Chapter 12

We spent four days at Klaus Silber’s place. While we were there I followed the Kotacek case in the Prague newspapers. The guards had put together a good story. According to them, several dozen men armed with machine pistols and hand grenades had come over the fences and dropped down upon them, capturing the castle and overcoming all resistance before a shot could be fired in defense. The papers made no mention of the nude condition of the guards. Either they had managed to untie themselves and dress before giving the alarm, or else the press decided to withhold that particular tidbit from its readers. At least one man hadn’t put his uniform on, if only because I had not left it behind for him. I finally wound up stuffing it in a trash can downtown.

Then, the fourth day, the newspapers reported that “reactionary elements of the Stern Gang, composed of Israeli fascist terrorists” had announced the trial and execution of the Slovakian Nazi. The general tone of the article suggested that it was lamentable that Israelis had used gangster methods in so friendly a nation as the People’s Republic of Czechoslovakia, but that, after all, Kotacek was dead either way, and certainly deserved it, and if nothing else Czechoslovakia had been spared the time and expense of a trial.

None of the articles had hinted at any connection between Kotacek and one Evan Michael Tanner. Indeed, I had not been mentioned at all. So by the fourth day I felt we were safe to make our move. They wouldn’t be looking for us now. We would run into heavy trouble if someone happened to recognize us, but there was a lot less chance now that he was officially dead.

And we couldn’t leave fast enough to suit me. The Butcher of Bratislava was a rotten companion and a boorish house guest. He completely ignored my instructions about keeping his mouth shut in front of Klaus, and several times he tossed out Nazi speeches that could have been trouble if our host hadn’t been so well prepared for that sort of thing. “The poor man,” he said each time, “the poor deluded old fellow. Those camps leave one horribly scarred, do they not?”

Another time, he keeled over spontaneously, without benefit of flashlight. I thought it was the catalepsy again, and was frankly grateful for it. But I happened to notice that he was breathing weakly, and that his heart was still beating, and then I remembered other aspects of his medical history. He was a diabetic and had been off the needle ever since his escape. It was miraculous that he hadn’t gone into diabetic coma immediately. He was in it now, and I had to send Klaus rushing off to a druggist for insulin and a hypodermic needle. I guessed at the dosage, and wound up giving him too much, and succeeded only in sending him right off into insulin shock. We stuck a lump of sugar in his mouth to balance it off. It was a little like Alice in Wonderland, eating first from one side and then the other side of the mushroom, but we finally managed to straighten him out. Through it all, I wanted in the worst way to let him die and be done with it.

I stocked up on insulin and got Kotacek to tell me just when he had to have a shot and just how much the dosage should be. Then the fourth day came, and we were ready to roll. I left the house and managed to find the gas station where I had left our car. I was a little nervous about reclaiming the car – if the police had spotted it somehow, they’d be quick to grab anyone who came for it. But it seemed safer to use a pre-stolen car, which the officials had presumably forgotten by now, than to steal a fresh one. I went to the station, and the car was ready.

“Some vandal must have been at it,” the mechanic told me as I paid him. “Someone went to work on that engine as if possessed by devils. I had a difficult time with it, believe me.”

He hadn’t done that well, either, I discovered. The engine ran more smoothly but still sounded pretty bad. I wasn’t sure how long I could drive the little thing without having a breakdown. It would only be safe as far as whatever border we crossed first, as you cannot get a car across a frontier without the proper papers. But we would worry about that when the time came. I’d be satisfied if the car got us safely out of Prague.

I picked up Kotacek, stowed his insulin and needle in one of the bridal couple’s suitcases, took the flashlight and revolver along with me, and loaded Kotacek into the back seat of the car. He didn’t like that. He wanted to ride in front with me. I convinced him that he would stand less chance of being spotted if he sort of slouched in the back. He didn’t like it any better, but he put up with it.

Klaus wouldn’t accept any money. He absolutely refused. “The poor old fellow,” he said. “A convincing transference, yes? One would almost believe he is what he thinks himself to be. Do you think there is any possibility of curing him?”

I said I didn’t think so.

“Then you do what you can to make him comfortable. For my part, I am only glad I could be of service. The poor old gentleman!”

I got behind the wheel. “Let’s get out of here,” my cargo grumbled. “The scruffy old Jew makes me sick.”

We got out of there.

The exit route I picked was fairly close to the one I had worked out in Pisek. I drove almost due east at first, straight through Bohemia and Moravia and into Slovakia. The countryside became progressively more pastoral, the towns smaller and more provincial as we went along. He wanted to stop in Slovakia, no doubt expecting to receive a hero’s welcome there. I didn’t bother to tell him that there were blessed few Slovakian Nazis left in Slovakia. Most of them had been fitted with ropes around their necks when the Russians liberated the country in 1945. A few, like Kotacek, had gotten out in time. If he had announced himself in the streets of Bratislava, they would not have given a party for him. They would have found a rope and done the job once and for all.

“You must stop in one of these towns,” he said. “We can get proper food here, good peasant food that sticks to your ribs. And the people know me. They will want to welcome me.”

I kept on driving. “Later,” I would say. Or, “There’s a car following us. I want to make sure he doesn’t get suspicious.” Anything, just so he would shut up and let me drive.

He was no bargain. I figured to cut south and cross into Hungary around Parkan, then cut across to Budapest. From Prague to Parkan, the roads ranged from bad to worse. The total distance was only something like 250 miles, but I couldn’t figure to average much better than fifty-five miles an hour. Kotacek cut our speed by almost a third. He was the worst traveler I’ve ever met. I was constantly stopping the car so that he could urinate, because he had all the bladder control of a six-week-old puppy. He complained constantly. Time after time he made me stop to buy him a sandwich at a roadside restaurant. He expected to go into an expensive restaurant and sit at a table and gorge himself; when I explained that this was plainly impossible, he sulked and then retaliated by announcing his hunger whenever possible.

And when he wasn’t making me stop the car, when he wasn’t complaining about the roughness of the road or the way I drove or the cramped quarters of the back seat, when he wasn’t doing any of these charming things, then he would talk. Some of his babble was Nazi theory – what the Fourth Reich would do, its present strength, the countries where it was gaining ground, the new faces of the movement. And the plans which would be eventually put into action. First, obviously, the ultimate extermination of world Jewry. But that was only the beginning. Next would come the depopulation of Africa. “Of course the world is crowded, Lieutenant Tanner.” I had been severely demoted this time. “That is only because the strong races have not done their duty in respect to weaker races. The primitive inhabitants were wiped out in America, although it took centuries before their decline rendered them no longer a danger. The Australians moved somewhat faster against the Bushmen. They are dying out quite rapidly, as I understand it. But no progress at all is being made in Africa. On the contrary, the black races there become stronger day by day. But when the world is ours, we will show the world how to clean house. They will be cleaned out, an area at a time. As we level the forest, so shall we liquidate the blacks. Can you visualize the potential of a white Africa? Can you imagine it?”