Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Eighty-Five
3rd August 1960
Binz, Rügen Island
There was a distinct absurdity to working while on holiday, but there was a reason why the Prora gave Aurora’s parents a discount on the suite they stayed in. In prior years her parents had done the photography that the resort used in its promotional material and while they were here, they held events like they were going to do today. It was an exhibition of her parent’s work. There was a subtle game played in how they arranged the photographs and it had to do with how nebulous the identities of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro really were. What got published under which name depended entirely on the subject. Originally, the name had been cooked up as a means to get photographs to be accepted by publications that would turn their nose up at the mention of names like Endre Friedmann and Gerta Pohorylle. Early on Aurora’s mother had published under the name Robert Capa as well, but that had ended as the two of them had become better known they had needed to come up with another name. Then events outside Madrid during the Spanish War had changed everything and had nearly ended the career of Aurora’s mother.
The term used was; High velocity artillery and aerial bombardment followed by armored exploitation. What that had meant in practice was that Gerda Taro had been left clawing at the earth in a small hole in the ground. All while the section of the front lines she had been photographing was heavily shelled, then divebombed and finally had Panzers roll over it. The Panzer Dragoon Grenadiers who had found her had not exactly been delicate in their treatment of her until they figured out that she was a Photojournalist as opposed to one of the Internationals fighting on the Spanish side. Afterwards, she had been sent home to Berlin because she had a “case of the nerves” as it was called in those days. That was before Traumatic Stress was understood well enough to even have a proper name for it, so it had taken her years to recover. It had been two years later, during that recovery that she had found herself pregnant with Aurora, right as a new war was getting ready to start.
That was why Aurora’s earliest memories were of the apartment in Paris where she had lived with her mother, her father was only able to visit occasionally because he was off covering the Second World War from the first shots fired on the Russian border until the signing of the armistice in Tokyo Bay. It had been nine months after a visit from her father just after the Soviet War had concluded that Aurora had suddenly discovered that she had a little brother named Yoni. Aurora’s sister Pia had been born nine months to the day that her father had come home from Japan.
Her mother had remained a photographer, but her choice of subjects had changed. Small things, slices of life and the little moments of pain and joy that existed in everyone’s life. Aurora, and later her other children were her favorite subjects, so thousands of people had watched her grow from a newborn baby to a teenager. It had made for an odd, awkward childhood. Especially because Aurora had turned out to be somewhat of an introvert.
Today, Aurora was helping her parents put up copies of their photographs that had been blown up to be poster sized on the walls of one of the exhibition halls with Yoni and Pia as she had done for as long as she could remember. Unlike her brother and sister, Aurora’s parents were allowing her to stay for the presentation and the reception afterward this year. Her siblings had immediately started complaining about that, but Aurora’s mother had said that they would be more than welcome as soon as they became adults like their older sister.
Montreal, Canada
Having her harpy of a daughter-in-law in her house was not Margot’s idea of a pleasant summer pastime, but she didn’t dare say a word. Over the winter, that book had come out and Margot had had avoided it for as long as she could but after everyone else in her social circle had read it she had opened it just so that she would have an idea of what everyone else was talking about.
The book had detailed page after page of shocking behavior. It had frankly described the events that had happened when Katherine was twelve which had left Margot aghast. That had included biting through her own lip when she didn’t want to answer another question. What had followed was a kaleidoscope of self-destructive behavior. Hopping trains, breaking into buildings and the system of tunnels that supposedly existed below the streets of Berlin, getting arrested on a few occasions, all before she turned fourteen. Getting recruited by German Military Intelligence at fifteen, she had a violent disagreement with one of her instructors and quit. Then she had abruptly reentered service at sixteen because of a national emergency. She had killed a terrorist and saved hundreds of lives in the process but had been left reeling by those events. The resulting publicity had ruined her value as an Intelligence Agent, but at the same time it had brought her to the attention of a shadowy Order that existed to advance the interests of the German Kaiserin.
Throughout the book were instances of extreme violence, unapologetically dealt upon perceived enemies. Something for which Katherine had been richly awarded for by the German State. Eventually becoming the only woman awarded the prestigious Pour le Mérite and commanding the elite First Foot Guard Regiment, but also achieving a rank equivalent to Brigadier before retiring. Supposedly, she had ended her career because she felt she was missing her out on the lives of her children, and she was tired of the constant demands. Margot only approved of one of those things. The specter of violence though, she had no idea beyond Malcolm’s cryptic warnings of exactly what Katherine was capable of. After the book had come out Malcolm had felt perfectly free to tell her that when Katherine had first come home with Douglas, his men had been making bets about how long it would be until Katherine murdered her and that she should be happy that little detail didn’t make it into Katherine’s biography.
Now, Douglas was home, Katherine and their children were with him. Margot did her best to avoid conflict with Kat, but she found the presence of Marie unsettling. The last time Margot had seen Douglas’ youngest daughter, she had still been a baby. Now, she was a quiet little girl who had been named after Margot’s mother, Douglas’ grandmother. The shape of Marie’s face, especially her jawline gave her a strong resemblance to Douglas, much like her siblings did. The trouble was that red hair, that was something that she could have only inherited from Katherine.