Answer: Elektra. It’s a café on Hoovera Ulice, next to the National Museum. And Ca d’Oro, a beer restaurant on Narodni Trida, in the same building as the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta. Detmar had given me some instructions in how to go about this: I should take a red rose wrapped in an old copy of Pritomnost and leave it on the table while I ordered something. Pritomnost is Presence, the weekly review that Masaryk helped to found. I could buy a copy on the black market quite easily. That’s what happened. And having made contact with Radek in the Elektra – I do not know his last name – I handed over the list of traitors.
Question: Was it Radek who came up with the plan to kill General Heydrich this morning?
Answer: No, it was someone else Radek introduced me to. I’d told them about Gunther and how he was working at the Lower Castle in Panenske-Brezany. How a car from Gestapo HQ with just a driver would come and pick him up and drive him there. A plan was quickly conceived – the opportunity appeared too good to miss. Two men from UVOD would hijack Gunther’s SS car and sit on the floor behind the seats so that they might get into the grounds of the castle, walk in and shoot everyone and anyone they could. Hopefully Heydrich would be one of these casualties.
Question: By which time you would be safely on a train back to Berlin?
Answer: Yes. That was the plan.
Question: And Gunther?
Answer: He was also to be shot by the two UVOD assassins. But the plan went up in smoke when Gunther’s car from Pecek Palace was cancelled and the poor fool had to walk to the Castle and requisition a car from there. After that, there seemed little or no choice but to get on the train as arranged. I’d done all I could. What will happen to me, please?
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Heydrich.
He turned to me.
‘And at the present moment in time, as you can see for yourself, things are not looking so good for your lady friend. But I think it answers your earlier remark, Gunther: that she hadn’t done anything. Now you know. She tried to murder Himmler. She planned to murder me, and as many of my guests as possible. And she planned to murder you. That’s quite an achievement. It looks as if she played you for a fool, wouldn’t you say?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘It’s fortunate for you I’m still feeling grateful that you helped us catch Paul Thummel, otherwise you yourself might now be facing what undoubtedly lies ahead of this deeply misguided young woman.’
While the stenographer had been reading, Arianne had recovered consciousness and was at least alive; but she had fainted again and while I could see no way of saving her from execution, or at best a concentration camp, I did think there was a way of preserving her from further suffering on the water bascule. Much of what I’d heard made sense to me, but it was obvious that she was still concealing things from her torturers; and it was equally obvious that I was now in a position to tell Heydrich exactly what I knew and thus save Arianne from herself, even if that meant putting my own head in the Gestapo’s lunette.
It was clear that it was me who’d been betrayed by her; and yet, as I started speaking, it somehow felt as if it was Arianne who was being betrayed by me.
