Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred Thirteen
27th August 1978
Mitte, Berlin
It was the last week of the Summer Holiday and what was she doing? Watching the dedication of a statue, that was what. This wasn’t helped by it being a muggy evening with the threat of rain which had caused delays earlier in the day. This had the effect of making it so that most of the people present were having trouble just staying awake. The men from the First Foot present looked like they were about to fall over. Mathilda felt sorry for them because she knew what they were going through. Her brother had told her all about his time in the ceremonial guard, how the summertime had been incredibly hellish with the heat and the tourists. At the moment, there was one of members of Berlin’s Landtag who was droning on about who Opa had been. He was not a great public speaker.
This was all about dedication and public unveiling of the statue of Opa along with the statue of Walter Horst. The two of them joining the ranks of other statues of the Realm’s heroes. Mathilda had seen the statue many times when it had been on display in Breslau, so there were no surprises here. Oddly, this was a repeat of the public portion of Opa’s funeral which brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. From Mathilda’s perspective the whole thing would have been far more tolerable if they had limited it to actual mourners as opposed to people who were there just to make sure he was actually dead or those who felt obligated to come because they owed Opa money. The later, more private burial had been better, but Mathilda always had what had happened there at the back of her mind. The empty sky and the meaning she had drawn from it had just been too much at that moment. Mathilda had discussed what had happened with Aunt Ilse and she had told her that the universe is a very cold place when you looked at it logically. Part of growing up is to accept that and to avoid becoming nihilistic out of despair.
If Mathilda had to guess, that was a reflection on how Aunt Ilse saw the world. She knew that Ilse had not had the easiest life. There had been a few instances that Mathilda had witnessed involving the Agoraphobia that Ilse suffered from and some of the stories of her childhood were downright disturbing. Mathilda had always thought that she had been lucky to land with the Richthofen family. That had only been because powerful people took an interest in her case and her brother’s friend Christian was the husband of Opa’s granddaughter. Apparently, there had been far worse alternatives that she had only gotten glimpses of.
With an exasperated sigh, Mathilda slouched in her chair wishing that the hard folding chair had actually been made with human contours in mind. The speaker droned on. Mathilda was starting to wish that a cane would reach out and yank him off the stage like in the American films that depicted the old Vaudeville theater when an act had overstayed its welcome on stage. It was then that there was a howl of feedback. The speaker apologized as he tried to reposition the microphone causing the stand to fall over.
As the loud “Thud!” blasted through the public address system it caused hundreds of crows who had been roosting in the trees in the park next to the watchhouse to take flight at once. This was right as the setting sun broke through the clouds, bathing the streets of Berlin in a crimson glow. That meant little to most of the people present, but to Mathilda it meant everything. She knew in her heart that the cold logic that Ilse spoke of missed so much about the world.
She just wished that this had happened sooner.
“Enjoy yourself” Mathilda whispered as she watched the crows flying in the pell-mell manner of their kind with a smile.
South China Sea, off Kuching, Borneo
Erich was getting tired of waiting for something to happen. The self-styled Pirate King whose activities had caused a response by the High Seas Fleet had gone suddenly quiet. Historically this was a common tactic used by pirates, gather in numbers, strike swiftly, and then scatter before the hammer came down. Modern communications such as radios and telephones had made that far easier. When Erich had been briefed with the other Officers they had said that they needed to assume that their presence was already known. So they were in the uncomfortable position of relying on Intelligence to ferret out where these pirates were holed up.
In the meantime, they were left waiting.
This would have been tolerable except Borneo was considered off limits to the Marine Infantry because of extremely bitter memories. During the Pacific War the 1st Marine Infantry Division along with the 5th Army Corps that had just arrived from fighting in the Soviet War had waged a savage campaign on the island against the Japanese with the civilian population caught in the middle with neither side having much regard for their survival. The victory in that campaign wasn’t considered the Marine Infantry’s proudest accomplishment during the war. It was small wonder that most of the focus was on earlier Battle of Formosa and the later Korea/Manchurian Campaign.