There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 1

1. Kaffee und Kuchen

"I am so glad", said Cleo, "that we are not going to Germany. It took a week to talk the agèd parents out of it. It is a ghastly country full of fat men in leather trousers and enormous sausage factories stretching away to the horizon."

The coffee shop was part of the United Friendly Reformed Charismatic Church of Christ King, which three months ago had been the Ecumenical Rainbow Faith Church of The Army Of Jesus. Cleo and Ant had chosen it because their regular coffee shop was almost certainly filled with government listening devices. They had made sure of this by sitting at the same table week after week, giving ample opportunity to anyone who wanted to place a listening device in it. The clientèle of the Charismatic Church of Christ King's coffee morning were very different from the people who frequented the Caffè Hyperactivo. Many of them were very close to God indeed. Some of them seemed only minutes away from meeting him in person. Anyone hurrying out from the Caffè Hyperactivo to sit close enough to listen in on Ant and Cleo's conversation would be recognized easily due to being under the age of seventy.

The coffee in the Church of Christ King was also a good deal cheaper, though it tasted vile, despite being served with Malted Milk biscuits. But that didn't matter. Today there was a reason for being in a room where nobody could listen. Today, they had a message from the Mail Drop.

"Erm", said Ant.

"Well, don't keep me in suspense", said Cleo. "What was in the Mail Drop? You know, I think I hate everything about Germany. I hate their lousy language full of Z's and K's and W's, I hate their frankly unimaginative flag, and I hate their rich national history that Fräulein Meinck keeps reminding me about, though her history lessons always seem to stop around 1914 for some reason. And the fact", she said, waving her arms desperately, "that they're so infuriatingly good at everything. Apart from reggae. German reggae is a thing that has to be heard to be believed."

"Erm", said Ant. "My Nan says Germany is very clean."

"Anyway", said Cleo, blowing on her scalding hot cup of Instant, "what was in the Mail Drop?"

"They want us to go on the school trip to Germany", said Ant.

Cleo turned an unhealthy khaki. Normally she was a rich Jamaican brown. "They want us to do what?"

"That's what it said in the Mail Drop message. Gondolin were very excited that the school trip was going to Spitzenburg. They seem to think it's very important that we go there."

Cleo was now passing through khaki and into tan. "Why? What's so important about a small town in Bavaria? I've got fifty uniforms ready to collect on Thursday." Ant was amazed. He had difficulty darning his own socks - which he now had to do since his mum and dad had split up. For Cleo to have managed to run off fifty military uniforms in the space of a few short months was unbelievable. Truly women were amazing and incredible creatures.

"Fifty?" He said. "I didn't think you'd manage five. How did you do it?"

Cleo shrugged. "I got someone else to do it."

"Who?"

Cleo touched the side of her nose. "It's a military secret. Why do Gondolin want us to go to Germany?"

"I have no idea, and I can't exactly ask them. It's not as if they're on the phone. They say they'll give us more instructions when we get there."

Gondolin was, it was true, out of range of normal telephone networks for two reasons - firstly, it was almost certainly light years away from Earth, and secondly, neither Ant nor Cleo really had any idea where it was. Gondolin was the thirteenth colony of the United States of the Zodiac, a secret set of settlements in space founded by Britain and the United States of America. Those colonies had decided they no longer wanted to be governed by Washington and Westminster, and Washington and Westminster were not happy about the arrangement.

Cleo's hands tightened on the new, pink mobile phone she'd had since the summer. "That's right", she said. "The US Zed aren't on the phone."

"Anyway", said Ant, "I knew we were going somewhere different today, but this place is downmarket even for me."

Cleo's confidence deflated. She gripped the phone even tighter, as if trying to squeeze the SIM card out of it. "Ant, my dad's been put under investigation by the Union. They say he's been taking bribes from businessmen and politicians. He's been suspended without pay."

Ant's jaw dropped in shock. His skin had just grown cold enough to match the frost outside. "Has he? I mean, been taking bribes? I have to say, he drives round in a really big car for a union rep."

Cleo grimaced. "He is president of the National Union of Wheeltappers, Ant. He says not. He was arguing with my mum last night. It was very loud. They normally never argue. It was not good."

Ant shook his head. "No. No, forget I said it. Your dad couldn't do that. That's the sort of thing my dad does. Cleo, that doesn't make sense."

Cleo ran her thumb up and down the buttons on the mobile phone like a washboard player. "No. No, it makes no sense at all."

"So you don't have any money today, and that's why I'm drinking cheap coffee?"

Cleo nodded miserably. "The money I had left in my purse was just enough to pay for one coffee." She looked at Ant's Danish pastry hungrily. Ant, without hesitating, pushed it over the table to her.

"That's not fair", said Cleo. "Now you haven't got one."

Ant shrugged. "I can get another. Dad won big at the casino last night. So instead of paying off our latest CCJ, he's splashing the cash."

"Ant! Your dad's got County Court Judgements against him?"

"Oh god yes. We have CCJ's like other houses have junk mail -"

The door of the coffee shop opened; Ant and Cleo froze. An incredibly old lady tottered in at an incredibly slow speed. She had wispy white hair confined by a bright blue hairnet, spectacles thick as ice cubes, and an enormous hearing aid.

"I think she was probably in her teens when she originally left the house", said Ant.

"Bless her", said Cleo. "So. Spitzenburg."

The little old lady lowered herself at the speed of a falling feather into one of the plastic chairs.

"I can't afford to go to Germany", said Ant. "And neither can you."

"We can both afford to go if I knock a few uniforms off the last batch of the order", shrugged Cleo nonchalantly. "I reckon I still have over ten thousand pounds in cash in a suitcase under my bed. If the Gondoliers want us to go, they can pay for us to go."

Cleo had been given the money - a colossal amount of cash in various currencies - by the Gondolin government in exchange for outfitting its entire very small military.
"But as far as my dad knows, I can't afford to go. And as far as your mum and dad know, you can't either. Aren't they going to get suspicious if we suddenly pay for a holiday with our own money? I mean, I've got a paper round, but even my dad's credulity has limits. Besides, aren't your mum and dad beginning to wonder what that suitcase has in it?"

Cleo shook her head, avoiding Ant's gaze and frowning. "No. They know why I'm so secretive about it."

"Why is that?"

"It's full of love letters from you." Ant's teeth locked in a grimace. "Don't be like that, Ant, it was the only explanation I could think of at the time, and it worked. After all, as far as they know, we did go on holiday together last year, and as far as they know that was because we love each other deeply."

Ant warmed his hands on his coffee. The church tea room was not well heated. "But that means they're going to be expecting all sorts of things. Kissing. Valentine cards. Long irritating phone calls where you keep saying "You hang up. No, you hang up."

Cleo was startled at the wealth of detail. "You seem to know a lot about this, Ant."

"My mother does it", said Ant in desolation, "with her boyfriend. His name is Ian", he added, as if being called Ian was the most shameful thing imaginable.

"We don't have to do that, Ant", said Cleo - and then, laying her hand on top of his, said: "Not if you don't want to." She smaned as Ant snatched his hand away as if hers was electrified. "But we're going to have to explain how we're paying for the trip. We just have to make sure the wrinklies don't get to meet up and exchange notes. What did you tell your dad about last summer again?"

"I told him I'd gone with you and your family on a Christian Retreat."

"Ant, just because we're Christians doesn't mean we live a life of monastic isolation out in the desert somewhere."

"Well, what did you tell your mum and dad?"

"That I'd gone with you and your dad to the Isle of Grain. So we're already in nostril-deep do-do if they talk to each other and find out we were on a world orbiting Ross 248 for most of that week."

Ant nodded. "My mum yells at my dad if he takes me on holiday in an aeroplane."

"Well, my dad usually spends way too much time away from home, but it's looking like he's going to be spending a lot more time with his family. And you know what he's like. He loves your dad. He thinks he's the salt of the earth, the common working man."

"Oh, my dad's a salt all right", said Ant. "I'm thinking ammonium nitrate, or maybe monosodium glutamate."

"Oooh. Who's been doing their chemistry homework."

Ant frowned and nodded. "I've been doing a lot more. I just want to understand what everyone on Gondolin's talking about when they use those really big words that hurt my tiny mind. I never thought I'd need all of that school stuff. I thought I'd just end up a welder or a shelf stacker or a truck driver, never amount to anything, just like my family always have. But now...now things are different."

Cleo looked back at Ant severely. "Ant. My dad was a welder."

"But he isn't a welder any more."

"He'd say that's all he's ever wanted to be. My mum says that's the best thing about him. He drives round in the big cars and gets to meet politicians and company directors, but he still carries a card that says LEONARD SHAKESPEARE : WELDER. He never shows it to anyone. But he keeps it in his wallet to remind himself that that's who he is."

Ant sipped his coffee grumpily. "Me, I can remember who I am unassisted, most mornings. I just don't like being able to."

He took another sip of coffee, turned his nose up at it, and set the cup down.
"Come on. We're going to the Caffè Hyperactivo. My treat."

"Ant. You never buy me coffee."

"Today I can afford to buy you coffee. My treat."

***

As they walked out of the church café into the cold, Cleo's shiny pink phone rang. The ringtone was the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars.

Cleo unwrapped several layers of beige felt from around the phone and held it to her ear. "Hello?"

"I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number."

"What was that?" said Ant.

"Someone who thinks I'm someone else", said Cleo. "I think he must have this number by mistake. He keeps phoning up and making threats."

"Threats about what?"

"Threatening my family."

Ant's mouth flapped open in shock. "What are you going to do about it?"

Cleo grinned. "Tell him where Tamora goes to school. She's been particularly annoying this month. She texted my bra size to all her horrible little prepubescent friends. Apparently one of the more retro-evolved Year Eights is paying well for the information. He claims to be building a cup size database." She began winding the felt round the phone again.

"Why do you wrap that stuff round your phone?"

"The ringtone's too loud. I go this from a shop in town. It's soundproofing."

Ant was puzzled. "Why don't you just, er, turn the ringtone down?"

"You might well think that a mobe this expensive would have an option to turn the ringtone down, but no."

"I've never seen a phone like that. Where did you get it?"

"You know, um, I really don't know? It was a birthday present."

"Your birthday was in October. And I saw you with it in August. Look, Cleo, we're not really going out." Ant squirmed with the whole horrific awkwardness of the thing. "If, erm, another boy bought it for you, er, that's no problem."

"I know."

As they crossed the road to cut through an alleyway into the main shopping street, a gigantic, gleaming Mercedes crackled away from the kerb ten metres behind them, like a big dog growling deep in its throat.

"That's them", said Ant. "Special Operations. Government men. You'd think they'd be less obvious."

"That's the ones they don't mind you seeing", said Cleo. "It's the ones you don't see you have to worry about."

She put the mobile back in her handbag and closed the zip with finality.

***

"Kein Grund, bis sechs offen zu bleiben. There's not much point staying open till six", said Jochen's grandfather. "You can start bringing in the tables. Only a lunatic is going to be sitting outside today in any case."

The fabric on the umbrellas was whipping in a stiff breeze blowing in from the East, out of an inky blackness beyond which lay two countries' worth of high mountains and a thousand miles of steppe. Up here, on the parapet, the wind had a force not felt in the streets of the town below.

Jochen was reluctant to give in. "But Opa, someone might come. What if they're expecting us to be open?"

Herr Von und zu Spitzenburg nodded. "It is the classic taxi driver's dilemma. If there are no customers, does the cabbie wait around in case anyone else turns up, or does he go home? We café proprietors are in exactly the same predicament."

Jochen stood shivering in the breeze, his apron flapping. "I can stay open the extra half hour. I'll clear up at six."

"No! The answer to the dilemma is that when there are customers, the cabbie stays in his cab the entire evening, and longer if necessary. When there are fares to transport, he works every hour he can, because every hour is paying him money. But on days when there are no fares, he goes home, puts his feet up and has a beer, which, Kumpel, is what we are going to do." A gnarled finger wagged at Jochen. Der Alter, the old man, was not a man to be disobeyed. There were tales that he had had men shot for far lesser crimes than failing to clear away café umbrellas.

"But what happens", said Jochen, "if there are never any customers?"

Herr Von und zu Spitzenburg drew in a long, dispirited breath.

"Well, then", he said, looking across the empty, ice-rimed tables, "the cabbie might have to concede that parking his taxi at the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere was a really bad idea."

Stiff-backed as if he were still under inspection in the Army, he moved to dismantle one of the sun umbrellas. The sun umbrellas were lightly dusted with snow. It was not advisable to sit on the terraces at the Märchenschloß in midwinter.

Then Jochen called out: "Opa! Taschenlampen! We have customers!"

Herr Von und zu Spitzenburg looked down the castle's winding driveway with momentary venom, then regained his composure and began re-erecting the sun umbrella.

"Also, Kamerad. We have visitors. Let us put on our best waiters' smiles."

***

It was odd for customers to walk up to the Märchenschloß café at this time in the evening. Admittedly, fewer people were prepared to drive either in this weather; the road up from the town was a kilometre-long glissade of compacted snow and ice. These visitors were well wrapped up against the cold. Oddly for customers of the café, they were all men - businessmen by the look of them. The majority of the customers - besides retired folk from the town and school or coach parties -were men and women enjoying a romantic meal on the castle terrace. Occasionally, they might even be men and men or women and women enjoying a romantic evening, at which Herr Von und zu Spitzenburg did not bat an eyelid. These men did not look romantically inclined, however. Wearing heavy coats and gloves against the cold, and dressed in business suits and ties beneath that, they moved silently towards the café across the courtyard, as if on a job of work rather than an evening out.

Jochen's blood ran cold. Schuldkollektoren - debt collectors. His grandfather hated them, and spoke of them only in heated arguments with Jochen's mother. Jochen had never seen any such men, knowing of them only by reputation. He had been under the impression that his grandfather was managing to keep up his payments to the bank, but the café had been doing badly lately as its older, loyal customers died off one by one - and it always did worse in winter.

Still, these might be valid customers. They might really be businessmen looking for a quiet place to do a shady deal over a coffee. It was best to be polite.

"Guten Abend, geehrte Herren", said Jochen with his best artificial smile. "Inside or out?"

The men looked out at the snowbound night and back at Jochen again as if he were mad.

"Weg mit dir, Idiot", said the tallest of the four. "We are here to talk to the owner. Where is he?"

Frozen simultaneously with rage, fear, and, it had to be said, actual cold, Jochen turned and pointed wordlessly at his grandfather inside the café. The collectors - he was sure they were collections men now - marched into the café without knocking the snow off their boots, four sets of broad shoulders on backs as solid as bronze statues. But they were stopped in their tracks by Jochen's grandfather. Even at his age, der Alter could immobilize a man with a glance. He was not a large man, but had the the same dangerous intensity common to many German men of a certain age - that look that said, I may be old, but be warned, I have killed men in my time, and you have not.

Jochen heard nothing of the conversation beyond his grandfather's first words before the café door closed: "Also, was willst denn du?" Du was a word used only with people you knew very well - and, the way his grandfather was using it, people you did not like very much at all. He doubted der Alter had ever hung around with debt collectors.

Two of the men were dark-haired, one blond, and one iron-grey. They were all significantly younger than his grandfather - after all, most people were. But they stood in a way men did not stand nowadays, chest out, back ramrod-straight, hands clasped behind their backs.

Who were they?

Der Alter was angry, shouting at them at the top of his voice as if they were junior officers and he was back in the Service, shaking his finger at them as if it were a Field Marshal's baton. And then he stopped shouting, and sagged forward onto the café floor. The blond Schuldkollektor had one gigantic hand clamped around the finger, bending it back toward the wrist. Grandfather's face, through the window, was agony made flesh. But his teeth were gritted hard. He was trying trying not to cry out, trying to preserve his honour, and Jochen knew him well enough to know honour was more important to him than life. Jochen had never heard his grandfather cry out in his life, not even when he'd struck his thumb with a hammer and split the nail.

Jochen pulled the mobile phone from his pocket, unlocked it, flicked the Contacts list down to Notruf Polizei, and clicked the CALL button. A female voice came on the line instantly.

"Spitzenburg police. Where are you, and what has happened?"

"At the Café Märchenschloß", said Jochen. "Someone is about to be shot."

***

The back way in to the café was through the kitchen door. The kitchen door was one courtyard further round than the café terrace. Jochen slipped and skinned his knees on the cobbles as he ran, using words his grandfather would have thoroughly disapproved of. The kitchen door was still ajar. Prima!

Inside the kitchen, he could still hear the visitors' voices in the café beyond.

"Where is it?"

He heard his grandfather's voice. "If you think I would tell you - give you the only good card left to us -"

"I grow impatient, old man. If not to save yourself pain, perhaps to save your daughter-in-law, your son, your employees? Perhaps the eyes or fingernails of that young man we encountered outside?"

As his grandfather talked, Jochen moved to the dumbwaiter in the kitchen. The room was huge and cold. In the days when der Alter had been young, it had served as the kitchen for the entire castle. The dumbwaiter had delivered food upstairs to palatial rooms inhabited by the resident nobility and their guests. Now it was padlocked, no longer used.

Jochen pulled the hasp out of the lock; grandfather never turned the key when he closed it. Gently, he eased open the dumbwaiter door and slid out what he found inside.

"I an old man." Der Alter cackled so hard he coughed, despite the pain. "You have a sense of humour, Herr Kolonel."

"Go fetch the boy", said a voice which Jochen could only assume was Herr Kolonel's.

"Sofort." Jochen was sure he actually heard heels click in the café. Did anyone click their heels in the military nowadays? It was an old-fashioned Prussian thing to do. He searched frantically for the other component of what he'd found in the dumbwaiter. Where did his grandfather keep it?

While searching, his hand hit the steam tap on the coffee machine. It hissed like a wounded serpent. Jochen froze.

"...If you had only seen what I have, you would understand", the visitor was saying. "If you had only been where I have been!"

"You've been inside the Venusberg, Kurt, like Tannhäuser. You may not have grown old. But like Tannhäuser, your life has been wasted."

"Times have changed. I can take you there tonight. And return you again in a week, one good old-fashioned week older. Would that satisfy you?"

"I have no idea of the location of what you seek. What, do you think I'd hide such a thing in the second drawer down in the kitchen?"

Understanding instantly, Jochen grabbed for the second drawer down, forced himself to ease it open gently. There it was, hidden under an immaculately-folded pile of towels. It still felt full - after all, it was hardly likely der Alter would go out hunting rabbits with it. He slid it into the receiver as his grandfather had once shown him. It connected with a satisfying .

A cold breeze blew through from the café, blowing the calendar on the wall about. Someone had opened the door to the terrace.

"He's not there, sir. He's gone."

The voice of the visitor rose sharply. "He's in the kitchen, then. I heard noises. He must have walked around. Fetch him -"

Jochen stepped out of the kitchen, holding der Alter's war souvenir. He was holding it aimed directly at the Kolonel's chest.

"Off my grandfather's property", he said. "RAUS! BEWEGT EUCH!"

The Kolonel looked into the barrel of the MP40. The gun had scratches deeply and deliberately carved into the side of its stock. Opa von und zu Spitzenburg had never said as much, but Jochen knew this meant it had killed before.

"Gentlemen", said der Alter with intense pride, "may I introduce my grandson, Jochen von und zu Spitzenburg."

"Someone in the family is still a warrior, at least", said the Kolonel. But fear flickered in his eyes. Jochen drew back the bolt on the gun. The Kolonel stiffened as if to receive a blow.

Police sirens wailed mournfully from the town below.

"Kriminalpolizei", said one of the Kolonel's accomplices. "How did they get here so quickly? He couldn't have contacted them. There is no telephone outside, and we heard no voices in the kitchen."

"They have wireless telephones here now", said the Kolonel. He nodded at Jochen. "He probably has one."

"We should go", said another of the Schuldkollektoren. The Kolonel nodded. "Unless he is going to shoot us. Are you going to shoot us?"

"You should leave", said Jochen, "or we are both going to find out."

The Kolonel smiled. He had a scar down one cheek, exactly where a downward blow from a sabre would have contacted. "Weak, after all. Weak like your grandfather."

He turned and walked away into the night, accompanied by his entourage. The café door banged shut after them.

"You'd better put that away", said Herr von und zu Spitzenburg. "It's a good thing you didn't fire it, or there'd be hell to pay."

"Who were they?" said Jochen.

Der Alter settled down into a café chair, his hands shaking now the need for iron self control had been removed. "Men who wanted a thing I couldn't give them."

"They knew you."

The control was returning. Herr von und zu Spitzenburg held his temples with one hand as if trying to force self-assurance on himself. He nodded. "Very well. A long time ago, some of those men were my friends. Yes. Friends would be the word."

"And Kurt?"

The blue eyes narrowed. "No. I cannot say Kurt was ever my friend. We will tell the police they left because they heard the police sirens. It would not be good to mention the fact that you threatened them with a Second World War machine pistol. The police would probably arrest you, and search for them to see if they wanted to make a complaint. Besides, it could have blown up in your face, you know that? What were you thinking?"

Police headlights were coming up the single-track road from the town now, winding back and forth. They were making slow headway, however - the road up was steep and sheer as glass.

"The police will catch them", said Jochen. "If they have a car, there's no way out but down the drive."

Der Alter shook his head. "The police will find those gentlemen have vanished into thin air. They are long gone by now, trust me."

"In the snow? They were wearing town shoes! And it takes me half an hour to get down to town, in boots! And their tracks will show up in the snow! And the police will have dogs -"

"I am telling you, the police will find nothing. Now, make yourself useful and start bringing in the tables from outside. I think I need to sit down a moment."

Jochen shook with frustration. Herr von und zu Spitzenburg looked up at him.
"You did well", he said. "It is not true what Kurt said. You are not weak. It is not weakness to fail to kill people. You must believe this."

"Opa", said Jochen, "who is Kurt?"

Herr von und zu Spitzenburg’s lips curled up around his perfect row of plastic teeth. "Well...the people at the bank and the credit card company and the Inkassobüro, so I hear, are fond of calling me der Alter. Kurt...Kurt could be described as der Älter."

This meant nothing. Jochen turned and ran through the café door, the gun still in his hand. He was still wearing the leather shoes his grandfather insisted he wear in the café, and his feet slipped on the snow. He put the safety on the gun. He was not sure what he would do if he actually found anyone to shoot with it.

Four sets of footprints led out of the castle gate; four sets of footprints led in. They didn't follow the road up from the town, though, but immediately diverted from it, into the woods. The woods were like one long barcode, an endless zebra-stripe of black and white. A running or walking man would show up against them like an elephant in a living room. The tracks continued and did not deviate, both the incoming and outgoing trails following the same path.

He followed the tracks. The trees opened out into high meadows. At the edge of the trees, the massive expanse of concrete that had once been the Vogelkäfig, the Bird Cage, was now visible only as a broad unnatural flatness in the snow. Once, chains had fed into recesses here, rolling off drums far beneath the surface, reeling out, reeling in, maintaining tension in the line, keeping something that jerked and jumped frantically, trying to escape the chains, moored steadily to the ground. Now, all that was here were memories that the town of Spitzenburg would rather not have. Memories that made middle-aged men ashamed of their parents, and that made old men whimper in their sleep at night.

The tracks ran out into pure virgin snow, a fresh blanket laid by this morning's snowstorm.

And petered out into nothing.

He whirled round; no tracks led away in any direction.

He looked up. Something dark was moving off up into the sky, eclipsing the stars.