Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Seventy-Four
4th September 1972
Wahlstatt, Silesia
There were only twenty-four of them and as Gretchen learned, not one of them had the first clue as to what they were doing. To the others, this was all a lark. They were all from various minor Junkers families or were the daughters of various heroes and they had watched with glee over the Summer Holiday the consternation of their fathers and older brothers at the prospect of this. It seemed that she was the only one who was aware of what was in store, even so she had chosen this because spending the next six years at the mercy of Anna and her clique of friends was something that Gretchen considered nightmarish.
Mathilda, that strange girl who had joined her family over the summer was essentially going to Tzschocha in her place. Mathilda had a self-assurance and poise that Gretchen lacked, she had also treated Anna as if she were no more than an insect to her and Gretchen had envied her ability to do that. The adults of her family had clearly been pushing her to be friends with Mathilda, but why on Earth would someone like her want to be friends with someone like Gretchen? Not first the time, Gretchen wondered what her parents were thinking.
Getting off the train in Liegnitz, they had been herded onto a bus with the other first year students at the station. Gretchen had heard a lot of wild stories from Niko and Bas about what sort of greeting she would receive, but Opa had told her that the two of them were full of hot air.
Eventually, the bus pulled up a massive building. Opa had told her that it had once been an abbey, it certainly looked like it. A harried looking man in the uniform of an Oberstlieutenant and a dumpy looking Feldwebel accompanied by a woman wearing all black greeted them as they got off the bus and stood on the paving stones before the school entrance. The other buses were pulling in behind theirs and the students from those classes were staring at them as they milled around.
“Now, I am pleased to welcome you to what will be a bold and exciting new chapter for this institution. To introduce myself, I am Oberstlieutenant Adolf Gruber, and I will be your Headmaster during your time at the Prussian Institution of Wahlstatt. Boys, please go with Oberstabsfeldwebel Arbeit and… girls…” The Oberstlieutenant said before letting out an exasperated sigh, “Girls, please go with Stabsfeldwebel-Leutnant Pavlichenko. They will show you to your accommodations, get you situated, and brief you about what you will be doing over the coming days.”
Pavlichenko wasn’t wearing a uniform and the only clue of her rank, a Warrant Officer whose authority was roughly equivalent to that of a Hauptmann, was the Pioneer Corps Career badge that she was wearing pinned to her shirt. She looked at them coldly as if taking stock of them.
“I am supposed to teach History at this school, but they saw fit to stick me with you lot as well” Pavlichenko said with an accent that Gretchen couldn’t identify. “Now form a line, follow me, and no funny business. I am not your mother and have no problem with doling out harsh punishments, the consequences of stupidity should be painful. Understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am” Gretchen said along with the others.
It was clear that this woman was someone they did not want to mess with.
Lake Constance
After a week in Munich, Kiki had had enough. Sure, there had been fun parts like watching Freddy and Michael awarding sportsmanship medals to the various competitors or the occasional injury where she happened to be the closest Doctor with full access. For the most part though, she had been expected to play the part of the good hostess in a tense situation because the respective Governments of Germany and the United States had found a new reason to be at odds with each other. This time it was because the Abwehr, later the BND, had found a way to get an Agent into a high-ranking position within a key Government Agency. If Kiki had to guess, the American CIA was probably trying to figure out how it had been done so they could copy it at that very moment. It was all a part of the stupid games that Governments played, and Kiki found it all exhausting.
There were also other costs involved as well.
Zella had said that an old friend of hers had somehow gotten killed because of this whole mess and that the family of sorts that he’d had in Berlin were at a total loss. It wasn’t as if they could have a proper funeral for him, not without breaking certain promises that they had made.
Going back to Lake Constance and just watching the sailboats cruise around the lake from the foredeck of the Epione was a welcome change. Like on most afternoons, Rauchbier was doing his level best to prevent the sofa in the saloon from floating off. Still, he needed to take his run a couple times a day. That was why Kiki had taken him ashore to a field where he run to his heart’s content, hopefully leaving whatever small game happened to be present alone. The last thing that Kiki needed was that sort of trouble.