Part 132, Chapter 2253
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Fifty-Three
1st October 1973
Mitte, Berlin
Franz Josef Strauss was worried. The fullness of his mistakes was growing more evident by the hour and that had led him to present situation in a hotel room near the center of Berlin. The building was as secure as could be arranged and the room itself was heavily guarded. For all the good that ultimately did him when the door swung open.
Strauss remembered a Science Fiction film he had watched a few months earlier that depicted a man living within a black steel suit whose function was essentially a mobile iron lung. His voice was a low rasp between gasping breaths. The entire presentation had been disconcerting. That had nothing on Birsha Bleier, if that was his real name, who entered Strauss’ hotel room in dead silence. It felt as if his presence was a hole in the fabric of reality.
“My guards had orders not to let you in here” Strauss said, projecting far more confidence than he actually felt.
“Your guards?” Bleier asked, his words seemed hang in the air like an oily pall. “I am afraid you will need to find new ones. A small price for you to pay after thirty of my best people vanished in August.”
Strauss didn’t like the implications of that. This time there would be questions asked, it couldn’t be helped, and he knew there wasn’t a chance in Hell that Bleier would lift a finger to help him. This was entirely a show of strength, for Bleier to show that he was above any Law that Strauss might try to impose on him. Bleier had murdered his way to the top of Berlin’s underground and had proven far smarter than Strauss had thought.
“There is no way that you can blame me for that” Strauss said, “How was I supposed to know that it was bad information?”
Bleier gave him a cold smile. “Because that is your job, Franz” He replied, and Strauss wondered how on Earth he had thought that Birsha Bleier was the lesser evil when compared to Katherine von Mischner. Bleier had never elaborated as to why it had been in his interest to eliminate the Tigress, now it was an open question as to if that had really been the goal. Strauss had had a suspicion that many of the people killed in the attempted raid on Katherine’s house had been those he had deemed potential rivals, slated for elimination one way or another. Pawns to be sacrificed before they became a danger to him?
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Their efforts had grown increasingly frantic as the hours ticked down ahead of tomorrow’s broadcast. Normally Zella’s approach of using a small team, often just herself and Yuri, enabled her to quickly, and cheaply, put a story together. This time was different though. They had a massive story of international importance with hundreds of hours of video that needed to be reviewed and edited into something useable. The Board of Directors at ARD had sensed that it would be a story that would define the Network for years to come and had promoted it, giving Zella a hard deadline. Come Hell or high water, the story was going to be broadcast on Sunday, the 2nd of October in a two-hour special and not just on the ARD affiliates.
Central Radio Television Radio, ZFF, and the Bavarian Broadcasting Service, BR, ARD’s two major rivals in public broadcasting had decided to air the special on their networks simultaneously. While it was no surprise that ZFF, the network that specialized in Financial and Business coverage, out of Frankfurt had expressed interest. That network was mostly interested in the eyeballs that the special would bring on a night when their normal viewership’s interests were elsewhere. BR out of Munich was different though. Zella had been persona non grata on that network since she had parodied their habit of signing out of every night’s programing with a video of King Albrecht on a horse imitating Napoleon Bonaparte. Even before that, the BR had not been shy about how the existence of Zella herself wasn’t in keeping with the values of their network.
So, Zella found herself heading a team that was trying to put together the documentary as the pressure increased. It would feature Kiki’s trip to Russia. How Kiki had facilitated Vasily Jughashvili and Svetlana Alliluyeva’s travel west and then their reunion with Yakov Svanidze, the older half-brother who had lived in exile in Germany for the last thirty years. Things were finally starting to come together when Zella received a call from the bigwigs at ARD. They had secured a deal with the two big private television networks out of Berlin, Universelles, the television division of UFA and their chief rival, Metropolis-Rundfunk. That meant that Zella’s special could easily become the most watched program since the Moon Landing several years earlier. That put things beyond merely being under the pressure of a hard deadline, they were coal being ground between tectonic plates and Zella had better be able to produce diamonds.
Typing frantically, Zella was incorporating the final revisions of script of the voiceover that she would be recording in the coming hours. Yuri walked past with a smile on his face. Like everyone else, he had faith that Zella would stick the landing on this one when the truth was that she felt that she was about to land flat on her face.
1st October 1973
Mitte, Berlin
Franz Josef Strauss was worried. The fullness of his mistakes was growing more evident by the hour and that had led him to present situation in a hotel room near the center of Berlin. The building was as secure as could be arranged and the room itself was heavily guarded. For all the good that ultimately did him when the door swung open.
Strauss remembered a Science Fiction film he had watched a few months earlier that depicted a man living within a black steel suit whose function was essentially a mobile iron lung. His voice was a low rasp between gasping breaths. The entire presentation had been disconcerting. That had nothing on Birsha Bleier, if that was his real name, who entered Strauss’ hotel room in dead silence. It felt as if his presence was a hole in the fabric of reality.
“My guards had orders not to let you in here” Strauss said, projecting far more confidence than he actually felt.
“Your guards?” Bleier asked, his words seemed hang in the air like an oily pall. “I am afraid you will need to find new ones. A small price for you to pay after thirty of my best people vanished in August.”
Strauss didn’t like the implications of that. This time there would be questions asked, it couldn’t be helped, and he knew there wasn’t a chance in Hell that Bleier would lift a finger to help him. This was entirely a show of strength, for Bleier to show that he was above any Law that Strauss might try to impose on him. Bleier had murdered his way to the top of Berlin’s underground and had proven far smarter than Strauss had thought.
“There is no way that you can blame me for that” Strauss said, “How was I supposed to know that it was bad information?”
Bleier gave him a cold smile. “Because that is your job, Franz” He replied, and Strauss wondered how on Earth he had thought that Birsha Bleier was the lesser evil when compared to Katherine von Mischner. Bleier had never elaborated as to why it had been in his interest to eliminate the Tigress, now it was an open question as to if that had really been the goal. Strauss had had a suspicion that many of the people killed in the attempted raid on Katherine’s house had been those he had deemed potential rivals, slated for elimination one way or another. Pawns to be sacrificed before they became a danger to him?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Their efforts had grown increasingly frantic as the hours ticked down ahead of tomorrow’s broadcast. Normally Zella’s approach of using a small team, often just herself and Yuri, enabled her to quickly, and cheaply, put a story together. This time was different though. They had a massive story of international importance with hundreds of hours of video that needed to be reviewed and edited into something useable. The Board of Directors at ARD had sensed that it would be a story that would define the Network for years to come and had promoted it, giving Zella a hard deadline. Come Hell or high water, the story was going to be broadcast on Sunday, the 2nd of October in a two-hour special and not just on the ARD affiliates.
Central Radio Television Radio, ZFF, and the Bavarian Broadcasting Service, BR, ARD’s two major rivals in public broadcasting had decided to air the special on their networks simultaneously. While it was no surprise that ZFF, the network that specialized in Financial and Business coverage, out of Frankfurt had expressed interest. That network was mostly interested in the eyeballs that the special would bring on a night when their normal viewership’s interests were elsewhere. BR out of Munich was different though. Zella had been persona non grata on that network since she had parodied their habit of signing out of every night’s programing with a video of King Albrecht on a horse imitating Napoleon Bonaparte. Even before that, the BR had not been shy about how the existence of Zella herself wasn’t in keeping with the values of their network.
So, Zella found herself heading a team that was trying to put together the documentary as the pressure increased. It would feature Kiki’s trip to Russia. How Kiki had facilitated Vasily Jughashvili and Svetlana Alliluyeva’s travel west and then their reunion with Yakov Svanidze, the older half-brother who had lived in exile in Germany for the last thirty years. Things were finally starting to come together when Zella received a call from the bigwigs at ARD. They had secured a deal with the two big private television networks out of Berlin, Universelles, the television division of UFA and their chief rival, Metropolis-Rundfunk. That meant that Zella’s special could easily become the most watched program since the Moon Landing several years earlier. That put things beyond merely being under the pressure of a hard deadline, they were coal being ground between tectonic plates and Zella had better be able to produce diamonds.
Typing frantically, Zella was incorporating the final revisions of script of the voiceover that she would be recording in the coming hours. Yuri walked past with a smile on his face. Like everyone else, he had faith that Zella would stick the landing on this one when the truth was that she felt that she was about to land flat on her face.
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