A Letter from Afar

While Frederick pondered the future in the hot springs, Budweis City awoke at dawn in the depths of winter. The leaden sky hung low, and fine snow drifted down, blanketing a city once ravaged by war that was now struggling, bit by bit, to rise from the ruins.

The shattered walls and rubble had long since been cleared away, and the snow had draped the newly built houses in a pristine silver mantle.

Ever since the "Maria Plan" began, the city had changed dramatically from month to month. Along the newly paved concrete streets, fresh brick buildings radiated vitality.

On the outskirts of the city, a plume of white steam rose as the first train of the day pulled away from the station, loaded with cargo.

Smoke was beginning to rise from the city's chimneys, and a faint smell of it lingered in the cold air.

Not far from the railway station, the grandest red-brick building in the city was gradually coming to life.

Behind the Holáček Brewery's office building, its tall chimney had already begun belching thick white smoke into the sky.

The factory's owner, Holáček, mayor of Budweis City and director of the brewery, stepped through the office building's entrance, wrapped in a biting chill.

He had not even had time to take off his thick woolen hat, flecked with sparkling snow, before his anxious gaze swept across the lobby and settled on his secretary, who was waiting respectfully nearby.

"That batch of beer from yesterday," he asked. His breath stretched into a long plume of white in the cold air. "Has it been sent to Carlsbad?"

There was a hint of tension in his voice, as if the fate of that beer were bound up with his own life and fortune—and even with the very breath of