Chapter Two Thousand Three Hundred Fifty-One
18th January 1974
Montreal, Canada
After months of internal debate, Marie Alexandra had finally purchased a bicycle and was riding it home, even as she was annoyed by the noises that it was making. Squeaking and clanking mostly. It was an old metallic-green Schwinn Breeze Deluxe 3-speed with a step through frame that admittedly needed a great deal of fixing, which was part of the reason why she had been able to get it for a song in a shop that sold an odd jumble of everything from rusty tools and car parts to electronics and hi-fi stereo equipment. Marie got the impression that the old man who owned the shop had cut her a great deal because he thought she was pretty. It was something that Marie felt she could live with so long as he had been polite, that was just how the world worked. There had been countless times when Marie had been forced to endure unwanted attention and boorish behavior. That was something that she would not put up with for very long.
Out of habit, Marie went past that Lane house to see if family car was in the driveway. On a Saturday, that typically meant that they were home. Walking the bike up to the door, she knocked and was surprised when Isabella, the Lane’s Housekeeper didn’t answer the door. Instead, it was Mr. Lane who looked at Marie as if she were a visitor from a different planet.
“I just stopped by to check of Henni and Alice” Marie said a bit awkwardly. She had rarely seen Mr. Lane around and all she knew about him was that he worked downtown as an Insurance Salesman. To her, he was the epitome of the grey men she saw every day who worked in boring offices and went home to boring lives.
“That’s good” Mr. Lane replied in a manner that suggested that he really was dead from the neck up. Why was it that many people seemed to just sort of give up on life as they grew older? “What are you riding that for? I would assume that you would have something nicer.”
“I am intending to fix it up” Marie replied looking at the bicycle, “The new ones I looked at lacked character.”
“It certainly has that” Mr. Lane said, “I didn’t know that you were into bicycle mechanics.”
“Something like that” Marie said. Fixing old things up was something that she had done for as long as she could remember and was what she preferred. While she wasn’t exactly mechanically inclined by any means, finding someone with that sort of knowhow had never been difficult. It was too bad that Sophie was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, she lived for this sort of thing.
Near Rio Gallegos, rural Santa Cruz Province, Argentina
Niko remembered what Manny had told him about the wind in this part of Patagonia. So, the constant howl of it should not have been a surprise. Zwei’s reaction though was. During particularly strong gusts, the horse shied away from the wind. That was a reminder to Niko of something that his grandfather had warned him of, that you never could tell what might startle a horse. Niko supposed that the Devil winds were as good a reason as any.
Niko had been running dispatches between the forward Command Post and Headquarters in Rio Gallegos. It was a simple, though monotonous task. He knew that he was supposed to be learning from this experience, though exactly what he was supposed to be learning was unclear. He had done his best to continue his education independently, but that was proving more difficult than he had imagined. There was no one to keep him on task, if his mind wandered then it might be hours or even days before he got back to the assignment.
There was also the issue with Teachers here in Argentina. Most of them were in the employ of the High Command, few in number, and overwhelmed by the workload they had. If Niko turned in a paper, the wait until they got back to him was often considerable. Finally, there was the nature of Patagonia itself in the summertime. He was surrounded a vast number of distractions. Niko had seen how Willi didn’t bother, and how that had marked him for whatever unpleasant job the Senior Noncoms had in store. While Niko had found himself doing those sorts of jobs plenty of times, being seen doing something that the Noncoms approved of during your spare time tended to stay their hand.
On the opposite extreme was Juan Ibarra. The Gaucho seemed to come and go as he pleased, and Niko figured that was because his knowledge of the region was priceless as far as the 3rd Hussars were concerned. They needed someone who the locals would be inclined to at least talk to.
In the short time that Niko had been in Argentina he had already seen what happened when the people in the distant sheep stations and scattered communities were not inclined to cooperate. They turned noncooperation into an artform and stole anything that wasn’t nailed down or on fire. He supposed that they’d had a great deal of practice during the months that this area had been occupied by the Chilian Army.
There was another gust of wind and Niko felt Zwei shutter and made sure that he had the horse firmly under control. The last thing he needed was for Zwei to run off out of control with Niko along for the ride, that was if he didn’t get bucked off first. Either way, it was something that he would never be able to live down.