Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

Sophie is beginning to learn that to ask for help is not being weak but it is a slow process for her.
The “Lost Generation “ memorial is going to be considered one of the great public arts projects of the Twentieth Century but it is too soon to say that now.
Kiki putting flowers on the memorial was very appropriate and it is going to lead the Russian evening news and Yuri is going to out do himself in capturing the moment for Zella’s documentary.
Russia is going to go all out on the Wedding to show that it is a Great Power and certain statements by the Greek and Russian governments may have Cyprus concerned.
 
Actually the real thing that is the top most level to be decided is, whether to have the Patriarch of Moscow (head of the Russian Orthadox Church) or The Patriarch of Constantinople (Considered the Senior most leader in the Eastern Orthadox).
 
Actually the real thing that is the top most level to be decided is, whether to have the Patriarch of Moscow (head of the Russian Orthadox Church) or The Patriarch of Constantinople (Considered the Senior most leader in the Eastern Orthadox).
The solution is somewhat simple the Patriarchs are Co-Celebrants with each responsible for certain parts of the Mass with other Priests of the various Orthodox Church helping out.
The main political point is that the Orthodox world centers around Constantinople and Moscow..
 
Part 131, Chapter 2236
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Thirty-Six



13th August 1973

Washington D.C.

The sudden appearance of the Lockheed Galaxy with its Curtis-Wright engines a year and a half earlier had drawn little attention at the time. The plane had been full of technology that had been in use for at least a decade by Junkers Aircraft across the Atlantic, but on the American Market they were nothing short of revolutionary in terms of efficiency and capability. Boeing, who had been enjoying a dominant market position, was unhappy with how their competition was taking advantage of overseas technology and expertise. This was at the same time Boeing was getting to the bottom of the icing issues that had plagued their latest designs.

As the Representative from Washington’s 7th Congressional District, James M. Hendrix was receiving heated phone calls from the Executives of Boeing while his staff was getting calls from constituents that were decidedly less pleasant. Many of them were convinced that it was the Germans engineering a plot to take down the economy of the United States. If the Germans had done that, they had picked a very strange instrument to do it with. It was Howard Hughes who had brokered the entry of Lockheed into the international consortium that was eating Boeing’s lunch. Hughes had played a large role in placing Boeing into the lead that they had enjoyed in the 50’s and 60’s, something that they seemed to have forgotten to their peril. Hendrix knew full well that the people living in Southern California near the assembly plants of Curtis and Lockheed probably had a different perspective. Hendrix was headed home for the August recess, and it was a safe assumption that it was not going to be an enjoyable time.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Bill Stoughton, the Speaker of the House, said as he let himself into Hendrix’s office. Upon seeing Hendrix sitting at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, handwritten memos everywhere, and with the two phones that Hendrix wasn’t currently talking on ringing, he just gave one of his infamous smiles as Hendrix hung up the phone, the other two phones oddly fell silent which Hendrix figured Bill Stoughton must have something to do with. “Now that is the picture that you want your constituents to see, you at your desk, working your butt off on their behalf.”

“I think they might be interested in following the example of your ancestor and burning me at the stake when I get home” Hendrix replied.

“I will have you know that William Stoughton never burnt any witches” Bill said as he looked through the cabinets of Hendrix’s office. “Hung plenty though.”

“Does it bother you that they were innocent of any wrongdoing and the whole thing had to do with land and political power?” Hendrix asked.

“No more than I am that the actual site of the hangings is now in someone’s backyard behind a pharmacy” Bill replied as he found a bottle of Bourbon that had been a gift from a constituent in a happier time and opening it, breaking the tax seal. “It just goes to show that things never really change. In uncertain times people follow the first person who seems to know where they are going and sometimes that is straight off a cliff.”

“The trouble I have is that witches are typically not who people in America like to hang” Hendrix said.

“You are just lucky that this isn’t happening during an election year” Bill said as he poured himself a generous glass. “You want one?”

“I’ll pass” Hendrix replied.

“Have it your way” Bill said, “There is an order to these things and your friends at Boeing know that they will have to figure something out now that they have some real competition. It is how we do things in this country. Someone is always trying to build a better mousetrap.”

“If you say so” Hendrix replied.

“I also say that you ought to knock off early” Bill said, “I’ve a dinner meeting with some individuals who have very deep pockets, and they were most impressed with the Hendrix Aviation Act. I have talked you up as a man with vision to them.”

Hendrix was a bit annoyed that Bill Stoughton had done that. The moneyed interests he was talking about were a necessary evil. The have power in Washington you first needed to get elected and that required money. Bill knew all of them and was a master at the game.



Moscow, Russia

Reviewing the videotape, Zella was amazed by some of the footage that she and Yuri had captured over the last few days. Kiki placing the bouquet of flowers at the base of the Monument to the Lost was particularly good. While Zella had gotten a good angle of that, there had been other camera crews present and that had been widely broadcast throughout Russia. The whole purpose of this trip was reconciliation and efforts like that were key if this was going to be successful.

Zella reached the end of the tape and put the next one in. It was of the table in saloon of the SMS Epione and a meal was being served. Kiki’s guests had included the Russian Czar and many high-ranking members of the Russian Government. It had been interesting, watching Kiki play the role of Hostess, though it was not the sort of thing that came naturally to her. She knew that Kiki had enjoyed herself far more when the Epione was underway and going someplace new.

When Zella reached the end of that tape, she put one in of Kiki touring a hospital here in Moscow. It had been Yuri who had been filming and he had followed as Kiki had gone straight to the Emergency Department. This was not what the Hospital Administration had been expecting. If they had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Kiki was wearing her medal from the International Order of St. John. They took these things very seriously and would be overjoyed that Kiki was showing the flag as it were.
 
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Kiki being known as "The People's Princess" is the best representative that Germany could send to Russia at this time as she makes her public appearances feel personal and genuine to everyone looking on.
Having the Czar and High Government officials having dinner aboard her barge reinforces the personal diplomatic touch that she has and as the years go by is,using it more effectively.

Rep. Hendrix seems bemused by the attention that "Big" Bill Stoughton pays to him and all of the extra help he gives him, of course the Speaker of the House isn't doing favors for Hendrix just because he likes him but there is a higher purpose for Hendrix that Stoughton has for him.
 
BTW, the bit about the site the hangings during the Salem Witch Trials now being located behind a pharmacy, that is the truth. The whole "Gallows Hill" thing was created at the top of the hill for the tourists in the late Nineteenth Century.
 
BTW, the bit about the site the hangings during the Salem Witch Trials now being located behind a pharmacy, that is the truth. The whole "Gallows Hill" thing was created at the top of the hill for the tourists in the late Nineteenth Century.
To be honest, I thought it was one of those wierd things that was too strange not to be true.
Fiction has to make sense, the real world, not so much...
 

ferdi254

Banned
For the USA as a whole it does not really matter if Boeing or Lockheed build the planes. Unless of course Lockheed pushes Boeing into oblivion and then gets cut off by FW when it comes to technology.

But on the other hand the military will demand a capable independent aviation industry and as in OTL fighters and bombers will be heavily overpriced to subsidy passenger planes.
 
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Part 131, Chapter 2237
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Thirty-Seven



15th August 1973

Schwielochsee, Spreewald National Park

They had just finished supper. The others were playing the game of Monopoly that they had been playing off and on for the last week in the brief period of time between supper and lights out. Sophie had not been interested in the game and had found a dogeared copy of a historical fiction novel in English that she had started reading because she had wanted to practice that language.

The novel was set during the Soviet War and detailed the complex situation that the Americans who worked in the United States Embassy from the point of view of the Naval Attaché. It likened the situation to walking a tightrope and there was a great deal of intrigue as both German and Soviet agents were trying to draw them into the conflict. They were also trying to gather information about the state of the war itself. To her it rang a bit false and reminded Sophie of some of the commented that Kat’s older brother had made about the Americans practicing not so neutral neutrality across two World Wars. The Soviets would not have needed to have drawn the Americans into the conflict, they had already got what they wanted with the supplies shipped into Russia through Vladivostok or Murmansk. It seemed as if the author had made mistakes that might have been avoided if he had opened a history textbook.

Sophie was far enough into the novel that she felt that she should at least try to get to the end. No one else would care if she didn’t finish it, but she would know and didn’t like the thought of not finishing it. Lina, Ziska, and Ilona were arguing about the rules of the game, with Ilona having been caught helping herself to the bank again. That was the reason why Sophie had not been interested in playing the game. It seemed like it devolved into arguments because it seemed like one of them would always try to find a way to cheat.

That was when there was a thud as a rock hit the wall of the cabin just below the window frame. There wasn’t any glass, just a screen, and if it was cold, you closed the shutters. There were small, high windows in the back wall of the cabin that allowed a nice breeze on hot nights with the help of a fan that was in the doorway between the front and back rooms. The cabin had no heating and was clearly intended to be an entirely summer accommodation. The cabins were in different sizes with the smaller cabins going to the older girls. There were four of them in this cabin, the largest cabins, if you could still call them that, across the quadrangle were two floor affairs that had fifty on each floor. Sophie remembered how she had stayed in those on her first Summer Holiday at Schwielochsee.

A minute later, there was a second thud.

That was enough to draw everyone’s attention away from arguing over the game. In seconds, the three of them were at the window peering out into the night. “Think someone is out there?” Ilona asked, stating the obvious.

Sophie sat up and swung her feet off her bunk. It was all she needed, to be subjected to some elaborate prank which was what she figured this was.

“Is Zoe or Zoey, or something like that, here?” An unfamiliar, male, voice asked in a stage whisper.

That caused the three other girls to start giggling.

“You mean Sophie?” Ziska asked in reply.

“Yeah, I guess” The voice replied.

“Sophie, you have a visitor” Lena said, with a lot of mirth in her voice.

With a great deal of annoyance Sophie got to her feet and entered the front room.

“What do you want?” Sophie asked as she saw the boy with just his head looking into the cabin. Meaning that he must be sitting on the ground, clearly not wanting to be seen while seemingly unaware that he was probably visible to anyone in the quadrangle.

“Hi” The boy said with a sheepish smile.

He had risked getting in a lot of trouble, snuck over, under, or around the fence. Just to say that? The weird part was that she had seen him before, many times in fact. He had been the boy who had struck the canoe that Sophie and Ziska had been using with a barge pole the year before. What was his deal?

“You need to go before…” Sophie started to say, just as a hand reached out and grabbed him. She recognized that it was the Head Councilor of the Girl’s Camp a formidable woman who took trespasses like this seriously and her husband. She suspected that he would be in a lot of trouble in his own camp, at first. Then he would be everyone’s hero because of where he had gone despite how silly the whole thing was.

As the boy was led off by the husband, she looked at the four of them standing in the window. “Lights out is in five minutes” The Head Councilor said, “I am not going to have any trouble from you lot over this?”

“No, Ma’am” Sophie said echoing what the others were saying.

As soon as the Head Councilor walked off. The other three girls immediately rounded on Sophie.

“I think he likes you” Lina said in a sing-song tone.

“He has an odd way of showing it” Sophie replied, not liking that her friends had witnessed that. “I don’t even know his name.”

“That is easy enough to find out” Ziska said as Ilona smirked.

There was a great deal of illicit communication between the two camps. Sophie suspected that the adults knew about it but maintained the separation as a matter of tradition.
 

ferdi254

Banned
Keeping teenagers from doing sth stupid… impossible.

ITTL there was no Great Recession and Monopoly was an answer to that so ITTL it would be vastly different from OTL.
 
Keeping teenagers from doing sth stupid… impossible.

ITTL there was no Great Recession and Monopoly was an answer to that so ITTL it would be vastly different from OTL.
"Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game created by Lizzie Magie in the United States in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy that rewards wealth creation is better than one where monopolists work under few constraints,[1]" -


Unless America took a more Socialistic turn that we haven't seen, it's going to broadly be the same game once the Parker Brothers realize they can just repackage this other game, make it more capitalistic and sell it.
 
Keeping teenagers from doing sth stupid… impossible.

ITTL there was no Great Recession and Monopoly was an answer to that so ITTL it would be vastly different from OTL.
Keeping teenagers from doing stupid things is nearly impossible. That doesn't mean that it has got to be easy for them. Two rows of thorn bushes and a chain link fence are just going to slow them down.

The Great Depression happened in this timeline. The US exited it and was quite prosperous in the 40's selling materials to all sides of the conflict.
 
"Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game created by Lizzie Magie in the United States in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy that rewards wealth creation is better than one where monopolists work under few constraints,[1]" -


Unless America took a more Socialistic turn that we haven't seen, it's going to broadly be the same game once the Parker Brothers realize they can just repackage this other game, make it more capitalistic and sell it.
I can’t help but think of this…

RtR_klIhJbmz8j9Zt6ZBd8gZaB26N_-ffCk0yiICzX8.jpg
 
Part 131, Chapter 2238
Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Thirty-Eight



17th August 1973

Tempelhof, Berlin

There were closed circuit television cameras on the exterior of the building that were cunningly concealed. They enabled Kat to see what was happening on the street out front and in the alleyway in the back. That was how she had known that the house had been watched for weeks, entirely because the watchers had been unaware of those cameras. Regardless, Kat understood that they wouldn’t have a plan as such. They would take her in a rush, using the weight of numbers to negate any advantages she might otherwise have had. It was exactly how she might have done it herself.

Tonight, Kat could see that they were through watching and that there were at least twenty of them massing outside, probably a dozen more acting as lookouts. That was far more than she could have handled when she had been at her best two or three decades earlier. She had always known that this was going to happen eventually, that the enemies she had made along the way would find someone willing to do this. The timing was fortunate though, her children and those under her care were all elsewhere.

Tatiana was off in Ireland, learning how to be someone else. As disappointing as Kat found her daughter’s career aspirations, Kat knew that Tatianna would always be her little girl and it had been her hope that one day they would be able to put their difficulties aside. Malcolm was in Bad Reichenhall in the Alpine Training Area. She had uncharacteristically pulled a lot of strings to get him into the Arctic Training Program. She understood that once it was offered to her son, he would be unable to turn it down. It was a dream come true for him. Marie, Sophie, and Angelica were all in the Spreewald. Far from danger and the practical consideration that the saferoom in the basement wasn’t going to be needed. Kat didn’t want any attention drawn to the vaults down there because that was where she kept the evidence of past actions and of her own culpability within them. It couldn’t be destroyed because that was her insurance against the factions of the Government that might move against her or her family. Even Douglas, who had put up with how difficult Kat could be at times for the last twenty-five years, was out on assignment in the far north photographing wildlife in Sweden’s Abisko National Park. He had wanted Kat to come with him, but she had too many pressing matters to attend too at home. A shame really, she would have missed out on tonight’s festivities.

“Darya?” Kat asked as she saw the girl walk past her office door. “A moment please.”

“Ma’am” Darya said entering the office. One of the choices that Kat had made that she would never regret was bringing Petia’s granddaughter into her household.

“If you could do me a favor and take Sprocket up to your room” Kat said, “And lock the door to the servant quarters behind you. Tell the others to stay put, no matter what happens.”

Darya looked at Kat with alarm, but after years of obeying Kat without question she swiftly took Sprocket and left the room. The dog, thinking it was a game tried to squirm out of her arms. Kat heard Darya running up the stairs. One less innocent in harm’s way, she thought to herself.

Pulling her attention away from the monitors that were normally hidden away in their cabinet. Kat went to the decanter that she kept for guests and poured herself a measure of the whiskey. She had not had a drink in decades, not since a perforated ulcer had nearly killed her. If these were her last minutes, then she figured that she should at least see what she was paying for. As the sip she took burned down her throat, she figured that it tasted the same to her as the cheap spirits she had dunk during the Soviet War. That was a disappointment.

Looking at the sub-machinegun and pistol by her desk, Kat knew that they would not be adequate for the task at hand, but this had to be her fight alone. If she involved others, then the blowback would land on them. Something that wouldn’t be right. When those gathering outside came into the house, Kat hoped that they would check to see if the doors were unlocked before they kicked them in. It would be a shame if they did any unnecessary damage.

----------------------------------------------------------------

“This has got to be a trap” Czcibor said as the front door of the house swung open and Tom stepped through.

“Shut up” Karlheinz growled as he pushed the Pole through the double front doors of the house. This was the domain of the Tigress, and their mission was simple, she was not supposed to see another sunrise. The Organization had been gathering forces for this hit for months and not one of them wasn’t a killer. Still there were those like Czcibor who allowed the reputation of Tigress to get the better of him. Karlheinz though, since he and Tom had been children coming up in the streets of postwar Berlin, he had never been scared of anything. That had made him and Tom an unstoppable team. Karlheinz as the muscle and Tom as the brains.

As Tom saw the crew that had come in through the back coming up the stairs, he felt the hairs raise on the back of his neck. There had been no opposition so far and this was starting to feel wrong. Czcibor had to be right, this had to be a trap.

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest, in the night” Tom muttered to himself. “What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

“Enough of that” Karlheinz said sharply to Tom. “These assholes are about to piss themselves.”

While Tom knew that Karlheinz could barely understand two words of English, the tone of that poem was unmistakable.
 
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