Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Fifty-Six
21st July 1972
Mitte, Berlin
Nancy didn’t have the first clue as to where Sabastian had gotten the money to make calls on a pay phone several times a day. Every time it was the same thing. Him complaining about spending the Summer at the Richthofen Estate, which she had thought he liked doing, and demanding to know what they were thinking by allowing Gretchen to attend the same school he was.
She had explained to him that the trip to Spokane wasn’t for pleasure. This was because his grandmother had recently suffered a stroke and was disabled, so Nancy and Alan both had to go to Washington to help get their mother situated. Tilo had agreed to come to offer moral support to Nancy if he couldn’t help her directly. She wasn’t taking Sabastian because if he went, then it was inevitable that he would get bored. Then the trouble would start. With Sabastian that could include Police involvement as well as a whole lot of angry neighbors. Spokane, Washington was one of the last places of Earth he should be. Anna and Gretchen were staying put as well with Nancy having arranged for the two of them to go with Kat’s ward Sophie to a Summer Camp for girls located in the Spreewald.
As for Gretchen attending his school, that had been Gretchen’s choice after she had made it clear she would deliberately flunk out of school to avoid attending the same school as Anna for reasons that Nancy was having trouble understanding. Nancy understood that once her youngest daughter put her mind to something then it was almost impossible to stop her. The Wahlstatt School had happened along at the right time to prevent that. Offering her a place in their pilot program. It seemed that the school was using the same tactics that the military had for years to prevent anything untoward from happening. With most of the girls they had selected being largely from New Junkers families, the school certainly had a strong incentive to see to it that the rules were obeyed. Of course, they would be dealing with hormonal teenagers, so they had their work cut out for them. Besides that, Gretchen would have her big brother nearby putting the fear of God into anyone who dared to give her so much as a sideways look.
Sabastian wasn’t interested in listening though. So, the conversations devolved into arguments and because no matter how grownup Sabastian tried to act, there were times when he reminded everyone what his actual age was. This was one of those times and with him being a teenager, everything was the end of the world. That was why Nancy was having her Personal Secretary take a message every time he called. Tilo had explained that they needed to be the adults in this situation and that rewarding their son’s obnoxious behavior wouldn’t help matters. Tomorrow, Sabastian would be traveling with Nikolaus to the Richthofen Estate and Nancy had been assured by Manfred the Elder that he would keep the boys too busy to cause much trouble over the summer. They knew that he was taking them to the Munich Games in August, so they Nikolaus and Sabastian would be extra motivated to stay in their Opa’s good graces.
Reichenwalde, Brandenburg
Clearing the cobwebs was how her father had put it. Just getting on your bike and riding fast, thinking about nothing else but the road around you until all your troubles were distant. Zella had tried that, and it had not worked, not really. She had eventually stopped after she had put an incredible amount of distance on the highways that ran around Berlin.
Now, Zella was on the shore of a lake, surrounded by forest and she didn’t have the slightest clue as to where she was. The instant she had stopped, all her troubles came instantly back to mind. Her career, her mother, Yuri, and the huge mess she had made of all of it. The idiot had told her that he loved her, and Zella had fled. It was something that she had been aware of, but to hear those words come out of his mouth had caused Zella to panic. She had felt as if her head had filled with static and by the time it had cleared, she was on her motorcycle trying to put as much distance between herself and Yuri’s apartment as she possibly could. Things had been going astonishing well lately, which made this latest episode so much more painful.
Zella had been reviewing albums for the BT and she had run across one by an American Rock band out of Memphis, Tennessee. Their label’s Berlin counterpart had asked Zella to give their album a listen and spread the word about the band if she liked it. She got the impression that the label, which normally dealt in Soul Music was not quite sure how to market a band that didn’t seem to fit into any ready category. It was clearly a Rock album, but the Pop influenced sound made it difficult to define. The thing was that Zella had reviewed albums by a band that had featured Alex Chilton before. That stuff had been bubblegum, and she had savaged it accordingly. This new album was a very different take that Zella had not expected. Looking at the name of the band and also the title of the album, the whole thing had just reeked of pretension. The music though, that had been something else entirely, surprisingly good.
Zella had worried that she was being biased in her reaction to the album, so she had figured that she needed to find exactly the sort of person who it was geared towards. So, she had given her advanced copy of the album to Sophie Sommers, the thirteen-year-old ward of Kat von Mischner. The reaction that Sophie had had reminded Zella of the first time she had heard the Moondogs years earlier. That band could be huge, Zella thought to herself as she stared across the lake as wind drove ripples across its surface.