Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-Seven



4th February 1979

Mitte, Berlin

It was Sunday morning and all that was left of the weekend was the long trip back to Tzschocha. Gretchen was not looking forward to that part. There was the trip itself, long hours on the train to Görlitz and then more time spent on a bus. Finally there would come getting back to the school itself. The staff was always on the lookout for them trying to bring back any sort of contraband.

It seemed strange to Gretchen as she had written at length in her latest letter to Erich. How the Tzschocha Gymnasia was encouraging girls in her class to travel to Berlin on the weekends for the Winter Social Season. She understood that it was for the same reasons that Gretchen and Eddi had been encouraged to attend formal dances at Wahlstatt when they had been younger, so that young Ladies could meet boys of the same social standing. For Gretchen that would have meant dancing with Sabastian and Niko, which would have been painfully awkward for a lot of different reasons. She remembered that she’d had a schoolgirl’s crush on Niko, to the point of being eaten up jealousy when she had seen his reaction when he had first met Monique Chanson. Sabastian was her older brother, so of course it would be awkward mostly because he still treated her like if she was still a small child.

Gretchen had actually attended the Wahlstatt Institute for a year before figuring out that it wasn’t a good fit and had received a different sort of encouragement, namely, to leave. She had then attended a Liberal Gymnasia in Berlin with a strong focus on Academics. There was an American term that she had heard, latchkey kid, used to describe her situation. Gretchen had managed to mess that arrangement up and had been sent to Tzschocha where a close eye could be kept on her and that meant attending school with her sister Anna. It wasn’t entirely bad though. She had met Mathilda Auer and Edmée Adenauer. Joining their little found family with their shared dislike of Anna and her friends had been happy coincidence. The fact that they all knew Nella and Nan, the two youngest daughters of the Hohenzollern Family and had been invited into their circle of friends.

Still, Gretchen was noticing that her friends were sort of odd at times. Sophie and Nan were extremely close, Nella said that it was because they shared the bond of having had miserable childhoods. Nan had been celebrating her liberation having learned that the man she had thought was her father, wasn’t. That seemed like an odd thing to celebrate, but as Nella had pointed out to Gretchen, their parents were generally good people. Sophie and Nan had not been as fortunate. Nella said Nan had thought that she was a direct relation to a real monster, so bad that she preferred being illegitimate. She knew that Nan had been adopted by Nalla’s family, she just had never heard any of the backstory. How bad could it possibly be?

All of that had been discussed at length on a lazy Sunday morning. They had all been invited to another social event the night before, one where it was regarded as important for Nella to attend as a representative of her family who still resided in Berlin. The rest of them had been along as moral support. Gretchen had no idea that Craft Guilds were still a thing but had found the evening pleasant, even if that had involved spending the evening talking about Metalwork, Carpentry, and Basketweaving, among other things. It seemed that there was a serious movement to revive what were regarded as lost industries. One question that had been asked was what Gretchen’s plans were for Carnival? The last Tuesday of February this year was going to be the last big party that would mark the end of the Winter Social Season. Gretchen had not even thought about that until it had been brought up. Gretchen’s father had been raised Catholic even if he saw religion as something of a joke and her mother was sort of agnostic. She said she had never liked the organized part of organized religion. Gretchen supposed that it was a big deal but had written in her letter to Erich about how it didn’t feel that way to her. There didn’t need to be too much of an excuse for the people in Berlin to throw a party and she had lived in the city for most of her life. So the prospect of that left her a bit cold. She just hoped that her friends understood if she told them she wasn’t interested.



Dublin, Ireland

Did anyone really know Marie Alexandra?

That was the central question that Jackie had been pondering since she had moved in with the German Princess. Marie was painfully shy, but loved to talk to people from other countries when she met them in the many languages she was at least conversant in. There was also the ways she radically changed her appearance, frequently several times in the course of a day. Jackie had realized that she could easily walk right past Marie on the street and not recognize her.

At the same time, there was how Marie dressed when she was just in the apartment they now shared. On weekends, Marie might not even get dressed, wearing those faded plaid flannel nightgowns all day. The rest of the time it was a red sweatshirt with the logo for McGill University across the front of it and old blue jeans with the knees torn out. Jackie could see that red looked terrible on Marie. With how she carefully constructed her appearance, was that also a disguise aimed at Jackie? There was simple no way to answer that question.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-Eight



8th February 1979

Dublin, Ireland

Ed could think of a lot of places he would rather be. The US Department of Justice was trying to collect an American, an alleged bank robber, who had fled to Ireland one step ahead of the FBI and New York City Police. Someone had tipped off the Justice Department, supposedly a girlfriend who had found out about the scumbag’s wife back in New York, and the Garda had picked him up. That part was simple enough. It was then that the Extradition process had gotten tricky. It seemed that the Irish Government was not particularly thrilled with some of the aspects of American Law and had made the treatment of the scumbag during the trial and in whatever came afterwards a big deal.

A big part of this mess was a Defense Lawyer who was extremely well known to the Irish cops and Prosecutors as someone whose very presence could ruin your day, John Kennedy. Ed had occasionally encountered Kennedy professionally and that had not been a fun experience. Somewhat to Ed’s surprise, Kennedy was American by birth, but had immigrated with his family back to Ireland in the ‘30s and was the older brother of Edward Kennedy, a prominent Irish Politician. Ed had been unable to figure out if that information was useful at all. So far it hadn’t been. The Judge assigned to this case had basically implied to Walt Johnson, the Legal Attaché from the US Embassy, that they needed to come up with a deal themselves before this case got any more political. Then Ed and Jimmy ended up on an elevator with Kennedy, an unfortunate coincidence that wasn’t comfortable for any of them.

“My client is understandably worried about how he has the State of New York and the Federal Government against him, he won’t get a fair shake” Kennedy said.

“He should have thought about that before he fled to Ireland after gunning down a security guard in a botched robbery” Jimmy said, only to have Kennedy hold up one finger.

“Alleged” Kennedy replied, “This is exactly the sort of thing that that my client is concerned about.”

While Jimmy Hovanesian had come a long way in the year and a half that Ed had worked with him, he still tended to run his mouth at the wrong times. With someone as slick as Kennedy, that could easily prove disastrous. The last thing they needed was Kennedy arguing to the Judge that Jimmy’s attitude was representative of not only the FBI, but the entire Justice system back home.

“What my partner is trying to say is that Mr. Donnel is accused of some very serious crimes” Ed said, “It is everyone’s interest to keep proceedings fair and impartial.”

Both Jimmy and Kennedy gave Ed a look that said “Bullshit.” Mercifully, the doors of the elevator slid open. In the lobby of the Courthouse a young woman, late teens, or early twenties, if Ed had to guess, who was conservatively dressed was waiting, Ed could see that she had the combination of long red hair that hung nearly to her waist and blue eyes that was rare pretty much everywhere but Ireland. She said something to Kennedy in what Ed recognized as Gaeilge, the native language of Ireland that the Government had been pushing for decades as in their desire to erase the remaining signs of the English occupation from their culture. Ed had been forced to listen to many long-winded stories in that frustrating tongue as the subjects of investigations delighted in stymieing his efforts. Despite living and working in Ireland for years now, he was lucky if he could pick up even every third word. It was something that he would not miss about this country.

Kennedy laughed at something the girl said before turning to Ed and Jimmy, “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ve invited Máire Alastríona Coilldubh, my young Protégée to lunch and you two are not invited” He said, “So good day Mr. O’Neill.” He rather pointedly ignored Jimmy. Ed only hoped that Jimmy wouldn’t take the bait in what was an obvious trap, fortunately he did this time.

“Mentoring her must be a real hardship” Billy said as they watched John Kennedy chatting with the girl as they walked off. Ed wasn’t about to disagree with Jimmy on that score.

Ed just shrugged.

For all he knew John Kennedy was telling the truth about being the girl’s mentor, however he had read Kennedy’s FBI file. Former US Navy ONI, which he had left for reasons that the Navy and US Government had not included for some reason. He had fought with the Irish International Regiment against the Russians in the Soviet War. Supposedly Kennedy had been a real tomcat back in the day. So it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise for Ed if he eventually learned that the relationship wasn’t wholesome.

“Rich guys get all the perks” Ed replied.

With that, Walt Johnson walked out of the elevator.

“Happy to be back in the courtroom, Sir?” Jimmy asked.

“I was in Probate Law and Estate Planning in Southern California before the friend of a friend talked me into taking this job as a second act” Walt replied, “Fleeing criminals, Gangsters, the remnants of the IRA and Orangemen acting like it is still 1916. It is far more than I bargained for.”

“Too much excitement?” Ed asked.

“Sometimes, perhaps” Walt said, “But I think that when the new Administration comes in and I can finally go home, I’ll miss it.”

“You hadn’t heard” Jimmy asked, “There is a move on to get Dick Nixon to run for reelection next year.”

The look that Walt gave Jimmy suggested that was something else he had not bargained for.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-Nine



9th February 1979

Troyes, France

“Having the daughter of Field Marshal von Holz in my parlor as my guest would have killed my poor husband” Estelle said, “If he were still alive that is.”

Zella and Estelle had been talking while they had watched Yuri set up the video camera on its tripod. It seemed that Estelle was always happy to have any visitors, even going so far as to greeting Zella and Yuri at the door wearing what were clearly her best clothes.

The apartment had an extremely lived in feel. Probably because Estelle Roy de Mendette had lived here for years, ever since the husband she had mentioned had died according to the materials that ARD had provided her. Zella had grown tired of Ozzy and Ian’s antics over the prior months, with them arguing over what to name the new band as the recording grew closer to completion. They were completely ignoring the real problems they had despite Zella trying to bring it up with them several times over the prior weeks. With Ozzy’s involvement, the executives from the various record companies that Zella had spoken had been thinking that it would be another Mythology album. Instead, they were recording an album that those same executives couldn’t wrap their heads around. Perhaps it was because Zella had inadvertently turned Ozzy onto the work of Composer Piere Henry among other things. The rest of the band was not in the least bit interested in reprising old ground even if their music was clearly based on it.

After months of babysitting four grown men in addition to caring for Irina, Zella had been in desperate need of a palate cleanser when ARD had called and asked if she wanted to travel to France and interviewing Estelle, who had appeared in a short film during the Silent Era called the Cat’s Breakfast with her Grandmother and cat in 1906 as a Human-Interest piece. Somewhat surprisingly, Estelle knew exactly who Zella was. It shouldn’t have been, Metz was only a couple hundred kilometers away and Troyes was well within the broadcast range of the ARD affiliate located there.

This was also the first time that Zella had been working with Yuri in a few years. That had been a condition of her going back to work at ARD. By now their relationship was an open secret, just no one was making a big deal of it.

“Whatever became of you?” Estelle asked, “You used to be on the Boche channel all the time, and then you were gone.”

“Maternity leave” Zella replied, “Life happened.”

“I know all about how that works” Estelle said happily. Zella had noticed that there were hundreds of photographs around the parlor, three or four generations of Estelle’s family. “Your child is well?”

“My little girl, Irina is going to be turning three next month” Zella replied.

“She also has a few other children who are in their thirties” Yuri said, earning a dirty look from Zella.

“I have been working as a Manager of sorts slash Publicist for a Rock band” Zella said, “Four grown men who can act worse than children at times.”

Estelle gave Zella a knowing smile. “Enjoy your daughter being that age, they grow up extremely fast” She said.

With that Yuri got the camera working and signaled to Zella that the interview was about to begin.



Dublin, Ireland

Marie’s old Schwinn three-speed bicycle had been shipped to Ireland with her other things. She had not really needed it, living within a stone’s throw of Trinity College. It had come in very useful this afternoon as Marie had been feeling restless and it was good for putting some distance between herself and her problems on a Friday afternoon.

With it being February in Dublin it was still cold and drizzly, still there was the feel that Spring was just around the corner. Jack Kennedy still wanted Marie Alexandra to help him with what he said would probably be his final great case. She doubted that though. Jack found too much meaning in his work and Marie figured that if he died in the Courtroom in the middle of arguing against some great injustice on behalf of a client, it would be with a smile on his face.

The other day, when Marie had seen Jack get out of the elevator with those two FBI Agents she had nearly had a panic attack and had started talking to him in Irish worried about why they were there. She had recognized them for what they were instantly having dealt with them too many times in Canada. It wasn’t as if she could run away.

With Jackie having moved into the apartment and Fianna popping in most afternoons to make sure that they were taking care of themselves, Marie was really starting to envy Tatiana. Her older sister was working in the German Embassy in Washington DC, and no one seemed to think that she needed people to keep an eye on her. Of course, for as long as Marie could remember Tatiana had been contrary just for the sake of being contrary. Marie’s mother had insisted that she needed help because she would accept it. Tatiana would have told their mother to get stuffed. Marie didn’t have it in her to do that.

Coming around a corner, Marie came into view of the Irish Sea. Turning East, she rode towards Howth. She had heard that during the Summertime this whole area and its beaches would be swarmed with tourists. That wasn’t something that Marie had any intention of sticking around for. It would be nice if she could go on another adventure with Tatiana like they had when they had toured Spain a couple years earlier.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty



10th February 1979

Santa Monica, California

The day before, Stanley McGregor had seen seagulls in the quad of his High School. To those in the know, it meant that a major Winter swell was going to be coming in off the North Pacific and standing on the shore Stan could see that the waves were not disappointing. Finding someone with a car who could give Stan a lift to the beach had hadn’t been too hard because a lot of his friends were coming here as well, still Stan wished for the millionth time that he had a car. It wasn’t like he could take his board on the bus.

The real trouble was that Stan’s mom didn’t want him out on the waves today, she wanted him hitting the books, saying that when he started college next year he had to be ready because no one was going to help him when he got there. He had pointed out that he could always join the Army like Mr. Valenzuela who lived next door had, earning him a threatening look from his mom in the process. “Over my dead body” had been her response. Stan had been joking about that. The Army sucked if it was like what he had seen in the movies and Mr. Valenzuela could be a real asshole if you pissed him off. Having a guy like that as your boss? No thanks. Stan had once mentioned that to Mr. Valenzuela’s little brother Mario by accident when he had come to visit. They had been talking about surfing, which Mario knew a lot about having surfed waves from Big Sur all the way down to places in South America and Asia that Stan had never even heard of. Mario had laughed at him and said that Stan should be so lucky to be under Mr. Valenzuela’s command. A Warrant Officer in the Green Beret was a big deal, even from the perspective of Mario who said he was in the Army Rangers. Stan had no idea what any of that meant.

The rain was drumming on Stan’s head as he waded into the surf. His hair was already plastered to his head, so he wasn’t worried about it getting wet. The last time his grandparents had visited California, his grandfather had asked when he was planning on getting a haircut, cause he looked like a girl. What had happened with his father, who Stan had never actually met, was already bad enough. Stan’s mother had told him not to take any of that seriously. Her father was of a different generation.



Judenbach

Tactics were dictated by the weapons. Erich had been informed of that again and again. The men of the Squad he was in charge of had to approach every situation differently if they had to use weapons acquired locally as they couldn’t always count on being provided by the Heer or Kaiserliche Marine supply chains. If that meant bolt-action hunting rifles and revolvers like the Gauchos who had fought on their side during the Patagonian War, so be it. The Gauchos had been extremely effective against the Chileans who had been armed with what Erich himself would have deemed modern weapons.

Erich felt like he was in a Cowboy movie as he fired the Double-Action Redhawk .44 Magnum pistol at the targets before ducking back behind cover to reload. The need to keep track of the number of shots fired and to always maintain cover. He’d had trouble wrapping his mind around “Imperial” measurements as he loaded the cartridges into the cylinder. The metric measurement being 10.9x33mmR was something that he just didn’t need to think about. It certainly didn’t roll off the tongue. Using it gave Erich an appreciation of automatic weapons. It was certainly far more practical than that weird French Hotchkiss submachine gun that folded up he’d been using last week. It also explained why the Gauchos liked their knives so much. That was okay, the Instructors had told Erich. They were going to be trained how to use those too.



Königsberg, East Prussia

“Please try again Dalia” Cecilie said.

Dalia looked at the page in front her on the table in the Albertina University’s Library. She had no idea how Cecilie could be so patient with her because the progress was so painfully slow. Cecilie said that things would have been much easier if they had figured out the reason for her illiteracy when she had been a child. Instead, she had been basically been forced to leave school, told she was stupid and lazy. The book she was trying to read from was normally meant for children.

With a sigh, Dalia started trying to read from the top of the page. It was a silly story about the misadventures of farm animals as they blundered through their day. The fact that she knew that much was something of a miracle for Dalia.

This was the arrangement that Dalia had with Princess Cecilie, who understood that she needed to go to her job at the market most days. In the late afternoon, Dalia would come to the University where Cecilie was tutoring her. She had once asked Cecilie why she was doing this for her, the Princess had just smiled and said that it was something to do. Besides, a dear friend of her brother Louis had a son who had Dyslexia just like Dilia did. So Cecilie knew that it was a problem that could be solved with a little bit of work. That was a surprise for Dalia. She had thought that she was alone and as it turned out, she wasn’t.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-One



16th February 1979

Neuquén, Argentina

After entirely too much time wasted in Buenos Aires, they had finally arranged a flight to Neuquén. Fortunately, their stay in a local hotel had been short. Mostly because the Argentine Government was going out of its way to facilitate Ben’s work. On the Federal level they saw it as a major prestige project while the local government saw it as a source of high paying jobs with year-round employment that wasn’t subject to the cycles that had plagued Argentina for centuries.

The Central Hospital of Neuquén was better than Kiki had been expecting. The discovery of shale oil and gas deposits west of the city over the last two decades along with improvements to the regional rail system due to the Patagonian War had resulted in a local boom. However, like all resource dependent economies the boom had been followed by a bust. A drop in the World Oil prices during the second half of the 70’s had hit the Neuquén Province hard.

Still, the city had invested in the Central Hospital and the University as a part of a hedge against the inevitable hard times that everyone had assumed correctly were coming. In the meantime, Neuquén had fallen back on the Agricultural economy that had been their bread and butter since the city’s founding decades earlier. While it didn’t operate at the same capacity that it had during the oil boom, the Farmers enjoyed the railroad allowing them to access the larger markets in the East. It was that same rail link that resulted in this region being proposed for a new observatory with Benjamin selected to lead the construction once the actual site was selected. For Kiki, that was all well and good, but what would she be doing in the meantime. Before Ben had agreed to take the position, they had spoken at length about how it would probably involve living and working in Argentina for five or six years.

That wasn’t a problem for the children. Nina and Lutz had already discovered that living in Neuquén was far different than anything they had known in Germany. They had swiftly gotten used to living in the house that Kiki and Ben had found through a local agency. Located near the city center, it was in a walled compound of the sort that was popular throughout South America. The imposing steel gates out front told people that someone important lived there. The fact that they could stand up to everything shy of heavy artillery was beside the point.

The Hospital Director had been surprised when Kiki had asked him if he needed an experienced Emergency Field Surgeon. She wasn’t interested in an Administrative position, she just wanted to practice medicine. He looked like a ghost after he learned what her background was, especially who her references were. Kiki could understand the man’s reaction, she could have his job if she wanted, but she didn’t, and he didn’t understand why. The truth was that Kiki had already been in Hospital Administration and it was a miserable experience.

Ben told Kiki to just offer to fund some new equipment or building repairs. There were versions of that back home and unlike there no one needed to make a pretense that they were doing it for charity. Did she really think that it was an accident that there dozens of universities, hospitals, libraries, and God only knew what else were named after members of her family? So, if Kiki spread some money around the hospital, they would humor her until they eventually had no choice but to take her seriously.

Touring the hospital with the Director though, Kiki could see that everything was at least a decade out of date. It was hardly a surprise that he was extremely interested in any money that she might want to donate. She figured that Ben was right, they would humor her just to get the money. Only after she had established herself, the Director would realize that it was Kiki who controlled the purse strings.



Tempelhof, Berlin

Sophie had been determined to have a good ride today after weeks of being kept cooped up by the weather and her studies. When people learned that she was taking Physical Education at University they made a lot of assumptions. She knew that she needed to be preparing for the Paris-Brest-Paris Audax, which was actually only a few months away. She had dreamed of taking part in that endurance race for years and just the thought of that made her feel a bit giddy. It was hoped that Sophie would beat the women’s time record, shattering the present record of 57 hours. After that, the next big thing she would be building towards would be Moscow to compete in the Olympics.

Unfortunately for her, when Sophie had woken up that morning, she had looked out the window of her bedroom and saw that it had already been snowing and high winds were kicking up. It had turned out that there was a winter weather advisory and classes at the University had been cancelled. Sophie knew that Kat would have some very strong words for her if she tried to take a bicycle out on a day like today. When Sophie had talked to Gabi and Ziska over the phone they had separately told her that she had their permission to indulge herself by taking a lazy afternoon. That was why Sophie was laying on the couch, watching the old television shows that were used by the network to fill in otherwise empty time periods. Eventually, she was joined by Sprocket, Cheshire, and Angelica. Sophie’s dog, cat, and little sister. It seemed that she had all of her bases covered.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Two



19th February 1979

Duisburg, Westphalia

It was something that people didn’t really think about. The vast logistics train required to keep the Empire going. Shipment of raw materials to the factories and foundries. Then there were the finished products going every which way. The hundreds of millions of people residing in the Empire who wanted the lights to come on, a television to watch, and a couch to sit on while they did it. There was also the concrete, steel, and brick that their home was made of. And finally, at its most basic, the food in their stomach. All of that had to come from somewhere.

Everyone saw the trains, lorries, and barges. Usually as an inconvenience, like when their car was stopped at a rail crossing or they were blocked by a lorry that was being unloaded on a narrow street. That last one though, they seldom thought about that at all because the canal system that connected the rivers predated pretty much everything else. Did they think it was an accident that most the major cities were located on the confluences of large rivers?

That was why it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the German Empire boasted a substantial Brown Water Navy that operated in conjunction with the Federal Police, the Waterways and Shipping Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Federal Customs Service. The Riverine Navy was every bit as serious as their Blue Water counterparts and wherever the Navy went, the Marine Infantry was right there too. So when Erich and his men turned up in Duisburg, no one made a big deal about it. At the moment, something big was apparently in the offing and the Riverine Navy needed all the warm bodies they could get. Erich and his men certainly qualified. Because all of the Marines who had gone through Cuxhaven were trained in shipboard operations and they had been heavily involved in weapons familiarization over the prior weeks, they didn’t need much training ahead of the operation.

Their Commanding Officer at Judenbach felt that after weeks of hard work, they deserved a bit of time in the field to catch their breath. It was considered the sort of low-risk environment where they could familiarize themselves with small craft. Particularly the Type III 10-meter F-boats, dedicated River Patrol Craft, that was the workhorse of the Riverine Navy. It was sort of like how they had flown in on that airplane into Judenbach when they had first been sent there. Naval pier near the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr within the large inland port was the headquarters of the Western Riverine Flotilla. As they waited for something to happen, Erich found himself talking with Dreher about the strange approximation of coffee that the Military had developed over the last few decades.

There were all sorts of rumors about what was actually in the ersatz “coffee” that had been a standard part of military rations for decades. Yes, during the Soviet War it had been made almost entirely from roasted chicory root and beechnuts with a small amount of raw sugar, later it was discovered that caffeine could be added. Then the individual Soldiers in the Heer started receiving freeze dried coffee, or if they were extremely lucky whole beans, from the Americas, mostly the United States. They had mixed it with the ersatz coffee to help stretch it out. All these decades later, the mixture that had emerged in the field was still in the ration packs. Mostly because it was dirt cheap and as strange as it sounded, it was something that everyone had gotten used to. That was why Erich had been able to point out that the “coffee” in the ration packs they had been issued did in fact contain a certain percentage of coffee, it was all right there in the ingredients. Besides that, everyone knew that the packets of “coffee whitener” which were included with the coffee mixture had far stranger ingredients and was even rumored to be potentially explosive. Dreher’s response ask if Erich believed everything he read.

Erich didn’t understand why the Feldwebel needed to be so dour all the time. It was like if he was just waiting for life to deliver the next kick, just so he could say “I told you so.” Once they had arrived at Judenbach, their fortunes had markedly improved. That was made clear by the winter coat and felt lined boots that Erich was wearing, he normally would have needed to spend months begging Supply for them. For once Dreher didn’t have a whole lot to complain about, which was the real reason they were talking about ersatz coffee.



Plänterwald, Berlin

“I don’t understand why you are doing this” Nan stated to Freddy who seemed entirely too pleased with himself.

“Your childhood has quite literally been the plot of horror movies and you deserve to have good things for a change” Freddy said, “Besides, this is one of the few powers that I can use without asking permission of the Reichstag. So let me do this for you this once.”

It was common knowledge that Nan was an orphan who had been adopted by the Hohenzollern family. The press had never really pried into the story, lack of interest mostly. The public understood that Louis Ferdinand and Charlotte’s daughter Antonia had been a bit of a surprise. The addition of Nan was seen as a means to round out their family. Now Freddy was throwing a wrench into the works. The paper copy of proclamation that Nan was holding in her hands said that she, as Annette Pfenning, was the last known descendant of Georg von Jägersfeld, the illegitimate son of Friedrich Henry von Preussen. That implied that Nan was a distant cousin of the main Hohenzollern line as well as the heir of the Margraviate of Brandenberg.

“No one is going to believe this” Nan said, “Any prying and it all falls apart.”

“You have a lot to learn” Freddy replied, “This will be something that people will want to believe Annette. The long lost, dispossessed family line that can now come back because the inheritance laws have changed because the Old Junkers families have been dying out. That will be the sort of romantic story people like, add in your rags to riches story and they will just eat it up. The fact that we now have proof that your paternity is unknown means we can fill that blank with whatever we want.”

“That sounds incredibly cynical” Nan replied.

Freddy just gave Nan a smug smile. She knew that before he had become Emperor, Freddy had been a Lawyer specializing in Contract Law. If he had written this up and made all the necessary alterations, there was a good chance that it would be bulletproof. Which was a scary thought.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Three



21st February 1979

Duisburg, Westphalia

“At least no one got hurt Sir” Erich said to the Prosecutor who was in charge of the operation, earning himself several angry glairs in the process. That wasn’t quite true. There were a whole lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos in the room as they tried to reconstruct what exactly had gone wrong. It had been a multiagency operation, so there was a whole lot of blame to go around.

They had been expecting to raid a warehouse there in Duisburg less than a kilometer from the Naval base where supposedly a large amount of cocaine was being shipped through. Instead, there had been crates containing thousands of posters depicting a kitten hanging off a tree branch with the words “Hang in there baby!” spelled out across it in English. For Erich it wasn’t that bad, his part had gone well enough even if he had not known it at the time. He and his men were ordered to remain on the road outside the warehouse to stop anyone coming in or going out. Before the operation, they had all been given “Sealion” shoulder patches to sew on even if that wasn’t really who they were. The idea was that once they were in uniform, wearing the balaclavas that were required to be worn by Special Forces when they knew there was a good chance that they would be seen by the Press, no one needed to know anything else about them. Erich had no idea what was actually happening inside the warehouse until a Reporter recognized that he was an Oberleutnant and asked him his opinion about the unfolding debacle.

In the end, Erich had not seen anyone come out of the warehouse when everyone else had come in the other side. Hours later, a tunnel to another warehouse was found and things got really embarrassing. On the roof of the other warehouse the smuggling ring that they had been there to bust had set up lawn chairs and popcorn as they kicked back and watched the police and various other officials trip over their own dicks. In addition to the posters, the only other thing of note was the eye and dagger sigil of the GS, the Society of Silence, that someone had painted on a wall, meaning that the smugglers they had been trying to catch were not the expected crooks they normally dealt with. It seemed that the Navy wasn’t the only ones who wanted the world to know exactly who was involved. And whoever was in charge of this particular crew had a twisted sense of humor.

24th February 1979

Rome, Italy

“Do you understand the implications of your brother’s gift to you?” Amedio said happily.

“Other than how I will be crucified if anyone unfriendly ever finds out” Nan replied, “Friedrich says that I shouldn’t worry about that because it is something that people won’t care about because the story he had spun up is something that they will want to believe.”

Over the last week the people of Brandenberg had discovered that they not only had a Margravine, but they had sort of had her for years as the Press had breathlessly reported that the young ward of Louis Ferdinand von Preussen was exactly that. All that Freddy had done was make it official according to the story that he had spun, while it was complete load of manure, there were several key elements of the story that were true. Nan, her tragic past, and how she had been taken in by distant cousins. He had been absolutely right about how people would just eat it up.

“Every Royal House in Europe employs teams of people who have no other job than to manage their public image” Amedio said, “To help sweep all the unseemly little details under the rug. Who has a number of bastards scattered about because they cannot keep it in their pants, or who’s father isn’t actually their father, stuff like that. Your brother’s proclamation about your paternity would barely tip the scale when it comes to the sort of wild things I’ve heard about. Besides, do you really know you are not a descendant of the last Margrave? For all you know you could be.”

Freddy had told her that she still had a whole lot to learn. Over the last week, Nan had learned far more than she had ever imagined. But just what had she imagined her life would be like? Flying was the only thing she felt she had ever been good at. Then there was Amedio. Just where had she had thought that was going? He was wonderful even if he was more than a decade older than her.

“This will be particularly good for us” Amedio said, “It sidesteps most of the questions that people would have. There is already speculation about that, your comings, and goings in and out of Rome have not gone unnoticed.”

“Us?” Nan asked.

“Of course, us” Amedio replied, “My mother really wants to meet you and as I said, this sidesteps so many questions.”

“Oh” Nan said. Suddenly this was a lot more serious than she had figured it would ever be. She had been flying over the Alps to visit because it had been fun. Amedio had been making plans and considering how happy he was, it was going to be hard to pound her misgivings into his head.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Four



26th February 1979

Mitte, Berlin

Gabi was seated at her desk while Sophie was laying backwards on Gabi’s bed, her head over the edge and her hair hanging towards the floor. Sophie was listening to the music that Gabi had written with her eyes closed, shutting out everything else.

“What did you think?” Gabi asked as she finished playing the tape of the piece of music that she had been working on for weeks.

“It was different” Sophie replied.

It was a musical trio that Gabi had put together as a study. Electric Bass guitar, piano, and Alto Saxophone. Gabi had been able to play the first two instruments in the recording sessions and had recruited a fellow student at the Stern Conservatory to play Sax. The recordings had gone well enough, but the Sax player had been angling to do far more than just be a Session Musician working with Gabi. So, he was someone who Gabi would not be working with in the future.

Gabi knew that her sister wasn’t exactly the best judge for this sort of thing. While Sophie messed around with the piano when she was in Gabi’s apartment, it was incredibly obvious that Sophie didn’t know one end of the keyboard from the other. The weird part was that Sophie seemed aware of intervals and tended to hit notes in the key of G Major, which was a massive percentage of popular music. Three cords and the truth, all that. That was perfectly fitting with how Sophie tended to listen to whatever just happened to be on the radio.

The piece of music that Gabi had written was influenced by an American Composer and Jazz musician who had used a Fender J-Bass in a ways that no one had ever thought of. Then ended up in a Pennsylvania State Mental Hospital with a Manic Depression diagnosis. That last part was a bit of a sour note for Gabi. It seemed like Guitar heroes were a dime a dozen, but an actual innovator on Bass, a Soloist, is a certified nut case. Gabi had not mentioned that to Sophie. Knowing her sister’s dark sense of humor, it was all too easy to anticipate what her reaction would be. Sophie would laugh herself silly.

“I think that Angelica would like this” Sophie said.

That surprised Gabi. She had met Angelica de Medici, who was a part of Sophie’s found family a few times, curiously Italian and extremely pretty. Gabi being Sophie’s half sister always resulted in awkward questions whenever she went to Sophie’s home in Tempelhof. She was sure that the questions would go the other way, except it was only Gabi and her mother in the apartment they lived in near the city center.



Los Angeles, California

It was raining when the bus dropped Stevie off, and he had stomped in the water running down the street as he walked up the hill until he made it to the front yard of his house. His mother was at work but like most afternoons, his father was already home having left for work in the early morning hours. Stevie was happy about the “A” he had gotten for the one-page double-spaced essay he had written in school. The assignment had been easy enough.

What did he want to do when he grew up?

He had written all about how his Dad and Uncle Mario had traveled all over the world in the Army. He had seen how wherever his Dad went it seemed like everyone knew that he was the toughest guy in the room without him even having to say a word. There was also the green Army Dress uniform that Stevie had seen his father wear to events where the family was required to attend. People there saw the Green Beret and medals, things which Stevie had seen commanded great respect. Stevie had said that he wanted to be like his father.

Things took a turn though when Stevie got home and found his father working in the daylight basement at the typewriter. Dad never said what he was working on when he did that, but the safe bolted to the house’s foundation in the basement closet suggested that it was important. Dad had seemed happy that Stevie had aced the essay but had told him to never mention the essay to Mom. Dad said that they wanted him to aspire to better things, his mother would get extremely upset if Stevie chose enlistment and everything that came with it. In fact, she would probably be happy if Stevie became a ne’er-do-well like Stanley next door simply because it came with far less risk.

Stevie didn’t get that. For starters, what was a ne’er-do-well? Stan was always skating and surfing, even showing Stevie a few tricks on the BMX bike he had gotten for Christmas. Stan was cool in a way that few other grownups ever were. With that, Stevie had been told to go do something quiet, but to stay in the basement. His father was working but still needed to keep an eye on the children, meaning Stevie and his little sister Kristie. The trouble with that was that while Kristie was happy enough with her own toys, she wanted to be involved in whatever Stevie was doing. That was why he wasn’t allowed Legos along with a host of other things, his parents said that it was a choaking hazard. From Stevie’s perspective, that was incredibly unfair. He had never asked for a little sister, so couldn’t they take her back to the store and exchange her for something that wasn’t totally useless?

As soon as those words had left his mouth, Stevie knew that he had said something that he would regret for the rest of his life. His parents had found that hilarious, even going so far as calling Grandma Concha and getting him to repeat what he had said to her.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Five



1st March 1979

Rhine River, South of Bonn

Watching the riverbank roll past, Erich was trying to sort his thoughts by writing a letter to Gretchen, he felt that he needed to give her a brief description of the F-Boat. Before he had left Judenbach, his mail had finally caught up with him. There was a stack of letters that had taken him a few days to get through. There were the expected letters from his parents, trying to make him feel guilty about the course that his life was taking. He had thrown those away without a second thought. Far more welcome were the letters from Gretchen. Included among those was a photograph of Gretchen, with Mathilda and Eddi. The three of them looked like they were laughing and having a lot of fun. Gretchen said in her letter that had been at the procession followed by massive street festival in Berlin marking Carnival or Fastelavend depending on whether or not you were Catholic or Protestant. Gretchen said that it would have been better if Erich had been able to make it. Perhaps next year.

Erich had the challenge of telling Gretchen what he had been doing in his letter. Without telling her too much though. She made clear that she wasn’t too thrilled by his silence over the last couple months, though she figured that he had a good reason.

Getting on a squadron of F-Boats headed up the Rhine after what had happened in Duisburg seemed like a good idea. Erich’s mind kept going back to how unimaginative the Navy could be. Type III, meaning that boat was the third version of what was essentially the same thing, 10-Meter, which was the length, and finally, F-Boat, which was short for River Patrol Boat.

Oberdeckoffizer Meyers, who commanded the squadron of boats being used on this little excursion had told Erich all about his boats. Starting that the hull was made of fiberglass. It had a 20mm cannon on a Scarff ring in the bow-section and an MG42/56 that could go on a swivel mount just aft of the cockpit. Meyers said that his crew kept the 20mm under a rubberized canvas cover and the machine gun was kept in the weapons locker. They were less likely to scare people that way. The boats were powered by a pair of the marine diesels made by Junkers of the sort that were found everywhere in the Navy, so much so that Erich had become certain that someone high up in procurement must have stock in that company. Apparently, the boat used a jet propulsion system that Erich was a bit surprised worked. According to Meyers, the whole design had been shamelessly copied from an American design a couple decades earlier and no one had come up with anything better in the years since.

Erich had split his men between the boats, the crews being perfectly happy to have the extra muscle. He was also spared having to listen to Dreher for a few hours. Feldwebel Dreher was a solid man, good in a fight. The trouble was that the rest of the time Dreher was not shy about torturing everyone around him with his opinions and dour perspective.

“You ought to see this in the summertime” Meyers yelled over the sound of the engines. “There are pleasure barges and boats all through here, a real party.”

Of course Timo and Udo, the two youngest members of Erich’s men, who he had made sure remained close were eating Meyers’ stories up. It seemed that Meyers had joined the Navy about thirty odd years earlier as soon as he was old enough to see the world. Instead, he had been sent to the Riverine Navy. Despite the Polish War having been the only time he had ever been in actual combat, Meyers time in the Navy had been eventful. It seemed like every bend in the river or stretch of canal had a story behind it.



Dublin, Ireland

After two months, matters finally boiled over.

Jackie had done her level best with Marie Alexandra; Marie had been fun when she had visited Jackie’s family in prior years. Unfortunately, living with her was a completely different experience.

The last straw had had been what had happened with Colm Berne.

After months of work, Jackie had contrived to get Colm to come over to help her study when she had other things in mind. It had been going swimmingly right up until Marie came home. Colm took one look at her, and Jackie had been completely forgotten. As Marie had been putting away the groceries she had gotten from the list that Fianna had left for them, Colm had gone to help her with that and preparing dinner. Jackie had been left stewing on the couch as she had watched all of this unfold. The worst part had been that as Colm had tried to chat up Marie, she had seemed completely oblivious to it.

For weeks, Jackie had put up with it, but that was just too much. Once Colm had gone home, she had been understandably upset with Marie. Only to get an apathetic response in return, because as it turned out arguing with Marie was like yelling at a wall. In a fit of pique Jackie had called her father and told him that she wanted to move back home, only to be told “No.”

“The plan was that your presence would help Marie not withdraw into herself like she tends to do and in turn she would keep you out of trouble” Jackie’s father said in the tone he used when talking to a recalcitrant client who owed him a considerable amount of money. “It sounds like it is working exactly like we intended Jacqueline.”

“What do you mean by we” Jackie asked in reply. Even as she asked that, she had a feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six



12th March 1979

Rural Silesia, near Liegnitz

Silesia was hosting the vast military exercise that the European Defense Pact this year. Niko had found himself working in the General Staff as they had found themselves managing dozens of Divisions from different countries, the logistics chain, and everything that came with that. As a very junior Officer who actually lived in this region Niko found himself riding Zwei all over the backcountry of Lower Silesia on this or that errand. Coordination had become a major issue and very often he had to spend a great deal of time finding the various headquarters. It might have been a cliché, but it wasn’t a surprise considering the massive egos involved that no one was prepared to admit that they were lost. Niko had left Army Headquarters early that morning with a map and a radio with the task of finding where the various Divisional Headquarters actually were as opposed to where they were supposed to be.

Not that Niko was alone. He had been joined by Bruce, his British counterpart who was an old friend from the various Calvary competitions that they had taken part in, and a Second Lieutenant James Acree from the American Observation mission. It was rumored that the American President wanted to have American troops take part in European Defense Pact exercises in an effort to further improve diplomatic relations. The Observation Mission was considered key to that.

Acree was a self-styled Cowboy from Texas who said that his friends called him Slick, apparently that included Niko and Bruce. He had been delighted to learn he would be shadowing them on horseback. It was amusing to watch the deference that Slick was paying to Bruce who was acting the role of the British Gentleman. Niko knew the truth, that Bruce was the son of an Auto Mechanic and had grown up in the industrial city of Sheffield. He talked and acted the way he did because he had attended an exclusive Public School as a scholarship student. That was also where he had gotten into equestrianism and fencing which had brought him into Niko’s orbit.

This ride would have been a pleasant experience, except it was still winter no matter what the calendar said. The temperature had not once gotten above freezing the entire time they had been out. They were all roughly the same rank, but Niko lived here so that left him in charge. At the moment, Slick was telling them about his experiences in the US Army’s 6th Air Calvary Regiment after he had graduated from the Virginia Military Institute. He had apparently had a few misunderstandings about the changing nature of warfare when he had arrived in Fort Riley, Kansas. Niko kept his opinion that Slick was full of shit to himself. There was no way that he could have gone through all those years of training not knowing that most “Cavalry” rode helicopters or armored vehicles these days. Of course, Texas. Even Niko knew about the reputation that Americans from there had. Aunt Kat had told him stories about dealing with American businessmen when she had worked in Customs at the old Tempelhof Airport before it had been covered by an upscale neighborhood and the Humbolt Campus of the University of Berlin. Apparently those from Texas or Massachusetts tended to stand out as they had they were the most likely to proposition her. Niko had been shocked to hear that had ever happened. His aunt’s reputation for not gladly suffering fools was extremely well documented and her favored means of solving problems were seldom delicate.

It was either fortunate or unfortunate that as they trotted along they had plenty of time to talk.

“Does every place around here look like this?” Slick asked, “The icy asshole end of nowhere.”

They had been avoiding towns and villages as they had been making their way east towards Breslau along the “Front lines.” Any place with a population would present complications. It would take about five seconds for the people in any of these places to recognize Niko and he would be obligated to meet with the Hetman. That would be useful when they had to stop for the night, but at the moment it would just take too much time. So they had seen a lot of narrow lanes running through snow covered fields and forest.

“Come back in a few weeks” Niko replied, “This whole place will be a mire.”

“And you live here?” Slick asked.

“My family’s house is a few kilometers north of here and I’ve lived here my whole life” Niko said, “Except for a year I spent in Argentina.”

“You ought to get Niko to tell you about that” Bruce said, “Peacekeeping mission, real cowboys and Indians.”

“How’d that work?” Slick asked, sounding a bit bewildered.

“With the Cavalry” Niko said, “I was sent to be the aide of an Oberst… er… Colonel when I was attending Wahlestedt, the Cadet Academy. That took me to Argentina.”

“Now you said your folks live around here” Slick said, “How big a spread are we talking?”

“That depends” Niko replied. They had crossed in and out of land that Niko’s family directly owned several times over the last several hours. Not that Niko was about to tell slick that.

“All of Silesia sounds about right” Bruce said with a laugh, “Your family also has land in Argentina. Right Niko?”

“That is one way to look at it” Niko said, “I wouldn’t say that we own Silesia though, my father would say that we merely run it, symbolically of course.”

“Just who are you?” Slick asked, sounding confused again.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Seven



13th March 1979

Richthofen Estate, Rural Silesia

Ingrid was chattering happily with Niko as he rode his horse towards the stables, and she walked beside Zwei. There were two other men with him who were wearing the uniforms of foreign armies. Albrecht recognized the brown uniform of the British Army and the man, little more than a boy really, was Second Lieutenant Dickinson who had been a friend of Niko’s for the last couple years. The grey-green coat one of them was wearing was American, that much was obvious. The Unit patch sewn onto the left sleeve of the coat the man was wearing was unfamiliar though, a gold unicorn on a blue field.

“We have a problem” Niko said to Albrecht as he dismounted from Zwei and handed him the saddlebags off his horse, then nodded towards the American. “That one is smart as a fox, much as he tries to hide it.”

The American was talking to Indrid with a big grin on his face as he answered her questions. The man spoke with an accent was one that was considered to mark one as uncultured and ignorant even among Americans. Looking in the saddlebags Albrecht saw an advanced Army radio with the encoder plugged into it, the batteries were presumably in the other bag. He knew what Niko’s assigned job had been during this year’s EDP exercises and why he had that radio. He also understood that the respective Governments of both the United States and United Kingdom would do anything to get their hands on one of the encoders. It didn’t matter if those men were Niko’s friends, if they learned that Niko had the encoder it would become a problem. Which was exactly how Niko had described the situation.

“Do they know you have this?” Albrecht asked.

“They wouldn’t have heard it from me” Niko said quietly.

“Good” Albrecht replied, “Go entertain your friends and I’ll put this in my office safe.”

Niko seemed to be extremely relieved to hear that as he rejoined the group that was talking to Ingrid. Like always, Albrecht’s youngest child was full of questions. Fortunately Niko’s friends were happy to answer them. Albrecht knew that it would only be a simple matter to call Tilo Schultz and have the Field Marshal send someone for the radio. Niko had done exactly what he was supposed to have done by securing the radio and reporting the matter to a superior Officer, which Albrecht certainly was as an Admiral even if that was slightly irregular.

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

When Niko had described his family’s house, it had sounded like if it were ordinary enough. The reality was that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The place was huge and shockingly ornate even from Slick’s perspective. His father had struck it rich during one of the oil booms selling drilling equipment in Texas and then had the good sense to sell the company at the height of the boom so that unlike most of his competitors he had not gotten soaked when the market inevitably went bust. Slick understood that his father had come from nothing and had grown up in North Texas during the Dust Bowl. Once he had come into money, he had spent it on things that he had assumed rich people did, filling the big house on his ranch will all manner of gaudy junk. The result was a bit comical, which was why Slick had seldom gone home since he had left for the VMI when he was sixteen. The Richthofen house was a different story. Niko said that they had lived on this land for the last two and a half centuries with the only gap being when the family decided that it would be healthier if they were somewhere else during the Soviet War and Old Man von Richthofen torched the old house when it grew obvious that the Russians were going occupy it.

The décor of the Richthofen house wasn’t gaudy. It simply suggested that the family who lived there had far more wealth and prestige than any visitor baring the German Kaiser himself could ever hope to match.

Slick had been told to approach Niko if he got the chance by an Intelligence Officer who had said that he was a Leutnant in the German Cavalry and the grandson of Manfred von Richthofen, fighter ace, Field Marshal, and the King of Silesia. Slick had been unaware that Germany wasn’t a monolith until he had found himself being sent there. That it was a Federation of Kingdoms, Principalities, Dutchies, and God only knew what else. Each one had its own legislative bodies, Courts, and some even had standing Armies. Germany as a single nation had only existed as such for a bit more than a century and they were still trying to figure it all out.

Slick figured that he would play the ignorant hayseed, ask questions with obvious answers, and let Niko give him all sorts of information in conversation. That had certainly worked enough times in the past, in fact it worked like a charm, just not with Niko. Niko’s friend Bruce, who was also along for the ride, struck Slick as being twenty pounds of manure in a ten-pound bag. He was more than happy to tell Slick about all sorts of things, the trouble was that Bruce didn’t seem to know jack shit about anything remotely considered important. By the second day Slick was certain that Niko was onto him. There was also how Niko gave the impression that he was carrying something extremely valuable, which was confirmed when he handed his father the saddlebags the first instant he could.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Eight



3rd April 1979

Richthofen Estate, Rural Silesia

Looking out the window, Ilse saw Nikolaus and Ingrid playing with a half dozen Akida puppies who were descendants of Manfred’s dog Rust. The pups were giant paws and shaggy fur that they had not grown into. They knew that they were supposed to chase after the ball but hadn’t figured out the notion of fetch yet, so the result was a chaotic jumble. It was nice to see that Ingrid was happy as she fell in the snow and was buried under an avalanche of puppies who forgot all about the ball when they had the chance to pile onto her. Ilse could hear her laughter.

Just when everyone had thought that weather was finally warming, there had been a spring blizzard that had taken them by surprise. The last time Ilse had talked to Mathilda she had said that she and Edmée were looking forward to coming home over Easter Holiday. Ilse had been a bit surprised to look at the calendar and seeing that was that was only a couple weeks away. Finally, Albrecht had said that with all the things that had snuck up on them so far this year it was time that they started being proactive. He said that he was going demonstrate his part in that by getting his taxes in order as opposed to waiting until the last minute in July to petition for an extension like his father had done habitually.

Unfortunately for Albrecht his father had been rather creative in his accounting. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Manfred von Richthofen had somehow died with more money than it was safe to know about as well as leaving a mess that would take a considerable amount of work to untangle. Albrecht had been forced to call for help in the form of his cousin Karl Lothar, the oldest son of his father’s youngest brother, who had become something of a black sheep of the family by studying Accountancy at University. Ilse had her own reasons to avoid his company though. His being around was a complication at a time when Ilse already had too much to handle, especially because she knew a thing or three about Karl Lothar that her husband did not. It disgusted her that man was going about his life seemingly without a thought towards the wreckage he had left behind him.

It had taken an extremely long time, but Ilse had finally convinced Izabella Lis to tell her the identity of Ingrid’s biological father. She had been extremely reluctant to mention it because of years of self-recrimination. Ilse knew from her own experiences how it worked to be conditioned from early childhood to feel ashamed of being human, how devastating it was when you inevitably fell short of what you were told you needed to be. The idea that you deserved the consequences, whatever they were. It was the sort of shame that resulted in the sort of silence that made entire generations into victims of one sort or another. When Izibella finally divulged that piece of information, the name was a familiar one even if it was a man who she had only met a few times in passing, Karl Lothar von Richthofen.

That meant that Ingrid was more closely related than Ilse had ever imagined. Manfred had always treated Ingrid like she was his granddaughter, the truth all along was that she had been his grandniece. That also added to her worries about Ingrid’s future. Eventually Ilse and Albrecht were going to have to tell Ingrid the truth, and so much was going to become unraveled when they did that.

Ilse had grown up in Berlin where seeing people whose backgrounds were from everywhere was an everyday thing. Silesia was a long way from Berlin. It wasn’t as bad as Ilse had heard her older sister complaining about, that crossing the border between Berlin and Brandenberg meant going back in time to the Fifteenth Century. Still though, in Silesia an unofficial caste system existed between Rural Catholic Poles and Urban Protestant Germans. Ilse had witnessed the retrograde attitudes towards Jews or even worse, Gypsies, in Selesia by both groups. Ilse had figured out early on that Ingrid’s father was German and that alone would have caused her to be rejected by Izabella’s family. Her being a blood relative of the Richthofen family was a further complication. The conclusion that Ilse and Izabella had reached was that for her own good, the world had to continue to believe that Ingrid was Ilse and Albrecht’s daughter.

Into this was Ilse having to deal with Friedrich Raskop, her mother’s older brother. She was the closest thing that he had to a family, having only seen him a few times over the years. The last time was when Ilse had gone to Lübben to visit her grandmother to tell her that she had a great-grandson shortly after Niko was born. She wished that she had known her grandmother before a lifetime of grief and senility had ruined her mind. She mistook Ilse for her daughter Ingrid, who had died of a presumed heroin overdose in Berlin in 1938. Ilse had named her own daughter after her to have some sort of connection to her. Every time she had visited, Friedrich had threatened to call the police if Ilse ever came back.

Now word had reached Ilse that Friedrich was suffering from congestive heart failure that was complicated by emphysema. The hospital in Lübben had reached out to Ilse because Friedrich had never married and had no family of his own.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Nine



15th April 1979

Breslau, Silesia

Ina just wished that her newborn daughter had better timing. She had been born in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, when it seemed like every female member of the Mischner and Richthofen families had been gathering at the Richthofen Estate for the holiday. That was why Ina had discovered a bevy of well-wishers comprised of most of her extended family, all wanting to see Helene Adele. It was Christian’s idea that if they had a girl, they ought to name her for both her grandmothers. Ina had yet to find out the reaction of Christian’s parents to that because they were still on their way from Brandenberg an der Havel, but Ina’s own mother seemed rather pleased. Eventually, everyone was herded out so that Ina could rest.

There was one exception though. Aunt Marcella remained seated in the chair next to Ina’s bed in the hospital room.

“At my age it is easy for people to look right past me” Marcella said when Ina asked.

“That is terrible” Ina said. Looking at Helene who was totally unaware of how she was the center of attention as she slept in her mother’s arms.

“It has its advantages” Marcella said, “I get to talk to my grandniece and meet my great grandniece in peace.”

Ina couldn’t help but notice how frail Marcella had grown. A few months earlier she had spoken with her father and the subject had come up, he had told Ina that Marcella had a whole host of health problems that came with being an elderly woman.

“I remember the photographs Douglas took in the back garden of the old house in Pankow after you were born, Katherine” Marcella continued, “That was one of the few times that, Manfred, Helene’s father ever went there.”

Ina had seen those photographs. She had just never heard Marcella’s take on them before. It was regrettably keeping with her late grandfather’s character that he’d had no interest in spending time in what was a working-class neighborhood in those days. Ina had always found her grandfather’s snobbery to be disappointing. Curiously, it was an aspect of himself that he had always kept hidden from the public.

“I wish that he were here” Ina said, “He was ecstatic when Manny’s little boy was born.”

“Another little girl who would have him wrapped around her little finger before she even learned to talk?” Marcella asked, “Driving your mother nuts in the process with it being her actual granddaughter this time.”

“My mother’s complaints were about how Opa loved to be the indulgent grandfather in a way that he rarely was with his own children” Ina replied.

“That is the luxury of being a grandparent” Marcella said happily, “Being a parent means that you must be exactly that. Someone needs to tell the children to eat their peas and that it is time for bed. Being a parent is not a popularity contest.”

Ina looked at Helene and the responsibility of having her was suddenly a crushing reality.

“Your Aunt Kat had the same look on her face when she talked to me about finding herself unexpectedly with twins” Marcella said, “She said she was worried about being complete rubbish as a mother.”

That didn’t sound at all like something that Aunt Kat would ever say. For Ina’s entire life she had seen how her formidable aunt would obliterate anything that got in her way. There was also something else there…

“Unexpectedly?” Ina asked, a bit bewildered to hear that.

“It was harder to tell that a woman was carrying twins back then” Marcella replied, “So they were expecting Tatiana, when Malcolm followed it was a bit of a surprise.”

After what had just happened over the prior day for Ina, the thought of a surprise twin was quite terrible. They loved to depict that sort of thing on television sitcoms but like with so much else it wasn’t remotely funny or cute in real life.

“That is just how things seem to work out for Katty” Marcella said, “I love her to pieces, but wouldn’t want to be standing too close to her if something goes wrong.”

A newspaper columnist once made the mistake of saying that Aunt Kat enjoyed a “charmed existence” while criticizing her role in Berlin politics. Ina had just happened to be in the room when Kat and her mother were talking about that. She didn’t consider herself that way, more like cursed.

“You are saying that Kat and Doug were planning on having Tatiana?” Ina asked. Considering how Kat and Tatiana were seldom on speaking terms, that was a bit hard to believe.

“Those two are so similar in their personalities it is hardly a surprise that they would butt heads. Kat wanted to prevent Tatiana from making the same mistakes she that did and Tat found that stifling” Marcella said, “Malcolm is more like Douglas and Marie Alexandra… Marie reminds me a lot of my sister, Kat’s mother, your grandmother Suse. If only she had listened to my warnings about Otto…”

Marcella just shrugged. That was the most that she had ever said about Ina’s maternal grandmother. It was an old painful memory. There was also the grandfather who had revealed himself to be a real monster in the years that followed.

“Hans is looking for you Marcella” Christian said from the doorway.

Marcella smiled and squeezed Ina’s arm before getting up from the chair. “Take care of those two Chris” she said as she walked out the door. Christian just nodded. It had taken him a bit of time to get used to the family dynamics of the Mischner family. That included Aunt Marcella.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy



1st May 1979

Los Angeles, California

The recent trip to the Doctor had confirmed a few things that Lucia had suspected for weeks, namely that they had another kid on the way. She had told Ritchie in the strongest terms that he ought to make another Doctors appointment of his own. She didn’t care what the goddammed Vatican had to say, it was either that or else she would do it herself with a pair of rusty hedge clippers. Escaping from the present openly hostile domestic situation for a few hours was certainly welcome.

Baseball at the Rec Center had not changed one bit since Ritchie had played it as a kid. The only difference was that the Yosemite Rec Center was far nicer than the one in Pacoima. The team uniforms were just white shirts with colored three-quarters sleeves and a matching ballcap. LA Dept. of Recreation and Parks, Central Division Little League, and the district number was stenciled across the front. The rest of the uniform was blue jeans and sneakers, either Converse All-Stars or the highly coveted PF Flyers. The area of the team’s district was part of Eagle Rock and the western end of Highland Park. That meant that Stevie’s team was comprised of boys who he saw in the classroom every single day.

If anyone had asked Ritchie, watching Little League baseball at this level as a parent was like watching paint dry. The kids weren’t stupid, so they knew that the odds of the Pitcher getting one over the plate were next to nil. Most of them had figured out that the best way to get onto base was to not bother swinging, take the walk and call it good. It struck Ritchie that it was a terrible lesson to be teaching the kids and had been encouraging Stevie to go chasing after it. Stevie might strike out. So what? He was playing the game how it was supposed to be played. That was the real lesson the kids were supposed to learn on the ballfield, better to go down swinging than to get a cheap, unearned win. The trouble was that the other parents saw things differently. It was a good thing that they all had heard what Ritchie did for a living, it really kept the static down.

That was when Stevie went chasing after a pitch that was low and outside. The aluminum Easton bat connected with the ball with a loud “Clank!” Stevie was off balance, so he couldn’t smash it. Still, it was a good line drive that stayed in fair territory as dropped into shallow outfield and rolled into the corner. The Left Fielder’s mind must have been wandering because he was totally unprepared for the ball to roll past him just as the Manager for the opposing team started yelling at him. As Ritchie saw the boy belatedly scrambling for the ball, Stevie rounded first and made it to second before the Third Base Coach signaled him to hold there. A stand up double with a run batted in, Stevie was all smiles as he saw how the parents in the stands and his own dugout were cheering him on.

Last autumn, Stevie had asked Ritchie and Lucia if he could sign up for Soccer. It had turned out that Lucia knew full well that would be very different from Baseball and had given both Ritchie and Stevie a firm “No.” Youth League Soccer in Los Angeles was the very definition of a Darwinian environment, especially for a Mexican kid like Stevie. He would either get good fast or else his own teammates would eat him alive. After what Ritchie had just seen, he figured that next Autumn would be a different story. By then, he figured that Lucia would have her hands full with other matters and would be happy to have Stevie out of the house.

The next kid who batted managed to strike out, ending the inning. As Stevie ran in, Ritchie could tell that he was on top of the world. If only all things could be so simple.

Ritchie had gotten a call from Nixon requesting a favor. No one in their right mind told the President that they had other things going on, not unless Ritchie wanted to spend the rest of his career counting paperclips in the hot dusty Hell-on-Earth that was Fort Irwin.

What Nixon wanted was someone he could trust going into the belly of the beast, the high security offices of the German High Command in Wunsdorf-Zossen. There were ongoing talks regarding an upcoming Joint Exercise and Nixon wanted someone in the room to get a read on things. At the center of it all that was the Commander-in-Chief of the Military High Command, Field Marshall Friedrich Ritter von Lengfeld, among the handful of German Officers who had been in the Soviet War. That was reflected in the long list of medals and Service Orders that Lengfeld had. The wound badge in Gold had caught Ritchie’s eye. That meant that the Field Marshall must have been a real tiger before he had gotten too banged up and had been posted to the General Staff. Lengfeld had also been in the Gebirgsjäger, not a man to be underestimated.

When Ritchie had gotten a chance to think about it, that would be like someone from 10th Mountain Division heading up the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was unlikely. He had heard that being in Special Forces was considered pure poison if your aspirations included ever going back into the regular Army. Supposedly, no Colonel who had been in the Green Beret had ever been promoted to General. In the eyes of the real careerists, even Airborne and Alpine troops were suspect.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-One



5th May 1979

Rural Neuquén Province South-East of Zapala, Argentina

Arno was sniffing around the edge of the road, which was a dirt track this far from the nearest town, as the team of surveyors, various other kinds of experts, and the Gauchos who were serving as their bodyguards made their way back towards civilization. If Ben had to guess, this trip into the countryside was a bit of paradise for the hound. All sorts of new and interesting things to sniff, possibly roll around in. When Ben had started making the forays into the countryside it had been on horseback accompanied by Arno and several of Martzel Iberia’s men as he examined the ridges within the rain shadow of the Andes Mountains. Martzel’s men knew that Ben’s work had something to do with the stars, they didn’t really care about that though. It was his involvement in the Patagonian War as a Fighter Ace and how he had bombed the Presidential Palace in Santiago that they brought up, how it was a shame that Allende wasn’t home that night. They showed him a lot of respect for that.

The same couldn’t be said of the Provincial Government. It seemed that the European Southern Observatory was seen by them as a massive pot of money that all of them would be able to funnel into their own pocket in due time. Ben knew that was going to be a problem, so he had appealed to the one thing that was already in play. If he couldn’t appeal to their better angels, then their greed would have to suffice. The exact words he had used were that you couldn’t milk a skinned cow. Perhaps that was a bit tasteless and coarse, but it was exactly the sort of language that the men in this region responded to.

Ben had Kiki to thank for his easy introduction to the City Government in Neuquén. Once she had started working in Neuquén’s Central Hospital everyone had been understandably curious about the foreign Princess who had come to their community and was basically volunteering to practice medicine. Ben knew that Kiki was a well-regarded Trauma Surgeon who had been a High-Ranking Officer in the Medical Service. The people here didn’t really understand that. What they did seem to understand was that if she had stayed in Buenos Aries, she could have named her own price to work in any of the city’s hospitals. Instead, Kiki was working in Neuquén and had even paid out of her own pocket to upgrade much of the Central Hospital’s equipment. That wasn’t nearly as big a deal for her as it sounded. The relationships she had with the computer manufacturers and medical suppliers had enabled her to get all of it at a major discount. For years, Kiki had told Ben that there was a reason why families like hers were able maintain their position within society. To see firsthand how that worked was an education.

The plateau that Ben and his team had been scouting was the one that he had first proposed as the site of the observatory when he had looked at satellite photographs months ago. It was high enough and in an isolated location to avoid the light pollution that existed in the region while still being close enough to build a rail spur to the site itself with minimal expense. Ben had scouted several other sites over the prior months, mostly to keep the regional players guessing, but just in case they found a site better suited to their needs. It was understood that land values would suddenly soar wherever they located the observatory. With any project this size there would be winners and losers, Ben wanted to keep the latter to a bare minimum like he had managed to do in Balderschwang.



Washington D.C.

Looking out the thick bulletproof glass of the oval office, Nixon had found himself on the phone having to deal with a diplomatic snafu that he presumably had absolutely nothing to do with. Unfortunately for him there were many people who thought that he was President of the World, not just the United States.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran had landed in a Paris hospital for treatment of an undisclosed illness, though rumor had it that the man had cancer. The well-meaning hospital staff had put him in the same ward as a fellow Iranian who was there apparently after suffering an attack of apoplexy over some sort of modernity. Apparently, no one in the staff had bothered to find out just who Ruhollah Khomeini was before they did that. Neither man was in the state to do much damage to the other one, much to the disappointment of the Iranian Government. Nixon got the impression that the Prime Minister of Iran would have been pleased as punch if both had killed each other. Of course, Nixon’s Press Secretary had been flooded with calls asking about his opinion on the matter.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Nixon mused to himself. Does the President of the United State still have to have an opinion?

The exiled Shah had been a thorn in the side of the State Department for decades. So, they wouldn’t miss him if he died. The CIA had regarded Khomeini as being a radical and troublemaker for decades, to the point where they had suggested hypothetically that it would be a good idea for him to get accidentally backed over by a bread truck. That seemed like an oddly specific accident.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Two



9th May 1979

Krakow, Galicia-Ruthenia

Teo was running late as he ran through Krakow’s old town. The President of Jagiellonian University had told him of the importance of his presence today as the new Mathematics and Computer Sciences Center was being dedicated today by the Queen and the Royal Consort of Galicia-Ruthenia. As a Professor of Applied Mathematics and one of the youngest men to ever to earn a Professorship at the Jagiellonian, Teo was a key player in this project.

When Marie Cecilie had assumed the role of Queen, she had promised the people of Krakow that the city would reassume its role as a center of learning and enlightenment. After decades of neglect in favor of Warsaw and war, Krakow’s institutions were threadbare. For Teo, it was in keeping with what he had been doing for most of his life. His parents had returned to the nation of their birth after decades living elsewhere just after the Soviet War to help rebuild, they happened to settle in Southern Poland, what would eventually become the Galicia-Ruthenia by happenstance. Teo had grown up during that heady era of wild talk and debate. Revolution and separation from the Warsaw Government had been on everyone’s lips.

Teo had been in the Main Market Square in the center of the city on the 7th of August 1966 when the Polish Army had fired into the crowd during that first doomed the attempt to separate from Poland. Fortunately, Teo had not been among the dozens who had been hurt or killed that bloody evening, but he had the experience forever burned into his memory. The sound of bullets hitting bodies, the crowd panicking, the crush of people as they tried to flee from the soldiers. There was talk of erecting a memorial in the Square, but there was no consensus as to what it should look like. Among the dead were members of every ethnic group that made up the fabric of Krakow. Regardless of what the Polish Nationalists had to say Poles, Ruthenians, Germans, Jews, and Gypsies had all bled just the same.

When the war had started, Teo had found himself a Hauptmann in what became the Galician Landwehr Division much to his surprise and his parent’s horror leading a Company comprised young men who had been his students only a few weeks earlier. When General Bauer had addressed them, he had said that their freedom depended on every single man fighting like ten. There were no exceptions. The first days were a nightmare with them getting slowly pushed back towards Krakow, then the Bohemian Corps had arrived… Teo never forgot his Company’s arrival in Warsaw in the wake of the German 2nd Army. There really had been the feeling that justice had been served.

Rounding a corner, Teo saw the new brick building that housed the Mathematics and Computer Sciences Center. Most people were shocked by how vast it was, it was his understanding that there was some question as to whether it was large enough. It was theorized that in the coming decades, computers would revolutionize every aspect of life and the Jagiellonian was a key Research University, so they would be shaping what that look like. For Teo, it meant that the future was very exciting indeed.



Los Angeles, California

“Wah’s up Stevie?” Stanley asked without really expecting an answer as he opened the garage door, revealing the immaculate space within. Dad said that Stanley’s mother was totally anal, whatever that meant, and how he couldn’t figure out how Stanley had become such a slob. Stevie had hidden by the gate to the side yard of his house not wanting to be bothered by his parents, grandma who was visiting today, but most of all by his little sister Kristie. The space right in front of the gate was not visible from any part of the house. What Stevie had not considered was that he was in full view of anyone passing by or by Stanley who was pulling a trashcan out of his garage and dragging it out to the curb with the horrendous sound of galvanized steel scraping on concrete.

“Mom and Dad told me that I am getting a new brother or sister around Thanksgiving” Stevie replied, “Grandma Concha says that it is a gift from Jesus.”

Stanley just shrugged, “You’ve met my kid sister” he said, “That doesn’t seem too bad.”

Stevie had seen Stanley’s half-sister Maddie around. He had also heard Uncle Bobby had joked that the ex-husband of Stanley’s mother was what was officially referred to as an OTM, Other Than Mexican, again, whatever that meant. Stevie had been told not to ask exactly what Maddie was though, it would be incredibly rude. And Stevie’s mother had said that he would be grounded for the entire summer if he ever so much as thought about making that mistake. Maddie was nine though while Stanley was eighteen, so they were never in each other’s space the way that Stevie and Kristie always seemed to be. The new baby would just take up more of Stevie’s space.

With that, Stanley closed the garage door and walked towards the front door of his house. Steve had always thought that Stanley was the epitome of cool, but what that meant in practice was that most of the time Stevie was beneath his notice.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Three



14th May 1979

Neuquén, Argentina

As with most mornings, the waiting room to the Clinic was packed when Kiki got to the Central Hospital. Looking over pages on the clipboard, she tried to sort who was most in need among the crowd of people. The Nurses were supposed to conduct triage. This being an isolated corner of a developing country though, they were often overwhelmed. There were also people who got impatient and left as well as those who thought that they should be served first if they paid for the privilege. The result was a confused mess. Kiki had tried to straighten out the system and had gotten some static over the matter. The problems were deep rooted, and she was basically asking people to change their culture. Which meant that doing so would take time. Kiki had unexpectedly found herself teaching the Nurses how to use the new computers that she had in fact purchased, and that had helped a lot more than even she had thought it would.

While Kiki had worked in the surgical wards occasionally, she preferred the Clinic. The other Doctors on Staff were more than happy to let her do it. The first patient was a colicky baby and a panicked young woman who was a first-time mother. For Kiki was an opportunity to have a brief but gentle conversation about long term health and family planning. Then the next patient was a middle-aged worker from the gas fields who had a nasty looking gash on his leg, it was infected and needed treatment urgently. Kiki had asked why he had let it go for so long and why had he not alerted the Nurse about how serious this was? He had said that there had been work that had needed to be done, so he had bandaged it himself and had gone back to work. He did not come to the hospital until he had collapsed the next day. She had ordered him admitted into the hospital for a course of antibiotics and to have a surgical consultation about that gash, which looked like it needed more than stitches.

Eventually, Kiki lost track of the number of patients she had seen, and it was late afternoon. She was entering the information from her notes into the computer. Creating a database of the patients and doing away with the paper records had been regarded with deep suspicion when she had first proposed it, her being a major stockholder of Zuse AG had not helped matters. It had only been her pointing out that the system in question had been used with great success by the Medical Service in Germany that had sold it. The German Military was well regarded in Patagonia, and it was personnel from the KZS that most ordinary people in the region had seen firsthand. It was nice to know that she was continuing that work.



Los Angeles, California

“What the fuck!” Bobby exclaimed as he listened to why Ritchie was in the doghouse this time.

Ritchie had thought that him being informed of his pending promotion to Chief Warrant Officer and the CWO-2 paygrade would be good news. He had been on fact finding missions and briefed the President himself, so the promotion was probably going to come through this time. For Ritchie, having another kid on the way made taking the promotion a no-brainer. The trouble was that it came with a catch, namely transfer to US Army 1st Special Forces Command in Fort Meade, Maryland and Ritchie going back into the Regular Army. That would not only mean just this promotion but rapid advancement in years ahead.

Lucia had been talking about how they were going to need a bigger house. What she had in mind was elsewhere in Los Angeles, like the new developments or perhaps in Orange County. Maryland couldn’t have been further from her mind, and she was understandably angry about it. She understood what a huge opportunity this was for both them and the kids, that didn’t mean that she was required to be happy about it. This was basically because she felt she was being forced to make this decision because the last time this had come up, Ritchie had chosen to leave the 1st Special Forces Group to come to California. She said that it was her turn to make a sacrifice though Ritchie had not asked it of her.

Shooting the shit with Bobby over beer in the garage was something that Ritchie did at least once a week for ages if he was in town. Though now that Frankenstein was finished there wasn’t a whole lot to do, so they had ended up just talking about things.

“That’s just how it is” Ritchie replied.

“If Lucia really wants a house in the suburbs, then going back east might be a good call” Bobby said, “You know as well as I do what sort of neighborhoods those new developments are in.”

Ritchie knew what Bobby was getting at, the outer suburbs of Los Angeles were rather infamous for being where Whites had fled to escape what they saw as the horror of school integration. Any Mexican who was not a maid or a gardener was not welcome in places like that. Not that things were much better on the East Coast; Ritchie had seen that when he had been stationed in Upstate New York. It was just different.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Four



19th May 1979

Kiel

After so many months away, Erich had been given a week of leave. At his mother’s invitation, he had come to the yacht club on a Saturday afternoon. The white panted building on Kiel’s waterfront was smaller than he remembered.

“Your coat, Sir?” The Bellman asked as an Attendant took Erich’s black wool coat from him. In years past, he might have gotten static from this man about not wearing a jacket and tie, which was mandatory according to the formal rules of the Imperial Yacht Club of Kiel. Erich found that wearing the blue dress tunic of Marine infantry meant that the Bellman had absolutely nothing to say. The man glancing at the pin on his beret caused the look on his face to change for a split second. This establishment went out of its way to cater to the Kaiserliche Marine. While the prestige of the Military had declined in recent years in the greater society, many blamed the ending of conscription and the changes in the emphasis in education because the country needed Engineers far more than Soldiers, this club was separate from society outside its doors. So, the Bellman would understand exactly what the medals pinned to Erich’s uniform meant.

“We are pleased about your return Oberleutnant” The Bellman said neutrally, “Your parents are waiting for you in the lounge.”

Erich was here because his mother had asked him to at least come to the exclusive yacht club in Kiel that his family had been members of for generations. It was her hope that they could try to find a middle ground, that was how she had termed it when they had spoken over the phone. As far as Erich was concerned, that was absurd. His father had wanted to dictate his life and Erich had gone along with it, right up until he had joined the Marine Infantry. Erich had agreed to meet his parents for luncheon today, his hope was that he could get a sort of resigned acceptance from his father.

Looking at himself in the mirrors that made up one of the walls of the lobby. He was wearing a white beret with a blue band. Pinned to it was a gold wreath with a diving sealion. That along with the Marine Career Badge and patch of the 3rd Marine Infantry Division sewn to his sleeve said to everyone exactly who Erich was. When he had returned from time spent with the Riverine Navy, he had been informed that despite there still being some training left, Erich and his men had earned their place among the Sealions, the elite Jager Corps of the KM.

Entering the lounge, Erich saw that his mother and father were waiting. His father had a blank expression while his mother looked hopeful. Erich had not seen them since that incident in the Hamburg Military Hospital, with any luck Erich wouldn’t end up strangling his father again this time. His goal was just to get through the meal without any outbursts.

“You came Erich” His mother said, happy to see him. “You are looking well.”

The last time she had seen him, Erich had just arrived back from the campaign in the East Indies. It was not an exaggeration to say that he had been looking rather rough at the time.

“Good to see you Ma” Erich replied as they walked together towards the crowded Dining Room. She smiled at him in reply.

Kiel Week, the highlight of Kiel’s Summer Social Season when Kiel would be the center of the Empire, was coming up in the last week of June this year, only a month away. The members of Yacht Club were the ones who organized the regatta, so everybody who was anybody was here today for the planning sessions that were set to begin after the luncheon. Erich had no intention of sticking around for that.

It was no surprise that the luncheon was a multi-course meal comprised mostly of seafood. It was an absolute feast compared to what Erich had been eating for the last several months. He found that was entirely too rich for his stomach.

Finally, as the last course was completed. The club President signaled that he wanted to speak and was met with polite applause. He was exactly what people imagined when they thought of an establishment like this one. An elderly and ossified fossil. He was a self-styled “Kommodore” having once been a Kapitan-zur-See in the Pacific War, commanding a Battlecruiser. These days he spent his days presiding over the day-to-day operations of the Imperial Yacht Club while soaking up gin in the lounge.

“Before we start the main event this afternoon, I wish congratulate a member who has returns to us today after spending several harrowing months in the South Seas of the Pacific” The Kommodore said, “Young Herr Raeder battled pirates and incompetent superiors, earning himself medals and meritorious promotion in the process. While many might have quibbled over his choice to join the Marines out of the Academy, he has proven himself mightily. I knew your great-grandfather, Erich. He would be proud of you today.”

This was met with far more enthusiastic applause.

Erich couldn’t help but notice that his father was glaring at him in red-faced anger, the vein in his forehead throbbing. His mother just looked disappointed by this latest turn. Things had been going well right up until the Kommodore had opened his mouth.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Five



1st June 1979

Tzschocha Castle

Like always, Gretchen was sitting with Mathilda and Eddie at lunch. The food was the usual bland unappetizing concoction of who knows what boiled into culinary incoherence. They had debated for months about whether the food at the Tzschocha Gymnasia was considered an actual crime but had been unable to identify which laws were being broken. Gretchen was reminded that her mother had said that the food wasn’t nearly as bad as she said it was the last time she went home. As Tilda and Eddie debated that, Gretchen read through the stack of letters that she had received that day. Most of them were related to her birthday, which was tomorrow.

Not all of them were related to her birthday, which was tomorrow. There was an invitation to her older brother’s wedding in July and another from Erich, whose typewritten letters came every few days anyway. In his latest later Erich described this mortifying scene at the Imperial Yacht Club in Kiel when the President of the Club had praised him for his actions in the East Indies before some of the most prominent members. He had no idea if it was intentional or not, but the Kommodore seemed to have snubbed Erich’s father in the process. Erich had said that he had never been happier to find himself back in the Bachelor Officers Quarters afterwards. He wished her a happy birthday and disappointingly, said that he was going to be out of communication for the next few weeks.

There was a letter from her mother saying how unfortunate it was that she was in Tzschocha this year and promising to go do something fun with her the next time she was home. Gretchen was reminded that they had not needed to have sent her to Tzschocha in the first place, she would never have met Tilda and Eddie if that hadn’t happened though. Gretchen’s grandmother had once told her that for everything that life takes from her, something is always given in return. Did it have to be so aggravating though?

Looking across the hall, Gretchen saw that Anna and two of her friends, as much as anyone could be said to be Anna’s friend, were giggling about something while looking at her. That was never good news. They had delighted in teasing Gretchen over her middle name, Eun-Ji, and just what that meant over the prior months. The fact that too many others laughed at Anna’s jokes not because they were funny, but because they didn’t want to cross her just made it worse. Gretchen really did wish that she was more like Tilda, Tilda didn’t allow anything that Anna did to affect her.

Eddie and Tilda were talking about their plans for the summer. They were talking about this epic adventure that sounded amazing, but Gretchen suspected that it involved camping a few hundred meters from the main house on the Richthofen Estate. Tilda might be a proud Heathen who said that she practiced the “Ancient Ways,” but she had spent most of her childhood in a house without indoor plumbing or electricity. It was implausible to think that Mathilda Auer would forgo creature comforts unless she was given no other choice.

Eventually, lunch concluded and they had their afternoon activities ahead. Gretchen wasn’t joining her two friends because they were a year ahead of her. That was a disappointing reminder that at the end of next year they would be going off to University while Gretchen would remain stuck in Tzschocha Castle.

Shoving the letters into the front pocket of her bookbag. Gretchen remembered that she had Swimming class this afternoon at the Community Center in Marklissa. Going swimming and perhaps a chance to window shop in the small town closest to the castle would be a welcome change of scenery. That meant going up to her room and getting her things. Before she got there though, Gretchen was intercepted by Vera Kappal. If Gretchen had to choose an example of how the Tzschocha Gymnasia’s position in society cause any number of problems, the presence of Vera was in the top five. Technically she was the Headmistress’ Assistant, though her actual role was more nebulous. She spoke in flowery language about how the school needed to see to the emotional needs and development of the students as opposed to the rigid Prussian model that often mistreated and dehumanized them. It was easy to see how the parents of the students ate that up, Gretchen was of the opinion that Vera was a nuisance at best. None of this was helped by her having an unfortunate resemblance to the American Actress Shelly Duvall and the demeanor of a small dog that had been stepped on too many times.

“I spoke with your sister and I found it disturbing” Vera said.

“And you believed her?” Gretchen asked in reply. She knew Anna and remembered how she had been giggling with her friends. Odds are it was because she had said something that had prompted Vera’s actions.

Vera gave Gretchen a looked that suggested that Anna might have fed her a line had not occurred to her.

“She said that you have been in correspondence with a man who is much older than you, and when she tried to talk to you, you and your friends boxed her out” Vera said, “Is any of that true?”

“Was that before or after Anna told everyone that my middle name means dogshit in Korean?” Gretchen asked, “And if you had bothered to find out, writing letters to soldiers in the field is a school assignment.”

The look on Vera’s face suggested that she was getting an idea of just how thoroughly Anna had gulled her. Not that Gretchen thought for an instant that there would be consequences. One thing that the adults never seemed to be able to do is admit to having been played.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Six



9th June 1979

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Marie Alexandra knew that she was borrowing trouble by coming here. Still, after months of living with Jackie she felt obligated to come here to help sound things out. That and she had reached the conclusion that Jack Kennedy deserved a severe beating before she had boarded the plane from Dublin to Montreal. He must have known exactly what he had been doing, having his daughter living with her while they were both attending University. There had been a few young men who had come sniffing around, clearly with the hope that it wouldn’t be too difficult to convince nineteen-year-old Jackie to naively make a few profound lapses in judgement. In their defense, Marie had found that Jackie had thought that they were interested in her personally as opposed to what had really been going on. That much was evidenced by how fast most of them had grown bored with Jackie and had turned their attention to Marie the instant they learned that she was from Germany.

The trouble for Marie was that it had all been spelled out in the files that Jack had given her. All the cases that didn’t involve rape seemed to follow the same depressing pattern. Men sweet talking them into bed only to walk away leaving them to deal with the consequences alone. Marie understood that she wasn’t immune to that sort of flattery herself, but her own social anxiety and experiences had proven to be a defense against that sort of thing. Getting abducted, held hostage at gunpoint as a child, and watching a woman who was basically her big sister get clubbed down in the street sort of made understanding people’s motives extremely important to her. Jack must have known that Marie would see herself, her mother, Jackie and any one of dozens of women she had known in those files when he had given them to her. It was the reason why she had ultimately given the files back. She had come to loath the people, mostly men, who had taken advantage of those women and then opportunistically did it again and again. Marie had found herself starting to agree with her mother’s penchant towards brutality when dealing with certain people.

That wasn’t who Marie wanted to be.

Then Jackie moved in and Marie had seen firsthand why her mother had never been able to avoid getting involved. Jack must have known what would happen because he had not been surprised when she had told him that she was going to Nova Scotia when she should have been on going home for the holiday.

At least the woman Marie was here to visit lived in Halifax as opposed to somewhere further afield. She had never learned to drive having always lived in this or that city center. A bicycle had always been sufficient to get her where she needed to go if transit was unavailable. Nova Scotia was a long way from the Montreal neighborhoods that Marie had lived in. The bus had dropped Marie off on a street that faced the harbor and the house she was looking for was a couple blocks up the hill.

It was a simple house like the others that surrounded it. A low chain-link fence enclosed the small yard that separated it from the street that had a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden that had been taken over by weeds in it. The mailbox had the name Campbell stenciled on the side , suggesting that Marie had found the right address. Two dogs that looked like they were the result of generations of random selection started barking at her as a she debated what to do next.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU TWO!” A big man said walking out from the garage that was behind the house before focusing on Marie. “What do you want?” He demanded. His hair and beard must have once been dark but had gone completely grey, he was also red-faced and she could see how bloodshot his eyes were. Marie could smell the beer on his breath from more than a meter away.

“I am looking for Sibéal O’Keefe” Marie said, mustering her courage to do so. She had come a long way to ask Sibéal’s permission before she clawed open old wounds. It was something that she doubted that Jack could have been bothered to do.

“We don’t need any of the trouble that your sort bring” The man growled at her. “Trying to get my wife to answer stupid questions so that you make a name for yourself.”

“Who do you think I am?” Marie asked.

“You’re from the newspapers” The man said, “Right?”

“No” Marie replied, “I’m a Law Student from Trinity College in Dublin working as an Investigator for John Kennedy.”

The man just staired at Marie like if she had grown a second head.

“A Senior Partner at Mallon, McGill, and Ó Doirnáin Solicitors” Marie finished and then thinking quickly she asked, “Are you Henry Campbell?”

“Aye” The man, Henry replied, “You still haven’t said what you want though.”

To help Jack blow apart Irish Society by finishing a battle that he had started decades earlier, Marie thought to herself but didn’t say aloud.

It was then that Marie saw a woman leave the house, pushing a screen door out of her way.

“The Doctor said no more drinking Hank” The woman said sharply in a language that Marie understood perfectly but had rarely heard outside of Ireland. “You act like a complete bastard when you you’ve had a few anyway and hiding your beer in the garage won’t change that. Now, who is this girl?”

Henry, or Hank, Marie corrected. He really did look more like a Hank and the formal Henry didn’t suit him at all. He gave the woman, presumably Sibéal, a guilty look.

“I am Marie Alexandra Blackwood” Marie said, “I am here representing John Kennedy in the matter of…”

“Has it really been so long?” Sibéal asked, a touch annoyed that Marie had understood what she had said, as she opened the gate. “You might as well come in.”

As Marie stepped through, she had the dogs sniffing at her feet as Hank muttered something to Sibéal.

“She’s our guest” Sibéal said, “Her mother was the one who broke me out of the Kilmainham Gaol. Not too many in Ireland were sorry to see the damage Kat Mischner did to place with the fire she set either.”