* * * * *
Anjiro Watanabe shook hands with Ash Phillips as they met in the parking lot near the Golden Bears' football stadium. The campus, of course, being quite deserted.
"One solid gold dagger-axe, as requested."
He handed over the item in question...which had been quite literally gift wrapped. White paper, red ribbon, and all!
"If you don't mind me asking," said Jiro: "Where on Earth did you manage to get two million dollars?"
Ash could not resist smirking.
"When my paternal uncle died, he left me both his stock shares in Indepetreco, _and_ the number to his Swiss bank account! I might have sold the former out of spite. But, I was smart enough to hold on to the latter! Good thing, too. Because, as of now, that's precisely where I'm going to store this: in a bank vault in Switzerland! And, after I pass away, my estate will bequeath it to the Smithsonian Institute."
"With the proviso that they permanently return it to Red China, one year afterwards."
* * * * *
DRACHENHOF, AUSTRIA
(FIVE YEARS LATER)
Gabriella Barbini, daughter of Count Carlo Barbini, had married Alfredo Longobardi (of the Italian-Swiss banking Longobardis) in the early 1870's. That union subsequently produced three children: two sons and a daughter. The latter, born as the middle sibling, was christened Enrichetta Faustina Longobardi. And, she was in her second year of boarding school, in Geneva, when she met--and fell in love with--Hans Schildkraut. A young student teacher from the village of Drachenhof, in the Austrian province of Styria.
The feeling proved mutual. And, three months later, when they learned that Enrichetta was pregnant, Hans immediately tried to do the honorable thing. He asked Alfredo for his daughter's hand in marriage. But, the latter absolutely refused! He would rather send his daughter to a convent, until the delivery; and, then, anonymously give the baby up for adoption.
Instead, the youngsters eloped. Prompting Alfredo to disown the girl, completely and permanently. Refusing to speak her name, or have anyone else speak it in his presence, ever again!
This was one of the reasons why Frieda--the couple's own daughter and only child--grew up and joined the German Communist Party following World War I. The sexual and socioeconomic equality espoused by this controversial political philosophy! Yet, it was also through this same organization that she also met Werner Petermann. The man she married in 1922; and whose son she bore a year later.
Ernst Petermann was ten years-old when the whole family fled to the French province of Alsace, to escape Nazi persecution. Seven years later, however, the Nazis invaded France, as a whole. And, just before the occupation of Paris, the three of them wound up being approached by a GRU officer from the Russian consulate.
Major Sergei Yerkov.
The latter recruited them as spies for the Communist cause. As a result, Werner and Ernst joined a French resistance cell in Alsace. While their mother became a double-agent in Fascist Italy. Ultimately posing as "Maria-Giuseppina Santapietro." Research assistant to Prof. Klaus Kraus of Isla Utgard, in Argentina!
Yet, it would have shocked both men had they known the truth. Frieda was actually a triple-agent...of sorts!
More specifically; she--like her mother and grandmother before her--was a follower of La Signora Oriente. And, it was in the ruins of a Roman temple, in a cavern beneath Drachenhof, that she now telepathically communed with the entity currently hiding behind that alias.
Labia of the Melissae.
"Bring me that dagger-axe, my child. By whatever means, necessary! Bring it to me...so that I may destroy it."
"As you command, Mein Mistress," Frieda telepathically replied (before snapping out of her self-induced trance).
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
BERKLEY CAMPUS,
DECEMBER 25, 1962
BERKLEY CAMPUS,
DECEMBER 25, 1962