Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Forty-Four
26th February 1963
In transit, Rural Brandenburg
The helicopter was headed south. This time they didn’t had not been dispatched to clean up after a car wreck and Kiki was thankful for that. Instead they were headed for a range of wooded hills in the southern part of Brandenburg where a sightseer had not made it back to her hostel the night before. The police were asking for all the help they could get and that included them. Spending a day tromping through the snow only to find that the person they were looking for was shacked up with a local who they had met at the village tavern was actually a welcome change from the carnage they normally encountered. At least walking through the countryside was peaceful. The conversation that Kiki had ended up having with Sigi kept running through her mind as she watched the ground race by.
“How thrilled are you about who you were a few years ago?”
That was what Sigi had said after she had told Kiki about how she had actually met Helene a few times when she had been working as an aide for Kat von Mischner six or seven years earlier. Apparently Sigi’s appearance had changed to such an extent between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six to make her nearly unrecognizable. Sigi felt that it was a good thing that she had been forgotten in this case and she did make a comment about everyone involved was actively trying to forget how her introduction to Kat had gone. That had prompted Kiki to ask what had happened and Sigi had steadfastly refused to say anything more on the subject.
There was also the thing that had prompted Helene to visit in the first place. Kiki was under no illusions about how her family was seen and that they were not universally loved. Kiki’s father had even told her that there was a substantial number of people within the Monarchist faction of the Reichstag who would cheerfully replace him with one of his cousins who were seen as more traditionally minded. The rest of the family could just go away, they were never specific as to where. Kiki’s father had always warned her that the extremes of political spectrum were the most dangerous for her. One side would see her as an obstacle to be dealt with and the other as vermin in need of extermination, the result however would be exactly the same. The newspaper column just illustrated that reality. For Kiki though, they questioned not only her presence in the FSR but suggested that her entire career was inappropriate and suggested that she would be better sequestered in the palace until a suitable marriage could be arranged. There was a fair amount of self-righteous bible thumping thrown in on top of the misogyny as well. Berg had once sarcastically told Kiki how extraordinary she thought it was that God always seemed to tell men like that exactly what they wanted to hear.
The helicopter touched down outside Grünewald and the team spilled out, it was noticeably colder than it was in Rangsdorf.
“We signed up for this” Kiki said in response to the team’s grumbling as she looked at the map which showed the route that the sightseer had she was going to take. The had all the makings of a cold and boring day. While she could live without the cold, boring was good because it meant that nothing was happening.
That was how they passed their afternoon, walking across fields and over hills along the border of Saxony as the sun descended towards the western horizon. Looking at the map again, Kiki reckoned that they were a few kilometers east of Ortrand. If they didn’t find the sightseer soon, they would probably need to head for the town to sneak in a hot meal before they radioed for their ride home. That was when Kiki noticed that she felt like she was being watched. It was the same feeling that she’d had right before she had emptied the magazine of her pistol into the night. She was leading a team this time and there would be consequences if she allowed herself to give in to paranoia. Kiki stopped and looked around carefully, making sure that it wasn’t just her overactive imagination and traumatic stress. Looking at the dried brush left over from the previous summer, Kiki saw that it looked like someone had pushed through recently just they had gone to great lengths to hide their footprints. That suggested that if this was real then there was a good chance that whoever this was, they didn’t want to be seen.
Kiki caught Ingo’s eye and signaled for the rest of the team to stop. “What is it?” Ingo whispered as he got close.
“There is someone close” Kiki said, “Who is trying not to be seen, look for yourself.”
Kiki pointed out what she saw, and Ingo unslung his rifle from his shoulder. The rest of the team realized what was going on when they saw him doing that, moved into position and went to ground. No sooner than they had when Kiki heard the sound of a rifle bullet pass through the space that Mitsi had just vacated.
Kiki drew her pistol from her belt, seriously wishing that she had brought a rifle along today. Then again, she hadn’t planned on getting ambushed in what was practically her back yard and hadn’t wanted to haul around the extra weight, Kiki thought to herself as she heard more bullets passing overhead. Without being told to, Anton was calling for reinforcements.
“Make every bullet count!” Kiki called out. She knew that the ammunition that the team had was very limited.
“Headquarters wants to know what the hell is going on!” Anton yelled at her.
“We’re under attack, that’s what!” Kiki yelled back, when the truth was that she didn’t have the first clue as to what was going on.