Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty-Five
22nd April 1964
Mitte, Berlin
The time between sunrise and sunset is something that few people think about. In Berlin on the 22nd day of April, it was just fourteen hours and twenty-five minutes. What few realized that as that clear spring day dawned, nothing would ever be the same again.
It started in a small way, with a phone call…
----------------------------------------------------------------
Kiki had gotten the call that Suga had gone into labor, had dropped everything and had gotten in her car to drive to Berlin. Recent weeks had brought a lot of changes. She had been forced to move into the house that Vicky had leased and take over the payment the rent. It was not because her family was completely destitute, but as her father had said to her when he had asked her to do it, every little bit helped right now. The truth was that Kiki missed the one room apartment that she had lived in. It had been perfect for her. It was because of every little bit helping that there had been a lot of small changes like that. Freddy had been accepted for a two-year Legal Apprenticeship that was to start that summer. Rea had made a few offers, but the truth was that she had been volunteering for various causes as well as her role in the Imperial Court. The cutbacks to next winter’s social season had made it so that she would basically cost the family very little for the foreseeable future.
That was why Kiki had not been able to get to the phone before it had rung several times in the early morning hours. She was still getting used to the phone being in the kitchen which happened to be downstairs from her bedroom. Freddy was on the line telling Kiki what was going on and she could tell that he was in a mild panic, she told him to calm down because it was his and Suga’s first so having him panicking over the next several hours, possibly a day or more, would do absolutely no one any good. That had obviously not been what he had been expecting to hear from Kiki and she remembered that she was trying to get away from blunt comments like that because like Freddy panicking, she knew that it didn’t do anyone any good. A quick call to Doctor Berg had given Kiki a complete picture of how Suga was doing and she had told Berg to be expecting her as soon as she got there.
The dive to Berlin had gone well enough, it was a weekday morning and except for hitting traffic getting into the city itself Kiki made good time. According to Doctor Berg, Freddy and Suga had been taken to Old University Hospital in Central Berlin. As Kiki pulled into Visitor Parking, she had a Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus pull in next to her. It was the commercial “Panel Van” version that was absolutely ubiquitous throughout Germany. As she started to get out of the car the cargo doors of the Microbus swung open and what Kiki saw was absolutely horrifying…
----------------------------------------------------------------
Finding out that Kiki’s red VW convertible was in the hospital’s carpark wasn’t a surprise. That she had not responded to repeated pages over the intercom certainly was. Berg was starting to wonder where she might have wandered off to when Katherine von Mischner invaded the hospital with a handful of her selected goons from the KSK. As a military doctor, if Berg wasn’t familiar with the men who surrounded Kat today, she was certainly well acquainted with the results of their work.
Berg had always found Kat abrasive, had never liked her very much and she was aware that the feeling was mutual. Both of them were powerful women in their respective fields and Berg had watched with mild interest as Kat continued her career rising into the highest ranks of the military and society. Still, as far as Kat got away from the working class neighborhood that she had grown up in, it was clear to everyone who knew what they were looking at that she was very much the teenaged girl who had hopped trains for the thrill of it in Berlin’s undercity. An unlikely path for a woman who many said was likely to be the next Elector of Berlin.
“Have you seen Kiki?” Kat asked.
“No” Berg replied, “I was just looking for her, her car is here and Suga wants to know where…”
“Where?” Kat demanded. And before Berg could voice any objections, was leading Kat’s people through the hospital to the carpark. It was shocking how fast they had the car unlocked and were searching it.
If the keys hanging in the ignition wasn’t a sign there was a was a serious problem, Kiki’s purse being found under the passenger seat drove that point home like few other things could have. That led Berg to have a number of questions regarding just how Kat might have known that Kiki was missing. Kat refused to answer those questions however, she had gone to the nearest phone and she was talking to someone named Werth, telling him what was happening here.
“Are you going to answer my questions at all?” Berg asked sharply. She was expecting the usual annoyance that she got from Kat, instead she caught a flash of something unexpected cross Kat’s face. Fear. It turned out that Kiki wasn’t the only one missing.