Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II

The fights between Gia and Fyodor after they get married will be legendary! You could sell tickets!
The most hilarious would be that there would be good odds for Fydor to be accepting of an open relationship always that Gia and Asia kept it discret.

Considering the kind of antics that the Tsars and their Nobility kept out of sight or as an open secret, I suspect that Fyodor will oddly surprise Gia and not in a bad way...
 
I like how Maria refers to her children as belonging to Emil when they are being horrible, but when they are being good does she stake her claim to them?
Gia is still haunted by "The Romanov Curse" and the only way Fydor can make headway with her is to find a way to overcome it and given the past record of this timeline it is going to be spectacular.
 
Part 83, Chapter 1272
Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Two


10th March 1958

Berlin

“I hope you don’t mind me interrupting?” The Woman asked as Kiki and Doctor Berg were having lunch in the Hospital Cafeteria, “But you are Kristina von Preussen?”

She didn’t look like any journalist that Kiki had ever encountered. Pleasant looking, mid-thirties, strangely she had an Austrian accent. Something about the way she had asked Kiki her name under the well-known royal pseudonym like if that were no big deal made Kiki uneasy. If she wasn’t a journalist than there were a few other unsettling possibilities.

“Feel free, Frau…” Doctor Berg said, clearly asking a leading question.

“Fraulein de Bar” The woman said as she sat down at the table with them, “But you can call me Lotte.”

Kiki noticed that she had a hospital Administration badge pinned to the front of her blouse identifying her as Charlotte de Bar, Human Services, City of Berlin.

“That’s nice” Berg said in a tone that suggested that she didn’t like this intruder any more than Kiki did. “Is there anything we can help you with.”

“Actually, I’m here to speak with Kristina” Lotte said, “I’m a social worker and I just wanted to see how she was handling things. If we could talk privately?”

Kiki had been uneasy before, now there were alarm bells going off in her head. This woman could completely upset the applecart for her. “Doctor Berg is my mentor and personal Physician” Kiki blurted out, Doctor Berg had shown a great deal of trust in Kiki and it was time that she returned the favor. “Anything said to her will be in confidence.”

Lotte hesitated for a second as she was clearly wondering if she should be taking Kiki’s word for that.

“I just wanted to see how you are doing personally Kristina” Lotte said, “To see if you were still pursuing early emancipation and medical career? I know that you’ve had a trying time over the last couple years.”

“I was wondering how a woman from Austria comes to be a social worker in Berlin?” Berg asked. It was a question that Kiki wouldn’t have thought of and thankfully it took the focus off her for a few seconds.

“I had the exact same career in Vienna, but my intended lives here in Berlin so I started anew recently” Lotte said, “Now, this isn’t about me. Are you going to answer my questions Kristina?”

It was clear that Lotte had a lot of practice in this sort of thing and wasn’t easily deflected.

“I’m doing well enough” Kiki said, “The last several months have been nice. I’ve been living with Gräfin Katherine of Berlin-Pankow since my father decided that she was better equipped to get me through this time than he was. I still want to go into medicine, but my educational goals have had some setbacks.”

“I see” Lotte said, “How serious were the setbacks?”

“I was hoping that I would be allowed to complete my secondary education in time for my sixteenth birthday” Kiki said, “The Headmistress of my gymnasia told me that my educational progress and emotional maturity were lacking.”

“How did you take that?”

“I was unhappy, of course” Kiki answered, “Benjamin was pleased that it would keep me around through the next term.”

“And just who is this Benjamin?” Lotte asked with a slight smile.

That was how it progressed for the next several minutes until Lotte seemed satisfied with Kiki’s answers. She thanked Kiki for her time and left. It hadn’t gone as badly as Kiki feared it would, Doctor Berg gave her one unsettling observation about the entire conversation.

“It felt to me like she was trying to get a feel for you” Berg said, “Who you are, what you want, and whatnot? Beyond what a social worker might normally do, though that is exactly what she seemed to be.”

As Kiki replayed the conversation in her head, she couldn’t figure out exactly what Lotte had been up to and why.

“Is that all?” Kiki asked.

“No” Berg replied, “But I’m sure you’ll figure out when whatever that was all about clobbers you over the head.”

Not for the first time, Kiki wished for a pleasant surprise for once.


Near Oppeln, Silesia

“This is how it is, General” The Feldwebel who was about thirty seconds from finding himself with a new, greatly diminished rank, was saying to Hans without taking the cigar from his mouth to talk. There were times when Hans sorely missed having Jost Schultz and Soren Yount around. Their ability to keep the Enlisted in line was something that he had taken for granted.

The other problem revolved around what Stefan had jokingly referred to as Newton’s First Law of motion, the Military Version. Objects at rest, tend to stay at rest. When soldiers are involved, they fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Today, after spending a frustrating winter straightening out the bureaucratic structure of the Division, Hans had discovered that half the Division’s tracked vehicles were out of commission ahead of the spring thaw. The roads of Upper Silesia were not exactly in the greatest of condition. More than a decade after the war had ended there were still good roads leading to ruins that had never been reclaimed and lousy roads leading to villages that had. No one had a clear idea of which were which. Once the thaw set in, tracked vehicles would be the only thing moving on the unpaved roads.

That was why Hans was out trying to get as many of the SPz-2 APCs, half-tracks and Raupenschleppers that belonged to the Division running without cannibalizing too many of the vehicles for parts. All of that took time, something that they were rapidly running out of. Matters weren’t helped by most of the men, with the exception of the senior Enlisted and the Officers, would go back to being shop keepers, barbers, factory workers or whatever else they did when they were not doing their rotation with the Division.
 
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So for Berg's sake I hope that was really a social worker and not a reporter or someone else digging for dirt. The first thing they should have asked her for was her credentials. As far as I know social workers can't just walk up to any child and grill them about their life. There has to be a complaint or investigation started, usually ordered by a judge.
 
Did Lotte show any credentials? If not that was very trusting on Kiki's and Dr. Berg's part and if Lotte is not who she says she is then there is going to be a world of trouble coming.
I wonder how Jost and Soren will like being transferred to Silesia?
 
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So for Berg's sake I hope that was really a social worker and not a reporter or someone else digging for dirt. The first thing they should have asked her for was her credentials. As far as I know social workers can't just walk up to any child and grill them about their life. There has to be a complaint or investigation started, usually ordered by a judge.

It's a bit more complicated than that, Lotte was exactly what she said she was. At the same time there are larger forces at work, much to Kiki's deep consternation.
 
The most hilarious would be that there would be good odds for Fydor to be accepting of an open relationship always that Gia and Asia kept it discret.

Considering the kind of antics that the Tsars and their Nobility kept out of sight or as an open secret, I suspect that Fyodor will oddly surprise Gia and not in a bad way...

I think that also be hilarious Gia met Fiodor brother and fall in love with him.
 
The very act of a social worker speaking to the Kaiser's daughter out of professional standpoint is politically charged. No even the most dedicated social worker would do so on a lark unless Kiki would would show quite a lot more warning signs, as it would amount to self-destructing their own career unless there is something really damning to find.
 
The problem with that is that sometimes the "trash" will decide that instead of taking pennies for working the other "trash" over, they will just go to the source, where the fat golden goose lies and take it all and ware those who get in their way.
Indeed, this strategy worked so well for the Romans with the Vandals and Goths, Britons with the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish with the Normans.
 
Fyodor smiled, “You knew exactly what you were doing” He said, “You didn’t lose control, you were exactly who and what you pretend you are not. Underneath that education and cultured exterior is a passionate woman who did her best to kill the whoreson who hurt her adopted sister.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about” Gia said.

The look on Fyodor’s face basically said that he knew what she had said was bullshit.

“I am not blind” Fyodor said, “The physical resemblance between you and that German woman is remarkable. I understand that she was your body double at one point and after how you lost your family it’s entirely understandable that you would find a new one.”

At that moment Fyodor was lucky that Gia didn’t have a gun. Otherwise she would have shot a second deserving man in the head.

What will be interesting will be if, and I hope they do get married, after their nuptials someone somewhere along the line makes them mad. Imagine both of them after you. Or better yet imagine if they have a child or two and not just having them, and them also includes the whole of the Spenatz troops in Russia, Remember she is now their patron saint if only in secret St. Gia to them; You will have folks like their childrens Auntie Kat and her friends after them.
 
The very act of a social worker speaking to the Kaiser's daughter out of professional standpoint is politically charged. No even the most dedicated social worker would do so on a lark unless Kiki would would show quite a lot more warning signs, as it would amount to self-destructing their own career unless there is something really damning to find.

She isn’t an SW. She is actually either a member of a criminal gang, or intra-German subversive political group, a member of the polish resistance or an agent from a rogue foreign intelligence group or extra-national entity doing a bit of pre-mission planning to nab Kristina in order to embarrass the German Government, the Kaiser, make a political point and/or make some money on the side with a ransom demand to fund their other activities.

If that sounds ridiculous, paranoid, and wildly improbable it’s only because that is what this timeline has taught me to expect!
 
She isn’t an SW. She is actually either a member of a criminal gang, or intra-German subversive political group, a member of the polish resistance or an agent from a rogue foreign intelligence group or extra-national entity doing a bit of pre-mission planning to nab Kristina in order to embarrass the German Government, the Kaiser, make a political point and/or make some money on the side with a ransom demand to fund their other activities.

If that sounds ridiculous, paranoid, and wildly improbable it’s only because that is what this timeline has taught me to expect!

PBM wrote: "It's a bit more complicated than that, Lotte was exactly what she said she was. At the same time there are larger forces at work, much to Kiki's deep consternation."
 
Could everyones favorite psycologist have anything to do with the social worker showing up? He is cleared into areas that even high ranking members of the military and government are not able to see. If the Kaiser wanted someone to be a backstop so to speak with her living with the Grafin and letting him have an unvarnished report on what is going, he would be perfect for the role.
 
Part 83, Chapter 1273
Chapter One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Three


28th March 1958

Tempelhof-Berlin

Why couldn’t have Lotte been a journalist digging for dirt? Kiki could have handled that. The truth was far worse than anything she could have imagined.

“This means that the two of you have so much in common” Zella said, once she had stopped laughing. “Both of you like to sneak around under assumed names and work in non-traditional careers. The two of you ought to get along great.”

“Try to be nice Zella” Kat said, “Kiki has just had a major surprise, and this is not funny.”

Kiki remembered that conversation with “Lotte” a couple weeks earlier. It turned out she really was a social worker and there was a good reason what she had been able to get around Kiki’s unobtrusive security detail at the hospital. They had been ordered to stand down by Kiki’s own father so that Lotte could speak with Kiki and not to tell her about it after the fact. Worse of all, she had included several clues as to who she really was in the conversation that Kiki had failed to pick up on. “Lotte de Bar” was just as much a pseudonym as Kristina Fischer. It belonged to Archduchess Charlotte of Austria, the younger sister of the current Archduke and her intended, the one she had mentioned lived in Berlin, was Kiki’s own father. She had used her professional position and connections to bend the rules to talk to Kiki and get to know her without letting on who she was.

It was not until a couple of weeks later when Kiki had been with Kat and Ilse as they had been in a department store looking for clothes for Ilse’s baby when she had overheard talk that her father was remarrying. A couple hours later when Kiki had finally gotten her father on the phone, she’d had him joke about how he now knew what it took to get her to call him. What followed was watching the announcement of the engagement unfold on television, Charlotte was introduced at her father’s side with Michael, Louis Junior, Marie and Victoria. Friedrich was mentioned as being overseas and Kiki was said to be indisposed, as she had been since her return from Japan almost a year earlier.

Not for the first time, Kiki wished that her father was just the engineer and mechanic that he seemed to wish that he could be. Then she wouldn’t have her family’s business covered in breathless detail.

The call to Suga had gone a bit better, Kiki had been having tea with the Japanese Princess since she had moved to Berlin. The fact that Suga was in University while Kiki was still attending the gymnasia was a bit of a gulf between them but still, she was someone a bit removed from all this. “You need to understand that your father wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life alone” Was what Suga had to say on the matter. While Kiki watched all this unfold on television, she was sulking and getting needled by Zella. She understood on an intellectual level what Suga had told her, she also knew Kat was right about this being a major surprise.


Cam Ranh, Khánh Hòa Province, Vietnam

With things at home sorted, things stood better domestically than they had in months. Albrecht’s mother had said that she would do her best to keep the Graf from interfering with Ilse too much. However, they had needed to tell him that Ilse was expecting and that was fraught with difficulties. He had actually been happy with Albrecht for once. The week had ended, and he had found himself boarding an airplane back to Vietnam. No mad dash across Asia this time, instead he was flying on a conventional airliner. He had not wanted to leave Ilse and had promised that he would be back in June. He just hoped that circumstances wouldn’t make him a liar again.

Albrecht was practically humming with excitement as he made his way from Mission Control. Dioscuri II had been a successful launch that had just reached orbit, in the coming hours the communications satellite would be boosted into a geostationary orbit over the Western Pacific. When Dioscuri III launched in a couple weeks and took position over the Indian Ocean, it would join a third satellite that was already over the Mid-Atlantic that had been launched by the British. That would create a network that would link Cam Ranh to Peenemünde and Wunsdorf without the need for relays. The satellites were also equipped to transmit television signals, so they were going to link the empire together like never before.

Dioscuri IV was the launch that everyone had their eyes on though. After the final Atgeir launch had ended in tragedy, everyone was concerned about how it would turn out. Albrecht had that plus Sigi to contend with. She was the second alternate to Pilot Dioscuri IV, if something happened and Sigi became the first alternate then there would be a media circus. Albrecht had been an alternate until the primary had been injured, then he had made a historic flight. Linus Dunst was slated to be the Command Pilot of Dioscuri IV having recovered from the surgery to repair the knee he had injured while trying to get out of Huginn 1 during a scrubbed launch. He had said flatly that Albrecht wasn’t taking his seat this time. It was a comment that had prompted him to look and see where he was on the list of Raumfahrers in upcoming missions. He had seen that he could be the Command Pilot Dioscuri VI, if he wanted it. He was also aware of when that launch was going to take place and what the mission profile was.

That was enough to put an idea in his head. Ilse would be furious, but delighted at the same time.
 
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It was a comment that had prompted him to look and see where he was on the list of Raumfahrers in upcoming missions. He had seen that he could be the Command Pilot Dioscuri VI, if he wanted it. He was also aware of when that launch was going to take place and what the mission profile was.

That was enough to put an idea in his head. Ilse would be furious, but delighted at the same time.
Well THIS sounds ominous!!!
 
Kind of crappy how Kiki found out about her father's engagement. Her dying mother refused to see her on her death bed and now this.
Kiki at this point in her life is more like a live grenade with the pin pulled out and the person holding it has a tenuous grip on it.
From the Protocol Office it may be suggested that the wedding is kept on a low key affair.
 
I wonder if Benny is going to be asked by Kiki to be her escort at the royal nuptials. I would pee my pants if I had to go to anything like that. So yes, I would be decked out in a dark suit.
 
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