Hunting the Hangman Read online

  HUNTING THE HANGMAN

  May 1942: Two assassins trained by the British SOE parachute into occupied territory to kill the man ruling their homeland. Their target is SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the Hangman of Prague, architect of the Final Solution. Even fellow Nazis call Heydrich the Blond Beast but not everyone in the resistance wants him dead, when reprisals could lead to the deaths of thousands. Can two men really kill Hitler’s Heir and evade the biggest manhunt in the history of the Third Reich?

  Hunting the Hangman is a tale of courage, resilience and betrayal with a devastating finale. Released on the eve of the seventy fifth anniversary of Operation Anthropoid and based on true events, the story which reads much like The Eagle Has Landed and The Day of the Jackal is the subject of two new big-budget movies, Anthropoid and The Man with the Iron Heart.

  About the author

  Howard Linskey is the author of three novels in the David Blake crime series published by No Exit Press: The Drop, The Damage and The Dead. Harry Potter producer David Barron optioned a TV adaptation of The Drop, which was voted one of the Top Five Thrillers of the Year by The Times. The Damage was voted one of The Times’ Top Summer Reads. He is also the author of No Name Lane, Behind Dead Eyes and The Search, the first three books in a crime series set in the north east of England featuring journalists Tom Carney and Helen Norton, published by Penguin.

  Originally from Ferryhill in County Durham, he now lives in Hertfordshire with his wife Alison and daughter Erin.

  howardlinskey.com

  @howardlinskey

  PRAISE FOR HUNTING THE HANGMAN

  ‘This is a first-rate thriller and a realistic fictional account of the real events that shook the world at the height of WWII. Hunting the Hangman is thought provoking, exciting and clearly a labour of love for the author – a genuine joy to read’ – Paul Bk, Goodreads

  ‘A brilliantly researched and written book and one that tugged at my emotions like no book has done for a long time’ – Diane Abrahamson, Goodreads

  ‘Redolent with authenticity this book is based on historical accounts which have been fictionalised to help bring the characters to life. Well paced and exciting the characters are credible and beautifully drawn and the book deserves attention and to be read. Highly recommended’ – Greville Waterman

  ‘This is a terrific read which grabs and keeps you engaged from first to last, intelligent, well written, with excellent characterisations throughout… I very much enjoyed it’ – John McCormick

  PRAISE FOR HOWARD LINSKEY

  ‘Linskey delivers a flawless feel for time and place, snappy down to earth dialect mixed in with unrelenting violence and pace. A Tyneside Dashiell Hammett to put Martina Cole firmly in her place’ – Times

  ‘The Drop is chosen by Peter Millar in The Times as one of his Top 5 crime thrillers of the year’ – Times

  ‘This is splendid stuff. It is further proof that Linskey (whose The Drop burst on to the crime scene with incendiary force in 2011) is one of the most commanding crime fiction practitioners at work today’ – Financial Times on Behind Dead Eyes

  ‘This is one of those books that I open intending to just taste it and a few hours later find myself reaching the last page. Linskey’s deceptively simple and mild style conceals a powerful punch’ – The Literary Review

  ‘Linskey could turn out to be very good indeed’ – Daily Mail

  ‘Howard Linskey has staked out the North East as his territory. Linskey has a light touch and exuberantly memorable storytelling’ – Sunday Express

  ‘This is a well-crafted crime story’ – Sydney Morning Herald on No Name Lane

  For Alison & Erin

  Hitler’s heir is in Prague.

  He is going to kill eleven million people.

  Two men have sworn to assassinate the Hangman.

  Even if it costs them everything.

  Introduction

  I can vividly remember the moment when this book began to take shape, in my mind at least. Back in the year 2000, I came home from my day job and turned on the History Channel half way through a documentary on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich; a man I admit I was only dimly aware of.

  By the end of that programme, I was hooked on the tale of Operation Anthropoid, one of the most thrilling and extraordinary missions of the Second World War. I started devouring books on the Third Reich and the SOE, trainers of Heydrich’s would-be assassins, plus anything I could get my hands on about the Nazi occupation of the Czech capital and the mission to kill the Nazi general. I was determined to recount this story in a novel.

  The cast of characters features virtually every senior figure in Nazi Germany, as well as Winston Churchill, the Czech President in exile, Eduard Beneš, the head of his secret service, and the incredibly courageous members of resistance networks in Prague, who lived under constant threat of exposure, torture, and summary execution, and of course Gabčík and Kubiš, the men chosen for the mission. I flew to Prague and went to the key locations in this book, including the Church of St Cyril and St Methodius; now a shrine to the men and women involved in this story, visited by thousands from all over the world each year.

  Reinhard Heydrich is perhaps not as well-known as other leading Nazis like Himmler, Göring, Hess, Bormann or Goebbels but he was an immensely powerful, much-feared, senior figure in Hitler’s inner circle and considered his eventual heir. Heydrich was Heinrich Himmler’s deputy and the head of the Reich Main Security Office, which oversaw the Gestapo. He was also Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, which made him dictator of the former Czech territories, holding the life or death of its entire Slav population in his hands, ruling over them all from Hradčany Castle and executing so many (ninety-two in his first three days and thousands were to follow) he became known as ‘The Butcher of Prague’ and ‘The Hangman’. He is also universally acknowledged as the true architect of the Holocaust. Hitler called him ‘the man with the Iron Heart’.

  What struck me most about Reinhard Heydrich was his lack of compassion, empathy or need for friends of any kind. Even in the SS he was known as ‘the blond beast’, yet he was not without talent. Heydrich was a virtuoso violinist and an expert skier, an Olympic standard fencer and a man who flew combat missions during the early years of the war, so he did not lack courage. His obvious abilities were almost entirely devoted to his own ruthless self-advancement, however. When he was tasked with the extermination of an entire race by Adolf Hitler, it seems he never once doubted the morality of the undertaking, merely fretting about the length of time it would take him to accomplish the systematic murder of eleven million men, women and children of Jewish origin. At Wannsee, Heydrich chaired the only meeting from which minutes have survived to prove genocide was the Nazis’ preferred ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question.

  If I found Heydrich to be a fascinating, albeit almost wholly evil character, I was just as intrigued by Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, the men who volunteered to kill ‘the Hangman’, for entirely different reasons. These two incredibly brave individuals risked everything to strike back on behalf of a defeated nation, in a move designed to preserve its very existence, and the more I learned about them, the more determined I became to tell their story.

  It took me three and a half years to research then write the first draft of Hunting the Hangman. The book secured me a literary agent and a year or so later we were sitting down with an editor interested in publishing the book. I then became bogged down in interminable rewrites, including the creation of fictitious episodes that ‘fleshed out’ the story, partly at the behest of the publisher and partly because I was trying to second guess what he wanted
, which is always a risky business. I ended up with a bloated, part-fact, part-fiction novel that didn’t really work and, along the way, the publisher’s interest waned.

  Undeterred, I went on to write six more books and, when each of them in turn was published, I promised myself I would one day return to this story and finally do it justice. Prompted partly by the seventy fifth anniversary falling in 2017 and the release of not one but two Hollywood movies (Anthropoid and The Man with the Iron Heart that no matter how good, could not possibly tell the whole story), I finally put aside the time to do this. I blew the dust off Hunting the Hangman and rewrote it meticulously, removing every fictitious part of it and simply sticking to the core story. To the best of my knowledge, everything that happens in this book actually occurred, though I obviously had to imagine dialogue between the characters and I took one liberty, by setting a scene in Kutná Hora that likely happened elsewhere in reality. When you reach that point in the book you will realise why I found this location irresistible.

  The story of the attempt by Gabčík and Kubiš to bring down one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich and its terrible aftermath needed no other embellishment from me. Thankfully I found a publisher in No Exit who agreed and shared my fascination with Operation Anthropoid, for which I am supremely grateful. So here it is; one of the most exciting, exhilarating, dramatic and devastating incidents of the Second World War and all of it true. I hope you find this story as intriguing as I do.

  Howard Linskey – May 2017

  Cast of Characters

  Josef Gabčík & Jan Kubiš: chosen to carry out the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich for Operation Anthropoid

  Reinhard Heydrich: SS OberGruppenführer, Reichsprotektor Bohemia and Moravia, Chief of the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office), Himmler’s deputy, architect of the Holocaust

  Anton Svoboda: originally selected for Operation Athropoid

  Eduard Beneš: Exiled President of Czechoslovakia

  Edward Taborsky: Private Secretary to President Beneš

  František Moravec: Head of the Czechoslovak Secret Service in exile

  Emil Strankmüller: Major; Moravec’s deputy; recruited Kubiš and Gabčík for Operation Anthropoid

  Winston Churchill: British Prime Minister

  Anthony Eden: British Foreign Secretary

  Ron Hockey: Flight Lieutenant, RAF; pilot of Halifax Bomber used to parachute Gabčík and Kubiš into occupied territory

  Anna Malinová: girlfriend of Jan Kubiš

  Liběna Fafek: girlfriend of Josef Gabčík

  Paul Thümmel: ‘Agent 54’ – German double agent who spied for Czech secret service

  Silver A Team:: Lieutenant Alfréd Bartoš, Sergeant Josef Valčík & Corporal Jiří Potůček

  Silver B Team: Vladimír Škacha & Jan Zemek

  Outdistance Team: Lieutenant Adolf Opálka, Sergeant Karel Čurda & Corporal Ivan Kolařík

  Bioscope Team: Sergeant Josef Bublík & Sergeant Jan Hrubý

  Tin Team: Sergeant Jaroslav Švarc & Sergeant Ludvík Cupal

  Jindra Resistance: Ladislav Vaněk, Jan Zelenka, Network Prague : ‘Aunt Marie’ Moravec, Ata Moravec, František Šafařík, Josef Novotný

  Father Vladimír Petřek: Church of St Cyril & St Methodius

  Adolf Hitler: Führer, Nazi Germany

  Rochus Misch: Hitler’s bodyguard

  Heinrich Himmler: Reichsführer SS

  Walter Schellenberg: Head of the Reich’s Foreign Intelligence Service

  Karl Frank: State Secretary Bohemia and Moravia – Heydrich’s deputy in Prague

  Martin Bormann: Adolf Hitler’s private secretary, head of the Reich Chancellery

  Adolf Eichmann: organiser of Heydrich’s Wannsee Conference

  Heinz Pannwitz: Head of Anti-sabotage Section Prague Gestapo

  Max Rostock: SS Hauptsturmführer tasked with destroying Lidice

  Lina Heydrich: Wife of Reinhard Heydrich

  Johannes Klein: Heydrich’s driver

  1

  ‘The people need wholesome fear.

  They want to fear something.

  They want someone to frighten them

  and make them shudderingly submissive’

  Ernst Röhm, Head of the SA (Hitler’s Brown Shirts),

  Assassinated by the SS on the Night of the Long Knives

  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 this and not Beneš.

  ‘How indeed?’ said Beneš. ‘That part I will leave up to you.’

  The President looked smaller here with everything hemmed into his office in the old abbey at Aston Abbotts. His desk was an unfeasible 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 and it towered 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 favourite.’

  ‘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 bolthole. 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, a 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 realised 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 realised what he was getting at.

  ‘We’ll only get one chance. Fail and Heydrich won’t travel anywhere again without an armoured 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?’ and Beneš nodded. ‘Good men would know that already,’ he assured his President.

  2

  ‘Set Europe ablaze!’

  Winston Churchill’s instruction to Hugh Dalton, Minister for Economic Warfare, on the creation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), July 1940

  Josef Gabčík 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 towards 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.