Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Sixty-One
29th September 1961
Mitte, Berlin
It was something that no one expected to be here, but that was exactly the point. The building that housed the temporary headquarters of the KSK looked like any other high-rise building in city core. The differences were very apparent once anyone got inside the building and saw the level of security throughout the building. Kat had just come from meeting with Tatiana and Malcolm’s teachers. It seemed that when they had placed the two of them in separate classrooms this term it had revealed that Malcolm had been dependent upon his sister in getting passing marks in certain subjects. While Kat approved of them working together and being clever enough to pull that off, it had only been a temporary fix to the larger problem. Kat had thought that Malcolm had been making real progress, so this was a real disappointment. The children had gone home with Douglas so she could get back to work.
That was the reason why Kat wasn’t exactly in a great mood when she came through the front door. Even though she was wearing civilian clothes everyone here knew who Kat was and she was grateful that she had put out the memo that this location was to be considered a field command post. It was technically true because the mandate of KSK basically extended to wherever the OKW authorized its operations, including Berlin itself. The result was that there was very little ceremony to announce her arrival. She just got buzzed in through the outer door by the two guards who watched the lobby from behind the bullet proof glass. The process repeated itself until Kat made it to her office on the top floor.
“Our friends on the fourth floor of the U.S. Embassy are a bit agitated today” Oberst von Schiller, Kat’s Aide-de-Camp said as she walked in. “It seems that someone told them of your latest appointment.”
Kat concealed her annoyance when he said that. Everyone else in this building seemed to find the way that the American Central Intelligence Agency viewed her as the monster under the bed to be amusing. Kat had replaced Johann Schultz as the not so secret mastermind behind the actions of the German State in popular imagination. It was odd because Kat currently had no working relationship with the BND, they mostly pretended that they had no idea who she was. Schultz on the other hand had earned his reputation by meddling in the affairs of the United States to such an extent that no one could ever acknowledge that it had ever happened because far more than national pride and reputations were at stake.
“I don’t have time to worry about little boys jumping at their own shadows” Kat replied, and von Schiller just gave a slight smile at that answer.
“The files you asked for are on your desk as well Ma’am.”
“Thank you” Kat said. She was still trying to get used to the changes that came from her new rank. “Have you heard back from our source in Cuxhaven?”
“No” von Schiller replied, “I’ll let you know when he gets back to us.”
That was another annoyance. Recently, Kat had completed a tour of the training facilities of the KSK and Cuxhaven stood out as a particular trouble spot. She knew that the Marine Recon units, the Sealions were incredibly valuable. However, there was the culture of the Marine Infantry that seeped into the way that the Sealions did things. The Generalmajor who was the Commanding Officer in Cuxhaven and the Oberst in charge of the training facility there had taken upon themselves to tell Kat what she wanted to hear and while having every intention of keeping it business as usual while she wasn’t around. Kat knew that she would need to make an example of someone in order to be taken seriously. They had just moved themselves to the top of the list. Two of the files on her desk were of those two men.
The third file Kat had requested at the insistence of the Emperor and that was the one that she opened. He had asked her to look in on the present welfare of his daughter beyond what she had seen herself in Laupheim. It was interesting reading as Kiki had a medical examination when she had completed the Physical Training portion of what was called the Leadership Indoctrination Course this week. It was the training that Officers and Aspirants endured if they wanted to lead one of the Special Forces teams in the future. Not only was it more difficult but the trainees were subjected to intense training while being subjected to a more subtle examination. The idea was to see how they reacted when pushed to their limits, both physically and mentally.
Underweight, exhausted and difficult, that was the conclusion that the Doctor had reached about Kiki. Kat wondered how he would fare if he had experienced what she had over the previous eight weeks. According to his notes he had made the mistake that male Doctors always made when dealing with female patients with the very first test that he had ordered. No wonder Kiki had proven difficult.
Reading further, Kat saw that Kiki had almost washed out of the program. It was not for physical reasons though. It was entirely because she was seen as being too nice. It had been observed that her leadership style involved building a consensus as opposed to giving orders and the concern was that she would be indecisive at critical moments. Then she had apparently come close to twisting a man’s leg off in a training exercise and a different side of her had emerged over the following days. Kat smiled at that, anyone who had seen Kiki fight back against her older, much bigger, brothers would know that she could absolutely merciless if she chose.