Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Twenty-Seven
22nd December 1962
Mitte, Berlin
What had played out in the vicinity of the Berlin East Railway Station had been brutally effective. Setting off a large bomb just outside the station which was full of commuters on a Friday afternoon had been merely the first stage. The second blast had been aimed directly at the emergency personnel responding to the first. Gunmen had remained in the area to ambush the additional responders as they had entered the area, only fleeing as large numbers of police backed by the military arrived. Evidence suggested that they had been armed with pistols and submachine guns that all fired the same very common cartridge, which would make tracing the spent cartridges alone difficult. Dozens had been left dead and hundreds more had been injured. The Railway Station was considered a complete loss.
At the moment, fingers were being pointed in all directions about who was responsible and who was going to take the blame for this calamity. There was no shortage of suspects. Throughout the Empire there were several separatist movements and a large number of malcontents who were mostly seen as harmless blowhards. The Polish Independence movement and Refus d'accepter in Alsace were no strangers to violence but mostly had had been relatively quiet lately because the efforts of the BII in subverting those movements had been effective. It suggested that there was a new player on the scene who had gone for making a big splash and they had directly targeted the State itself. Using large bombs carried by lorries had been a tactic used by Poles nearly a decade earlier and Berlin East had been the terminus of lines that extended to Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev and the Baltics. That pointed directly to a movement in the east, but intelligence said that in Poland and Slovakia the separatist and criminal elements were already scrambling to get out of the way of a crackdown that they knew was coming. They had obviously been caught flat-footed, otherwise they would have already vanished into the woodwork.
Then word got out that among those who had been responding who had gotten shot was Princess Kristina who had been on leave from the FSR…
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“Try to hold still” Doctor Berg said, “Otherwise this will hurt more than it otherwise would.”
The Panzerweste Ausf. C, the type of flak vest that Kiki had been wearing had done its job in preventing a serious, possibly fatal, injury when she had gotten hit. Unfortunately, it had been like getting kicked in the chest and it had not been until well after midnight when Berg had taken the time to notice how stiff Kiki’s movements were that anyone realized that she had been injured. After that, word had spread faster than Kiki had thought possible and had grown with retelling. By then most of the seriously wounded had been evacuated, so Berg had time to give Kiki her undivided attention.
It was in one of the medical tents sitting next to an electric heater and under the high-powered lights that Berg had forced Kiki to take off the vest, as well as the parka and shirt that she was wearing underneath. Centered just next to her sternum, Kiki’s chest was livid with reds and purples. Berg had taken one look at it and said that it would need to be drained.
“Your whole nobility of character thing is wearing extremely thin” Berg said as she pushed the needle of the large syringe into the hematoma. “There are better ways of giving your life meaning other than getting yourself killed.”
Kiki looked down at the syringe that was filling with blood and lymph as Berg drew it out. She figured that now wasn’t the right time to have a sharp comeback to that comment.
“I heard through a colleague that you were referred to Minke Glas” Berg said as she withdrew the needle, “Perhaps you ought to talk to her about why you are constantly pulling these little stunts. Hold this.”
Kiki took over holding a cotton swab over the puncture as Berg reached for one of the instant ice packs that had come into use recently by the Medical Service.
“I’ve only met Doctor Glas once” Kiki replied, “I’m not sure if I will again.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Berg asked as she switched the cotton swab for the icepack, “She’s good at her job, she was able to help Ilse Tritten and her problems are far worse than yours.”
That caught Kiki a bit short, Ilse was Kat’s younger sister. It also explained how Charlotte had known who Glas was in the first place. There was commotion outside, Berg stepped out and a draft of cold air came into the tent. A reminder that it was still December regardless of whatever else was going on.
Then to Kiki’s complete mortification, her father and Freddy bulled into the tent only to look at her in shock before turning around and getting chased out by Berg. “You wanted to see if she was still alive. You saw, now get out” She said.
Berg was chuckling as she came back into the tent and threw a blanket over Kiki’s shoulders.
“There is a rather lengthy list of things that men cannot handle in my experience” Berg said, “Seeing their adult daughter’s body is right up there with childbirth I’m afraid.”