There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 11

11. Scorched Earth

There was an alien in Ant's brain, and he had to do what it said. The alien was telling him to kiss Cleopatra, so it could ooze its way out of him and into her. If he didn't do it, it was saying, it would ooze out of him in a way he wouldn't survive, leaving him dead on the pavement in a pool of blood and blueness. The alien was only the visible part of the bigger alien, however, which was lurking beneath the speeding car, which was actually a motorboat, opening its one huge eye to look at him through the car's glass bottom - a New Dixie kraken, bigger than a suburb of Atlantis, washed inland by tidal storms and run aground on a reef. Tentacles and protuberances of it were waving all about the car, protruding above water level. The water was green and looked like grass. The tentacles looked like trees, but Ant knew they were really the carnivorous treeoids of Krasnaya Zvezda Three, that at any moment they could pull their giant stinging abdomens out of the ground and come for him, ingest him, turn him into more silent, sterile forest like themselves -

"Hey, Stevens! STEVENS! Wakey wakey, Teddy Byes!"

Sheep were grazing around the trees' bases, but he knew they were robots only pretending to be sheep.

He shook himself awake. "Wha? Whereami?"

"You've ad an interestin life so far, Stevens. You bin talkin in your sleep. Suffice it to say you ent on New Dixie, an you ent on Krasnaya Three, nor Alpha Four. An I thought I ad stuff I was frit of."

Ant's memory was coming back. "You shot me. Why did you shoot me?"

Armand's hands tightened round the steering wheel. "To let you know what it's loike. When you shot me, I went straight back to bein foive year old. You ave any idea what it's loike to ave your mum leave you when you're foive year old?"

"I know what it's like to have your mum leave you when you're ten", said Ant.

Armand seemed to soften slightly. But only slightly. "Not even close", he said. "But everythin you come out with when I shot you sounds like it appened to you in the larst year. An if what's bin appenin to you for the larst year is that bad, then om on your soide. No wun should ave things loike that appen to em. No wun."

Ant was astonished.

"Noice car, this, by the way. Foive series. The four litre."

Ant realized Armand was driving the police car. He was wearing a German police uniform. Ant looked down. He was also wearing a German police uniform. It did not fit.

"Er", said Ant. "Are we going to a party?"

"You crack me up, Stevens. No, I figured we'd stand more charnce of gettin away with, you know, stuff, if we looked like the enemy."

"The police aren't the enemy", said Ant.

"Everyone", said Armand, "is the Enemy. Certainly roight now. Now, we're in the middle of Reggensborough. Iss quite noice. Iss got carstles an cathedrals an that. But we're gunna after ditch the car pretty soon. People've started noticin that I'm the only fifteen-year-old black policeman in Germany, loike. So I need to know - where are we gooin? Where did your spaceship crash?"

Ant shook his head clear of krakens and walking stinging shrubs. He looked about him. The car was travelling, bizarrely, through the middle of a mediaeval city. Buildings had turrets as well as roofs. The turrets had clock towers and onion domes. The roofs of the buildings were far pointier than would be allowed in England. Health and Safety would have complained. "Uh - the TV news said Botanischer Garten, Universität Regensburg. I think that means the botanical garden at the university."

"Smart", said Armand. "Dunt know where the university is by any charnce, do ya?"

"Drive", said Ant. "Drive round in circles. When you see a whole sector of the city that's blocked off by huge military vehicles and police cars, that'll be it. The nice thing about Special Operations is that they can be relied on not to do things by halves."

Armand squinted into his rear view mirror. "What about elicopters? You reckon there'll be elicopters, like, overin overead?"

"Almost certainly. Green military ones."

"Roight." Armand did a half doughnut in the middle of a bridge over a river. Despite the sudden manoeuvre, nobody sounded their horn. Ant wondered why, until he realized they were in a police car. You didn't sound your horn at police cars.

For good measure, Armand put the siren on.

"Ad it on most of the way ere", he said. "Got into it arfter a whoile, loike." He began to move his body rhythmically back and forth in tune with the police siren. Ant hoped he was not serious.

In the distance, he could now indeed see olive drab helicopters, buzzing around something in the distance like gigantic greenbottles. On the sides of the helicopters was stencilled: U S ARMY.

***

"Hey! Stop! Eintritt verboten! You are not allowed to go!"

The café lady spoke far worse English than the old man had. Tamora was already inside the café kitchen, looking for things Cleo might be hiding underneath, inside, or behind. There was a door at the other end of the kitchen that could not lead anywhere but further into the castle. "We are going to need drain cleaner", she said. "Do you have any drain cleaner?"

Behind her, Fräulein Meinck was also on her tail with missile lock. "Tämora! Get out off zere at vunce! Zät iss ä priväte kitschen!"

Tamora turned round, unperturbed. "That blue substance that came out of the cake", she said to the café lady. "Do you know where it came from?"

"Zere iss no blue substänce in my cäke", said the lady, folding her arms proudly and firmly.

"It came from Cleo. The girl you gave the cake to. My sister."

Fräulein Meinck was clearly attempting valiantly to understand. "How? Vhy vould Cleo poison a cäke?"

"Because that is not my sister", said Tamora. "She has not been herself all morning. She has been polite. She has been quiet and kept herself to herself. She told me I looked nice when I went out to the coach, and I so do not look nice, I cannot do anything with my hair today. And she has been eating meat. And Cleo would rather eat poison than meat." Actually, Tamora suspected that, if it came down to a meat / poison choice, Cleo would go for the meat, but it had the desired effect.

"You are säying that Cleo is..."

"An alien, yes", nodded Tamora. Fräulein Meinck remained mystified. "Zirc will explain it all to you", said Tamora. Cubic Zirc, who was at Fräulein Meinck's elbow, inhaled ready for a long conversation. Tamora felt very, very sorry for Fräulein Meinck, particularly since Herr Riemann still had a hold of her left hand. He appeared to care deeply about her.

"The rest of Team Salami", she said, "with me."

The café kitchen filled with a push of bodies, some of them in Team Salami, some just along for the ride. Harjit was left behind in the café, standing looking sternly at Porsh.

"I coulden elp it, Arjit", said Porsh, trembling.

"Porsche Red Chardonnay Essence de Femme Catchpole", said Harjit, "your ass is mine." She jerked a thumb in the direction of the chaos in the kitchen. "Them buggers are going to make so much noise, Cleo'll hear 'em coming a mile off. Two of us, on the other hand..."

Porsh was clearly petrified. "But she's a Nalien, Arjit. She'll get inside my brain."

"Don't worry, Porsh. There's plenty of room in there for you and her both. Now, have I ever let you down? Not even on the bra-stuffing? Nor about that little shrine to Lucy Lawless you've got in your locker?"

Porsh looked at the laminate floor. "...no, Arjit."

"Then let's lock and load. Er, that's a metaphor. It means, let's find us something caustic we can sprinkle all over Cleo." She began searching in the cupboards behind the café bar, unregarded by the café lady, who was still trying to stop everyone in the whole world from piling into her castle.

"But what if she's Yuman arfter all?"

"Then she'll be glad of the fact we dissolved her face with bleach to prove it once and for all, hey."

Harjit came out from behind the bar with a massive bottle labelled ROHRREINIGER NATRIUMHYPOCHLORIT. It had a picture of a man pouring the contents of the bottle into a toilet, which was steaming. It had skulls and crossbones and red crosses on it, and had GEFÄHRLICH! printed on it in huge red letters. "This looks like the stuff."

"What's GEFÄHRLICH mean?"

Harjit screwed open the top of the bottle and sniffed it. "Poo - based on a nostril full of that, I'd definitely say it means 'DO NOT MAKE JELLIES OUT OF THIS STUFF AND HAND 'EM OUT AT CHILDREN'S PARTIES."

"...om not sure about this Arjit."

"That's why I'm the Mad Scientist, and you're the Henchwoman", said Harjit. "Now, there's got to be another entrance to this place somewhere..."

***

The whole road was blocked off. The area cordoned off by security forces had grown since the morning - tapes saying POLIZEIABSPERRUNG, one of the largest and most impressive German words Ant had ever seen, crossed the road. There were police cars, and cones, and many, many large military vehicles. Some of the military vehicles were German, some were American, and some were British. The men from the military and police vehicles were arguing with each other.

"What are they arguin about?" said Armand.

"The German police are asking the German soldiers why the the British and American soldiers have blocked off part of Germany. The British and American soldies are getting even angrier because they've been told to block off part of Germany, but they don't really know why either. Basically, phone calls have been made to their bosses' bosses' bosses, and all they know is that whatever is in that parkland has to be got out of it double quick before the Press take any more photos of it."

"Why're they so scared of the Press?" said Armand.

"Because what's in the park is a crashed example of a working flying saucer, and no-one on Earth is supposed to know flying saucers exist. I think we should get this car out of here and round the corner. Those policemen are starting to take an interest in us."

Armand quietly put the car into reverse, and expertly took it back round the corner onto the grass verge. There were police here too, directing traffic away from the street that had been blocked off, putting up signs and cones. They were about a hundred metres away, too far to see that Ant and Armand resembled German police officers the way dishwashers resembled spaghetti. One of them looked up at the car in mild curiosity. Ant, however, knew that mild curiosity could become hot pursuit very, very quickly.

"We got to ditch these uniforms", said Armand.

"You kept our proper clothes, right", said Ant. "Tell me you kept our proper clothes."

"Er", said Armand.

A hand fell on Ant's shoulder through the open car window. Ant froze, petrified.

"Big Ups to the Planet Earth Posse", said a low, deep voice in Ant's ear.

"ARMAND, PUT THE GUN DOWN, PUT THE GUN DOWN, HE'S A FRIEND, HE'S A FRIEND, HE'S A FRIEND."

"Sorry", said Armand, who had already had the gun set to FRIT, aimed and ready.

"Richard!" said Ant. "We've come here to, er, save you"

"Great!" said Richard Turpin, wearing jeans and a T shirt rather than his usual USZ flight suit. The jeans did not fit. The T shirt had a Nazi flag on it. Underneath the Nazi flag, it said: REDEFREIHEIT FÜR ALLE IN DEUTSCHLAND?

Ant stared. He was acutely aware that, ten metres behind him, a massive line of German car drivers, stopped in traffic, were also staring out of their side windows, looking murderously at Turpin.

"Richard", said Ant, "where did you get that shirt?"

"A nice man with a very short haircut gave it to me", said Turpin. "He was trying to sell them at the railway station, but nobody would buy them and the police kept moving him on. I felt ever so sorry for him."

"E's a Nazi, Teds", said Armand warningly, his hand clicking nervously on the wheel of the Orgonizer.

"He is not a Nazi", said Ant. "Richard, you need to take that shirt off and turn it inside out."

"What's a Nazi?" said Turpin.

"That T shirt says you're a Nazi", said Ant. "And it's illegal to be a Nazi around here."

"It's a free country", said Turpin.

"Not if the Nazis come to power it won't be. Take it off and turn it inside out now, or we aren't rescuing you."

"I had to buy the shirt really, just to show you, because it's a really funny thing, but the symbol on the front of it looks exactly the same as the one on the wreckage from the -"

"We know", said Ant. "Welcome to the land of You've Caught Up Now."

Turpin shrugged. "Anything to be helpful." He began to struggle out of the shirt. As he reversed the shirt and put it back on again, so that the swastika wasn't visible, Germans in the nearby cars began clapping. Turpin, imagining the clapping was for him, bowed extravagantly. Someone threw a Coke can at him. Turpin stared at the man who'd thrown the can, evidently mortally offended.

"Leave it, Richard", said Ant. "You were in the wrong. You have no idea how much in the wrong you were."

"You'd better come to my van", said Turpin, "so you can rescue me."

Ant looked at Turpin in incomprehension.

"You've got a van?"

***

The room smelled like the bottom of a compost heap after cold rain. Icicles had formed on the ceiling, indoors, reaching down out of the winter like pick blades, biting into the stonework, doing damage. Stonework two metres thick did not usually fear frost damage, but the building could not take this lack of maintenance forever.

The only light came from a single halogen lamp the old man carried with him. He shone it carefully into corners as he walked. He had seen horrors most young men of today could only imagine, but there were things even he was scared of. In his hands he carried a sledgehammer, a metre long, with three kilos of steel at the business end.

The cellars had originally been a proper mediaeval undercastle. A mediaeval castle was a stone box with very thick walls and a very high entrance. The high entrance ensured that whoever tried to break in would have to climb uphill while the defenders rained rocks, arrows and boiling oil on them. The high entrance also, however, meant that the ground floor of the castle was a windowless space below entrance level - the undercastle. Commonly, undercastles had been used for storage, and often they would contain wells, dug very deeply into the rock, to keep the castle supplied with water during a siege. The undercastle for Schloß Spitzenburg had been no exception. In the Middle Ages, it would have contained salt pork and firewood, arrows, and, in one corner, a dungeon. In the early twentieth century, it had contained tanks of diesel oil, heating boilers, electrical generators, and massive industrial-sized refrigerators big enough to feed a castle full of aristocrats and their very fine guests. Now the generators were rusting in one corner, the refrigerators had been sold and shipped out, and the diesel tanks were almost empty. Only a few centimetres of oil were dribbled into them once a year, to light the boilers and check that the flames still burned blue, not yellow; that the air vent to the outside of the castle wall was unblocked and that the cellars were not filling with deadly carbon monoxide every minute the fire stayed lit. That much was required by Federal law. Apart from that, all that remained were the descendants of the original spiders, huge, brown and businesslike, lurking in their ragged webs. Not even rats lived here any longer. What would they live on?

The old man descended a staircase, taking him below ground level. The stonework all around him was now wet with condensation. It was always wet, even in the depth of winter, the temperature always just a hair's breadth above freezing. He measured his paces out along the wall, until he came to a part of the wall that was not stone. Here, clearly visible in the light from the lamp, was a doorway in the wall that had been filled with brick.

He spat on his hands, took up the sledgehammer and swung.

***

"GOOD MORNING", said man's voice, pointedly loud.

Harjit and Porsh swung round, instantly guilty. They had been walking round the perimeter of the castle, Porsh keeping watch every time Harjit tried a door. So far no doors had been open.

The man was standing in the centre of the courtyard, wearing a very nice suit. Next to him stood two enormous dogs. The larger of the two, a massive Pyrenean, was less unsettling than the smaller, which was growling low in its throat, whilst every few seconds attempting to graze the cobbles for some reason. The noise it was making also actually sounded less like a growl than a horribly aggressive bleat.

"This on my left is Larry", said the man, “and on my right is, I believe, Hasselhoff. Both these dogs are highly trained killing machines -"

Hasselhoff sat up on his haunches, scratched his ear and panted happily.

"- at least one of these dogs", recovered the man with a sour glance at Hasselhoff, "is a highly trained killing machine. The other is a bit of a waste of hair, it has to be admitted. Larry, however, can and will kill you on my command. You appear to be attempting to burgle this establishment. You will please stay absolutely still."

The man had his hands in his pockets. He was not especially large or imposing - it was his eyes that had stopped Harjit dead. They were green as polar ice, sunken back into his head, suggesting cold depths and deadly sharpnesses lying beneath the surface. He was middle-aged, and age had not been kind to him - his skin hung sparely on his bones. There were also two men behind him in identical civilian ski parkas. The fact that the parkas were identical made Harjit certain that the men were not entirely civilian.

"Alastair Drague", said Harjit. "Born Islington, 1945. Educated Winchester School, 1957 to 1963. History scholar, Balliol College, Oxford, 1963 to 1966. Drives a Lagonda Three-Litre", she said, and added. "Black."

The mass of wrinkles above the eyes contracted into a frown. The eyes continued to stare into Harjit's for several seconds.

"I must say, you appear to have the advantage over me", he said. "But no matter; I shall make it my duty to acquaint myself with you more fully. You are?"

Harjit reached behind herself for the wrought iron handle on the great front door to the castle. Incredibly, it turned.

"Running away", she said.

"I think not", said Alastair. He clicked his fingers; the two men in parkas moved forwards. One of them took hold of Porsh's arm.

"Porsh", said Harjit. "Now."

Obligingly, Porsh began to quiver and spasm in the man's hand; her face turned pale. A second later, the man leapt back holding his hand out from his body and staring down in horror at his lovely formerly green parka.

"Oh my GOD -"

"Smart", said Harjit, threw open the door, pulled Porsh inside it, and rammed the bolt she found on the other side home. The bolt looked as if it had been designed to stop heavy siege equipment during the Middle Ages. It was as thick as a man's arm. There was a locking assembly on this side of the door that looked as if it might be able to pull back the bolt from outside, but a key would be needed for that...

They were now in a cold, huge, completely empty space with a vaulted stone ceiling. Doorways opened off it into rooms to right and left, and a large wooden staircase was visible ahead. Next to Harjit, breathing heavily in the dark, Porsh was wiping fresh vomit from her mouth.

"That's a heavily underestimated talent you got there, Porsh, my girl", said Harjit.

"Cor", said Porsh, looking up and around herself. "Ooever built this place, they dint goo in for wallpaper an carpets an soft furnishins an that a nole bundle, hey."

Outside the door, a younger man's voice, less aristocratic than Drague's, was saying:

"Should we send the dog in through the door, sir?"

Harjit stood back from the door, alarmed. The door had been hard to close. It was probably not much thinner than the trees it had been made of. Through the door?

"No", said Drague. "We don't want to attract attention, and grand entrances through the front door are not our forte in any case . There has to be another door here somewhere. Find it."

"Sir."

"Time to make ourselves scarcer than the tiger", said Harjit. "Now, let's see - Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare -"

She flicked down a list of numbers on her mobile phone, found the one she was looking for, and pressed CALL.

Somewhere in the maze of cavernous echoing rooms, a Nokia ringtone sounded. Harjit smirked and clapped Porsh on the shoulder.

"Come on, my trusty non-Indian companion."

***

Jochen sat rigid at the desk, listening to Frau Männlicher telling him about the former iron-and-steel-producing areas of central Belgium. The most important former-iron-and-steel-producing area of central Belgium, it seemed, was Lüttich (Liège), where newer, less specialized industries had developed to fill the gap left by iron and steel. These new industries included textiles, chocolate manufacture, and saxophone assembly. The classroom was overheated, as it always was in winter. People's heads were drooping with dull inevitability towards their desks.

Someone was throwing paper pellets at the back of his head.

His grandfather had told him to go to school as normal; everything would be fine. He, der Alter, would fix things. If they came again during the day, while Jochen was in school, he knew a thing or two. And Jochen's mother would be safe; he would keep her out of it.

The saxophone parts, Frau Männlicher was telling him, were produced in China, then shipped to Belgium for assembly under such trade names as The Genuine Belgian Saxophone Co, As Invented By Adolphe Sachs, The Famous Belgian. The saxophone industry now employed fifty per cent of the population of Liège.

Another paper pellet hit the back of his head. He turned to see Sepp, Girgl and Wastl, sitting bolt upright in their seats, hands in their laps, like choirboys.

What were they, the blue men, looking for? Der Alter thought it was better Jochen did not know. But they would not get their hands on it. "Scorched earth", he had said, as they parted company, as if this explained everything. "scorched earth."

He shot his hand up suddenly. "Frau Männlicher, what does 'scorched earth' mean?"

Frau Männlicher stopped in the middle of a discussion of fascinating parallels with the American sousaphone industry. "This is a geography lesson, Jochen, not history."

"It's very important, miss."

Frau Männlicher's eyes narrowed; after several seconds of staring Jochen down, she seemed to conclude that he was genuine.

"Scorched earth", she said, "was the policy used by the Russian Army during World War Two, when they destroyed everything on their own land as they retreated from the Wehrmacht, so that capturing the land would be of no benefit to the Germans. Is that enough of an explanation?"

"Yes miss. Thank you miss."

Destroying everything on their own land -

Another pellet hit his head. He reached carefully into his schoolbook, selected a fountain pen - a refillable one, its rubber bulb plump and full of ink as he unscrewed it. Then he turned in his seat and squeezed the bulb hard with his thumb, shooting a jet of Prussian Blue directly at Girgl's white T-shirt.

Girgl looked down in horror; Jochen grinned in glee.

"Psychopath", muttered Girgl. "He's a psychopath." He turned to the rest of the class. "A new shirt", he said, tugging at the shirt to show how new it was. "A new shirt."

"JOCHEN", said Frau Männlicher severely. "This is UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR. You will GO AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF TO THE PRINCIPAL."

"Yes miss", said Jochen. "Thank you miss."

He picked up his bag and coat and excused himself from the classroom. The principal's office was left; Jochen went right. Running down the corridor, he almost barged straight into a middle-aged lady. She had obviously dyed auburn hair, horrible chunky plastic sunglasses, and an enormous coat with a ghastly brown floral design.

"You should watch where you're going, young man", she said.

"Sorry", said Jochen, gathered his bag up under his arm, and continued running.

***

Turpin did indeed have a van. It was a white VW Multivan, parked on the grass verge near a set of buildings having signs that said they belonged to Regensburg University. It had clearly been driven onto the grass. There were tyre tracks.

"Richard. This is a van. Vans need to be driven."

"I know", said Turpin, smiling happily.

"You can't drive, Richard", said Ant. "You turn into a trembling quivering wreck every time you get into a car."

"I have a driver", said Turpin proudly. The driver waved out of the open window of the Multivan. "Anthony Stevens - George Quantrill."

"Pleased to meet you", said George Quantrill, extending a hand. He was a ruddy-faced, middle-aged man with sandy blond hair and a cheerful smile. Numb with shock, Ant shook the hand.

"But you're -" said Ant.

"Dead, yes", grinned Quantrill. "Oh so horribly dead. But here I am, moving around and stuff. I can only put it down to good diet and exercise." Ant looked nervously back down the road behind the van. "Shall we get going? I don't want to be any more dead than I am already."

Turpin opened the side door to the van.

"This is Armand", said Ant. "He's, er. He's not dead."

"Only between the ears", said Armand, climbing in. "Are you guys, loike, from Space?"

"No", said Turpin. "We come from planets, both of us. Lalande 21185 Two, specifically. And you?"

"Northampton", said Armand. "Issa town", he nodded, "not a planet."

The van grumbled into motion; no-one appeared to be following them at Quantrill nosed out onto a main road.

"What does Polly Zie mean?" said Turpin, looking at their uniforms.

"Police", said Ant. "It's a long story. We need some more clothes."

"I see. And where can we get those?"

"A place called the Evangelisches Freizeitheim Spitzenburg."

"Gosh", said Turpin. "I don't speak German."

"That makes two of us", said Ant. "Uh - George - weren't you - not to put too fine a point on it - captured, by Special Operations?"

Quantrill shook his head. "They nearly had me. Gave em the slip. They followed our van up the M1 to where Richard had parked the ship. When we stopped the van and started unloading, then they moved in."

Ant nodded. "You were smuggling. Things needed on Gondolin that couldn't be manufactured there. Microchips, precision instruments", he said. "Monster Munch."

Turpin hung his head guiltily at the Monster Munch.

"So how did you escape?" said Ant.

"Idiots left the door unlocked on the van", said Quantrill. "They'd cuffed my hands with cable tie, but I was able to kick the door catch and jump out. Right over a railway bridge, with a slow freight train passing underneath it. I spent a nasty few minutes sharing a car with a half tonne of coal, but as soon as I was clear of the road, I was off the train and running. That wasn't the end of it either. They had unmarked cars and helicopters out looking for me. I hid in someone's garage for two days. It was a week before I got back to the safe house in London."

"The safe house", said Ant.

"We haven't dared use it since we thought George had been captured", said Turpin. "It's in Enfield. Belongs to George's uncle."

"I've been lying low there for over a year", said Quantrill. "WHO TAUGHT YOU TO DRIVE, YOU - what do those yellow diamonds on the road signs mean?"

"So...how did you get here?" said Ant.

"I figured out eventually that Richard wouldn't be coming anywhere near the safe house ever again", said Quantrill, "because he'd seen me bundled into the Special Ops van. So I lay low, and I thought things out. Became more of an Earthling every day. You know those big steel cubicles all around Earth towns are not actually men's walk-in toilets? They're actually communication devices. They contain telephones."

Ant wrinkled his nose in distaste. Quantrill saw the distaste and exclaimed indignantly: "Well, the first time I ever saw someone use one, that was what he used it for."

"Saturday night, was it?" said Ant.

"What's that go to do with it?"

Ant grimaced knowingly. "Go on. You were at the part where you were becoming more like an Earthling every day."

"Well, there were a few places I figured the Commodore might be interested in, so I kept an eye on them. Weaponization in Bedfordshire, that was one. Dudleytown, Connecticut, where they make hulls for starships, that was another. And this place was another. So when I saw on the telly that a top secret jet had crashed in a park only a few miles away from Spitzenburg, and I saw from the telly that it wasn't a jet but a Harridan A1..."

"You could see the Forellen Turbine", agreed Ant.

"...I got in the van and drove straight here", said Quantrill. "Six hundred miles plus. Non stop." Triumphantly, he tapped a long line of Pro-Plus packets and scrunched up styrofoam coffee cups on the dashboard.

"That's nothing", said Ant. "My dad did Northampton to Warsaw once in one go."

"Oh", said Quantrill, looking rather disappointed.

"Mind you, he did come off the road and drive across a ploughed field halfway through Belgium", said Ant. "But it was the middle of the night, and nobody noticed. And hey, it's only Belgium."

"Did you know people don't drive on the right side of the road here?" said Quantrill. "I mean to say, they do drive on the right side of the road. I mean, left should be right. Right is wrong. What do you think?"

"I think you've had far too much Pro-Plus", said Ant. "We need the B85."

"What's the B85?" said Quantrill suspiciously. "A device that counteracts the effects of caffeine? Does it hurt? Does it need to break the skin?"

"It's a road", said Ant. "We need to be on it. Turn right now."

The van turned right on screeching plumes of blue vapourized rubber. Ant's teeth clamped together; he held on to his seat for dear life.

"I nearly failed my driving test", said Quantrill apologetically. "These things just don't handle like space fighters. I kept saying to the instructor, Why don't we just fly over the bus?"

"I can see how that would have been a problem."

***

Jochen's bike had given up on the iced-up road which led up to the castle; the road was now bendy and slimy as an eel. He had left the bike in the snow, and was running flat out, out of breath, cutting across the zig-zags of the road. He flailed his arms at a passing Volkswagen, begging for a lift, but it didn't stop. Someone who wasn't his grandfather, driving up to the castle in this weather? He would almost certainly get to the top before they did. They might not get to the top at all.

His clothes were soaked with sweat inside his coat. He dreaded the thought of what he would smell like when he took the coat off. Things were hurting in his chest. His knees and hands were skinned from falling over and hitting the gravel.

The courtyard, eventually, came into sight. He had not stopped running since he ditched the bike, not even when he'd thought he would die.

The courtyard now contained two Volkswagens - Tante Ilse, his grandfather's ancient 1978 Beetle, and a more modern Jetta. The Jetta was very poorly parked, slewed across the courtyard entrance, as if it had been abandoned. Across the courtyard, the café door was half open. Neither his grandmother nor his mother would have let heat seep out in such a manner.

There were also three men here, and two dogs. The men were attempting to open the lock on one of the side doors to the castle. One of the men, who wore a very expensive-looking suit, looked round with eyes green as malachite. He held something rather like a television remote control in his hand. As the remote moved, one of the two dogs, a large Alsatian, seemed to swivel with it, fixating on Jochen like a snake on a startled rabbit. Jochen recognized the other dog, a huge white waste of fur which was nibbling its own backside happily in another corner of the courtyard.

"Alastair Drague", said Jochen. "You drive a Lagonda Three-Litre", he added.

"Good grief", said Drague. "Does everybody here know my entire life history?"

"I have been comprehensively briefed", said Jochen, "by Cleopatra."

"I see", said Drague. "You wouldn't know Cleopatra's current whereabouts, by any chance?"

"By the rules of the Geneva Convention, I only have to give you my name, rank and number", said Jochen. "Cleopatra said to mention the Geneva Convention to you. She said it annoys you. Your German is very good, by the way", he said.

"Thank you", said Drague. "I served here for some time in the nineteen sixties. You must tell me everything you know about where Cleopatra's current plans and location. Otherwise, she could be in terrible danger." He looked past Jochen out of the castle gate. "Very terrible danger."

"Jochen von und zu Spitzenburg, Untersekunda, identity card serial number 1220001518."

"I see", said Drague. "We're having terrible trouble with this lock, by the way. We're rather used to breaking into locks that were designed in the nineteenth century or after. You wouldn't by any chance...?"

"You should go now", said Jochen, "or I'm afraid I will have to call the police."

"I don't think so. I'm afraid that you really won't be able to make it to a telephone inside the castle now."

"Why?" Jochen looked at the dog, which was moving very, very slowly towards him, its eyes wide like glowing coals. "Are you going to have your dog attack me?"

"No." Drague looked pointedly over Jochen's left shoulder. "I'm afraid the situation is rather more complicated than you think. Depressing though this may be, we, you see, Jochen, are the good guys."

Jochen turned round. The bad guys were standing right behind him.