Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Sixteen
15th January 1972
Wahlstatt, Silesia
Bas had discovered that he had a lot of time to think as he practiced running 5000-meters as he passed the Coach on the starting line completing the lap, he noticed that the Coach was looking at his stopwatch and was frowning. That got Bas to pick up the pace a little.
An incident in one of the other dormitories that involved a foolish attempt to sneak a group of girls from Wahlstatt into the school had resulted a shake up among the Cadet Corps. This went far beyond mere demerits, the perpetrators as well as anyone who had known about the plot had been punished to the fullest extent that the school could mete out, even expulsions for those who had been caught in the act. The Institute valued its good relations with the village and the Headmaster had let the assembled students, with the Village Council present, know that fraternization of that sort was expressly forbidden.
For the first time since Bas had started at this school, his name wasn’t at or near the top of the list for punishment detail, which was a positive. The trouble was that Niko had been bumped up in Rank and was now the Cadet Kapitan who was kind of, sort of, in charge of their entire year. Like always Niko was jumping through every hoop to prove that he was worthy of such a position.
Bas himself had been appointed to be a Korporal, but he had found that job wasn’t nearly as difficult as Niko had made it seem. Like always he found the ranks in the Cadet Corps silly. You could be a General of Cadets, if there were such a thing, and you would still be subordinate to the whims of those like Staber Arbeit. Mostly it seemed like the system was set up so that when something went wrong, everyone knew exactly who to yell at first. It also gave the Institution something that they could easily take away from you.
What Bas cared far more about was the signups for Track & Field Intermural Competition that was taking place that spring. Bas had vastly improved in Discus since he had taken it up. At the Coach’s direction he had taken up Javelin and Pole Vaulting as well, which were great fun. What Bas had discovered that he could not do though was run particularly fast. The Coach said that it was alright. After Bas had made the School’s Football team as a Defender, he had spent entire games chasing after the ball and often outpacing the much faster attackers on the opposing teams. The Coach had noticed and said that he wasn’t built for speed, long distance running was more his thing. All of this had replaced Contact Combat, which had become a lot less fun as most of the Class was afraid to stand against Bas in the ring, so most of his sparring had been against his Instructor this year and he made short work of Bas most days but not always. The Instructor had said that when Bas started to beat him regularly then everyone ought to be very, very afraid of what Bas was capable of.
Niko got excellent scores in marksmanship, had been competing above his age group in Fencing, and had taken up Archery. It was impossible to tell if Niko actually enjoyed athletics like Bas did though. The school encouraged all the students to take part and provided the time and equipment for any student who was interested. They had also used sport to get indifferent students like Bas to keep their grades up.
Los Angeles, California
After living in Upstate New York for years, Ritchie found people’s complaints about how cold in was amusing. At Fort Drum, the same temperature in Los Angeles this time of the year would have been considered short-sleeve weather. Still, it did have its perks. Snuggling with Lucia on the couch for example. She was having trouble sleeping these days and because Richie had been working graveyards, on his days off he was able to stay up with Lucia. Usually, they fell asleep sometime in the early hours of the morning and had to wake up to go to bed.
When Ritchie had told Big Mike about what was going on he had said that it would be that way until the pregnancy had run its course. Mike had been where Ritchie was a few times and had given Ritchie some helpful advice. Not so helpfully, Mike had also pointed out that Ritchie Junior wasn’t even born yet, and he was already being a pain in the ass.
Tonight, they were watching KCET 28, the Public Broadcasting Chanel. The other networks had signed off for the night. Originally, they had been watching the BBC Report as it had covered the attempt to hammer out a ceasefire between Argentina and Chile. There had been footage of what looked like an apocalyptic battle that had been taking place in the mountains. Ritchie knew how things worked in the Army and he had been a bit surprised at how entire Divisions were being decimated as the Argentine and Chilean Armies had hammered each other. The Germans had clearly had enough of the entire affair and in an interview, Field Marshal Schultz had engaged in some very deft diplomatic speech, basically saying that Argentine President had made his point, so the time had come to pull the pin. Ritchie had noticed that Schultz was wearing a Pour-le-Mérite and a constellation of other medals on his blue and white Marine uniform. Most of all he had recognized the Sealion patch, meaning Schultz was former Special Forces and was not someone to be taken lightly even if he was a jarhead.
The news report had ended, and a movie had come on. Ritchie had been skeptical when he had seen the words BASED ON A TRUE STORY appear at the very beginning. Fortunately, it was a German film that had been intended for an International audience and had been done in English as well as presumably German. Ritchie probably wouldn’t have been interested in reading subtitles for two hours. The prologue had been a group of men in a warehouse as they had viciously beat a man, forcing him to beg for his life. In the middle of this, a girl had been walked in and the man’s begging had grown more intense. Ritchie had not understood the context of the scene, but he could read it well enough to know what was about to happen. The man had been thrown in front of a speeding train. While the camera had cut away, Ritchie knew full well that it was an ugly way to die.
The next scene was years later as a man identified as Inspector Sven Werth is assigned to investigate a case that had grown cold at the same time the bodies of young women are being found in vacant corners of Berlin. Werth is joined by his partner Gunther and Kat, young woman who is a Special Agent representing the interests of German Kaiser as they follow the trail of a killer who is a truly monstrous sexual sadist. Ritchie followed along and found the story engrossing as it grew more and more apparent that the investigation in the movie’s present was connected to the events of the prologue in unexpected ways. In the end, Inspector Werth made a pragmatic choice for the greater good that didn’t necessarily conform to the letter of the Law by letting a man who he knew had committed a brutal murder go free rather than making an arrest in the initial cold case. The killer who Werth’s team had been tracking gets executed by guillotine in the final scene. It gets left up to the audience if either of the two outcomes were just. That was radically different from what would have happened in an American film. Lucia had fallen asleep some time earlier, so Ritchie was left alone with his thoughts.
