Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Sixty-Nine
29th January 1964
Potsdam
It seemed that over the course of his career, Piers Sjostedt had noticed that people tended to be focused on both ends of their lives. It seemed like baptisms and funerals were where he saw most people. What they did in the middle between those two events was a bit more important. No one could argue that Walter Horst didn’t leave his mark, they might quibble about how he did it though. There were a lot of people, especially in Russia and among those who had formerly been under his command, who might argue that Horst was the Devil himself.
The sort of life that Horst had led was definitely checkered by anyone’s standard and Sjostedt knew it because they had spent a lot of time together in the trenches as it were in the First World War. He fully understood the dichotomy of the man himself like few others did.
Horst had been a Soldier, first in the Ranks and eventually rising to the rank of Generaloberst and he’d had many of the vices associated with that. Horst drank, smoked, gambled and was about as irreligious a man as Sjostedt had ever known. He could be extremely vulgar and rude at times as well. There were a lot of good reasons why he had earned the nickname “Mad Dog” somewhere along the line during his career. There were also the attendant arrogance, pride and wrath Horst had exhibited in large measures during his life.
There was the other side of him as well. Horst had been a faithful husband and a good father. Something that was especially important to Sjostedt because Horst had been married to his younger sister Nina. Sjostedt’s mind kept going back to all the times that Horst had his back in life and death situations. Or Horst’s reaction when the two of them came face to face with the sort of ugly bigotry that people like Sjostedt were subjected to by Americans. Horst was also a member of the most prestigious Orders of the Realm, some of which he had been granted on more than one occasion at different stages of his career. That included getting inducted into the Order of the Red Eagle no less than three times and the House Order of Hohenzollern twice. No one doubted his bravery or integrity for a second.
For those who knew Horst, whether they loved or hated him, news of his passing had come like a punch to the gut. When he had been leading the charge as a younger man, he had seemed invincible.
The Old Garrison Church of Potsdam was a building that the weight of history fell heavily on. The events that had occurred within its walls reverberated throughout Germany over the previous centuries and if everyone was being honest, it had not always been in the most positive way. While holding this event here was in keeping with Horst’s stature and reflected his career, Sjostedt was acutely aware of how this was also making him a part of that history. What role did a man like Sjostedt, who had dedicated a considerable portion of his life to the cause of peace have in a place like this, whose very purpose seemed very contrary to everything he stood for?
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As Uncle Piers stood before the gathered mourners and began the litany, Nizhoni knew that her father would have hated the circus that this whole thing had become. Today, his ashes were to be interred here. After everything that Walter Horst had done with his life, all that remained was an urn and a pillow with his medals on it.
For Nizhoni, this whole thing was a nightmare.
When her father had died her mother had been left completely catatonic and her older brothers had been almost completely useless. She had been the one to tell Uncle Piers that the closest her father had come to giving instructions about what he wanted after his death had been “Burn me with the rest of the trash.” Piers had just shrugged and written down that the General had requested cremation and had proceeded with making the arrangements. Nizhoni had realized that this wasn’t the first time that Uncle Piers had dealt with situations like this.
Then the calls had started.
Everyone wanted to know when and where the service was going to be. Nizhoni didn’t have any answers for that. She had two small daughters to care for on top of all of this. Petra was still a baby, which made things easier. Elke on the other hand had a lot of questions. She understood that her Opa had been sick, then he had gone away and wasn’t coming back. The adults in her life weren’t exactly forthcoming. And was the concept of mortality something that a four-year-old needed to have weighing on them?
That was when Katherine had stepped in and had made the arrangements which was a godsend. Nizhoni had thought that this church was a bit much, until she had seen who would be in attendance. Still, she was ambivalent about her sister-in-law. Yes, Katherine was generous with her time, was good with Elke and Petra, and had helped out Stefan and Nizhoni countless times. Yet beneath it all there was a ruthlessness to Katherine that was unsettling. Stefan said that it was because she was the daughter of their father and left it at that. Nizhoni hadn’t found that comforting though. Everything that she had learned about Stefan’s father had been disquieting, he was believed to have been a Machiavellian figure controlling the underworld from the shadows for decades. It seemed that his efforts had culminated in the person of his daughter, the very embodiment of the iron fist in the velvet glove.
With that the litany concluded and Nizhoni realized that she hadn’t listened to a single word of it. The eulogies were about to start, with the first being by the Emperor himself. She hoped that they would at least be honest about her father, they owed him that much.
