Part 129, Chapter 2185
Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Eighty-Five
26th October 1972
Tempelhof, Berlin
Kat really wished that Aunt Marcella had not been quite so frank with Sophie. It was Marcella’s style to bring things to a head, take it on directly, but telling Sophie that Kat was aware of how Sophie didn’t trust her had taken things a bit far. Marcella’s thinking was that it had been five years and a teenaged girl who was afraid to talk to anyone was an accident waiting to happen. Kat supposed that Aunt Marcella probably had a lot of experience when it came to matters like this. Kat had hardly spoken to anyone for a long time, right up until Helene and Gerta entered her life. Sophie had her friend Ziska, but Kat suspected that it wasn’t enough and as she had drawn increasingly inward over recent months Kat was increasingly worried. Then Marcella had decided that direct action was needed.
For Kat, her domestic concerns were a diversion from what was going on in the wider city. She was getting static regarding a Rock & Roll festival that Zella Holz and Sarah Schmidt were planning in honor of the deceased owner of the V8 Club next spring. The club’s stock as a concert venue had skyrocketed once word about who had owned it had gotten out. It was an understatement to say that the entirety of the German Government did not like the situation that had arose. Not even Kat had all the details, but it had all the hallmarks of the sort of convoluted scheming of Johann Schultz or Jacob Schmidt when it all went sideways. She had been dealing with this nonsense since she was fifteen and not even those two men being dead seemed to have brought that nonsense to a stop.
Turning her chair, Kat looked down into the garden. Sophie was doing what she did most afternoons and was playing with sprocket. The little dog would chase a ball until he fell over from exhaustion and he was doing his level best to do that. Sophie paused what she was doing, then turned and looked up at the window. It seemed that she had figured out how Kat had been observing her unseen. No one had ever accused Sophie of being stupid.
Washington D.C.
The media surrounding that German Prince was intense and it was setting off the analysts in the basement of the Pentagon. It seemed that his ship, SMS K24 “Grindwal” the German name for Pilot Whale was of a new series of Corvettes and Destroyers that were the current annoyance of the US Navy. In their thinking, the other side had gotten a few new toys, so they needed more. K24 had a new revolutionary form of propulsion, and even though the Navy had ships with a similar arrangement as paper projects at that very moment and would probably start construction as soon as possible, they were leaning on Members of Congress to get it done sooner. Like if the House or Senate needed an excuse to throw money at the Military.
As an outgoing President, Rockefeller was personally debating vetoing the Defense Budget. He knew full well that it would be overridden in a heartbeat, but he had grown tired of what he had seen over the prior eight years. Massive waste, greed, Congress pushing for favored projects whether the Military asked for them or not. There had also been demands that the Nuclear Stockpile be increased beyond the deterrence that it was limited to by International treaties. Finally, there had been the clusterfucks in Chile or China where American Allies had gotten pasted, but not before American Industry had made out like bandits. Rockefeller had concluded that he had gotten rolled in the entire Chilian matter when he considered who the actual big winners had been.
The CIA was also interested in how Margareta de Roumanie, the Romanian Princess who had apparently taken some time away from studying at the School of Fine Arts in Paris to meet socially with Louis Ferdinand Junior. It was the sort of thing that the tabloids lived for because it sold a million trashy newspapers. Despite these people no longer being the heads of Government in their respective nations, they still played a key role in the balance of power. If Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia became King Louis of Romania, which was what was being speculated about, then it would affect the balance of power in Eastern Europe. The Tsar of Russia and Emperor of Greece were both Louis Ferdinand’s cousins and the CIA knew that this would expand the influence of House of Hohenzollern in an area where they already had a huge amount of influence. Being able to be as oblivious as most people to the complexities of a part of the world that most Americans had never heard of was something that he was starting to envy.
Finally, there was his own Party who was openly courting people who Rockefeller felt belonged in prison. Those who had loaded the guns during the Truman Administration as it were. They hated Nixon and when asked they just repeated incomprehensible nonsense about Augustus Lang and Martin King, a man who few on this side of the Atlantic knew much about and a man who had vanished, probably killed by the Klan, after becoming the scapegoat for a generation of violence. The FBI had not needed to have told Rockefeller that it was code speak because they were embarrassed by who they were pandering to, but not too embarrassed about receiving their votes.
26th October 1972
Tempelhof, Berlin
Kat really wished that Aunt Marcella had not been quite so frank with Sophie. It was Marcella’s style to bring things to a head, take it on directly, but telling Sophie that Kat was aware of how Sophie didn’t trust her had taken things a bit far. Marcella’s thinking was that it had been five years and a teenaged girl who was afraid to talk to anyone was an accident waiting to happen. Kat supposed that Aunt Marcella probably had a lot of experience when it came to matters like this. Kat had hardly spoken to anyone for a long time, right up until Helene and Gerta entered her life. Sophie had her friend Ziska, but Kat suspected that it wasn’t enough and as she had drawn increasingly inward over recent months Kat was increasingly worried. Then Marcella had decided that direct action was needed.
For Kat, her domestic concerns were a diversion from what was going on in the wider city. She was getting static regarding a Rock & Roll festival that Zella Holz and Sarah Schmidt were planning in honor of the deceased owner of the V8 Club next spring. The club’s stock as a concert venue had skyrocketed once word about who had owned it had gotten out. It was an understatement to say that the entirety of the German Government did not like the situation that had arose. Not even Kat had all the details, but it had all the hallmarks of the sort of convoluted scheming of Johann Schultz or Jacob Schmidt when it all went sideways. She had been dealing with this nonsense since she was fifteen and not even those two men being dead seemed to have brought that nonsense to a stop.
Turning her chair, Kat looked down into the garden. Sophie was doing what she did most afternoons and was playing with sprocket. The little dog would chase a ball until he fell over from exhaustion and he was doing his level best to do that. Sophie paused what she was doing, then turned and looked up at the window. It seemed that she had figured out how Kat had been observing her unseen. No one had ever accused Sophie of being stupid.
Washington D.C.
The media surrounding that German Prince was intense and it was setting off the analysts in the basement of the Pentagon. It seemed that his ship, SMS K24 “Grindwal” the German name for Pilot Whale was of a new series of Corvettes and Destroyers that were the current annoyance of the US Navy. In their thinking, the other side had gotten a few new toys, so they needed more. K24 had a new revolutionary form of propulsion, and even though the Navy had ships with a similar arrangement as paper projects at that very moment and would probably start construction as soon as possible, they were leaning on Members of Congress to get it done sooner. Like if the House or Senate needed an excuse to throw money at the Military.
As an outgoing President, Rockefeller was personally debating vetoing the Defense Budget. He knew full well that it would be overridden in a heartbeat, but he had grown tired of what he had seen over the prior eight years. Massive waste, greed, Congress pushing for favored projects whether the Military asked for them or not. There had also been demands that the Nuclear Stockpile be increased beyond the deterrence that it was limited to by International treaties. Finally, there had been the clusterfucks in Chile or China where American Allies had gotten pasted, but not before American Industry had made out like bandits. Rockefeller had concluded that he had gotten rolled in the entire Chilian matter when he considered who the actual big winners had been.
The CIA was also interested in how Margareta de Roumanie, the Romanian Princess who had apparently taken some time away from studying at the School of Fine Arts in Paris to meet socially with Louis Ferdinand Junior. It was the sort of thing that the tabloids lived for because it sold a million trashy newspapers. Despite these people no longer being the heads of Government in their respective nations, they still played a key role in the balance of power. If Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia became King Louis of Romania, which was what was being speculated about, then it would affect the balance of power in Eastern Europe. The Tsar of Russia and Emperor of Greece were both Louis Ferdinand’s cousins and the CIA knew that this would expand the influence of House of Hohenzollern in an area where they already had a huge amount of influence. Being able to be as oblivious as most people to the complexities of a part of the world that most Americans had never heard of was something that he was starting to envy.
Finally, there was his own Party who was openly courting people who Rockefeller felt belonged in prison. Those who had loaded the guns during the Truman Administration as it were. They hated Nixon and when asked they just repeated incomprehensible nonsense about Augustus Lang and Martin King, a man who few on this side of the Atlantic knew much about and a man who had vanished, probably killed by the Klan, after becoming the scapegoat for a generation of violence. The FBI had not needed to have told Rockefeller that it was code speak because they were embarrassed by who they were pandering to, but not too embarrassed about receiving their votes.
Last edited:
