Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Sixteen
2nd March 1957
Paris, France
It was a drizzly morning and reflected the mood of Ethan Noyer as he entered the Ministry building where he worked. From his desk he the perfect view of the goings on within what had been dubbed “Les Départements Fantômes.” The Government Departments that were geared towards Alsace-Lorraine, Vietnam and other territories that had been lost in recent years. Increasingly it was looking like Algeria would soon be joining them. For a long time, it had been thought that budget cuts would eliminate the departments that haunted this building and their skeleton staffs would be assigned to other, more fruitful tasks. That was something that had yet to happen.
It was suspected that if the departments were eliminated it would be an admission of France’s decline from being one of the World’s Great Powers. As if it wasn’t already apparent from what was regularly seen in the magazines and newspapers. Just that weekend, Ethan had seen a political cartoon featuring France as a slattern in a rundown house telling a man wearing what was clearly an archaic Prussian uniform to leave the money on the nightstand as he left for the evening.
That was obviously in reaction to the recent funeral of Maria Kirillovna, the wife of the German Prince of Leiningen whose family had been given control of Alsace-Lorraine following the Franco-Prussian War. President Coty had felt obligated to attend the event but his arrival in Strasbourg became a humiliating spectacle. René Coty had been calling for there to be a plebiscite to settle the question of the disputed border region. When he had stepped off the plane, he had been greeted with a sea of German Imperial flags and the red, white & gold flags of Alsace-Lorraine being waved. The Boche had not been subtle about what they thought of the that idea. It was typical of them, arrogant, heavy-handed and deliberately offensive. They didn’t care because they didn’t have to. The reports that came across Ethan’s desk every single day told the entire reason why.
Working on behalf of the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône which included the seaport Marseille, Ethan saw how every single year millions of tons of cargo passed through that seaport. It was something that had brought prosperity to the region, but it was also entirely dependent upon the treaties between France, Germany and Italy.
Wunsdorf-Zossen
Kurt could hear the laughter as Suse and Josefine were running up and down the hall outside the study. Judging from the smaller footfalls they were being pursued by Alois and Suse’s cat Finster. Gerta had been delighted that Suse and Jo had become friends quickly after Jo had been taken in by Kat von Mischner. That didn’t however make for quiet afternoons when both girls were in the house.
Then it grew ominously quiet.
Having been Suse’s father had taught Kurt something important about his daughter. When she was in the house and he couldn’t hear her that usually meant that something untoward was about to happen. With a friend like Jo and her little brother with her, she had two extremely willing partners in crime.
Berlin
Sitting behind a typewriter didn’t come naturally to Douglas. Especially with how quiet the house was this afternoon. Kat had arranged for Jo to spend time with Suse at the Knispel house and for Tat and Kol to be at her Aunt Marcella’s. Noella had taken Marie upstairs for her afternoon nap. Kat and Ilse were at work, Petia, the Cook and the Housekeeper had gone to the market. That left Doug alone in the library on the parlor floor in the grey light of an overcast afternoon. Oddly, Kat had done her best of clear out the house so that Doug could work on this project in peace. He would have preferred the house to be full of noise and life while he worked.
This afternoon the house was too quiet, and Doug had found his mind wandering. Looking out the windows Doug looked down at the trees that they had planted. The first buds of the leaves were specks of green amid the brown and grey of winter. Over the next couple of months, it would burst into life, but it obviously wasn’t there yet. Looking away from the window, Doug looked back to the typewriter and the stacks of photographs on the desk. All of this had been Gia’s idea, he had been showing off the latest photographs that he had been taking of street scenes around the city of Berlin. It was all the parts of the city that tourists didn’t normally get to see and when taken as a whole revealed its surprising diversity. Gia had said that Doug needed to put out a pictorial book that would showcase his work and she had mentioned it to the publisher of her autobiography. What had followed was that they had gone through the back catalog of Doug’s work and had been excited about the project.
That was how Doug had found himself going through the dozens of photographs trying to select the best ones and typing up the stories behind them. It was a process that he was finding to be a challenge because storytelling wasn’t something that he was particularly used to doing. He had always been able to take the pictures and allow others to fill out the story based on whatever he had told them in his notes.
