Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Ninety-Two
5th October 1958
Mitte, Berlin
The flashing lights of the emergency vehicles were more than enough to let Kat know that something out of the ordinary was going on. She saw a battered Zella sitting in the open door of an ambulance with Maria. Kat couldn’t help but notice that even in the state that she currently was in, Zella was looking at the motorcycles of the Traffic Police with envy. Kat hoped that she never changed. Emil was talking to Sven Werth, they had been the ones who had sent for her.
“Glad you came” Emil said, “We need your opinion on this.”
“I don’t see what I can do regarding traffic accidents” Kat replied, “Or why Sven is here. How is this a Federal matter?”
“I don’t know what you might have heard” Werth replied, “But this wasn’t just a traffic accident and you’ll see why I’m here. Show her.”
With that one of the uniformed Traffic Officers lifted the tarp that was covering the body. Kat saw in the light from the portable floodlights that it was Henning Krause, her father’s lackey, and that someone had cut his throat.
“We think that he managed to stagger out into the street after someone did that to him” Sven said, “There was a report of a fight on the sidewalk in front of a house on this block in the minutes before he got hit.”
“I’m not surprised that this is where Henning ended up” Kat replied, “He was a minor player. After my father died, the rail workers cleaned house and he wasn’t regarded as enough of a threat to give the boot to. Still though, he had his thumb in several pies.”
Kat could now see why Sven was here, it also explained her presence. Anytime one of her father’s people turned up dead, there was a good chance that a power struggle was happening in the shadows. She might have been tempted to say that the animals were eating each other, but ordinary people tended to get hurt if they got caught in it. This time it was Zella who had blundered into what could turn out to be a massive can of worms.
“Ordinarily we might have declared this a service to the community and not exactly have made it a priority” Sven said, “But this time Markgraf von Holz’s daughter is involved.”
Kat nodded. That meant that the powers that be inside the Federal and State Police would be kicking over every rock they could until someone paid a price for this. Even without Zella’s personal connections, she was exactly the sort of person that they were supposed to protect.
Paris, France
“Now that you’ve made it into orbit, I think that you’ll find it is only a matter of time until Jackie finds a way to top that, somehow” Jacqueline Auriol said, “Though I don’t see how she’ll do it this time, not yet anyway.”
The rivalry between the French Aviatrix and her American counterpart, Jackie Cochran, was famous. The two of them had been beating each other’s speed and altitude records again and again over the last decade. Sigi had been sent to France as part of the publicity surrounding the mission of the European Space Agency. Drumming up support from the governments involved. Sitting around the hotel room all day Sunday had not appealed to Sigi, so she had accepted the breakfast invitation from Jacqueline Auriol. Once there Sigi had learned that she was currently the toast of the small world of women in aviation, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing as she was discovering. There were many who saw her accomplishment as a direct challenge.
“Of course, Amelia is trying to figure out how to convince you to come to New York” Jacqueline said, “I told that she just ought to send you an invitation.”
“Did she send it?” Sigi asked.
“She said that she had” Jacqueline replied, “But you aren’t the easiest one to get a hold of these days.”
That was fair enough. Sigi had been catapulted into international fame by being the first woman in space. Any invitation that Amelia Earhart may have sent would have been lost in a blizzard of similar correspondence that she had simply lacked the resources to sort through.
“I’ll need to get back to her then” Sigi said, a bit awkwardly.
“I think she’ll like that” Jacqueline said, then she looked at Sigi with a wistful smile. “What was it like?”
“What exactly?” Sigi asked in reply.
“All of it” Jacqueline replied, “Being launched into outer space, looking down on the world.”
“It was incredible” Sigi said, “For the first couple days, then Bert started fretting over his wife. Getting her sister chewing him out over radio put a bit of a pall over things.”
“Men and their theatrics” Jacquelin said, “And they say we’re the emotional ones.”
“I hear that sometimes” Sigi said, “But usually they fall all over themselves to be polite whenever I enter the room.”
“You have no idea how lucky you are. I don’t know if you heard but there is a group of women that have been trying to get in on the Mercury program in America. The administration at NASA showed them the door a few days before you launched from Vietnam. It really is egg on those chauvinist’s faces.”
Sigi had been unaware of that. It seemed odd to her, the results from her foray into space had been considered extremely encouraging. There were a few promising female candidates in the Raumfahrer program who seemed like a natural fit. Sigi couldn’t imagine what it would look like without them. Going back to how it had been before Sigi had gotten through the program. The Admiral, von Braun and the rest of the them in Cam Ranh, total unchecked id. Who would be crazy enough to want that?
