Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Sixty-Eight
16th April 1975
Falkensee, Brandenburg
While she was still attending University Tatiana was expected to spend at least a couple hours each day in the Research and Analysis Section of the European Division on the Falkensee Campus of the BND. She knew that it was a way to keep tabs on her while she was in Berlin. When she had been in Boston she had been transferred to the North American Division. She had only been dimly aware of the mechanics of that switch until she had found herself staring at mass consisting of reems of paper, stacks of books, thousands of reels of tape, both audio and video, and vinyl records. She was supposed to read, watch, or listen to them and then provide a synopsis of everything that she read. When she had asked what all of this was for, Tatiana had been told that they were looking for works which might pose a danger of exposing active BND operations.
That seemed rather unlikely, anyone who had actually worked in this field knew that James Bond was a fantasy. Actual Intelligence Officers did their best not to draw attention to themselves in the way he did. The Section Head had smiled and handed Tatiana a copy of a novel by a British Author named John le Carré. She had been shocked at how the novel had given vivid and extremely detailed descriptions of the Offices of the Military High Command in Wunsdorf-Zossen and the BND Headquarters in Falkensee. She had realized that she was reading the work of a retired Intelligence Officer and he had been inside those very installations at the risk of his own life. That was a leak they couldn’t control, the domestic equivalent though, that was what they were looking for.
Today had started off normally until she found a binder full of loose papers in today’s offerings. The title page said that the author was Anne Frank, someone she knew and that seemed like an easy assignment. She had known Anne her whole life as one of her mother’s network of close friends that were practically family and knew that her books were light reading mostly fantasy of a somewhat Feminist bent, so she had taken the binder without a thought. The title, Volume One, The Diary of a Young Girl seemed in keeping with that. It wasn’t until Tatiana started reading that she realized that it was not fiction but the actual diary of Anne herself from when she started writing it after receiving the empty journal as a present on her twelfth birthday. She had included every detail of her life, talking about her parent’s relationship, her older sister, and herself.
The diary was composed of individual entries that grew longer with time. Finally, there were entries about Anne’s father insisting that she should be introduced to the Imperial Court in December of 1946 after Empress Kira had made clear that religion would not be an issue. Oddly, what she wrote about that event focused more on these strange girls who had crashed the party and were hiding on an upstairs balcony poking fun at the events below. They had been the ones who had given Anne her first sip of Champagne from the bottle they had swiped from the party. They introduced themselves as the Little Birds, namely Kristine, Leni, Tilde, and Judita. Tatiana realized that she knew all of them.
The following entries were about getting drawn further into the world of the Little Birds as well as meeting their other members, Asia, Ilse, and Gia. Learning all about how they had been recruited to play body doubles for a mysterious Russian Princess who they had never actually met despite actually traveling to Russia with the Empress. Afterwards, they had become a family of sorts, aided by the fact that they all sort of looked alike. Oddly, they had accepted Anne as one of their own despite her being from outside their circle and had introduced her to their spiritual mother, Imperial Archduchess Tatiana of Russia. Tatiana was not expecting that, her mother had never mentioned it to her. There was mention of an American girl who joined them about that time who had come to Berlin as a visiting scholar.
Then came mention of Anne’s first encounters with Tatiana’s mother, how she had been awed by her presence. There had also been encounters with Helene and Gerta. The descriptions had not quite been in line with Tatiana’s thinking until she realized that it was because those the press dubbed the Three Furies were roughly the same age as she was. They would have been very different back then. There were also those who called themselves the Little Birds. They had essentially been a spy ring that had worked on behalf of the Empress.
Eventually there had been an incident when Kristine had read portions of Anne’s diary. To balance the scales, Tatiana’s mother had gotten a copy of Kristine’s records and had guided Anne through them. It had apparently been a surprise to Anne when a Psychiatric Profile in those records implied that Kristine was a Lesbian, something that she had needed to reconcile for herself when she realized that Kris had never stopped being her friend despite reading a portion of her diary without permission.
The entries continued on, and Tatiana continued reading. She was aware that the sounds of the office had grown quiet, and lights were getting turned off. Meaning that it had been hours and everyone else had left. Then she came across and entry about her mother suffering a miscarriage and having one of her dark episodes. That was entirely new information for Tatiana. She knew that her mother had bad days, but this described her locking herself in her room for weeks and refusing to talk to anyone. It also described Tatiana’s mother as uncertain and full of doubts about the future. That was completely unlike who she thought her mother was.