And, above all, if you are stopped in the daytime hanging around in the streets-which will often be the case for Gabčík and Kubiš during the coming months-you must have a very good reason not to be working. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942, you must be able to produce a work permit.

London has equipped them with fake ID cards, but it’s not enough-far from it. First, though, they must deal with the three great problems facing any secret mission: accommodation, provisions, and identification. I’m sure they marvel at the city’s Baroque beauty. On January 8, 1942, Gabčík (limping) and Kubiš walk upon Prague’s sacred earth for the first time.

One day, perhaps, someone in need of solace will write the story of the Novaks and the Svatošes, of the Zelenkas and the Fafeks. And if no one hears me, that doesn’t matter. The Svatošes, the Novaks, the Zelenkas-not to mention all those whose names or existence I’m unaware of-will return to their oblivion. I know already that only the Moravecs, and perhaps the Fafeks, will find a place in my story. No reader could possibly retain this list of names, so why write it? For you to remember them, I would have to turn them into characters. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory. Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. But for us, the living, it does mean something. The dead are dead, and it makes no difference to them whether I pay homage to their deeds. How many forgotten heroes sleep in history’s great cemetery? Thousands, millions of Fafeks and Moravecs, of Novaks and Zelenkas… Each member of each of these families would deserve his or her own book-an account of their involvement with the Resistance until the tragic dénouement of Mauthausen. The Svatoš family, a few feet from the Charles Bridge the Ogoun family, near the castle the Novak, Moravec, Zelenka, and Fafek families, all farther east. Almost all of them paid with their lives-men, women, and children. I examine a map of Prague, marking the locations of the families who helped and sheltered the parachutists. And I look up and see, growing all over it-ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy-the unmappable pattern of causality. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect-and these people, these real people who actually existed. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. Gabčík and Kubiš will meet lots of ordinary people ready to risk their lives in order to help them.

Hhhh book