Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Fifty-Two
23rd June 1968
Sonnenberg
Like always, Kiki felt absurd when she wore the uniform of the Johanniter Order. The red tunic, white skirt, black cloak, and matching hat were absurd. She had joined the other Knights in the Order that afternoon as they had conducted the procession from the hospital to the castle. Because all members of the Order were equal, Kiki had found herself walking beside her father. He had smiled at her and told her that he was happy that that she had come.
The Renaissance castle that was the Seat of the Order’s Brandenburg Bailiwick and was probably the last place on Earth Kiki wanted to be this evening. However, she had run out of excuses for not coming to the Neumark for Saint John’s Eve. Presently, she was the only Dame of Honor in the Order and by far the youngest member. Her cousin had said that would change in the future, but Kiki wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed that the public reputation of the Order tended to proceed it. When the subject of the Order had come up when she had gone on the rounds with Doctor Berg on Friday afternoon. Berg had seen the pin of the Order on Kiki’s white lab coat and had been rather cynical when Kiki had tried to explain what it was about.
“A bunch of rich old men parading around in funny costumes trying to buy their way into Heaven with money as opposed to deeds” Was how Berg had put it. That was perfectly in keeping with what Kiki knew about Berg’s opinion of hypocrisy. The thing was, that described most of the chivalrous Orders when it came right down to it. Kiki also knew that Berg, along with the entire University Hospital’s administration, had never turned away anyone who wanted to donate money to it. Berg had also seen fit to mention that the Order’s Patron Saint had probably been a Paranoid Schizophrenic who had spent much of his life deep in the throes of religious mania.
Berg had dropped it when she had started talking to her patient, an unfortunate woman who’d had one child too many and had paid a heavy price. Berg had told Kiki that it was a long recovery further complicated by the woman being rendered surgically menopausal. It was in keeping with the questions that Kiki had for Berg anyway and they had talked afterwards. Berg had said that she should come to the hospital in the afternoons and evenings to work in her department. She felt that Kiki could learn a lot and it would probably be a welcome change from what she will have to endure in the mornings.
With that, the prayer concluded, and everyone seated themselves. As a Dame of Honor, Kiki was seated at the far end of the room, out of earshot of the Grandmaster who was leading this whole thing. She still had the ritualized “feast” to get through and then a hundred odd kilometers back to Berlin to look forward to.
Near Arenillas, Ecuador
The problem of Peruvian tanks would have been easily solved if the pencil pushers back in Washington D.C. could have pulled their heads out of their asses for five minutes. Instead, Parker had sent increasingly terse telegrams back to the States and he kept getting the same answers back. A Special Forces Team like the one he was heading had a specific Table of Organization and Equipment for good reason. That basically said that the US Government didn’t trust their Ecuadorian counterparts and they didn’t want to give them a weapon that might be turned on American forces if the political winds changed. His requests for more of the type of anti-tank rockets currently issued to the US Army had been rebuffed. His team had the only M-20 Super Bazooka in all of Ecuador and only a dozen rockets for it while intelligence said that the Peruvians had a hundred tanks. From long experience, Parker doubled the number of tanks he could expect if the balloon went up and according to Ritchie these were Panther II tanks they would be dealing with. The handful of M-9 Bazookas that the Ecuadorians had would probably just piss off the crews of those tanks and they would return the favor with interest in the form of high-explosive shells.
Into this, Parker had received a letter from Sigi. Just her letting him know that she was well. Pomerania was boring during the winter, so she was happy that summer was finally here. The issue was that the letter had been routed through Langley before it had been redirected to him. It was the CIA’s way of letting Parker know that they were watching him and his personal relationships very carefully.
Meeting Sigi in Nova Scotia and Cuba had been nice. Mostly they had been able to enjoy themselves without the politics of their home countries interfering with matters. The CIA had not been pleased with Parker having done that. During the latest debrief that he had been subjected to upon his return from Cuba, he had been asked if he was trying to turn Sigi. It had been all he could do not to show his annoyance. The CIA saw her as a potential asset, nothing more. Apparently, the CIA’s counterparts in the BND were leaning on Sigi in the exact same way. Sigi had told him that if a couple of meteors took out Langley and Falkensee both of them would be happier for it.