14.6.2014
Strange news today.
Heidi, who has been overseeing government military forces participating in the arrests and detainment of confirmed NDP affiliates and individuals, reported to me this morning as I was feeding Retia that our forces had come across two odd discoveries that both have very worrying implications.
The first discovery at first sounds strange - it was that our troops have discovered nothing. What I mean by this is that this morning, several squads of the Stadtallendorf stormed a few houses in the outskirts of Dresden in order to arrest a few notable NDP chapter leaders in the area, but they were nowhere to be found. Now, granted, our military endeavors to uproot NDP leaders and shut down their various chapters throughout the country following the Hanover Massacre may very well have been found out by NDP-affiliated individuals who may have seen some of their comrades get arrested and thus warned the rest of their comrades so that they may flee the country, but if that is the case, our border troops are keeping a strict eye on all of our airports and borders to make sure nobody with known NDP ties leaves the country. Obviously it is impossible to ensure that all NDP members stay inside the country, but if we can imprison their leaders, the competent thinkers that are capable of leading a movement, then surely the party itself will be dealt a heavy blow. It is the brutal truth that not everyone is born to be a leader, a truth that we can exploit to our hearts' content.
But the troops in Dresden discovered that the homes of the men and women they were hunting to arrest were entirely untouched, while their targets seemingly vanished off the face of the planet. When the troops interviewed their neighbors, they claimed that following the Hanover Massacre, they had noticed that the targets were not seen again. One such neighbor apparently bitterly remarked that it was best for those people to run - if the government was not actively hunting them down, the people themselves would.
Not just in Dresden, but throughout the day, Heidi and I constantly received reports from our troops and local police forces around the country revealing negative results. So far, their efforts in rounding up known NDP officials and leaders was going so well - and today, all of it just came to a grinding halt. Dare I say, they seemed to be spirited away...though I doubt such a term is appropriate.
Of course, they could have simply all gone into hiding. But all at the same time? That sounds too strange to be true.
I called my husband and Jollenbeck to my office to discuss this with Heidi in private. Why were the NDP suddenly disappearing like this? Their homes showed virtually no signs of struggle if there was someone besides our forces actively trying to hunt them down themselves. Perhaps they were assaulted whilst they were outside their homes? But seeing how many more our forces still needed to arrest, if there is another entity hunting them down, it is not foolish to think that we would have received a report about at least one such kidnapping - someone would have seen at least one of them, surely. Gernot remarked that this situation was certainly quite strange. "Did Batman decide to come punish those Nazis for us?" he even joked.
Batman or not, while it warms my heart to know that there is perhaps another faction out there that is hunting down the NDP, it still stands that this is a governmental responsibility, and that we cannot outsource it to a private entity. In addition, the more NDP they kidnap, the less NDP we have in our own prisons to use as information pools through interrogations. Not to mention, who knows if this Batman-like faction is even friendly towards us, the government, or to the citizens of our country as a whole, or whether or not this faction even exists in the first place. We could very well be overthinking this, something all four of us were keenly aware of once our little private meeting was concluded. I ordered Jollenbeck and Heidi to call upon the BfV, our domestic counterintelligence agency, to crack this mystery. Hopefully the good men and women of the BfV can figure out what exactly is going on here.
Before Gernot left, I held him behind in my office for a quick word. I asked him if this matter was a significant enough issue to consider speaking to the American Seal Team Six about. After all, although the times in which we have requested assistance from them have only been a few, they had given us aid with speed and decisive aggression, and they did not seem interested in calling in favors either. Gernot disagreed. While the operatives over at Seal Team Six were certainly good people, we could not rely upon them exclusively. Not only would we start to use them as a sort of crutch (not to mention they are still a foreign military unit who is under American jurisdiction, not ours), but we would also be encumbering them unnecessarily. A top secret team like them would undoubtedly be busy with tasks and assignments all around the world - it would be best if we did not push our luck with them. Hearing this from my husband is actually rather surprising - normally Gernot speaks of the Americans in a dismissive tone, seeing how much involvement the United States government has had in Europe, especially our own country, over the past decades. Gernot explained that Seal Team Six was an exception - while they may be American, as individuals, they did not seem like the manipulative, power-hungry American politicians that would normally fit the bill.
After work, our colleagues in the Bundestag assured us that they would handle the rest of the evening work, enabling my husband and I to return home early today with our daughter. Retia seems to have figured out somehow that the Wunderwaffe girls had departed for an extended period of time, now that they have been absent for two nights, for she has crying out some of their names with her unsteady baby voice. Although this should normally be an adorable sight, it instead rather pains me, because I know that my daughter has forged some strong friendships with the ship girls. Lebe and Max always fed her and played with her, Prinz Eugen fed her, played with her, and acted as her nanny, even sometimes when I was at home too, and U liked to crawl around on the floor with Retia riding on her back. Typical U things. Bismarck was the most aloof from Retia, but even she would look after her when nobody else could by reading to her books by Kant and Kafka in our library.
Thankfully, tonight was the first night in which we were able to test the communication adapters that Jollenbeck gave to us, courtesy of the Wunderwaffe team. The ship girls had all reached England safely and were inhabiting a secret underground bunker a kilometer outside of the dockyard grounds as their living quarters. They had been introduced to the British ship girls, who are apparently nicknamed the "Royal Girls" (is it just me, or does that sound like it has a rather...suggestive connotation? It might just be me). Bismarck was fuming at the fact that there are also apparently so many more British ship girls than there are German ones. If I were Bismarck, I would perhaps feel the same way too.
Bismarck also informed me that our German carrier, Graf Zeppelin, had also arrived there a few hours after they had landed. I suppose I should pay a visit to the Wunderwaffe team tomorrow and give them a stern word about making sure to inform me of such things when they happen, they have been slacking off quite badly in this regard and I have not yet had the opportunity to reprimand them. In any case, it is nice to hear that our newly constructed carrier has now joined them in England and will be participating in the joint training program there. I asked Bismarck of her feelings training alongside British ship girls. I cannot lie - that was initially one of my bigger personal concerns regarding this training program from the start. Bismarck is, as I have mentioned, a very proud German woman with the military spirit of World War II Germany burning within her. Obviously during that time the British were her enemy, so I asked her if she still felt any animosity towards them that may hinder her ability to cooperate with them for the sake of receiving the training that they needed.
After making sure none of the other ship girls were listening to her, Bismarck secretly confided to me that indeed, it was a concern that also rode on her mind as well. When they met the Royal Girls for the first time today at Rosyth Dockyards, she felt a real sense of war rivalry that, if agitated enough, could very well become resentment or even hatred. It was a clear dichotomy between her heart and her mind: while there is no more war between our two countries and we are now close allies, Bismarck seems unable to completely shake off the shadow that adheres to her feet. She is aware of just how important this upcoming training regime is and how seriously she must take it, but one hostile confrontation with the Royal Girls and who knows what may happen. I assured her that so long as she could keep her hubris in check, she should be fine. I asked what of the others, and Bismarck reported that no one else seemed to have the same internal conflict, which is good to hear. I advised Bismarck to always talk to the others, especially Prinz Eugen, whenever she felt her old war hostilities bubbling up. Prinz Eugen would know how to calm Bismarck down.
With that, I sat Retia on my lap so that my laptop camera could see her, and I asked Bismarck to fetch the rest so that Retia could say hello. My daughter was certainly thrilled to see them on the computer screen, but since she is still rather unfamiliar with the marvels of technology, Retia reached forward to touch the screen with her tiny baby hand, perhaps thinking that the girls were actually inside the screen. The girls, quickly realizing what Retia was doing, also laughed too, finding this very cute. Retia starting pouting up at me, looking at me with a very confused face that seemed to be asking me why her best friends were inside this thin piece of metal. I just cuddled her up with me. How am I supposed to answer that? I simply told her that they were away on a trip and would be back in two weeks.
I can hear Gernot finishing his shower in our master bathroom. I have already prepared myself for bed, since my husband and I will be going to bed together for the first time in a very long time. It has been so long since we have done so that I actually find myself rather looking forward to it. It makes me feel like a normal couple with my husband, as much of a "normal" life that we could have led with our beautiful baby daughter without an obstructive career in politics to hinder us. I know a few of my colleagues who are very strict on their own children, having visited their homes in the past and meeting them and seeing their interactions. I myself prefer intending my daughter to live the productive life that she wishes to lead, but if possible, I certainly do not want her pursuing a career in politics if she plans to marry and raise a family at all. Gender stigmas still weigh heavily on my shoulders, for I feel that it is my responsibility to raise my baby into a healthy, productive young lady. I am a mother...of course this is my task. But my career demands too much of my time - I must always choose between the needs of my country and the needs of my child. And almost always, the needs of my country win out.
I wish that one day, the contrary might for once be true.