10.6.2014
Upon entering the Reichstag for another day at work, Gernot and I were immediately greeted by Heidi with urgent news that she had just received moments before we arrived. There had been a shooting at Hanover.
According to witnesses, at 0740 hours, three vans of armed men in full business suits and sunglasses pulled up and stopped in the middle of the intersection of the 441 and 6 streets, blocking all traffic. The men emerged from the vehicles with assault rifles and submachine guns and began shooting everyone they saw in sight. One of them used a megaphone to proclaim that the city of Hanover was now in the hands of the National Democratic Party, and that all who were not in favor of the party's policies were to evacuate from the city or be shot.
The rallies have finally become violent, and it was only a matter of time.
Heidi, the Minister of Defense, had already deployed several squads of the GSG-9 with Oberfeldwebel Jollenbeck in charge to assist local police forces suppressing the armed men. Casualties at the time of our knowledge of this shooting stood at fourteen killed and eight more hospitalized from gunshot wounds. She asked us what we thought was the proper course of action to deal with these terrorists.
Gernot wanted to simply kill the terrorists. "Just as they had exterminated our Jewish citizens, so too shall we exterminate them!" he cried angrily. "We ought to show them what the blood of true rats look like, and now is a perfect opportunity!" And of course, outlaw the NDP while we are at it.
I, however, took a more steadfast approach. No doubt that the terrorists needed to be dealt with seriously, but to simply shoot them all on sight would be folly. We needed a testimony, solid evidence from these terrorists that proved the NDP's direct association with their actions. For all we know, these terrorists could have been random thugs hired by some shady criminal crime syndicate or some other politically affiliated organization that wants to frame the NDP. Because for all their disruptive rhetoric, up until this point, their rallies, besides the noise complaints, were not violent. To the knowledge of the German government, the NDP had shown no such intentions to suddenly turn their rallies violent. Of course, the shooting today did not start as a rally, it was simply a shooting.
But I must admit that the secret information that Herr Sanford and Herr Deimos had slipped us about the A.A.H.W. providing arms to the NDP leaves its bias. Gernot and I both knew that this was most certainly an act of terrorism on the part of the NDP - we just needed the proof, and we knew exactly how to get it.
I ordered Heidi to instruct our special forces to capture a few terrorists if possible and to eliminate the rest. Gernot muttered to me in private that I ought to have instructed the GSG-9 to kill all of them. If there was one American ideal he firmly believed in, it was the refusal to negotiate with terrorists.
Shortly after, as I sat in my office to deal with the flood of calls that were sure to come in regarding the incident, I instead received a call first from Herr Sanford. He informed me that he and Herr Deimos had been notified of the shooting. When I asked him what they were doing now, he replied that he and his partner were headed to a classified location to track down the source of the weapons used in the shooting in Hanover. The GSG-9 would be able to handle the situation by themselves; there was no need for them to assist. He stated that if all went well, by tomorrow, the two American operatives would have solid evidence that we would be able to use to prove the NDP's association with the A.A.H.W. and convict them legally as an extension of a terrorist organization.
Before we ended the call, Herr Sanford also recommended that I put our girls back home on high alert. There could be a chance that their services may be needed, in the slim chance of a grave emergency. I did not like the sound of that, but I did so anyway, calling the girls at home. Citadel Five - one of a series of codes specifically meant to be given to our Wunderwaffe ship girls as orders for war, and this one ordered the girls to prepare themselves to defend the country. We have a few weapons stored carefully in tricky places throughout our home to accommodate the girls, so they do not need to rely on others to be supplied, and we have a bulletproof car in our garage always ready for emergencies like this. They remained on sharp standby for the entire day, but thankfully I did not end up having to deploy them anywhere.
Within hours, the GSG-9 and the local police forces had quelled the terrorist attack, and Jollenbeck and his men were able to capture three of the terrorists, two of whom they had wounded and taken down, the last one surrendering after being cornered. Around the same time, the NDP issued official statements, claiming that they were not responsible. But Gernot and I knew better.
The media arrived just before lunch to press for official comments from the Chancellor. Gernot believes firmly in the ideal that the government must be as transparent as possible with the media for the sake of promoting a positive, trusting image of the government for the citizens of the nation, and to this end he always goes to speak with the media whenever the need arises. Needless to say, the media always knows that the Chancellor is willing to talk, thus are in good terms with him. We announced that the we had been informed of the incident earlier in the morning and immediately dispatched our best teams of special forces to apprehend the terrorists, as was the case, and that we were going to persecute them to the fullest extent of the law and hold them accountable for the deaths of the innocent civilians who had been killed at that street intersection at the outburst of the violence. We issued an official apology for the families of those who were either killed or injured at the epicenter of the incident, and Gernot told me to leave the emergency press conference while he handled the press stuff. He knows I do not like dealing with the press. Sometimes I wonder how it is that my husband has so much patience for such people.
The terrorists captured at Hanover were then taken to Stammheim Maximum Security Prison, so I flew down to Stuttgart to observe their interrogation. Jollenbeck handled the interrogation - it is his trained career specialty, after all. The two wounded terrorists yielded nothing, but the one who had surrendered voluntarily leaked information that NDP authorities indeed had negotiated an arms deal with mediators from the A.A.H.W., although he claimed to know nothing of the details, and that everything he knew was just from casual eavesdropping or rumors from other NDP members. He also revealed that the terrorists at Hanover earlier today were indeed NDP members, meaning that we now can proceed with official charges of terrorism against the party. Armed with the evidence, Jollenbeck and I drove back up to Berlin and worked quickly to prepare the data before an emergency meeting of the Bundestag scheduled for tomorrow morning regarding the terrorist attack at Hanover.
Finally, as a gesture of goodwill from the government, I headed over to the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover to visit the survivors of the attack. One of them died of their wounds at the hospital, bringing the total death count to fifteen, but the others were in stable condition. Three of the seven survivors were still critical; one of them had been shot in through the dead center of his stomach, and had he not been speedily transported to the hospital, he would have perished of internal acid poisoning. Although he is expected to slowly recover, his spine has also been severed at the point where the bullet passed through his body, meaning he cannot walk. A depressing day indeed, especially when I met with the families of some of the survivors who had come to the hospital to check on their loved ones.
Thus ended my day. It was a tiring day, as are all days when we must respond to national crises such as the one today. The girls received me and Gernot warmly when we returned. I wanted to feel relieved and unravel once I had come back home, into the open arms of our daughters. It has become a bad habit of mine, to call the Wunderwaffe girls our daughters. But they have been living with us for enough of a time that I have found myself to be slowly lapsing into this habit. Just the other day, I called out to Prinz Eugen as "meine Tochter" - "my daughter". I suppose this is just indicative of a small quaint streak in me, all things considered, but it may also be an offshoot of a kind of desire to have daughters just like Prinz Eugen and the others. They have made our lives so easy - Gernot and I have been feeling the effects of our aging catch up to us, and we know that as we continue to work, our strength and energy as a young couple is no longer the same as it once was, so having them be a part of our small family admittedly cushions a lot of the stress that we have been feeling lately with our work. Not only do they behave like our own ideal daughters, but they even take care of our real daughter too. What more could we ask of them? And to think that Gernot and I returned home to find a whole warm roast chicken sitting on the kitchen table, ready to eat - and to think that they do all this and ask nothing in return. I suppose that state visit to the cathedral at the end of the month was a good idea - God must be looking over our family.
After dinner, Bismarck asked me if it was possible for me to tell her everything that had happened today. I felt that it was important for someone like Bismarck to know, so I indulged her. After listening to my recollections, Bismarck said that she wanted to set out herself and destroy the NDP, the party responsible for the terrorist attack. She could not comprehend why German citizens would attack fellow German citizens. How did that make sense, she asked. In what situation ever would a German citizen feel that he or she would have anything to gain by attacking and killing another fellow German citizen? She cannot even begin to understand. Such people ought to be branded as traitors and executed, she said, and she would very much like to do some of the honors herself. I restrained her, saying that she would have to leave the honors to the police, the GSG-9, and other German military forces. In addition, tomorrow, we were sure to brand the NDP as a criminal and terrorist organization and outlaw them, rendering their leaders and members criminals in the face of German law. Either way, we were going to destroy them. Bismarck made herself content with this knowledge, although begrudgingly. As arrogant and proud as Bismarck can be, she is fueled by a strong sense of justice. A part of me wishes to ask her what she feels about the fact that she had served the people whose ideologies and beliefs are the foundations on which the terrorists themselves built their organization, but I held back. That was probably not the most appropriate question to ask...