Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Six
16th January 1959
Tempelhof, Berlin
According to Ben’s own father it was normal to be horrified by one’s parents. To have his mother go out of her way to give the Gräfin a piece of her mind over how Kiki had treated him was exactly that. He had asked her not to do that, but she had anyway. Now, he was sort of stuck. Spending time with Kiki had been fun and keeping her secrets had been a big part of maintaining that. However, she had broken up with him. How was he going to explain that that he had briefly dated an Imperial Princess, and shared what had turned out to be the first kiss for both of them? It sounded both impossibly romantic and absurd at the same time. Not to mention the minor detail that no one would ever believe that any of it had ever happened.
Ben remembered the last time he had seen Kiki. When she had entered the lobby of her dormitory, she had obviously just woken up. Still though, she had looked exhausted. She had also been wearing the old Hertha BSC jersey that he knew she slept in under her coat and hastily tucked into an old pair of trousers. Kiki’s hair had been mussed up and she’d had a pimple rising on her chin. She remained the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Now as he remembered that conversation, he realized that he must have come across as completely clueless about what she was going through. Worse, he had allowed the memory of seeing her through her bedroom window months earlier and the intrusive thought about what she might or might not be wearing under that football jersey to distract him, she had picked up on it. That had probably been one of the things that had driven her to make the decision that she had.
Now, his mother had told off one of the most dangerous women in the world because of Ben. She had also carried on about how Gräfin Katherine had a collection of guttersnipes and had wondered aloud if she was some sort of Fagin. After that, Ben could hardly tell his mother the truth. Instead, he had confided that in his father who had looked like he was going to bust up laughing over the entire matter.
“Nadine still wants to think of you as her baby and doesn’t want you to get hurt. I doubt that she will see the humor in this, especially after some of the things she has been saying” His father had said, “She’s lucky that the Gräfin doesn’t like other people paying too much attention to her personal business.”
When Ben had asked about that, his father had pointed out that the Gräfin’s house was just as much a fortress as a family home. Little things he’d not paid attention to. Fully functional steel shutters on the windows, reinforced exterior doors set in heavy frames, the masonry walls. There was also rumored to be arsenal somewhere in that house that contained everything shy of heavy artillery that Ben had certainly never seen.
Mostly, Ben’s father had wanted to know if Kiki really was that Kristina and had been all smiles when Ben said that he had kissed her, once anyway.
“At least you didn’t take it any further than that” His father had said, “That just would have been a source of endless trouble.”
That last part had given Ben pause. He had been surprised when she had asked him to kiss her, anything beyond that had simply never occurred to him. All Kiki had wanted was that kiss, so he must have done the right thing. The memory of it had certainly stayed with him.
Near Posen
Olli was sitting in the turret of his Skunk watching the road that was a couple hundred meters away through his binoculars. The 30mm cannon was pointed slightly skyward, no one wanted for there to be another expensive act of stupidity. Not after what had happened the previous autumn when a Gunner in a different platoon had discovered what a high-explosive 30mm shell could do to a milk cow. The Gunner in question had been demoted, a farmer had needed to be compensated and that Platoon had been the laughingstock of the entire Division.
Sitting in a Skunk under camouflage netting while waiting for someone to drift by on a winter afternoon wasn’t most people’s idea of fun. Olli however just ignored the grousing by the Luftpanzer Platoon that he was leading. During the Soviet War it was moments like this that were the good times. No one expected anything of them, and they weren’t risking ambush on the roads. They were to sit tight and if they made contact with the “enemy” force, they were report it and extricate themselves as best they could.
Olli did wonder what the point of this exercise was though. Due to the number of artillery spotters that they had been hearing in the air overhead, it was obvious that it would be stupid to move before it got dark. Olli remembered plenty of times during the war when impatience was rewarded with 122mm artillery shells or an airstrike. When he had told that to the PCs when they complained, he had been met with silence. Amazing what having experience did when it came to being aware of why they were doing what they were doing. Olli heard the usual complaints about having to hurry up and wait, he had heard that origins of that expression were lost in antiquity, not loudly though. Their orders were to maintain radio silence and noise discipline. Whoever had ordered them out here wanted their presence to be a complete surprise if it came to that.
