Princessa 

Chapter 5 Back At the Palace

Back at the palace, King Valdamir is screaming at his defense minister. “Where the hell is she, goddammit!” The king feels closer to his pretty young granddaughter than anyone else in the world and he greatly loves having her with him, even under house arrest. Even if it’d been a strain lately, arguing politics all the time. When the guards discovered she wasn’t in her room, he went into a rage.

“I’m sure she’ll be okay” says Petros; they’d found a note stating ‘she’s with me - AK.’ “She’ll be killed” yells Valdamir, trying but unable to control his voice “she’s going to get killed, you know that, don’t you?” “No” the general insists “she’s going to be fine, it’s going to be alright.” “How the hell do you know. How do we know where she is, or who the hell she’s with…this guy, who is he, anyway.”

“He’s, he’s one of our best agents” says Petros “but… well, he’s young; he’s impulsive… people, see the world coming to an end, and they do crazy things.” “He’s kidnapped my granddaughter!” the king yells at him. “Yeah, and I’m guessing that didn’t take a lot of persuasion.” “What the hell… what the hell do you mean by that?”

But he’s just bluffing, just blowing smoke. Trying to find an outlet for the feelings that are overwhelming him. Petros knows that, knows him, better than anyone does. “The girl… the girl is a free spirit” he says “she likes adventure, likes being full of life.” “Yes, yes I know. I deal with, these adventures, all the frickin time. But this is not the time… to be running off, on larks.” “Kids” says Petros “their feelings… who can; there’s never any time to wait for the right time, to be young.”

“My God! You gotta, get all mush-headed when… I’m trying to find Maria, and deal with all these other little matters at the same time.” “Must be tough, to be king” says the old general. Valdamir’s thinking the exact same thing, but not so sarcastically. “Yeah, it is; so… who is this guy, Andre Korzene, anyway? And how does he get the gall, the nerve, to break in here and… leave with her.”

“Sounds like something you’d’ve done, way back when; huh Vald?” “No” says the king, considering way back when “I wouldn’t have left a note. But I would like to know something about this guy.” “Well, you remember you pinned a medal on him that one time, right here in this room.” “Yeah, and he laughed at me, the son of a bitch. I should’ve pinned that medal up his ass. And now we’ve sent, this boy, out…on this mission” getting up in the general’s face “suicide mission! And he’s decided to take Maria along for the ride.”

“Smet will be there too” says Petros, like throwing out the anchor and there’s no rope attached. “Yeah, Smet. Our head of security; and what a fine job those guys did. I wonder if they held the doors open for them!” “It’s not them” says Petros “don’t blame them; he’s good, this fellow, real good. She’s safe with him, you’ll see.” And then thinking about the pressure they’re all under now, he adds “maybe she’s safer with him... than she is here.”

The king looks up at the portrait on the high wall above the staircase and feels his heart break in half. Tears coming into his eyes. Everyone who sees the painting thinks it’s the young princess. But actually it’s her grandmother, Marie, the king’s lovely young bride, the general’s sweet little sister.

After the Nazi’s had come, Prince Leomont had left his only son, a boy of five, with the Petros family in the mountains. The little boy was the last of them. All the others in the royal family had been captured and executed by then. Valdamir was half Bruno’s age at the time, and Marie was barely three. But they and the others in the family had survived, hiding in the hills and caves until it was safe.

And they grew up together, even after the Russians came, and after they began searching for the rumored survivor of the royal family. Later Valdamir had been secreted away to Europe, when they’d come too close to catching him. Years later he and Marie were married, and they had a daughter, the princess’s mother.

But he’d always been committed to coming home, throwing out the invaders, as his father had tried to do. He led a revolt that caught them off guard and would’ve gained international interest and maybe even support, in another part of the world. But it was quickly crushed and he and many others were thrown into prison. His young wife Marie had died there. There were never any photographs of her, for security reasons, and the painting had been done from the king’s memory as he had described her to the artist.

Petros follows the king’s gaze and sees the tears swell in his own eyes. “She was a lovely girl” he says to the king. Valdamir says nothing, wiping his eyes, with his back to the general. He finally turns toward him. “I should have protected her” he says, then quickly puts his hand over his eyes again. The general comes over to him “yes… and I should have too. But… I was in the wrong army, then.”

He goes over and pours himself a drink and brings one to the king. Together they sit at the bottom of the stairs and drink the strong grappa. “I can’t live, without Maria” the king says “without knowing that she’s alright.” “I know. She’s just... so much like her.”

The king stands up and goes over to get another drink hoping his old friend is right. That Maria will be safe, safe and protected from all the troubles that are falling down all around them. He knows that they’re all targets now. Now that he’s just come back from his meeting with Tomkin. Just come home with him on the one side of ‘you’ll need to make some concessions’ and himself on the other, the short end of no way out, gonna lose no matter what you do.

It still burns in his head, that meeting, with the great and powerful Mr. Tomkin. And him being king of this ‘never heard of it before little country.’ Yeah, now they’ve heard of us, he thinks, because they want our border, our airspace. Want to run oil from here to there. And we’re in the middle of all that, in their way, so to speak. If he could’ve just made Tomkin realize. Could just get him to come here, to his country. See the people, the land; where they’d come from, how bright their future was; or was going to be and now wasn’t. Now everything just crushed to ruin under this boot stomping edict of pumping the oil.

His biggest worry is that his darling Maria is somehow going to get caught in the crossfire. Not that he’ll be overthrown in some sort of phony put-up coup. Or that his country will again be overrun by foreign armies. Not that his beautiful ancient palace will once again be ravaged by their bombs. Or that he and all the good and decent people of his court will be killed or maimed. But that something… inadvertent, something accidental might befall his lovely little Maria, who was all in all, about everyone’s favorite in this whole backward little country.

“Keeping her safe… is my job” says the king. “Yeah well looks like someone beat you to it” says the general. “You better be right.” “Yeah, we better all be right” says Petros “or we’re all gonna be fucked to pieces, aren’t we.” “You want me to cave in? Okay… I’ll cave in; we can be… Beirut or Belfast or Mogadishu. I don’t care. Maria’s gone… and I’m… surrounded by toothless old clowns.”

The king is running out of steam now and that’s just the opening Petros is looking for. He gets another drink and leans against the heavy wooden table by the wall. “I remember... fighting the Russians, after the war.” He looks over at Valdamir. “You were in exile somewhere. And then later, I fought for them. Hell they didn’t know who I was, just some guy volunteering to join up. They needed volunteers, they didn’t care.

“And all day long, every day, I was the best soldier… the best. And all night long, every night, I would steal around like a thief and take their secrets, their codes, their plans, logistics, whatever I could find. Every day, every night. And then later, I got to be a troop commander, a leader of men in battle. And it was, like I didn’t even know which side I was on, or if there was a side for me, Petros… Bruno. The traitor to both sides, or so people might have thought.

“But I would make plans for attack, for defense, battlefield maneuvers; and then give these same plans away to the enemy. What do you think of that… my troops, my young Russian troops. They were good boys, most of them; just wanted to go home, is all. And I sent them home in body bags to their mothers. And do you think I didn’t feel for those brave young men, my troops. Do you think that sometimes I wouldn’t maybe withhold information, or fix it so we’d have the upper hand. These are tough choices Valdamir, difficult choices for a man to make; who lives, who dies.

“One time one of my aides found me in a tent, weeping, alone. He says to me ‘Marshall Bruno, we have had setbacks, I know; but don’t you worry, we will prevail.’ Do I want you to give up, to give in? No, of course not. We can’t allow that to happen, to our country, to our people. But it’s all on you… and me. Just you and me; and we have no options.”

The king comes over and puts his hand on the general’s shoulder. “Yes my friend… Bruno; I know... I know. And as the book says, when you have no options, you attack.”