Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Ninety-One
29th August 1965
Potsdam
At least it was a nice day for an outdoor reception. They had lucked out in that regard. Kat had also taken advantage of the fact that she was here in her capacity as Chief Court Mistress, as opposed to the Generallieutenant commanding the KSK. So, she was wearing a sundress as opposed to a heavy wool uniform that all the men seemed to be wearing.
The arrival of a Presidential delegation for a State visit at the Summer Residence basically put everything on hold. Louis had been talking with Architects about the design of a new Winter Residence somewhere near the center of Berlin now that the House of Hohenzollern’s finances were back in order. That and things of far more importance had been shelved for now. The money that Kat had loaned him was getting paid back directly or in the form of land grants in southern Germany. So, everything had worked out, sort of. Long experience had taught Kat to be suspicious of when things seemed to be going well. Because when it all ended it tended to come as a surprise.
Enter Nelson Rockefeller.
The American President had recently signed a law that guaranteed that every American had the right to vote and had immediately faced a massive backlash from his own political party. It was hardly a surprise that the honeymoon was over. President Rockefeller was to the left of his own party these days and was probably one of the few men who could have gotten nominated and then go on to win the election. His signing of the laws that had languished during the prior Administration had revived the prospects for the Democratic Party, who oddly stood to gain the most from them. Kat had followed American politics since the 1940 Presidential election and still found it absurd theater at best.
The consequence of that was that Rockefeller was in Potsdam trying to get a foreign policy victory by talking up a strategic arms limitation treaty. As if either the Emperor or Chancellor would be disagreeable with such a thing. Louis had been writing editorial columns under his various pseudonyms again about that exact topic. Comparing nuclear arms to battleships in the last century. How the arms race between the German Empire and the UK had needlessly raised tensions, becoming just one of the many causes of the First World War. Like always though, the Devil was in the details. International treaties were a matter of give and take, frequently with all parties coming away not particularly happy with the result being the best outcome.
Kat was also aware that those who drafted the treaties either lacked imagination or wrote gaping holes within them. Her own people had gotten copies of the draft treaty and discovered that there were dozens of holes in the language that both nations could easily exploit. The favorite example was the series of drone aircraft that Fieseler had built going back to the Fi 103 which had been used to great effect against Moscow during the Second World War. Since then there had been substantial developments in that program had taken place over the last twenty years with the latest versions being turbojet powered and certainly nuclear capable by design. Not one word was said about them.
If Kat had to guess, she would assume that it was just how the game was played. As she got older, Kat was starting to realize that she didn’t have a whole lot of patience for those sorts of games.
“Deep thoughts?” Kat heard a voice ask and she saw Louis Junior approaching her. He was wearing the white summer uniform of the Navy with a shiny new Polar Service Medal pinned to it. A couple days earlier he had told Kat about how he had found it hard to reconcile what people said about him serving in a far-flung place like Wilhelm Station versus what he had in fact done there. If he had worked logistics in Kiel no one would be impressed, doing in Antarctica made it completely different somehow. Kat told him that was just how life worked, it frequently didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“Just about what they are trying to do here” Kat said motioning to Louis Senior and President Rockefeller as they answered questions from the gathered press pool.
“The treaty” Louis said.
“Peace is always a worthwhile goal” Kat replied.
“I understand that” Louis said, “But the show, is it needed.”
“Actually yes” Kat said, “Visibility, public support, political accountability.”
Kat saw Louis frown. He didn’t have a whole lot of use for politics. Neither did Kat, though she was in a better position to tell people to go sod off these days. Louis Junior was still working his way up the ladder and it was obvious to everyone that since he had returned to Potsdam he had been at loose ends. He couldn’t afford to tell people what he thought of them the way that Kat regularly got away with doing.
“Perhaps you should sail a yacht around South America, go to Hollywood and date an actress or something” Kat said, “That is the sort of thing that younger princes do.”
Louis smiled at that. It was what his father had done in the thirties before the untimely death of his brother Wilhelm, who had been the Crown Prince at the time, had put him next in line for the throne.
“Perhaps I ought to go to Stuttgart and work on an assembly line like he did with Ford in Detroit then” Louis replied.
“Do you also secretly wish you were a mechanic?” Kat asked. It was an aspect of Louis Senior that few knew about, he was happiest when he was tinkering with engines in his workshop. Like everyone else Louis Junior found that amusing.
Minutes later the press conference ended, Louis Senior and Rockefeller eventually passed where Kat and Louis Junior were watching.
“I would like to introduce you to Fürstin Katherine of Berlin” Louis Ferdinand said, and Rockefeller gave her a quizzical look. It was nice to know that she still had the right sort of bad reputation. “And my son Louis.”
“The Antarctic explorer?” Rockefeller asked and Kat noticed that Louis’ smile became fixed as he shook the President’s hand.