Pavel Kohout - The Widow Killer

Morava asked him to convey his thanks to Mrs. Baumann. Given the reaction of the female workers in the police department, he thought it was brave of her to volunteer. Of course, his gratitude had a purely personal motive as well, he admitted, since she was sharing the risk with his fiancée.

“Believe me, I know what you mean,” Buback said, closing the conversation. “After all, Mrs. Baumann is my close friend.”

“I just don’t know what to think about him anymore,” Morava reported to Jitka that evening, shaking his head. “I do believe Beran that Buback has other reasons for being in our department; a month ago I even feared him at times, but I don’t think his sincerity is entirely false. Any thoughts?”

“You said it yourself.”

“What?”

“A month ago he was alone; now he isn’t.”

“The phrase ’close friend’ doesn’t have to mean…”

“I saw the way she looked at him this morning.”

“How was that?”

“Like this.”

Jitka’s adoring gaze warmed him, but only briefly.

“Meanwhile he looked here and there, just the way you do when other people are around.”

“Wait a minute, what are you trying—”

“Come on, Jan! Men are naturally ashamed to show their feelings in public. In any case, this Marleen has decided he’s hers. And in his loneliness, he’s taken a step in her direction, whether he knows it or not.”

All the while she gazed at him with her big brown eyes until he could no longer stand it and went around the kitchen table to kiss her. Then he asked her a favor: “For God’s sake, take off those widow’s garments. I’ll be crazy with fear every time anyway. If it works out, I’ll come guard you personally along with Matlák. But be awfully careful, my darling!”

“Don’t worry. You’ll protect me, and God will protect both of us; what could possibly happen?”

Kroloff’s behavior was merely the most graphic example of Buback’s fall from grace in the department. The skeletal figure had clearly noticed that at a certain point — after his confrontation with Buback, in fact — the colonel stopped calling personally and began sending all his messages through Kroloff.

Now Kroloff relayed another one: Buback was to report immediately to the head of the SS special units. The tone in his voice betrayed his glee at his superior’s evident humiliation. The detective could see that Kroloff had never truly reconciled himself to the way he had been shunted aside since Buback’s arrival; Buback sensed a rancor in him that at the first opportunity would erupt into revenge.

He forced himself to react casually, accepting the order and Kroloff’s behavior with apparent indifference. The mental discipline he had learned as an interrogator came as naturally to him as the multiplication tables. He pulled on his overcoat and directed Kroloff with a short glance to open the door for him as always. Then he turned around.

“Kroloff?”

“Yes…?”

“Tell the colonel I said thanks for the fish.”

He watched the skeleton’s jaw drop, and hid his grin. Would Kroloff convey the message? And what about Meckerle? Would he swallow it, or explode? Grete insisted that despite all his bad qualities, the giant did feel a need to preserve his masculine honor. However, these were purely personal problems of the chief’s own making; there was nothing honorable about disgracing Buback publicly. It was high time the colonel realized who he was dealing with. Buback was, after all, a specialist; technically, he answered not to Prague but to Berlin.

His defiance grew stronger when the SS officer led him into the room on the second floor of the former Czech law faculty. Judging by the spaciousness and mahogany paneling, it had been the office of at least a university rector. Instead of standing up or motioning him to sit down, the pockmarked SS major snapped out his right hand in a greeting.

“Heil Hitler! Your orders were to determine and report locations from which the Prague police might direct a rebellion against the great German Reich. Is this correct?”

Buback knew the type. He would have to put a stop to this arrogance straightaway or the man would wipe the floor with him. After all, Buback’s borrowed rank made them equals. He put his hand on the nearest chair.

“May I?” he asked as he pulled it up to the table. Without waiting for a response, he sat down face-to-face with the major.

The scarred face twitched, but that was all.

“You are correct,” Buback affirmed, “and my report, as I see, is in front of you.”

The SS man knew he had met his master; he changed his tone.

“We have worked out a plan of action that will let us occupy communications hubs and potential foci of resistance within two hours of an alert. You are to give me crucial information on when we should put it into effect. Tomorrow, today, yesterday even?”

Now he whinnied, displaying a mouth tiled with gold.

“I warned the colonel,” Buback said, “that shutting down the city radio station prematurely will prevent us from warning the German population of air raids and passing on other information important for their survival.”

“We don’t intend to destroy the machinery,” his opponent objected, “just get the Czech workers out. Our men can broadcast in German.”

“And do you have twenty free radio technicians?”

“If we occupy the central office, one person can do it, right? Or two, to allow for bathroom breaks.”

“The Czechs can broadcast from any of the nineteen local stations.”

“We’ll lock and guard all of them.”

“But we should be using them to direct emergency operations; otherwise they’ll be totally crippled.”

“Fine, we’ll take forty technicians from some regiment or other.”

“And forty translators, so they can figure out what’s going on?”

The SS man grappled with this.

“You’re saying we should let them stab us in the back?”

“An uprising doesn’t come out of nowhere, Major — you know, by the way, that we have the same rank! — an uprising spreads, and it will take at least a couple of hours before things get out of hand. This country is thoroughly occupied and we have a powerful presence in Prague, both in the police and with the army. We couldn’t possibly miss the first signals. If you’re really capable of striking within two hours, we should wait. Otherwise we might bring an avalanche down on ourselves for no good reason. Will you take responsibility for this decision?”

Scarface was on the defensive again.

“Will you take responsibility for seeing we’re informed in time?”

“Yes.”

Buback felt confident of this; yesterday he could feel how much closer Grete’s offer had brought him to the Czech policemen. And he knew them well enough to spot any suspicious behavior.

The commander of the special units asked him a couple of routine questions about the Prague police’s weaponry. Assured it was a risible quantity of closely controlled pistols and rifles that were not worth the price of a politically damaging raid, he released Buback, even shaking his hand.

Buback then skipped lunch and headed straight back to Bartolom jská Street to find out for himself — and for Grete — how the first hunt had gone. Morava excitedly told him how he had hidden under the staircase for the first time. He described the tension that seized him when he heard the keys and steps, caught sight of Jitka’s black boots over the kitchen threshold and then the endless seconds where the pounding of his heart drowned everything else out. How much worse it must be for her, the young detective sighed.

To his horror, he recounted, the door handle clicked a second time. He and Matlák instinctually seized each others’ hands in a painful grip, each hoping to prevent the other from giving the game away prematurely. The shuffling footsteps approached, and he fought the temptation to step straight out, so powerful was his fear of missing his chance.