Chapter 337: The Visitor, Part 5
Karacakoy, Provisional Seat of the Provisional Government - 4 March 1941
Kaiser Otto woke up to the sound of...well, nothing. Roosters crowed in the distance. Cows mooed and pigs snorted. Tractor engines hummed. And some fishermen were shouting as they prepared to take their boats out to sea.
And yet he still heard the sound of boots thumping on the ground and his officers barking out orders, reminding him that he was in the provisional seat of the true imperial government.
His room was quite plain. The walls were concrete and gray. The floor had a basic carpet covering a concrete floor. The dirty windows at least we're made of bulletproof glass. He remembered Ludendorff apologizing for the conditions of his room. It was a far cry from the luxury of Brandenburg Palace, but his only other option was sleeping outside on the dirt and risking murder not only by Angeloi assassins but also common criminals who had no respect for him.
He got dressed and walked outside, where his detail of Varangians saluted and took up positions around him. Karacakoy was a small rural village not unlike those in the German and Greek countrysides. The only things distinguishing this village from its neighbors were the Eastern Slavic and Zunist temples and the Turkish being spoken by most of its inhabitants.
Turks had a long and complicated history with the Reich. When the Seljuks were driven from Mesopotamia and Syria, the Turks settled there had been expelled. Later, when the Timurids conquered the Iranian and Turkish heartlands they sent waves of refugees in the Reich's direction. By then the Reich's traditions of tolerance and fairness had been mostly established, and Kaiser Martin settled them in villages throughout the Reich. Karacakoy was one of them. After Persepolis and the ensuing collapse of the Timurid Empire many of the Persians chose to go home, but since the Turkish homeland was promptly conquered and colonized by India the Turks mostly stayed in the Reich. Widespread assimilation and Germanization soon followed. By the start of the war most of the Turkish community had been absorbed into the German and Greek population. Karacakoy was one of the last of the original Turkish villages established in the 1390s. And despite the decline of the Turkish community, life in this village carried on as normal.
In the middle of the village, next to the small fishermen's harbor, sat a building complex that looked completely out of place. Modern steel bunkers, from which the imperial eagle flag fluttered in the morning breeze, towered over the small local houses. The dirt road gave way to pavement, and horse-drawn carriages were parked next to civilian and military cars. Next to farmers tending to their crops, soldiers drilled in formation.
He walked inside one of the bunkers, which was so new there were still people working on the inside. That was probably why Ludendorff put him in the middle of the village. Or maybe he was still fuming from yesterday's argument.
He found Ludendorff and the other generals and admirals in what passed for a war room. Everybody sat on plain wooden chairs around a basic table on which several maps of the area immediately surrounding Constantinople and Karacakoy were randomly spread out. Men and women sat in front of large computing machines and radios, reading output printouts and listening to messages intently. Phones constantly rang, bringing with them news from the front lines.
An attendant placed a cup of coffee in front of him as he sat down at the table.
"Morning, gentlemen," said Otto, sipping his coffee. "Ugh, I'm still not used to this Turkish coffee."
"Morning, Your Majesty," said Ludendorff.
"Let's get to business," said Otto, "How goes the front?"
"The western front with Bulgaria and Macedonia is relatively stable," said General Bulow, "But we're not making any progress there. They can't make any progress either. Unless we retake the capital we won't have the industrial and supply capabilities to break through."
"There are troops stuck in Nicomedia and the Marmara coast region," said General Franco, "They're also holding, and were diverting as many as we can for the assault on Constantinople. The troops in Athens have performed admirably. The city's still under our control, as are Bucharest and Damascus."
"But we can't do much while the Angeloi hold Constantinople," said Ludendorff, placing a dozen Angeloi counters on the Queen of Cities, "Almost as soon as they left they started reinforcing the capital from the sea and air. They've based an entire fleet and two air wings in the city to supplement a large number of troops, the exact number of which we were unable to determine. They've reinforced not only the old Theodosian Walls but just about every single wall and entrance and exit in and out of the city with dozens of artillery pieces, .50-caliber gun turrets, and mines. They're expecting us to throw everything we've got into an attempt to retake Constantinople, which they expect to fail and open up Thrace to invasion."
"But if we just sit here, they'll attack us first," said Otto, "And we don't have the manpower or equipment to defend this village, believe it or not."
"Then what do you suggest we do?" Franco asked.
"Extend the draft," said Otto, "Don't implement mandatory conscription just yet, but we need as many soldiers as we can get. Use all of our air wings to establish air superiority over Constantinople in preparation for an attack. Horthy, what's the status of the navy?"
"Not good, sir," replied the admiral, "Our main carrier fleet has gone missing off the coast of Hispania, presumably lost with all hands. Our main battle fleets are currently engaging Angeloi ships in the Bosphorus. The remaining ships are stationed in Athens, but they're not seaworthy and are too far away to help out."
"Ludendorff, where are Panagiotos and Lettow-Vorbeck?"
"Last I heard before we lost the Suez, Panagiotos had run out of fuel and was stuck in Indochina and Lettow-Vorbeck was stationed on a random island near Papua. All fleets that aren't in the Mediterranean have been destroyed."
"Guess it's just us, then," said Otto, "Get as many troops as you can and tell me the soonest you can attempt to retake the capital. Dismissed."
The generals saluted as he left the room.
He headed over to his temporary office, where mounds of paperwork awaited him. It was just him and a few ragtag men up against an evil empire that was once his. The tables were turned against him. Two years ago, Angelos was the rebel. Now he was the rebel. Angelos held hostage almost all of the Reich and its armies and factories. He had nothing. Not even his wife. For the first time since his father was murdered he was utterly alone.
He remembered his lonely childhood. His first memory was reading about the assassination of Uncle Franz Ferdinand (not the same guy who Angelos had forced to be a puppet Kaiser). In the next few weeks things were a blur. He rarely saw his own parents. His father was busy in Berlin being groomed to succeed Franz Joseph, who he remembered as "that grumpy old man." His mother was frequently absent, accompanying his father to Berlin. He was raised in Vienna by a group of old men and women assigned to be his mentors and tutors. For two years he was constantly drilled in everything from horse riding to archery to calculus to music composition. The pressure on him to be the perfect heir was terrifying, and his mental breakdowns were so frequent that they had to hire Freud himself to treat him.
Then his father was murdered by a Hashshashin acting on orders from the Chinese-installed Persian government, and at six or seven he became the Kaiser. He remembered the day that happened as if it were yesterday. Several servants entered his room, some of them crying and others with a serious look on their face.
"What did I do?" he remembered saying.
"Nothing," said one servant, bowing low, "It's your dad."
"Where's my dad?" he had said.
One servant had hesitated. "He...he's in Heaven now."
"Daddy is dead?"
"...yes."
And then he had stared at them for the next minute, watching as they bowed before him. They had told him he was the Kaiser now. They took him to another room, dressed him in fancy clothes, and put him on the old throne chair for people to kneel before him. And then the pressure on him only intensified. More and more lessons. More and more training. More and more practice. More and more restrictions. And of course there was Angelos as the regent. At one point he even ran away and hid on the streets of Berlin. He didn't want to deal with the immense responsibilities of being the most powerful man in the world.
Victoria Louise had turned him around. They met in 1921 after the signing of the Toronto Accords ended the last battles of the war, allowing thousands of men to come home. Among them was Duke Franz Ferdinand, the Maximist claimant who had been overseeing the evacuation of Tsarist forces to Sweden and helping to organize their government in exile. Angelos held a ball to celebrate the end of all fighting around the world. He first saw her on a balcony, gazing up into the stars. When he tried to start a conversation she simply veered into a discussion on whether or not Mozart was better than Beethoven. He lost that discussion, but she didn't care. They were still kids, so of course Angelos and the other adults forbid them from dancing. After the ball, she returned with her father to the Maximist estate in Saxony, while Otto went to Vienna, but they kept in touch with letters almost every week. Finally, he had someone who really understood him. She made getting used to his responsibilities as Kaiser far easier.
Of course, there were many hardships over the next few years. The General Strike of 1926 toppled Reich allies and enemies around the world and installed radical dictatorships in their place. There were times when he feared the strike might escalate into a revolution, but Victoria Louise, who had by then gained her father's permission to move to Berlin, helped him get through the tough times.
Almost as soon as he came of age another crisis hit his empire. The Great Depression decimated the world economy, and the Reich's was the hardest hit. While many despaired and some even jumped out of skyscrapers to their deaths, Victoria Louise told him not to worry. He would get through this. And he did. With Adenauer's help he implemented fiscal policies to jumpstart the economy and gave fireside chats over radio to the nation, soothing the people's fears. Unfortunately Angelos claimed most of the credit for that, which led to this blasted war.
Angelos knew that Victoria Louise was the one thing keeping him going when things got rough. And Otto knew that. For the first time in twenty years, he didn't have Victoria Louise by his side. He had forgotten what it was like to be alone. He didn't know what to do now. One wrong move and he might lose her forever.
He sighed. "Get to work," he told himself, "She would have wanted me to do at least that."
If Heydrich as much as touched her, he would personally tear him to pieces and get the Inquisitipn to cast a spell to send him directly to Hell.
Constantinople - 5 March 1941, early morning
Mihailo's phone rang, waking him up in the middle of the night.
He sleepily picked up the phone. "What is it?" he snapped.
"It's me," said Octavia, "We're having an awkward situation up here."
"Don't worry, I'll come up right away," replied Mihailo.
"Don't," said Octavia, "It's awkward, but we've got everything under control. Anyways, I've got a mission for you. I know that the city's only been under occupation for a couple days, but this is important."
"I'm listening," said Mihailo.
"This is going to sound hard, but you need to make sure the Kaiser is safe."
"That's easy," said Mihailo, "He already fled the city, abandoning not just all of us but also his wife."
"Sometimes I wonder why you signed up with the Resistance."
"Better dead than fascist."
"So...I'll call you back when I got another mission for you. Keep in touch. Stay safe."
Octavia hung up.
Mihailo sighed and went back to sleep. Abandoned, again. Just as his father abandoned him when he ran off to be possessed by an angel. Just as his girlfriend left him. Everybody had abandoned him. All he had was the Resistance now. Just him and a few rebels defending a lost cause.
Northern Illyria - 6 March 1941
A highway snaked through the imposing Balkan landscape. The pavement twisted and turned and rose and fell with each and every mountain, valley, river, and lake. As he drove down the highway on his way north, Wilhelm couldn't help but wonder what made this rugged wasteland so valuable. In many timelines the Balkans were among the deadliest battlefields on the planet, but here they had been peaceful since the unification of the Reich, aside from the chaos of the Anarchy, the Fifty Years' War, and the Maximist War. And then of course there was this war, which laid waste to the region with such ferocity as hadn't been seen in centuries.
He was jolted from his contemplation by a sudden sharp pain in the back of his head. He pulled over to the side, or what he thought was the side. For some reason he was now on the left side of the highway, not the right, and surrounded by cars, which honked in annoyance at him.
He quickly corrected himself and pulled over to the left, where he got out and looked around. He thought he was driving along an empty highway through a landscape filled with the scars of war. But now the highway was filled with cars driving on the left side of the road, and the countryside had no signs of battles being fought. Billboards rose over the highway, advertising products he was not familiar with.
He blinked, and that was all gone. He was on the right side of the road again, and there were no cars or billboards in sight.
What...what was that? Gavrilo asked.
I have no idea, replied Wilhelm.
He got back into his car and drove off.
Vienna - 7 March 1941
Uriel suddenly tensed up.
"What is it?" Engelbert asked.
"I'm sensing another breach in the fabric of reality," said Uriel, "This is not good."
"You mean somebody else is crossing over into this universe?"
Senator Otto asked.
"It appears so," said Uriel, "If that is the case, that only makes our situation even worse. It'll accelerate the rate of convergence."
"Where is this person crossing over?" Otto asked. "Maybe we could find them and send them back across."
"Even if you could get to Delhi, I doubt you have the means to cross between universes."
"That's not my concern," said Engelbert, picking up his hat, "I'm off to a Resistance briefing. Make sure your spells cover the entire building, including the basement. Raphael's needed at the briefing."
He left the room.
"Let's hope the people trying to capture you haven't followed you here," said Uriel.
"I doubt it," said Otto, "If they crossed over in India I think it's fair to say they don't know who I am. Wait, how did this individual cross over if Gabriel only had one grace with him?"
"Gabriel must be powering up the angel tablet," said Uriel, "Oh, this is even worse than convergence."
"What?"
Uriel looked straight at him. "Gabriel is trying to become God."
Delhi - 8 March 1941
Gandhi and his officers looked inside the holding cell, where they had put their guest.
"He looks a bit like you," said General Bose, "Doesn't he?"
"Shut up," said Gandhi, "Everybody in this room knows he is an exact duplicate of me."
Indeed, the cell contained another Gandhi, only he was still heavily drunk and made no sense at all.
"Not a single word of this is to be leaked to the press, Shekha," said Gandhi, "If word gets out of me apparently being a raving drunk lunatic the Muslims and Bolsheviks will tear us apart."
"Yes, my neta," said Shekha, "What should we do with him?"
"I don't want to kill myself," said Gandhi, "Obviously not myself, and to an extent that is me. Keep him here until he sobers up, then prepare him for interrogation. I will conduct the interrogation."
"But sir!" Bose said.
"You heard me," said Gandhi, "I need him alive and unharmed...for now."
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Okay, that last part wasn't part of the original plan but I'll roll with it.
