Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Six
21st December 1963
Breslau, Silesia
Helene had been hoping for a peaceful Christmas Season spent in her constituency. Unfortunately, events far out of her control conspired to prevent that from happening.
At issue was Southern Poland, or whatever that particular patch of ground happened to be calling itself these days was. The Government in Warsaw had referred to it as Lesser Poland for years and the people who lived there had taken to calling it Galicia. It was the same region that had been hit hardest by fighting during the Second World War and it had been depopulated as a result. In the twenty years since the war had ended the Federal Government had done its best to put that land back into productive use by encouraging farmers and craftsmen from other parts of the Empire to relocate there, with veterans from the Military getting preferential treatment. Having the main rail line between Berlin and Kiev pass through the region had driven large scale industrial development as well. Unfortunately, that policy had unforeseen consequences that were only now starting to become noticeable and had the potential to become serious problems in the future.
For decades, the Government in Warsaw had played both sides in the politics of that country. Tacitly supporting the independence movement in Poland, while at the same time pointing at it to prompt official Berlin to send money their way. It was well known that much of that Federal largess had gone to Warsaw and the other fiefdoms of the Government Ministers. Now they were waking up to reality that demographics in southern Poland had changed with Ruthenians and ethnic Germans becoming the majority. Those two groups had little love for the Government in Warsaw for various reasons, and there was a growing independence movement in the region. Surprisingly, they were joined by a substantial number of ethnic Poles in that regard. Neighboring Silesia and Slovakia both had Polish and Ruthenian minorities which was why Helene had reporters asking her about the situation.
In Helene’s opinion it served the Government in Warsaw right to find themselves with the shoe on the other foot for a change. Not that she would say it out loud. She also had her parents to contend with, both of them were in their seventies and in declining health. While seeing to their care wasn’t something that she needed to worry about, the simple fact that Helene’s father had been the head of the family for decades, increasing their social stature over his lifetime made things complicated. The day was coming when he would no longer be around and the tricky business of keeping the family estate intact would need to be undertaken carefully. No one doubted that Albrecht would be the next Graf, but it would be extremely easy for them to find themselves with that title, some land and little else in a generation. That was what had happened with the families that Helene’s sisters, Sonje Louise and Caecilia, had married into.
Mitte, Berlin
The delight that Nella had the Holiday Season was infectious. Currently, she was pulling Kiki along as they went from stall to stall in the Alexander Marketplace. They had spent the afternoon going to several different Christmas Markets and this one was possibly the largest of the entire lot.
Freddy and Suga had been with them but Suga had needed to find a place to sit and rest. A week earlier they had gone in for a scan and discovered that Suga had a healthy pregnancy that was progressing nicely. They had also discovered that she was further along than they had thought, and the due date had been moved up from May to April. The announcement of it was scheduled to happen during the television address that Kiki’s father was going to make on Christmas Day from the Winter Residence. Freddy and Suga were going to be on the air with him as part of the increasingly prominent Freddy was to take on over the coming years as their father was still planning on retiring when he turned sixty-four. The announcement of the impending birth of his first grandchild would be seen as an important milestone by the public and it would be laying the groundwork for his eventual retirement as being seen as another. Not that Kiki blamed him, somehow keeping on working until you dropped over dead when you didn’t need too seemed perverse to her.
“You got to see Kiki…” Nella blurted out as she pulled on Kiki’s arm. She had been sucking on candy canes and had been wolfing down other sweets since they had gotten here a couple hours earlier. It being the holidays, Charlotte had said that it was alright to indulge her. Just Kiki understood that as amped up on sugar as Nella was at the moment there would come an inevitable crash, that was if she didn’t get a stomachache or worse.
This being the Alexander Marketplace, they came to a wide-open space beyond the stalls and in a roped off section was a crowd of people watching as men made hand-blown glass Christmas ornaments under exhaust hoods that were there for exactly that purpose. Watching a bubble of molten glass get placed in a heated mold and with how fast they were getting churned out was something. Nella seemed to lose interest and was tugging on Kiki’s arm again.
A few minutes later, they were walking among a different section of stalls when Nella seemed to wilt. Kiki noticed that she was pale, and her skin was clammy. Coupled with the amount of sweets that she had eaten, Kiki understood what was happening and pulled her towards the nearest rubbish bin. Seconds later, Nella threw-up into it.
“Is your little girl alright?” A woman with a kind face running a stall that looked to be selling jars of all manner of pickled things asked in Russian as Kiki used her handkerchief to wipe off Nella’s mouth.
“Nella just has had too much holiday cheer” Kiki replied in the same language.
The woman smiled warmly at that, then turned and grabbed a small jar of ginger root that she handed to Kiki. “This might help your daughter feel better” She said.
It seemed that she had made the same assumptions that people always did when they saw Kiki and Nella together. Kiki didn’t bother to correct her as she paid the woman, glad that Zella and Aurora weren’t around to see this. They had joked for years there was some aspect of Kiki that made people assume that she was a young mother.
Glancing up Kiki saw that her security detail was watching her closely, though was standing off somewhat and letting her handle the situation. It was the disadvantage of her own instructions to them and because they knew she was a Medic, they figured that she was well suited to take care of Nella. Twisting open the lid and prying out the wax seal, Kiki pulled out a piece of the ginger root and gave it to her little sister.
