Chapter Two Thousand Six Hundred Sixty-Eight
10th March 1978
Sonthofen, Bavaria
After months of deliberation, Kiki and Ben had settled on Elene Stella to be their daughter’s name. It would have been Friedrich Eugen in the off chance that she had been born a boy. Elene because Kiki had liked the name with Stella, Latin for Star being Ben’s contribution. It would have been Stella-Polaris, but the Registrar had baulked at that. Apparently, it wasn’t on the approved list. Ben had said that everyone knew that the Registrars and Clerks who recorded the Births and Deaths in the local municipalities considered themselves to be the last bastion preserving German culture. So, it was best not to cross him. Kiki had told him to stop making fun of the man who was just trying to do his job.
With the additions of names that Kiki and Ben had added for personal reasons, her full name was Elene Stella Cecilie Aurora von Hirsch. The newspaper announcement had included mention that Elene was the daughter of the Graf of Oberallgäu with only passing mention of Kiki as the Princess Royal of Germany, which meant that she wouldn’t have to carry the burden of being a Princess from birth. That was something that Kiki was happy about.
Elene, presently in Kiki’s arms, was looking around with unfocused eyes in the manner of all babies. According to a book on early childhood development that Kiki had read had suggested that they saw world as a blur, not having the ability interpret what they were seeing yet. The one thing that Elene was able to focus on was the pendent on a gold chain that Kiki had around her neck. With her left hand, Kiki did her best to take off the necklace before Elene decided she needed to grab ahold of it.
In what had become something of a tradition, a ring or pendent as a gift for a new mother. The births of additional children would result in a new setting. That was why Kiki now had third stone added to her pendent. This one was aquamarine for her youngest daughter, while the bloodstone and jasper were for Nina and Louis that went along with the lapis lazuli for Kiki herself. Because all three of her children had been born in March the Jewelers had simply looked at the literature about which months of the year the stones symbolized and their various alternates.
Ben had told Kiki all about this as she had been in the Hospital in Sonthofen. He had also given her the pendant as they had talked about it and how they were going to introduce Elene to her older siblings. Kiki had also mentioned her conversation with Rea, how it felt as if Elene had been merely waiting for permission to enter the world. That was a key reason why Kiki had made part of Rea’s actual name of Marie Cecilie part Elene’s. She had wanted to include the names of both her closest friends, but though Zella had been touched that she had offered, she had asked her not to. So, Aurora had gotten the mention.
Los Angeles, California
The State Department, Department of Defense, Army Intelligence, CIA, and a whole host of alphabet soup Agencies that most people had never heard of wanted to know what Ritchie found out while he had been in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. That was sort of expected when you get sent on a fact-finding mission by the President. While there had been a formal debriefing when he had gotten off the plane in New York, they wanted it all in writing. That was why Ritchie was sitting in the sunlight basement of his house with a typewriter wishing that typing was something that he was actually good at. He had dozens of pages of handwritten notes that needed to be transcribed and his procrastination had not helped matters.
He had spent the last few days working on Frankenstein with varying degrees of help from his brothers Bobby and Mario, as well his former partner Big Mike. Bobby had been surprisingly helpful, helping locate parts from some friends of his. Ritchie had accepted that help with the knowledge that he should probably make a point of never running the serial numbers. He figured that he wouldn’t be happy with the result. It was similar situation with the other friends that Bobby had down in Tijuana who could do anything that Ritchie wanted as far as paint, or interior work for a song. What would the San Diego Police have to say about Bobby’s friends if Ritchie asked? He figured that Bobby’s friends would probably be greatly amused by the irony of finding themselves working on an old cop car.
Pushing that aside, Ritchie thought about how he had been tasked with finding the 4th Panzer Division in Northern Ukraine. It wasn’t just the 4th Panzer though. Ritchie had seen elements other Divisions that comprised the German 2nd Army Corps as well. That alone was a huge part of Germany’s peacetime military strength. What else was going on in Belarus and the Baltics? Ritchie knew it wasn’t his job to speculate but it looked to him like the Germans were moving pieces into place so that…
“Keep quiet Kristie, Popa is working!” Ritchie heard Stevie yell at Kristie, defeating the purpose. It sounded like Kristie was smashing something plastic into the concrete wall of the basement. Lucia liked it when he was home because he was able to watch the kids while she was at work. There were two small problems with that. With a bit of annoyance he got up to deal with whatever his kids had gotten into.