Chapter One Thousand Seven Hundred Thirty-Six
7th August 1966
Krakow, Poland
After months of living in farm cottages, roadside inns or occasionally sleeping in her car, Zella wanted to sleep in a bed that she wouldn’t have to share with a few thousand new friends in place that had actual indoor plumbing. The raw footage of the documentary was complete so no one would begrudge Zella a single night of relative luxury. They were stopping in Krakow anyway because they had needed to drop the latest, and last, batch of video tapes off at the Post Office. The walk to and from the Hotel to the Post Office was surreal. The streets were nearly abandoned, and the hot, humid air had the heavy feel of a thunderstorm about to break. It made Zella happy that she was headed back to Berlin tomorrow, she was getting the impression that Poland wasn’t a great place to even visit.
Once back in her hotel room with her hair still wet from the bath, Zella was laying on the bed staring at the ceiling musing about what she would do on a summer holiday in the coming weeks. Riding her motorcycle up into the mountains to a spa town that didn’t smell like manure and doing as little as possible for a couple weeks sounded like heaven. Perhaps she could go to the seaside instead… Zella figured that she would have the time. When she had talked with her Supervisor by phone at ARD, he had told her that right now the public was entirely consumed with Spacemen and Moon rockets, so it would probably be a while before there would be much interest in the Dairy Industry.
Then there was pounding on the door.
“What do you want?” Zella demanded as she threw the door open.
“There’s something going on outside” Yuri said awkwardly as he stepped into her room and closed the door behind him.
“And?” Zella asked.
“You told me to keep an eye out for newsworthy items” Yuri said, “One of the men down in the bar said that Free Galicia is planning on having a demonstration this evening in violation of the curfew.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Zella said as she took off her dressing gown and swiftly dressed. It wasn’t until she got her shirt on that she noticed that Yuri was staring at her, completely agape.
“Why did do that?” Yuri asked.
“Because there is a story happening this instant and we are going to be covering it” Zella said, as she pulled on a pair of trousers. “What, you’ve never seen a naked woman before?”
Zella had been sarcastic when she had asked that, after living with her for the last four months, Yuri had to be aware that she had a body under her clothes. The fact that his face had blushed a deep shade of scarlet answered the question that Zella had just asked as a rather emphatic “No.” She would need to find Yuri a girlfriend when she got back to Berlin or else there would be no working with him in the future.
“You are what, twenty-one?” Zella asked with a great deal of annoyance as she found her press credentials and shoved them into the pocket of her trousers.
“T-twenty-three” Yuri stammered, embarrassed by this whole incident.
“Whatever” Zella muttered as she took the camera from its case, opened the door, and walked into the hallway. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to film cows being milked for the rest of my career. Grab the rest and come on.”
For lack of anything better to do, Yuri grabbed the VTR unit and followed.
The streets that had been empty before, were suddenly crowded with people and all of them were moving in the same direction towards the Main Square in the center of town and the large freestanding clocktower that was the most prominent feature. Already, there were thousands in the Square as Zella and Yuri were pushed forward by the crowd. A young woman bumped into Zella, nearly knocking her over. “Watch it!” Zella yelled at her as she barely managed to keep ahold of the camera in her hands.
A few minutes later, Zella and Yuri found a good vantage and plugged the cable from the VTR into the camera and started filming. The Square was just a sea of humanity as multitudes were pressed up against the barricades in front of the Cloth Hall. Looking through the view finder, she could see policemen and soldiers on the other side of the barricades. Zella spent a few minutes panning across the crowd, so that anyone watching could get an idea of just how huge it was, and more people were still coming. Red and White flags, that had a golden coat of arms composed of a crown and raven on them, were unfurled by the crowd. There was a lot of cheering when these people saw that. Turning back to getting the men behind the barricades back into the shot. There seemed to be a bit of disagreement among them, one of the policemen shoved one of the soldiers and that was swiftly broken up. Still, they still looked agitated. Something about the scene made Zella uneasy, she realized that she needed to get out of here.
That was when the shooting started…
8th August 1966
Mitte, Berlin
Maria woke up to pounding on her front door just after two in the morning. There had been an unfolding story about a new round of violence in Southern Poland. Reports about the Polish Army having to put down a riot in Krakow, open fighting in the streets and dozens left dead. She had been on the phone with the BT as the newsroom had been trying to confirm as much information as possible before they ran with the early edition. Finally, she had gone to bed just after midnight only to be awoken a couple hours later.
Coming downstairs she saw Emil talking with two men, clearly Officers from the OKW. The look on his face suggested something was very wrong. In his hand was a plastic bag with bloodstained ARD Press Credentials inside.
