Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-Three
20th April 1965
Silesia
With Easter past everyone was just enjoying a few quiet days in the countryside before returning to their lives. The big family meals in the Richthofen house had grown into raucous affairs. Helene’s mother said that it was good to have them from time to time because the house tended to get extremely quiet if Ilse and Albrecht were back in the city. After nearly fifty years of marriage, Manfred and Käte understood where their interests lay and how they overlapped. There simply wasn’t a whole lot to talk about that they hadn’t discussed countless times before.
As Helene watched Marie and Tatiana playing a board game with Ina, it occurred to her that every time she saw Kat’s daughters, they reminded her of Kat herself when she had stepped off that railcar at the vegetable market in Berlin almost thirty years earlier.
There was also the reminder that her father was very different when he played the role of Opa to the various children who came to the estate. He had taken an interest in Marie this time, helping with her curiosity regarding the animals that she had only read about in books, seeing them for real. There was a rather large contrast between that and how Helene remembered her own childhood. She recalled that he had always been somewhat remote and a rather hard disciplinarian.
“How can he be so different?” Helene asked as she explained it to her mother.
“Because indulging grandchildren is the domain of a grandfather” Käte replied, “And as much as he is loath to admit it, I believe that he has learned from his mistakes.”
Of course, that was exactly what Helene would expect her mother to say. She had seen the great Manfred von Richthofen when he had been at the height of his personal power and commanded the attention of the entire world. His career had continued for decades afterwards, but he had never quite matched the achievements of those early days. Helene knew that saying that her father had made mistakes was about as far as her mother would be willing to go, with her anyway.
“What’s this girl Suse who I’ve been hearing about like?” Käte asked, changing the subject.
“She is Gerta’s little girl” Helene replied, “And I don’t think that her and Manny are an item. Not yet, anyway, if ever.”
“Gerta?” Käte asked, “As in Gerta von Wolvogle?”
“Yes” Helene replied, seeing the expression on her mother’s face change.
“It is just speculation, but many researchers think that some forms of insanity might have a genetic component” Käte said, “Just something to consider if the girl is Ritter von Wolvogle’s granddaughter.”
“You knew the Old Wolf didn’t you” Helene replied.
“All too well” Käte said, “Do you have any idea how destructive that man was when he got drunk?”
“Ask the Russians” Helene said darkly.
Käte nodded, “He broke the picture window on the landing between the first and second floor of…” She trailed off as she remembered that this house wasn’t the same one that she had lived in decades earlier even if it had been built on the same spot. For Käte, damaging her house in a drunken stupor was unforgivable. Even after more than two decades, she still hadn’t been able to square that with how her husband had torched the old house rather than have it become a trophy for the Soviets.
Wilhelm Station
When the end came, it was an anticlimax.
The SMS Sirius had arrived a few days earlier and it was to open a passage for the Albatros back into open water. Louis’ mail had arrived, and it had included a stack of magazines about various topics and dozens of letters. There was an article about Kiki in there and they seemed to have caught her when she was in one of her melancholy moods. Still, seeing her sitting there in a garden somewhere was a reminder of just how long he had been away from home. There were also plants growing there, even in wintertime. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen an actual plant growing in the ground.
Louis had not had time to think about how much time was left in Antarctica, or much else, because he had been babysitting a group of Geologists as they had worked their way down a mountain range that was poking out of glaciers in the interior. It had been a boring task, keeping Geologists from coming to grief in the cold and weather had proven to be a fulltime job. Then they had returned to Wilhelm Station and it had been mentioned that he was on the next ship back to the world. Unless he wanted to spend another winter at Wilhelm Station that is, they always needed volunteers…
Now as he got out of the Iltis with Hugo carrying his sea bag across the ice dock to the gangplank, Louis realized that he was not going to this place at all. His time in Antarctica had not been an epic tale of survival or exploration. He had come here to do a job. He had done it to the best of his abilities and now it was over. Was most adventure just boredom masked by nostalgia? Louis didn’t know.
The Obermaat in charge of the security detail gave them the evil eye as their papers were checked and approved. Minutes later, they were shown to their quarters aboard the Albatros.