Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Fifty-Four
2nd December 1957
Cam Ranh, Vietnam
As much as Albrecht was going to miss Ilse when she left to return to Berlin, he had realized that she needed to go before her health further deteriorated and had made the arrangements for her to go. She had taken a sabbatical from her position at the University of Berlin and had come to Cam Ranh just to be with him. It was something that he felt a stab of guilt over with every new illness she seemed to get. In the first weeks after their arrival she had been stricken with malaria. That had been followed later by a different fever a month later that had left her feeling faint and badly dehydrated. She had also been rapidly losing weight, which wasn’t good. The Doctors had said that it was because her body was having trouble adjusting to the tropical heat and humidity. The best thing for her would be spend time in an airconditioned building until she could be sent home.
The whole time that this was going on Ilse had not complained. That was something that Albrecht had noticed about her, Ilse tended to just accept things the way they were no matter how unacceptable her situation was. It might have been something she had learned to do as a survival mechanism early on, but in Vietnam it was clearly working against her.
“Your sister is expecting you” Albrecht said as he helped her up the stairs onto the airplane.
“I’m so sorry Bert” Ilse said, “None of this turned out the way it was supposed to.”
“Stop apologizing” Albrecht replied, “I wouldn’t be any happier watching you kill yourself as opposed to going home. Besides that, I’ll be following you in a few months.”
“You promise?” Ilse asked with a smile as they found her seat.
“Yeah, I promise” Albrecht replied before he kissed Ilse on the forehead and whispered, “I love you.” He couldn’t help but noticing that she was feverish even then.
On the way out of the cabin, Albrecht had a quick word with the Steward who recognized who he was. Basically, he had made very clear that he wanted Ilse taken care of during the flight.
A day later, Albrecht was still smarting about how things had worked out. Worse, only hours after he had put Ilse on the plane, Walther von Braun made an announcement that also made Albrecht into a liar. The Atgeir Project was being scrapped in favor of the new Dioscuri Project. Albrecht was being asked to stay on in Vietnam until the end of the next launch cycle, several months longer than originally planned. Even as tolerant as Ilse had been of his career, he couldn’t imagine that she would be happy with this turn of events.
Moscow, Russia
Decent food, terrible company.
That was the conclusion that Gia reached as sat at the table with her cousin and his wife. Like always, the subject had turned to Gia’s rejection of the latest round of suitors.
“What can I say?” Gia asked, “You have terrible taste in men Georgy, it’s something that I have trouble getting past.”
Gia heard Lidiya snicker over that.
“You and Fyodor are possibly the only two people in all of Russia who can get away with telling me that joke” Georgy replied.
“It is not that you have terrible taste George” Lidiya said, “It’s just that the sort of educated, articulate men that Sasha is attracted to are rather thin on the ground in this country.”
That caused Georgy to glower at his plate.
“That Georgian bastard was chucked into the crematorium more than a decade ago and he’s still causing me grief” Georgy muttered, “He is like syphilis, the gift that just keeps on giving.”
Gia knew who the “Georgian bastard” her cousin was talking about was. From what she had observed, the damage that Joseph Stalin had done to certain sectors of the economy and the Universities were going to take decades to repair. In his displeasure over that Georgy had proposed that the 18th of December be declared a national holiday so the Russian people could properly express their regard for Stalin’s memory. Over the last couple years that had taken the form of getting drunk and burning an effigy of the late despot unofficially. Earlier this year Georgy asked the Duma to make it official. Normally, that legislative body was like herding cats, with debate over minor matters frequently stretching out for weeks. It had taken them three hours to pass the law giving the holiday the official stamp of approval.
This year there were several large papier-mâché likenesses of Stalin and his deputies that were going to be put to the torch in Red Square. Similar events were planned in every corner of Russia. It was said that the vodka distilleries were gearing up because they actually expected to run out of product. Gia had also heard many terms used to describe Stalin. This was the first time she had heard syphilis used, it was however a perfectly appropriate description of Georgy’s situation.
“Do you need to use a term like that George?” Lidiya asked.
“No” Georgy replied, “But when describing that man, I find that no terms can be too vulgar.”
“I am agreeing with Georgy on this one” Gia said, “Not something I do often.”
