Hunting the Hangman

by Howard Linskey

Genres: World War II; Historical Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

What an entire army couldn't do, two men must: take out the Butcher of Prague. Operation Anthropoid has been engaged.



1941: The Third Reich is at its zenith. Its protector is Reinhard Heydrich, the most merciless senior figure in Hitler's inner circle, and the Fuhrer's eventual successor. Under Heydrich's oppressive command, thousands of lives have already been erased in Czechoslovakia's capital. It's only Heydrich's first ruthless step in service to the German people. Heydrich's ultimate endgame is the Final Solution. But under the cloak of night, the resistance conspires as well.



Trained in subterfuge by the British Special Operations, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis are unfailingly dedicated soldiers. Now, as committed allied agents they've been tasked with an audacious and seemingly impossible mission: parachute into an occupied city in lockdown, rally the remaining Czech rebels, and assassinate one of the most dangerous men alive. Outmanned against insurmountable odds, Gabcik and Kubis have no choice but to succeed. The fate of Europe and the world is in their hands.

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Aston Abbotts, Buckinghamshire, Autumn 1941

“So it’s murder?” he asked reasonably.

“Not murder, no,” his President answered.

“An assassination, then.” František Moravec held up his hands to indicate he had no objection to this. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Call it what you will, but never call it murder,” answered Beneš. “An execution, perhaps, or you could name it war,” the exiled Czech leader told the head of his secret service, “if you prefer.”

“Let’s call it justice?” suggested Moravec, but Beneš was already tired of this.

“Suppose we simply call it what must be done.”

Moravec seemed happiest with that definition, for he had merely been testing his leader’s resolve. “But how to do it?” he mused, as if asking himself and not Beneš.

“How indeed?” said Beneš. “That part I will leave up to you.”

The President looked smaller here with everything crammed into his office in the old abbey at Aston Abbotts. His desk was an unworkable clutter of transcripts, memos, and telegrams, and he seemed reluctant to allow any of them to be filed away. Every available inch of it was covered in paper. A large bookcase was fixed to the wall behind him, towering above his shoulders, but there was no space here for books. It, too, had been commandeered for the papers of state. They were piled high in horizontal stacks or wedged together vertically in such close order that their spines had warped under the pressure of the confined space they occupied.

“It won’t be easy,” said Moravec.

“I understand.”

“You want to send men back to our conquered capital to kill the most senior Nazi in the country,” said Moravec, “a man with the rank of a general who rules like a king. Heydrich isn’t just a Nazi puppet. The man ranks second only to Heinrich Himmler. He is Hitler’s personal favorite.”

“I would go further,” said Beneš. “I’d say it is likely Hitler regards Heydrich as his heir.”

“The next generation,” agreed Moravec, “of the Thousand-Year Reich he has promised his people.”

Beneš suddenly rose from his seat and crossed the room. It was a restless movement with no specific purpose behind it. He stared out of his window at the garden of his English bolt-hole. The village of Aston Abbotts was not a new dwelling place—it was mentioned in the Domesday Book—but you could walk its entire length in a little over five minutes. There were neat little nineteenth-century houses here, tied cottages, a couple of ancient pubs, and a Norman church with a stone memorial to an earlier conflict. The former abbey was as good a spot as any for the exiled President’s hideaway. Guards patrolled the area discreetly or held back in the shadows provided by the dark grey stone of the house—and at least one would be in permanent occupation of the tiny, picturesque lodge, the thatched and white-washed cottage by the gate.

“Then it would be an even bigger blow,” he told Moravec purposefully. “One they would feel in Berlin.”

“What about the British?” asked Moravec. “Are they going to help us?”

“They will,” said Beneš firmly, and Moravec realized his President had yet to ask Churchill for his blessing. “I know this is no ordinary mission, František,” Beneš continued. “Our target will be heavily guarded.”

“An army couldn’t kill Heydrich,” said Moravec, and his President seemed concerned he might have already admitted defeat, until he added, “but two men might.”

“Only two?”

“With help from others.”

Beneš seemed satisfied Moravec had already been giving the mission serious thought. “And you could find me such men?”

“There are many who wish for nothing more than the opportunity to continue the struggle against the Nazis, so yes, I can find you two men.” He spoke as if that was the easy part.

“But they must be the right men?” Beneš realized what he was getting at.

“We’ll only get one chance. Fail, and Heydrich won’t travel anywhere again without an armored convoy around him.”

“Thousands came to England to continue the struggle when our country fell,” Beneš reasoned. “There must be exceptional men among them.”

“There are,” Moravec agreed.

“Get them, then,” Beneš ordered, and he turned back to the window to give Moravec his cue. Their meeting was over. The rain that had been threatening for hours finally came, and thick droplets padded against the window outside. Moravec made as if to leave.

“František,” Beneš stopped him. “Make sure they understand.”

“That they might not be coming back?” Beneš nodded. “Good men would know that already,” he assured his President.

Josef Gabík was playing at soldiers again. He had just leapt from an imaginary landing craft, an L-shaped jetty yards from a Scottish beach, into an admittedly very real sea, and was now wading toward the shore, chest deep in the salty surf.

Using his peripheral vision, he noticed he was at the head of a dozen men who had jumped into the water. There were a few gasps from his comrades and a number of loud curses at the initial shock of the cold ocean, but the swearing strangely cheered him, coming as it did in his native tongue. He ignored the icy chill of the water, the salt in his eyes, and the burn of the pack’s straps on his shoulders and pressed on.

Gabík held his rifle high above his head with both arms, trying not to stumble on the uneven, shifting surface of the seabed, bending forward to allow for the forty-pound pack full of rocks that was strapped to his back. He advanced as quickly as the buffeting of the ocean would allow.

A few more steps. and he was pulling himself free from the grip of the water, which tugged at his soaking fatigues, weighing him down, and he became instantly aware of the harsh cries of the two British non-commissioned officers, or NCOs, waiting on the shingle.

“Move yourselves! Move yourselves!”

“Get out of there now! This is not a fuckin tea dance!”

Both men were with the Special Operations Executive and, with the sadistic enthusiasm to which Gabík had become accustomed, were hell-bent on turning him into a commando. As soon as he was free from the surf, he sprinted across the cove in a stumbling run, feet sinking into the shingle, running like a child trapped in a bad dream who could get away fast enough. His lungs heaved under the exertion, and the breath caught in his throat before being expelled in little clouds of vapor that were immediately left behind him as he powered forward.

Now he was almost there, he could make out the giant shadow of the cliff face in front of him, even though his head was down to avoid the pretend bullets of an imaginary machine gun they were assured was in the cliff tops.

“Yer fuckin’ dead, Kubiš!” Screamed the Glaswegian corporal. “Unless you get yer bastard head doon!”

Like Gabík, Jan Kubiš would barely have understood a word from the Scotsman’s mouth, but they could have both easily picked up the meaning. That’s what it was like here: a few half-comprehended phrases of command were all they had to cling to. That, and a desperate yearning to one day return to their homeland to fight the Germans who occupied it.

Till then, their world was a completely foreign place. These defeated Czech soldiers awoke each morning in a Scottish barrack block in Mallaig to be ordered around by officers they could just about understand. As for the NCOs, they were a grim bunch of hard soldiers with varied and unusual communication skills. Everything was barked or yelled in a guttural holler. The few words of English he and his comrades had picked up were torn and tortured beyond understanding by these career soldiers, but that was fine; it was the same the world over, and Gabík was a six-year veteran of the Czech army—when it had an army. The NCOs were cursing now as some of the men made a slow and unsteady progress across the beach.

“What’s wrong with you lot? Are you all pissed or something? Gabík! You short-arsed little runt! All you’ve managed to prove is your legs are not long enough to get you where you need to be!”

With these inspiring words of encouragement ringing in his ears, Gabík finally reached the cliff face at a full sprint, almost slamming into it. As always, he did not let up until he was at the very end of his task.

He leaned against the rock gasping for breath with a few of the quicker, fitter men who had arrived at roughly the same time. Gabík was pleased that, at twenty-nine, he was among the first there, could still hold his own. His short frame was stocky and powerful, making him capable of feats of strength that would defeat larger men. Gabík had a volatile temper that could cause embarrassment in civilian life but served him well under a hail of bullets or shelling. And he had already fought, and killed, Germans.

He had beaten Kubiš there by a yard, but felt no less respectful of the slightly younger man for it. Jan Kubiš was still a fine soldier and theirs a good friendship, forged under the most maddening of circumstances. As the NCOs got the men together, he noticed Kubiš, like him, was quickly recovering.

“That wake you up?” asked Gabík.

Kubiš was breathless. “There’s nothing like a nice walk along the beach.”

The corporal immediately rounded on him. “Save your breath, you’re gonna need it.”

The Scottish corporal was on a roll again. This time, it was an unrelenting rant at their inability to cover the yards of beachhead within the desired time—a limit Gabík was savvy enough to assume would always be a few seconds quicker than their fastest man. Such was training, such was the army.

“Now you are going to redeem yourselves with a nice, gentle climb!”

The NCO cajoled the men into one final effort, an eighty-foot vertical ascent of a sheer rock face.

“Make it look good, or we will throw you off this course. You can go and dig potatoes with the Land Army girls. I’ve seen a couple of them up close, and they are a fucking sight scarier than you lot. Now move it!”

And so Gabík climbed, for he knew it was his only way back into the war. With three and a half thousand other Czechs, Jan and Josef had endured a perilous sea journey to England. The Czech Brigade based itself at Leamington Spa, and the two veterans had experienced the boredom of army camp life there with no imminent prospect of a return to action. After a year of frustrated inactivity, the request had gone out for volunteers to join the SOE. Neither man hesitated, and they were on the move again, to Mallaig and the six-week commando course that was more than two thirds through by the time Gabík found himself stranded halfway up the cliff face.

He clung perilously to the rock with his red face pressed against the stone, hissing profanities to himself in Czech. He was about to fail his assignment and would likely be thrown off the course as well, and it was all down to his own stupidity. Had he listened to the instructor when he urged them all to use proper footholds and not just grip the rope with their hands like they always did? The cliff face was too high for that. Gabík’s biceps burned, and the small of his back throbbed with the effort required just to stay still. He tightened his grip around the length of grey, wet rope that hung from the uppermost point of the crag, trying to ignore the way the rope rubbed the skin from the palms of his hands.

Moments ago, he had admitted to himself he was stuck, unable to go back down and seemingly stranded without the footholds needed to carry him the extra forty feet to the summit. All about him, lesser men than Gabík were making steady, if unspectacular, progress. The humiliation was too much, and it spurred him into action. Rage welled up inside him, slowly replacing the fear and the doubt; he cast his eyes to the left and spotted an outcrop that was tantalizingly out of reach. If he could just spring from his current spot, he might get enough leverage with the rope to propel himself onto this toehold. Gabík hesitated for a moment, closing his eyes and summoning up his anger, the storm that had always served him so well in battle. He had to make it, and fear of falling must not be allowed to prevent him. If he did not make the jump, he could not move higher. If he did not climb higher, he would never reach the top, and would not then pass out of the commando course to join the other would-be saboteurs—his only opportunity to engage the Germans and remove the shame he felt at abandoning his country. And so, he jumped.

For a second, there was nothing but air around him—then his left foot connected with the rock, his left hand scrabbling for an indent, and it held. He clung there, the rope drawing fresh blood from the base of his thumb, which he contemptuously ignored. Gabík barely paused. Instead, he hauled himself higher and propelled his other hand into the air. He could not see the ledge above him but grasped it firmly and pulled his body upward again, stretching out his right foot till he connected with a large outcrop. And so, on it went, Gabík rising, cursing, and rising again, using his self-recrimination to push himself on, catching up with the others.

He remembered the last thing the Scottish corporal had told them in the briefing.

“When you reach the top of the cliff, I want you to give me a battle cry. Let me hear the roar from each of you. Pretend I’m a Nazi machine gunner. I want you to scare the shit out of me!”

Gabík took him at his word and shot over the edge of the cliff with the most bloodcurdling cry imaginable. Even Corporal Andy Donald was impressed.

Gabík careered past him at a full sprint, only stopping at the rallying point, which was already beginning to fill up with his fellow Czechs, now sitting on the ground next to, or on top of, their packs. One of them was foolish enough to let out a laugh at Gabík’s crazed countenance and toss a handful of insulting words his way. That was it. Without pausing for a moment, Gabík whirled on his mocking colleague and smashed a fist squarely into his chin.

Corporal Donald immediately began to shout new orders, to have Gabík dragged away from his hapless victim. Gabík was in one of his private worlds, all red mist and hot rage, and Donald had seen him like this before. It could start with something quite trivial, an upended mug of tea or the frustration borne of an inability to complete a task—assembling a Sten gun blindfolded, perhaps. Corporal Andy Donald was a hard man, scared of nobody, but even he recognized this soldier had a truly awesome temper, the kind that, if harnessed correctly, would take him through any obstacle without a second’s hesitation. Bullets bouncing around him would go unnoticed. It would take a lot to stop Josef Gabík if his mind was set.

It took three of Gabík’s comrades to haul him away. This is what happens when you train men to kill but don’t let them anywhere near the enemy, thought Donald.

“All right, that’s enough! Enough!”

Had Gabík really seen Nazis as he reached the top of the cliff? Probably, knowing him. For a second, Corporal Donald almost pitied the poor bloody Germans.

“One more, please. Please, Herr Gruppenführer, just one Omore, with the big smile, and so! Now perhaps we have Frau Heydrich with little Heider, is it? Heider, yes! Heider and Klaus, and, of course the little Princess Silke. We haven’t forgotten you, have we?”

The photographer cooed absurdly at Reinhard Heydrich’s baby daughter, shaking his head. “No, we haven’t, no!” She sensibly chose to ignore him.

Hauptsturmführer Zentner belonged to Goebbels’ propaganda division, and his mission today was to capture the Heydrichs at home—on film, at least. Reinhard had agreed to the photo call weeks ago, aware of the need to project a positive image at all times and to every section of German society. It was part of his strategy to reach the very top. He had even consented to be photographed out of uniform, in a ridiculous pair of shorts and shirtsleeves, in order to contrast the man at home with the man of state, as Captain Zentner put it.

First, it was full silver-grey SS dress uniform, complete with ceremonial sword, at the foot of the staircase; then behind his desk, again in uniform, black this time, pretending to peruse a blank sheet of paper as his pen hovered above it motionlessly, until the click of the shutter and the flash of the bulb released him, and he melted from the frozen image he had assumed.

Now the whole family was made to cavort ridiculously on the lawns to the rear of the Panenské Bežany mansion. But the photo shoot was taking too long, as these things always did, and Heydrich’s mind was elsewhere. He had postponed a liaison with his mistress for this, and he began to long for the delicious friction of her even as he posed, with his children all around him, smiling inanely at the lens. Today, though, he had weightier matters to consider, and he wondered what had happened to his driver. Klein had been sent back to Hradany three hours ago to collect a batch of urgent signals. He had been told not to pause even for a cup of coffee but to return as soon as he had the papers and hand them personally to Heydrich. What on earth could be keeping the man?

Heydrich’s irritability found a target in the photographer. Zentner was a small, thin streak of nothingness with a lispy, effeminate manner who danced around them enthusiastically as he sought the perfect picture of the Heydrichs. Too enthusiastically for Reinhard, who eyed the man contemptuously. He was convinced the man was a bum boy, like that scrawny drag queen he once had the misfortune to witness in a Berlin nightclub during a time before the Nazis had shipped out all of the fags along with the gypsies, the communists, and the Jews. But then, hadn’t Lina already established that he had a wife? While he was setting up his tripod and cameras on the grass and bossing his two silent and anonymous young assistants, she had trilled at him in a nervous, eager-to-please manner.

“And is there a Mrs. Zentner?”

Did she actually hold this photographer in some form of awe?

“Back in Koblenz, yes, Frau Heydrich!” he had called back familiarly, as if she were the wife of a sergeant.

No children though, I’ll bet, thought Heydrich, probably a show marriage to take suspicion away from his unnatural, nocturnal activities. What was Goebbels thinking, employing degenerates like this fellow? Heydrich had been told they were sending one of the best men from the propaganda division, and the photos would be seen all over the Reich. There was another SS man close by with a cinematograph machine, so the ideal Nazi family unit could be displayed across a thousand film screens as well. Lina was loving every minute of it, which was perhaps why she was so uncharacteristically civil to the captain.

He remembered how she had been in a fury the day they had seen the first, sanitized newsreel footage of the Goebbels family, a prelude to the feature attraction of some Berlin cinema. There was Magda, the archetypal Aryan matriarch, seated and flanked by no fewer than six children. Her adoring husband, Joseph, stood at her shoulder, beaming down at her, while a rousing commentary extolled the virtues of maternity, motherhood, and the glorious provision of young Nazis to serve the greater German Reich. Cut to shots of sexless young women doing exercises in a field somewhere in Bavaria. Dressed in identical white blouses and dark shorts, fine figures of Germanic girlhood one and all, they danced in synchronicity and on the spot, while the commentator told them how healthy bodies produced healthy babies and urged the women to marry the right Aryan boy and immediately begin gestating for the Fatherland.

This little insight into Nazi thinking ended with a final shot of the beaming Magda, provider of life, champion producer of children. Of course, at the time of the film, Joseph, the perfect family man, had been screwing Lída Baarová, the famous Czech film star, whose career he had extravagantly promised to advance. But no one was going to put that in a newsreel.

Lina proclaimed Magda to be a vain and common bitch parading herself in this manner. She had obviously forgotten this heartfelt opinion now, for she scooped all three of the Heydrich brood to her arms at once and clasped them to a more than ample bosom as she tried to persuade them to smile for the camera. Heydrich thought it an impossible exercise, as Silke was entirely uninterested and Klaus appeared to be choking on her breasts. Lina was unlikely to spot his distress, however, so entranced was she by the adoring camera.

“Lina, you’re suffocating the boy.”

He wandered away from the scene as Frau Heydrich flushed before trying to turn the whole thing into a joke, desperate to stifle Klaus’ already welling tears. Heydrich lost interest in this charade the moment he noticed Klein. His chauffeur was literally running toward him across the manicured carpet of lawn that divided them. The two men met a few yards from the cameras.

Klein saluted, “Apologies, Reichsprotektor, the signals arrived late, and I had to wait for the dispatches to be decrypted.” Klein knew Heydrich cared little for excuses but was determined to prove the delay was most certainly none of his doing.

He handed over a sealed folder containing several sheets of paper, receiving no further instruction from Heydrich, who simply wandered away wordlessly as he scrutinized the information.

Avoiding the distractions of Lina’s twittering and the unchecked hollering of his children, Heydrich read the eastern front dispatches. It took only a moment’s perusal to realize operations were not moving quickly enough, not by a long way.

The memos contained a detailed report on the Einsatzgruppen and their daily ratios, and they were letting him down. The Einsatzgruppen were Heydrich’s personal responsibility, along with controlling the entire secret service of the Reich and running the “Protectorate” of Bohemia and Moravia, as the Czech territory was now known. He had also volunteered for one more assignment, a pet project very close to the Führer’s heart. Only by achieving success in all three arenas could he be assured of further advancement. The top job in France was his next target, for he had noted with satisfaction how the current administration had the country far from under control. It would take the SS to subdue the French, and Paris would prove the perfect stepping-stone. Then, one day, the longed-for call to Hitler’s bedside, when an ailing leader would publicly name Heydrich as his successor and leader of the German people. Nothing would stop Heydrich from reaching his goal—but the Einsatzgruppen would have to improve, and quickly.

The majority of the three thousand men of the Einsatzgruppen were of a civilian background, often from the professional classes—disgruntled doctors, lawyers, government officials, and clerks, all sharing one trait: a fanatical belief in the semi-Darwinian theory of Nazism. Their three weeks of training at Pretzsch Police School in Silesia were an indoctrination period, reinforcing the mantra of eugenics, not training in tactical combat. Let the strongest survive, eliminate the weak—and, of course, it was the Germans who were the strongest, the Jews occupying the lowest rung on the human evolutionary ladder. The men of the. . .