January 13th, 1951

Krakow, Polish People's Republic

A conversation between gathered individuals at a nondescript cellar.

It had been years since they had last seen each other. Laying low, disbanded, and officially no longer enlisted after the Home Army ordered the stand-down in late 1945, and after the effective dissolution of WiN in 1947, it was only now - now, after the merger of the Government in Exile, and only after friend after friend was arrested, tried, and killed. They had had enough.

Stanisław Sosabowski looked at the three others in front of him. This was all that was left...? He sighed. He had smuggled himself into Poland, officially MIA to both east and west, trying to smuggle his own family out of Poland before international tensions had flared up to a boiling point as of now, with soldiers on the very borders of Germany. It was clear nobody would be getting out from under the Iron Curtain anytime soon.

He broke the tense silence, finally. "Then it's just us five...?"

Stanisław Jankowski gave a reluctant nod. "If you're telling me that OSE denied getting the rest of the Cichociemni in, then... yeah. It's just us, sir."

Sosabowski rubbed his temples. "Nothing left of WiN?"

"Well," Adam Borys now spoke up, "Yes and no. The hierarchy is all gone. No leadership, but there are still local cells, yeah. Mostly helping get people back into civilian life, forging documents, getting jobs, that sort of thing."

A firm nod or two was Sosabowski's response. "Alright. Here's what we're going to do: Take stock of local cells, bolster them up, and start setting up a new heirarchy from scratch. We know everyone here would trust the others in their lives, and would sooner kill themselves than give up anything. We've all been through the training." A pause as he turns his attention to the woman across from him in the damp cellar. "Do you have the list of VIP's?"

Elżbieta Zawacka recited from memory. "Władysław Raczkiewicz, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, Tomasz Arciszewski, Stanisław Ostrowski, Jerzy Hryniewski, Alfred Urbański, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski all entered the country under the pretext of joining the merger government after Potsdam. Komorowski has gone missing, though rumor through the WiNdmill is he's gone to ground somewhere around Warsaw - no doubt pissed to all hell. Everyone else on the import list is assumed being watched, marked, and under heavy surveillance. None hold any power in actuality. Raczkiewicz joined the PSL; everyone else is under an unspoken house arrest. Anyone unmentioned in politics is still in the UK."

"Why the hell did Raczkiewicz..." Sosabowski shook his head incredulously. "Man makes no sense. Okay. Prisoners of note?"

Bolesław Kontrym took a heavy drag from his cigar as Sosabowski made his next question, before responding. "Too many. Franciszek Niepokólczycki, Leopold Okulicki, Wincenty Kwieciński... Basically anyone in WiN, and any Silent Unseen not accounted for in the UK or here right now. Jan Rzepecki squealed like a pig, revealed almost everyone of note, and got a bullet for it."

"... got a bullet from who?"

Bolesław grunts as he puts the cigar back, giving a slightly muffled "Does it matter..?"

The silence returned to the room, only the sound of a cigar puff for a moment. Bolesław spoke up gruffly. "They shot Pilecki. Whispers are they're going to shoot a lot more soon. World's on fire, and Soviets just love to stoke the flames everywhere they can..."

Grunts of depressed affirmation responded as Sosabowski finally stood up. "Then let's start a few bushfires of our own while they're at it. Seems to me like there's a prison break long overdue. I'll be giving each of you your assignments individually, so that nobody knows what the others are doing, and send feelers out to individual cells of WiN and AK to get a grip on things. Scramble callsigns, work with each other at your discretion, but never reveal the whole picture to anyone. Any cells you establish answer to you and you only; have fallback plans in case you can no longer take information from the cells. Dismissed. Jankowski, we're starting with you, you stay. Let's get to work."