Chapter Two Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixteen
2nd February 1980
Tempelhof, Berlin
It was one of those rare winter days when it was so clear that everything seemed to be in incredibly sharp focus. For Kat it was the last thing she wanted to see. It was a day like this one that had irrevocably changed the course of her life and ended with her in the hospital. To this day people thought that her actions had been heroic, but she long ago concluded that was only after staggering amount of papering over her personal failures that day. Kat had the ringing in her left ear as a reminder of that. People had died because she had been slow on the uptake, now after forty-one years she was being told that she was one of the last remaining survivors of that incident. Which was a complete farce. And like with most years at this time, there was a spike of interest in Kat. As much as she would love to turn a machine gun, or better yet, a flamethrower, on the journalists who pestered her, it was Kat’s understanding that dealing with them that way was sort of illegal. She had hoped that with Kristina being back in the news again they would have forgotten about her, but there was no such luck.
That was why Kat was holed up in her house as much as she had come to hate it. It wasn’t that she had any hate for her home. It had always been a place of shelter for her. What she hated was feeling like a prisoner…
It was then that Kat’s melancholy was interrupted by noise from the library. As she reluctantly got up from behind her office desk, she felt the too familiar pain in her back. It was what was termed a “Service-Related Injury” and had resulted in a KZS Doctor telling her that she had a condition that might eventually require surgery to correct, somewhat. It would possibly reduce the amount of pain she was in, but at the cost of her ability to move if it worked as planned. She was understandably reluctant to agree to that. Despite having retired years ago, Peter Holz regularly called Kat to check how she was doing and when they had talked about it he reminded her that she had taken what was equivalent to a hard blow from a 10-kilogram sledgehammer to her back. That wasn’t without Long-term consequences.
Entering the house’s library, Kat saw that there were five young women present, two of them were the last of the girls who Kat had taken in, talking to each other. It might have seemed strange that she had built a family, not just with her biological children, but eleven more who had needed a place to go, twelve if you included Anne, whose daughter Lina was in the library with the others. It was a bit strange that Lina was now in University. Had it really been so long? She had recently changed her surname from Kauffmann to her mother’s maiden name, Frank, after being annoyed by her father once too often. Kat had not reached a conclusion about that yet. She was arguing with Angelica over what music to put on. Angelica wanted to listen to the Moondogs’ Spiraling album, which was an odd choice considering the role that one of the members of that band had played in her life. While she had not yet completed her secondary education, Angelica was interested in studying Archaeology at University next year with the main focus having shifted quite a bit over the last few years. First it had been Rome, then China, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Egypt since she had gone there over the Easter Holiday last year. Kat figured that meant that her foster daughter was going to lead quite an adventurous life once she went out into the world.
Sophie was talking with Gabriele and Franziska as they were spreading the materials from the day’s lectures on the table. It was the first time that Kat had seen Sophie in a few days with her being kept busy lately. When Kat had established the fitness studio with the help of Malcolm, it had been an interesting diversion. The fact that she didn’t have Sophie underfoot this winter had been a happy accident. The idea had come from conversations where Marie had talked at length about the athletic club she had been a member of in Montreal, and Kat had realized that there might easily be a demand for a place like that in Berlin which was not attached to a Football Club or training Boxers. Malcolm’s climbing wall and presence of not just Sophie, but the other members of her Cycling team made it different as well. The thought of Malcolm reminded Kat of how she was filled with dread every time she thought about the Mountaineering expedition he was a part of. Everything that she had heard suggested that the mountain was absolutely lethal, which she understood was part of its allure. Malcolm had spent his life being discounted for reasons that were not his fault, so he saw reaching that summit as a way to prove all of his detractors wrong. The thing was that it was entirely unnecessary. Kat knew that the Alpenkorps had contacted him. All they cared about was that he was on the verge of receiving a Doctorate in Computer Science, had attended the Arctic Training School near Bad Reichenhall, and was a Mountaineer of note. They were giving Malcolm everything that he ever wanted after the Luftwaffe had basically shoved him into a hole to watch a monitor screen and ignored him for the last decade.
“Aunt Kat” Lina said as she noticed Kat standing in the doorway. “We aren’t bothering you. Are we?”
All of them were staring at Kat.
“No, not at all” Kat replied.