Reincarnated: Vive La France

A whistle cut through the night air just before the wire snapped.

Two men crouched beneath the bridge at Zdice, sweat freezing on their brows.

The explosives didn't detonate the line didn't carry ammunition, only timber but the message was sent.

Inside the War Ministry's night office, General Krejčí looked at the telegram without expression.

"Who authorized this?"

His aide, a captain barely thirty, didn't look up. "No one, sir."

Krejčí tapped the table.

Then said, almost to himself, "So it begins."

In a cellar beneath Vinohrady, seven men and three women met by candlelight.

They had no uniforms.

No arms.

No leader.

But they had names.

Lists.

Locations.

A map of printing presses, safe houses, and one shortwave transmitter they'd scavenged from a derelict airfield.

They called themselves S13 after the thirteenth article of the Czech constitution.

The Republic shall defend its democratic form.

They didn't speak of war.

They spoke of preparation.

A woman in glasses drew a circle around Domažlice.

"A German convoy is expected here within the week. They're distributing radios. Not for news. For orders."

A man across from her said, "We intercept?"

"Yes."

Henlein stood in Berlin's south wing, awaiting Goebbels.

The wait was longer than usual.

When he was finally admitted, Goebbels didn't look up from his papers.

Henlein spoke carefully.

"My field leaders are splintering. They've begun actions without coordination. Executions, forced flag marches, torch parades. One group stormed a Czech museum in Žatec. Burned everything not in German."

Goebbels closed a file.

"Have they broken anything we can't frame?"

"They've broken the wrong order. There is no chain of command left."

"Then the chain has served its purpose."

Henlein said nothing.

Goebbels rose and walked to the window.

"They know your face, Konrad. But now it's time they forget your name. It's time Sudetenland belongs to Germany, not Henlein."

Henlein stepped back, as if struck.

Goebbels didn't turn.

"You may rest now."

In Paris, a Czech diplomat placed a sealed envelope in the hands of a Le Temps editor.

Inside a classified dossier of German paramilitary movement in Karlovy Vary, including coded transmissions and shipment manifests signed by Reich officers.

The editor opened it slowly.

"Is it real?"

The diplomat's voice was dry.

"If it were false, Berlin would deny it before you finished reading."

The next morning, the story ran with a single headline.

"Evidence Mounts: Germany Arms Sudeten Militias as Czech Patience Wears Thin"

The story crossed the border in hours.

It reached Geneva by midday.

The League of Nations did not respond.

But their phones rang for hours.

Beneš was reading Le Temps when the British envoy returned.

Lothian did not sit.

"We did not expect you to go to the press."

"You asked us to concede," Beneš said without looking up. "I decided instead to inform."

Lothian's tone chilled. "You risk alienating your last allies."

Beneš stood and walked slowly to his bookshelf.

He removed a small volume.

Pressed it into Lothian's hands.

"Do you read Masaryk?"

"I read Whitehall."

"Then here's your translation. 'A republic must survive not only invasion, but negotiation.'"

Lothian left without another word.

Later that evening, Beneš sent a cable to Krofta in Geneva.

"Start drafting our defense to the League. Not for their sake. For history's."

In Brno, children were no longer required to sing.

The mandate had been lifted.

Replaced instead with silence.

One teacher, a former violinist, decided differently.

At the end of lessons, she opened her case and played.

Dvořák again.

But slower now.

At first, the children listened.

Then, one by one, they hummed.

Their mouths didn't move.

Just sound.

A deputy from the German liaison office stood in the hall, frowning.

He asked, later, what the melody was called.

No one answered.

That night, two members of S13 placed a package beneath a telegraph pole near Jablonec.

It wasn't explosive.

It was wired to hijack the line.

They waited.

At 02:13, the German broadcast began.

A message about "Czech aggression" and "Sudeten reprisals."

Then their signal overtook it.

One line, repeated.

Over and over.

"We do not march on German homes. Why do they march on ours?"

The override lasted ninety-seven seconds.

But it was long enough for four German outposts to report jamming.

And for five Czech towns to hear something that wasn't Berlin.

At the castle, Beneš received a hand-written note slid under his study door.

There was no name.

No greeting.

Just a poem.

"They wait with boots

On streets we swept.

They smile with guns

Behind their breath.

We carry maps

Not yet erased.

But ink is slow

And war moves fast."

Beneš folded the note and placed it inside his journal.

He didn't sleep that night.

In the hills near Třinec, a Czech courier was stopped by a checkpoint bearing German flags.

The guards were local men.

One of them barely eighteen waved him down with a flashlight.

When he asked for papers, the courier hesitated.

"You're not border agents," he said.

"No," the boy answered.

"Then what are you?"

The boy looked past him.

Then said, "I'm what comes next."

The courier turned his bicycle around.

He never delivered the message.

But he remembered the face.

And later, he wrote it down.

At dawn, Krejčí convened a secret staff meeting.

Three generals.

One colonel.

No civilians.

He tapped the table.

"They are within our soil. Operating freely. Uniformed without admission. Orders without flags. This is no longer diplomacy."

The colonel asked, "Do we act?"

Krejčí answered, "We prepare."

He pulled a folder from beneath the table.

A map with shaded zones centralized mobilization positions, hidden artillery reserves, encrypted rail paths.

The plan was called Vlna.

The Wave.

"Five days. No announcements. We reinforce the heart, not the edges."

"And if Berlin notices?"

"They already have."

In Berlin, Hitler held a private audience with Göring and Keitel.

A final plan lay open on the desk.

"Two weeks," Keitel said. "That's the window."

"And the excuse?" Göring asked.

Hitler smiled.

"They'll give it to us. They're Czech. And they still believe decency will save them."

He marked the date.

February 14.

No title.

Just a name.

Fall Grün.

In Prague, Marta found Beneš staring out into a rain-dimmed courtyard.

She carried a letter.

He waved it off.

"I already know," he said.

"You do?"

He nodded. "They've set the date. Even if we haven't."

She folded the letter quietly.

After a while, she said, "You should sleep."

"I will."

"Soon?"

"When the rain stops."

The rain did not stop.