Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Twenty-Seven
22nd April 1964
Mitte, Berlin
“What the fuck?” Kat said looking at the playback from the reel to reel recording of what had happened in the Imperial Bank of Berlin just a couple hours earlier. The guards were being questioned as to whether or not Kiki had been in on the robbery. As if the scene that had apparently played out just outside the bank didn’t make that perfectly clear. Several of the witnesses had all said the same thing about a detail that Kat was certain wasn’t an accident “She has military training and there is no way she wouldn’t know that she had it locked open.”
The men in the room didn’t dare disagree with her but it had been suggested that she was entirely too close to this matter to have as much involvement as she was taking. Kat had made several suggestions of her own about what they could do with themselves when they had spoken with her.
As if to add an exclamation point to what Kat was saying, the playback showed Kiki blindsiding the Jacobin whose body had been found on the street outside and she then attacked the others. The reason for that was clear when Marie took off running and Kiki was knocked flat by one of her captors. A moment later, they dragged her into the microbus that they were using, and Kat could see blood running down her neck even in the grainy black and white image. She had risked injury and death to get Marie away from those men. It was stupid and reckless, Kat realized that it was the only choice that Kiki could have made and still been true to herself.
The call that the bank had been robbed and Marie turning up at a Police Station out of breath and frantically trying to tell the Wachtmeister what had happened arrived at the same time. Marie being Marie, she was talking a thousand words a minute and wasn’t very articulate beyond telling them that her friend Kiki needed help over and over. Kat had collected Marie and had passed her off to Douglas who was trying to get the whole story about exactly what had happened out of their daughter. Doug had always been better at figuring out what was real and what was one of Marie’s flights of fancy when they talked. Today Kat feared that she simply didn’t have the patience if she had to deal with that. Kat also had a lot of questions about just how Marie had been taken from her school with them only noticing that she was missing during the morning rollcall and them calling Kat to find out if she was out sick.
The minimal security that Kiki insisted upon had also become an issue. The BII kept her under observation, prepared to step in if there was trouble. It was generally accepted that Kiki could take care of herself, so they accepted that she would leave point A and get to point B with minimal fuss. Her getting quickly grabbed off the street because someone had figured out how quickly gain compliance from her wasn’t what they were expecting. Yet it seemed that it was exactly what had happened.
All of those things were matters that would have to be examined in the coming days. In the meantime, Kat knew that she needed to get ahead of the current situation. Right now, Mithras had gotten a great deal of money and would be looking to get as far from Berlin as he could. With the city locked down, it was just a question how and just what did he hope to gain from having Kiki as a hostage? Kat picked up the phone to call Sven Werth, she had a few ideas of how to get ahead of this.
Tegel International Airport, Berlin
Kiki felt like her head was swimming as she sat there in the seat of the airliner as Mithras cursed under his breath at the latest predicament that he had found himself in. She could tell that she was badly concussed, her throwing up while she was being dragged from the microbus to the airplane through service corridors and how dizzy she had felt were signs of that. Mithras had been yelling at her the whole time, as if she hadn’t been feeling rotten enough at that point. Bulling their way onto an airplane that was waiting at the gate had been the final part of what Mithras said was his plan, only to hit a major snag when they boarded. The pilot had pointed out that Mithras could make all the threats he wanted because nothing was moving. Looking out the windows, they could see that all the taxiways were blocked off by 8-wheeled armored cars.
As the minutes they waited turned to hours, the armored cars converged on the airplane that they were sitting in. Kiki cared less and less about what was happening around her. Instead, she was filling with resentment about how Mithras had turned her into a liar. Kiki had promised Suga that she would be there when Suga had her baby. Instead she was sitting here because Mithras… No, she was tired of playing that stupid game, because Lothar had decided to include her in his deluded plot. Her head was aching, she was finding the sunlight through the windows painful and enough was enough.
“End this now before someone else gets hurt Lothar” Kiki said to him, “A real leader is honest with his people, you clearly don’t have a plan, just a fantasy where everything goes your way. It didn’t and now you’re trapped.”
Lothar gave her a withering look. “Shut up” He snapped.
“Am I wrong?” Kiki asked, “This is all because of your obsession over me. I got news for you, I already have a boyfriend and even if I didn’t, arrogant and stupid are dealbreakers for me.”
Kiki tried to get up out of the seat. She wanted to be in Lothar’s face when she told him that and more, but a fresh wave of nausea stopped her.
“Yeah, whatever” Lothar replied.
That was when they started to hear noise outside the airplane. Church bells probably hundreds of them. Kiki knew that they were rung after significant announcements were made. It if were a death it would be the solemn undertaking. For a wedding or a birth, it would be the wild rapturous sound like what they were hearing now. Kiki understood what that meant.
“You are a complete bastard” Kiki spat at Lothar with as much venom as she could muster.
Lothar just smirked; he saw this as a victory.
Then a thought occurred to Kiki, what that noise was perfect cover for. It was hilarious, and she couldn’t stop laughing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Hearing those stupid bells upset Kristina, Lothar saw that much. The stupid little princess who had probably never been told “No” in her entire life was being denied something. It served her right.
Then she started laughing. As he watched she put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes and was laughing. He was confused as to what she was doing when he heard a thud and a small canister was rolling around the airplane’s center isle by his feet. No sooner than he had registered that it was there when it exploded in a blinding flash of bright light and a blast that left his ears ringing. That was when the shooting started…
