Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Sixteen



25th August 1974

Boston, Massachusetts

In just a few days she was supposed to get on an airplane that would take her “home” where a bit of clever footwork would cause Anne Morgan to disappear, and she would be Tatiana von Mischner-Blackwood again on a train bound for Berlin from Paris. Instead, Tatiana was in the small room she had rented for the summer terrified that American Federal Agents were going to kick in her door at any second.

Of course, it was because of her mother. It was always about her mother. It had taken Tatiana a long time to understand why it was that her mother always needed to make a huge splash in whatever she happened to be doing. Simply put, Katherine von Mischner, essentially the reigning Queen of Berlin loved to show off. Normally that had little effect on Tatiana but today the front page of the New York Times had featured the explosive story about her mother’s wartime exploits. How her actions had shaped the postwar world. The trouble for Tatiana came in the photograph that came with the story. It was the one taken by her father at the start of their relationship, the one of her mother at the Inn in Judenbach when she was roughly the same age as Tatiana presently was. It was a face that was shockingly similar to the one that Tatiana saw every day as she looked in the mirror.

Fortunately, Tatiana had finished her last week at the restaurant otherwise she would have had a major problem on her hands. She had been looking forward to spending her last few days in Boston exploring the city. Going places that tourists didn’t normally venture into. That wasn’t going to happen though. Instead, she had taken one look at the front page of the newspaper and had fled back to her room and like a small child she was laying in her bad with a blanket over her head in the hope that it would hide her from whatever was coming her way.

She would somehow have to find the courage to leave this room and go to Logan Airport on Tuesday. At the moment, that felt like it was walking into the lion’s den.



Reims, France

For lack of anything better to do, Sjostedt found himself traveling from Verdun to Reims. It was the start of the infamous “East Road” that had figured so prominently in the Second Battle of the Marne that ran from Reims to Paris along the river. It was actually a series of battles fought up and down the same stretch of road as the changing nature of warfare was playing out over a period of months as both sides introduced new technology to gain an advantage. That was the same battle where aircraft and armored vehicles had come into their own. The verdict from Historians was a bit odd with them concluding that Germany had ultimately lost that particular battle but had won the war in the process. It was the same as with the rest of the bloody First World War, a whole lot of suffering and death just to reach a disputed inconclusive conclusion. He couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t the only old man riding on this train. As Sjostedt was walked through a crowded dining car, he saw another man his age wearing the tri-color cockade popular with French veterans pinned to his suit saw him and nodded when he caught his eye before moving on. Long ago they had gotten to the point where they recognized each other by sight regardless of nationality, there was an aspect of a man who had survived the trenches that was impossible to shake.

He figured that he would take the train to Paris and from there get on the express train home. To his deep annoyance, the trip from Reims to Paris was only about a hundred and fifty kilometers, only a bit more than an hour by train. Much of it covering the same ground he had trudged across and never did make it into Paris. Sjostedt figured that he would probably never figure out what Coyote had been getting at. It seemed to him that if his vision were about anything concrete then it wouldn’t have been so cryptic.

Sjostedt was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he hardly noticed the figure that was siding up to him until out of instinct he grabbed the wrist of the hand that was in his pocket. The hand belonged to a boy… No, Sjostedt thought to himself once he got a better look at the thief’s face and that was under the dirt, she was a girl even if her close cropped dark hair made it difficult to tell, who was trying unsuccessfully to break Sjostedt’s grip on her arm.

“You know that it is bad luck to rob a Priest?” Sjostedt asked in French and the thief stopped thrashing around.

“You don’t look like a Priest” The girl said, “And I’ve never heard that about it being bad luck.”

“I was a Lutheran Pastor before I retired, truth be told” Sjostedt said as he plucked his wallet out of the girl’s hand. “And of course, it’s bad luck, you just got caught.”

The girl looked at Sjostedt angerly.

“You let me go or else” The girl demanded.

“Or else what?” Sjostedt asked, “Do they still break of the thumbs the pickpockets they catch in this region?”

The girl became frantic, unable to break his grip as the train pulled into a station.

“Gabin!” The girl called out, only to see the tough looking young man who Sjostedt assumed was the muscle who backed these forays of hers disappear out the door. He had to know that there was little he could because she had gotten nabbed inside a crowd of people.

“Keep yelling and draw more attention to yourself” Sjostedt said, “If the Gendarme ask about you, do you think that I will hesitate to hand you over to them?”

The girl fell silent, and she looked at him in fear. Sjostedt knew the reputation of the French Police, that they would probably not be gentle with this girl, or worse. He could hardly just throw her to the wolves in good conscience. What did he do though? He also noticed that she had grey-blue eyes which was unique.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Seventeen



25th August 1974

Paris, France

“Why are you doing this?” Monique asked for the dozenth time as they stepped into the small hotel room.

“Helping you seems like the least I can do after the scene on the train” Sjostedt replied, “I have met few in your position who would turn down a free meal and a safe place to sleep for one night.”

“Oh” The girl replied, with a tone that suggested that she didn’t believe that for a second.

It was easy to understand why she thought that everyone had an ulterior motive whenever they did something for anyone else. She wasn’t the first runaway who Sjostedt had helped like this, there had been dozens of them over the years and they had all behaved in roughly the same way. He had been helped by Flensburg being way out at the end of the line, the last major city before the Danish border. By the time most of them got out that far they were at the end of their means. A hot meal, a chance to get cleaned up, and a place to sleep were usually what they wanted more than anything. Then the painstaking process of figuring out what to do with them could begin. Sjostedt was well aware that many of them were running from something, so it was never easy, and there many questions. It usually started with; Could they go home? If they couldn’t, why not? And finally; If going home wasn’t an option then what were their alternatives.

This time though, he did have a motive that he wasn’t about to tell the girl about. It was nothing harmful. Just that her name was Monique Chanson, and over the course of his life Sjostedt had learned that names had far deeper meanings that the people who carried them realized. In this case, Monique’s name literally meant One Song and considering the series of events that had caused Sjostedt to go on this mad quest with how one of Coyote’s names translated to “Song Dog.”, that was a bit too much of a coincidence. Of course, it was far more likely that he was a lonely old man grasping for meaning where there was none to be found. The logical part of his mind wanted to believe that, but the part of him that had never really left the Mesa desert disagreed. It believed that every single thing in the world was connected and there was no such thing as a coincidence.

“I’m stepping out to run an errand” Sjostedt said, “Feel free to use the bathroom and then we’ll see about finding some clean clothes for you.”

“How do you know I will still be here when you get back?” Monique asked.

“That is on you” Sjostedt replied, “It would probably make things far easier for me if you did.”

Monique said nothing in reply to that. The expression on her face suggested that Sjostedt’s words, however much truth there was in them, had had the desired effect though. The easiest way to get a teenager to stick around was to tell them that it would easier for you if they left. It had turned out that she was a couple years younger than he had initially thought. What that meant was that her ability to tell when an adult was playing her was still somewhat lacking. Sjostedt suspected that it was something that that young man, Gabin, had been taking advantage of.



Baltic Sea

SMS K024 Grindwal was in close formation with two of her sister ships and pair of Destroyers out of Kiel. The five ships were racing north at flank speed as they practiced maneuvers. The crew was in General Quarters and the gun crews were waiting for the order to open fire. Standing in the Command-and-Control Room, Louis Ferdinand Junior was interested in seeing the new 30mm autocannons in action. The Operator sat in the Control Room. He had discretion over shooting at surface or stationary targets but when the system was armed, it would react to anything it detected that resembled an incoming missile or aircraft by shooting at it faster than a human could even perceive the threat. Louis knew that there were many things that could go wrong with such a system, that it might be a bit too effective in its intended purpose. That was why he had ordered the pilot of the small reconnaissance helicopter that the Grindwal carried to keep his distance when that system was active until they were absolutely certain that there wouldn’t be any accidents.

Louis saw a television screen looked like in was in black and white. However, it was an image that had been processed to see through night and inclement weather so that even the thickest of fog could not render the Grindwal blind. When the target came into range, the 30mm on the starboard side opened up. Louis had heard the autocannons several times over the last couple weeks as they had been calibrated and test fired. To him they sounded like ripping cloth, and it was clearly audible even through several bulkheads. Each shell was high explosive and while the hulk wasn’t armored, its hull plates were made of steel that was several centimeters thick. Even so, they punched fist sized holes through it.

“Anyone aboard that ship would not be happy” The Portside Operator said looking over the shoulder of his counterpart.

“Closed caskets” Louis opined, “Though Manila envelopes would do the job.”

The Operator looked back to his own screen suddenly remembering that the Captain was observing them directly during this exercise.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Eighteen



27th August 1974

Montreal, Canada

It had been harder saying goodbye to her family as they had boarded the plane that would take them home then she had thought it would be. Marie Alexandra had watched the plane take off and had almost cried when it had disappeared from view in the distance. Her grandparents had stood there with her, not in any rush to get out of the airport until she was ready to leave of her own accord. The entire ride back to the Blackwood house had been a blur, with Marie not really paying much attention to anything other than how she already missed them terribly. Even Sophie, who she tended to argue with constantly.

When Marie got back to her room, she found it was full of the clothes and other supplies that her mother had insisted she needed, most of which were still in their bags. At the center was a heavy weight wool coat and fur lined boots that she had said Marie would be incredibly grateful to have when winter came. Just that thought reminded her that she didn’t have the first clue as to when she might see any of them again. Christmas or perhaps Easter, Marie had no idea.

Then she saw the radiometer that had once belonged to her father and usually sat on the windowsill in her grandfather’s home office had been moved to the windowsill of her bedroom. The black and white vanes spinning around in the morning sunlight, Marie remembered how she had thought that it was magical when she had first seen it years earlier. Opa Blackwood had told her that it was simple physics that she hadn’t been taught yet. Later, the Science Professor at her Gymnasia had explained a concept called thermal transpiration which was the widely accepted theory of how a Crookes radiometer worked. She had thought that it was wonderful, learning the trick of how it worked. The world was full of magical things, all it took was a little bit of understanding and you could work wonders. The Science Professor had disagreed and had chastised Marie, saying that Science Class was no place for her frequent flights of fancy. It was hardly Marie’s fault that old fuddy duddy totally lacked imagination. It just seemed to her the world was full of miracles that had grown mundane by being familiar. Stepping close and seeing the little black and white vanes spin around a glass spindle inside the sealed globe seemingly of their own accord was one of those things.

“You found it” Sir Malcolm said from the doorway. “I’d say its yours now.”

“I cannot take this” Marie replied, “It belongs to my father, and it has been in your office for ages.”

“I doubt that Douglas would take issue with you having it” Sir Malcolm said, “I think you’ll get the most out of it. Before you came to visit when you were thirteen, I had almost forgotten that it was there.”

“Thank you” Marie said, looking at the radiometer.

“I know that you are a bit homesick but know that you choosing to come here to go to University and keep up the family tradition is quite wonderful” Sir Malcolm said with a slight smile. “Margot is proud of you, even if she will probably never tell you that herself.”

“I thought that she didn’t like me?” Marie asked.

“Pride can be a terrible thing at times” Sir Malcolm replied, “Your grandmother hates admitting that she is ever wrong, but if she really didn’t like you, she never would have allowed me to invite you to stay with us.”

That was an angle that Marie had not considered.



Plänterwald, Berlin

“Some things are supposed to be easy, fun” Was what Ben had said earlier that night. “The instant they became laborious and boring, there was a problem.”

He had said that because he had noticed that Kiki had kept looking at the clock, was unable to hide the bored expression on her face because it had come to feel like an obligation. That had completely killed the mood for both of them. Now a few hours later, rinsing out the small amount of blood that had seeped into the nightgown she had been wearing. It was a sign that what had become laborious had not accomplished anything this month. Besides that, she was more comfortable in the old football jersey and trackpants that she had slept in for years. The trouble was that as soon as Ben saw what she was wearing he would probably have a good idea of what was going on. Berg had warned her that when couples did this it took eighteen-months on average. It had just grown so frustrating in the meantime. Like anyone else, Kiki had wanted things to happen right away and that apparently wasn’t happening.

Looking over her shoulder in the mirror, Kiki saw a bit of movement by the doorway. “You are supposed to be asleep little Mouse Bear” She said.

Nina poked her head around the corner, surprised that she had gotten caught. Kiki didn’t think that her daughter lacked intelligence, she just hadn’t realized that even though Kiki’s back was turned she could still be seen in the reflection. It was the sort of mistake that children made.

“Owie?” Nina asked.

“No” Kiki replied only to get a quizzical look back.

One day, probably far sooner than Kiki would like, Nina would understand this. For now, she was a fairly typical three-year-old. Scooping up Nina, Kiki saw that Rauchbier had been watching over her as he tended to do.

“You are just getting too big for me to carry you like this” Kiki said sadly as she carried Nina back to her room.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Nineteen



28th August 1974

Fossoy, France

Part of the problem was in convincing Monique that she was probably better off going home and getting her life in order as opposed getting into trouble. As Sjostedt had seen a few times before, living rough and facing the prospect of starvation tended to make one focused on their actual priorities. This was especially true when it seemed that Monique’s only real complaint about her home was that it was boring.

That was how Sjostedt found himself traveling more or less back the way he came. Just this time there were no express trains because like everywhere else, the transit was focused on rapid transport of people between major cities. Getting to a small village in Northern France took considerably more time.

First a slow train to Château Thierry after a considerable wait in Paris. Then they had the choice of an even longer wait or just walking the last few kilometers to Fossoy. For Sjostedt this walk left his mind troubled for a lot of reasons. He had time to look at the walls of the buildings they passed, sill pockmarked by bullets and shellfire decades later. More disquieting were the ruins of houses where all that remained were the masonry walls. With those there must have been no one left to back and rebuild after the war.

This entire region had changed hands several times during the war. For those long months it had been a war of movement, with the frontlines shifting constantly. Far different from the static trench warfare that had defined the earlier stages of the conflict. At the end of the war, the area had been in French and American hands. That had hardly mattered though because just across the front lines, the German Army had been systematically looting the areas they had occupied before retreating back to the 1914 Frontier as required by the treaty which had finally ended the war.

It had been witnessing that which had driven Sjostedt’s early anti-war activism and put him firmly in the orbit of Augustus Lang. Looking at the landscape they were passing through, he could see that what he had spent most of his life working on had hardly been enough. Three generations later the ruin of the First World War remained as a stark reminder of that. Department of Aisne had never really recovered and remained an impoverished backwater which most people tried to travel through as swiftly as possible so they wouldn’t have to think about it. There was also Sjostedt’s connection to a spot which they had probably passed somewhere along this very road.

“The first time I nearly died was somewhere along here” Sjostedt said, “The Amis, Marines supported by French built Panzers… er I believe they are called tanks here, got the drop on us and I caught a bullet for my trouble.”

“I thought you said you were a Lutheran Pastor?” Monique asked.

“Before that, I was a conscript in the German Army” Sjostedt replied, “I wasn’t much older than you are now at the time.”

“People still talk about what the Boche did” Monique said, “How they…”

Sjostedt knew that Monique had been about to say something but had suddenly thought better. He remembered many things which had happened, that he had grown ashamed of over the decades since. How he had basically taken advantage of desperate people because he had not been aware of what he was doing. That actually haunted him more than the memories of those he had killed. There was a staggeringly vast difference between what happened in fight between combatants and what individual members of an occupying army might do in what amounted to a moral vacuum.

“When I face eternal judgement, I will have a lot to answer for” Sjostedt said, “That is probably the only honest thing you ever hear anyone say on the subject. War turns ordinary men into brutes, and anyone who gets caught in the middle gets ground into paste.”

“Oh” Monique said, a bit surprised by that answer.

A straight answer was often hard to come by, getting one like that tended to end the conversation. Claiming patriotism or duty as a rationalization was just a denial of reality. Sjostedt had not been interested in that sort of thing for an extremely long time.

They walked on in silence as they neared Fossoy. The village had had only a few hundred residents during better times. Unfortunately, that had been during prior centuries. Now it was just a few streets worth of dilapidated houses clustered around the gates of a Chateau which shared the air of neglect as the rest of the village.

“What am I going to tell my grandmother?” Monique asked.

“The truth” Sjostedt replied, “That you ran off, that it was a mistake, and you are going to do better in the future.”

“That will make her angry, especially after what happened with my father” Monique said. She had told Sjostedt about how her father had spent most of his life coming and going from Fossoy. Running off for some sort of venture that inevitably ended in failure. The last time he had come to town he had left one step ahead of the vengeful family of a local girl who disapproved of her involvement with him. Apparently, Monique had been the result of that affair and her mother’s family wanted nothing to do with her. There had been bad blood between them and her grandmother even before that. Fourteen years later and no one knew what had become of Monique’s father after that according to her. All she knew was that he had never come back.

There is also this” Monique gestured to her hair, which was no more than a finger’s breadth in length. She had told Sjostedt the story about how she had sold it to a wig maker at the suggestion of Gabin. Beyond Sjostedt not realizing that was something that still happened, it had been an opportunity to point out the truth about her “friend” Gabin. In the short time that they had been together he had cajoled her again and again to take chances and make sacrifices for the sake of their friendship. Over time he would have taken more and more while leaving Monique with little in return if she hadn’t gotten away from him. That much was evidenced by how he had ditched her at the first sign of trouble. Sjostedt’s hope was that she would learn from the experience once she got past the embarrassment of having been taken advantage of.

“I think that your safety will be her main concern” Sjostedt replied as they walked up to the door of a small house near the church graveyard at the center of the village.

Having apparently lost her keys somewhere along the line, Monique was reluctant to knock on the locked door. Eventually, Sjostedt just did it for her. An elderly woman opened the door and the sight of Monique caused her to frown. It was clear that the girl would have a lot of explaining to do. Her gaze then shifted to Sjostedt and her expression became quizzical. This was a conversation that he’d had with the parents of runaways several times. They usually said the same sorts of things and asked the same questions. He figured that this would be no different.

“Piers?” The elderly woman asked. That was not what he was expecting to hear.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty



29th August 1974

Potsdam, Germany

Black Shuck had been released to wide acclaim the prior July, or at least as much acclaim as a horror film might be expected to receive, and that had been reflected where it really counts. At the box office. To Jost’s amazement his own performance had been one of the things lauded. It was felt that he had lent the character of Oberst von Fürst an authenticity and gravitas. The result was that he was having a flood of job offers and had even been invited to the Vienna Film Festival in October and to Cannes next May.

Most of the job offers involved further horror or war movies. Not that Jost had a problem with that. Playing a General or Oberst was a lot of fun, the vast majority of the cast and crew that surrounded him were unaware that he frequently was making fun of the Officers he had served under for his entire career. Jost’s agent, it was unbelievable that he now needed an agent, had set up a number of small things to keep his face out there. A few television appearances here in Potsdam as well as a guest appearance on a British comedy series as a German tourist who ends up verbally thrashing a juvenile delinquent who was a series regular. The nineteen-year-old actor, Rowan something or the other, had been a regular smartass so Jost hadn’t exactly been acting when he had gone off on him. The trouble was that Rowan couldn’t understand a single word of German and exactly what Jost said had apparently horrified those busybodies in London who apparently could after it had been aired. Seriously? Fuck them, Jost thought to himself as he walked onto the set of today’s job. A commercial for Augustiner Beer of all things.

The whole thing was perfectly absurd and ironically based on something that Jost himself had done. Someone doing research had found an old photograph of Jost with Hans von Mischner and Soren Yont taken at some point during the race to Moscow at the end of the Soviet War. In the photo, Jost was seen with an MG42 slung over his shoulder with an unlit cigar in his mouth. While Jost wasn’t as stupid as he had been in his 20’s, now knowing that carrying the goddamned Bonesaw all day would end with him unable to move for several days, he could still carry one of them for a few minutes with relative ease. This one was an old MG42, the old pattern as opposed to the updated and improved MG42/48. According to the Prop Master, this one had been acquired by the Studio from the Heer had been used in dozens of films and television shows.

The sound stage was done up to look like a dark forest with dry ice ground mist. The sound of howling wolves could be heard in the distance. This was the fifth take that they had attempted, each time the Director spotting something that he didn’t like. The last time, Jost had joked with the Prop Master that he was going to find a belt of live ammunition for the bonesaw. They had laughed about that.

The script had Jost to say his lines and continue stalking forward, which he thought was stupid and it was small wonder that the Director had hated it for the first four takes. That was because it was crap. This time Jost had decided that an improvement was needed or else they would be stuck here all day.

Stepping to the pre-marked spot, Jost looked directly into the camera. “Defending the Realm against supernatural beasties just gives a man real thirst!” Jost practically bellowed at the camera off script. Past it he could he the crew were looking horrified as he pulled the bottle of beer from his pocket and used one of the vents on the MG42’s handguard as a bottle opener. It was something that he had actually done countless times. “Augustiner Beer hits the spot!” Jost yelled before chugging it. He figured that this would result in them needing to do a sixth take, but he needed to blow off a bit of steam. Finishing the beer, Jost threw the bottle over his shoulder. He heard it shatter on the soundstage somewhere behind him. Then with an evil grin, he brought the Bonesaw down from his shoulder, worked the bolt-cam to chamber a cartridge and leveled it so that it was pointed right at the camera and crew. From their perspective, the 8mm bore was like looking down a subway tunnel.

That was when Jost squeezed the trigger, firing a burst.

There was a belt of blank cartridges in a 50-round drum carrier that he emptied. There was little recoil brass flew and flame shot out of the muzzle. The truth was that even Jost would probably find it difficult to control an MG42 while firing from the hip with live ammunition, and there were also no tracers. The crew didn’t know that though and many of them scrambled to get out of the way. Jost was chuckling as he lit his cigar on the white-hot gun barrel of the Bonesaw.

“Cut!” The Director yelled, “That was perfect.”

“Wait, what?” Jost yelled back.

“You heard me” The Director replied, “That was perfect.”

Jost was willing to run with that, for now. He was finding showbusiness impossible to understand. If he wasn’t having so much fun, he might have taken issue with it.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-One



29th August 1974

Fossoy, France

Watching Monique weeding her grandmother’s kitchen garden from the back steps of Helene’s house, she was happily humming to herself as she went about the mundane task. Sjostedt knew that the prior weeks must have been quite an education for the girl. She had learned that there were worse things than pulling weeds. This also meant that he finally had a chance to talk to Helene without the fourteen-year-old listening in.

Of all the things that might have happened to Sjostedt, running into Helene had not been expected. Especially considering that he had not seen her since the Heer had retreated back to Courtemont-Varennes after the Battle of Ussy-sur-Marne in August and the 4th Division had been ordered to dig in along a ridge that was only a few kilometers east of Fossoy. She had vanished during that retreat and Sjostedt had been forced to put her out of his mind as he had watched over the following months as American and French forces had massed across the lines. Sjostedt had been certain that when the attack came his number would truly be up. Unknown to him, or anyone else at the time, was that what had happened at Ussy had convinced the Americans that while they could defeat the Heer in the field, it would come at too great a cost.

The relief that Sjostedt had felt when the ceasefire had been announced had been profound. Still though, his orders had been to hold in place and then to join his Regiment as they had walked back to the 1914 Frontier. They had been under no illusions about what happened to local women who took up with German soldiers and he had been given little choice but to accept her loss.

“I thought that you were gone forever” Sjostedt said as if that changed things. “If I had known that…”

“You would have what?” Helene asked, “Come back searching for me? And gotten yourself butchered because a lone Boche was good as dead in those days? A lot of good that would have done me or you.”

“Still though, it wasn’t right for me to have left you” Sjostedt said, “Or even what happened before that.”

“What are you on about?” Helene asked.

“You were given few choices, you weren’t much older than Monique” Sjostedt said, “I took advantage of you without knowing better.”

Helene gave him a look and shook her head. “Still the same arrogance after all these years” She said, “Who’s to say that I didn’t take advantage of you?”

“The tough as nails Danish soldier with that big bruiser you were always with” Helene said, “What was his name?”

“That was Walter Horst” Sjostedt replied.

Helene was a bit surprised by that answer, apparently Horst’s legend had grown to the point where they had even heard of him here.

“Regardless” Helene said, “No one with any sense messed with you, or your woman.”

“I had not considered that” Sjostedt said, “What about her?”

He gestured towards Monique.

“What about Monique?” Helene asked in reply, “She is the daughter of my son Pierre, the same son who was probably killed by her mother’s family because of who his father was or how they didn’t like his involvement with their girl.”

“You are avoiding answering the obvious question” Sjostedt replied, as if the answer weren’t patently obvious just by that name. “Just how certain are you that Pierre is dead?”

“He hasn’t shown up one step ahead of those he was indebted to in almost fifteen years, and he is unlikely to have turned over a new leaf” Helene replied, “I can feel it in my bones that he is never coming back.”

“That is disappointing” Sjostedt said.

“Yes” Helene said, “Disappointment is something you get used to. They dropped Monique in my lap once she was old enough for them convince themselves that they had done their Catholic duty. It must have been awful for her mother, and I haven’t seen her since. They really are the worst sort of hypocrites, the whole lot of them.”

“I see” Sjostedt replied. He was aware that wasn’t a unique problem to this corner of France, the sort of deep hatred that became part of a people’s identity if allowed to fester long enough. It was such pure poison that they had made their own granddaughter one of “Them” and apparently thought nothing of it.

“She also cannot stay here because of that” Helene said, “After her running off and with her hair like that, they are going to try to destroy her reputation and there isn’t a whole lot I can do.”

“And you think there is something I can do about that?” Sjostedt asked. It was odd to consider that Monique having cut her hair off would mark her out here while in Berlin or Paris it might be considered fashionable.

“A Lutheran Bishop who addressed the League of Nations on matters of war and peace should be able to do something for his granddaughter” Helene said.

“That was a long time ago” Sjostedt said as he felt another stab of guilt. Apparently, Helene had been aware of what he had been doing this whole time. “I am now retired and seventy-six years old in case you haven’t noticed.”

Helene snorted as if Sjostedt said something funny.

“The Aunts also have to be considered” Sjostedt said, “Monique would be considered Diné among them and they can make things difficult if they find her wanting. Even so, there will probably be trouble if I don’t call my sisters and get their opinion on this matter.”

“Who are the Diné?” Helene asked.

Sjostedt didn’t have the first clue as to where to begin.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Two



31st August 1974

Tempelhof, Berlin

Sophie was a bit desperate for time to stop. It had been a wonderful summer now there was only a couple days left until the new school term started and it felt like it was far too soon for that. First the bicycle races, the rock & roll festival then a few weeks spent in Canada. The prior few days had been busy, mostly because Kat insisted that Sophie and Angelica be prepared on the first day of the term for anything that might get thrown at them. What was a bit surprising though had been that nothing had changed. Marie Alexandra had been Kat’s youngest actual daughter and she had decided to go to University in Montreal. Sophie couldn’t say how exactly, but she had figured that things would be different. It seemed that she had been wrong on that score.

“You are a part of this family Zoe, so why would things have changed?” Kat had replied when Sophie had asked.

Playing with Sprocket by bouncing his ball off the back wall of the garage. She watched him misjudge the angle which the ball would go in and ended up tumbling on the grass as he tried to change directions. In an instant he was back on his feet scrambling after the ball. When he caught up with the ball, Sprocket brought it back to Sophie and dropped the slobber covered ball by her feet. Picking it up, she threw the ball against the wall again and the mad scramble began anew.

If this was how things were going to be over the next couple years, then Sophie wouldn’t have too much of a problem with that.



Washington D.C.

“Is following an eighteen-year-old girl around really the best use of Agency resources?” Frank Church asked looking at the photographs that had been taken just hours earlier. He knew that his appointment to be the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was as little more than as a placeholder until the Administration got around to appointing their own man. Now, almost two years in, Nixon had mostly been consumed with domestic concerns. So, Church remained at the Agency involved in the Sisyphean task of attempting to rein in some its worst impulses. Following the granddaughter of a retired Canadian Defense Minister around Montreal because her mother happened to be the odd quasi-monarch of Berlin was just one example. All they had learned was that the girl liked thrift stores and the whole thing had the makings of an international incident if they got caught.

Of far more interest was the ongoing operation in Germany. It had taken decades, but they had turned someone at the very highest levels of the German Government. The fact that person was able to give them the details of the day-to-day operations of the BND and BII was a real coup. The trouble was that there were two serious problems. The first was that their man on the inside might overreach and the other was that someone in the Agency itself might brag about what was going on where unfriendly ears might hear. Both had the potential to expose the operation. An unexpected development had been when an Army Officer working out of the Berlin Embassy had stumbled across a second source out of the German Military High Command that corroborated the first. Church had smelled a rat, mostly because he had spent a long time in this game and knew the Army Officer in question. If there really was a disaffected Officer within the OKW, they would have to either be profoundly stupid or black out drunk to reach out to Oliver North. It wasn’t that North was stupid, it was that he was exactly the sort who Church figured would do the bragging if that happened. And how did they know that this second source wasn’t the start of a mole hunt in Berlin and Wunsdorf? They didn’t and the only way to find out was when they all got burnt.



Los Angeles

Ritchie fired the last two bullets from the new pistol, leaving the slide locked back he waited for the rangemaster to ring the bell announcing that this part of the exercise was over. This was all part of him qualifying to use the new service pistol that the Department had adopted. Officially, it was manufactured by Smith & Wesson when the truth was that it was a licensed version of the Sig-Sauer P.226. The pistol and its 9mm Parabellum cartridge were automatically controversial within and outside the Department.

Many Officers were upset about what they deemed a “Kraut gun” even though it was Swiss in origin and the Los Angeles Times had had a field day with what it termed an “Army Weapon” in the hands of every Police Officer. It was the same sort of thinking that had nearly resulted in the Department considering taking away Stoner Rifles from the Officers who had been issued them. They also took issue with the 15-round capacity. What could they possibly need that many bullets for?

Of course, Ritchie had a different perspective. Anyone who had ever tried to reload an old revolver in a stressful situation knew how much a pain they were and honestly, you could never have too many bullets when things went sideways. It was why he had tried to get a 1911 pistol when he had first joined the Department. That also why he had been among the first to volunteer to qualify with the new pistol.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Three



2nd September 1974

Mitte, Berlin

“These are your aunts and cousins” Sjostedt said to Monique as the train pulled into the vast train station that was under the streets of the German Capital. “They are very curious about you but remember when dealing with your aunts to always be respectful.”

It had been a bewildering few days as she had watched Piers Sjostedt, who her grandmother said was her grandfather, call in a number of favors with shockingly prominent people to expedite the process of moving her out of Fossoy and to legally take up residence in Flensburg. The obvious problem was that she was French. There was also the issue of his family, the reality of which struck Monique as being completely unlikely if not insane. He had referred to them as the Diné, but they were known by a different name which she had only heard in movies, Navajo. And that despite having served in the German Army her grandfather had been born in Arizona near a place called Four Corners. There was also an open question as to whether or not the Aunts as he called them would accept her. It seemed that among the Diné that was any woman her mother’s age or older, regardless of blood relation.

That had been a bit hard for Monique to wrap her mind around, until it was pointed out that the structure of the bones in her face and her dark hair pointed directly to that heritage. There where other aspects of her appearance which could easily be attributed to his half-Danish background as well.

Sitting on a train pulling into the station, Monique was totally apprehensive about what was waiting for her. All of her meager belongings had fit in a suitcase, so it wasn’t a complicated process in getting off the train and stepping onto the platform. Her whole life, she had listened to what her neighbors had to say about the Boche. How they were harsh and militaristic. That officialdom was king. They were also frequently compared to bloodsucking lice by her neighbors with how they intruded where they were not welcome and took everything. The not so hidden pretext of those comments was that many had heard and/or spread the rumors about Monique’s father.

The scene on the platform was nothing like that, if anything it looked identical to what she had seen in Paris just a few hours earlier. There were businessmen identifiable by their suits and briefcases. Families greeting loved ones as they arrived home. There was a group of young people Monique’s age wearing brightly colored clothes that were artfully tattered. When they spotted a pair of soldiers wearing blue and grey dress uniforms, they began pantomiming what they thought soldiers did with exaggerated salutes and marching around comically. The two soldiers just shook their heads, laughed, and kept walking.

“Those are men from my old Regiment” Sjostedt said, “So, they have nothing to prove, not after what they did in South America.”

“How do you know that?” Monique asked.

“The patch on their shoulder” Sjostedt replied, “A fortress on a hill, I was there when the 140th Souville earned that.”

“I thought that you were a peace campaigner” Monique said.

“Yes” Sjostedt said, “And my experiences as one led me to the other.”

It was one of the odd contradictions that Monique had observed about her grandfather. He was proud of his time in the service, yet at the same time he had spent considerably more of his life in the cause of peace.

Climbing the stairs, they entered the waiting area of the train station. Monique had never been in a cathedral, but the wide space with long wooden bench seats and high ceilings lit by golden lights were as spectacular as she imagined they were.

Three elderly women warmly greeted Sjostedt. He had told Monique that they were Nina, Matilde, and Elisabeth. There were a handful of younger women and a shocking number of children. Monique realized they were her great aunts’ children and grandchildren, possibly great grandchildren as well. They all turned and looked at her.

“Our brother has told us a lot about you Monee” One of the women, presumably Nina said with a smile. “You are someone I never expected to meet.”

Monique was unsure how to respond to that, and all these people who came to meet her. What if she disappointed them?

“You are also very beautiful” Nina said in a stage whisper.



Montreal, Canada

The first day at University and Marie’s head was spinning as she arrived back at the Blackwood House. The Professors had launched right into the coursework, obviously with the assumption that it was what they were there to do. She had inadvertently frontloaded her schedule because that was what she was used to. Only finding out later that few of her fellow students voluntarily signed up for a class before Nine O’clock in the morning unless they were left few other choices. The flip side of that was that her classes were done by early afternoon.

Heading into the kitchen, Marie was looking through the refrigerator looking for something that could be prepared quickly when Margot found her. She was a bit surprised that her grandmother even knew where the kitchen was. Mostly, she preferred to tell the Housekeeper who passed it on to the Cook what she wanted a few hours in advance.

“You don’t need to be as coarse as your mother” Margot said as she saw that Marie was preparing a sandwich.

“I don’t think that coarse is the right term Grand-mère” Marie replied, “My mother always believed that we should be self-sufficient.”

She almost called Margot Oma out of long habit, but her Grandfather had warned her that it would be rather provocative to do so if she wanted to remain a guest in this house.

“We will have to agree to disagree” Margot said handing Marie an envelope, “This letter arrived for you and is this normal for you?”

It was a bit disappointing that someone had opened the letter, Marie thought to herself as she removed it from the envelope skimmed through it, but that probably wouldn’t have done them much good as it was written entirely in Japanese script. Marie wondered how Margot would react if she knew the letter was from Suga asking how she was adjusting to living in a new city and going to university.

“Yes” Marie replied without elaborating.

“You really are a polyglot?”

Marie just shrugged and smiled.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Four



7th September 1974

Falkensee. Brandenburg

In theory, they were holding Tatiana for debrief. The truth was that she felt like she had hardly done anything worth mentioning. There had been some questioning, looking at photographs of people who might have been her customers over the summer. Tatiana’s Interrogators seemed particularly interested in the big shot who had come around several times and was a close personal friend of the restaurant’s owner. He always tipped heavily, and the other waitresses had warned Tatiana to always stay at least an arms-length away from if you could help it. Then there was the Black man who had come in with the big shot a few times, many of the others had liked him on the other hand. Tatiana had not understood the appeal. He had seemed entirely too polished; it was as if he was constantly trying to be what people expected as opposed who he really was. The Interrogators wanted Tatiana’s observations on those two in minute detail. What they ate, who they had spoken with, and the like. The rest of the time she was living in a one room apartment in Falkensee while attending classes at University in Berlin this week to maintain the pretense that she was going about her life as normal. Now that it was Saturday morning, she had figured that she would have the whole day to herself. Apparently, her Superiors had other plans when Frau Sagen, not her real name, let herself in to the apartment.

“Good morning, Tatiana” Frau Sagen said.

It was an odd how Frau Sagen always said the exact same things whenever she entered the room. Her placing her briefcase on the table proved that she did the same things as well. Nothing else seemed to have changed about Frau Sagen over the three years which Tatiana had known her either. She hadn’t changed her hair and her clothes looked exactly the same.

Which was really odd.

“Did you enjoy your little holiday in Boston?” Sagen asked. That was a strange way to put it.

“I worked as a waitress the entire time” Tatiana replied, “That is hardly what I would call a holiday and I did nothing worth mentioning.”

“You only think that” Sagen said, “There were things going around you there in Boston and we really didn’t want you to know more than what anyone would expect.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Tatiana asked, finding that she simply didn’t like being left in the dark.

“It means that if Anne Morgan, who you were at that time, suddenly becomes an expert in International Affairs and domestic American politics, it would raise a great deal of suspicion” Sagen said mildly in reply.

“She might just like being informed” Tatiana said.

“Would that be in keeping with the legend that we have constructed” Sagen said.

Tatiana was really starting to dislike some of the aspects of Anne Morgan. Despite managing to get into University, she didn’t seem to have a great deal of intellectual curiosity and was a total introvert. Which was something that Tatiana had inadvertently made part of her character. Even her recent travel to the United States had been about making money rather than exploration and she seemed to fear meeting new people. Tatiana realized that even the way she had conducted herself had played into this, almost entirely because she figured that social interactions left her dangerously exposed.

“It was of particular interest to us that when you had spare time during that last week you never left your room” Sagen said.

“That was because photographs of my mother were on the front page of the New York Times and the Boston Globe” Tatiana replied, “Not just any photographs though, they were the ones of her when she was my age, and everyone says that I look like her.”

“You were afraid that someone would make that connection though no one was looking for you in Boston so even if they did, they would have put it down to mere coincidence” Sagen said, which made Tatiana’s actions during that last week seem very silly.



Mitte, Berlin

After years of work, it seemed that the considerable amount of time and money that the CIA had invested in this operation would finally be about to pay off as the returns of the State Elections here in Germany came in. While that changed nothing at the Federal Level, it showed that the National Liberals were currently ascending, and the Social Democratic Party couldn’t hold off a General Election for long. When that happened, their man on the inside would be at the heart of the new Government. The trickle of information that they had been receiving would become a flood.

That was the reason why the mood was buoyant in Berlin Station these days. After years of constantly being on the back foot when it came to their dealings with the Germans, they were finally getting a chance to start to even the score.

Robert Hale didn’t feel like celebrating, unlike the colleagues he had resented for years he knew that there was still important work needing to be done. Unlike the flashy cloak and dagger nonsense which struck him as flirting with disaster, his job was to gather the information that the policy makers back in Washington needed to make proper decisions on matters of war and peace.

That involved going through numerous publications trying to get a feel for the public mood in Germany. The upcoming elections struck Robert as a lot of noise that signified nothing. German politics had been defined by center-left and center-right political parties that mostly agreed on all the truly important issues.

Flipping open the society page of one of Berlin’s many newspapers, Robert saw the announcement of the impending marriages of two of the grandchildren of the Prince-Elector of Silesia. The implications of groom in one of the couples was the son of the current Minister of the Interior and the bride was the daughter of the Commander in Chief of the Bohemian Military were staggering when mentioned in the context of the House of Richthofen. The other couple was the less glamorous granddaughter who was marrying the son of an Auto Worker. Oddly, it was the latter marriage that Robert was having trouble figuring out the implications of.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Five



9th September 1974

In transit, rural Bohemia

Just watching the countryside roll by was something that Kurt rarely got to do anymore. There was always something that he needed to address that consumed most of his time these days. If not that then there was something that Michael had cooked up that needed his input to keep it from going completely sideways. At the moment though, Kurt was seated at his desk in the private railcar that was part of the train that was the command post of the Bohemian Military. There was a pile of paperwork he was neglecting, but with the window right there it was impossible to maintain focus. He found himself looking out at the landscape and his mind kept wandering.

It was Gerta’s idea that Kurt should recreate the train her father had used as a mobile command post during the Soviet War, albeit without the risqué paintings and red velvet wallpaper in the saloon car. Things had sort of snowballed from there. Next thing he had known he was at the Skoda Headquarters in Prague going over their proposal for specialty railcars with a communications suite and all of the equipment needed to monitor the battlefield already installed especially because he had to often integrate forces from the disparate service branches on the fly. Their thinking was that while it was initially expensive, having the Bohemian Military as a customer would just be the start. They had proven correct on that score as the head of every Military District in the German Empire had wanted one once they learned that Kurt had one. It was just another status symbol for men who had progressed far past the usual means of showing themselves superior to their peers.

It was useful though as Kurt had observed the rapid advice of the Bohemian Army Group across Bohemia in the Autumn Field Maneuvers. It had been while he was in the field that word reached him that Suse Rosa and Manfred von Mischner had told Manfred’s grandfather their intention to finally get married. Kurt understood that it was something that they had been putting it off for as long as they could in the hope that things might change, and Gerta wouldn’t turn their wedding into a massive production. That was rather optimistic on the part of Suse because nothing shy of all out nuclear war would prevent Gerta from doing that, especially if Michael and Alberta were involved. So far, Kurt had learned that was exactly what was happening, and he knew his daughter well enough to understand that this was her worst nightmare. He had expressly told her that anything stupid she might try in the way of a public scandal wouldn’t work with the players involved. Besides that, a key part of why they were in this situation was because Kurt and Gerta had exactly that sort of public scandal happen with everyone too polite to mention that Suse Rosa had been born less than seven months after their wedding.



Tempelhof, Berlin

Dieter had thought that the things that went on over the summer were done for the year. However, because Sophie had a membership at an Athletic Club that mostly catered to teenagers they access to a heated indoor swimming pool. He had been astonished that on a Sunday afternoon they would be one small group among hundreds. There were a lot of things to do, which included water slides and diving boards. Before he knew it, it was time to go home.

Dieter would have helped if he were bigger, he had offered to try but Ziska had flatly told him that she didn’t need his help as she had climbed out of the pool and made her way as best she could to the lounge chair where they had put their things. She only had one foot, which made things difficult. He had never seen her without the robot leg that she normally wore and her leg with how it ended below her knee looked odd to him, it looked like it was smooth at first until he noticed a seam of old scar tissue and knew that was from when the surgery had originally been done. Seam was the correct word for it because…

“It is rude to stare” Ziska said sharply drawing Dieter’s eyes away.

“I’m not trying to be rude” Dieter said, “I’m going to be a Surgeon one day and I just wanted to see.”

“You were curious?” Ziska asked as she pulled a sock over the stump and her knee. “I suppose that is a better reason than how most people just want to gawk at it.”

“Why did they do that?” Dieter asked.

“It was deformed when I was born” Ziska said, that was probably a question she got regularly so she swiftly changed the subject. “You are going to be a Surgeon?”

“Like Noah Bauer or Ludis Balodis” Dieter said. Dieter had watched Doctor Noah Bauer for years, but recently a television series premiered depicting a Platoon of Panzer Dragoons in Argentina during the Patagonian War. Dieter had watched as the Field Surgeon, Doctor Balodis, who was embedded in their Regiment was possibly the most courageous of them all. When Dieter had mentioned that was what he wanted to do when he got old enough, his father had misunderstood. He had thought that Dieter meant the Panzer Dragoons and in the weeks since, he had never been happier with his youngest son.

“From television?” Ziska asked as she adjusted her leg as she got it into the socket on the fiberglass prosthesis.

“Except in real life” Dieter replied, “I know a few real Surgeons like Doctor Ott, or Kiki.”

“Kiki?”

“She hates it when friends call her by her proper address” Dieter replied, “Doctor von Preussen.”

That caused Ziska to give him a look of mild surprise as Dieter felt someone grab his shoulder. He looked and saw that it was Sepp.

“Time to go to the showers Didi” Sepp said before looking to Sophie and asking, “We are meeting back in the lobby in half an hour, yes?”

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Six



11th September 1974

Montreal, Canada

In the past, Marie Alexandra’s Grandmother had always shooed her out of the room when she had tea with her friends. Today though, something was going on elsewhere in the household, so she wasn’t there just yet. Marie saw it as an opportunity to get to know her Grandmother’s friends and she figured that it was something that she probably wasn’t going to be doing again in the future because of what they wanted to talk about.

“My goodness, that really is you with Kaiserin Takako” One of women from the social circle of Marie’s Grandmother said as she showed her a photograph in a magazine of Marie sitting to Suga’s right as the Empress was entertaining members of key Humanitarian organizations. “Margot didn’t mention that were so prominent in the German Imperial Court. What are the Kaiser and his family really like?”

That was entirely because it was the German Imperial Court, but Marie had promised her Grandfather that she wouldn’t provoke her Grandmother. The trouble was that her Grandmother wasn’t making that easy. Marie had also discovered that there were a lot of things that her Grandmother had not mentioned to her friends. Unfortunately, many of those same friends were strangely enamored with European Royalty and for Marie that was an obvious source of trouble.

“Friedrich is nice, though when he gets started talking on a subject that interests him, he doesn’t stop” Marie said, “Suga… Er… Takako is who I spent the most with, I think you would probably like her. She is interested in following the example of Friedrich’s Stepmother, who works as a Social Worker.”

“You mean Kaiserin Charlotte?”

“Yes” Marie replied, much to the woman’s delight. She was starting to suspect that her own life until just a few weeks earlier had likely been this woman’s fantasy. “You understand that they are just people, right?”

“I understand” The woman replied, “But that must be so exciting, to know Kings and Queens personally.”

Marie wondered if she would be nearly so excited about Royalty if she saw what they were really like. Especially if she had the privilege of dealing with Suga and Freddy’s daughters Mirai and Alex when they were intent on being little shits? That was the sort of thing that the magazines weren’t particularly interested in. Marie seen it a great deal because as Kammerfräulein before she had left for University she had often been tasked with trying to teach those two about Court etiquette and protocol. It had been like trying to push a string.

“That is behind me I guess” Marie said, “The Empress is looking for someone to fill my position since I left.”

“Sir Malcolm and Margot are delighted that you chose to come here for University” The woman said, “And Margot said that it is about time that they were able to get you away from your mother. I understand that she is something of a tyrant, so I feel sorry for your poor father.”

“She said that?” Marie asked, wondering if her Grandmother was knowingly trying to start a war.



Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California

For weeks they had been warned that the natives were restless during rollcall at the start of each shift. Most had paid heed to that warning, some didn’t though. Ritchie woke up on a Wednesday morning in time to see Lucia off to work while he spent a day off with Stephen. When he had heard the windchimes on the back patio and the howl of the Santa Ana winds in what was already becoming a hot day, he realized that they were all in trouble. That he should expect a call at any moment telling him that it wasn’t going to be a day off after all. He made a call to his mother to send one of his sisters to babysit. If he had turned on the television he might have seen the breaking story that was unfolding at that very moment.

It was a simple enough matter. The twist though was that it wasn’t even the LAPD that had caused the incident. Instead, it was the actions of a pair of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies and outside of the Los Angeles City lines, not that it made much of a difference. A broken taillight in Westmont near the corner of Normandie Avenue and Imperial Highway resulting in a traffic stop that went horribly wrong. It probably would have been a career ending incident even if the driver had not been Black. Of course, it probably wouldn’t have escalated so quickly if that were not the case. Then with contradictory commands being yelled at a terrified driver, it was the sort of thing that happened often, and it came as no surprise that this ended with a dead driver. The complication was that this occurred right in front of a Seven-Eleven with dozens of witnesses who had been there to get something cold to drink. Ritchie heard the details much later and he would have reacted in disbelief if he had not seen that sort of thing happen a few times himself.

It didn’t take long for word of mouth to spread throughout the nearby South-Central and that was exactly the spark that everyone had worried about. No sooner than Irma got there that Ritchie got calls from the Department, his Commanding Officer from the California National Guard, and Big Mike in rapid succession. When he left his house that morning, he had no idea that he wouldn’t be back for several days.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Six



13th September 1974

Montreal, Canada

As news reached Montreal that made it seem as if the entire world had gone mad, Sir Malcolm Blackwood had received a number of calls from newspapers and even current Government Ministers asking if he had any insights based on his experience. While he did his best to answer their questions, he was secretly glad that he was retired, and that this latest crisis was someone else’s problem. Presently, he was finding that peace within his own house was also difficult to come by.

Malcolm knew about what his granddaughter was capable of because in his correspondence with Douglas the subject had come up a great deal over the previous years. How she was a chameleon of sorts, extremely capable of changing her appearance and manner radically to suit her own ends. That extended far beyond language and clothing to the point where she practically became someone else. Margot had no clue about this and that was why what happened that evening was a shock. Whatever she had done to tick Marie off must have been a doozy, because she was showing she knew exactly how that talent of hers could be weaponized.

That much was clear as Marie came downstairs for dinner.

She was wearing a dark green velvet dress that was the height of elegance. Her hair was pinned up with silver pins that had emeralds that glittered in the dining room lights, Marie was wearing matching earrings and an emerald pendent on a silver chain around her neck that Malcolm knew had been gifts from her mother. There were also three medals on bows pinned to the front of her dress. Malcolm recognized them as an Order of Louise, 1st Class, a golden Ladies Merit Cross, and a Cross of Merit for Women and Girls. Those were unmistakably Prussian in origion with the ribbons that made up the bows on two of them being black and white. When Marie spoke, it was in Metropolitan French which oddly had been the language of the German Court decades earlier and her manner was that of a highborn woman so the not so subtle message that Marie was sending Margot was rather unmistakable. That compared her, she was a provincial nobody. The proverbial big fish in a little pond. Because Marie had not actually done anything overt, Margot could only sit across the table stewing.

“The two of you need to cut this out this instant” Sir Malcolm said flatly, “I’ve had enough of both your games.”

“This is entirely one-sided” Margot replied.

“Margot, this is a continuation of what you have been doing since you first met Katherine almost thirty years ago” Malcolm said, “And Marie, do you think that I don’t recognize what you are doing? If the two of you insist on sniping at each other, then you can do it elsewhere, because I am not putting up with it for another minute.”

Neither Margot nor Marie looked happy that Malcolm had put his foot down. He knew that they would resume this the instant he looked elsewhere. For the duration of this meal anyway he would get a little bit of peace. He would take that until he figured out how to arrange détente between his wife and granddaughter.



Los Angeles, California

The California National Guard had first dibs on Ritchie’s time once the Governor had declared a State of Emergency and that elements of the 40th Division had been activated to assist the LAPD in restoring order to the city. This had been a bit awkward because Ritchie had already been in the field with the Central Division, knew what the situation was, and had been very reluctant to return to headquarters. That had resulted in him on the phone with Pat Brown as he had tried to explain what the prior hours had been like. He found it difficult to put into words things such as the smell of smoke and tear gas as wind whipped flames had consumed entire city blocks in what had become a firestorm which disturbingly reminded of photographs of places Kure or Moscow during the Second World War. The Fire Department was unable to put the fires out because of the unsafe situation and had eventually resorted to using explosives. There was also the incoherent rage that he had witnessed first-hand in that kaleidoscope of destruction. As the Department had moved to contain the disturbance to South Los Angeles but had found that there were opportunists who were taking advantage of the chaos outside the cordoned area. Then they discovered that this went far beyond Los Angeles as word arrived of disturbances in the Bay Area, Chicago, and New York. Apparently enough was enough and the State Guard was coming in.

Before he had left for Inglewood, he had spoken with Lucia briefly. Fortunately, Eagle Rock was located well outside the areas of rioting. She had been mostly concerned that Ritchie was safe. That had been good for Ritchie’s peace of mind as he had gotten into Frankenstein with Big Mike driving which had enabled him to get a bit of sleep as they had taken the long roundabout way to Inglewood. The scene at the Armory was a strange oasis of calm, of course having the growing presence of a Mechanized Division during a citywide curfew was enough to keep all but the most insane from causing trouble. Ritchie wasn’t expecting that he would be told that General Ware had asked for Sergeant Major Valenzuela to be sent to him the instant he showed up at the Armory. It seemed that he had made an impression on Governor Brown.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Seven



17th September 1974

Montreal, Canada

It was brisk autumn morning with it raining off and on. Marie Alexandra had been warned that winter here in Montreal was more severe than what she was used to in Germany. That had been pushed to the back of her mind as classes had started and she simply had not had the time to think about that. Now though, feeling the wind that cut right through the light jacket she was wearing it was hard not to focus on anything else until she walked past a shop that sold television sets.

The news was playing on the televisions in the storefront, footage of buildings on fire and massive crowds of people in the streets. Then they showed the latest development, heavily armed soldiers in green uniforms backed by armored vehicles and helicopters imposing order block by block. Marie saw one of the soldiers, who looked like he was a Spaniard giving a public statement, but Marie couldn’t hear the sound though the glass. He wore stripes on his sleeve in the manner of the American and British Armies, and there were a lot of them. The caption at the bottom of the screen identified him as Sgt. Major Richard Valenzuela, 40th Div. CA National Guard. It cut back to the news anchor who was a familiar face on Montreal television before showing more destruction in Southern California. Wildfires in other parts of the State this time.

Turning away and continuing her walk back to the Blackwood house, Marie was reminded of what her grandfather had told her about how with everything else going on in the world he would have peace under his own roof. That was nonnegotiable. He also said that to make that happen Marie and her grandmother needed to work out their differences, he didn’t care how. Preferably without any more stupid games because unless she was prepared to keep that up for the next few years, then her grandmother would win that stupid pissing contest due to exhaustion on Marie’s part. Then he had then pointed out that Marie was an extremely attractive young woman when she put in the effort like she had on Friday night and wished that in the future she would do entirely for herself. Sir Malcolm had also mentioned that he was proud that she was already so accomplished at her age.

It had taken a moment for Marie to figure out what her grandfather was getting at with that last part, then she remembered the three medals. He must have understood exactly what they meant, and she had felt a bit silly with how she had worn them deliberately to antagonize her grandmother. Still, her grandmother had made her angry with how she belittled her parent’s relationship and made her mother out to be some sort of ogre. It simply wasn’t true, and she had wanted to get back at her somehow. That just seemed childish now that she had a chance to think about it.

The next shop that Marie stopped in front of sold bicycles. Must of the colorful bicycles were by Japanese manufacturers who she had never heard of before. Considering that she didn’t want the bother of a car, but still needed to get around, a bicycle would probably be perfect for her needs. She understood that there were designs that did well going up hills which was critical in a place like Montreal. She just hoped that Sophie didn’t find out because Sophie had been trying to sell her on cycling in general for ages and Marie had resisted that mostly out of general obstinance. Now, she was annoyed that it was a practical consideration.

Shoving her hands into the pocket of her jacket, Marie continued up the street until she got to the corner. It was there that she saw something she wasn’t expecting. An elderly Black man wearing a suit and tie was handing flyers out to passersby. As she got closer, Marie saw that they read, Understanding what is really happening in Los Angeles. She instantly recognized him as being the same man she had seen outside her grandparent’s Church when she had visited Montreal five years earlier.

“Not quite Langston Hughes” Marie said as he handed her one of the flyers.

“Do I know you?” The man asked.

“No” Marie replied, “But you handed me a paper with the words of the poem Harlem five years ago as I was coming out of church.”

“I have done that a lot over the years” The man said, “And if you’ve seen the news then you know how well people have listened.”

“I remember that I tried to speak to you in Swahili” Marie, “A rather stupid assumption on my part.”

“I recall” The man said, “That was a bit strange, having this little girl with red hair saying that she had met actual Africans where she came from. That sort of thing sticks with you. You never said where you came from.”

“Tempelhof” Marie said, before finishing with “In Berlin” when she drew a blank look back.

“In Germany?” The man asked, “This is a bit distant from there.”

“I came here to go to University” Marie replied, “And I’ve family here.”

“I see” The man said guardedly.

“Most of the Africans you meet there are professionals or soldiers” Marie said, “The issues you find there are not quite as stark as here.”

“You expect me to believe that you don’t discriminate over there?” The man asked.

“Against Africans, not so much because there are so few of them” Marie replied, “If you were a Pole or Jewish it would be an entirely different story.”

The man reacted as if Marie had just said something quite funny.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Eight



18th September 1974

Berlin

Getting together with Kiki for lunch was normally the highlight of Berg’s week. That was unless Kiki was in a snit like she was today.

“I am starting to think that Zella is right” Kiki said, “That bringing a child into this world is an act of cruelty.”

“Is that how you feel about Nina?” Berg asked.

“Please, don’t, Nora” Kiki said as sat there staring at the plate of food in front of her. She had been poking at it for the last half hour after complaining about how it wasn’t to her taste today. “I love Nina and couldn’t imagine things without her, but what the Hell were Ben and I thinking?”

Berg knew that Kiki was difficult to reach when she was in a mood like this. Probably it had to do with the news. Blood and fire on television, the incoherent rage of people who had endured systematic inequity for generations lashing out, opportunists of every stripe taking advantage of the chaos. Anyone who was informed about the situation in Los Angeles wasn’t surprised that there were similar incidents in other cities that were not allowed to spiral so out of control. Still, Berg was uncomfortably aware that the same thing could just as easily occur in their own city with the wrong sort of prompting.

For Kiki it was worse because she had worked in Los Angeles for a few days, the very city that was in the news. She knew people on the ground there and her first instinct was to get involved. The trouble was that it was on the other side of the globe and Kiki knew full well that her presence alone would just make things worse. She had also mentioned in passing the death of a retired General who had helped her when she had been recovering from a skull fracture a decade earlier by letting her live on his property for a couple of months. She had needed a place to rest without the constant barrage of stimulus that came with everyday life. An isolated chalet with no electricity on a mountainside in the Alps had been perfect for that. Berg sort of felt like that was something that Kiki could use again.

“I think that you and Benjamin have a wonderful family that you would welcome a new addition to” Berg said, “Just life has gotten in the way. You didn’t bother taking a holiday this year during the summer, perhaps you should consider doing something this winter. Get some perspective and reduce the amount of stress.”

“We can try, but as Ben said, even our holidays are not really holidays” Kiki replied, “Do I need to tell you about what the trip to Russia was like?”

“I saw it in the news” Berg replied, “You did a world of good on that trip as a Goodwill Ambassador to Russia, then facilitating the reunion of Stalin’s children to show everyone that the war was truly over.”

“Not exactly a holiday” Kiki said, “Ben said that if we go on a holiday then we should go as a family and the rest of the world can go on without us for a few weeks.”

“It seems to me that he has the right idea” Berg said.

“I guess” Kiki said as she just stared at her plate with no appetite. “I should just tell Ben that is exactly what we should do, that I don’t care where we go, we just need to leave as soon as it can be arranged. We also need to stop it with this whole baby nonsense before we do something for stupid reasons.”

Looking at Kiki, Berg noticed that she looked a bit feverish and tired. That coupled with what she had already observed, there was a good chance that it was a bit late for that last part of what Kiki had just said. Berg had decades of experience in these matters. She figured that Kiki would likely take it badly if she said anything. Let her figure it out on her own, Berg thought to herself. Unless this turned into another bout of cryptic bullshit like the last time that is.



Los Angeles

It was the smell that bothered Ritchie.

People thought that when a building burnt down it was like the woodsmoke from the fire when they went camping. The truth was that everything that went into a building burnt along with it. Wood, wall insulation, the plastic in the wiring, the paint on the walls, the tiles on the floor, everything. All of that went up in flames and the smell was awful. Frequently, soldiers from the 40th had been seen wearing gas masks and that had little to do with the threat of the tear gas that was being used, it had everything to do with that smell.

Ritchie was reminded of this as he shined his flashlight into the burnt out remains of what had been a grocery store just week earlier. There were quite a few insurance companies that were going to get soaked from the events of the last few days, was the thought that running through his head as he looked at every building.

It had taken some doing for Ritchie to get himself and the rest of the 160th Regiment’s LRRP section out into the field where they belonged. He had gotten tired of being the Spokesman for the Division and the Department. They had people whose specialty that was, so let them do their job.

Big Mike had taken full advantage of the situation. It seemed that Lieutenant General Keith Ware, who commanded the 40th Division, knew Mike from watching him on TV when he had played for UCLA back in the day. So, the General had been more than happy to make the phone calls to have Mike made the Police Liaison for the duration of the crisis. It wasn’t as if he was getting called to do anything, that was until he got a call from Clair. It seemed that his wife had been trapped for the last week with their children and wasn’t happy about it. She had made him pick up Little Mike and Derik, his two oldest boys from his house. Clair didn’t care where they went, just so long as they weren’t there. Things had worked out because the 40th had need of “civilian volunteers” and there they were. Ritchie had joked that if Little Mike got the smell of Army all over him then the Navy wouldn’t take him when he turned 18 next year. Big Mike didn’t find that funny, though everyone else within earshot did.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Twenty-Nine



19th September 1974

Los Angeles

Ritchie had thought that coming home once South Central was declared pacified, as terrible as it was to use those terms about a community that was a part of his city, would be a lowkey affair. Instead, he found that his extended family along with Lucia’s was there to greet him as the great hero and that was an excuse to throw a party. A party that was ongoing in the back yard as Ritchie was in the kitchen trying to catch up with everything that had been happening at home over the last week. Everyone had seen him on television, not just in Los Angeles but nationally as well. This included Fort Drum where he still had a lot of friends and they let him know exactly what they thought of seeing him on the Evening News. Lucia had a notepad with messages written on it with requests that Ritchie call them back as soon as it was convenient. This included President Nixon, Governor Brown, Mayor Bradley, the Chief of Police, as well as a Senator, a few Congressmen and State Assemblymen.

“You had the President on the phone?” Ritchie asked Lucia who just smiled.

“Actually, it was your mother who answered the phone” Lucia replied, “She even got him to agree with her about how handsome you looked as you were answering those reporters’ questions on TV.

“Are you kidding me?” Ritchie asked in disbelief.

“No” Lucia replied.

This wasn’t the first time that Ritchie’s mother had done something like this. When it came to promoting her children, she really was fearless.

“I suppose I had better return these calls” Ritchie said.

“Save it for tomorrow” Lucia said, “Today is for us.”

It was sort of hard to argue with that, Ritchie thought to himself as they walked out the back door to the party. Celebrating Ritchie as the big hero was a bit odd considering the events of the last several days and the role he had really played in it, but right now it felt like everyone needed to blow off a bit of steam.



21st September 1974

Prague, Bohemia

Kiki had been explaining about the plans that she had been making with Ben over the last few days. The fact that this was happening at a tourney with knights jousting in plate armor and horses made the whole thing surreal. Leave it to her brother to cook something like this up and have men from around the world travel here to take part.

“That is very exciting” Birdie said as they watched from the box in the stands as a horse and rider thundered past. Seconds later, there came the sound of metal smashing into metal and the splintering of wood. The other rider came past seconds later wobbling but managing to stay on the saddle. Considering how violent the collision had been it was a wonder that neither rider had been unhorsed. It left Kiki wondering if she was going to be needed in her capacity as an Emergency Surgeon because when they got knocked off the horse, they hit the ground hard.

“Yes, from here we are going to Balderschwang so that Ben can be the Director of the Observatory” Kiki said, “Since King Albrecht of Bavaria promoted Ben to be the Graf of Oberallgäu, there have been calls for us to live part of the year there. Now seemed as good a time as any.”

What Kiki didn’t mention to Birdie was that while she was living in that rustic corner of Bavaria she would be rather difficult to contact. That was seen as something of a perk in that she needed a break from people in general for a time.

“What will you be doing?” Birdie asked.

“That is one of the things about being a Surgeon” Kiki replied, “No matter where I go there is always a demand.”

Kiki looked at the plate of cheese, fruit, and bread that had been brought out to them. This included gorgonzola and feta cheese along with the aged cheddar. Normally, she didn’t care for the strongly flavored blue cheese and feta smelled of sheep. Today, she didn’t seem to mind. The figs and apple slices were a welcome counterpart to the cheese. Her appetite had been nonexistent lately and she had felt like she was battling a minor bout of flu. It was probably that she was hungry after having eaten hardly anything over the previous days. That was until she took a drink of wine… And immediately spit it out.

“Is there a problem?” Birdie asked.

“This wine tastes like battery acid” Kiki replied.

“I should hope not” Birdie said, “That is a Muscat that is produced here in Bohemia, the Winemaker will be extremely disappointed if this was a bad batch that he sent us.”

Kiki nibbled on another piece of cheese as she watched as Birdie took an experimental sip of the wine before looking at it with a perplexed look on her face.

“Well?” Kiki asked.

“It tastes all right to me” Birdie said, “A bit on the sweet side, but that is why it matches well with strong flavored cheese.”

“That makes no sense” Kiki said.

Birdie looked at Kiki for a second, then she got a smirk on her face. “When I was pregnant with Philipp the way I tasted things changed, radically.”

Kiki looked at the piece of gorgonzola that she had been nibbling on. “Well… fuck…” She muttered.

“Language Kiki” Birdie said, “Personally I think that it is wonderful for you and Ben.”

Kiki was saved from Birdie saying anything else when Michael trotted up on that big bay stallion of his. As had been planned in advance, Birdie took off the silk scarf she was wearing, she tied it around Michael’s left arm before leaning out and kissing him. He saluted her with his lance before taking his place at the far end of the lists. The crowd loved it.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirty



1st October 1974

Wahlstatt, Silesia

When Niko was called into the Headmaster’s office he racked his brain for some infraction that he might have unknowingly committed. Or worse, be asked about whatever idiotic thing that Bas might have done despite being totally consumed by sports over the last couple months. Instead, Gruber told Niko that he had been assigned to spend the rest of the Academic Year on the Staff of Oberst von Kropp of the 3rd “Zieten” Hussar Regiment. The other detail that he learned was that the 3rd Hussars were preparing to deploy to Argentina on a League of Nations backed mission, what was dubbed Peace Keeping. These assignments were given to students as rewards, though Niko found it to be a somewhat dubious reward.

“This is an excellent opportunity for you Nikolaus” Oberstleutnant Gruber said, “In many ways I envy you for it, a real adventure.”

Niko was instantly reminded of his father’s warning about how it was called adventure once you were looking back at it through the lens of nostalgia. At the moment, it was just misery, hardship, and that death was always just around the corner. His father knew a lot about the subject having flown dozens of combat missions off of an Aircraft Carrier during the Mexican War and had been in Orbit a couple different times with the Space Program.

“What did my father have to say?” Niko asked.

“Unfortunately, the Admiral was unavailable because his Carrier Group is at sea” Gruber said, “Your grandfather told me to tell you to learn everything you can from von Kropp and that he wishes he were young enough to come with you.”

Of course, Niko’s grandfather was all for him doing this. No matter what else he had done with his life, Manfred the Elder was always a Cavalry Officer at heart. For him going to a place like Argentina to play that role would be like going to Heaven.

“As I said, this is an excellent opportunity” Gruber said, as he handed Niko a list of things he was supposed to get from the School’s supplies and a train ticket for Oberhavel where the Regiment’s Depot was located. “I told von Kropp that you are a good student and will serve him well as his aide having already been a leader among the Cadets, I trust that you will not disappoint me in that regard.”

Easier said than done, Niko thought to himself.

It was a reminder of what Bas had told him dozens of times. Cadet ranks were meaningless outside the school. Out there he would rise or fall on his own merits. If it were the later, no one would step in to stop it, though they might stop to gawk at him when he splattered on impact.



Munich, Bavaria

The Specialist they were seeing today had been highly recommended, though it only took him a matter of seconds to get on Kiki’s bad side. Ben understood that for this to work, she would need to trust whoever they saw and how he seemed to discount her opinions was a massive red flag.

“Well,” The Obstetrician said with a smile as he looked through folder with the lab results. “They double checked everything like you requested and I’m pleased to tell you that you definitely expecting.”

Ben was happy that neither he nor Kiki were in harm’s way this time. When she had unknowingly been pregnant with Nina things had taken a turn for the absurd for both of them. This time both of them were in Bavaria which had its own complications. Notably who the father-in-law of Kiki’s sister was. King Albrecht was like a force of nature here and that colored every consideration. Ben was concerned that word would get out too soon, having Kiki’s sister-in-law Alberta being the one to help her figure it out was almost as bad as them telling the sleazy tabloids themselves. Ben had known for a long time that the trouble with Birdie was that she just didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. Her with this sort of information insured that it wouldn’t remain a secret for long. When it leaked, Ben figured that Albrecht would milk the situation for all it was worth like he did with everything else. Kiki had the idea of going on to the Hohenzollern Province. It was hers as a result of her father appointing her to be the guardian of the family’s ancestorial castle and the Principality that surrounded it. That also wasn’t a great choice for a lot of reasons.

“We will need to schedule prenatal care in the weeks ahead” The Obstetrician said, “I understand that you tend to travel quite a bit, arrangements can be made for that, but I would recommend against it, also you are over thirty which further complicates matters.”

That was probably the wrong thing for the Obstetrician to have said. Ben could tell from the expression on Kiki’s face that she was fighting the urge to rip the man’s arm and beat him with it. The last few months had been a rollercoaster with them trying to get pregnant without success, then having her change her mind, only to have this happen.

“During my last pregnancy I traveled nearly the length the South America” Kiki said with words that were dripping with ice water. “Without complications.”

“You were extremely lucky” The Obstetrician replied, “And I was warned that you can be difficult when I talked to your colleagues in Berlin.”

Again, that was the wrong thing to have said. Ben wondered if the Obstetrician knew that about Kiki ahead of time and this was a ham-handed way of encouraging them to go elsewhere. He also knew that whenever Kiki got back to Berlin, whoever had spoken out of turn would not be happy.

“I think that is enough from both of you” Ben said, “Let’s get through this today and then we can make other arrangements.”

Both Kiki and the Obstetrician gave Ben a dirty look. Were they trying to antagonize each other? And if so, why?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirty-One



11th October 1974

Liebenwalde, Brandenburg

Niko’s arrival at the Depot had not worked out the way that he imagined it would. The 3rd Hussars were preparing to relieve the 1st Uhlan Guard Regiment in Patagonia. The first and only thing that Oberst von Kropp had said to him was that he had put in a personnel request for Troopers who had gone through the Alpine Training School in Bad Reichenhall because that was actually what was needed in Argentina. Niko had been just one part of what he had gotten instead. He then told Oberfeld Boettcher to find something for Niko to do until he figured out what to do with him. It took Boettcher exactly five seconds to hand Niko a shovel and tell him to follow closely.

A Cavalry Regiment that specialized in Guerrilla Warfare had hundreds of horses and mules in addition to whatever modern vehicles they used. Those were Animals that needed to be fed and watered on the north end. All of that moved in a generally southern direction until it became an issue for the Soldaten. That was where Niko came in as one of the youngest men in the Depot. He found himself shoveling manure and fouled straw into a wheelbarrow as Willi, a boy around his age who he had been sent to work with wheeled it away. He had lost count of the number of times he had filled the wheelbarrow over the previous days.

“How can you stand this?” Niko finally asked Willi who had been doing this for far longer than he had.

“Beats the Hell out of starving on the streets” Willi replied, “We get free meals and a warm place to sleep, all that is asked in return is a bit of work.”

Something about the way that Willi spoke suggested that he had experienced those things. Small wonder Niko had never heard him complain about anything. They had been sleeping with a dozen others in a bay of the barracks that reminded him of the one he had lived in back in Wahlstatt. The difference was that he didn’t have Bas around and was at the very bottom of the ladder along with Willi. Regardless of what Willi said, that situation didn’t feel particularly safe to Niko.

Leaving the stall, Niko led the horse, a big gelding, back in. He made sure that the horse had plenty to eat and drink. The horse liked it when Niko scratched behind its ears. Glancing at the number on the stall he saw the number, the one that matched the brand on the horse’s hindquarters. Niko wondered what name its regular rider gave to it. In theory, the horses were not supposed to have names because they might need to be used by different Troopers, but he knew better than that. Horses were often just as affectionate towards their people as dogs.

“You are good at that” Willi said. There had been some effort to teach Willi to ride since he had been sent here after Basic Training which had been entirely Infantry focused. That was a slow process though. Mostly because Willi looked at the horses with considerable apprehension and the horses responded in kind.

“I grew up around horses” Niko replied, “It is a necessity at my grandfather’s house because of the distances involved.”

“Where does he live?” Willi asked.

While Willi had heard Niko’s surname used, he had never made the connection with Manfred the Elder. That seemed impossible, but Niko’s grandfather had once told him why that could happen. When people pictured him, it was as the young Crimson Knight of the Skies, leading JG1 against the British and French. Or more likely these days, the actors who had played him in the movies. Opa laughed at how they were far more handsome than he ever was and most of them had become frequent guests whenever he was at his townhouse in Berlin.

“My family owns land in Silesia, Poland, and Galicia” Niko relied, “Mostly forest though.”

“So, are they rich?”

That was like asking if a mountain was tall. Niko had sat in on discussions where his grandfather’s estimated worth was the topic. One didn’t get to be a Prince-Elector after having started out as a Freiherr without having a lifetime of getting the better part of every deal along the way. That was especially true of someone who was as ruthless as Niko’s grandfather could be.

“They are” Niko replied, “As you can see, I’m not, so here I am shoveling shit with you.”

Willi accepted that and it made logical sense. Though Niko knew that it was far more likely that someone was trying to teach him a lesson. It was the same lesson that he had been required to learn again and again since he had been enrolled in Wahlstatt six years earlier.

It was then that the call came through the stables to fall in. Six years of practice made the response automatic. Niko put everything aside and fell in with the rest of the Troopers who were gathering on the Parade Ground. The entire Regiment wasn’t in Liebenwalde, not yet any way. That would come in the coming weeks as they gathered in preparation for movement. Even so, there were an impressive number of them present. Oberst von Kropp looked at them with an unreadable expression before turning on his heel and walking back to the Administration Building. Niko had realized that the problem that the Oberst had wasn’t with them, it was that peace didn’t agree with him. In the olden days he would have been one of those Officers sharpening his sword on the steps of the French Embassy, daring those inside to take issue.

Niko tuned out the Hauptmann as he gave the day’s announcements. His main consideration was lunch which was going to be served as soon as they were dismissed.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirty-Two



18th October 1974

Montreal, Canada

The Canadian Holiday of Thanksgiving had been earlier that week and Marie Alexandra was enjoying the week off. The formal dinner that her grandparents had held had not been the nightmare that she had feared it would be, mostly because her grandmother wanted to keep up appearances and there had been enough other people around for her to have plenty of people to talk to. Marie was certain that her grandmother had also happy that she had gotten a number of compliments about her lovely granddaughter and how happy she must be about her going to McGill University. That didn’t mean that Marie necessarily was interested in staying around the house. She knew that if she were around her grandmother long enough one of them was going to say something that everyone would swiftly regret. Going about her favorite activity of exploring for hidden treasure in thrift stores was far more fun.

Marie had also abided by her promise to her grandfather that she would not antagonize her grandmother. However, that had not stopped her from attending a meeting at a Unitarian Church that she was rather certain that her Grandmother would have kittens if she ever found out. That meeting was not religious in nature, instead there were discussions at length on the subject of Civil Rights. Marie had discovered that she was hopelessly naïve on the subject, learning that in Canada it was Black people, and those who she had been asked not to call Indians again after she had unthinkingly used that term, who bore the brunt of bigotry. Mr. Lewis, who she had met on the street corner weeks earlier had told her about the meeting in the first place, had also patiently answered her questions. Like why he had found her comment about Jews and Poles getting discriminated against in Germany so amusing, for example. His reply was that he was amazed by the power of human ingenuity. That had been something else that Marie had not understood, but this time had not asked him to explain further. Something else that Marie had learned at the Unitarian Church was that the people at those meetings had good reason to be suspicious of outsiders, especially one like Marie who was apparently being followed by more than one surveillance team and they had wanted to know why.

That was news to Marie, and she had been unable to answer their questions. That was why she had not been back either.

She had written a letter to Kage Akio asking for advice on how to handle the situation. Akio was an expert in these matters and wasn’t completely beholden to Marie’s mother like Aunt Asia. She had yet to receive a reply. She hoped that this wouldn’t be repeat of when she had asked him to train her in the art of Ninjutsu a few years earlier. He had told her that mastering that art was a burden that he wouldn’t wish upon anyone. A young woman like Marie needed to live her life in the bright sunlight, teaching her to ply the shadows would be like clipping a falcon’s wings, that was also the origion of the pet-name that he had called her ever since. Marie had a different perspective, she thought that learning to be a ninja would be far better than her present state of being followed around Montreal and be unable to put a stop to it.

Looking at a dress that smelled heavily of mothballs and had a few unfortunate stains, Marie wondered if it could be salvaged. It was the sort that could easily be altered to fit her, and the striped pattern was delightful. In the end she decided that it was too far gone and kept looking. She was hardly paying attention as she passed two women who were looking at a different rack of clothes.

“This will look absolutely adorable” The older woman said holding up a pullover, before her face fell. The younger woman, who Marie recognized with a shock was Henriette had been the girl who she had been pressed to become friends with when she had come to Canada when she was thirteen, looked totally indifferent.

“I cannot do this for you” The older woman said before walking off.

Henriette walked among the clothes, looking at them. As she drew closer, Marie saw that she just looked exhausted.

“Hello Henriette” Marie said with a smile, “Remember me?”

Henriette’s reaction wasn’t what Marie was expecting. She snapped out of her apathy in a heartbeat and just looked stricken. She put her hand over her mouth and fled. The older woman, who Marie remembered was Mrs. Lane, a friend of her grandmother’s years earlier. Too late, Marie realized that she had not seen her around when her grandmother’s inner circle met in the sunroom for tea.

“Look, we don’t want any trouble” Mrs. Lane said, “Your grandmother can be vindictive to those who fail to live up to her standards.”

Marie was a bit confused by that. “That is something that I am perfectly aware of” She replied, “Would you mind telling me what happened?”

“You don’t know?” Mrs. Lane replied growing angry, “Unbelievable! Hennie!”

Mrs. Lane then walked, practically running, off towards the door in the direction that Henriette had gone, and Marie was left standing there wondering exactly that had been about.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirty-Three



20th October 1974

Liebenwalde, Brandenburg

After days of being stuck in the stables, Oberst von Kropp finally summoned Niko to his office. This didn’t help matters when Niko entered the office and von Kropp made no secret that he hated the smell of him. He wondered what von Kropp had expected to happen considering what he had been put to work doing. The last few days, Niko had found that he could get away from mucking stalls by assisting one of the farriers who worked for the Regiment. That involved doing important work that had a direct bearing on the coming mission in the months ahead. It was something that shouldn’t be lost on anyone in this room, though Niko wasn’t stupid enough to think that they had time to spare much thought regarding him. Movement was only a matter of days away, Niko wasn’t aware of any of the details or the present date for that matter, but that was all anyone was talking about.

“Yes, Nikolaus” von Kropp said looking at him across that desk that dominated his office. “I am rather surprised that you are still here.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Niko asked in reply.

“Well, considering the work you’ve been doing, I would have thought that a young man of your social standing would…” von Kropp said his voice trailing off. He had been about to say that he had expected Niko to just quit, that had probably been what he had been aiming for, proving that von Kropp knew next to nothing about him. “Never mind that, you put us in a rather ticklish position.”

Yes, and? Niko thought to himself as he waited for the rest of the Oberst’s thoughts.

“We are going to be shipping out starting tomorrow” von Kropp said, “As you know we are going to the Patagonian Frontier. It is an unsettled region and not without danger. Your Headmaster at the Wahlstatt Institution said that you can return with a glowing report from me, if that was what you want.”

The way he said that suggested what his preference would be.

For Niko, it was a bit different. His whole life he had heard stories about his grandfather, father, and older cousins. What they had done to earn their place in the world. Here he was with a chance to exactly that but was being encouraged to do what was safe. Niko realized even as he had that thought, that if he returned to Wahlstatt now it would set the tone for the rest of his life.

“Then I guess I had better get ready to leave for Argentina, Sir” Niko said, daring von Kropp to order him back to Wahlstatt.

The Oberst just stared at him, looking a bit surprised.



Montreal, Canada

This was probably the wrong thing to do, but Marie Alexandra didn’t like the idea of not knowing what was really going on. Long experience with her mother had taught her that getting surprised by unexpected events was not in her interest. So, that was why she had taken the time to look at up the address of the Lane family. She would have a few answers about what was going on and perhaps she could prove to these people that she wasn’t the sort of ogre that her grandmother was.

It was a brisk autumn day, with the weather report saying that there was a chance of snow that night. The slate grey sky did little to dispel that. During the summer, this neighborhood was probably quite pleasant, with tree shaded streets and the sort of houses owned by management types who worked downtown. These were the people who aspired to greater things. It was easy for Marie to see how the Lanes fell into the orbit of Marie’s grandmother. It was also easy to see how precarious that was. These people managed the businesses that the likes of Margot Blackwood owned controlling interest in, earning her disfavor could cost them dearly.

Screwing up her courage, Marie walked up to the front door and knocked. After a long minute, a woman answered the door. She had an olive complexion and was dressed in the manner of housekeepers. “Yes?” The housekeeper asked in oddly accented French, followed by “Can I help you?” In English.

Marie guessed that those were not languages she was particularly comfortable with. She also made an educated guess where this woman came from.

“I am a friend of Henriette” Marie said in Spanish, though that wasn’t true. “I wanted to see how she is doing.”

“Miss Hennie will be happy to have a visitor” The housekeeper said, happy to be speaking with someone in her own tongue. “Perhaps it will cheer her up, she has been so depressed lately.”

With that Marie followed her into the house. Walking upstairs, she saw paintings hanging on the wall. Mass produced, but in keeping with the décor of the rest of the house. They were along the lines of Marie’s assessment of the rest of the neighborhood.

“Miss Hennie” The housekeeper said, knocking on a door before opening it. Though it was early afternoon, Henriette was still wearing a nightgown. She also had dark rings under her eyes like if she had not slept in weeks. As before she looked stricken to see Marie. “You’ve a guest.”

It only took Marie a few seconds to figure out what was really going on with Henriette. A baby woke up in its cot and started crying which explained why Henriette looked so tired. Henriette looked at Marie despondently until Marie gently picked up the baby and held it on her shoulder rocked it until it stopped crying.

“You are good at that” Henriette said, “While I’m rubbish.”

“Don’t be silly” Marie replied, “I’ve had a lot of practice, with my friend Suga’s little boy, though he is four now, and Kiki’s little girl.”

“You don’t share your grandmother’s objections?” Henriette asked, “Alice is why your grandmother froze my mother out.”

“What do I care?” Marie said as Alice’s breathing became even as she fell asleep. “And I think Alice is a wonderful name. When I was little I read Lewis Carroll’s books over and over until they fell to pieces.”

“Really?” Henriette asked.

“Yes” Marie replied, “My brother thinks I ought to write a dissertation on those books, I mostly have them memorized so it would be extremely easy.”

“Dissertation?” Henriette asked a bit confused.

“I started University this fall” Marie replied, “McGill.”

That turned out to be the worst thing that Marie could have said because Henriette started crying.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirty-Four



23rd October 1974

Rio Gallegos, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina

This was not a small logistical undertaking, and they were part of the first wave. The rest would arrive in the coming days. They were moving tons of equipment and men across an ocean with the added complication of animals thrown into the mix. Decades earlier, it would have involved weeks spent at sea on a ship. These days it involved an entire day spent on a Junkers “Herkules” Transport airplane. The trouble was that the horses absolutely hated the sound of the four turbofan engines and several of them had needed to be sedated. There had been Veterinarians on hand, but Niko and Willi had been among the most junior of the men aboard the plane so much of keeping the horses calm had fallen on them. That meant more than a day in the air and no sleep. Leading a mule down the ramp, Niko saw Oberst von Kropp with his Staff walking off a different Transport that had an Iltis Utility Vehicle rolling down the ramp. The intention was to go places without roads, that didn’t mean that they didn’t have need for motor vehicles. That meant that the Oberst had gotten a quieter, most certainly less odorful flight.

“How do you like that?” Niko asked to no one in particular. He had been sent to the 3rd Hussars to learn from Oberst von Kropp. As it happened, Niko was getting quite an education, probably not what the Prussian Institution had in mind though. Comments that he had heard his mother making about rising to the level of your incompetence came to mind.

What the Oberst was or wasn’t doing was hardly Niko’s focus as he climbed onto the saddle of his horse thankful that the long coat he had been issued had been made with riding a horse in mind, the broad-brimmed hat ha had been issued was supposedly worth its weight in gold according to Manny. He had not gotten to know the bay horse well enough to come up with a name yet, just the KP0122-3H from his brand. Niko knew that it stood for Cavalry Horse n.0122-3rd Hussar Regiment. Opa had warned him that he and the horse would need to work out an understanding because it was a mutually beneficial partnership. The rub was that he couldn’t very well explain that to the horse and he had tried to turn and bite Niko on a few occasions.

Niko grabbed ahold of the lead for the mules that he was supposed to take to the Depot. The mules were trained to simply follow the mule or horse in front of them, so long as nothing else was asked of them they were fairly easily handled. That was unless Willi was the one holding the lead, Niko had stepped in to prevent that particular calamity.

After listening to Manny describe Rio Gallegos it had loomed large in Niko’s imagination. Actually, seeing it was different. The sleepy Provincial Capital that his cousin had described was gone because the railroad that had been built to facilitate the Patagonian War had caused a flood of people into the region. Adventurers, speculators, prospectors, tourists, and opportunists. Leaving the airport, Niko saw that the streets were full of traffic and pedestrians. Volkswagen, Kubelwagens, Bergwinds and the civilian version of the Iltis were popular here along with Ford and Chevrolet Pickup trucks, and America’s answer to the Iltis, called the Jeep after the character from the Popeye cartoons. It was noticeable that nearly all the vehicles were four-wheel drive. Manny had said that with the exception of some of the main Federal Highways, paved roads more or less ended outside of Rio Gallegos. Niko also saw that no one batted an eye at seeing horses and mules going down the road.

“So, this is Argentina?” Willi asked looking at the baren hills in the distance.

“Yeah” Niko replied as they passed a tree that was just starting to get the first green leaf buds on it.

“I thought it was the fall?” Willi asked, pointing at the tree they were passing.

“The seasons are reversed” Niko replied, “This is South America, the Southern Hemisphere. You know?”

“Ah, yeah” Willi said awkwardly. Had Willi really not known about that? Niko thought to himself. He also couldn’t help but notice that Willi sat in the saddle of the Sorrel mare that he was riding like a sack of flour. Apparently he had lived an apartment tenement in Reinickendorf that had been torn down with only a few weeks warning to the residents. His family had been scattered and joining the Heer had been a frantic effort to escape a spiraling situation. Niko was unclear as to how exactly Willi had ended up in Cavalry.

“Someone has to teach you how to ride properly” Niko said, knowing that he had basically just volunteered.

“Not all of us are born on a horse” Willi said, and Niko almost laughed at that.

“When I was five Opa insisted that I learn with him as a teacher” Niko said, “He is one of the greatest heroes of the realm but as a teacher, he is the sort who throws you in the deep end of the pool to teach you to swim.”

“My Opa just likes to keep pigeons and tell stories about the old days” Willi said, he had listened wide-eyed to Niko’s stories about how he had spent his time on his grandfather’s estate. Some of the things that Niko and Bas had done. Even some of the things his cousin Marie Alexandra, Bas’ little sisters, and even Mathilda got into. “He also loves to read cowboy novels, Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Three-Ten to Yuma and whatnot.”

They passed a seedy looking tavern that had a number of Gauchos standing out front watching them pass. Tough looking men who knew every centimeter of this land, Manny had told Niko all about them. How they had bled the Chileans white.

“You should write your Opa and tell him you are in the Wild West” Niko said.

“Really?” Willi asked, surprised by that.