Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Six


30th August 1960

Potsdam

“Lotte says that just sitting around watching television is bad for me” Kiki said, “And if I’m going to do that then I get to watch Nella.”

Aurora just shrugged. She had finally come home the day before, right when Kiki had been desperate for someone to talk to who could carry on a conversation. “Nella is still a baby and she’s sweet” She said, “I’ll trade spending time with her for having to deal with Yoni and Pia any day.”

They were sitting in the Chinese House on a warm late summer afternoon with all the windows open because Kiki figured inviting friends for tea and biscuits in the odd little building some distance away from the Summer Residence would be enough to keep Lotte from interfering too much.

When Kiki had invited her guests into the Chinese House, Suga had taken one look at the Chinoiserie décor and had not been able to stop laughing for several minutes. The building had been constructed on orders of Friedrich the Great as a part of the fashionable interest in the “Orient” that had swept through Europe at that time. It was what people had thought the Far East looked like, designed and constructed by people who had never set foot outside of the Kingdom of Prussia. Kiki had seen the artwork that Suga had collected in Japan of what people there thought Germany looked like. She couldn’t help but feel sad about how the growing fields of mass communications across long distances the people of various countries on the other side of the globe would know exactly how the people in other nations lived. It felt like something magical and imaginative was being lost.

“I can see what Charlotte’s point is” Suga said, “One of your worst traits is that once you decide to do nothing then that is all you do, and it takes extreme measures to get you moving. Like imposing a rambunctious little sister on you for example.”

That was easy for Suga to say. She had been the little sister her entire life while Kiki had been the oldest girl and the middle child of six, now seven.

“What is Vicky making of this?” Aurora said, “She was the baby until Nella came along.”

“Only by a matter of minutes” Kiki replied, “And it is not as if Lotte doesn’t watch her share of television.”

“That is a bit different” Aurora said, “Your father and stepmother are watching your brother Michael compete in Rome.”

Kiki gave Aurora a look, that let Aurora know that she had hit the mark. The thing about Kiki that Suga had not mentioned was that she tended to be needlessly dramatic at times. Michael had worked hard to make the Olympic Team. He was representing Germany in equestrian and pistol shooting events.

“I think that it’s wonderful” Suga said, “For once the public gets to see that Freddy has other brothers and sisters.”

As Freddy had started going to University their father had made him almost as much of a face of Imperial Crown as he was. They had also frequently made sure the public was aware of Kiki’s work after the fact. A series of newspaper articles had run about her volunteering to spend much of her Summer Holiday serving as a Sani in Korea attached to a Marine Infantry Unit. Louis Junior, Marie and Victoria were almost invisible to the press. Louis because he had yet to accomplish anything of note and the twins because the entire German State was absolutely terrified by the sort of thing that they might do to get their attention.


West Point, New York State

After spending weeks crossing Siberia, they had made it across the Continental United States in only a few days and that was taking a somewhat leisurely pace. Salt Lake City had given Zella the creeps, there was something about that place that had put her teeth on edge, and she had gotten more dirty looks from people during the brief time they had spent there than she could recall getting anywhere. The Rockies though had been spectacular though. Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois had been endless fields of corn. Chicago had been a bit of a bust. Zella wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but she had swiftly realized that without someone to show her around the city that loomed so large in the music that she loved would remain a mystery. Perhaps one day she could come back and have more than a few hours to explore it. Cleveland had not seemed like a great place to stop, so they had spent the night as a roadside motel in Youngstown, Ohio. Today they had ridden across Pennsylvania and New Jersey before turning north to arrive in New York.

Zella’s father had said that a good friend of his had invited them to be his guests while they waited for their flight home in a couple days. What he had not said was that his friend was General Omar Bradley, the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point. When Zella shut down the engine on her motorcycle and took off her helmet, she saw that two Cadets in grey uniforms were staring at her. She gave them a hard look and they quickly found something else to be doing.

“You would think that they’ve never seen a girl before” Zella complained to her father when he got close enough to hear.

“Cut them some slack” Emil said as they started walking towards one of the buildings, “Not everyone is as worldly as you, so try to be on your best behavior while we are here.”

“Why?” Zella asked, “It’s not like I’m coming back here.”

“Marcella” Emil said, “You being a difficult little shrew is not welcome when I need you to see the bigger picture. There is a good chance that I might come back here as a guest lecturer.”

“Really?” Zella asked. Why had he not mentioned that before now?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Seven


31st August 1960

West Point, New York

“George is in California these days” Bradley said, “When he was put out to pasture, they sent him to the Veterans Home in a place called Yountville in the Napa Valley. He can talk about marching with the Roman Legions to his heart’s content out there and not only won’t he annoy anyone, he might actually finally find a receptive audience.”

Omar Bradley was talking about a man who had been his superior and subordinate at different times in his long career and then finally his predecessor as the Superintendent of West Point, George Patton. There was some debate about if the retired General was brilliant and eccentric or just plain nuts. His belief that he had be reincarnated again and again in order to fight in all the great wars throughout history. Needless to say, some of the things that he had said over the years had proven controversial and Patton’s stubborn nature wouldn’t allow him to admit that he had gotten anything wrong in his public pronouncements. It was hardly a surprise that the Policy Makers in Washington D.C. would want him as far away as possible.

Bradley himself could have retired a few years earlier, but he had accepted this appointment as a chance to finish his career in the same place where he had started it decades earlier. When he had learned that Emil was planning on traveling around the world, Bradley had invited Emil to visit West Point. However, Emil got the impression that Bradley had never thought that he would accept it and Zella was a wrinkle that few could have anticipated. The problem was that only Emil knew what she was doing, and he really wished that she would cut it out already.

“That seems harmless enough” Emil replied, “Though it is bit of a shame, Horst said that he and Sjostedt encountered Patton in France just after the Battle of Ussy. Hiding in a ruined building. They didn’t have time to take him prisoner, so they told him to wait till dark and follow the river back to where your Army held a crossing.”

“It’s hardly a surprise that George never told that story. Still, he and Walter Horst sharing the same air?” Bradley remarked, “Those two monstrous egos in one spot, I’m surprised that there wasn’t a massive explosion along the lines of the Mont-Blanc.”

That had been a relatively small incident, overshadowed by the conclusion of the war just a few weeks earlier, but it had loomed large in the history of Saint-Nazaire. The SS Mont-Blanc sitting in the harbor during the winter of 1917, her hold stuffed with explosives that the French Government had forgotten about because the war had ended. No one had ever been able to figure out the cause, but the ship had exploded while tied up to the pier and it had taken a substantial portion of the city out with it in the largest manmade explosion up to that point. It was just one more calamity in France during those years.

“Fortunate for them, Horst had Sjostedt with him” Emil said, “Blessed are the peacemakers and all that.”

“Just who is this Sjostedt?” Bradley asked.

“He was a Feldwebel, er… Sergeant back then” Emil replied, “These days he’s a Bishop in the Lutheran Church.”

Bradley found that amusing. Emil’s eyes darted to Zella to see what she was doing.

There were times when Emil was reminded that while Zella was his daughter, she had every bit of Maria’s intelligence. She didn’t really want to be here and the Cadets that attended West Point were as a whole, simple not the sort of men she was interested in. Sure, she was acting the role of the perfectly respectable Lady visiting the Military Academy. She was also feigning an inability to speak English so that she wouldn’t have to engage in conversation with any of them. And those who attempted to speak to her in German got an abrupt lesson in the Berliner dialect that anyone who had never lived in that city would find difficult to understand. Zella had maintained only a vague smile on her face for the entire meal, but Emil knew that she was laughing inside at the looks of frustration that were evident on the faces of the young men

“Your daughter will be fine” Bradley said, “Those boys understand what you will do to them if they are not perfect gentlemen. With me helping out, of course.”

“That isn’t the problem” Emil said, “I know that Zella can take care of herself. It’s just that she is having a great deal of fun at their expense.”

Bradley looked at what was happening and looked back with a quizzical look on his face.

“I don’t see it” Bradley said, “Sure, there is a bit of a language barrier, but that is what happens when you have guests from foreign countries.”

“Zella spent the first four years of her life in Australia and has traveled widely in the years since” Emil replied, “She probably speaks English better than they do and she is pretending not to because she doesn’t want to talk to them.”

Bradley found that hilarious. “Then those boys are going to be getting a bigger lesson out of this then they ever imagined.”

“Excuse me?” Emil asked.

“It’s the stupid arrogance that I’ve been trying to beat out of them” Bradley said, “The idea that people from other countries might have their own agenda never seems to enter their thinking. With that bunch, learning the hard way that a pretty girl doesn’t consider them to be the cat’s meow is a harmless way for them to learn it.”

That was certainly one way to look at it.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Eight


1st September 1960

Seoul, Korea

Nancy’s actions were entirely unexpected but hardly surprising. With the situation with China somewhat resolved, but no one with an ounce of sanity thought that it was for more than just the moment, the 3rd MID had returned to Winter Quarters in Pusan. It had been shortly after his arrival in Pusan that Tilo had discovered that he had a daughter, Anna Gertrud, as he had been informed in the telegram. It might have been the medium, but it did seem rather tersely worded. Tilo would have found that understandable, except it included words to the effect of them having to talk this over as soon as Nancy got there. Whether he liked it or not, Nancy had decided that as soon as she had recovered enough to travel, she was coming to Pusan.

Now a few days later, Tilo was at the airport in Seoul watching Nancy descend the stairs from the airplane down to the tarmac while carrying Sebastian. At three, Sebastian was getting a bit big for that, however he was still too small to go down the stairs on his own. A second woman who Tilo had seen at Kat von Mischner’s house but had never been introduced was walking just behind Nancy. He remembered that she was French, but Tilo couldn’t recall her name to save his life. Instead of dwelling on that he took Sebastian from Nancy.

“You remember Noella Proulx?” Nancy asked, “Kat’s children are old enough that she didn’t need her services as a fulltime nanny anymore and Kat didn’t want to just dismiss her out of hand, so she referred her to me.”

“Shouldn’t we have discussed this?” Tilo asked in reply.

“You were obviously not available” Nancy replied as she took a bundle from Noella, “Noella has already proven valuable. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to travel with children?”

Looking at the bundle, Tilo saw a scrunched-up face that reminded him of Nancy when she had a particularly vexing problem to deal with.

“Say hello to your Poppa, Anna” Nancy said, “For such a smart man, he’s a bit of an idiot at times.”

“You don’t need to put it quite that way” Tilo said as he noticed that the other passengers leaving the plane were giving Nancy, and presumably Anna, a wide berth. Few things were worse than being trapped in an airplane with a baby. “And your telegram was a bit vague about your plans.”

“My plan is to not end up like Ilse” Nancy said, “Her husband is gone most of the time and she spends most of her time alone or at the University. Seriously, her and Albrecht are leading almost completely separate lives.”

“You think you are staying here?” Tilo asked, only to get a withering look from Nancy.

“As long as you are” Nancy replied, “After how you ran off while I was pregnant with Anna, you owe me.”

“I wasn’t given a choice in the matter” Tilo said, “If I had been, I would have…” He trailed off when he saw that Nancy clearly didn’t care, she was walking in the direction of terminal building. Tilo had left her and had received a promotion in the process, in her mind he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He wouldn’t be the only Officer with a family in Pusan, far from it and he would be happy to have them around. He just wished that Nancy had discussed this with him first. On the other hand, he knew that once she made up her mind to do something, then she would plow ahead through any obstacle. It was something that he loved about her, but there were times when that got her into trouble. Like what she was about to walk into, he had to warn her…

“There is something that you should know before you go in there” Tilo said, “Word about you coming leaked to the press and this story mixed with Korean attitudes about family. It’s sort of a big deal.”

“I can deal with the press” Nancy said, “Remember what I do professionally, I’m not helpless you know.”

Tilo took a deep breath. He knew that she was acting this way because she was angry about having been left behind during what had been a difficult time for her. Rightly or wrongly, the perception that the Government in Seoul had been fostering in the Korean public was that two of the heroes from the liberation of Korea, Tilo and General Gang, had gone to the border and the Chinese had pissed themselves in fear. Everyone knew that it was a load of pure crap and Tilo knew that if the Chinese had started a war his Division would have been overrun in the first hours, but people loved a good story. Inside the terminal was a media circus, Tilo’s young family arriving in Korea was a human-interest story that the networks and newspapers hungered for.

Stepping through the doors, Nancy was shocked by the spectacle that greeted her. There were photographers, television camera crews, even a band that struck up a tune as soon as they entered. In counterpoint Anna started wailing and Nancy was trying to calm her down, she shot Tilo an accusing look. He had tried to warn her about this.

It took a few minutes to get the band to stop playing. Then Nancy had to deal with shouted questions, many of which she couldn’t understand, as graciously as possible. As he watched Tilo knew that she wasn’t through saying her piece with him and he was reminded of something that his father had told him on the day he had married Nancy. No matter how high he rose or how much power he acquired, there would always be one person in this world who wouldn’t care.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Nine


2nd September 1960

Mitte, Berlin

Looking over her notes, Zella was trying to write the final column for the Berliner Tageblatt about her trip around the world. The trouble was that her own immaturity and conformity was very evident within her notes. She had only been in America for a week and it wasn’t until she had reunited with Kiki and Aurora that she had realized that she had unconsciously absorbed many of the attitudes within the United States. Mostly it was because she was just passing through and didn’t have time to get more than a superficial impression. However, there had been a few times when she been advised to avoid certain parts of cities and had just taken that advice without question. Her experience crossing the United States was also limited to Interstate 80. That did run through most of the major cities, but it would have kept her in the most cosmopolitan portions of the country. Only in what she had heard referred to as the Intermountain West had she been in areas that could be described as back country. Were places like Elko and Salt Lake City representative of the large portions of the United States that she hadn’t passed through? Zella simply didn’t know.

It had been Kiki asking about Rock & Roll music after she had gotten home that had really focused her mind. When she had tuned into the radio in America, that music had been completely absent from the dial. With the exception of Country and Western, she had heard music that was not dissimilar from the sort of bland, inoffensive music that was played on the radio stations that her parents listened to. That absence and the reason for it was the real story, but it had so endemic that she had not even noticed it.

Then there had been her impressions of West Point…

While she hadn’t burnt her notes, Zella was particularly proud of what she had written down either. Admittedly, she had not been feeling particularly social that night and some of the things that had been said in front of her when it was thought that she couldn’t understand had been horrendous. Days later and thousands of kilometers away it was obvious to Zella why she had gotten a few dirty looks from her father that night.

The truth was that Zella was finding that she had preferred Siberia over the funhouse mirror that she had found in the United States. The trouble she had was exactly how to write about that.


Tempelhof, Berlin

“It looks like you didn’t bring back any microbial souvenirs from Korea, troublesome ones anyway” Berg said, “If that is what you are worried about.”

“No” Kiki said, “I just wanted to…”

What did she want? She had made this appointment after she had gotten back impulsively and because she had been scattered, unable to put things into perspective. She realized that she had just wanted to talk to someone who might understand and didn’t want to wait until next Monday at lunch. If she said that now, Berg would get cross with Kiki for wasting her time.

“…be certain of that” Kiki concluded.

“Good” Berg said, “You are also a healthy young woman, one who I might add needs to eat better and get more sleep. My own personal opinion is that you are completely full of crap Kiki. So, what was your real reason for coming in today?”

“Please don’t be angry with me” Kiki replied.

Berg looked at her, more annoyed by that reply than she had been over figuring out that Kiki hadn’t been straight with her over making this appointment.

“I was going to ask for you to come in anyway” Berg said, “You just saved me the trouble of asking. Out with it, what couldn’t wait.”

“While I was in Korea, there was incident where one of the men from the Marine Infantry was severely injured and the Surgeon in charge black tagged him while I was still working to save him” Kiki said.

“Working here in the hospital you’ve seen patients whose injuries are beyond the abilities of medicine to treat” Berg said, “This one stands out for you? Why?”

“I was ordered to stop” Kiki replied, “And then he died. I had to watch it happen.”

“I see” Berg said, “Giving up didn’t sit well with you.”

“That wasn’t what I said, but I thought that we didn’t just give up on people.”

“What was the first thing that you were told when you started training to be a Medic?” Berg asked.

“That despite our best efforts, people will still die in our care” Kiki replied, “I would hardly say that what happened to Beat Müller was our best effort.”

“Can you describe this case for me?” Berg asked.

Kiki paused for a minute, trying to remember what she had seen.

“The patient was brought in following an accident involving a trailer used to transport artillery shells and cased charges. He had been given IV fluids and morphine before being transported to the Field Hospital. Once he was there, I observed that the patient had multiple fractures of ribs, complex pattern injury to the pelvis and compound fractures of both femurs. Suspected spinal injury and evidence of internal bleeding due to…”

“That is enough Kiki” Berg said, “It sounds like he was crushed like bug, which is horrible. The only question for you is if there were the resources available to stabilize that patient there in the field hospital?”

Kiki blinked for a minute, hesitating to answer that question. The answer was obvious on an intellectual level. The Casualty Department in the University Clinic that they were sitting in would be hard pressed to save someone in that condition. It was as Father Lehmann had said at the time. Here they might be able to manufacture a miracle.

“That doesn’t make it easy” Kiki replied.

“Nor should it” Berg said, “This profession is plagued with callous arrogance by those who have come to find it easy. Do me a favor, don’t forget how you feel right now and try to remember that you are barely at the start of what will hopefully be a long career.”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred


5th September 1960

“You cannot be serious Sir” Kiki said, “I was in Korea for a month and nothing happened while I was there.”

It was something that Doctor Berg had pointed out to her when they had talked the previous Friday, nothing had happened while she was there. It was the entire reason why she’d had the time to dwell on the death of one man. If things had gone bad, she could easily have found herself having to decide how resources were allocated so that the Surgeons could do their job without distraction. She would have found herself having make choices like the one that Lehmann had made dozens of times an hour. Either she would need accept that reality or she would need to find something else to do with her life because the next time she was in the field that might find herself in that situation. The implications of her career choices were becoming clearer and increasingly she was worried that she might have been very naïve about what it would be like. Now there was what Major Armbruster was asking of her and it was becoming too much.

“A month in the field is considerably more than the rest of your class” Armbruster said, “And my understanding is that you managed to demonstrate some leadership while you were in the Far East. Those recent additions to your ribbon bar are proof enough of that.”

Kiki wished that she could have just chucked the whole thing into the river. “That was politics Sir” She said, “I got those stupid things because of who I am, not necessarily because of anything I actually did.”

“There are some members of the U.S. Army Special Forces who would disagree with you on that count and they had no idea who you were at the time” Armbruster said, reminding Kiki of that photograph of her with Specialist Valenzuela after she had grown tired of watching him standing around and demanded that he help out. That had gone double for his buddies. The Press had eaten it up, especially once they learned that it was her.

“The truth is a bit different than how the press reported it” Kiki said.

“It always is” Armbruster said, “You showed up and that is all that really counts.”

There were a number of things wrong with that comment, but Kiki knew better then to point it out. She had no idea where they had dug him up from originally. Armbruster was a middling Officer, he had served in the Second World War in logistics and he eventually landed here long after his career stalled. It seemed like his primary qualification was that he didn’t care who was in his class. Including Kiki, whose background alone made things complicated, a quarter of the class were women, a detail that an Officer with more of a careerist bent might have objected to. Today, she had learned that her time in Korea had placed her at the head of her class in more ways than one. And Armbruster expected Kiki to play a role that reflected that, he wanted her to know that he wasn’t playing favorites here and he was doing her no favors. It was something that she knew no one would believe.

Picking up the sheet of paper with the names Kiki read down and saw that they were in alphabetic order. As she read down until she reached the surnames that started with H, she saw a familiar name and was instantly furious. It was clearly a misguided effort to impress her. “That stupid fucking idiot” Kiki muttered, louder than she intended because Armbruster looked at her with a frown. Kiki made a mental note to remember that Armbruster didn’t like foul language in the future.


Munich

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Emil had thought to himself when he walked through the doors of BMW’s International Headquarters. Minutes later he was waiting to give a presentation to the Board about what he intended to do now that he was in charge of one of their racing teams and the role that it would play within the larger company. He had no idea how receptive the Executives on the Corporate Board would be to his ideas once he had laid out his perspective regarding international competition.

Looking at the satchel that contained the visual aids that he hoped would drive the points he made home. As he waited, he glanced at the poster sized photographs, making sure that they were in the proper order. “They are ready for you now, General Holz” a young man who didn’t look old enough to shave, said. Someone’s assistant, Emil thought to himself.

As he entered the conference room, Emil saw a dozen men looking at him. They already looked bored, he had heard that he had been hired solely for his famous name and they didn’t have very many expectations for him. He was just supposed to go to company events and attract press attention. One of the men he saw in the room was Georg Meier, the head of BMW’s Veritas Racing Team. If he didn’t see Emil as a rival already, then he most certainly would after today.

“Good morning” Emil said, “Thank you agreeing to have this meeting.”

He pulled a photograph from the satchel and placed it on the easel. It was of the 500 Kompressor, the last truly competitive racing motorcycle that BMW had put out two decades earlier with a string of victories between 1935 and 1941 when racing was suspended due to the war. It also happened to have been Georg Meier’s ride back then.

“As I’m sure you are all aware of, international competition drives innovation and sales” Emil said, “This particular motorcycle was innovative at the time, but now we have something new to contend with.”

He pulled the next photograph out of the satchel. It was of a compact car. “This is the Honda L360, it features a 249 cubic centimeter engine.” He pulled the next photograph out. It was of the four-cylinder engine. He knew that he would have a tough audience, the skeptical looks they were giving him confirmed that. They were wondering where he was going with this.

“That same engine is seen here transverse mounted on a one of their RC series motorcycles” Emil said, before he pulled out the next photograph. It was of the same motorcycle except with a fiberglass faring completely covering the front.

“It is expected to be a world beater in a few years” Emil said, “My question is what exactly do we intend to do about it?”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred One


6th September 1960

Potsdam

Kat was sitting in the after-hours diner that was across the street from the buildings that housed Headquarters of the BII, Federal Police and Brandenburg State Police. It was hardly a surprise the such an establishment would spring up in this location. The Police would provide a steady customer base and who could ask for better security. Most criminal types stayed as far away as possible.

Meeting with Sven Werth and Gunther Kassmeyer was a complete bust. They were telling Kat what she didn’t want to hear, and it was perfectly infuriating.

“There’s been no progress since the last time I talked to you?” Kat asked with a mixture of frustration and disbelief.

“You know how these things work Katherine” Sven said, “I know that would like to see this monster strung up by the balls, but patience is in order.”

Kat just glowered at her cup of tea.

“We did get the perpetrator's blood type from the last victim” Gunther said, even as he watched Kat bristle at that mention, the implications of how a sample like that had been found would not be lost on her.

As she calmed herself down, Kat looked out the window at the VW Type 2 Kombi, the cargo version of the Microbus, with the name of the bakery painted on the side that had pulled up. The diner never closed, so deliveries being be made with customers present was hardly noteworthy. As she watched, the driver of the Kombi opened the doors and pulled a rack containing loaves of bread out. It was a mundane scene that played out everywhere at the start of a new day.

“Unless he has a super rare blood type then it doesn’t help us” Kat said, “Most of my father’s children have tended to be universal recipients, that was how my sister Ilse was able to confirm her paternity.”

“We should be so lucky” Sven said, “The Technician in the laboratory said that it might eliminate a suspect if can find one.”

“There was that article that I read” Gunther said, “There’s this Scientist who thinks that something found in these sorts of samples can identify a suspect more readily than a fingerprint.”

“You told me already” Sven replied, “And I called the Scientist in question. He asked me to call him back in fifteen or twenty years if he has a series of major breakthroughs and can even get funding.”

Kat knew that last part was directed at her.

“I’ll talk to Louis, but he’ll have questions” Kat said.

“It’s frustrating” Gunther said, speaking for all of them. “It’s like if this bastard has figured out a way to be invisible or something.


Tempelhof, Berlin

“Have you gone completely insane Ben?” Kiki asked, “This has got to be the stupidest reason to do anything that I have ever seen.”

“I’m happy to see you too Kiki” Ben said with a smile, he had done this in an effort to get her attention. It was successful just not in the way he had intended, and it had been more than a year since the last time they had spoken in person. Why the Hell was he still interested in her?

The day before Kiki had seen Ben’s name in the class roster, but with Major Armbruster’s expectation that she would take on a leadership role she had not had the chance to take it up with him until now. Unfortunately, Ben was the least well-equipped human being on the planet for what he had gotten himself into. Sure, Kiki liked Ben as a person, but he was hardly a physical person and he all too often followed his imagination rather than dealing with reality.

“Is there a problem?” Armbruster asked.

“Herr Hirsch should not be in this class” Kiki said, “I am aware that outside of here, he is a Sciences Major. Astronomy, in particular.”

“You would be wrong about that” Armbruster replied, “There is a great demand for those who are interested in Celestial Navigation in both the Luftwaffe and His Majesty’s Navy. Also, the Space Program is an option as well.”

At that moment, Kiki saw the look on Ben’s face. Mention of the Space Program was manna from Heaven to him. He got be around Kiki every day and his wildest dreams might come true by doing this. That was a pernicious half-truth at best. In that moment Kiki almost told Ben that if there was a war, then he wouldn’t be given any choices. The Powers that Be would shove a rifle into his hands and tell him to lead a Platoon. Even if there was no war the dangers were still very real, she had seen plenty of that in Korea. She held her tongue because this wasn’t the place and prayed to the God whose existence she was ambivalent about that she wouldn’t come to regret not saying that.

“Is that really the reason for your objection Fraulein Fischer?” Armbruster asked.

Kiki said “Yes” at the exact same time Ben said “No” and Armbruster looked at them with an amused look on his face, clearly able to read between the lines.

“Whatever is actually going on here, the two of you need to remember that you’ll need to work together in the future” Armbruster said.

Kiki saw that Ben had a smirk on his face, he was being pigheaded enough to think that he had won this round.

“And by the way, as I am sure that as you read in the regulations, there is to be no fraternization with other members of your class” Armbruster said, “I’m sure that the two of you won’t have an issue with that.”

The smirk on Ben’s face vanished in an instant.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Two


8th September 1960

Tempelhof, Berlin

“You got lucky and nothing is broken, you’ll just need to stay off it for a few days” The Doctor who was looking at Ben’s foot said, “How did you say this happened again?”

“I didn’t” Ben replied, “But it was an accident.”

Ben’s left shoe was sitting on the floor with the tire tread pattern still on it after two hundred and some odd number of kilograms of motorcycle and rider had ridden over it. He most certainly didn’t feel lucky at the moment. He had found himself heavily recruited for that class when he had finally gotten his Abitur the previous spring. He had also learned that Kiki was in the same class, so he had seen it as a chance to reconnect with her. It was only when he had seen that she was decidedly not happy to see him again and was treating him like he had done something incredibly stupid that he realized the nature of his mistake.

Kiki’s best friend Zella was a lot more direct than Kiki was. She had accused him of being obsessed with her friend and said that she would gut alive him if he didn’t get lost. He had tried to say that there had been a misunderstanding and she was not interested in listening. He had been left limping to the University Clinic after he had not been fast enough getting out of her way when she had left. Zella had never liked him, and Kiki’s reaction this time had meant that she had absolutely no inclination to keep her peace.

As he struggled to get his shoe back onto his foot he wondered if he really was obsessed with Kiki. She had kissed him that one time and things had gotten weird, then she was gone. In the months since she had abruptly dropped out his life, no girl had been willing to give him the time of day and he was seriously starting to wonder if there was something wrong with him. Now this latest mess.

He had no idea how he was going to explain this to his parents. Or worse as he had been waiting for the doctor to get to him the thought had occurred to him, Kiki’s father would destroy him if she had cause to complain. He had made a commitment to be in the same class with Kiki for the next year. Also, because she had completed Basic training, Advanced Infantry Training and was a Qualified Field Medic who had spent a month in the field under near combat conditions Kiki was to be considered the Leader of their class. That meant that him flunking out was something that could happen at her discretion.

Ben could already hear his father asking him if he could screw up only halfway for once.


Mitte, Berlin

Seated at his desk, Emil heard the door to Zella’s room slam. She had been late getting back to University at the end of the Summer Holiday, so she had been placed on a waiting list for a bed in the women’s dormitory with Kiki and Aurora. The result was that she was living at home for the time being and it was an arrangement that no one was particularly happy with. He had forgotten how much of a joy it was to live under the same roof as his daughter when she was in such a mood and he wondered what had ticked her off this time. He was certain that he would get to listen to Maria and Zella yelling at each other over whatever this matter was before the end of the day. Whichever of the old Junkers had said that without the need for heirs, women would have been swiftly hunted to extinction was way too optimistic. In Emil’s professional opinion as a Field Marshal as well as a husband and the father of a daughter, it would have been fight that would have been lost before it had even started because the Junkers would have been outmatched. There were few creatures in nature more dangerous or merciless than the human female and to provide them with a common enemy…

Emil pushed those thoughts aside as he looked at the blueprints on his desk. The meeting with the Executives at BMW had been interesting. The discussion had circled around what could be done to improve the fortunes of the BMW Motorrad. The question was just who was buying motorcycles. Once the entry vehicle of choice, the writing should have been on the wall when Volkswagen put out the Type 1, followed a few years later by the Föhn series that included the Bergwind and Iltis. The result was that motorcycles were becoming the province of enthusiasts with disposable income. Even as the words had left his mouth Emil had realized that he was describing himself. His R68 was oddly the way forward. With only around 1500 built, it was rapidly coming to be considered a classic due to its rarity. It was a high-performance version of the more pedestrian R67/2 and being the first production motorcycle that could go a 170 KM/H it already had a place in the history books.

The blueprints of the engine were of something completely new. While BMW was maintaining the opposed cylinder format, this new 500 cubic centimeter engine incorporated advances in technology that had happened over the previous twenty years, revolutionary as opposed to the conservative evolutionary approach that BMW had taken. Doubling the power over the previous generation of engines had certainly raised a few eyebrows. The question was if Emil could make this a reality and if he was correct about who would be interested in purchasing such a motorcycle if it was perceived as being too hot. As if there was such a thing in Emil’s mind.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Three


12th September 1960

Tempelhof, Berlin

It was not a surprise to Kiki that Vanesa had asked to share a room with someone else after four terms. She had grown tired of Kiki’s presence. The things that Kiki involved herself in had bothered her and being Kiki’s roommate had brought unwanted attention to Vanesa herself. The result was that Kiki was sharing a room with Laura Tamm, who had told Kiki that she was Estonian and that they would be such wonderful friends in the first five minutes. It had been two weeks since then and she knew almost nothing else about Laura even though they had slept only a couple meters apart. Despite that, Kiki had swiftly fallen back into her old routine.

Today being Monday, Kiki was staring at the green salad in front of her. The smell of oil and vinegar dressing was the most notable feature of the otherwise bland dish. Doctor Berg was chatting about the latest goings on in the hospital. There had been a particularly naïve set of patients who she had seen sometime in the last week who apparently had been unable to figure out why her and her husband had been unable to conceive. It had been six months and they wanted to start a family. It had turned out that they had been using the wrong hole since their wedding night. Normally Kiki would have found that amusing, but she had other things on her mind.

“I think my best friend might be a lunatic” Kiki said. On Saturday Zella had told her about what she had done the previous day and Kiki had been horrified. Sure, she had liked it in the past when Zella had leaped to her defense, but Zella had gone too far this time.

“Is this about that mysterious injury that your former boyfriend suffered last week?” Berg asked.

Kiki frowned. The last thing she wanted was get Zella into any more trouble.

“Everyone in Casualty had a good laugh about that one” Berg said, “And because he stuck with his story about how it was an accident, what could they do?”

“So much for confidentiality” Kiki muttered.

“Look, when Roseline chases Romeo away from the balcony it gets people’s attention” Berg said, “Or is it Mercutio chasing off Juliet. I swear the games that young people play can be so confusing at times and have so many needless complications.”

Kiki felt her cheeks starting to burn as she understood what Berg was implying a few different things there and that Doctor Berg found this whole thing amusing. It couldn’t possibly be anything like that. At least she didn’t think so.


Petaluma, California

Jonny walked out the front door of his parent’s house carrying a galvanized bucket that had bottles of beer floating around in ice. He had been at loose ends since he had gotten back from China a week earlier. His Squad had been told to take a few weeks leave once they had completed debrief. The reaction that they had when they had learned that the girl with the German Medical Mission had been the Kaiser’s daughter exactly as he predicted. That wasn’t mentioned though until they were safely back in New York. Being presented with that Kraut medal had been a lark, everyone knew that it was about keeping up appearances and the murky politics involved. After that everyone in the 1st SFG who had been to China had gone their separate ways.

Gloria had left a message at Fort Drum that she would be out of the country for a the next few weeks because she had a few favors that she intended to call in and a lead on a major story that was brewing. She would catch up to him, wherever he was when she got back. His choices were somewhat limited after that, so he had bought a plane ticket home and figured that he would figure out what to do once he got there.

It was a warm afternoon of the sort that was expected in the Bay Area, the hills of the Sonoma Mountains covered in dry grass and green trees off in the hazy distance. In New York it had been getting on towards Autumn but here is was still Summer. The smell of ripe apples on the tree in the back yard filled the air as he walked out to the storage shed and opened the door. Inside was his old Ford Coupe up on jacks and under a tarp, the one that he had rebuilt when he had returned from Mexico. His mother had suggested that perhaps his ought to consider selling it once he had bought the Falcon a couple years ago, but Jonny would sooner cut off his left arm. He knew that if he sold the Coupe then he would regret it for the rest of his days. Besides that, if he was going to be home for next few weeks, he needed wheels and the Coupe was a Hell of a lot more fun than the Falcon. There were rumors that Ford was looking at developing a sedan that would be an answer to the Chevy Nova that had just come out, a compact car with a small-block V-8 engine. Jonny wished that they would get on with it.

Taking the Coupe off the jacks and making sure that the fluids hadn’t gummed up over the previous months was a painstaking process that Jonny knew couldn’t be rushed. Then he had to go through and make sure that the points were good before filling the gas tank. That was why he was under the Coupe taking out the oil plug when he saw two sets of feet walk into the shed. One was wearing a pair of black boots that could only be Army issue even if the legs they were on the ends of were wearing blue jeans. The other pair were smaller and from what Jonny could see bare ankles and sneakers without socks.

Crawling out from under the car, Jonny saw he knew who at least one of these people was. The wind blowing in through the open doors was a touch cooler than it had been under the car, so before Jonny said anything, he fished the one open bottle of beer out of the bucket and took a drink.

“This had better be good” Jonny said to the Runt, “Because otherwise you came a long way out of your way for nothing.”

“Donna didn’t think that you were for real Sarge” Ritchie said with a shy grin, “Bigger than life and all that, and I wasn’t sure if Whiskey was making it up when he described this car.”

Jonny saw that the Runt had a blond girl with him. He recalled that Ritchie had said that he had a girlfriend who attended college down in Southern California. It looked as if he had convinced her to take a day or two off.

It looked like today at least had gotten a little more interesting. “How much do either of you know about cars?” Jonny asked.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Four


16th September 1960

Mitte, Berlin

When Gloria left the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, she had noticed that the same Marine guard who was always there when she passed through was present. A Corporal who had been here for months and had been given the nickname Rabbit by his fellow Marines, some play on his last name if she had to guess.

“Ma’am” Rabbit said as he opened the door for her, and she stepped out the doors of the Embassy. It was a nice afternoon, not presently raining like it had earlier in the day.

The Marines and the Civilian State Department Employees had seen her before, several times in fact. They knew she was a Journalist and that she had access to portions of the third floor that few of them were allowed to set foot in.

While Gloria wasn’t a CIA Agent, she was considered an asset by the Agency and there was a certain amount of give and take in her dealings with them. Today, she had needed access to the sort of background files that they kept on the big players in the German Government and Imperial Court. All because she had caught the rumor that Gräfin von Mischner was far from retired, instead she was putting all her training and experience into conducting investigations for the German Kaiser personally. That would surprise hardly anyone, Katherine was still a relatively young woman who had only retired because she had not wanted her career to consume the rest of her life. However, she was unlikely to just sit at home and watch the grass grow. The current investigation that was the real story. The Countess of Berlin was once again on the trail of a serial killer. In America, the people ate a story like that up. Gloria did know that Katherine was notoriously secretive about what her current activities were, so she would need to find other sources for that information. It wouldn’t be too difficult. Like police everywhere the German Federal Cops loved to tell stories, the gorier the better.

What she had learned today though was a bit surprising. The two CIA Agents who had been tasked with keeping tabs on the Tigress had said that it was suspected that she had been involved in technology transfers between Germany and Canada over the last few years. It was things like that which Gloria found infinitely fascinating. If Kat were a man acting as the personal Agent of the Kaiser, no one would bat an eye. Instead they were constantly surprised.

That’s what happens when you constantly underestimate someone, Gloria thought to herself as she unlocked her rental car.

The traffic getting out of the City Center was heavy as thousands of commuters tried to get out of town. This was happening earlier in the day than Gloria would see in the United States and she wondered if it was the result of different cultures. Here people try to go home early on a Friday afternoon while in say Washington D.C. everyone was afraid to be seen as the first one going out the door.

Eventually, she reached the turn off for Tempelhof and entered the neighborhood. Driving through the Humboldt Campus of the University of Berlin. It looked like any other urban college she had seen with red brick buildings that had been designed to look like any of the other high rises that surrounded it.

As she pulled up to an intersection, Gloria heard the clattering sound of an engine and a dark green motorcycle pulled up next to her car. When she saw the rider glance towards the window of her car to make sure that Gloria had seen her, she noticed that the it was young woman. It was a reminder that she was a long way from home. Gloria went straight and the motorcycle turned right, presumably towards somewhere on the Humboldt Campus.

The high rises gave way to row houses that reminded Gloria of the brownstones found in New York City, though these were mostly made of yellow and grey stone or red brick. Her understanding was that this whole area had all been an airport until a few years ago. It was difficult to imagine that now. Pulling up to the address the she had been given, she got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front door of an imposing grey stone house. The bronze door knocker had a crest that included a cat and a sword, as if she needed proof that she had found the correct address. After Gloria knocked on the door and waited for a bit the door swung open and a girl of four or five years of age with red hair and vivid blue eyes looked out at her. The family resemblance was unmistakable.

“I’m Gloria, I believe that your mother is expecting me” Gloria said, trying to hide her discomfort at talking to the child who just stared at her in silence.

She was saved when she heard a few sharp words in Russian from inside the house and the little girl vanished. A moment later the door swung all the way open and a woman of an undefinable age stood there.

“The foolish little girl has needed to be warned not to open the door for strangers even though she is shy around them” The woman said in German with an accent that sounded Russian. “Marie is like her mother in that regard, she doesn’t like to listen either. Katya is expecting you”

“You’ve worked for the Gräfin for a long time?” Gloria asked as she followed the woman through the house.

“Since the war” The woman said, “I was a prisoner and she was there to help when few others would. I helped Katya because there were thousands of us and only one of her, I have been helping her ever since.”

“Wait” Gloria said, there had to be more to that story, lots more. When she had written Katherine’s biography, she had known that she had been in the German Special Forces and had taken time away from that to do other things. But she had never spoken to anyone who had known exactly what those other things were. This entire trip was because she had needed to fill in those blanks.

“That is her office” The woman said and then she turned and headed down a staircase. Not giving Gloria a chance to ask any more questions. Entering the office, Gloria saw Kat sitting behind her desk, the little girl that had answered the door was playing on the floor with a small tabby kitten. She truly had entered the tiger’s den.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Five


21st September 1960

Pusan, Korea

In her haste to come here Nancy had crossed all sorts of lines that she had no idea existed. Bringing Noella had turned out to be a bit of a mistake because it implied that she wouldn’t place a whole lot of trust in Korean Domestics to mind her children. Something that the Koreans placed a huge amount of importance in. It had taken time, but she had managed to organize the household in a way that worked and so that she didn’t need to send Noella packing. Sebastian loved it because he was never without attention, even for a second. Nancy had however, found the entire episode embarrassing. She had a Degree in International Communications from the University of Washington. She was supposed to know these things.

The other adjustments had become clearer as the days had passed and Nancy had set up the household. In Cuxhaven, Tilo had commanded the 3rd MID’s training cadre and then he had been a Staff Officer in the Ministry of War in Berlin. Here, he was in charge of the entire Division and that came with a large number of headaches for both of them. For Tilo it meant sitting behind a desk trying to get a handle on the massive backlog of paperwork that had resulted from the Division being in the field for the whole summer.

Nancy on the other hand had found that she was subject to a large number of expectations at the very top of the pecking order among the wives of the Officers of the 3rd MID. She was supposed to provide leadership while at the same time turning a blind eye to some of the realities that she encountered on the ground here in the Korea, like the number of men who had multiple families, on opposite sides of the globe. Tilo said that it came from spending years away from home and that she would need to be understanding. Nancy on the other hand had made it clear that if she ever learned that Tilo had an arrangement like that, it would become very boring after she cut his balls off. Reier found that hilarious. She had found the presence of the senior Noncom a bit of a comfort, he certainly was the one to talk to if something needed to be done without delay. At the same time, she always had to be aware that while Reier wasn’t the highest ranking of the Noncommissioned Officers, he was well known to have been with Tilo all the way across the Pacific. Tilo never had to get angry because if anything happened, Reier typically happened to the malefactor first.


Rural Upper Silesia

It was the first exercise like it that had been attempted on a mass scale. The entire 1st Fallschirmjäger Division was going to insert themselves behind “Enemy Lines” and it was the job of Sigi’s Flight Group to provide close air support once they were on the ground. This being an exercise, the Brass would want everything to go perfectly or go perfectly wrong. No one would know until they got to the landing zone. Sigi had told the crews of the helicopters in her Squadron that they needed to be prepared for anything. Up front, Schinken was fiddling with the yoke that controlled the chin turret. As a perfectionist, he disliked it when there was any play in that system.

“No shooting before we get where we are going” Sigi said into the intercom. Schinken just made a two fingered gesture in return that Sigi laughed at. He had never fired any shots by accident, but it was still a dangerous thing to do even if the circuit breakers that armed the guns were switched off.

Just to their left were hundreds of Al-18 transport helicopters, dubbed Dragonflies by their crews, in close formation and each one carrying a dozen Paratroopers. The Hornet’s were along the outside of the formation, any interference from the ground during the landing would get their undivided attention. Not that a Dragonfly was helpless, far from it, some of them carried the same pods that fired the meter-long rockets that the Hornets did, while they weren’t filled with the anti-armor rockets that the Hornets typically carried, a rocket with a high explosive warhead moving at a 1000 meters per second would ruin almost anyone’s day. All of them had gunners with machine guns sitting in the doors as well.

Sigi glanced down as they passed over a road, she had to wonder what the people down there made of the display that was passing over their heads at that moment. They could only wish that they had a job like hers.

----------------------------------------------------------------

It was one of the crassest displays of military posturing that Gloria had ever seen. That was her thought as she watched the helicopters flying overhead. She had been on the road back to Berlin when she had noticed that people had stopped and were looking up at the sky. Her understanding was that the German Military had been shrinking over the last several years, going to a smaller, professional Army, Airforce and Navy that were bolstered by a couple other service branches that worked with all of them equally. It was hard to square that with what she was looking at.

It was particularly tone deaf considering the things that Gloria had learned about this odd region where Germany, Poland and Bohemia came together. The result was a truly odd mixture of cultures, societies and politics. While it wasn’t universally true, she had discovered that here there was a similar urban/rural divide as the one that could be found in the United States. The difference was that the people living in the cities frequently were of a different religion and/or ethnicity than those who lived out in the small villages and farms. The old landed Nobility was very much in control as the land reforms that had been instituted during the Second World War had not touched the region because the Russians had briefly occupied it. It was because of those very divisions that a killer had been able to operate undetected for a considerable period of time.

Tomorrow, she would be back in Berlin and she would type up this story. Then the following day she was to meet with Katherine von Mischner again and her legal counsel was supposed to be present. There were a few questions outstanding that touched issues that weren’t exactly legal. What some considered the abduction of Jehane Thomas-Romanova and a few mysterious deaths that might have been the work of Katherine’s father.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Six


23rd September 1960

Mitte, Berlin

Gloria would later learn that Gräfin Katherine walked into the U.S. Embassy as if she owned the place. That was hardly a surprise, she did that everywhere she went in Berlin. The Marines guarding the front entrance of the Embassy were in quite a state when Gloria made it down to the lobby. Having a foreign General with her reputation showing up unexpectedly had that effect. Gloria heard about it because she was going through the archives regarding the issues surrounding Russian Prisoners of War following up on what that woman who worked for the Countess had to say. It was an interesting story, but for some reason, the Countess had not mentioned the extent of her involvement. Her getting a Red Cross Medal had been for that work, but the citation had only mentioned that it had been for unspecified humanitarian reasons. It seemed that under the Bolsheviks the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs had done a number on the families of Russian POWs and to be accused of collaboration on top of getting captured could result in harsh reprisals. The consequences of that was still being felt as there were sizable Russian expatriate populations in most of the major cities of Eastern Europe composed of people who could never go home. Katherine had declined a substantial amount of the recognition that she might have received in order to shield the prisoners she worked with from being harmed. Yet Gloria knew from her own experience that Katherine would never admit to having done such a thing. Instead, she would just say the medal was undeserved in the first place and leave it at that.

The CIA Officers in the building were unhappy with Katherine’s presence. As if she would assault the Embassy by herself.

----------------------------------------------------------------

When Gloria reached the lobby, she found Kat with a smug smile on her face and a man who she presumed was her legal counsel giving Rabbit a venomous glare. It was obvious that the Marine knew that he was in over his head and Kat’s Lawyer was an imposing man who was several inches taller than him. Because of course, she would hire someone like that. However, Gloria was reminded of the absurd reaction that was taking place upstairs.

“What is the problem Corporal Oswald?” Gloria asked.

“Uhm…” Rabbit said with a gulp as he tried to think of the words to use here. While Gloria had known for a long time that she needed to stop thinking of him with that stupid nickname, he made it difficult to think of him as anything else. “The Countess is on the list Ma’am, and she knows it. Mister Kennedy was just saying that it has no legal basis in American or German Law.”

That stupid list. While Katherine wasn’t barred from traveling to or from the United States, she was the unofficial list that the Ambassador had compiled of known German troublemakers who the guards were supposed to keep an eye out for and deny entry to if they could come with an excuse. A task that Rabbit normally would have been able to carry out except this situation wasn’t exactly normal. That explained Kat’s smugness. She would see being on such a list as an affirmation.

“You were supposed to meet me in the hotel bar” Gloria said, “And not for another hour.”

“I figured that this would be fun” Kat replied, and she got a dirty look from her Lawyer.

“Whatever” Gloria said, knowing that getting the Countess out of here would be what was best for everyone involved as she headed for the doors.

“Gloria, this is Jack Kennedy” Kat said, “Jack this is Gloria, the biographer whose book we couldn’t stop from getting published.”

Gloria was swiftly learning that Kat in a good mood was worse than when she was in a foul mood. She was also surprised that Kat trusted John F. Kennedy enough to act as her legal counsel. He had been one of the men alleged to have been involved in the attempted abduction of her in Australia shortly before her eighteenth birthday. There had to have been other shared history between them that Gloria didn’t know about.

“Mind telling us where we are going?” Gloria asked, changing the subject.

“A place around the corner” Kat replied, “Some place where we can talk without having to worry about eavesdropping.”

Gloria followed as Kat led them through a nondescript door into a featureless building. As they entered an opulent lobby that looked like something from the previous century, she couldn’t help but noticing that there was a sign on the wall that said MEMBERS ONLY. The Attendant cleared his throat when he saw them, it was obvious that he felt that he felt that they didn’t belong here. Kat gave him a withering look and opened her coat, pinned to the front of her dress was a medal that Gloria recognized as the Grand Cross of the Order of Louise. She saw him look at Katherine and he was making swift calculations. Red hair, that medal, the fuck you attitude and a face that was familiar to everyone in Berlin. “I am expected” She said sharply.

The Attendant was surprised by that sudden display. “I… I am terribly sorry my Lady” He stammered and led them into the dining room.

With that Gloria followed and she was amazed by what she had just seen. How had a girl from a working-class neighborhood become this woman who she saw in front of her?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Seven


1st October 1960

Tempelhof, Berlin

The cartoon was pretty brainless on the level that its intended audience would see it at. However, after a mind-numbing week of classes and the added pressure of Ben’s presence in half of them, Kiki didn’t want to think. Her mind didn’t want to cooperate though. She tried to focus on watching the slapstick cartoon penguins conducting guerilla operations from their hidden base within their enclosure in the Tiergarten Zoo interplanetary invaders that only the animals were aware of without a whole lot of success. Then the penguins were confronted with the tigress who lived in a different part of the Zoo and strongly disliked their constant intrusions into her space. Every attempt to bring their overwhelming firepower against the tigress always backfired badly and they learned once again that nothing ever went wrong with her claws when she decided to use them. The only companions of the Tigress were the eagle who roosted in the tree within her enclosure and her three cubs. The eagle believed that he was a monarch and ruled everything that he could see when he obviously didn’t. The tiger cubs were cute but terribly naïve, falling in with the convoluted plans of the penguins even at the risk of angering their mother. Today the baboons were in a debate over who they would elect to be their new leader and it was spilling out into the rest of the zoo. Kiki wondered how the studio was getting away with this cartoon. It was obvious which people that they were lampooning, and the entire thing was extremely political with jokes making fun of the Reichstag and the Military.

As the scene concluded with the penguins retreating back to their base and their leader seemingly fine until he fell into a dozen pieces in a delayed reaction to the Tigress connecting with her claws, her mind kept going back to her present situation. Doctor Berg’s idea that Zella had always disliked Ben because she was secretly jealous. What did that even mean? Berg had alluded to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to make her point. Roseline, Juliet’s cousin who was also Romeo’s original love interest chasing Romeo away from the balcony was easy enough to understand, but that implied that Zella had a thing for Ben. Then there was that other suggestion, Mercutio chasing off Juliet. That cast Kiki as Romeo in that scenario and many critics over the years had suggested that Mercutio was secretly in love with his best friend. That dynamic playing out in Kiki’s situation seemed rather farfetched. Kiki had known Zella since they were children and they had few secrets from each other, so she knew what her best friend’s leanings were.

The next time Kiki had seen Doctor Berg she had asked her opinion about what that all meant. Berg had just smiled and said that there was more than one type of love. What she and Zella shared was a close friendship, almost familial in nature. Berg thought that Zella was jealous because she thought that Ben or someone like him might steal away her sister of sorts. Later that week the subject had come up when Kiki had been talking to Aurora and Aurora had laughed about it. She said that Kiki needed to be a bit more observant because there were few things that aggravated her friends more than having to deal with her Highness, Princess Kristina once she had made up her mind and wouldn’t listen to anyone else about what she was doing. Then Aurora had pointed out something that Kiki had never cared enough to notice before. How many friends did Zella really have besides them? Sure, there were the acquaintances, the Rock & Rollers and people she had met along the way, but none of them ever got to see who Zella was when she let her guard down. Before she had met Kiki and Aurora, Zella’s tendency towards rash actions had caused her to be boxed out by her classmates in primary school.


Santa Rosa, California

After catching up with work in Washington DC, Gloria had decided that spending a few days in California with Jonny not thinking about a whole lot of anything was just what she needed. Jonny had seen it as a great opportunity to show her one of the regional treasures that few outside of that corner of California knew about.

The Harvest Fair was not at all what Gloria had been expecting when Jonny had invited her to come to it with him. She had been expecting a whole lot of the sorts of things that involved falling off a turnip truck, or something equally hokey. Instead, the expanse of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds was filled with halls packed with every sort of produce imaginable. Then there were the showcases of the artistic products of vintners, brewers, cheese makers and who knew what else. A glass of wine, a live chicken and as many apples as one could carry were all easy to find. Presently, Gloria was sipping a glass of wine and had a bag of apples. She had passed on the chicken. Sitting in the shade of a covered picnic area they were eating apple slices with fresh baked sour-dough bread and white cheddar cheese.

The wine was surprisingly good, rivaling anything she had tasted in Italy or France. Looking at the label the bottle Gloria asked, “Where is Kenwood?”

“Over towards Sonoma” Jonny replied, “Just an intersection, a few houses, a school and a church.”

“I saw a lot of places like that in the south-eastern corner of Germany when I was there last week” Gloria said.

“What took you out there?”

“The same story I’ve been working on for the last couple years” Gloria said, “The updates to the biography of the Countess have gotten a lot more interesting now that I have her cooperation.”

“I would be careful though” Jonny said, “She is probably feeding you a lot of self-serving information.”

“Do you really think she is doing that?” Gloria asked.

“It’s what I would do” Jonny replied.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Eight


2nd October 1960

Jena

As the weeks wore on, the full scope of Zella’s overreaction towards Ben became more obvious. It was something that she was finding that she was having trouble dealing with and because she lived with her parents off campus, her Mother’s disapproval of her actions was impossible to escape. Then her father’s old Helios motorcycle, the same one that had vanished during the March Revolution in 1921, had been found in a storeroom not far from where he had last seen it nearly four decades earlier. He had taken it upon himself to restore it as a labor of love and Zella’s failure to be impressed by the motorcycle that was covered in rust and filth had gotten her exiled from his garage. Was it her fault that she preferred to have actually have brakes?

It being a Sunday afternoon she had gotten on her own motorcycle and had taken an aimless course out of the city taking turns on the Autobahn at random until she had found herself near Jena. The assisted living home where her Grandmother was someplace where Zella knew she would always be welcome even if she just dropped in.

Sitting in the dining room, Zella was speaking with the Grandmother whose name she shared, enjoying tea and biscuits that were a bit stale when the uncomfortable subject of Zella’s behavior came up. It had turned out that her Grandmother had been talking to her father.

“I don’t understand why it is so important for you to protect your friends, you could have seriously hurt that boy” Zella’s Grandmother said, “And it doesn’t even sound like they have asked for your help.”

“They wouldn’t though” Zella said, “Every time I turn around, they are making some sort of stupid decision, particularly with men.”

“Really now” Zella’s Grandmother said, “So, now you are an expert on that subject? Since when?”

Zella felt the blood rise in her cheeks as her Grandmother chuckled at her.

“You know what men can be like” Zella said, “Acting like spoiled little boys, and the way that some of them look at me makes my skin crawl.”

“Are you being serious Marcella?” Her Grandmother asked as she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, “I’ve seen a lot of changes in my life but there are some things that will never change. How you deal with matters needs to change though, these rash actions of yours are going to get you in trouble.”

Seeing just how thick the lenses were on those glasses Zella couldn’t help but noticing the irony of her Grandmother’s last comment. She was nearly blind.

That was when Zella’s Grandmother looked at her with a frown. “Your father always had that same look on his face when he is about to say some smartass comment” She said, “Or was thinking it.”

Her Grandmother clearly didn’t need perfect vision to see right through her, so Zella focused on cup of tea in front of her trying not to make things worse.


Near Rtishchevo, Saratov Oblast, Russia

Not for the first time in this aimless quest, Fyodor wondered why he needed to be here. Just his presence alone added to the validity of the stories that he was here to investigate. What he suspected was actually going on was that during the long winter nights the jug of homebrew vodka got passed around once too often and the talk had turned to restless spirits and the blood-soaked still recent history of this region. Those stories had become wilder with retelling as tended to happen and with winter coming Georgy had sent Fyodor to see if it would be possible to quell those stories. He felt that it was counterproductive, but he couldn’t easily disobey a lawful order from the Czar who wanted to be seen as taking an active interest in the welfare of his subjects. So, here Fyodor was.

As he had passed through the villages and farms, he had learned that everyone had heard the stories. The tame ones were talk of seeing soldiers, both Russian and German seen wandering down the roads at night or spectral armies continuing the battle even though it had ended more than a decade and a half earlier. The other more disturbing ones spoke of men still being found frozen where they stood because they had met someone or something that was a perversion of nature. Something dark and twisted that had been born in the midst of the bitter cold and the titanic battles that had been fought here. Supposedly, it still stalked the night, preying on the unwary or merely the unlucky. The best ghost stories had some basis in fact, Fyodor wouldn’t exactly thrilled to be getting to the bottom of that one. However, getting to those facts was what Fyodor was doing if he had any hope of having some sort of success to present to Georgy.

Fyodor had been led in circles because everyone had heard the stories. It was always around the lines of them saying that they had heard it from a guest who had heard it from their cousin who was certain that they had talked to someone who had witnessed something. This time that had led Fyodor to this stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. A man he had talked to in Rtishchevo had said that he had heard engines revving in the night. Not just any engines though, the low growls and roars of diesel engines found in armored vehicles.

All Fyodor found was open country and fields where anything that might be of later use had been harvested on a cool autumn afternoon. It was the reason why the claims about hearing odd engine sounds had caught his attention. Finding their homes on the front lines had been a calamity for the people in this region. What had happened in the months and years that followed had been a different story. A knocked-out tank or armored personnel carrier was tons of alloy steel that was just there for the taking, finding a cutting torch and securing the services of a lorry were all that stood in the way of a very nice payday.

Then at the edge of road, the exception to that caught Fyodor’s eye. A scare cat with the eerie yellow eyes still in place though most of the black paint had long given way to rust, was leaning against a stone wall. Throughout Russia it was said that to see one was unlucky and to touch one was to invite death. This was one of those superstitions that had a basis in fact due to the German Special Warfare Division spreading thousands of the things around the countryside. That they were often placed in close proximity to mines or were rigged to explode themselves played a large role for the dread with which they were looked upon. There were some ghosts haunting the countryside that were very real indeed.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Nine


9th October 1960

Tempelhof, Berlin

It seemed that quiet Sunday evenings had become a luxury for Ilse as she sat on the recliner in the library watching Albrecht sitting on the couch trying to read to Nikolaus. Niko seemed far more interested in the sounds from the nearby parlor where his cousins were watching television.

The latest paper that Ilse had published had caused a stir. This time it was peer reviewed and the experiments had been duplicated in other laboratories. The conclusions were clear, burning coal released a considerable amount of sulfur dioxide and that came back down in the form of acid rain. Unfortunately, that led straight to the questions of what was going to happen next and those were ones that Ilse was not prepared to answer. To do so required delving into areas of policy that she hadn’t thought too much about. Sure, there had been the presentations that she had given in London a few years earlier, but Ilse had been a few steps removed from the British Government. In Germany her sister-in-law was Helene von Richthofen and with the National Liberals only having a precarious hold on power there was a chance that new elections might be forced at any time. The Democratic Ecology Party that Helene had founded with Sophie Scholl and her father could easily become a key part of a new coalition Government after that. For someone who abhorred politics, Ilse was finding herself neck deep in them.

It did however change the way that Ilse was treated within the University. To have a paper hold up under peer review like that, was truly something. Her colleagues would love nothing better than to than catch some flaw in the methodology or an example research that couldn’t be duplicated in the field. They would have cheerfully torn her to pieces, it wasn’t because they hated her, it was just what they did. Where before she had spent years quietly collecting samples, sometimes with students helping her but mostly alone, she was now finding that there was suddenly a great deal of interest in her work from both her colleagues and the press. This was in addition to the challenges that she already had to contend with.

Albrecht, who had taken on the role commanding the Carrier Air Group for the SMS Voss, had told that she should push the University for more funding while she was finally enjoying the recognition that she had deserved for a long time. His career was currently keeping him in Kiel all week where the Voss was undergoing a refit and her air wing was tasked with patrolling the Baltic from airfields around that city. It was something that enabled him to come home every weekend. However, the refit of the Voss was nearly complete, and she would be headed for the Pacific in a few months. It was something that neither Ilse nor Albrecht were looking forward to.

Tonight though, Ilse was content with this moment.


Saratov, Russia

“Please tell me that you are joking” Gia said when Fyodor had explained his plan to her after she had arrived by train a few hours earlier. He had called in a favor that she owned him to get her here and his hope was that when they returned to Moscow her cousin Georgy would be suitably grateful. Hopefully to the point of finally giving Fyodor a few months off to pursue his own interests for once.

“I’m not” Fyodor replied, “I’m not asking much of you, just make it look good.”

The plan was simple, the people of Russia had a deep reverence for her even if she was uncomfortable with it. Fyodor intended to take advantage of that by having her come out say a few words and then light a bonfire with a couple dozen of the scare cats that the Sappers the Army had provided had found in the countryside of this Oblast. His thinking was that if the ghost stories were the problem, then he needed a better story to counter it and the woman who the public knew as Grand Duchess Alexandra or Sasha as many liked to call her was perfect. The Orthodox Church had declared her to be a saint of sorts while they thought she was dead. Nothing that they knew of had run counter to that in the years since she had turned up alive. Many of her actions had in fact buttressed the notion that she was a living saint.

The problem that Gia had was that the scare cats were the work of her adopted uncle and that she felt that the superstitious dread that surrounded the things was absurd. They were just sheet metal cutouts and a couple pieces of glass. Klaus Böhler and his wife had welcomed her into their home and made her a part of their family. They had given her the space to heal after the ordeal that she had endured, and she felt that having the scare cats be a part of his legacy was obscene.

As for the Church, Gia had said to Fyodor on a few occasions that the way that they had depicted her was grossly inaccurate but had gotten embarrassed when Fyodor had questioned her too much about that. He found that amusing but hardly a surprise, no one was as pure as her public persona. That time he had watched her give in to anger and shoot that man in Danvers, he had seen the real woman under the artifice. Like it or not, Gia was a daughter of this land and it was good that she was home as opposed to wasting her time in Berlin.

Now Gia stood before several hundred people in the center of Saratov with a flaming torch in her hand and with a bit of flourish spoke of the need to banish the darkness from their hearts, then the need to heal the world itself from the evil that sprang from that darkness. She had thrown in a few references to Jesus Christ and invoked the faith that seemingly everyone here shared except for Fyodor and he had his doubts about her as well. It didn’t help that while her words were compelling, they were largely paraphrased from Gandalf the Grey. Luckily, few people in Russia knew of Tolkien, the Oxford Don turned fantasy writer.

As Gia threw the torch she was holding onto the pile of wood and tinder that had been prepared the people of Saratov witnessed the shocking sight of white flames consuming the scare cats. They thought it was a miracle. Of course, it had more to do with the thermite that Fyodor had put in there. He stood there enjoying the spectacle and Gia was looking at him accusingly. He had forgotten to mention that last part of the plan to her.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Ten


21st October 1960

Mitte, Berlin

The first thing that Emil had done was to tell his team to come up with ideas. He didn’t care how outlandish they sounded, he just wanted them throwing ideas out there and then afterwards they could try to figure out exactly what was feasible. That was why he was looking at the ideas on the chalkboard in his garage. BMW had promised that his team would get a working space soon enough but having the team of a half dozen men that included two engineers, two mechanics, a machinist and a rider in the garage sitting on whatever chairs could be found was working for now. The meetings were just twice a week at present, when they got a permanent location and some idea of what their goals were, they would be meeting and working every day. The problems with this location were instantly obvious. The parts of the disassembled Helios sitting on every horizontal surface and the other motorcycles in the garage, not to mention Maria’s complaints about them eating and drinking everything in the kitchen all provided unwelcome distractions. There were also deadlines and budget constraints that they needed to contend with in the coming months. First though they would need to settle on a plan, but in order to get there they needed to determine what was feasible.

Looking at the list there some pretty outlandish ideas, he swiftly crossed out the ones for exotic fuels and the most radical or unconventional changes to the basic engine. Those would be explored at a later time if they proved promising. Then he drew stars next to the ideas that seemed to hold the most merit. Building on the success of the 500 Kompressor engine was one idea that everyone agreed on, there had been considerable advancement over the prior two decades. Just they had differing ideas on how to go about doing that. Turbocharging seemed like an interesting idea to explore as because that technology had improved vastly over that same time period. Fuel injection was something that had come into widespread use in aircraft engines from the late 1930s until piston engines had been replaced by turbines. Disk brakes, light-weight alloys that had come as a result of the space program, possible improvements to the electrical system and suspension. The list still ran on for a considerable length.

“All of these are worth looking into” Emil said, “I guess we’re going to be spending a considerable amount of time in the coming days looking these things up and…”

“Why not talk to Leni?” An unexpected voice asked.

Emil looked past the men sitting around and saw Zella sitting on the steps that led up to the kitchen. He’d had no idea that she had been watching this meeting. With the University term in full swing she had needed to bury herself in her studies, so that had resulted in a bit of domestic peace in recent days. To put it simply, Zella didn’t have time to cause trouble, so she wasn’t getting into arguments with Maria. From Emil’s perspective, Zella’s problems were rooted in how she saw herself. In her mind, Zella was still the tomboy she had been several years earlier, unfortunately for her physical maturity had thrown a wrench into the works. She had become an attractive young woman and the sort of attention that brought her was something she was still grappling with. Emil supposed that he ought to be grateful that she was still trying to figure that out and had been reluctant to get into a relationship. Most of the young men who she regularly interacted with had what Emil considered the worst possible traits they could have, no future or inclination to improve themselves. If Emil was being honest, he would say that they were trash. If only Zella would learn how to be a bit more discrete when it came to how she handled difficult situations, it would probably go a long way towards her figuring out her place in the world.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class right now?” Emil asked.

“The lecture was canceled because the professor called in sick” Zella said, “Besides that, this is far more interesting.”

Emil realized that Zella’s presence was just one more distraction that he would need to roll with.

“Marcella just made a good suggestion” Emil said, “Her friend Magdalena works at the Berlin Central Library. If any of you have a ready source of information, I would suggest you use it quickly.”

With that everyone left, and Emil flipped the chalkboard over and saw the lengthy list of equipment that was going to go to the corporate office. They were not going to like this and wouldn’t until Emil started to get results.

“What’s your game Zella?” Emil asked.

Zilla got up and walked to one of the vacated chairs and sat down where it would be easier to talk to him.

“You don’t think that you are the only one into this?” Zella asked firmly in reply.

“What the motorcycles, the racing and whatnot?” Emil asked.

“Why not?” Zella asked, “I was there with you all the way around the world.”

Emil was about to say that it was different, but she did have a point. Still though, it was something that simply wasn’t done. The accusations of nepotism would be the least of his problems if he allowed Zella to get involved.

“Your mother knows where I keep the key for the desk drawer where I keep my old service pistol and she would use it on me if I allowed you in on this” Emil said, “She’s the one you would need to convince, not me.”

Zella looked disappointed, but Emil wondered if he had just made a mistake by not giving her a hard no.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Eleven


24th October 1960

Tempelhof, Berlin

It was Monday morning and Kiki found herself at her usual table in the Hospital Cafeteria. Currently, she was reading the newspaper and enduring an uncomfortable silence with Doctor Berg. Lately, the older woman had been looking at her with an increasing amount of disapproval for the simple reason of her neglecting things again. Was that really a surprise? Kiki barely had time to sleep these days.

The front page of the BT had an analysis of the American General Election that was coming up in a week. The conclusion was that while relations with the Harriman Administration were frosty at the present, he wasn’t openly antagonistic which was what was expected if Barry Goldwater was playing a key role in setting American foreign policy as Vice President next year. From Kiki’s perspective, that was going from a not so great situation to one that was bad for everyone. She had seen how dangerously close they had come to a bloody proxy war in Korea the prior summer. No one had any idea of how things may have shaken out if that had boiled over, but it would have left multitudes dead as armies had collided and civilians were caught in the crossfire. That much was certain, and Kiki found it a complete obscenity that none of the lessons of the previous century seemed to have been learned. People still thought that war solved more problems than it created.

“You look like you are angry about something” Berg observed from across the table.

“People are stupid” Kiki replied.

“You’re just figuring that out now?” Berg asked.

“Hardly” Kiki replied, “I just don’t get why idiots always seem to end up in charge.”

“Because people who are truly intelligent end up spending all of their time out doing things while dolts and weasels have all the time in the world” Berg said, “You are going to finish what’s on that plate, correct?”

Putting down the newspaper, Kiki looked at the food, as unappetizing as it was and tried to take a few more bites. Potato dumplings with extra sauerkraut and bread in addition to the green salad that Berg insisted she eat. In the most recent physical examination that she had endured after she had come back to University, it had been discovered that she was on the verge of being underweight. Something that Berg said was completely unacceptable because the last thing that they needed was to have her land in the hospital with serious illness again. That was why she had been ordered to eat heavier foods, particularly if she was going to be as physically active as she was.

Not that Kiki could afford to be sick, she had a full load of courses that she was taking, it was those relating to the War Academy in the mornings and in the afternoons, she was in lectures that were prerequisites if she was going to have any hope of going to medical school in a couple years. Berg was worried that she was going to suffer some sort of mental or physical collapse and was constantly urging Kiki to take better care of herself. Berg had joined what seemed like everyone else in her life saying exactly the same things. To say that they didn’t understand was a bit of an understatement.

“I wish that you would stop trying to save the world and focus on yourself Kristina” Berg said, “Just for a few days.”

“You sound like the Gräfin” Kiki said, “She’s always telling me to act my age. That I take on too much responsibility.”

Berg normally hid her annoyance with Kiki but to find herself in agreement with Kat Mischner was not a position she liked to be in. Her clashes with Kat had been legendary.

“I helped that woman bring three heathy babies into the world, which was something of a miracle considering her nature” Berg said, “And she made it all needlessly difficult because she has the same sort of stubbornness that she somehow taught you. It is something that will not serve you well in the future.”

“But she told me that everyone will make assumptions about how I got where I am for my entire life” Kiki said, “The only way around that is to work twice as hard.”

“Not at the expense of your health and happiness” Berg said, “The last thing you want is to be my age and be haunted by choices that you’ve come to regret.”

“Do you have regrets like that?” Kiki asked in reply. As soon as she said it, she realized that it wasn’t the right question to have asked.

Berg stared at Kiki and seemed a bit surprised.

“I wasn’t given many choices when I was your age” Berg said with a bit of anger in her voice, “Secrecy, fear and rejection were the pitfalls that were the lot in life for someone like me. It is very hard to have serious regrets when you have to contend with survival and the knowledge that certain things reaching the wrong ears could have serious personal consequences.”

Kiki went back to her meal, which seemed like the safer option at the moment. Doctor Berg confided in very few people the truth about her personal life, Kiki being one of them. Compared to Berg’s problems four decades ago, Kiki’s seemed extremely trite.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Twelve


5th November 1960

For Douglas, waking up with rain hitting the window wasn’t a surprise. A big storm had blown in the night before, bringing high winds and torrential rain. The sounds of the storm had filled the house in the early morning hours. Finding that Tat, Kol and Marie were sleeping between him and Kat was a surprise though. There was also Fleur, the rat terrier mix who thought herself his children’s fierce protector and Cheshire, the half-grown tabby kitten who followed Marie everywhere. When Kat had gotten the kitten for her, Marie had named him for the character in the Louis Carrol novel that she loved so much. She had even told Doug that if it had been girl, she would have named the kitten Alice.

They had been frightened by the storm and had sought the protective safety of being with their parents in the early morning hours, eventually everyone had just fallen asleep. Tatiana was sleeping in Kats arms. Kat might say that she didn’t have a favorite among her children, but her and Tat had always been extremely close. Malcolm and Marie were snuggled together with Fleur and Cheshire. Josefine wasn’t present, at fourteen she considered herself past being scared over that sort of thing.

Swinging his feet off the bed, Doug could feel the cold of the hardwood floor under his feet. It was the promise of the winter that was just ahead. This year would be different though. All the children were old enough to enjoy the holiday season now but were not yet at an age where the cynicism that came with adolescence would become a factor. It was something that Doug was looking forward to. Even if Jo was a stick in the mud like she had been last year, Marie’s wide-eyed wonder more than made up for it.

Padding across the room trying to avoid waking the others, Doug found his bathrobe and quietly made his way downstairs. In the kitchen he found Petia and Serhiy preparing for the day. Ilse was already up and was trying to feed boiled oats to a recalcitrant Nikolaus who was sitting in a highchair.

“I saw where the children disappeared to” Petia said when she saw Doug, “It was sweet.”

It had hardly been his intention to provide Petia with an amusing spectacle.

It was then that Jo came down the stairs to the garden floor. Still in her pajamas, her hair in desperate need of being brushed out and her eyes still swollen. It was clear she’d had a rough night. Doug heard her grumble something about being woken up, not by the storm but by Tat and Kol’s reaction to it. Her bedroom was right across the hall from theirs, so she would have heard the slamming doors and running footsteps.


Mitte, Berlin

It wasn’t until Saturday morning that Maria finally had something to say about Zella pestering her over the prior week and she was obviously not thrilled with how Emil had handled things.

“You should know by now that you are not going to be able to put your daughter off forever” Maria said.

It was something that Maria did half joking. Whenever their children behaved themselves, they were theirs as opposed to when they misbehaved, then they were entirely his. And because Zella had been an even bigger pain in the backside than usual over the last several days, Maria reminded Emil that she was his daughter. The fact that Emil had told Zella that Maria would be the one that she would need to convince, that was true enough. However, Maria had not been happy about Zella’s reaction to being told that.

“If I could get past the nepotism angle, there is Zella’s personality to consider” Emil said, “She is impulsive and likes to take risks. If I allow her in as a part of the design team, the finished product will be irresistible to her.”

“Sounds like someone else I know” Maria replied.

“That is not just what I mean” Emil said, “People work for years to get in on a racing team. To just let her get involved would be a slap in the face to them.”

“Emil, you had better think of what you will need to in order to paper it over then” Maria said, “Because Zella has never been one to allow anything to get in the way of getting what she wants.”

“Are you suggesting that I just let her into this project?” Emil asked.

“No, of course not” Maria said, “You do know that Zella is just going to find a way around your back and there is not a lot you can do about it.”

Emil found the contradiction of that confusing.

“Making me be the one to tell her no wasn’t the smartest move on your part, there are few things that your daughter loves to do more than spite me” Maria said, “You might have been able to beat the Russians Emil, but Zella is in a different league. So, good luck with that.”

Emil couldn’t believe this. Even with as serious as this situation was Maria found it funny.

“Perhaps you could…” Emil started to say only to have Maria cut him off.

“You tried to be clever, now it is entirely your problem” Maria said, “So you need to figure out how you are going to respond to Zella because I don’t want anything to do with this mess.”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred thirteen


9th November 1960

New York

It was well after midnight and the outcome of the election was still to be determined. Seventy million votes cast, and it have come down to a few hundred votes in the swing states of Illinois and Minnesota. After that it had swiftly become a war of words between Harriman and Rockefeller, from New York City and Albany respectively, and they were having none of it. Both of them were demanding that the other concede as the process of conducting recounts began. Already, both of the Campaigns were accusing the other of legal chicanery.

Observers were starting to realize that it was going to be a long, dragged out process.


Kattowitz, Silesia

While in America, a nation was holding its breath while politicians and election experts were trying to sort out who had actually won the 1960 Presidential election. Kat was having to grapple with a far more gruesome situation, and it was all she could do not to scream her head off at the people who were standing nearest to her. The killer she had been hunting for months had struck again and like had happened during the previous occurrences the police stationed in the community in question largely bungled the investigation before the Federal Police and BII got there. It didn’t help that the victim this time was a Jewish girl and there was only one word that could be used to describe what had happened to her, evisceration. In the past the known victims had been ethnic Poles, something that had led to a bizarre belief that the killer had a particular type to the exclusion of all else. Kat knew that was nonsense and now the people of this region had found that out the hard way. Whatever the killer’s actual motives were, if his goal was to spread terror, he had just he had just succeeded.

Into this was what Sven had told her on the ride from the train station to the scene where the body had been found, then the quieter ride to the hospital where the autopsy was being performed. The BII had come under increasing pressure to solve this crime because the whole matter had become a political issue with it being compared to the Hinterkaifeck murders which the police had never managed to solve. The sudden and unexpected death of Ernst Bohle which had been announced that very morning had poured petrol over an already fraught situation. That had upset the balance of power within the governing coalition and the current Government of Germany which had been led by the National Liberals was fragmenting at an astonishing rate. It was expected that the Chancellor was going to be forced to announce new elections at any moment. The State of Silesia, which had a reputation for being a sleepy backwater, had become one of the places where it was figured that the makeup of the next Government would be decided, and it was where this ongoing mess was occurring.

Then there was the girl herself, Rivka Chaikin, Kat reminded herself of that, she wasn’t just a nameless victim. Rivka was a person with a family, friends and an entire life. The killer shouldn’t be allowed to steal that entirely away from her, not if Kat had any say. It was hard to keep that in perspective when she saw what that monster had done to the girl. All Kat felt was a hot anger and she wanted to see that man suffer, ripped limb from limb.

Having seen enough, Kat walked out of the hospital to where Sven and Gunther were waiting on the street. As they entered the Police Station Kat noticed that there were now two dozen BII Agents and uniformed Federal Police present. That was quite a change from when she had been here last.

“There is a reason why this monster is able to elude us” Kat said, “He’s a delivery driver, a travelling salesman or something that we would look at and think nothing of it.”

“Do you think that you are the first one to think of that Katherine?” Sven asked, “You are not the only competent investigator here.” Then he motioned to a bulletin board that had a map of upper Silesia and the surrounding area on it. Red flags were in places where the killer had placed bodies and other crimes where he was the suspect. There were dozens of additional blue flags, she didn’t know what those meant yet. Then Kat noticed photographs of delivery vans made by VW and Opel delivery vehicles.

Sven handed Kat a heavy folder, “That was the conclusion of your former mentor, Anton Knoph, several weeks ago” He said, “Interesting reading if you want to take some time away from imagining what you are going to do to the suspect when we catch him. I’ll have you know that you are hardly alone in that.”

With that Kat took the folder and went to find a place to read it. She hated the idea that she had been so easy for Sven to read in this situation. He was probably correct in that the others felt the same way. For her though, this case had become personal. Every time she saw the photographs of the victims, she saw her own girls. The half dozen she had trained to help protect Gia but had continued to mentor and guide in their professional lives. Those who had come along later, including her own daughters. Lately that had included things like marriage and children, things that the girls who Kat had recruited from State Care had never thought that they would ever have.

Reading the report, Kat saw that Anton believed that the killer was an odd combination of below average intelligence and meticulous in how he went about his crimes, going months between them and evading detection until fairly recently. He was an opportunist when it came to how he found his victims, they happened to be alone in a vulnerable position when he found them. He worked a menial job that required him to travel around the region, one that enabled him to be a part of the background and seen as harmless enough that the victims didn’t see him as a threat until it was too late. A delivery driver of some kind being most likely. Anton also speculated that he probably already had a criminal record for lesser offenses. Finally, Anton reached a chilling conclusion. The killer was continuing to escalate, and the crimes were growing more disturbing with each passing victim.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Fourteen


21st November 1960

Langley, Virginia

It was hardly a surprise that the Headquarters of was in a state of flux. The same could be said about the entire country. The fight over the Presidential election had dragged on for weeks as irregularities discovered at the local level and what could only be described as stupidity swung the election back and forth. It had become a series of protracted fights over the intent of the voters when they marked their ballot and whatever stunts the local branches of the National Parties had pulled on election day. So far, neither the Democratic nor Republican Parties were looking particularly good because of the dirty laundry that was being aired for all the public to see. In the midst of this, Gloria had been recalled back to Langley. Normally, she would have blown off such a summons but today it seemed like Langley was where the action was, and she wasn’t disappointed.

It was clear that the career bureaucrats had a serious problem on their hands. They had no idea whose butt to kiss and if they kissed the wrong one, then they could kiss their careers goodbye. Gloria found all of that amusing as she wrote down her observations in her notebook. She was planning on writing an article about this, just leaving out that exactly which Government Agency the bureaucrats in question worked for. She figured that the same sorts of things were happening all over Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland this week. It was just as well that she had something to do while she waited outside the Department of Applied Research and Analysis according to the sign on the door. Whatever that was. There must be a contractor somewhere that provided government offices with carpet and furniture like the chair she was sitting in, because she had seen that same ugly color of beige dozens of times but nowhere else. The same went for the cream-colored paint on the walls. Between two of the chairs was a small table with a tray that had held a bowl of nuts, pitcher of water and two glasses. The secretary who had told her to wait here had told her to help herself. She had taken a glass of water, but with no means of cracking open the shells the nuts had seemed pointless to bother with.

Checking her watch with a great deal of annoyance, Gloria saw that she had been waiting almost an hour. It was as if they were deliberately trying to make her wait out here. She shoved her pen into the spiraled wire binding of her notebook and put it in her bag. This whole thing was growing tiresome.

Looking again at the nuts in their bowl, she figured that Jonny would know exactly what to do with those. He would know some means of getting them open even without a nutcracker. That was exactly the sort of thing that he was good for, the rest of it was sort of tricky. Being a soldier was the only thing he was ever really good at. It had been two years and Jonny seemed to be fine with the mostly long-distance relationship that they had. It was the lack of progress in that relationship was starting to make itself felt for her though. Just how long they could maintain things like this was anyone’s guess. Gloria figured that at some point in the future they would forget to return each other’s calls and then it would be over.

Her thoughts racing and she was starting to feel restless, Gloria poured herself another glass of water and took a sip as she waited with growing impatience, if they weren’t out here in the next few minutes then she was leaving. Which was when she felt like she had lurched several feet sideways which was impossible because she had never left her chair. According to the Agency she was a Civilian Asset, that meant that Gloria was afforded some respect as a volunteer and they had said that they wouldn’t order her to do anything untoward. There was a nagging voice in the back of her head that reminded her of the joke that Jonny had told her about which hadn’t applied to him because he had been drafted. The recruit in bootcamp complaining about how the recruiting Sergeant had lied to him to get his signature on the dotted line. Of course, he had lied, and it seemed like everyone in the camp except the recruit knew that.

Glancing at her watch again and discovered that she couldn’t make sense of the numbers. That isn’t good, Gloria managed to think to herself but was finding complete thoughts to be difficult. She had no idea how long she waited. It could have been seconds or hours. Finally, after what had seemed like an eternity, the inner door to the department opened and to her horror a man who looked like an aging athlete stepped out, followed by a man who was older and seemed to be the sort who was fussy and vain. Gloria was acutely aware of how she was completely helpless in this situation.

“We mean you no harm Miss Steinem” The athlete said, “We just want to talk with you about a few matters that need cleared up.”

“You said it yourself, what we gave her wasn’t a truth serum, it just lowers inhibitions, among other things” The fussy man said, “And with the amount that she took she might not be coherent enough to answer our questions.”

“I couldn’t predict that she would pour herself another glass” The athlete said, “And you were telling me just this morning that because our friends across the Atlantic are at least a decade ahead of us, we needed to take risks.”

“No matter” The fussy man said, then he turned to Gloria. “We would like it if you could tell us about the things that your friend, the Countess Katherine, might have told you that doesn’t turn up in your book.”

That wasn’t even Katherine’s name. The Germans pronounced vowels differently, especially E and I, then there was the H. Gloria hadn’t realized that she had said it aloud until she saw the fussy man staring at her with an annoyed expression on his face.

“That is well and good Miss Steinem” The Athlete said, “But it doesn’t help us. To repeat the question. What do you know about Katrina that isn’t in your book?”

“She is such a wonderful mother” Gloria said, “But she insisted that I keep her children out of it, and they are actually quite adorable. Particularly her youngest, Marie. Cute as a button.”

“That doesn’t help us at all” The fussy man said, “You told us that you could get results.”

With that Gloria shut them out completely as she realized that her mouth was just too big to find the words in.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Fifteen


24th November 1960

Theodor Roosevelt Bridge, Washington D.C.

It was when his keys, followed by his wallet, fell out of his pants pockets and hit the water below that Ken Kesey realized that he might have really miscalculated this time. Doctor Richard Johnson had insisted that they needed to get their test subjects chosen at random from the pool of Civilian Assets that the CIA maintained, and the experiment needed to be conducted as close as possible to field conditions. Johnson also felt that informing them of their involvement in Project Janus would pollute the results. What that idiot, who had probably the most appropriate name of anyone Ken had ever met, had not factored in was that there were very real consequences of tricking people into taking powerful psychedelic drugs.

Beyond the impact to the various test subject’s mental well-being, there were also other serious problems that Ken had not factored in until he had been given a tongue lashing by one of the men his superiors answered to about how the wrong test subject had been chosen this time. That was compounded when he had been dragged off a city street and thrown into the trunk of a car and driven on one of the bumpiest rides through D.C. imaginable. Then when the drive had ended Ken had found himself hanging by his heels over the Potomac River. It happened to be that one of their latest test subjects had a psychotic boyfriend in US Army Special Forces. When he had found out what had happened to Gloria Steinem he was understandably pissed and had brought along a couple of his buddies to help make his opinion clear to Ken. He knew that if they let go, the fall probably wouldn’t kill him but the long swim through icy water most certainly would.

“I can explain!” Ken yelled.

“I doubt that” a voice that sounded only slightly warmer than the water below them said.

Ken knew that this was John Casey, someone who Ken felt that he should have been warned about beforehand. The Agency frequently used men from his unit to do the legwork, so they must have known what they were capable of.

“Stop it, all of you and pull him back up before you drop him” Ken heard a voice say, one that he wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or terrified to hear. With that he was yanked back over the railing. Three known killers and a woman who had good reason to want him dead were staring at him.

“The Germans are years ahead of us in the use of those drugs” Ken said aware that he was babbling, “We have to experiment to learn what we are dealing with. What the possibilities are.”

“I took the liberty of talking to Peter Holz” Gloria said, “He said that the amount of lysergic acid that you fed me was several times the amount that he recommends. He also said that a heavy dose of that stuff given to an unsuspecting person outside a carefully controlled environment is basically torture.”

Ken felt the blood run from his face. “You didn’t” He said, “Not him.”

Gloria Steinem was under no obligation to keep any of this secret, her agreement with the CIA was that she would pass on information that the Agency found relevant to them and receive access to information gathered by the Agency in turn. She very seldom dealt in matters that could be construed as classified and was seen as a means of disseminating information to the public that was advantageous to the Agency. Because of the recent advances in telecommunications she had talked to possibly the last person on Earth they wanted to learn of Project Janus, General Peter Holz of the German Medical Service. Not just because he was a foreign General but because he was part of Holz, Tangeman and Brandt, the team that conducted the first clinical trials of LSD and MDMA on patients suffering from the effects of traumatic stress. He would instantly understand the implications of the experimentation. This was a disaster.

“Consider it a part of your just deserts” Jonny said, “To go along with the visit that we’ve already paid to your friend Dick Johnson. How the Hell did that guy survive High School with a name like that?”

Ken heard the two men with John Casey snickering after he said that. Johnson, with his nervous, fussy manner would have found these men to be the stuff of nightmares. And because of what they were involved with, it wasn’t like they could just call the cops. The police would demand answers and if the CIA stopped the investigation then the DC cops would make Johnson and Ken’s lives a living Hell as payback. Looking at John Casey’s face right now Ken realized that it was something that the soldier had based his plans around. Scare him, make him think that they were going to kill him, then make him think that they had let him off lightly by merely damaging his career. Was that it?

It had turned out that wasn’t it, as Ken found out when John Casey decked him and knocked him off his feet. He never saw it coming and the sudden pain came as a complete shock. It took a moment for him to grab ahold of the railing. His mouth was bleeding, and he was expecting a flurry of blows to come raining down on him.

“If we have to have this conversation again, you’re going into the drink” Jonny said into Ken’s ear, “You got that? And learn to conduct an interrogation before you make an even bigger ass of yourself.”

Just a groan was all Ken could give him in reply. A minute later, Ken heard doors slamming shut and the car engine start. As he heard the engine fading in the distance, Ken realized that his keys, money and identification were all gone. As he started to stagger towards the D.C. side of the bridge it started to sink in just how thorough the payback that he had just been subjected to had been.