacek said.

“In a way, she is.”

“I told you, do not make jokes. And would she miss it? Look, the girl is unconscious. I am an old man. How often do I have a young girl like this? She will never know the difference. Never. Why begrudge me a moment of pleasure?”

I had always despised him. A Nazi, a racist, a collaborator, a quisling, a Judas – I had despised him from the moment the rotten mission had been assigned to me. But now he was turning my feelings to something more personal. Now I loathed him, not just for what he had done but for what he was. I should have let him rot in jail. I should have let the Israelis hang him. And now, mission or no mission, I felt like kicking his teeth in.

Instead I said, “There is simply no time. And besides that, I have given my word to a faithful National Socialist. Also” – pointing to his wound – “you will be sore there for some time. Several days at the very least. It would not do to irritate it, or to risk an infection.”

He saw the point of that. He drew himself unwillingly away from Greta. At the last moment he looked as though he was going to reach for her again, to touch her breasts or loins. He didn’t. If he had, I really think I might have killed him. I hated him very deeply at that moment. But he didn’t, and my fury passed.

“What do we do now, Major?”

My title changed every minute. “We get out of here.”

“There are friends in Slovakia who would shelter me. Shall we go there?”

“We’ll see.” I wanted to go to my friends, not his. “First we get out of Prague.”

“And the girl?”

I didn’t like the way he was looking at her. I covered her with a bed sheet. She seemed to have lapsed from coma into simple sleep. I put my ear to her lips, listened to her breathing. It was gentle and shallow. It sounded as though she would go on sleeping for a few hours.

“The girl will stay here.”

“She lives in Prague?”

“No.”

I began dressing, putting on my own clothes instead of the Czech guard’s uniform. I wrapped up the uniform in a bed sheet and tucked the Czech’s pistol into my pocket. I didn’t want to leave anything incriminating behind, in case some officials entered the basement before Greta had a chance to get up and out. I didn’t think this would happen, but I wanted to make it as safe as possible for her. It bothered me a little, abandoning her in Prague. Still, I was confident she would get out of it all right, either returning to Pisek on her own or finding a new life for herself in Prague or elsewhere. For all I know, she might decide to go to Tel Aviv. She might like it there. An endless supply of Jewish lovers, and a paucity of Rhine maidens to compete with her for their attention. I tucked a sheaf of Czech banknotes into her hand, gave her a parting kiss, and gripped Kotacek by the hand. On the way out, I picked up the pencil-beam flashlight and shoved it in my pocket.

“You used that before,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You made me look into it, and you blinked it into my eyes. And then after that I had a seizure.”

“That’s right.”

“You made me have a seizure?”

“Yes.”

“You are able to do that to me, just by blinking the light in my eyes? That and that alone makes me have a seizure?” I nodded. “Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to leave that behind. After all, Major, we will have no further need of it.”

“I’ll keep it,” I said.

By the time we left the house it was about an hour or so before dawn. The Prague streets scared me. I could see and hear plenty of activity over by the castle – official cars, bright lights. I took his arm and we headed in the opposite direction. I was beginning to wish I had parked our little stolen car where I could get my hands on it. It had seemed sensible to leave it at the garage, but now we were stuck without transportation, and every cop in Prague was hunting for us.

We had to make a run for it, of course. But we could not dash south and west on foot, nor did I want to attempt to duplicate Ari’s feat and hot-wire a car. The escape needed time to jell, and time too for Kotacek to cool off a bit. At the moment the city would be sealed up tight. In a day or two the officials would be certain that he was either dead and buried or well out of the city and the country as well, and we might be able to move around without looking constantly over our shoulders.

I hated the thought of imposing again upon Klaus Silber. It would mean putting the old man in great danger. It would also mean abusing his hospitality by giving shelter to one of the tribe of men who had taken Klaus from a professor’s chair and clapped him in Buchenwald. The alternatives had even less appeal. We could not stay in that basement – it was too close to the castle, it was known to Greta and to the Israelis as well, and if anyone was captured and talked we would be taken in no time at all. Klaus Silber’s place was the best of several bad choices.

We took a taxi there – again, the best of two bad choices. Walking would take too long and entail too great a risk. The taxi driver did not seem to recognize Kotacek. I played things on the safe side by giving him an address two blocks from Silber’s house, and we walked the rest of the way.

“We can trust Dr. Silber,” I told him. “But do not speak to him. Say nothing to him. Stay in your room and sleep as much as possible. Do you understand?”

“Silber. Another Jew?”

“Yes. It doesn’t matter. He does not know who we are or what we are doing. He will cooperate. Just stay in your room and be quiet-”

“For a National Socialist, you know a great many Jews.”

“You’re lucky I do. Otherwise you’d still be in jail.”