Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Four
16th September 1960
Mitte, Berlin
When Gloria left the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, she had noticed that the same Marine guard who was always there when she passed through was present. A Corporal who had been here for months and had been given the nickname Rabbit by his fellow Marines, some play on his last name if she had to guess.
“Ma’am” Rabbit said as he opened the door for her, and she stepped out the doors of the Embassy. It was a nice afternoon, not presently raining like it had earlier in the day.
The Marines and the Civilian State Department Employees had seen her before, several times in fact. They knew she was a Journalist and that she had access to portions of the third floor that few of them were allowed to set foot in.
While Gloria wasn’t a CIA Agent, she was considered an asset by the Agency and there was a certain amount of give and take in her dealings with them. Today, she had needed access to the sort of background files that they kept on the big players in the German Government and Imperial Court. All because she had caught the rumor that Gräfin von Mischner was far from retired, instead she was putting all her training and experience into conducting investigations for the German Kaiser personally. That would surprise hardly anyone, Katherine was still a relatively young woman who had only retired because she had not wanted her career to consume the rest of her life. However, she was unlikely to just sit at home and watch the grass grow. The current investigation that was the real story. The Countess of Berlin was once again on the trail of a serial killer. In America, the people ate a story like that up. Gloria did know that Katherine was notoriously secretive about what her current activities were, so she would need to find other sources for that information. It wouldn’t be too difficult. Like police everywhere the German Federal Cops loved to tell stories, the gorier the better.
What she had learned today though was a bit surprising. The two CIA Agents who had been tasked with keeping tabs on the Tigress had said that it was suspected that she had been involved in technology transfers between Germany and Canada over the last few years. It was things like that which Gloria found infinitely fascinating. If Kat were a man acting as the personal Agent of the Kaiser, no one would bat an eye. Instead they were constantly surprised.
That’s what happens when you constantly underestimate someone, Gloria thought to herself as she unlocked her rental car.
The traffic getting out of the City Center was heavy as thousands of commuters tried to get out of town. This was happening earlier in the day than Gloria would see in the United States and she wondered if it was the result of different cultures. Here people try to go home early on a Friday afternoon while in say Washington D.C. everyone was afraid to be seen as the first one going out the door.
Eventually, she reached the turn off for Tempelhof and entered the neighborhood. Driving through the Humboldt Campus of the University of Berlin. It looked like any other urban college she had seen with red brick buildings that had been designed to look like any of the other high rises that surrounded it.
As she pulled up to an intersection, Gloria heard the clattering sound of an engine and a dark green motorcycle pulled up next to her car. When she saw the rider glance towards the window of her car to make sure that Gloria had seen her, she noticed that the it was young woman. It was a reminder that she was a long way from home. Gloria went straight and the motorcycle turned right, presumably towards somewhere on the Humboldt Campus.
The high rises gave way to row houses that reminded Gloria of the brownstones found in New York City, though these were mostly made of yellow and grey stone or red brick. Her understanding was that this whole area had all been an airport until a few years ago. It was difficult to imagine that now. Pulling up to the address the she had been given, she got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front door of an imposing grey stone house. The bronze door knocker had a crest that included a cat and a sword, as if she needed proof that she had found the correct address. After Gloria knocked on the door and waited for a bit the door swung open and a girl of four or five years of age with red hair and vivid blue eyes looked out at her. The family resemblance was unmistakable.
“I’m Gloria, I believe that your mother is expecting me” Gloria said, trying to hide her discomfort at talking to the child who just stared at her in silence.
She was saved when she heard a few sharp words in Russian from inside the house and the little girl vanished. A moment later the door swung all the way open and a woman of an undefinable age stood there.
“The foolish little girl has needed to be warned not to open the door for strangers even though she is shy around them” The woman said in German with an accent that sounded Russian. “Marie is like her mother in that regard, she doesn’t like to listen either. Katya is expecting you”
“You’ve worked for the Gräfin for a long time?” Gloria asked as she followed the woman through the house.
“Since the war” The woman said, “I was a prisoner and she was there to help when few others would. I helped Katya because there were thousands of us and only one of her, I have been helping her ever since.”
“Wait” Gloria said, there had to be more to that story, lots more. When she had written Katherine’s biography, she had known that she had been in the German Special Forces and had taken time away from that to do other things. But she had never spoken to anyone who had known exactly what those other things were. This entire trip was because she had needed to fill in those blanks.
“That is her office” The woman said and then she turned and headed down a staircase. Not giving Gloria a chance to ask any more questions. Entering the office, Gloria saw Kat sitting behind her desk, the little girl that had answered the door was playing on the floor with a small tabby kitten. She truly had entered the tiger’s den.
