2nd November 1944
Tiso and Tuka are not attending an unspecified meeting that isn't being held in the depths of the Presidential Palace. Not that deep obviously, the Presidential Palace isn't really big enough to have proper depths.
"What is the point of this meeting?" Tiso asked.
"It's not a meeting." Baron Von Killinger replied.
"But we're all here, there are some briefing notes, there's the chap with his burnt stick and slate taking the minutes." Tuka pointed to the damning evidence.
"This is not officially a meeting." General Kubela said.
"The notes say we can expect an update from Slovak Counter-Intelligence and the latest news from German Intelligence." Tiso read his briefing papers.
"That will not be happening, because none of us are here." Von Killinger angrily snapped.
"Is this part of your new security initiative?" Tuka said accusingly.
"Yes, I mean no. German Intelligence believes that if a meeting doesn't officially happen then the Allies can't spy on it." Von Killinger confessed.
"That would be useful for an Intelligence meeting like this one." General Malar nodded.
Von Killinger glowered at him and started to froth
"Or it would be, if we were having a meeting. Which we aren't. At all." Malar tried to calm the enraged German.
"Are Allied spies actually trying to infiltrate our meetings?" Tuka tried to drag the meeting back to somewhere near on track.
"Yes!" Von Killinger excitedly declared, pointing at the note from Slovak Counter-Intelligence.
There once was a spy from the States
Who acted like W B Yeats
His use of Allusion
Lead to the conclusion
That only a grounded and fully sublated ontology will reveal social useful truths about intransitive reality.
A savage attack (possibly) by Jankso Jesensky on poet that he (presumably) captured. It is hard to be sure. It is also hard to be sure if he is more disgusted by the man being a foreign spy or the fact the man is from a different school of poetry. But then it is always hard to be sure of anything in the world of critical social realism, that is kind of the point. Maybe. Perhaps.
Tiso automatically reached for his hipflask, the news that someone who actually mattered was trying to spy on Slovakia had come as a great surprise. He fought back the urge and tried to focus.
"Very well, these meetings will remain unofficial." Tiso decided. "But once they've started we're not going to muck about continuing to pretend they aren't happening while talking to each other."
Von Killinger looked down in disappointment, then nodded.
"Very well. Baron, what is the news from Germany?" He asked.
"The British have deployed a fearsome new weapon!" Von Killinger exclaimed.
"What is it?" Tuka asked.
"The Super Heavy Armoured Tank II." Malar read from the briefing.
"That sounds a bit.. generic." Tuka offered.
"Well the last British super heavy tanks were called the TOG and the Tortoise." Kubela shuddered as he explained. "We think Churchill has banned the Army from coming up with new tank names until they stop being rubbish."
"Where have these new super heavy monsters been deployed?" Tiso asked. "To make a breakthrough on the Western Front?"
"To smash through into Austria?" Tuka guessed.
"No, they are currently in Monaco, down in the South of France." Von Killinger gestured at the map.
The Franco-Italian-Alpine Front continues to be baffling, with neither side really having much in the way of a plan. The fearsome Super Heavy Armoured Tanks II are having a nice relaxing drive along the seaside, the 26th Unpronounceable-Collection-of-Constants Division is so terrified it has started running away already.
Tiso reached for his hipflask, but in triumph not disaster. Just looking at the badly named tanks, complete lack of plan and general mess in North Italy reassured him, he was not alone in having to deal with incompetent subordinates. *glug, glug, glug*
--
Notes:
Paradox didn't bother giving the British Super Heavy Armour proper model names after the A.39 Tortoise. But they did write an AI that wants to research and build Super Heavy Armoured divisions. From this I conclude that either the right and left hand of Paradox didn't know what the other was doing. Or they did know, but hated each other. Both are plausible.
