There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 3

3. The British are Coming

"YOU GOT EVERYTHING?" yelled a voice from high above Ant's head.

"THINK SO", yelled Ant without checking.

"RIGHTO". The truck's brakes hissed like snakes, and monster wheels turned. A reeking cloud of black diesel fumes blew out of the back of the truck's tractor unit as it pulled away, sending a crowd of Year Seven girls shrieking to the far side of the pavement. The hundred-metre queue of gleaming four-by-fours that had formed up behind the truck stopped honking their horns and started rolling up to the school gates to deposit their own children in turn. The idea of letting their children get out and walk an extra hundred metres to school while they'd been waiting for the truck to move didn't seem to have occurred to them.

Angry women scowled at Ant as they drove off. One of them drove off to the end of the road, parked, got out and walked back into her house.

"Om gunna send your dad my cleanin bill, Stevens", said one girl, scrubbing furiously at her brilliant white lapel.

"Look at this! Ruined!" wailed another, pointing out dirt spots only she could see.
"Om gooin to get beat off me mum", complained a third.

"Still making friends wherever you go", said Cleo. Ant turned. The Shakespeares' Jaguar was pulling away. Mr. Shakespeare waved at Ant. For some reason, he was wearing a T shirt that said he was a New Dad.

"Hello, Anthony", said Tamora. "I'm going to Germany with you."

"Hello Tamora", said Ant.

"I tried to talk her out of it", said Cleo. "She doesn't even speak German."

" Fräulein Meinck said anyone who was thinking of starting German next year could go", said Tamora.

"She said everyone who was thinking of starting German next year would be considered", said Cleo. "And Mum and Dad were supposed to tell the school we were going in writing four weeks ago."

"I've got a note", said Tamora gleefully, waving it like a banner. "It's from Mum and Dad. It's in writing."

"You have less than zero interest in German. You told me you wanted to do Italian because all Italian men looked like Al Pacino and rode motor scooters."

"I want to go on holiday", said Tamora crossly. "Is that a crime? I mean, a crime on the same sort of level as concealing hundreds of pounds in assorted currencies, just to pull an example wildly out of the air."

Cleo went deathly pale. All her blood was draining from her skin and concentrating in those parts of her which would be most useful in killing Tamora.

"No surprise from you, I see", continued Tamora to Ant. "So you're in it as well. I might have known. Violent mood swings and criminal parentage."

"I am proud", said Ant, "of my criminal parentage."

"Ant's dad isn't a criminal and you know it", said Cleo. "He just drives trucks backward and forward between here and the Continent, and occasionally he happens to take extra parcels for people, like whisky and perfume -"

"Entire trucks full of whisky and perfume, Cleo", said Ant uneasily.

"And Chinese people", said Tamora. "Don't forget the Chinese people. The ones who nearly suffocated."

"That wasn't his fault", said Ant. "They started smoking all the cigarettes inside the container and used up all the oxygen."

"Whatever", said Tamora. "In any case, I am going on holiday and that is final."

"It's not a holiday", said Cleo haughtily. "It's a serious study opportunity."

"Oh yes", said Tamora, unfolding a programme. "On day one, we're going to be, let's see, 'sampling the delights of German cake'. That sounds very strenuous to me. Some of those German cakes have very long names. And then on day two we're making a visit to a fairytale castle. On day three, though, it gets harder still, we're going to have to 'visit a sanctuary for rescued zoo animals', and those baby koala bears are so dreary. On day four, though, we get a reward for all our hard work when we finally get to go round the Spitzenburg Steam Tram Museum -"

Cleo snatched back the programme from Tamora. "The steam tram museum will be very valuable. We will get to learn many useful steam-related words."

"Hey, look!" said Tamora. "It's your friends in their big car." She waved frantically at a massive Mercedes - now sporting a newly replaced gleaming windscreen - on the other side of the street. "COOOEEEE! DETECTIVE INSPECTOR! OVER HERE!"

The driver of the Mercedes, looking warily over his shoulder, rolled the car twenty metres further forward, putting himself out of range of Ant's throwing arm.

"Detective Inspector?" said Ant, nonplussed.

"THEY'RE OVER HERE", said Tamora, pointing out Ant and Cleo. "IT'S A FAIR COP AND THEY WANT TO GIVE THEMSELVES UP. THEY WOULD LIKE AN INSTANCE OF SNIFFING PERMANENT MARKERS DURING ART CLASS TO BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION."

"Be quiet", muttered Cleo, looking round the pavement at the hordes of pupils streaming into school.

"It's perfectly true, and you had two indelible black rings round your nostrils to prove it", said Tamora serenely. "Now, unless you decide to tell me what's really going on here -"

Cleo turned and looked at the car.

"Hang on", she said, and clicked across the road on her heels, putting on a big smile and waving at the car. "HI!!!"

The car didn't pull away. The driver of the car was clearly not scared of Cleo.

"Cleo", called Ant. "Come back. HEY! YOU'RE CONSORTING WITH THE ENEMY!"

Cleo, however, walked right up to the car and knocked on the passenger side window. After a brief pause, the window wound down. Cleo leaned on the door sill and appeared to carry on a very pleasant conversation with Hammond Karg while Ant stood fuming on the other side of the road. At one point, Cleo reached into the car and seemed to be straightening Mr. Karg's tie. Then she clicked back across to Ant.

"Mr. Karg's getting terrible back trouble being driven around surveilling us", she said. "He gave me a barley sugar." She looked the barley sugar over sadly. "It probably has a microphone in it. I will feed it to next door's dog later." She noticed Ant's murderous expression. "What?"

"Why did you just do that?"

"Do I need a reason to be civil, Anthony? It is possible to deal with other human beings without throwing masonry at them, you know."

Cleo's mobile phone rang in her pocket. The ringtone was the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars. Cleo went rigid.

"Aha, the mystery mobile phone", said Tamora. "The one given you by a mystery admirer. I'm betting that will be Mr. Big phoning about his stash, am I right?"

"Tamora, you know perfectly well your mum and dad bought her that phone", said Ant.

There was a brief pause.

Tamora looked at Ant and Cleo in sudden quivering fury.

"They always buy you things and not me", she said. "Just because you're the oldest."

She stamped her foot and stomped away.

"Wow", said Ant.

Her hand shaking, Cleo put the phone to her ear.

"Can you talk?"

"Not right now. I'm kind of surrounded by hundreds of people?"

"I'm aware of that. I thought your conversation had reached a point where it might be politic of me to interrupt. Yesterday, you received a message from Commodore Drummond and Captain Yancy. You are going to Spitzenburg in Germany."

"I might be", said Cleo, checking her clothes for listening devices angrily.

"Cleopatra, if you continue to play this tiresome game of never-tell, your father will end his career at the trade union in disgrace. Your family will be forced into penury. Council houses. No fine clothes. No holidays. No motor car when you reach the age of seventeen. No college. Did I mention I can stop you getting into college as well?"

"I have very good friends", said Cleo, glancing at Ant, "who cope with that situation very well."

"We need to know where Gondolin is."

"I don't have that information. You know I don't."

"You can find out. Commodore Drummond and Captain Yancy know. Wheedle it out of them. You're good at wheedling. You will also tell us where your mail drop is, please."

"You're breaking up, Grandma", said Cleo. "I think your train might be going into a tunnel. Cccccchsxctpvw -"

She took out a battered scrap of tinfoil from her purse and began wrapping the phone in it.

"I can only stand so much of my grandma", she said to Ant.

"Your grandma's dead", said Ant.

"On my mother's side", said Cleo.

"So your parents didn't give you that phone after all."

"My, uh, grandma did. So I could talk to her. So I could talk to her all the time." Cleo stared at the phone in undisguised hatred. "It's, er, really embarrassing. Which is why I said my parents bought it."

"Is there a reason why you're wrapping it in Bacofoil?"

"The Off switch doesn't work. This does."

Ant looked at the phone in disquiet. "Remind me not to buy one of those."

***

"So you vant to go now."

"Yes, Fräulein. And my sister Tamora would like to go as well."

Fräulein Meinck's steel-rimmed spectacles drilled into Cleo's brain, exposing the deceit within. Fräulein Meinck was wearing stout, hardwearing tweed, as she always did, and two lapel badges, one in the shape of the German flag, one in the shape of the Union Jack, as she always did. Crowds of pupils moving between classrooms swirled around Fräulein Meinck and Cleo in the corridor. Cleo had been lucky to catch her between classes.

"You said you didn't vant to go last veek, Cleopatra."

"I know, Fräulein. I didn't have the money last week."

"But you häff the money now."

"I do."

Fräulein Meinck sucked in her breath at great length.

Finally, she said:

"You are very lucky, Cleopatra. Two people who vere goink to be goink on ze trip häff fallen ill viz a mysteriöus illness. A mysteriöus häppy illness zat involves smilink and laughink all ze time, and pointink at sings and sayink 'Haha, look at zät funny sing over zere'."

"That doesn't sound like an illness", said Cleo.

"Ze doctors sink", said Fräulein Meinck, "zey might be on Drugs. I häff not said zät, you understand, neizer häff you heard it." She looked over her shoulder, as if Drugs might be creeping up on her.

"When did it happen?" said Cleo.

"Fife minutes ago." Fräulein Meinck held up her mobile phone. "Ze Head häss texted me to say zät Tscheremy and Tschäke Moss vill not be comink to Spitzenburg. Zey are viz ze School Nurse, and she häss telephoned for an ämbulance."

"Jeremy and Jake Moss", said Cleo. "That's terrible. Are they in any pain at all?"

"No. Alzough zey should be. Poor Tschäke voss srowing a smaller boy into ze stingink nettles in front of ze Chemistry Block ät ze time, and suddenly begän laughink and srowink himself into zem over and over again."

Cleo was alarmed. "Jake Moss threw himself into the stinging nettles?"

"Zät iss vhat I said. He iss covered all över ze body viz nettle stinks. His great friend Anthony Stevens helped to dräg him aväy from zem, özzervize he could häff been vone big stink from head to foot."

A huge smile began to creep over Cleo's face.

"It iss not goot, Cleopatra", said Fräulein Meinck sternly, "to take pleasure in ze pain off özzers."

Cleo's grin almost split her face in half. "Uh, I'm just ecstatically happy to be able to go to Spitzenburg, Fräulein. With my baby little sister, whom I love dearly, of course."

"Also gut", said Fräulein Meinck. "It iss an Ill Vind zät iss blowink no-vone any goot, oder?"

"I'm sure you're right, Fräulein", said Cleo.

"Now run along to ze Bursar's office änd giff your mözzer and fazer's tscheque to Mrs. Tschenninks, or ve vill be two people schort off ze money for ze trip."

"My cheque", said Cleo, blinking stupidly. "Mrs. Jennings. Oh yes. Yes. That cheque. Erm - Fräulein?"

"Vhat iss it now?"

"Do you think Mrs. Jennings will take cash in very large denominations, some of them extremely foreign?"

The corridor was now almost empty. Only a few stragglers remained, most of them emerging from toilets - girls with their skirts tucked into their pants, boys wiping their hands on their trousers. The bell clanged deafeningly for the start of the next period.

"Ze bell, alväys viz ze bell", said Fräulein Meinck, holding her temples dramatically. "My nerves are in tätters. I am sure Mrs. Tschenninks vill täke vhatever you giff her as long as it iss not pöker chips or car vash tokens."

"Thanks Miss", said Cleo. "Auf Wiedersehen."

Fräulein Meinck smiled happily. "Auf Wiedersehen, Cleopatra."

***

Cleo slid soundlessly into place in class beside Ant. Crazy Ivan Maplethorpe, the maths master, appeared not to have even noticed she was missing. Crazy Ivan had been named for his habit of turning round suddenly without warning, in the manner of a Russian submarine commander, to look behind him. This was not to check for American submarines sneaking up on his stern, however, but to look for Year Nines attempting to stick Post-It notes to him. He suffered from tunnel vision, was incapable of seeing anything that wasn't directly ahead of him, and was still happily explaining what a Surd was to a beaming front row of boys. He seemed not to have realized that, when said quickly, 'Surd' sounded like something browner and far less mathematical, but was happy that his class was taking an unprecedented interest in the notation of roots.

"You", said Cleo quietly, "have been holding out on me."

Ant's eyes swivelled rightwards without giving any impression his attention was not still fixed on Mr. Maplethorpe. "In what way?"

"Before you left Gondolin, Lieutenant Turpin gave you a Personal Orgonizer."

Ant reddened guiltily. "It's a Mark Two. It works on the whole range of human emotions. It does happy, sad, angry, frightened, and it has one setting here", he said, tapping the top of a smooth metallic object in his schoolbag, "which is described only as SEXY."

"You used it on Jake Moss", accused Cleo.

A hand shot up at the front of the class. "SO, SIR, IF YOU WERE A SQUARE, I COULD GET A SURD OUT OF YOU."

The front row of the class sat in that silent, breathless state human beings sit in when attempting so hard not to laugh that it could cause physical injury.

Ant nodded a millimetre. "I used the HAPPY setting on him. I have also used the other settings, but not on human beings. I have been practising on squirrels."

Mr. Maplethorpe blinked in shock. His imagined world where students were truly interested in cube roots was collapsing. He turned round suddenly, looking to left and right, but no-one was creeping up armed with a Post-It. Outside in the trees, squirrels scampered past the window chattering angrily, out for blood and nuts.

"Demonstrate", said Cleo, eyes fixed forwards on Mr. Maplethorpe.

Ant nodded almost imperceptibly again, and snuck his hand down into his schoolbag. Cleo saw the dial turn to ANGRY. Ant's hand curled around the trigger...

"WELL, BROADLY SPEAKING, RYAN, THAT IS TRUE -"

A bright burst of light came from Ant's school bag, unseen by anyone not in the back row of the class. Mr. Maplethorpe quivered and tottered on his feet. His eyes rolled in his head. Then, suddenly, he leapt on Ryan Scrivener, grabbed him by the lapels and attempted to stuff his head into the FRACTALS ARE FUN display.

"IDIOT BOY! I TRY TO CRAM THE BEAUTY, THE TIMELESS MAJESTY OF EUCLID AND MANDELBROT INTO YOUR CRETINOUS HEAD, AND YOU ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN PLAYING GAMES? LET ME SEE IF I CAN STUFF YOUR CRETINOUS HEAD INSIDE MANDELBROT!"

Ryan Scrivener yelped as his head popped out of the other side of a giant cardboard fractal.

"I figured you might need some help getting us on the German trip", said Ant out of the corner of his mouth, "so I got rid of a couple of people who were already on it."

Cleo nodded. "Best return the poor man to normal. Otherwise he could lose his job."

Ant shook his head, watching Mr. Maplethorpe spank Ryan Scrivener soundly with a triangular prism from the KNOW YOUR SOLIDS table. "Sadly, there is no NORMAL setting. I will report it as an operational shortcoming. I think I can make sure Ivan just gets suspended pending psychiatric evaluation, though." He turned the switch on top of the weapon.

"Not SEXY", warned Cleo.

"The world is not ready", agreed Ant, "for a sexy Mr. Maplethorpe." Ant's schoolbag flared brilliant green and purple once again; Mr. Maplethorpe stood rigid with Ryan Scrivener in his hands, and the teeth ground in his head like badly changed gears on a car. He dropped Scrivener, fell to one knee, and began singing 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' in a rich, hearty baritone.

"Fascinating", said Cleo.

"An unexpected side effect", nodded Ant.

"If he goes on to the highly dodgy third verse about Making Negroes Down In Timbuctoo, I'll have to point out the shocking inaccuracies in his negro-related assumptions", said Cleo. "Us negroes are made in hospitals like everyone else. Except my sister Tamora. I suspect she was made in a vat."

"Oh no", said Ant, looking round at Cleo suddenly.

"Oh yes. Tazza is coming too."

***

Schorsch's juice bar in town was like the café at the Märchenschloß, but had the advantage that Jochen didn't have to work in it. On Saturdays, he would finish work at the Schloß, jump on his bike, pedal hard almost vertically downhill through the woods to the stile through the wall on the main road, lift his bike over the stile, and carry on pedalling hard till he reached Schorsch's in the town square with fifteen minutes to spare till closing time. The money from the tipping dish in the café was enough to pay for one of Schorsch's Super Eighteen-Fruit High Octane Big C Smoothies. These were half a litre in size, contained enough vitamin C to blow the head off a laboratory mouse, and most importantly, contained no caffeine whatsoever. After eight hours at the Märchenschloß, caffeine soaked in through the pores. Even if you hadn't drunk any of what you were making for the customers, simply standing behind the counter all day could keep you awake all night.

He was ten minutes late today. In ankle-deep snow, it had been necessary to brake occasionally. Schorsch was already polishing glasses and watching the street outside anxiously when Jochen finally skidded to a halt outside the shop.

He didn't bother locking the bike up. He wouldn't be inside long enough.

When he walked in, a barrage of smans broke out from the window seats.

"Tag Jochi! You're in a hurry!"

"He wants to know what it's like to have someone else make him a drink!"

"Have you saved up all your tips for the week?"

As he had done just that and therefore technically been caught bang to rights, it was difficult not to glow a brilliant incandescent red, particularly after having cycled here at full pelt from the castle. Sepp, Girgl, and Wastl, who ranked among Jochen's least favourite people in the entire world, began warming their hands on him. Sepp, Girgl and Wastl were lucky enough to have parents who didn't live in a mediaeval castle owned by a bank. They lived in a house, a flat, and in Girgl's case, a mobile home in the front garden because Girgl's mother was too psychotic to allow anyone in the house except on special occasions, but Jochen would have changed houses with any of them any day of the week.

Schorsch looked relieved that Jochen had finally arrived. He already had the fruit lined up and chopped on the counter, and began shovelling it into the smoothie machine, which throbbed, gurgled and attempted to vibrate its way to freedom across the counter when he turned it on. Schorsch was so laid back people had been known to check him carefully to make sure he was breathing. He was rumoured to have worked with Greenpeace, saving whales, until he had presumably decided enough whales had been saved and come ashore to live in a commune in California, though some rumours said Goa, some Scotland and some Outer Mongolia. Finally, he had returned to Germany to look after his sick mother. The juice bar, which Schorsch had never been able to work himself up to naming, was decorated with pictures of rainbows, dolphins, killer whales somehow occupying the same sea as the dolphins without eating them, red indians, lotus blossoms, and men with too many arms and elephants' heads.

"Hey, Schorsch! Don't put your finger in there by mistake! Jochi doesn't want a special strawberry surprise!"

Schorsch looked up at Wastl as if to make clear that he had already made Wastl a very special strawberry surprise on numerous occasions without his knowledge, and opened the tap at the business end of the machine. Jochen's smoothie glass began filling with a semi-liquid bright orange elixir.

"You have an admirer today", said Schorsch. Jochen was stunned. Schorsch seldom spoke. It was hard for a human voice to escape from the mass of hair and beard that constituted Schorsch. But Jochen didn't have time to have admirers, never would have time. He would work like a fool at the Märchenschloß on every Saturday and some Sundays until he was old enough to legally leave school, then he would take over the business of being a full time slave to the bank from his grandfather; then, after forty or fifty years of that, he might actually own himself the castle his grandfather had owned before he was born.

He followed Schorsch's eyes to the back of the shop. There was a girl there. A blonde girl, quite pretty. Erm. Actually, very pretty. Her hair was a little old-fashioned and looked as if it had been bludgeoned into submission with a hairbrush before being brutally restrained with an Alice band, but there were some girls who would look beautiful even if they were dressed in a sack, and this was one.

She wasn't quite dressed in a sack. She was wearing a blouse, a tweed skirt, and stockings, but the blouse had a jaunty sort of ribbon on the front. She looked as if she had been dressed well-meaningly by her great grandmother.

"Good morning", she said. Her German was perfect, but accented. It was definitely foreign, but from somewhere he could not place. What she had actually said had been "Grüß Gott". Only hardcore Bavarians and Austrians ever said "Grüß Gott". It was old-fashioned, regional dialect. A foreigner would surely have said "Guten Morgen."

"Do I know you?" said Jochen. Behind him, he heard a chorus of wolf whistles and yells of encouragement from the window seats.

"No", smiled the girl. "I don't come from round here." She peered at him closely. "You are Jochen von Spitzenburg, aren't you?"

Jochen nodded, and slurped at the straw of his smoothie as Schorsch passed it to him. The girl smiled at him again, as if everything Jochen did was fascinating.

"I have friends", said the girl, "who are concerned about you."

"Why?" said Jochen. He noticed that the girl was drinking an espresso. Jochen was always very suspicious about customers who drank espresso. It tasted like diesel oil, took five seconds to drink, and made people who drank it bounce off the ceiling.

"Your grandfather has been visited by people who made threats", said the girl. "We know about this. It is our business to know."

Jochen leaned on the table next door to hers. He was not yet ready to sit down. "Who are we?" he said.

"Let us say we are a government organization", said the girl. "We are interested in your wellbeing. These gentlemen who have visited you. What were they looking for? Do you know?"

Jochen slurped hard on his straw. It rasped like a drain emptying. "First of all", he said, "how do you know we were visited, as you say?"

"These gentlemen are not as clever as they think they are. They are under surveillance. We need to know who they are and what they want."

Jochen was confused. "But why don't you know that already? You must have a reason for watching them. Otherwise they might have been coming around to talk about, I don't know, the plumbing, and why would you have someone under surveillance for that?"

The girl gripped the edges of the café table. Her knuckles were whitening; her smile was faltering. "Because they are known to be very dangerous men."

"I thought you didn't know who they were", said Jochen. "You wanted me to find that out, remember?"

The smile flickered like a candle in danger of going out. She tapped a massive ice cream sundae on the table next to her. It was one of Schorsch's Megatonbombe specials. Two straws were stuck in it. "Would you like to share an ice cream with me?"

This was all very sudden. Jochen looked at the Megatonbombe as if it might indeed explode and shower him with creamy goodness.

"I'm sorry", he said. "Some other time, maybe."

"I won't bite", said the girl; but behind the smile now, he caught a quite different emotion. He realized suddenly that she was terrified. Terrified of Jochen? Hardly likely. Jochen was painfully aware that he had the muscles of a windowdresser.

"Tell whoever you work for", said Jochen, "that I'm not that predictable."

He stood up and backed away from the table, bowing as his grandfather would have done. He drained his smoothie - the smoothie that should have taken him half an hour to drink, reading from newspapers while Schorsch was closing up shop and upturning chairs around him.

"I'm that predictable!" yelled Girgl plaintively across the room. "My behaviour patterns are drearily familiar!"

"I'm more predictable than he is!" said Wastl. "Come and talk to me!"

The girl smiled with evident effort. She raised her voice and called out to Wastl with a smile and a darting glance at Jochen. "Maybe I should talk to you. Maybe you're the interesting one."

"And I'm not that predictable either", said Jochen. "You don't get to me like that."

The girl scowled. Oddly, it made her look much prettier. Jochen put down the smoothie, laid Schorsch's money on the counter, and left. She followed him out of the bar; he was glad he hadn't locked his bicycle. One jump, and he was on the saddle, away and beyond pursuit.

He stopped the bike around the next corner and sat on the saddle in the middle of the street, breathing hard.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he said to himself. "She was gorgeous."

But there had been something wrong about the whole thing. Something very wrong. Grandfather always said, look into a man's eyes once, when you first meet him. In that moment you will know him - whether he is good or bad, right or wrong. No further conversation is necessary.

The girl's eyes had been just a little bit too blue.

He leaned on the pedals and wobbled slowly in the direction of home.