The Guillotine Frequency

Prague, December 5th, 1940, 8:15 a.m.

Marie, who just finished tending to her one year old baby, heard the jumbled cacophony of beeps and buzzes coming from the living room, alongside the ceaseless cursing and frustrated hissing of her husband. She peaked into the room and asked; “Honey, what are you doing?”

“The radio, it’s busted,” said Karel. “Were you playing around with it again?” He glanced at his wife. She looked embarrassed, though her ice-blue eyes didn’t quite fit into that picture, like paper cut outs plastered on a face they didn’t belong to.

“I must have been,” she said. “Sorry.”

He turned back to the radio. He kept turning the two nobs at its bottom, left, right, then left again and right again, but to no avail. He cursed and hit the top of the rectangular wooden box with his fist. Then, a voice came out of it.

“Lion one, did you receive the package?”

“HAH,” Karel cheered, throwing his hands up in triumph. “Take that, you stupid damn thing!”

“Lion two, we’ve got it,” another voice said. “When are we doing this?”

“Wait,” Karel said, concerned. “What the hell is this?”

“Be ready at thirteen hundred, black limousine with white rims and golden handles.”

Black limousine? Karel thought. With white rims and golden handles, that sound’s like…

“What’s the street again, Lion 1?”

“Raichenberg street, Lion 2, how many times must I tell you?”

“That’s the old Liberecká street, right? God, I hate these new German names.”

“Yes, goddamn it! Now cut the chatter! Thirteen hundred, Raichenberg street, black limousine, white rims, golden handles. Lion 1, out.”

Then, silence. One heavier and emptier than Karel had ever experienced before. “My God,” he said, shaking. “Do you know what that was, Marie?” She shook her head in befuddlement, though her eyes said otherwise. “I think that was a resistance broadcast. We just heard a goddamn resistance broadcast.” Pause. “I think they’re going to kill my boss.”

“What, you mean Herr Heydrich? How do you know?”

“Don’t be so hollow, Marie! The limousine? The street? Thirteen o’clock? They obviously want to get him on his way to lunch with his wife.”

“But, why would they want to do that?”

Karel thought about it for a while. Why would they want to kill the head of the city’s Central Post Office? Sure, having direct access to all the letters sent to and from the city is a powerful position, but what good would it do them to kill him?

“I’m not sure,” he said.

He sat on the sofa in silence. Marie stood leaning on the doorway, behind her the baby started crying.

“Don’t you want to see to him?” Karel asked, almost unconsciously, his mind in another world.

Suddenly, Marie raised one hand to her cheek with her index finger raised and smiled, as if a light bulb had just turned on in her head. Karel saw the excitement on her face, but once again her eyes just didn’t quite fit.

“Why don’t you just let them do it?” she said, casually.

“What?”

“Just let ‘em do it,” she smiled. “You’re the assistant director of the office, so you’re next in line, no?”

“Marie, what are you saying?! Are you even listening to yourself?”

“Well, what then, you gonna tell him you ‘accidentally’ tuned in on the resistance’s frequency and overhead their plan to murder him?”

“Yes! What else am I supposed to do?”

“Right, ‘cause that won’t bring a legion of SS agents snooping around our apartment.” She sighed. “Look, honey, this is your chance for a quick promotion. You deserve it, so don’t squander it by doing anything stupid, alright?” Karel opened his mouth to speak, when Marie suddenly grabbed the radio, turned it off and walked out of the room.

“What are you doing?” he shouted into the hallway.

“I’m gonna smash the radio with your hammer,” she shouted back.

“Oh, for the love of…. Why?”

“To get rid of the evidence, just in case the SS do come snooping around. Now go to work or you’ll be late!” The baby’s cries became louder.

“Can’t you do something about that kid!” Karel shouted.

He heard the hammer falling down hard, shattering the radio.

Prague, December 5th, 1940, 9:00 a.m.

Despite the freezing winter cold outside, Karel was sweating like a pig by the time he arrived to the office. Everyone he met on the way to his desk greeted him cheerfully and then immediately asked him if he’s feeling alright. When his boss came up to his desk with a stack of papers for Karel to manage, he took one look at him and said; “You alright, Karl? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Karel smiled awkwardly and blabbered something about waking up wrong that morning. The whole day he spent checking his watch every two minutes and thinking about what he should do. Should he let it happen, like Marie told him? Or should he warn his boss and save his life?

The hours passed without him getting much work done, though he was sweating through his suit, until, after a while of successfully refusing to check his watch, he looked at it.

12:55

His heart picked up the pace. Just then, he heard the roar of the black limousine parking outside his window. He looked out and saw his boss going down the baroque building’s steps into the street.

Karel grabbed his coat, hesitated for a second or two, “No, don’t be stupid,” he muttered to himself and ran through the isles of desks, down the stairs and finally out the front door. There, trying to catch his breath, he saw the chauffeur opening the passenger seat’s door for his boss to get in. Everything seemed to slow down. He looked around the street to try and find the attackers. Men in long coats and hats carrying suitcases, a patrol of a couple of German soldiers, cars driving through the street, a motorbike carrying two.

The motorbike. Both of the men sitting on it were wearing winter scarves covering their faces. The bigger one, sitting in the back, was reaching with one hand for something under his coat.

The motorbike!

“Herr Heydrich,” Karel shouted through his lungs. “GET DOWN!”

He ran down the steps, and just as his boss turned around to look at him, he grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him down to the floor. Lying on their stomachs, they heard an ear-shattering barrage of bullets flying out of a machine gun, into the limousine, piercing the metal and flying out the other side, the glass windows shattering, their shards falling down on them, a woman screaming somewhere and the chauffeur’s body hitting the paved sidewalk. Then the hail of bullets stopped as suddenly as it began and they heard the motorbike ride out.

The attack took all of five seconds, but to them it felt like hours.

“Mein Gott,” said Heydrich. He looked around him and saw the aftermath of the bullet storm, including the dead chauffeur lying next to him. He shuddered. “You just saved my life, Karl.”

Karel didn’t say another word.

Prague, December 6th, 1940, 14:00 p.m.

Karel was shaking. The SS interrogation room was cold and dark, with only a single lamp throwing a weak light on the table in front of him. Yes, interrogation room, that’s what this is, Karel finally began to realise. He was supposed to arrive at one o’clock to give his statement - he hadn’t planned on saying anything about the radio - but they kept him waiting in that room for an hour now.

He wasn’t here to give a statement. He was here to be interrogated. That made him shudder more than the cold of the room ever could. He felt his hands and face wet with sweat, his shirt sticking to his body. He never thought he would end up in an SS interrogation room. Karel was among the first to bow down to the Nazis, being allowed to keep his job and property, but he only did that to protect his wife and their new child. Yes, that’s why he did it, that’s why he did it…

That’s why I did it, that’s why! And I’ve been loyal this whole time! The whole time!

Finally, the door opened. In walked a man dressed in the all black uniform of the SS. His face was pale with eyes as blue as the sky, and almost metallic looking blond hair.

“Herr Karl Schwartz,” his voice was as sharp as a bayonet and as cold as the December winds. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” He sat down across Karel, placing a suitcase as black as his uniform gently on the table.

“Of course,” Karel stuttered. “I -”

“Or should I call you, Karel Černý instead?” the SS officer said in broken Czech. Karl Schwartz was Karel’s Germanified name.

“What?” Karel squeaked.

The SS officer spat on the floor. “What an utterly disgusting language, Pfu!”

“Look, I -”

“Did you know of the attack before it happend?”

“No, I, I,… No!”

“One more time now, Karl. Did you know of the attack before it happend?” He articulated every word neatly. Karel, shaking and sweating and cold and…. What the hell is happening?! I didn’t do anything wrong, nothing! It’s not my fault that I, that I…

“Yes, I knew,” he hurled out. “Bu-but I’m not a rebel! I was tuning the radio and I accidentally tuned in on a resistance frequency, it’s not my-”

“That’s not what your wife told us.” The words hit Karel like shrapnel. A metal hand grabbed his heart and squeezed it, hard.

“My…, my wife?” His voice broke at every word, his breath shaking like a thin tree in a thunder storm.

“Yes, she came by this morning with a gift.” The SS officer opened the black suitcase and pushed it towards Karel. It was the smashed radio with a microphone Karel had never even seen before. “She said that she caught you listening to the terrorist’s frequency in your bathroom. You then told her to smash the radio and throw it in the garbage, so as to get rid of any evidence, and when she refused, you threatened her with her and your son’s lives.” He paused and inspected his pray. Karel was soaked and shivering.

“As if all this wasn’t evidence enough,” he continued. “Your coworkers said you were acting oddly all day. ‘Fidgety’, according to many, including Herr Heydrich. You were planning to help advance the goals of the terrorists by killing Herr Heydrich and taking his position, thereby being in control of the Central Post Office. Did I forget anything?”

A tear went down Karel’s cheek, while the fear and emotional pain of betrayal slowly processed and turned into physical torture. The little lamp on the table turned into a hot sun burning his eyes and melting his face, and the chair he was sitting on might as well have been made of knives burying their razor sharp blades into him. The pain gripped his entire body and encompassed all his senses. Like cracked porcelain, he was ready to shatter at the slightest touch.

And all he could think was; Why?

“Why…” he whispered. Then, he slowly raised his head and looked the SS officer in his bright blue eyes. Suddenly, he jumped up from his seat, making the officer flinch. “HAIL HITLER!” he yelled, raising his arm in the Nazi salute. “HAIL HITLER! MAY THE REICH STAND FOR A THOUSAND YEARS! HAIL HITLER!”

The SS officer shouted something and two armed guards barged into the room. They grabbed Karel under his arms and dragged him into the hallway. He was hailing and kicking and shouting praises of Hitler and the Nazi regime the whole time. Then, in his panic, he recognized the eyes like ice, staring at him intently.

Marie walked up to him and, like completing a puzzle, her eyes finally matched the rest of her face. She leaned close to him. “You always were a coward,” she said, her voice burning with a cold flame. “I regret not doing this sooner,” she whispered.

“You ungrateful bitch,” he wheezed. “YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH! YOU STUPID COW! DON’T YOU GET IT?! I DID IT ALL FOR YOU! FOR YOU!” The two guards tightened their grips, restricting his movements to just weak, short kicks. Then, Karel kicking and screaming, the guards dragged him away.

“A truly despicable man,” the SS officer said, standing next to Marie.

“Truly,” she said.

“Do not mourn him, do not waste you energy on that piece of garbage.”

“I won’t.” They stood in silence for a while. Marie sighed. “But what am I going to do now,” all of a sudden, she sounded scared and fragile.

“You need a real man,” the SS officer almost purred. “A pure-blooded Aryan, not some dirty Slavic scum.” Suddenly, he grabbed her arm tightly and turned her around, then he put one hand around her waist and the other on her backside. He held her with an iron grip. “What do you say?” The words slithered out of his mouth like a snake. Just then, something in her face shifted and it was as if those ice-blue eyes once again belonged to someone else.

Prague, December 5th, 1940, 23:45 p.m.

Marie knocked on the brewery’s door. Knock, knock, stop. Knock, stop. Knock, knock, stop.

The door swung wide open and a strong arm pulled her into the darkness, then swiftly closed it.

“What are you-”

“Shhh!” The large man in the dirty shirt dragged her to the back room, opened the door and pushed her in. Almost tripping, she recovered and turned around at him, only to find him holding a gun to her head. “What the hell happend, Marie?!”

“Hey! Calm down, Pavel,” a slender man in a gray suit put his hand on the big man’s arm.

“Oh, come on, Michal! She has some explaining to do, don’t you think?” Pavel said.

“Yes, yes she does, so stop being silly and put the gun down! Let her speak!” Pavel looked at Marie, grunted and lowered the gun. Though he kept it in his hand. “Alright, Marie,” the slender man named Michal sighed. “What the hell did happen?”

“It’s not my fault, alright?” She sounded worried, but her eyes remained almost unreadable. “He was tuning the radio this morning and accidentally found the frequency.”

“Bullshit,” Pavel growled. “You don’t just tune in on the frequency by chance!”

“Well, he did.”

“Ok, ok, so let’s say he did find it by chance. Why didn’t you warn us?” Michal asked.

“I couldn’t. He was scared. He wanted me to destroy the radio immediately after that. I tried talking him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me do it in front of him, so I had no time to connect the microphone and contact you.”

“Why didn’t he break it himself?”

She shrugged. “He wanted to share the consequences? I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I simply couldn’t do anything about it, so I tried talking him into letting it happen instead.”

“What did you tell him, exactly?”

“The truth. If his boss dies, he gets the job. As was the plan.”

“Yea, well now the plan’s botched, ain’t it,” Pavel said, stomping around the room nervously. A moment of silence followed.

“Marie,” Michal spoke almost solemnly. “Those SS dogs are gonna be all over this and they won’t stop until they find someone to punish. We have to distract them somehow.” He paused for a moment. “And we have to cut Karel loose. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

“Alright then,” Michal said, hiding his surprise at her bluntness. “Go to the SS office in the morning, tell them…, tell them the plan. Tell them that you had no part in it, that he forced you to keep your mouth shut, just pin it all on him!” She nodded.

“Leave the SS to me,” she said.

“Is Karel home now?”

“No, he’s getting wasted at the pub.”

“Good, go on home then, before he finds you not there.”

She nodded again, wished them both a good night, then walked herself out.

“I’m not.” Michal muttered.

“Huh?”

“That’s the most honest thing she said tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re right, you know. You don’t just happen to tune in on a secret frequency at exactly the time of a thirty seconds long conversation to reveal an assassination plot months in the making on accident.

Not entirely on accident, at least.”