Colonel Morávek—sole survivor of the Three Kings, last remaining chief of the three-headed Czech Resistance organization—knows that he shouldn’t attend the meeting. It has been arranged by his old friend René, alias Colonel Paul Thümmel, Abwehr officer; alias A54, the most important spy ever to have worked for Czechoslovakia. A54 has managed to warn him: his cover has been blown, and this meeting is a trap. But Morávek probably believes his own audacity will protect him. Wasn’t it audacity that saved his life so many times before? This man who used to send postcards to the head of the Gestapo to tell him what he’d done isn’t going to let himself get scared now. Arriving in the Prague park where the meeting is due to take place, he sees his contact, but also the men who are watching him. He gets ready to run off, but two men in raincoats call out from behind him. I have never witnessed a shoot-out and I have trouble imagining what it would be like in a city as peaceful as Prague is now. But there are more than fifty gunshots during the chase that follows. Morávek runs across one of the bridges that span the Vltava (unfortunately, I don’t know which) and jumps onto a moving tram. But the Gestapo are everywhere—it’s as if they’ve been teleported. They’re even inside the tram carriage. Morávek jumps off the tram, but he’s been shot in the legs. He collapses on the rails and, completely surrounded, he shoots himself. This is obviously the surest means of not telling the enemy anything. But his pockets will talk: on his body, the Germans find a photo of a man who (although they don’t know it yet) is Josef Valčík.
This story marks the end of the last chief of the Three Kings. It proves a thorn in the side of Anthropoid, because at this date—March 20, 1942—Valčík is still closely involved in the operation. It also represents a double success for Heydrich: as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, he manages to decapitate one of the most dangerous remaining Resistance organizations, thus fulfilling his mission. And as head of the SD, he unmasks a superspy who is also an officer of the Abwehr—the secret service run by his rival and former mentor Canaris. For the Allies this isn’t the first setback and it won’t be the last, but March 20, 1942, is assuredly not a red-letter day in their secret war against the Germans.
In London they are growing impatient. It is five months now since the agents of Operation Anthropoid were parachuted into their homeland, but since then there’s been hardly any news at all. London does know, however, that Gabčík and Kubiš are alive and operational. Libuse, the only secret transmitter still working, sends information of this kind whenever there is any. So London decides to give the two agents a new mission. As ever, employers are obsessed by their employees’ productivity. This new mission adds to rather than replaces the previous one. But it also delays it. Gabčík and Kubiš are furious. They have to go to Pilsen to take part in a sabotage operation.
Pilsen is a large industrial town in the west of the country, quite close to the German border. Its famous beer, Pilsner Urquell, is named after it. However, London is not interested in Pilsner for its beer but for its Škoda factories. In 1942, Škoda doesn’t make cars—it makes armaments. An air raid is planned for the night of April 25–26. The parachutists have to light fires around the industrial complex to help the British bombers pick out their target.
So at least four parachutists travel to Pilsen. They meet up in town, at a place agreed on in advance (the Tivoli restaurant—I wonder if it still exists?), and, that night, set fire to a stable and a stack of straw near the factory.
When the bombers arrive, all they have to do is drop their bombs between these two bright marks. Unfortunately, all their bombs miss the target. So the mission is a total failure, even though the parachutists did exactly what they were asked.
Then again, Kubiš did get to know a young female shop assistant during his brief stay in Pilsen—a member of the Resistance, who helped the group fulfill its mission. With his handsome movie-star face—imagine a hybrid of Cary Grant and Tony Curtis—Kubiš was always a hit with the ladies. So, even if the operation was a bitter failure, at least
Returning to Prague, the parachutists are very annoyed. They’ve been forced to risk compromising their principal mission—their historic mission—and for what? Nothing but a few big guns. They send London a sharp message suggesting that next time they send pilots with some knowledge of the region.