Chapter Six Hundred Fifty-Eight
23rd May 1948
Near Kleinburg, Silesia
“See the size of this sow?” The Game Keeper asked, “The only explanation is that its escaped livestock.”
An otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon had been interrupted by rifle fire. The Graf had decided that he needed to do something about the feral swine that had increased in number on his land in recent years. Ilse had discovered that he subscribed to the school of thought that when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. The Graf liked hunting and he would seldom pass up the opportunity. The weeks that Ilse had spent observing had only left her with the knowledge that she really had a lot to learn about the ecosystem and didn’t know enough yet to have an opinion about his conservation practices. The animal in question was huge, even Ilse knew it had no business being in the forest. The 9.3mm rifle bullet had punched through the animal through the ribs just behind the right foreleg, where the heart and lungs would be.
“Will you be interested in the postmortem?” The Graf asked. with a bit of dry sarcasm.
“That won’t be necessary” Ilse replied, she had a feeling that she would be seeing it turn up on the dinner table soon enough. She didn’t need anything else to put her off. Pork had to come from somewhere though. “An inventory on the stomach contents would be helpful though.”
“I think we can arrange that” The Graf said as he loaded two fresh cartridges into his rifle and closed the breech. Manfred didn’t know what to make of Ilse yet. Käte had invited her to observe the forest in the springtime. His concern was that she would be like her older sister, would assume that she knew everything already and full of her own self-importance. Fortunately, she seemed serious in her stated intent to learn while she was here. The main difficulty that he had was that Ilse looked far more like Hans than Katherine did. A reminder of his dullard of a Son-in-Law was not exactly a welcome development.
That was of minor concern, he wanted to be done with this problematic sounder before nightfall.
Montreal
Kat was pushing herself hard as she ran through the entrance of the park, trying to beat back her frustrations under the pounding of her feet. “The last thing we need is for you to become an expert at hiding what’s going on with you” were the words that Douglas had used when he had talked to her the night before. He’d learned through Malcolm what she had been doing. In addition of her having to decide about her future career she was still reeling from the death of Erma Tangeman, the person she might have talked about with, Peter Holz had been unavailable, for obvious reasons. She ran past the park bench where she had been going to get some privacy the last few days, that was out.
Later, back at the house. Her hair still wet from the shower, Kat was sitting in the parlor drinking coffee, observing Margot as she worked on some project and pretended that Kat wasn’t in the room. She was hardly paying attention when Emma entered the room. “A friend of yours is here, she wants to see you” Emma said, then in a hushed tone. “Did you really break her out of prison?” There was the sound of something breaking when Margot heard that. Kat looked over and saw Sibéal O’Keefe peeking around the doorway.
“It’s a long story” Kat replied as she got up, “She never should have been there in the first place.”
As Kat led Sibéal out to the front porch she could see that the move to Montreal had been good for her. Had it really been more than a year since she’d the Irish girl?
“I never got a chance to thank you” Sibéal said, “You, Mister Kennedy and Doctor Tangeman helped me when no one else would. I was sorry to hear about Doctor Tangeman, I lit a candle for her this morning at Norte-Dame just this morning.”
Doctor Tangeman would have found that amusing, not the least because of her withering opinion of the Catholic Church.
“I was glad that we were able to help you” Kat said, unsure as to what else to say.
“I know that it’s your job to help those who have no voice, but I wanted to thank you anyway.”
Kat could think of many ways she might have described her job, what Sibéal had just said would not have made that list. “Thank you” was all Kat could think to say.
Seattle, Washington
Tilo Schultz was such an idiot, Nancy concluded. She had dropped him off at the train station the night before. He was going to Chicago and then points beyond. There was a part of her that wished she was going with him, there was also a part of her that wanted to strangle him for just showing up with no warning. Then there were her father’s actions, if her and Tilo were an item that would be one thing, but this was another. Her father had acted horribly, Tilo had made a point of not retaliating in kind but Nancy knew from her conversations with Kat that he to be in Marine Recon he would have had to have been through Judenbach, to even be invited to train in that place required being totally ruthless. And as an Officer. That meant that he had been following a strategy, but to what end?
“Who was that cute guy waiting for you downstairs yesterday?” Beatrice asked interrupting Nancy’s thoughts, “And why did your father deck him?”
Beatrice seemed incredibly delighted to have this conversation. She was going to be disappointed because it was conversation Nancy wasn’t the least bit interested in having.
