Chapter Seven Hundred Eighty-Six
31st December 1949
Berlin
It was a last night of this decade, the 1940s had dwindled down to only a few minutes. Good riddance, Kat thought to herself. This year couldn’t end fast enough to suit her. She’d spent the last week in the Hohenzollern Palace at Kira’s insistence in a suite of rooms that overlooked the Spree river. The fact that she was so beat up that she had nothing else to do but think about things.
Exactly ten years earlier she had been at Maria and Emil’s wedding and she’d never even flown on an airplane at that point. The Second World War wasn’t even thought of as a possibility yet at that point, though Kat now knew that Augustus Lang was already preparing for it. Douglas was a University Student in Montreal. In British Columbia, Henry Thomas and his wife Tatiana Nikolaevna were trying to figure out what to do about Tatiana’s sister Olga because they didn’t want their daughter reaching maturity in such isolated conditions. Unknown to them, they were rapidly running out of time. Ilse had just been transferred from the orphanage where she had spent her childhood to the State School for Girls while her mother was slipping away to addiction just a few blocks away. Hans had just returned from being in the field during the Spring and Summer Crisis in 1939 when the Second World War had nearly started during the Finland War and the chaotic days following the Reichstag bombing.
It had been Kat’s hope that the 1950s would be a time where she could just live her life in peace. It wasn’t looking like she was going to get what she wanted. Douglas had come with her from the hospital to the palace with Aunt Marcella as backup. Marcella was understandably upset when Doug had mentioned that Kat was prepared give up on their relationship over recent events.
“Katherine Katja Mischner, you took a solemn vow and I raised you better than this. To bail out at the first sign of adversity” Marcella said, Marcella saying Kat’s full name still had the power to freeze her in her tracks. “You agreed to spend your life with Doug and did you think it would all be roses?” Days later those words still stung. Marcella and Uncle Klaus had been together for more than thirty years and she had laid bare exactly how trite Kat was being.
As for the aftermath of the ambush, Kat had been visited personally by the President of the Berlin/Brandenburg Division of the Federal Police while she was recuperating. They were spinning her actions as heroic, not that she had run and hid, but once she had gotten herself free of the ambush she had the discretion and presence of mind not engage with heavily armed attackers. Minimizing the risk to herself and any of the thousands of civilians within the range of an automatic rifle. That was a complete load of crap, that was what Kat had said to the President. He had just smiled and said that she needed to learn to take her due. Then once the photo opportunity was through he left. There had been no word on what was happening next, but Kat feared that she was going to on the receiving end of another round of undeserved recognition. Why couldn’t people leave her alone?
Midnight rolled around, and Kat could hear people shouting and the pop of fireworks going off. Kat looked out the window at the flashes of light over the river.
“You ever just want to drive to Hamburg, then get on a ship and just keep on going?” She asked Doug.
Doug smiled, “I already did that” He said, “That’s how I ended up here.”
“That answer is both a beautiful and terrible” Kat replied.
“I’m extremely familiar with the concept” Doug said, and he kissed her on the forehead, “I’m going to bed, please try to get some sleep tonight.”
She sat there for a while looking out the window. She could hear Doug’s snoring in the next room. Eventually, she would join him, but every time she tried to sleep the instant she closed her eyes she saw the green tracers flying past the windshield of her car.
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Fireworks were going off over the city as Justyn watched the display. It was a bitterly cold night now that midnight had come and gone. Meyer Lansky had warned him that if he tried to make a grab for power he needed to see it through. Most of all if he was going to go after the more dangerous people who surrounded Otto Mischner then he had to roll all sixes and he couldn’t afford to miss. His men had come back a week earlier saying that they had shot up the car belonging to the Tigress of Pankow, leaving it a flaming wreck with her in it. The problem was that between the flames, smoke, rounds cooking off and the police response coming they’d failed to actually see a body.
He’d learned a few hours later that the Tigress was banged up but still very much alive. As of this time, no one on that side knew who he was. That was a good thing because while the Tigress couldn’t rouse a scorched earth direct assault against him she did potentially represent the one force in Germany he could never hope to defeat. The Institutional power of the Empire itself. Now that his men had tried and failed to end her he was reminded that few things were as scary as wounded tiger in the bush.
When he’d been in prison Justyn had a cellmate who’d spent a few years in America. The cellmate had told him about American Football and something called an audible. When the Quarterback saw the formation that the opposing defense was taking he needed to change the plan on the fly. He needed to change the plan to factor in the survival of the Tigress. There were a few ways that he saw that he could work this to his advantage.