I know everything it’s possible to know about this flight. I know what Gabčík and Kubiš had in their backpacks: a pocketknife, a pistol with two magazines and twelve cartridges, a cyanide pill, a piece of chocolate, meat-extract tablets, razor blades, a fake ID card, and some Czech currency. I know they were wearing civilian clothes made in Czechoslovakia. I know that, following orders, they didn’t say anything to their fellow parachutists during the flight apart from “Hello” and “Good Luck.” I know that their fellow parachutists suspected they were being sent to kill Heydrich. I know that it was Gabčík who most impressed the air dispatcher during the voyage. I know that they had to quickly make their wills before takeoff. I know the names of each member of the two other teams who accompanied them, along with their respective missions. And I also know each man’s fake identity. Gabčík and Kubiš, for example, were called Zdenek Vyskocil and Ota Navratil, and according to their false papers they were, respectively, a locksmith and a laborer. I know pretty much everything that can be known about this flight and I refuse to write a sentence like: “Automatically they checked the release boxes and static lines of their parachute harnesses.” Even if, without a doubt, they did exactly that.
“The taller of the two, Jan Kubiš, was twenty-seven years old and nearly six foot tall. He had blond hair and deep-set grey eyes that watched the world steadily…” et cetera. I’ll stop there. It’s a shame that Burgess wasted his time with clichés like this, because his book is undeniably well researched. I found two glaring errors—concerning Heydrich’s wife, whom he called Inga rather than Lina, and the color of his Mercedes, which he insists is dark green rather than black. I also spotted two dubious stories that I suspect Burgess of having invented, including a dark tale of swastikas branded on buttocks with a hot iron. But in other respects I learned a great deal about Gabčík and Kubiš’s life in Prague during the months before the assassination. It must be said that Burgess had an advantage over me: only twenty years after the events, he was able to talk to living witnesses. Yes, a few of them did survive.
So, to cut a long story short, they jumped.
According to Eduard Husson, a reputable academic who is writing a biography of Heydrich, everything went wrong right from the beginning.
Gabčík and Kubiš are dropped a long way from the target area. They should have landed near Pilsen but actually end up a few miles from Prague. Now, you may say: well, that’s where the operation will take place, so in a way they’ve actually gained time. But such thinking just goes to show how little you know about secret operations. Their contacts in the Resistance are waiting for them in Pilsen. They don’t have an address in Prague. The people in Pilsen are supposed to make the introductions for them. So they are close to Prague, where they need to get to, but only after they’ve passed through Pilsen. They feel the absurdity of this roundabout journey every bit as much as you do, but they know it’s necessary all the same.
They feel it once they know where they are, but at this precise moment they don’t have the faintest idea. They land in a graveyard. They don’t know where to hide the parachutes, and Gabčík is limping badly because he’s fractured a toe landing on his native soil. They walk blindly and leave tracks. They bury the parachutes quickly under a snowdrift. The sun, they know, will soon rise: they are dangerously exposed and must find somewhere to hide.
They find a rocky shelter in a quarry. Protected from the snow and the cold but not from the Gestapo, they know they can’t stay here—but they don’t know where else to go. Strangers in their own land, lost, injured, and undoubtedly already the subject of a search—the Germans couldn’t have failed to hear the plane’s engines—the two men decide to wait. What else can they do? They consult the map, but it’s hard to imagine what they’re hoping for. To pinpoint the location of this tiny quarry? Their mission, hardly even begun, is already under threat of being aborted. Or, if we assume that they will never be discovered (which is a ridiculous supposition), of never getting started at all.
Anyway, they are discovered.
It’s a gamekeeper who finds them, early that morning. He heard the plane in the night, he found the parachutes in the graveyard, he followed their tracks in the snow. Now he enters the quarry. And, coughing, says to them: “Hello, lads!”
According to Eduard Husson, everything went wrong from the beginning, but they also had some good luck. The gamekeeper is a decent man. He knows he’s risking his life by doing so, but he’s going to help them.
This gamekeeper is the first link in a long chain of Resistance fighters who will lead our two heroes to Prague, and to the Moravecs’ apartment.