THE DOER

      It was dark when Dr. Jarolslav Havlicek stepped off the tram at the Staromestska Station in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. As one of the wealthiest men in the Czech Republic, he could easily afford to take a taxicab to his home across the Vltava River in Mala Strana.  He was a man of strong beliefs and habits not easily broken.  One of them was to pay homage to his ancestors, many of whom had been dragged from their homes by the Nazis shortly after they marched into Prague in 1939.  Havlicek, then twelve years old, had been dragged along with them.

      As he walked along Krizovnicka toward Karluv Most, he said his nightly prayer for his father and mother.  Both had been killed at the Terecin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where Havlicek had worked for five years carrying dead bodies for the Nazis to the mass graves, until, at the age of 18, he was released when the Allied Forces captured Terecin in 1945.

      Generally regarded as the most brilliant financial mind in the Czech Republic, he was often called the Alan Greenspan of Eastern Europe.  The first time he’d heard that, he had jokingly told the reporter that he thought of Greenspan as the Jarolslav Havlicek of America.

      He turned onto Karluv Most, known worldwide as The Charles Bridge.  With its beautiful statues of Czechoslovakian saints, it was featured in almost every movie filmed in Prague for the last twenty years.  Still, few moviegoers knew the names of the saints that dominate the best known view of Prague.  Havlicek smiled as he thought that even few cardinals in the Vatican probably knew that Luitgard, Adelbaert, Ludmilla, Procopius, Sigismund, and Vitus were among those canonized by the Catholic Church.

      The pedestrian bridge was fairly deserted at 10:00 p.m. compared to the great amount of traffic that crossed it during the day.  As he crossed its center, a man sitting on the ledge in the moonlight shadow of the statue of St. John Nepomuk, stood and said in perfect Czech, "Dobry Vecer, Doktora Havlicek."

      "Dobry Vecer," said Havlicek cautiously, as he did not recognize the man.

       The man extended his hand and Havlicek instinctively shook it.  Havlicek immediately looked at his own hand, which was already in pain, then at the face of the man who was carefully lifting him and setting him on the ledge of the bridge. 

      The man whispered softly, “the pain won’t last very long.  The primary advantage of the drug is that it is almost impossible to detect in an autopsy.”  Dr. Havlicek tried to scream but no sound came from his lips.  The man looked back toward the Old Town side, then ahead toward the Little Quarter side, and saw no one looking in his direction. He gave Dr. Havlicek a gentle push.  Havlicek fell over backward into the Vltava River.  The last thing Havlicek saw was the famous castle, Prazsky Hrad, upside down as he entered the water head first.

      As the doer walked toward the Little Quarter end of the bridge, he also looked at the castle.  “What a fitting ending,” he said to himself, “drowning under the statue of St. John Nepomuk.”  The doer was one American who knew that St. John Nepomuk had been bound and thrown from the Charles Bridge into the Vltava River by Wenceslas IV in 1393.