Gabčík’s arrival causes a sensation in the crypt. His comrades rush to hug him. He recognizes Valčík, his hair dyed brown, sporting a thin brown mustache, and Kubiš, whose eye is swollen and whose face still bears the scars of the explosion. These two are clearly the most demonstrative in their joy at seeing him again. Gabčík’s feelings are torn: he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Naturally he is very happy to see his friends, all of them pretty much safe and sound. But he’s so sorry for the way things turned out. He’s barely been reunited with them before he begins his bitter litany of excuses and self-reproach. They will soon become accustomed to this. He curses the bloody Sten, which jammed just when he had Heydrich at his mercy. It’s all my fault, he says. I had him there in front of me, he was a dead man. And then this piece-of-shit Sten … ah, it’s too stupid. But he’s injured—you got him, Jan? Seriously injured? You think? Lads, I am so sorry. It’s all my fault. I should have finished him off with the Colt. But there were bullets flying everywhere, and I ran, with that giant hot on my heels … Gabčík hates himself, and nothing his friends say can console him. It doesn’t matter, Jozef. What you did is huge, don’t you realize? The Hangman himself! You injured him! Heydrich is injured, that’s true, he saw him fall, but apparently he’s recovering in hospital. A month from now, he’ll be back at work—perhaps even earlier. It’s true what they say: those bastards are bulletproof. Anyway, the Nazis have always had the luck of the devil when it comes to surviving assassination attempts. (I think of Hitler in 1939, who had to give his annual speech at the famous Munich beer hall between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m., but who left the building at 9:07 to catch his train—and the bomb went off at 9:30, killing eight people.) But Anthropoid is a pitiful failure—there you go, that’s what he thinks—and it’s all his fault. Jan did nothing wrong. He threw the grenade. Sure, it missed the car, but he was the one who injured Heydrich. Thank God Jan was there! They didn’t fulfill their mission, but thanks to him at least they hit the target. Now the Germans know that Prague isn’t Berlin, and that they can’t treat this place like home. But frightening the Germans was not the objective of Anthropoid. Perhaps they were too ambitious after all: no Nazi as high-ranking as Heydrich has ever been shot. But no, what am I saying? If it wasn’t for the stupid, stinking Sten, he’d be dead, that pig … The Sten, the Sten!… It’s a piece of shit, I’m telling you.
Heydrich’s condition has suddenly and inexplicably deteriorated. He’s in the grip of a powerful fever. Himmler has rushed to his bedside. Heydrich’s tall body lies weakly under a thin white sheet drenched with sweat. The two men philosophize about life and death. Heydrich quotes a line from his father’s opera: “The world is just a barrel organ, which the Lord God turns Himself. We all have to dance to the tune that is already on the drum.”
Himmler asks the doctors for explanations. The patient seemed to be recovering well until he was laid low by a sudden infection. Perhaps the bomb contained poison or the horsehairs from the Mercedes’s seats got into his spleen. There are various theories, but nobody knows which one is correct. But if, as they believe, this is the beginning of septicemia, the infection is going to spread very quickly and he will be dead within forty-eight hours. To save Heydrich, they would need something that is not to be found anywhere in the vast territory of the Reich: penicillin. And the British aren’t about to give them any.
On June 3, the Libuse radio receives the following message, for the attention of Anthropoid:
From the president. I am very happy that you have been able to keep in contact. I thank you most sincerely, and take note of your absolute determination, and that of your friends. This shows me that the whole nation is united. I can assure you that this will bear fruit. The events in Prague had a huge impact here and have done a great deal for international recognition of the Czech Resistance.
But Beneš doesn’t know that the best is yet to come. And the worst.
Anna Maruscakova, a young and pretty factory worker, called in sick today. So when the afternoon post arrived and the factory boss found a letter addressed to her, he opened and read it without a second thought. The letter was from a young man, and this is what it said:
Dear Ania,
Sorry for taking so long to write to you, but I hope you will understand, because you know I have many worries. What I wanted to do—I’ve done it. On the fatal day, I slept in Cabarna. I’m fine. I’ll come to see you this week, and afterward we will never see each other again.
Milan