Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Fifty-Six
7th August 1961
Tempelhof, Berlin
Do not attempt to psychoanalyze Zella had been Peter’s warning about her. According to him she had been able to see right through it since she had been a little girl and any other attempts at subterfuge would get a negative reaction. It was not as if Berg was planning on doing either of those things and to her it definitely exposed a character flaw in him that most didn’t get to see. Especially since Peter in the manner of most men that she had dealt with it by delegating the problem on to someone else. That someone being Nora Berg. He said that it was because he figured that she would better be able to explain reality to his niece. She would have thought that a man who only answered to the Inspector of the Medical Service and Commander in Chief of the OKW would better be able to handle a matter like this.
Markgräfin Marcella Marie von Holz, called Zella by her closest friends and family. At the age of twenty she was currently a Student of the Arts at the University of Berlin and occasional Reporter for the Arts and Entertainment Desk of the Berliner Tageblatt. She was considered highly intelligent but was seen by many to be lacking in ambition. Still Zella had the wherewithal to have confronted her uncle directly over his treatment of her friend Kristina. It seemed that Zella was very decisive when came to her friends, the words abusive and manipulative had been thrown around quite liberally. It was an assessment that Berg found that she couldn’t entirely disagree with.
It was to Berg’s astonishment that Zella had even accepted her invitation to meet with her. What shouldn’t have been a surprise though was that Zella had done nothing to make herself presentable, wearing the same clothes that she wore when she rode that motorcycle of hers. The dark brown asymmetrical leather jacket she was wearing had a patch sewn to the left side of the front of it had a globe and with a rose on a thorny stem clutched in the claws of an eagle. The words Alis Propriis Volat, Latin for She Flies with own wings, followed by Berlin to Berlin the Long Way Around, were embroidered below. That seemed to fly in the face of the idea that Zella lacked ambition and it explained why Peter had never suggested that his niece would be a good candidate for his project. Entirely too self-possessed, it was very easy to see why she also frequently came across as an aggressive shrew.
“What do you want?” Zella said in greeting as she sat down on the chair across from Berg.
“To talk” Berg replied, “You made some fairly serious accusations about the conduct of your Uncle, even if it didn’t involve the Imperial Princess of Germany.”
“That was entirely between me and him” Zella said, she was not the least bit intimidated by Berg mentioning just who Kiki was. “I’m not making a legal case, I just wanted him to know what I thought of what he’s been doing to a dear friend of mine, with your help.”
“Of course, you waited until after one of your other friends had received medical care” Berg replied, “Herr Sutcliffe is recovering nicely, by the way.”
“As if I wouldn’t know that” Zella said, “What was I supposed to do? Let him die?”
“No” Berg answered, “But that does look a bit self-serving.”
“And treating Kiki like a poodle you can get to jump through hoops hasn’t been?” Zella asked, “So you can hold her up later and use her to get people to volunteer for the Medical Service?”
“No one made Kiki do anything” Berg replied flatly.
“You didn’t need to” Zella said, “She is so desperate for approval that all it took was a few suggestions from you and she upended her entire life to get it.”
Berg felt a stab of guilt over that.
“I think that is an unfair characterization” Berg said though she could tell that Zella felt otherwise.
“What do you think that Kiki herself is going to say after I tell her about all of this? Zella said, “Especially after she has been run through the wringer because of what you and my uncle have done?”
Berg didn’t have an answer for that. Something that Peter had never seemed to factor in was that while Kiki was a person with thoughts and feelings of her own. The day might come where she might not be willing to cooperate with his plans. Berg herself had told Kiki that it was a good thing that she was going to be out from under Peter’s purview. If she washed out of the training program in Laupheim then she would have the following months to stew over her what had happened, and Zella would make sure that she knew exactly who was to blame. If she passed, that would almost be worse in that it would give Kiki the perfect excuse to never come back, or if she did only on her terms.
Laupheim
Stepping out of the shower, Kiki saw how tired she looked in the mirror and tried to avoid looking at herself beyond that. She swiftly dressed and gathered her equipment. She had only a few minutes to rejoin the others in the mess hall. They ate meals as a group, that was something that was inescapable.
Wash and sleep whenever you can. That had been Kat’s advice on how to survive this and Kiki had followed it as best she could. Although they had been dismissed for the day, the first week had taught her that was an illusion at best. At any time she could be called away and because Kiki slept in a different location from the rest of the training cadre she found that she had to put in more effort to get to where the others were even if it involved running an extra couple hundred meters. Curiously, Kiki had discovered that she had some unexpected allies in this effort.
The Amelie Beese Barracks at the Laupheim Airfield named for the woman who had been the first German Aviatrix and later the Inspector of the Luftwaffe Auxiliaries during the Second World War. It housed a couple hundred women lived and worked on the Airfield in various capacities, many of them had been among the Auxiliaries who had been folded into the various service branches. Now twenty years later, they were in positions of authority. In that time a Mechanic would become a Crew Chief, or a Cook would find herself in charge of the kitchens. They all seemed to know what Kiki was trying to do and were helping her whenever they could.