Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-Nine



9th February 1979

Troyes, France

“Having the daughter of Field Marshal von Holz in my parlor as my guest would have killed my poor husband” Estelle said, “If he were still alive that is.”

Zella and Estelle had been talking while they had watched Yuri set up the video camera on its tripod. It seemed that Estelle was always happy to have any visitors, even going so far as to greeting Zella and Yuri at the door wearing what were clearly her best clothes.

The apartment had an extremely lived in feel. Probably because Estelle Roy de Mendette had lived here for years, ever since the husband she had mentioned had died according to the materials that ARD had provided her. Zella had grown tired of Ozzy and Ian’s antics over the prior months, with them arguing over what to name the new band as the recording grew closer to completion. They were completely ignoring the real problems they had despite Zella trying to bring it up with them several times over the prior weeks. With Ozzy’s involvement, the executives from the various record companies that Zella had spoken had been thinking that it would be another Mythology album. Instead, they were recording an album that those same executives couldn’t wrap their heads around. Perhaps it was because Zella had inadvertently turned Ozzy onto the work of Composer Piere Henry among other things. The rest of the band was not in the least bit interested in reprising old ground even if their music was clearly based on it.

After months of babysitting four grown men in addition to caring for Irina, Zella had been in desperate need of a palate cleanser when ARD had called and asked if she wanted to travel to France and interviewing Estelle, who had appeared in a short film during the Silent Era called the Cat’s Breakfast with her Grandmother and cat in 1906 as a Human-Interest piece. Somewhat surprisingly, Estelle knew exactly who Zella was. It shouldn’t have been, Metz was only a couple hundred kilometers away and Troyes was well within the broadcast range of the ARD affiliate located there.

This was also the first time that Zella had been working with Yuri in a few years. That had been a condition of her going back to work at ARD. By now their relationship was an open secret, just no one was making a big deal of it.

“Whatever became of you?” Estelle asked, “You used to be on the Boche channel all the time, and then you were gone.”

“Maternity leave” Zella replied, “Life happened.”

“I know all about how that works” Estelle said happily. Zella had noticed that there were hundreds of photographs around the parlor, three or four generations of Estelle’s family. “Your child is well?”

“My little girl, Irina is going to be turning three next month” Zella replied.

“She also has a few other children who are in their thirties” Yuri said, earning a dirty look from Zella.

“I have been working as a Manager of sorts slash Publicist for a Rock band” Zella said, “Four grown men who can act worse than children at times.”

Estelle gave Zella a knowing smile. “Enjoy your daughter being that age, they grow up extremely fast” She said.

With that Yuri got the camera working and signaled to Zella that the interview was about to begin.



Dublin, Ireland

Marie’s old Schwinn three-speed bicycle had been shipped to Ireland with her other things. She had not really needed it, living within a stone’s throw of Trinity College. It had come in very useful this afternoon as Marie had been feeling restless and it was good for putting some distance between herself and her problems on a Friday afternoon.

With it being February in Dublin it was still cold and drizzly, still there was the feel that Spring was just around the corner. Jack Kennedy still wanted Marie Alexandra to help him with what he said would probably be his final great case. She doubted that though. Jack found too much meaning in his work and Marie figured that if he died in the Courtroom in the middle of arguing against some great injustice on behalf of a client, it would be with a smile on his face.

The other day, when Marie had seen Jack get out of the elevator with those two FBI Agents she had nearly had a panic attack and had started talking to him in Irish worried about why they were there. She had recognized them for what they were instantly having dealt with them too many times in Canada. It wasn’t as if she could run away.

With Jackie having moved into the apartment and Fianna popping in most afternoons to make sure that they were taking care of themselves, Marie was really starting to envy Tatiana. Her older sister was working in the German Embassy in Washington DC, and no one seemed to think that she needed people to keep an eye on her. Of course, for as long as Marie could remember Tatiana had been contrary just for the sake of being contrary. Marie’s mother had insisted that she needed help because she would accept it. Tatiana would have told their mother to get stuffed. Marie didn’t have it in her to do that.

Coming around a corner, Marie came into view of the Irish Sea. Turning East, she rode towards Howth. She had heard that during the Summertime this whole area and its beaches would be swarmed with tourists. That wasn’t something that Marie had any intention of sticking around for. It would be nice if she could go on another adventure with Tatiana like they had when they had toured Spain a couple years earlier.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

The short film mentioned in the last post, Cat's breakfast.

 

[Dan]

Zella had grown tired of Ozzy and Ian’s antics over the prior months, with them arguing over what to name the new band as the recording grew closer to completion. They were completely ignoring the real problems they had despite Zella trying to bring it up with them several times over the prior weeks. With Ozzy’s involvement, the executives from the various record companies that Zella had spoken had been thinking that it would be another Mythology album. Instead, they were recording an album that those same executives couldn’t wrap their heads around. Perhaps it was because Zella had inadvertently turned Ozzy onto the work of Composer Piere Henry among other things. The rest of the band was not in the least bit interested in reprising old ground even if their music was clearly based on it.

This album will either be utterly seminal, or utterly semolina.

 

[dxe131]

Smart moggie

 

[Peabody-Martini]

This album will either be utterly seminal, or utterly semolina.

Music is entirely subjective, so it is very possible for it to be both at once.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty



10th February 1979

Santa Monica, California

The day before, Stanley McGregor had seen seagulls in the quad of his High School. To those in the know, it meant that a major Winter swell was going to be coming in off the North Pacific and standing on the shore Stan could see that the waves were not disappointing. Finding someone with a car who could give Stan a lift to the beach had hadn’t been too hard because a lot of his friends were coming here as well, still Stan wished for the millionth time that he had a car. It wasn’t like he could take his board on the bus.

The real trouble was that Stan’s mom didn’t want him out on the waves today, she wanted him hitting the books, saying that when he started college next year he had to be ready because no one was going to help him when he got there. He had pointed out that he could always join the Army like Mr. Valenzuela who lived next door had, earning him a threatening look from his mom in the process. “Over my dead body” had been her response. Stan had been joking about that. The Army sucked if it was like what he had seen in the movies and Mr. Valenzuela could be a real asshole if you pissed him off. Having a guy like that as your boss? No thanks. Stan had once mentioned that to Mr. Valenzuela’s little brother Mario by accident when he had come to visit. They had been talking about surfing, which Mario knew a lot about having surfed waves from Big Sur all the way down to places in South America and Asia that Stan had never even heard of. Mario had laughed at him and said that Stan should be so lucky to be under Mr. Valenzuela’s command. A Warrant Officer in the Green Beret was a big deal, even from the perspective of Mario who said he was in the Army Rangers. Stan had no idea what any of that meant.

The rain was drumming on Stan’s head as he waded into the surf. His hair was already plastered to his head, so he wasn’t worried about it getting wet. The last time his grandparents had visited California, his grandfather had asked when he was planning on getting a haircut, cause he looked like a girl. What had happened with his father, who Stan had never actually met, was already bad enough. Stan’s mother had told him not to take any of that seriously. Her father was of a different generation.



Judenbach

Tactics were dictated by the weapons. Erich had been informed of that again and again. The men of the Squad he was in charge of had to approach every situation differently if they had to use weapons acquired locally as they couldn’t always count on being provided by the Heer or Kaiserliche Marine supply chains. If that meant bolt-action hunting rifles and revolvers like the Gauchos who had fought on their side during the Patagonian War, so be it. The Gauchos had been extremely effective against the Chileans who had been armed with what Erich himself would have deemed modern weapons.

Erich felt like he was in a Cowboy movie as he fired the Double-Action Redhawk .44 Magnum pistol at the targets before ducking back behind cover to reload. The need to keep track of the number of shots fired and to always maintain cover. He’d had trouble wrapping his mind around “Imperial” measurements as he loaded the cartridges into the cylinder. The metric measurement being 10.9x33mmR was something that he just didn’t need to think about. It certainly didn’t roll off the tongue. Using it gave Erich an appreciation of automatic weapons. It was certainly far more practical than that weird French Hotchkiss submachine gun that folded up he’d been using last week. It also explained why the Gauchos liked their knives so much. That was okay, the Instructors had told Erich. They were going to be trained how to use those too.



Königsberg, East Prussia

“Please try again Dalia” Cecilie said.

Dalia looked at the page in front her on the table in the Albertina University’s Library. She had no idea how Cecilie could be so patient with her because the progress was so painfully slow. Cecilie said that things would have been much easier if they had figured out the reason for her illiteracy when she had been a child. Instead, she had been basically been forced to leave school, told she was stupid and lazy. The book she was trying to read from was normally meant for children.

With a sigh, Dalia started trying to read from the top of the page. It was a silly story about the misadventures of farm animals as they blundered through their day. The fact that she knew that much was something of a miracle for Dalia.

This was the arrangement that Dalia had with Princess Cecilie, who understood that she needed to go to her job at the market most days. In the late afternoon, Dalia would come to the University where Cecilie was tutoring her. She had once asked Cecilie why she was doing this for her, the Princess had just smiled and said that it was something to do. Besides, a dear friend of her brother Louis had a son who had Dyslexia just like Dilia did. So Cecilie knew that it was a problem that could be solved with a little bit of work. That was a surprise for Dalia. She had thought that she was alone and as it turned out, she wasn’t.

 

[ejpsan]

Former German Chancellor Heinz Kissinger has died today November 29, 2023

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-One



16th February 1979

Neuquén, Argentina

After entirely too much time wasted in Buenos Aires, they had finally arranged a flight to Neuquén. Fortunately, their stay in a local hotel had been short. Mostly because the Argentine Government was going out of its way to facilitate Ben’s work. On the Federal level they saw it as a major prestige project while the local government saw it as a source of high paying jobs with year-round employment that wasn’t subject to the cycles that had plagued Argentina for centuries.

The Central Hospital of Neuquén was better than Kiki had been expecting. The discovery of shale oil and gas deposits west of the city over the last two decades along with improvements to the regional rail system due to the Patagonian War had resulted in a local boom. However, like all resource dependent economies the boom had been followed by a bust. A drop in the World Oil prices during the second half of the 70’s had hit the Neuquén Province hard.

Still, the city had invested in the Central Hospital and the University as a part of a hedge against the inevitable hard times that everyone had assumed correctly were coming. In the meantime, Neuquén had fallen back on the Agricultural economy that had been their bread and butter since the city’s founding decades earlier. While it didn’t operate at the same capacity that it had during the oil boom, the Farmers enjoyed the railroad allowing them to access the larger markets in the East. It was that same rail link that resulted in this region being proposed for a new observatory with Benjamin selected to lead the construction once the actual site was selected. For Kiki, that was all well and good, but what would she be doing in the meantime. Before Ben had agreed to take the position, they had spoken at length about how it would probably involve living and working in Argentina for five or six years.

That wasn’t a problem for the children. Nina and Lutz had already discovered that living in Neuquén was far different than anything they had known in Germany. They had swiftly gotten used to living in the house that Kiki and Ben had found through a local agency. Located near the city center, it was in a walled compound of the sort that was popular throughout South America. The imposing steel gates out front told people that someone important lived there. The fact that they could stand up to everything shy of heavy artillery was beside the point.

The Hospital Director had been surprised when Kiki had asked him if he needed an experienced Emergency Field Surgeon. She wasn’t interested in an Administrative position, she just wanted to practice medicine. He looked like a ghost after he learned what her background was, especially who her references were. Kiki could understand the man’s reaction, she could have his job if she wanted, but she didn’t, and he didn’t understand why. The truth was that Kiki had already been in Hospital Administration and it was a miserable experience.

Ben told Kiki to just offer to fund some new equipment or building repairs. There were versions of that back home and unlike there no one needed to make a pretense that they were doing it for charity. Did she really think that it was an accident that there dozens of universities, hospitals, libraries, and God only knew what else were named after members of her family? So, if Kiki spread some money around the hospital, they would humor her until they eventually had no choice but to take her seriously.

Touring the hospital with the Director though, Kiki could see that everything was at least a decade out of date. It was hardly a surprise that he was extremely interested in any money that she might want to donate. She figured that Ben was right, they would humor her just to get the money. Only after she had established herself, the Director would realize that it was Kiki who controlled the purse strings.



Tempelhof, Berlin

Sophie had been determined to have a good ride today after weeks of being kept cooped up by the weather and her studies. When people learned that she was taking Physical Education at University they made a lot of assumptions. She knew that she needed to be preparing for the Paris-Brest-Paris Audax, which was actually only a few months away. She had dreamed of taking part in that endurance race for years and just the thought of that made her feel a bit giddy. It was hoped that Sophie would beat the women’s time record, shattering the present record of 57 hours. After that, the next big thing she would be building towards would be Moscow to compete in the Olympics.

Unfortunately for her, when Sophie had woken up that morning, she had looked out the window of her bedroom and saw that it had already been snowing and high winds were kicking up. It had turned out that there was a winter weather advisory and classes at the University had been cancelled. Sophie knew that Kat would have some very strong words for her if she tried to take a bicycle out on a day like today. When Sophie had talked to Gabi and Ziska over the phone they had separately told her that she had their permission to indulge herself by taking a lazy afternoon. That was why Sophie was laying on the couch, watching the old television shows that were used by the network to fill in otherwise empty time periods. Eventually, she was joined by Sprocket, Cheshire, and Angelica. Sophie’s dog, cat, and little sister. It seemed that she had all of her bases covered.

 

[ejpsan]

With Kiki donating money and equipment, it will also spur more donations from the local community.
Both Kiki and Ben are heroes to the Argentine people, so having Kiki as a visiting instructor of emergency medicine is a great way to use her without stepping on too many toes and fragile egos.

 

[Dan]

Now, if someone mentions Sophie's complaints in front of an engineer or engineering student, then we could see Johnny Goldberg beaten to the punch...

Maybe someone repurposes a treadmill?

 

[Dan]

With Kiki donating money and equipment, it will also spur more donations from the local community.
Both Kiki and Ben are heroes to the Argentine people, so having Kiki as a visiting instructor of emergency medicine is a great way to use her without stepping on too many toes and fragile egos.

Not just that, but there will be other medical personnel from other nations who will want to get out of a rut in their home country. The publicity around Kiki travelling to South America could see them take a cue and make the leap.

I know it's always been a thing, but now with the heightened awareness...

And of course, Medicins Sans Frontiers have been going a few years doing this kind of thing.

 

[Othala]

It had turned out that there was a winter weather advisory and classes at the University had been cancelled.

Not sure if I ever called you out on this, but this is a kind of pet peeve of mine: Weather related days off are very, very rare in Germany. See current happening in Munich and region: (relative) heavy snow, public transport basically not working at all. What do the advisories say? We understand if some students and pupils won't make it to school/university - but is no reason to cancel classes. Only some school districts further into the Alps have announce full closures - and even there not for all schools.

So some snow and high wind? No reason to close, especially not at university level where it is assumed people can be responsible enough to find a way to travel on their own, not needing their parents to help them.

Now what might happen is that the teacher won't make it - again, when they can't be reasonably expected to travel due to road closures, and so on. But in the 70s the students will learn that from a note taped to their Hörsaal or Seminarraum. (That is unless someone living close by popped into the office early enough, and then set off a cascade of phone calls - if the students have a phone on their own...) These days thankfully this information is usually communicated via digital channels too.

 

[ejpsan]

Kiki is a very, smart, ambitious, and extremely ruthless person when she wants to be, so when she takes a closer look at Neuquen, she is going to see an opportunity for Sony to open a television assembly plant where the components are imported to Argentina in order to lessen the tariff on them and then assembled locally.
She is also going help fund mobile clinics with portable x-ray machines and other such equipment.
There will be also Pre-natal, Well Baby, and immunizations clinics for the outlying areas.
Pretty soon the Hospital Administrator will find himself taking orders from Kiki and that his title is in name only.
But Kiki can't help it, she is the product of hundreds of years of some of the most ambitious and ruthless families in the history of Europe.

 

[jlckansas]

Kiki is a very, smart, ambitious, and extremely ruthless person when she wants to be, so when she takes a closer look at Neuquen, she is going to see an opportunity for Sony to open a television assembly plant where the components are imported to Argentina in order to lessen the tariff on them and then assembled locally.
She is also going help fund mobile clinics with portable x-ray machines and other such equipment.
There will be also Pre-natal, Well Baby, and immunizations clinics for the outlying areas.
Pretty soon the Hospital Administrator will find himself taking orders from Kiki and that his title is in name only.
But Kiki can't help it, she is the product of hundreds of years of some of the most ambitious and ruthless families in the history of Europe.

She also has had some time being tutored by Kat herself in getting things done and watching to see they are done right.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Two



19th February 1979

Duisburg, Westphalia

It was something that people didn’t really think about. The vast logistics train required to keep the Empire going. Shipment of raw materials to the factories and foundries. Then there were the finished products going every which way. The hundreds of millions of people residing in the Empire who wanted the lights to come on, a television to watch, and a couch to sit on while they did it. There was also the concrete, steel, and brick that their home was made of. And finally, at its most basic, the food in their stomach. All of that had to come from somewhere.

Everyone saw the trains, lorries, and barges. Usually as an inconvenience, like when their car was stopped at a rail crossing or they were blocked by a lorry that was being unloaded on a narrow street. That last one though, they seldom thought about that at all because the canal system that connected the rivers predated pretty much everything else. Did they think it was an accident that most the major cities were located on the confluences of large rivers?

That was why it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the German Empire boasted a substantial Brown Water Navy that operated in conjunction with the Federal Police, the Waterways and Shipping Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Federal Customs Service. The Riverine Navy was every bit as serious as their Blue Water counterparts and wherever the Navy went, the Marine Infantry was right there too. So when Erich and his men turned up in Duisburg, no one made a big deal about it. At the moment, something big was apparently in the offing and the Riverine Navy needed all the warm bodies they could get. Erich and his men certainly qualified. Because all of the Marines who had gone through Cuxhaven were trained in shipboard operations and they had been heavily involved in weapons familiarization over the prior weeks, they didn’t need much training ahead of the operation.

Their Commanding Officer at Judenbach felt that after weeks of hard work, they deserved a bit of time in the field to catch their breath. It was considered the sort of low-risk environment where they could familiarize themselves with small craft. Particularly the Type III 10-meter F-boats, dedicated River Patrol Craft, that was the workhorse of the Riverine Navy. It was sort of like how they had flown in on that airplane into Judenbach when they had first been sent there. Naval pier near the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr within the large inland port was the headquarters of the Western Riverine Flotilla. As they waited for something to happen, Erich found himself talking with Dreher about the strange approximation of coffee that the Military had developed over the last few decades.

There were all sorts of rumors about what was actually in the ersatz “coffee” that had been a standard part of military rations for decades. Yes, during the Soviet War it had been made almost entirely from roasted chicory root and beechnuts with a small amount of raw sugar, later it was discovered that caffeine could be added. Then the individual Soldiers in the Heer started receiving freeze dried coffee, or if they were extremely lucky whole beans, from the Americas, mostly the United States. They had mixed it with the ersatz coffee to help stretch it out. All these decades later, the mixture that had emerged in the field was still in the ration packs. Mostly because it was dirt cheap and as strange as it sounded, it was something that everyone had gotten used to. That was why Erich had been able to point out that the “coffee” in the ration packs they had been issued did in fact contain a certain percentage of coffee, it was all right there in the ingredients. Besides that, everyone knew that the packets of “coffee whitener” which were included with the coffee mixture had far stranger ingredients and was even rumored to be potentially explosive. Dreher’s response ask if Erich believed everything he read.

Erich didn’t understand why the Feldwebel needed to be so dour all the time. It was like if he was just waiting for life to deliver the next kick, just so he could say “I told you so.” Once they had arrived at Judenbach, their fortunes had markedly improved. That was made clear by the winter coat and felt lined boots that Erich was wearing, he normally would have needed to spend months begging Supply for them. For once Dreher didn’t have a whole lot to complain about, which was the real reason they were talking about ersatz coffee.



Plänterwald, Berlin

“I don’t understand why you are doing this” Nan stated to Freddy who seemed entirely too pleased with himself.

“Your childhood has quite literally been the plot of horror movies and you deserve to have good things for a change” Freddy said, “Besides, this is one of the few powers that I can use without asking permission of the Reichstag. So let me do this for you this once.”

It was common knowledge that Nan was an orphan who had been adopted by the Hohenzollern family. The press had never really pried into the story, lack of interest mostly. The public understood that Louis Ferdinand and Charlotte’s daughter Antonia had been a bit of a surprise. The addition of Nan was seen as a means to round out their family. Now Freddy was throwing a wrench into the works. The paper copy of proclamation that Nan was holding in her hands said that she, as Annette Pfenning, was the last known descendant of Georg von Jägersfeld, the illegitimate son of Friedrich Henry von Preussen. That implied that Nan was a distant cousin of the main Hohenzollern line as well as the heir of the Margraviate of Brandenberg.

“No one is going to believe this” Nan said, “Any prying and it all falls apart.”

“You have a lot to learn” Freddy replied, “This will be something that people will want to believe Annette. The long lost, dispossessed family line that can now come back because the inheritance laws have changed because the Old Junkers families have been dying out. That will be the sort of romantic story people like, add in your rags to riches story and they will just eat it up. The fact that we now have proof that your paternity is unknown means we can fill that blank with whatever we want.”

“That sounds incredibly cynical” Nan replied.

Freddy just gave Nan a smug smile. She knew that before he had become Emperor, Freddy had been a Lawyer specializing in Contract Law. If he had written this up and made all the necessary alterations, there was a good chance that it would be bulletproof. Which was a scary thought.

 

[jlckansas]

So now Nan has a romantic background that is just the thing to sway some people on a certain peninsula, and have their Heir come calling.

 

[Dan]

There will be certain people in the German legal profession quietly relieved that Freddy is, for the moment at least, unable to practice law.

 

[jlckansas]

Somehow do you get the feeling that Freddy was introduced to a certain attorney from Dublin when he visited a certain client in Berlin and was able to spend some quality time discussing the legal profession?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Somehow do you get the feeling that Freddy was introduced to a certain attorney from Dublin when he visited a certain client in Berlin and was able to spend some quality time discussing the legal profession?

They do have mutual friends.

 

[ejpsan]

I always thought that Freddy should have a talk with Marie about the many uses and advantages that a first-class legal education would have for her as she is still very uncertain about her life.