Reinhard kept shooting until the gun started producing only empty clicking noises in his hand. He proudly noted how steady his arm was. He proudly noted that he didn’t feel any pain, despite blood slipping through his fingers, staining his gray uniform. He started laughing even, softly at first and then louder, finding it particularly hilarious. Pathetic Czechs! They thought they could kill him. Him, Reinhard Heydrich whom they appropriately gave the name of Young Evil God of Death. Didn’t they realize that Gods couldn’t be killed?
But then he suddenly couldn’t feel his legs anymore and sank to the ground, very much surprised by such a betrayal caused to him by his own body. Now, sharp, searing pain was there as well, together with the realization of his own mortality. His driver Klein was already kneeling next to him, muttering something unintelligible.
“Get that swine!” Reinhard yelled at him, pointing with his hand, with the gun still clasped tightly in it, in the direction in which one of the assassins disappeared.
Klein took off running, his shots sending the crowd, gathered around the tram, scrambling and screaming. Reinhard remained on the ground, supporting himself on his elbow, refusing to lie down despite the agony slowly radiating from the torn flesh in his back.
The street came into focus before his eyes, slowly, deliberately, frighteningly real. Alarmed faces, shouts, panic; the shimmer of the broken glass around him became tangible, mortifying. A woman appeared out of nowhere. Is Herr Protector all right? Does he need help? She’ll fetch someone at once – a blonde, German angel, God bless her. He watched her stop the car and argue with two men in its front seat, who kept throwing glances his way, none too thrilled with the idea of aiding their Protector. Fucking Czechs, Reinhard cursed to himself, should have lined them all against the wall from the very beginning…
The blonde was already pulling a confused driver out of another car – a Tatra van. He, too, was trying to protest something, but this time she would hear nothing of it.
“He’ll help you into the car, Herr Protector,” the blonde spoke to Reinhard with a reassuring smile.
Reluctantly, Reinhard allowed the Czech to help him to his feet, before growling, “I’ll walk myself,” and nearly fell again if the Czech hadn’t caught him in time.
Reinhard hated him with all his might at that moment. Hated the feeling of being helpless – for the first time in so many years; hated the gawking crowd around him; hated seeing his car with its rear blown up; hated the Czech’s hands on him as he helped him into the front seat.
“My briefcase,” Reinhard told the blonde, motioning to his car.
She promptly ran up to it, fetched his briefcase and arranged it on his lap.
“Are you comfortable?” She asked, looking over his tall frame cramped into a much-too-small passenger seat, with concern.
“No,” he admitted after a moment’s consideration. “I want to lie down in the back.”
The blonde was back to arguing with the driver in Czech as Reinhard felt more blood dripping through his fingers. He said nothing, just clenched his jaw tighter, pale and proud.
“He says, the van is full of shoe polish he delivers. It smells there.”
“I don’t care, just let me lie down.”
The blonde and the Czech helped him into the back of the van, where he lay on his stomach, one hand still clutching the gun on top of the briefcase that the blonde brought along. In the crook of his other arm, he carefully hid his face, twisted with pain and bitter disbelief. That was not how this was all supposed to end. He was much too young, much too strong, much too powerful to die now, killed by some fucking Czechs, in the back of a shoe polish delivery van. As the van finally started making its way towards the hospital, Reinhard bit into his sleeve, fighting the dizziness off. He wouldn’t die if he stayed alert. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t let them win.
In the hospital, there were more wide-eyed Czechs. Reinhard lost count of the number of times he asked for a German doctor to be sent in – they didn’t understand him. A young nurse took him to the operating room, helped him onto the table, removed his bloodied jacket, shirt, paused briefly staring at his half-undressed frame for a few seconds, muttered something in her incomprehensible language and ran off, leaving Reinhard to his devices.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He cursed out the nurse and her modesty; the damned bitch must have gone to fetch a male doctor to help him remove the rest of his clothes. At the rate this was going, he would die before they took pains to at least bandage him.
Much to his relief, two doctors appeared, at last, one of them German. Reinhard breathed through the pain as they examined his wound, his teeth clenched so tightly that he could hear them grind when yet another painful jab of pincers probed his torn flesh. The German explained that they needed to do an X-Ray. Reinhard scornfully refused the help and stood before the machine even though he was half-expecting his body to collapse any second now. Out of some inhuman willpower, he made it this far, still conscious, still standing before the damned machine, with a broken rib, perforated diaphragm, his thoracic cage damaged, and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his spleen. The German doctor was already saying something about an urgent operation; Reinhard shook his head, ghostly-white and stubborn as ever, demanding the best surgeon from Berlin to be flown in.
“The time is crucial, Herr Protector,” the doctor insisted.
Reinhard saw his face swim in front of his eyes. Fuck, so it was.
“Will I die if you don’t operate?”
“It is a possibility.”
“Can you at least summon the best specialist you have in Prague?”
“Of course, Herr Protector.”
Reinhard allowed him to take him back to the operating room, and only there he closed his eyes.
The SS guard opened the door, letting Frank in. Reinhard forced himself to raise his head from the pillow, searched his subordinate’s face for any clues. Frank smiled brightly and gave him his usual crisp salute. Only the stench of his cigarettes betrayed his state he so thoroughly tried to conceal. He must have been chain-smoking again, trying to calm his nerves.
Reinhard made an effort to part his lips. “Is it me or the Führer?”
“I beg your pardon, Herr Obergruppenführer?” Frank tilted his head to one side.
“You were smoking so much… because of me or the Führer? You informed him, didn’t you?”
Only a little over an hour had passed since the operation. Reinhard was still a bit dazed, but at least they provided him with enough morphine to numb the pain.
“I did, Herr Gruppenführer.” Frank lowered his eyes.
“Let me guess; he threw one of his rage fits, didn’t he?” A sneer twisted Reinhard’s mouth.
Frank concealed a quiet chortle. “He ordered to fly the best doctors for you from Berlin. They’ll make sure that the local ones did a good job.”
“What else?”
“He demands to shoot ten thousand Czechs in retribution.”
“Typical.” Reinhard closed his eyes, leaning back into the pillow. “And what about me?”
Frank fumbled with something in his pocket, thoroughly escaping his superior’s gaze.
“You can tell me. It’s all right.”
“He said, it was an idiotic thing that you did, driving in that open car like that. He said, that how could a man of your importance be so cretinous enough to be guilty of such self-neglect and something else to that effect. I apologize; those were his exact words.”
Reinhard appeared to be amused, much to Frank’s surprise. Or relief, if he were completely honest with himself.
“What of those two? Did you catch them yet?”
“I took the liberty of summoning the forces of the SS, the SD, the NSKK, the Gestapo, the Kripo, and three Wehrmacht battalions, in addition to the local police forces, which were already at our disposal. Overall, more than twenty thousand men are taking part in the operation. All the roads are blocked. The city is virtually sealed. We’ll find them, Herr Protector. You can rely on me.”
Reinhard nodded. Frank was his best man. He would get those two from under the pits of hell if needed. Reinhard could sleep soundly.