Chapter Five Hundred Thirty-Eight
14th April 1946
Berlin
“You’ve seen how your cousins live” Asia said, “Is that the sort of life you want?”
The previous Friday, Kat had come home furious with Gianna for being so careless. She might trust Douglas personally but the amount of money that Press Agencies around the world were offering for an authenticated photograph Jehane Thomas-Romanova was enough to tempt anyone, not to mention the prestige of having gotten that photograph. Douglas was in possession of the negatives for several and Gianna had been speaking in a language that waved a bright red flag towards her personal origins to someone who would recognize it. Kat had told her that while Gianna could do whatever she wanted when she turned eighteen in a few months, until then Kat was directly responsible for what happened to her. Kat had said that Gianna had gotten lucky in that Douglas had thought that she had been messing with him. Since then Gianna had been confined to quarters as it were. The only saving grace was that Asia was willing to keep her company even if she agreed with Kat in this matter and thought that Gianna had been reckless. The worst part was that Gianna knew that they were probably right.
“I just wanted to have some fun” Gianna replied, talking at the ceiling above her bed.
“You wanted to show off how smart and clever you were” Asia said.
“That could be fun” Gianna said back.
Gianna could feel Asia’s eyes boring in on her. If only she had different Grandparents, then she could be as free as Kat and Asia were.
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Kat was back to talking to the Empress on a Sunday afternoon. This time it had nothing to do with the day’s events. Instead they were talking about the restructure of the Intelligence Agencies. The BND and Federal Internal Intelligence, the two former portions of Abwehr that had been split apart.
“How much complaining was there?” Kira asked.
“I came in during the tail end of it” Kat said, “But most of the complaints were because the idea didn’t come from in house. It is based on the British model, for a whole lot of reasons involving security and secrecy. You know how not invented here works?”
Kira smiled at that, “I’m aware of how fragile egos work” She said, “Eventually they’ll try to say that they would have come up with it on their own when the whole world knows how they react to change.”
“Speaking of change” Kat said, “If you could throw your weight behind my petition.”
“You know I can’t comment about political matters” Kira said, “And I’m surprised that you want a very profitable tenant gone from your property.”
“That tenant has worn out its welcome” Kat replied.
Judenbach
The last few days had been difficult for Sven Werth. The week prior an Inspector had come through asking for volunteers, preferably able-bodied bachelors, to join a new investigative Agency that was to support and coordinate the State and Federal Police. Then they had been sent to this delightful slice of Hell in the back country somewhere. Sven along with all the other volunteers had swiftly realized that they would be surrounded by super intense military types who saw them as unwelcome dilettantes in their world.
The worst of them was a Marine Recon Oberlieutenant named Dietrich Schultz, he came across like an affable dope but looking at his eyes it was wheels within wheels. He was said to come from a military family and had excelled during his long tenure in the Pacific, being there from the beginning to the end. He had a thug named Reier constantly at his side, the two of them screamed brains and muscle to Sven. They might have been considered good soldiers for the Empire, but they reminded Sven of the worst sort of criminals he might encounter.
There had been a series of pranks and more than a few fights in the shadows. These soldiers may have been among the best fighters in the world, but they were trained to fight in groups, even the SKA who were trained to work in groups of four to six. When it came to brutal close in fighting at the individual level few were better than the volunteers from the Federal Police were.
Seattle, Washington
For the last week the FBI Field Office had been in an uproar. There had a series of odd incidents over a single morning that no one had been able to get a handle on. A week earlier the brakes had failed on a parked truck and it had plowed into a car containing two Agents. Then two more had had come down with food poisoning. And that had been merely been the start. It had been one thing after another after that. Then by midmorning it had stopped. The investigation had revealed exactly nothing, just a series of unfortunate events. No one was willing to buy that, except claiming that there was an invisible saboteur preventing them from working in Downtown Seattle seemed like a good way to end up tossed down the nut hatch. The Agents still on hand had found themselves spread thin trying to cover one of the largest seaports on the West Coast.
At the same time, they were still having to deal with the backlog from that morning. There had been several low priority surveillance operations that had fallen by the wayside.
