Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred
9th June 1967
Jena
Sitting in the parlor of Kiki’s house in Jena on a Friday night had turned out not to be too exciting. Especially because Kiki was tired and didn’t want to do anything. He had said that he would be fine if they just hung around and watched television, but she said that she still had obligations to attend to. That was when Ben had made the mistake of asking where Vicky was and had been rather surprised by the answer.
“She went to Munich to help her fiancé with planning their wedding” Kiki said as she was in the process of opening a tray of letters all addressed to her that had been picked up from the Post Office, picking which ones to respond to and which to discard.
“There are several problems with that” Ben replied, “Does Anna know about this?”
“The two of them are making a weekend of it” Kiki said, the tone of her voice reflecting how absurd she thought that was. “I had hoped that Vicky had managed to put aside her conventional thinking and embraced who she really is. Now she is seriously considering marrying Franz von Bayern.”
“Not everyone has your courage, Kiki.”
“Vicky said the same thing before she left” Kiki replied.
“Speaking of marriage” Ben said, “My mother asked if we are ever going to get around to it.”
Kiki groaned when Ben said that and tore open a letter with the Martin Luther University Hospital’s logo on it, before throwing it on the discard pile. He saw that it was an invitation of some kind. He picked it up to see what it was.
“One day Nadine wants me to just go away, the next she asks you that” Kiki said, “Besides, even if both of us were not still in University and living in different cities, just the logistics of me marrying anyone would be an absolute nightmare.”
“We aren’t going to be able to put her off forever” Ben said as Kiki did nothing to hide her annoyance, before looking at the engraved invitation in his hand. “Did you read this.”
“Yes” Kiki said in an exasperated tone.
“Assistenzarzt Prinzessin Kristina von Preussen zu Hohenzollern” Ben read aloud, “We cordially invite you and a guest to our celebration of Midsummer on the Twenty-Fourth of June…”
Ben stopped when he saw that Kiki was glaring at him. “Are you through?” She asked.
“It could be fun” Ben replied, “That’s two weeks from now, so we have plenty of time.”
“I am very familiar with how events like that work” Kiki said, “The Department Heads and Senior Surgeons play court, everyone beneath them in rank has to line up and kiss their well-padded derrières. Care to guess who as an Intern would have to be first in line with their lips puckered?”
“That is being rather cynical” Ben said, “Do you socialize at all outside of work? Or better yet, have you been doing anything else besides work?”
“I do plenty of other things” Kiki said indignantly.
“Taking Rauchbier out for his morning run doesn’t count” Ben replied.
Kiki muttered something under her breath and Rauchbier’s ears perked up at the mention of his name despite seeming to have been asleep on the floor by their feet.
“You have more clout at events like this than you realize” Ben said, “It says right here where they call you by your title. Princess, as in the daughter of the Emperor who donates a considerable amount of money to the various charities that are dear to them.”
“You are welcome to go if you want then” Kiki said, as she opened another letter.
Mitte, Berlin
George’s arrival in Zurich had been an epic disaster. He had found that his accounts had been emptied and the Bank Manager had not been the least bit sympathetic to him. Minutes later he had tried to call his contact in Germany and had been given the bureaucratic run around. A day later he had arrived at the offices of his contact only to learn that the individual he was looking for had never worked there. As he walked out of the building, it occurred to him that someone had been playing him for months.
That was when he got grabbed from behind and pulled into a waiting car. The people who had grabbed him refused to talk as they then hustled him out of the car and into the back entrance of a building. A man who looked to be in his sixties closed the door and locked it once they were inside. George could hear loud music playing nearby as he looked at a large stack of beer crates that dominated one end of the room. An old table with chairs around it sat in the center of the room and the two people already seated didn’t need to be introduced, Fürstin Katherine von Mischner and Juan Pujol-Garcia. A Japanese man stood to the Fürstin’s right, there was a darkness that seemed to surround him that made the hair on the back of George’s neck stand on end. If anything happened to him in this room, no one would ever hear it.
“Better you than me pal” The man who had locked the door said, revealing that he was American. The thugs who were holding George roughly placed him in a chair. He realized that by their very presence, they were telling him something.
“You ripped me off!” George yelled at them.
“Yes” Kat replied, “And no one on Earth could say that you didn’t have it coming.”
“Wait, what?” George asked. He hadn’t been expecting a straight answer to that.
“If you had gotten arrested on that Greek island you would have paid a fine and set up shop somewhere else a few weeks later” Kat said, “That didn’t seem like justice to me, so I made other arrangements to go after the only thing that you actually care about.”
George glared at her, not liking where this was leading.
“The thing that you fear above all else Herr Bush” Kat said, “Destitution and the knowledge that the people you have ripped off are closing in. Who do you think it will be? The Greeks and Turks know about your double-dealing because I told them. The Panamanians are quite angry with you over a large portion of the Warehouse District of Panama City getting blown into orbit as well. Beyond that, the line of people looking to kill you starts on the left.”
It was about then that George realized that he was completely screwed.