Unlike Marjane Satrapi, Milan Kundera, Jan Kubiš, and Jozef Gabčík, I am not a political exile. But that is perhaps why I can talk of where I want to be without always being dragged back to my starting point. I don’t owe my homeland anything, and I don’t have a score to settle with it. For Paris, I feel neither the heartbreaking nostalgia nor the melancholy disenchantment of the great exiles. That is why I am free to dream of Prague.
Valčík helps his two comrades in their search for the perfect spot. One day, surveying the city, he attracts the attention of a stray dog. What strange or familiar quality does the animal detect that draws it to this man? It follows his footsteps. It doesn’t take Valčík long to sense a presence behind him. He turns around. The dog stops. He sets off again. The dog follows him. Together, they cross the city. When Valčík gets back to the apartment belonging to the Moravecs’ concierge, where he’s staying, he adopts and names the dog. When the concierge comes home, Valčík introduces him to Moula. From now on, the two of them will scout for locations together, and when Valčík can’t take him, he begs the good concierge to “look after his dragon” (so it must have been a big dog, or a very small one if Valčík was being ironic). When his master goes away, Moula waits quietly for him—curled up under the living-room table, immobile for hours. The dog probably won’t have a decisive role to play in Operation Anthropoid, but I would rather jot down a useless detail than risk missing a crucial one.
Speer returns to Prague, but is received with less pomp than on his previous visit. The minister of armaments is here to discuss manpower with the Protector of one of the Reich’s biggest industrial centers. And in the spring of 1942, much more so than in December 1941—with millions of men fighting on the Eastern Front, with Soviet tanks destroying German tanks, and British bombers striking German cities with ever greater frequency—the question of manpower is vital. More workers are needed to produce more tanks, more airplanes, more artillery, more rifles, more grenades, more submarines. Not to mention those new weapons that should help the Reich finally win the war.
This time, Speer dispenses with the tour of the city and the official procession. He’s come alone, without his wife, for a work meeting with Heydrich. Neither has time to waste on small talk. Speer’s efficiency in his domain is considered the equal of Heydrich’s in his, and he is undoubtedly pleased about this. But he can’t help noticing that Heydrich not only travels without an escort but that he calmly cruises the streets of Prague in an unarmored, open-top car, with no bodyguard at all except his chauffeur. He expresses his concerns to Heydrich, who replies: “Why should my Czechs shoot at me?” Heydrich probably hasn’t read the 1937 newspaper article by Joseph Roth—the Jewish writer from Vienna, now exiled in Paris—mocking the vast amounts of money and men dedicated to protecting Nazi dignitaries. In this article, he has them say: “Yes, you see, I’ve become so great that I’m even forced to be afraid; I am so precious that I don’t have the right to die; I believe so utterly in my star that I must beware the risks that can be fatal to many a star. Who dares wins! But who has won three times over no longer needs to dare!” Joseph Roth no longer mocks anybody because he died in 1939, but perhaps Heydrich did read this article after all. It appeared in a newspaper for dissident refugees—subversive elements, no doubt closely watched by the SD. In any case, Heydrich feels duty-bound to explain part of his weltanschauung to this pampered civilian Speer: surrounding yourself with bodyguards is petit-bourgeois behavior, in very poor taste. He leaves this kind of thing to Bormann and other Party higher-ups. In fact, he refutes Joseph Roth: better to die than to let them believe you’re afraid.
Nevertheless, Heydrich’s initial reaction must have disturbed Speer: Why would anyone want to kill Heydrich? As if there weren’t already enough reasons to kill Nazi leaders in general, and Heydrich in particular! Speer has no illusions about the popularity of the Germans in the occupied territories, and he assumes that Heydrich is the same. But this man seems so sure of himself. Speer can’t tell if Heydrich’s paternalistic tone, speaking of “his” Czechs, is just an idle boast, or if Heydrich really is as powerful as he claims to be. Call him a petit-bourgeois coward if you must, but in the open-top Mercedes inching its way through the streets of Prague, Speer doesn’t feel entirely at ease.