Chapter Two Thousand Five Hundred Sixty-Nine
10th July 1976
Montreal, Canada
It wasn’t until Margot actually met Nikolaus and Sabastian that she realized that Douglas had put one over on her. He had told her that it would be wonderful if she played hostess to a trio of young people from prominent families in danger of making some extremely poor life decisions. That had played on her desire to be morally superior, but the icing on the cake was the two young men were a Prince and the son of a Marquis whose families would be very appreciative, which certainly played on Margot’s ego. Sir Malcolm knew the truth was that two of them were recent graduates from the Wahlstatt Institute, an elite prep-school in Silesia and were starting University in Breslau next autumn. The girl, Sophie, had actually visited their house a couple of times in the past, but Margot had hardly noticed her. With them among the youngest of the athletes representing Germany, Katherine had been understandably concerned and had made arrangements that the made things considerably simpler in that chaperones would not be needed for the nearly impossible task of keeping teenagers out of trouble. Sophie being essentially Marie’s little sister. While Nikolaus was Marie’s cousin by blood, he said that he considered Sabastian his brother in every way that mattered. That basically made Malcolm and Margot family to all of them which would certainly make things easier.
Still, Nikolaus and Sabastian showing up at the airport wearing the uniforms of the Wahlstatt Institute, which coincidentally looked almost exactly like those worn by Germany in the First World War, must have been a shock to Margot’s system. The next shock was that Sabastian spoke English that to Malcolm’s ears had little to no accent. He said that it was because his mother was from Washington State. Malcolm got the impression that Sophie Sommers was fairly typical of the girls that Katherine took into her care, equal parts fragile and ruthless, which was evident in how she had made it as far as she had in the world of competitive Cycling. Factoring all that in, Malcolm’s conclusion was that he would need to have a long talk with Douglas when he and Katherine arrived next week, and to keep Margot from disowning their son in the meantime.
Presently, Malcolm was listening to the four of them in the kitchen sitting around the table talking with each other, getting caught up, laughing, and joking while enjoying a late dinner. As much as it pained Malcolm to admit it, Marie looked happier than he had seen her in months. He wondered how they were able to have this conversation after having spent the whole day before in the air. He knew that he would want nothing more than to sleep for a week if he were in their place. They also had news which Marie had not heard. That their older cousin, Manfred the Younger and his wife were expecting. That was an extremely interesting bit of news.
State Route 11, Yukon River crossing, Rural Alaska
This operation had turned out to be everything that First Sergeant Mullens had been threatening them with for months. Mario’s entire Battalion had been parachuted into a remote part of the Alaskan interior just south of the Brooks Range and ordered to walk back to walk back to Fort Wainwright outside Fairbanks.
They should have known something was out of the ordinary was up when they had been issued with old Garand derived M-9 rifles in the place of the Stoner M-10 Rifles they had trained with. The next day as they had been boarding the old C-47 Dakota Transport planes, word had gotten around that the 6mm cartridge that the Stoner fired would only serve to anger the wildlife that lived in the region. Mario had learned in a hurry that he missed the light weight of the Stoner. The M-9 was a big chunk of wood & steel and was anything but light. M-9 also kicked like a mule as Mario had discovered when he had practiced shooting his rifle. Then he had seen the size of the pawprints of the bear which had crossed the trail ahead of them and he wondered if even the .30-06 was enough to do the job if he really got into trouble out in the boonies of Alaska.
That set the tone for the rest of the long walk back to Wainwright. It seemed like everything they encountered would either try to eat them or attack them. As if to add insult to injury, helicopters from Wainwright had arrived, disgorging men who collected the parachutes and wished them luck before they had flown off to the south. The offer had been made to go with them, but if you did you would no longer be welcome in the 11th Airborne. Later as he joined the others on the long slog south and east, Mario had been annoyed with himself. There he was being offered an easy way out, yet he had not taken it.
Days later. Or at least Mario assumed that it had been days because the sun never seemed to completely set here this time of the year, Mario saw that he was on the approach to a bridge that crossed an impossibly wide river. There was a pickup truck coming the other way and Mario saw the faces of an Alaskan Native family staring at the hundreds of Soldiers who were walking down the road.