Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II

Grimbald

Monthly Donor
This is a fantastic story.

Looking for updates is a daily "morning coffee" chore that I truly enjoy.

I hope Kat and Kiki live forever.
 
There are so many things to unpack here, first off the audit is going to hit the Kaiser's personal household staff as there is a very good possibility that there are "Ghost Employees" on the payroll and others who are getting paid at a much higher rate then they should be getting.
Editorial cartoon in the BT shows tigers in the Berlin Zoo reading the headlines in the papers and they are licking their chops and the caption reads "Suppertime", other editorial cartoon in Europe shows Kaiser Louis Ferdinand speaking to the other Crown heads of State with him saying "Yes dogs are great but everyone should have a Kat" and behind him there is a tiger just waiting to spring in to action.
With Kat's well known devotion to the Imperial Family jokes are going to spread like wildfire first in Berlin then across Europe and the world.
Maria has just shown her mastery in how to handle Zella but Zella is going to get her laughs in as she becomes the first truly international television investigating reporter.
What would de great is if one of the JMS Hospital ships is in port either at Victoria or Vancouver British Columbia and races to be one of the first responders to the Alaska Earthquake, and President Harriman is going to have to accept the help whether he likes it or not.
Jack may think that this audit he is heading up will finally discharge his personal debt to Louis Ferdinand for that little misunderstanding he had in Sidney all those years ago but as the smirk on Kat's face will tell him "Think Again".
 
Jack may think that this audit he is heading up will finally discharge his personal debt to Louis Ferdinand for that little misunderstanding he had in Sidney all those years ago but as the smirk on Kat's face will tell him "Think Again".

Actually he would go from being Kat's person to the Kaisers person and not necessarily have to listen to her then.
 
Part 101, Chapter 1621
Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty-One



1st April 1964

Mitte, Berlin

“That old goat seems to have had this all planned out” Kiki said, “Right down to the date of his funeral.”

Oberstaber Musongole just gave her a slight smile.

“The Lion of Africa was a wise man” Musongole replied.

If Kiki didn’t know any better, she might think that Musongole was making fun of her. Looking at the rooster that Musongole had acquired from somewhere that he was carrying, she was certain that General von Lettow-Vorbeck had been laughing his head off when he had all of this written into his will. The day after he had died, Kiki had received a call from the General’s Executor saying that the General had requested that Hauptmann Prinzessin Kristina Alexandra Yekaterina Tatiana von Preussen-Hohenzollern march with her father in his funeral procession with his family. It was rare that Kiki had ever heard anyone call her by her full name and title. The whole thing reminded her of Zella joking about how if you leave your dirty laundry to someone in your will, are they obligated to wash it? As it turned out, it was a welcome distraction from everything else that was going on.

The pallbearers, including the General’s surviving son Oberst Rüdiger von Lettow-Vorbeck, was waiting for the procession to start. The Marine Infantry and Heer were both represented among the pallbearers. During the Boxer Rebellion in China von Lettow-Vorbeck had commanded the unit that would one day become the 3nd Marine Infantry Division. They considered him one of their own and had drawn lots to determine who would be given the honor of carrying the General to his grave.

The plan was that they would proceed through the streets from the Reichstag where the General’s body had been laying in state, with the parade behind them was composed of the Fourth Foot Guard Regiment, portions of the 3nd MID, dozens of surviving Askari who had traveled from Africa at the invitation of the German Government and finally the Drum Corps. The streets were expected to be lined with the friends and former enemies that the General had made over the previous ninety-four years. Kiki realized that she should be so lucky.

The destination was a bit surprising. It had turned out that the General had a burial vault quietly built inside the Imperial War Museum under the floor of the Medical Service’s Hall. Kiki had thought that the feel of that hall was an accident, that of a secular chapel. It turned out that the General had known exactly what he was doing. It was a place of peace and healing, the perfect place to be at rest. He had already had the remains of the wife and son who had predeceased him intered there. Kiki hadn’t known that Hauptmann Arnd von Lettow-Vorbeck had existed until she had seen the marker installed in the Medical Service Hall a couple days earlier. He had been twenty-two years old when he had died fighting the Soviets. It made Kiki wonder what the real reason was for the General requesting her presence.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Musongole, acting as a representative of the General’s family handed Kiki’s father the rooster. It was a tradition among some African tribes for the family to give the Chief a rooster or hen to mark the start of the funeral. Kiki just didn’t know which ones. With that the whole production started.



Anchorage, Alaska

Climbing over a pile of wreckage and looking down the street, Bobby Thornton saw the buildings that were leaning in odd directions because the soil underneath them had seemed to have turned to liquid. The entire scene was surreal, and Bobby had lived here for his entire eighteen years and had never seen anything like it.

For years there had been talk of building a highway to connect the Territory of Alaska to the lower forty-eight but there had little motivation to do that and the tensions with the Canadian Government in recent years had resulted in delays. According to Bobby’s Great-Uncle John, it was a territorial pissing match. The boneheads in Washington DC and Ottawa needed to put their egos aside and get shit done.

What that meant was that the only reliable link to the outside world was the railroad or the seaport. One only needed to see what the earthquake had done to the railyard to see why that was a serious problem at that moment. Bobby had wondered why help was slow in coming from the sea, then he had heard about the tsunami that had messed up Valdez. Not many with a ship were willing to risk being close into shore if there was an aftershock that kicked up more waves like that. That was why aid was only trickling in after four days.

Walking through downtown, Bobby could see soldiers in green uniforms with rifles slung over their shoulders standing on the street corners supposedly to prevent looting. While actual help had been slow to arrive, the 82nd Airborne had gotten here rather quickly. When Bobby had told Uncle John about it, he had just laughed. The US Army has always been good at getting to places where they could shoot people, he said, everything else they found challenging.

Keeping his head down, Bobby walked through downtown to Bootlegger’s Cove. A couple days before, he had managed to get a salmon that he had paid an exorbitant price for from a fishing boat that had docked at the pier. He had considered it fortunate that he along with Uncle John and his mother had eaten well. Today, Bobby was hoping that something would present itself. The trouble was that he didn’t have a whole lot of money left and after what had happened to the movie theater where he had worked, he doubted that he would see another paycheck for a good while.

Looking down the hill, Bobby saw a large white ship anchored out in Cook Inlet with a red cross painted on the side of it. Bobby was gleeful that it looked like help had arrived until he noticed the flag flying on the ship’s mast…
 
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Actually he would go from being Kat's person to the Kaisers person and not necessarily have to listen to her then.

I'm not so sure, I think he'll always be Kat's man, but I think he's long past being in Kat's pocket. It's closer, (but not that close), to being a "normal" Client/Lawyer relationship.

For a given value of normal, that really isn't very.
 
German, Canadian, British or Russian?

German. It has to be. One of the Prinzessin's for certain. Although people in the midst of a disaster don't particularly care where the help comes from, as long as it shows up.
The recriminations and demands for inquiries into just why a foreign government or NGO could respond faster than their own will be somewhat... loud.
In fact, Nancy just got a lot of ammo for her PR campaigns in the USA, and I think that she is more than smart enough to use it wisely.
Among the locals, US government & media attempts to stir up anti-German feelings will collide with their collective memories of how it was the Germans who came to their aid, and I see them clapping back against the attempts. The US government & anti-German brigade will, of course, just be more pissed off with said Germans, with yet more self-inflicted egg on their faces.

This has actual parallels in OTL, with the US having occasionally refused to accept foreign assistance or donations in times of natural disaster. Something to do with fearing loss of face, a desire not to appear weak and a belief that they can handle it out of their own resources (which the USA should be able to do, but for partisan politics pre-disaster). They are not the only country to have done this over the years.
 
There is no way in hell that President Harriman could have turned down the help of the Germans when the hospital ship was within 48 hours of Alaska especially during an election year.
This disaster should end all obstacles over building the "Romanov Highway" (named because Alaska used to be part of Russia and the highway runs right next to the farm that Romanovs lived and died in exile) as the project is more than mutually beneficial to all sides.
Also this could further spur the push for Statehood for Alaska as the need for representation has been shown.

Love the way the General wanted Kiki to be part of the procession as it was shown earlier that he had real affection for her.
 
There is no way in hell that President Harriman could have turned down the help of the Germans when the hospital ship was within 48 hours of Alaska especially during an election year.


Well so far the smartest american president we have seen is Truman, so anything is possible really.
 
@Salamander I'm thinking it could also be Russian. Geographically closer, plus the extra fun of Alaska being formerly Russian.

Possibly, but we know the German's have at least one hospital ship in the Pacific and if it was visiting Japan or Russia then Alaska is not too far from there. Especially if it was providing its services to the locals in the Russian Far East.
 
Well so far the smartest american president we have seen is Truman, so anything is possible really.
I think that President Harriman has been suitably chastised for the China gambit and if the hospital ship is named after Princess Kristina then there can be no real objections because of Kiki's recent successful American tour, in fact Kiki is probably wishing that she was on the ship instead of marching in the funeral.
 
I think that President Harriman has been suitably chastised for the China gambit and if the hospital ship is named after Princess Kristina then there can be no real objections because of Kiki's recent successful American tour, in fact Kiki is probably wishing that she was on the ship instead of marching in the funeral.
Kiki might just have to be presenting medals to the crew after this if that’s the case.
 
Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty-One



1st April 1964

Mitte, Berlin

“That old goat seems to have had this all planned out” Kiki said, “Right down to the date of his funeral.”

Oberstaber Musongole just gave her a slight smile.

“The Lion of Africa was a wise man” Musongole replied.

If Kiki didn’t know any better, she might think that Musongole was making fun of her. Looking at the rooster that Musongole had acquired from somewhere that he was carrying, she was certain that General von Lettow-Vorbeck had been laughing his head off when he had all of this written into his will. The day after he had died, Kiki had received a call from the General’s Executor saying that the General had requested that Hauptmann Prinzessin Kristina Alexandra Yekaterina Tatiana von Preussen-Hohenzollern march with her father in his funeral procession with his family. It was rare that Kiki had ever heard anyone call her by her full name and title. The whole thing reminded her of Zella joking about how if you leave your dirty laundry to someone in your will, are they obligated to wash it? As it turned out, it was a welcome distraction from everything else that was going on.

The pallbearers, including the General’s surviving son Oberst Rüdiger von Lettow-Vorbeck, was waiting for the procession to start. The Marine Infantry and Heer were both represented among the pallbearers. During the Boxer Rebellion in China von Lettow-Vorbeck had commanded the unit that would one day become the 2nd Marine Infantry Division. They considered him one of their own and had drawn lots to determine who would be given the honor of carrying the General to his grave.

The plan was that they would proceed through the streets from the Reichstag where the General’s body had been laying in state, with the parade behind them was composed of the Fourth Foot Guard Regiment, portions of the 2nd MID, dozens of surviving Askari who had traveled from Africa at the invitation of the German Government and finally the Drum Corps. The streets were expected to be lined with the friends and former enemies that the General had made over the previous ninety-four years. Kiki realized that she should be so lucky.

The destination was a bit surprising. It had turned out that the General had a burial vault quietly built inside the Imperial War Museum under the floor of the Medical Service’s Hall. Kiki had thought that the feel of that hall was an accident, that of a secular chapel. It turned out that the General had known exactly what he was doing. It was a place of peace and healing, the perfect place to be at rest. He had already had the remains of the wife and son who had predeceased him. Kiki hadn’t known that Hauptmann Arnd von Lettow-Vorbeck had existed until she had seen the marker installed in the Medical Service Hall a couple days earlier. He had been twenty-two years old when he had died fighting the Soviets. It made Kiki wonder what the real reason was for the General requesting her presence.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Musongole, acting as a representative of the General’s family handed Kiki’s father the rooster. It was a tradition among some African tribes for the family to give the Chief a rooster or hen to mark the start of the funeral. Kiki just didn’t know which ones. With that the whole production started.

The meeting of the Modern first world ceremonial with the native indigenous and important to the first world people.
 
Part 101, Chapter 1622
Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty-Two



2nd April 1964

Mitte, Berlin

Watching television after midnight, Mithras saw her again. She was walking next to her father in the funeral procession that had occurred the previous afternoon. She was beautiful and he hated her for it. The people’s Princess he thought to himself sarcastically, as if such a thing were even possible.

When Mithras had heard that the offices of the Hohenzollern Trust had been raided, he had been worried that the Financier would sell him out. So far, that hadn’t happened. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that would last for much longer, so he needed a plan to get out of the reach of the German Empire. Go someplace where he could just disappear. The problem was that he lacked the resources to do that.

What Mithras needed was a flight out of this wretched King infested country and a large amount of cash. He had a few ideas of how to go about doing that, but he also knew the players involved. If he acted, they would as well. The State may be a clumsy and slow, but once it got moving… That was why he needed a way to get them to freeze in place long enough to for him to be able to maneuver. That was the hard part.



Anchorage, Alaska

All Bobby had known about the Germans was how they were depicted in movies or on television. A distant, militaristic nation that still had a King. Sure, it was clear that it was their Navy who had responded, but the people who had come to the pier had been from something called the KZS. He was unclear about what exactly that meant, but apparently the ZS part of it stood for Central or Joint Medical Service and they were all volunteers who had explained that to him as they had given him a bag that contained a loaf of brown bread and several cans of food on the first day. What had seemed strange to Bobby was that an extremely large percentage of personnel from the German Medical Service were women.

He had eventually told them what he thought he knew about Germany and they had just laughed. How many Americans were Cowboys? Bobby had been asked in return. Hardly any was the answer for that. Then he had been told that Germany had ended conscription after the Second World War, so it was hardly militaristic. Later that afternoon Bobby had been told that if he wanted to help, he could come back the next day. It was only afterwards that it occurred to him just how obvious it was that he had nothing better to do.

When word arrived about the earthquake in Alaska, the SMS Prinzessin Marie Cecilie had completed a medical outreach mission to the Russian Far East and had been crossing the North Pacific to refuel in Bremerton before heading south for Panama. The brand-new SMS Prinzessin Antonia had arrived on station in Pusan, so it was time for the Marie Cecilie to return to Kiel so that the Victoria could make her annual journey to the South Pacific. When they had gotten word of the earthquake, they had proceeded north for Anchorage at flank speed. While there was no official doctrine, it was standard practice for the hospital ships of the High Seas Fleet to turn towards any natural disaster, politics be damned. It was said that the reason why the Captains of the ships had never gotten court martialed was because that very practice made the Hospital Ships extremely popular and they were generally welcomed everywhere they went. The rest of the Fleet certainly couldn’t say that.

There had been some grumbling from local officials when they had learned that the Marie Cecilie had been the first ship to reach them. The ships from the US Navy that were coming from Bremerton had arrived only hours later and they all understood that turning away a state-of-the-art Princess Class Hospital Ship like the Marie Cecilie would probably get them attacked by an angry mob during the present crisis. Still, they had been happy when the two destroyers, USS Berkeley and USS Maddox, entered Cook Inlet. By then food was being distributed and an FSR Team, something that few in America had ever heard of, had been in contact with the Chief of Anchorage Police.

That was when the trouble started…

The elements of the 82nd Airborne Division already present in Anchorage had taken exception to the presence of the FSR. While the FSR Teams may have had a dedicated Search and Rescue mission and were considered a part of the German Medical Service, they were an offshoot of the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger. That had resulted in a shoving match and the Police Department in the ticklish position of having to keep the two heavily armed groups separated.

For Bobby, that just seemed to confirm what his Great-Uncle had said about territorial pissing-matches. Here they were having those sorts of arguments in face of what Geologists were starting to say might be one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. It seemed like the sort of thing that a twisted comedy writer might come up with. As Bobby passed out the bags of food to the people who were coming to the pier he could see the truth for himself, international borders and rivalries were complete bullshit.
 
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Mitte, Berlin

Watching television after midnight, Mithras saw her again. She was walking next to her father in the funeral procession that had occurred the previous afternoon. She was beautiful and he hated her for it. The people’s Princess he thought to himself sarcastically, as if such a thing were even possible.

When Mithras had heard that the offices of the Hohenzollern Trust had been raided, he had been worried that the Financier would sell him out. So far, that hadn’t happened. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that would last for much longer, so he needed a plan to get out of the reach of the German Empire. Go someplace where he could just disappear. The problem was that he lacked the resources to do that.

What Mithras needed was a flight out of this wretched King infested country and a large amount of cash. He had a few ideas of how to go about doing that, but he also knew the players involved. If he acted, they would as well. The State may be a clumsy and slow, but once it got moving… That was why he needed a way to get them freeze in place long enough to for him to be able to maneuver. That was the hard part.


Kiki is beautiful and he hates her for it......yeah, that is one way to mask your attraction obsession. ;)

Anyhow, Mithras is about to do something stupid. Either a kidnap or a murder (or a bombing)....its the only way to get the State distracted enough.
 
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