Chapter One Thousand Nine Twenty-Nine
25th August 1969
Prague, Bohemia
It seemed like the entire kingdom was allied against him as the final days of summer arrived. Everywhere Michael looked he was reminded that they were very much in love with Alberta Charlette of England. Unfortunately, there were a huge number of jokes along the lines of Michael himself being so stubborn that she would need to marry him when he wasn’t looking, whatever that even meant.
When Michael had discussed the matter with his father he had been subjected to wry amusement. “I don’t see very many other respectable young women courting you” His father had said, “So, your choices are rather limited son. Are you going to wait for her to ask you?” Michael could tell that he was trying not burst out laughing the entire time he said that. He knew that his father had taken a hands-off approach towards his children’s personal lives after his mother’s machinations with his oldest sister had proven somewhat disastrous. The way that things had developed in the years since her death would probably have killed her several times over. It was Rea who had oddly become the only voice of reason with Vicky’s odd arrangement, Freddy’s weird ambitions and Kiki taking Rea’s place as the family crusader, most recently made International headlines when she placed the son of the President of the United States in quarantine.
Rea had always been Michael’s flighty little sister, with her odd causes and constant tilting at windmills. Then she had basically created an entire Kingdom out of whole cloth even if it was quickly becoming one of the strangest places in the Empire. She had said that he had the same set of choices that he had given Birdie years earlier, just he needed do two things. The first was to get their mother out of that otherwise empty head of his. The second was to bite the bullet and give Birdie a definitive answer so that either way the two of them could get on with their lives. Rea’s opinions about his intelligence aside, she had been talking sense.
Today, Birdie was coming back from Italy and Michael knew that they would need to have a talk about the future. They needed to be objective and determine the best course of action, preferably without any romance involved which he knew he was quite terrible at. That was why he wanted to put his best foot forward, so he was at the entrance of Prague Castle to greet Birdie as her car drove in through the gates. As soon as it came to a stop, Birdie opened the door and stepped out, not waiting for the Footman.
“Michael!” Birdie called out excitedly as she walked up to him all smiles. “You didn’t need to be out here waiting for me.”
“Actually, I wanted…” Michael started to say only to see a child get out who gave him a different sort of grin. This one was gap-toothed and full of mischief.
“You know my younger brother Billy?” Birdie asked.
“I’m familiar with who he is, but I’ve never been introduced” Michael replied tersely. Billy’s reputation as Hellspawn preceded him.
“Good” Birdie said, “I promised Mother that I would take him with me so that he could see how wonderful Bohemia was. And you, of course.”
At that moment, Michael was reminded about the old maxim about how no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Whoever Helmuth von Moltke the Elder had been referring to as the enemy couldn’t hold a candle to women in that regard.
Los Angeles, California
It had been strange leaving Fort Drum knowing that it would probably be for the last time. The 40th Infantry Division was expecting Ritchie, but he had been given a few days before he had to report to the Headquarters of the 160th Infantry Regiment in Inglewood. He had been warned that the California National Guard Unit had a decidedly different culture than the 1st SFG, or even the 82nd Airborne. While he was sort of expecting the worst, Ritchie had a few things going for him, namely the second rocker that had been given to him a few days before he had left Fort Drum with his promotion to Sergeant First-Class. Sean Destrehan had pointed out that whichever outfit they stuck him in with, he would have the clout to kick everyone’s ass into line.
Baring National emergency that would only be part-time though. Instead, in what was probably the most absurd turn in Ritchie’s life he was supposed to start at the Los Angeles Police Academy starting on the 1st of September. Considering that he had fled Los Angeles a decade earlier because a substantial portion of the LAPD had been looking to stomp him into paste, the irony of him having that as a career choice wasn’t lost on him. All anyone seemed to care about was that Ritchie was coming home after years of what had basically been exile. When he had arrived at his mother’s house in Pacoima, he had found that a party greeting him home was happening and that everyone he knew in the Los Angeles area had been invited.
His reunion with Lucia had been a joyous occasion, but in the back of his mind Ritchie knew that their respective families could already hear wedding bells in the near future. Not that he had a problem with that, but it seemed like now that he was home life was happening to him in a sudden rush.