Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Four
31st December 1965
Tempelhof, Berlin
Kat’s prediction about the kids falling asleep on the couch in the parlor came true around ten o’clock. Doug was able to get a few photographs of the children with the dog asleep in there. He knew that Kat adored pictures like those. That included Malcolm and Tatiana, at just shy of their fifteenth birthday they might have been past that. Evidently not. Suse and Jo who were seventeen and eighteen respectively, found it funny and helped Doug with the lighting. Hans and Helene’s daughter, Ina was reading a book with Marie’s cat on her lap. Occasionally, they heard a bit of the party that was going on downstairs as the household staff were throwing a party of their own.
The adults of the house then sat around the table in the library talking until just before midnight. Ilse and Albrecht had come back from Silesia where they had spent the Christmas Holiday. It seemed that Albrecht was rather aghast at what his father had been up to over the last several months. “I think that old vulture has really lost the plot this time” Albrecht said to Doug when he got the chance. “He thinks that he can appoint himself the Elector of Silesia.” Kat must have overheard that, but she didn’t say anything. Doug knew that Kat had some strong opinions about the Graf, how she had once taken a promotion in the Imperial Court so that he wouldn’t interfere with her brother’s marriage. Her getting elevated to be the Fürstin of Berlin might be what was driving the Graf, but one could never tell with him. Doug knew that he had always been an extremely ambitious man and was not one to let an opportunity to advance the Richthofen family pass.
There was a brittle peace between Kat, Hans, Helene, and Stefan that was holding for the moment. Doug had heard from Nizhoni earlier that night over dinner that Kat and Hans had cooked up a project and that Stefan had unknowingly gotten Manfred the Younger caught up in the middle of it. That had also been right before Stefan had been promoted and appointed to the General Staff of the 2nd Army, so he hadn’t been able to undo his mistake. Until Nizhoni had told him, Doug had not seen the big picture. He had understood that the Mischner siblings were arguing among themselves, but that was hardly out of the ordinary.
At a quarter to midnight, they went in to wake up the children. They found that they needed to wake up Suse as well after she had fallen asleep in one of the library’s armchairs. As they counted down to midnight, Doug thought about everything that had happened over the previous year. He figured that it had been a good one and his hope was that the coming year would go just as well. Next spring, they were planning a trip to Canada to visit Doug’s parents and sister, it would be the first trip like that since Kat had become the Fürstin of Berlin. That ought to make it interesting.
Doug was carrying Marie as they made their way out through the front door, lowering her gently onto her feet when they stepped onto street. At the stroke of midnight fireworks started going off all over the city and Kat stepped close to give Doug the first kiss of the new year. For a few seconds Doug completely forgot the others around him, it was just Kat and him. Then Hans popped open a bottle of Champagne, snapping Doug back to reality, and was pouring glasses that he was passing around. Helene handed one of them to Doug before taking one for herself.
Marie was looking at the glass in Doug’s hand curiously, so he caught Kat’s eye and she nodded with a slight smile on her lips. They had discussed this, how they needed to occasionally acknowledge that Marie was getting older. “You can have a sip” Doug stage whispered to Marie. And she was delighted right until Marie tasted it, then she had the expected sour look on her face.
Heuberg, Württemberg
It was Saturday morning as well as New Year’s Day now that midnight had come and gone. It was bitter cold, and it was snowing harder as Manfred made his way to the main gates. Christian had told him that Heuberg was supposedly the coldest place in Germany and as Manfred walked between the guard shacks making sure that those on making sure that those on Sentry Duty were awake, he believed it. He had been forced a few days earlier to explain how he was in no way connected to his Paternal Grandfather’s activities. That was when he found out that an extensive background check had been done on him and presumably the others who had volunteered.
That meant that Obenhaus must have known what the score was before Manfred had walked into his office, he just wanted to see if Manfred would tell him the truth. The whole thing had been a test and like so much that had been happening over the last week it was difficult to tell what was real on top of being cold, wet, and exhausted constantly. Jost had been a real nightmare. The day before New Year’s Eve the Platoon that Manfred had been assigned to had found themselves hip deep in cold water trying to get across a stream. Jost had mentioned that he had found himself in similar situations many times in Russia and had a Lieutenant who had understood that their own personal needs were often secondary to the mission. Then Jost had dropped the name of that Lieutenant, Hans Mischner. The rest of the men had looked at Manfred accusingly after that, like if Jost was punishing them for something that his father had done before he had been born.
Suddenly, Manfred did not have a whole lot of friends except for Christian. Tonight, Jost had ordered him out of the barracks and told him to keep those on sentry duty awake because he would be punished if Jost caught any of them sleeping. As Manfred kicked the side of the guard shack to awaken the Soldat inside he knew two things. The first was that he would probably be persona non grata in the Mess Hall, the other was that he had been told that the Noncommissioned Officers were playing similar games with all the Fahnenjunkers.