My father was in a bigger room with several beds, but his bed was isolated from the rest so we had some privacy to talk. He was bedridden and visibly frail, but alert. He was almost 70 years old. When the Communists released him from his second imprisonment in 1962, they brought him home on a stretcher. The doctors were predicting he would die within 3 months. He had serious heart and lung damage from tuberculosis he contracted in prison. He had very strong will and he lasted until 1965, even if he was most of the time very sick.
My mother, my sister, and I were all there that day. He wanted to talk with each of us alone. When I talked to him, I told him that I planned to leave Czechoslovakia and that I wanted to join the CIA to work against the Communist government. He told me not to do that, since in every spying organization unless you are the top dog, you will be used and if needed they will give you up. He asked me to take care of my mother and my sister, regardless of what happened. He also told me to try to contact in the West Count Podstatzky and Anna Von Hardtmuth, since my father and mother knew them very well. During the Nazi occupation they provided my father with intelligence against Germans, which my father passed to the Czech government in exile in London, and my father helped them when they had to leave Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover in 1948, to be able to take as much money as possible with them. He felt they would help me if I found them.
I told him that I wished he had told me more details about his activities against the Germans and against the Communist government in 1948. His explanation was that living in a Communist country, such knowledge could be dangerous to us and to others.
At some point during those same hospital visits — I no longer remember if it was that day or another day we were there — my father said he wanted to go home to die in his home and not in the hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors, including my cousin who was a heart specialist, all told us that he would not survive the transportation from the hospital. When he was told that, he appealed specifically to me, that I was the strong one, to insist that they take him home. I also had to take into consideration my mother’s state and told him sorry, no. That was very hard for me and to this day I feel bad about it.
He died that night. I had already left for work the next morning when the hospital called our apartment. My mother called me at work to let me know.
I moved quickly after that. The first problem was my job at Tesla, the electronics company where Kudibal had found me a position in December 1964. I was working there as an electronic technician assisting electrical engineers developing new transmitters for the army. It was a really nice, cushy job. I was attending night school in Electrical Engineering at Charles University and I could study during working hours. My bosses were very understanding and accommodating about my studies. Unfortunately, this job had an unintended consequence, since working in the development of army transmitters automatically disqualified anyone from getting secret police approval to go to any Western country like Austria.
Through a friend of a friend who worked inside CEDOK, the state-run tourist agency, I found out that the only trip going through Vienna was a week-long bus tour to Yugoslavia and Hungary with a one-night stopover in Austria. That was the trip I needed to be on. There were three preferred industries in Czechoslovakia where your current employer had to allow you to leave for another job. One of them was Transportation. I applied for a job as a tram conductor in Prague and left Tesla at the end of June or beginning of July 1965, I no longer remember the exact date. There was no waiting period required after switching jobs.
On my first day as a conductor I met another new conductor, also named Jan — Honza — though I forgot his last name. We became good friends. We covered each other’s routes when needed, went for beer, and had some parties. He introduced me to 2 girls; one of them was working at a phone company switchboard and once in a while I picked up the phone at our apartment and she was on the phone and started talking to me. I enjoyed his company.
Sometime in late September or early October, Vaclav Belik, driver of the tram where I was often conductor, warned me that his friend from personnel department told him that this Honza is a secret policeman and was put there as a conductor to spy on me. I did not change my behavior toward him. I did not fully trust anyone at that point, since attempting to escape was a serious criminal offense and I could not afford a mistake.
Around the same time, Jan Kotva, my friend from the army, told me that the secret police came to interrogate him about me. The friend in the CEDOK office called me to let me know that my trip application was denied by the secret police. I went to the secret police headquarters to confront them about this. In the lobby of the secret police building on Bartolomejska Street in Prague, there was a person who asked me what I came there for. I told him I needed to speak with the secret police agent who did not approve my trip going through Austria. He said that if it was not approved, they would contact me themselves, but since I was there I should go with him to an office. He asked me why I thought they did not approve my trip. I told him that there could be 3 reasons, none of which were valid. One reason was my father’s political background, but since a year ago the Communist Party directive was that family members were no longer to be persecuted for political crimes committed by other family members. The second reason could be that I had been working on army transmitters at Tesla, but I had now been working for over 3 months as a tram conductor and was no longer privy to any potential secrets. The third reason could be that one of my friends, Josef Brozek, went to the United States, but he did not escape — he had proper permission to go study at a university where his father was a professor. His father had left Czechoslovakia before WWII, had a new family in the USA and was a US citizen. I told him that it was an accident that this particular trip went through Austria, since I wanted to go only to Yugoslavia and Hungary. But since they denied my trip, I would now insist on being allowed to go on it, so I could prove that I could be trusted.
Not long after, conductor Honza met me at a restaurant at the main train station above Wenceslas Square for a beer and he told me that the secret police questioned him about me and my political views and that he told them that I told him I wanted to go to North Vietnam to fight against Americans. Obviously, he was trying to gain my confidence by pretending to lie for me in my favor. That proved to me that he is indeed working for secret police. I thanked him and told him that my long term intention is to leave Czechoslovakia to west country and told him the same story I was telling everyone else: that it would be very difficult to make a living in the West, in a capitalist country, without a college degree, and since college education was free in Czechoslovakia I decided to finish my degree first, but that I still wanted to go on this trip since coming back from it would establish my good standing with the secret police for the next time I applied. He believed me, as far as I could tell. Soon after, I was told that secret police approved my trip.
Thinking about it later, the only explanation I have for the secret police putting 2 separate informants on me at that specific time is that they had a listening device in the hospital room when I spoke with my father. Otherwise it does not make sense.
To pay for the CEDOK trip I took a loan from the state bank, since I did not have the money saved.
In September, the CEDOK contact called our apartment and left a message with my sister that there was a space on a bus tour leaving October 28th, going through Vienna to Yugoslavia and Hungary. My sister confronted me. She guessed I was not planning to come back and threatened to turn me in to the secret police unless I called it off.
My mother took me to Mr. Tresnak, a trusted family friend, to talk to me about it. He was an older man; his wife was a good friend of my mother’s. They had a son who was older than me, though I did not know him very well. We visited them often at their apartment in the Letna area of Prague. He had to be involved with my father in gathering intelligence about Germans during WWII, but I knew nothing specific about that. He told me that he fully supported me leaving Czechoslovakia, but warned me that it was not easy to start from nothing in Western countries and that there could be many ups and downs, and he strongly suggested I finish my university degree first. He said he had contacts in the West who would help me if I ran into difficulties.
I listened to everything he said and then told him that I had taken his advice seriously and that I would follow his plan. But I still wanted to go on this trip, I said, since if I returned from the trip, the secret police would trust me next time I applied to go through Austria. My mother and my sister believed me. They believed I was coming back.
The only person who knew I was not coming back was Kudibal and his girlfriend, Vera Motlikova.
Before October 28th, I still had practical problems. I did not have a suit, a winter coat, or a suitcase. The tram driver, Vaclav Belik who warned me about Honza, loaned me his suitcase and his suit. For a coat I had a raincoat called Sustak. We were allowed to take only 75 crowns out of the country and no documents.
The night before I left, Kudibal and Vera took me to a fancy restaurant near the Barrandov film studios in Prague for dinner. We discussed our plan and Vera was also looking forward to them leaving for Australia. Kudibal gave me 2 collector coins and told me to sell them in case I needed money in an emergency. He also gave me the address of his cousin in the USA to write him in case I needed help. That was the last time I saw Otto Kudibal.
That morning, on my way to the bus stop, I had a bad toothache. I stopped at the dentist on my street. They gave me 2 choices: fit a crown, or pull the tooth. I asked if they could do the crown right then. They said no, I would need to come back several more times for that. I told them to pull it. I walked to the bus stop with 3 stitches in my jaw and a swollen mouth, carrying a borrowed suitcase with a borrowed suit inside and 75 crowns in my pocket.
My goodbye to my mother was casual. For all she knew, I was coming back in a week.