There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 8

8. New German Happiness

Alastair Drague, still wearing a very nice suit, but with a heavy coat on top of it out of deference to the snow, was standing alone at the treeline, green eyes gleaming like verdigris from underneath wrinkled cowls of eyelids. Cleo tramped up to him, hands thrust crossly into her pockets.

"Good afternoon, Cleopatra. You will please refrain from attempting to damage me with anything you may have in your pockets."

"I haven't got anything in my pockets", said Cleo. "My hands are in my pockets because they are cold. Will this take long?"

"That very much depends on you."

Behind Cleo, Hasselhoff was growling softly.

"I advise you to keep hold of your dog", said Alastair.

"He's not our dog", said Ant automatically.

"If you look behind you to your left, you will see Larry", said Alastair. "He is currently on Aggression Level Four. Please don't make me put him up to Five."

Ant and Cleo turned. To their left padded a gigantic alsatian, which had somehow managed to approach them over thirty feet of virgin snow without being detected. Ant realized in shame that he'd heard every footstep, but had assumed from the four feet that it was Hasselhoff. The dog's eyes did not look quite right, as if, behind them, tiny iris shutters were opening and closing.

"Oh my god", said Ant. "It's -"

"BAAAAAAA", said the dog menacingly.

"- a Sheep Dog", finished Cleo.

"A Vickers Ferguson Mark Four D Robosheep dog, to be precise", gloated Alastair. "We removed the sheepy bits, added doggy ones, and did some reprogramming. The basic chassis and brain haven't changed."

Larry's head dipped down to the meadow and grazed it for precisely five seconds, jaws closing on nothing but snow, before looking up again with eyes full of cybernetic malice.

"The last time we saw those things", said Cleo, "they had gone crazy sheep bonkers on their own operators."

"A minor technical error", said Alastair, "committed by you personally, if you remember. Those teething troubles have now been ironed out. Larry's aggression matrix can now only be raised to six, and if an operator attempts to do so, VF-SOS will return a message asking 'ARE YOU SURE, AND HAVE YOU TAKEN COVER?'"

"VF-SOS?" said Ant.

"I'm told it stands for 'Vickers Ferguson Sheep Operating System'."

Artificial rubber jowls curled back quiveringly from Larry's enormous pointy teeth.

"As you can see", said Alastair, "I am perfectly safe, despite there being three of you and only one of me."

"Where are the operators?" said Cleo.

"Larry does have a small technical ground crew", said Drague. "In fact, I believe you may have met and shot two of them last year. But his control unit is here." He produced a device about the size of a mobile phone. "This is the Moutonotron-9001. Amazing what miniaturization can do nowadays."

Cleo was impressed despite herself. "The Moutonotron-9000 was the size of a sofa."

"And it comes with this handy tracker ball. It's a far more effective sheep-controlling machine." Mr. Drague rolled the ball forward with his thumb; Larry took two steps forward towards Ant. "Steady on there, Larry old chap; these people are our friends." He stopped rolling his thumb; Larry stopped moving, one paw raised like a living statue.

"What do you want?" said Cleo.

"You are here for some purpose of Gondolin's, otherwise you wouldn't have taken such pains to evade my agents. That's what my agents are there for, you see. When they phone me up and bleat 'Mr. Drague, we're ever so sorry, we've lost them again', I know that you are up to no good and it is time to come looking for you in earnest."

"How did you find us?"

"Cleopatra, my dear, you habitually leave a trail of mayhem and destruction without ever seeming to mean to. It's really rather sweet. I simply listened in to German police radio, heard that a naked incoherent man had been found wandering near the wreck of his car in the vicinity of Spitzenburg, and put two and two together. Do you know, Larry here managed to track you over ten kilometres of heavy snow?"

"You speak German", accused Cleo, as if, by doing so, Alastair was somehow cheating.

"Aber natürlich", said Alastair, smiling broadly. "Now, to business. You did something in London, and now you're up to something in Germany. You just called down a USZ ship from orbit, which seems to have been shot down before it could get to you. I have to say I had no idea any British or American interceptors were in this airspace. It was none of my doing. My commiserations; I do hope it was nobody you knew."

"There are no British or American interceptors in this airspace", said Cleo firmly.

"My dear girl, the American Aurora fighter is invisible to radar. There is no way your friends could possibly have known an Aurora was here until it was on them."

Cleo's mouth snapped shut.

"Invisible to radar", repeated Ant.

"Yes", said Alastair. "Just like the ship that fired on HMSS Black Prince out near Ross 248. So you see, there is no need for the mysterious alien enemy you're so keen on. There was simply an American carrier lurking somewhere in the Ross 248 star system, that's all. Maybe investigating the distress call from the Russian colony at Krasnaya 3, just like Black Prince was."

"What about the blue goo?" said Cleo. "That was on Krasnaya 3 too."

Alastair shrugged. "A new Russian weapon under test, perhaps. Maybe the test went awry, maybe not. They're not above testing weapons on their own citizens."

"An American weapon", said Ant, shaking his head. "It was used on the Americans' colony at New Dixie first, remember, before it was ever used on the Russians at Krasnaya 3."

"But the Americans are Britain's allies", said Cleo. "You'd know if the Americans had a weapon like that."

Alastair shrugged happily. "Britain has a very special relationship with America, as you know. I'm afraid I must admit that I have no more knowledge of the current cutting edge of American weapons research than I do of what the President had for breakfast this morning."

Ant had been silent, remembering a drab day in a country park just off the M1, when he'd suddenly been catapulted into the sky in an unfamiliar alien machine which had contained a viewfinder which had shown blue dots closing...

"The USZ can detect the Aurora", he said suddenly.

Alastair's eyebrow rose. "Can they? How interesting." He took out a notebook from his breast pocket and made notes with an expensive-looking biro.

"Ant", groaned Cleo. "You idiot. That was probably a USZ military secret."

Ant went white. His throat locked up, unable to speak, several seconds too late.

"That's the way Alastair works", said Cleo. "Never, ever trust anything he says. And always check everything you say to him before you open your mouth. You end up saying more than you realize."

She looked back at Drague. "We know even less than you do about why we're here. We were told to come here and await further instructions, and our further instructions seem to have just been shot down. I mean, what are we doing in Germany? The Germans don't have spaceflight. They don't even build rockets."

"They used to", said Ant suddenly. "Once. The V-2 rockets that were used to attack London. They were made in Germany."

"Ant, shut UP. If Commodore Drummond told you that, it could be another USZ secret -"

"In World War Two, Cleo. Ordinary people know this. The Russians and Americans took all Germany's military secrets after the Second World War and used them to make the rockets that fired Yuri Gagarin into orbit and launched the first moon landings." He hung his head in shame. "I read about it. In the, uh, Eye Spy Book of Spacecraft."

Alastair's face remained utterly benevolent, as if all astronauts read the Eye Spy Book of Spacecraft after they'd finished with their big boring old flight manuals. Cleo, meanwhile, narrowed her eyes to machine-gun slits. "Did Lieutenant Turpin give you this Eye Spy Book of Spacecraft, Anthony?"

"For Christ's sake, it's in the public library. It's not about anything complicated, it's just, you know, rocket science." He turned the idea over in his head. "But all the German rocket bases were in the north of the country, so they'd be within striking range of England. And we're in the south here."

"Don't mind me", interrupted Alastair. "I'm just threatening you with an incredibly dangerous armoured killing machine here." He pushed a few buttons on his keyboard idly. Larry gnashed his mechanical-shovel-like jaws. Metal hissed against metal, as if giant shears were opening and closing.

"Yes, but once the Germans started making space ships here", said Cleo, ignoring Alastair, "they didn't need rockets any more."

Alastair looked up in alarm. Ant looked at Cleo as if she, too, had been welded together by Vickers Ferguson.

"I knew we should never have let the USZ in on that piece of information", said Alastair, clicking his pen open again like a cat unsheathing its claws, preparing to write.

"You didn't let them in on it", said Cleo defiantly. "They have sources closer to you than you think. Did you really think anyone would ever believe that rubbish about a UFO crashing at Roswell? The Americans putting the wreckage back together bit by bit till they could build their own first starships?"

"Well", said Alastair with a great deal of wounded pride, "we believed it the first time the Americans told it to us."

Cleo nodded. "I suppose so. After all, it wasn't too different from the real story. The UFO really landed here, Ant - in Germany. In Spitzenburg. In the last years of World War Two. The Germans, of course, must have thought it was Christmas. Put their very best scientists on to trying to figure out how the crashed ship had worked, so they could use the same technology on the Allies."

Alastair's eyes bounced open in shock; then, he nodded. "And that, ironically, was the worst thing they could have done."

Cleo nodded back. "After they captured the facility here at Spitzenburg, it took the Americans, the most powerful nation on Earth, six years of peacetime research before they could launch their first interstellar ship. The Germans were fighting a war, and they didn't have six years. Didn't even have six months, in fact. The Hunnenfeld research may actually have lost them the war."

Alastair pursed his lips and frowned. "Arguably true. Konrad Belzer, for example, one of the Germans' very best scientists, was assigned to Spitzenburg. If he hadn't been working here, he could have been with Von Braun on the V-2 programme, or maybe even building Hitler an atomic bomb."

"Instead", said Cleo, "Belzer was wasted for the rest of the war."

Alastair nodded, turned, and looked out across the concrete. "At the end, we suspect, the Nazis murdered Belzer rather than let him fall into Allied hands. There is a great deal of history here. And a great amount of evil." He scuffed at the snow with a foot, working down till he struck concrete. "In order to build this platform, around one thousand men were worked to death, wearing not much more than stripy pyjamas, in weather very like this. Jews, gypsies, captured French resistance fighters..."

"Sounds a little like Alpha Four", said Cleo.

Drague looked up sharply. "It is nothing like Alpha Four. You have never been to Alpha Four - and neither, for that matter, have I."

"It's a prison planet where you work political dissidents to death. What's the difference? Oh, sorry. My mistake. It's an American colony, so Alpha Four probably has a McDonald's."

"They were housed", said Alastair icily, "in stone cells, with unglazed windows. They slept on wooden beds without mattresses, and with only one blanket. If they didn't make their work quota for the day, the blanket was removed. Every night they faced a choice between rolling their clothes up into a bundle and using them as a pillow, which was more comfortable, or sleeping in their clothes, which was warmer...the guards, you see, had removed the pillows that had originally been issued, as they found it amusing to see what the prisoners would do."

Ant finally found his voice.

"Cleo", he said, "how do you know all this?"

"I didn't know it", said Cleo, a cool smile spreading across her face. "Until thirty seconds ago. I've just been making wild guesses all this time, and Alastair's been confirming them. Congratulations, Alastair. You've been Alastaired."

Alastair's face softened in shock.

"Brilliant", he muttered. "Absolutely brilliant. You wouldn't like a job, would you?"

"On a sunny day in Bognor Regis", said Cleo contemptuously.

"Alas. Well, in any case, I'm afraid I bring bad news. The investigation against your father has gathered pace. Documents have come to light indicating that two hundred thousand pounds entered his bank account during the Wheeltappers' Strike in 1998, and were wired almost immediately to an account in the Cayman Islands. This has led to suggestions that he was taking bribes to end the strike. The Inland Revenue want to talk to him now too, apparently. It's really looking quite bad. Your poor dear mother is quite distraught. She's phoning you right now."

Cleo's mobile phone went off in her bag like a grenade. Hand shaking, she reached gingerly into the bag, picked up the phone, and held it up to her ear.

"H-hello?"

She stood listening for several seconds. Her legs began to shake as well.

"I see.

"No mum, it's all right, I've got plenty of money." She looked up at Ant. "Ant's subbing me. Dougie won big on the horses, remember?

"All right mum. Chin up. Don't cry.

"See you later. Bye."

She clicked the phone off, and stared up at Alastair as if imagining him turning on a skewer over an open flame.

"You're sure about that job, now", said Alastair.

"On a sunny day", Cleo said, "in Eastbourne."

Alastair affected a wounded expression. "Bognor Regis was cold", he said, "but Eastbourne is below the belt."

"We know nothing", said Cleo, "as I told you before."

"And I guarantee, if you set your dogbot on us", said Ant, his hand on the Orgonizer, "that, although you won't die, you will have one of the very worst days of your life."

"I see. How fascinating. You have a non-lethal weapon of some description in your left hand jacket pocket. It wouldn't make men run around naked hugging trees by any chance, would it?"

"We had nothing to do with that", said Ant.

"That man", lied Cleo, "was naked before we met him."

"He was German", explained Ant.

"They do that sort of thing", said Cleo.

"I see. Well, I won't detain you any further." Alastair nodded pleasantly, slid his dogbot controller back into his pocket, and strode off through the trees.

"Alastair", called Cleo.

Alastair stopped, and looked back over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"What did the President of the United States have for breakfast this morning?"

Alastair grinned. "Hash browns, fried mushrooms, two eggs over easy. Have a nice day."

Alastair left. Ant's hand relaxed on the trigger of the Orgonizer.

Larry trotted past Cleo, close enough for him to shed snow crystals from his fur. Hasselhoff tried to follow him. Cleo grabbed Hasselhoff by the collar.

"Whoah there, stupidhound. He has a tailpipe, not a bottom, and you won't enjoy sniffing it."

Hasselhoff sat down in the snow, panting happily. There could not possibly ever be a better day than this. Unless - joy of joys - the sun rose again tomorrow.

"We really have to get rid of this dog", said Cleo.

"I suppose so", said Ant grudgingly.

Hasselhoff licked Cleo's hand and beamed up at her in silent adoration.

***

"So let me get this straight", said Ant. "There never was a crash at Roswell."

Cleo looked both ways down the completely deserted, snowbound highway before crossing. Crash barriers of snow were piled high on either side. "There may have been. Maybe an American test flight went wrong. But whatever they built at Roswell was just a copy of a German prototype they found here, in Spitzenburg. That concrete platform at the top of the hill would have served well as a landing pad...That old lady said the Freizeitheim was up this road here, didn't she?"

Ant looked up the road; the onion dome of the church was still directly in front of them, as the old lady had promised.

"It should be this way...so the Saucerer ship, the alien ship, actually crashed in Spitzenburg?"

"Or was shot down, on Hunnenfeld, above the castle. Remember, it came down in the middle of a world war. The Germans would have fired on anything that didn't have German markings immediately. Or maybe they dug it up. Maybe it'd been in Germany all the time, crashed hundreds of years before Christ, and a bomb blast uncovered it. Who knows?"

Ant's breath puffed out of him like thistledown and drifted away on the wind. "So if the Germans had had just had a few months more to work on it, they could have won World War Two."

Cleo looked up at the massive sign for the Freizeitheim, with its long list of KEINs. "Ah, Heim sweet Heim...Yes, if they'd perfected it and mass produced it, almost certainly." She kicked at a clump of dirty snow. "Jochen seemed nice."

"Yeah", said Ant. "And his grandad is old enough to have been a nazi."

Cleo's throat strangled shut. It was obvious the idea had not occurred to her.

"You saw how quickly he got rid of us", said Ant. "Didn't want his grandson mixing with Unterwäsche", he said grimly.

"I think you mean Untermenschen, Ant. Unterwäsche would be underwear. But you may be right. A nazi would consider me to be less than human, on account of my blackness."

"Well, maybe he doesn't want Jochen mixing with underwear either. Maybe proper nazis go commando."

"Maybe you should go back up there on your own. You're not an Untermensch. You're white. Grandpa von Spitzenburg might talk to you."

"I don't know", said Ant. "He probably thinks I've got black lurgi or something now, because I've been rubbing up against you. That's what the nazis were all about." He thought a moment. "It might not be you. He might not have noticed you were black. He might have thought I looked Jewish. Do I look Jewish?"

Cleo punched him on the shoulder; he laughed.

"Maybe that's what the Blue Men are trying to get out of Jochen's grandfather", said Ant, trying to walk tightrope along a rare patch of visible kerb, and failing. "You've got to admit, he is old enough to have been in the War. Maybe he was here when the research was being done."

"Stop thinking of them as men, Ant. They aren't men. They're blue blobs controlling men, riding their brains like, like, like brain riders."

"I know, I know, I know. But if the Americans and Russians cleared the place out at the end of the war, shouldn't the Blue Men be looking in Roswell, or in Russia?"

Cleo shrugged. "Maybe they know there's something here the Russians and Americans didn't find."

"But the Blue Men already have space travel. We've seen blue goo on three worlds now. Richard Turpin shot down one of their ships. And they attacked the Xenophon, the Old Spot, and the Yezhov in open space. So what would they want with a sixty-year-old prototype spaceship?"

"What was it Jochen said his grandad said to them the first time they visited?" said Cleo.

"That he didn't want to give away the only good card we had", said Ant. His breath had stopped puffing out; he had stopped dead in the snow.

"Cleo, what if the Blue Men don't want whatever It is, whatever the Good Card is, for themselves? What if it's a piece of technology, a weapon, maybe, that the Nazis managed to hide from the Russians and Americans? What if the Blue Men already have that technology, and just want to stop us, mankind, from having it? Because they're planning for an invasion?"

Cleo was looking up at the face of the church. "The Barry Cross...Ant, do you remember, when Richard Turpin shot down that enemy ship, he said he'd seen an insignia on a piece of debris that came flying back at him?"

Ant looked up at the massive steel cross bolted to the outside of the church, looking no more spiritual than a lightning conductor.

"I remember."

"Well, what do you get if you draw bars on a cross?"

Ant would not have believed it was possible to feel any colder, but his blood had now reached freezing point.

"No", he said. "He would have known. He would have realized."

"Richard Turpin was brought up on Gondolin, Ant. He didn't get lessons in European history."

"But how is that possible?" said Ant. "They've been gone, defeated, for over half a century."

"Maybe some of them went somewhere else."

"But why now? If they developed that technology well enough to use it, why didn't they use it back then during the war?"

"Maybe they only had one ship back then. Maybe now they have a thousand."

"But...fifty years, Cleo. It's a long time for a bunch of criminal psychopaths to wait. Criminal psychopaths don't normally have that much iron self-control."

The sky suddenly filled with white noise like paper tearing, and three swept-winged aircraft streaked overhead, roundels on their fuselages identifying them as Royal Air Force jets.

"Tornados", said Ant.

"Patrolling the area", said Cleo unhappily. "Preventing anyone from flying down to pick up the USZ pilot. Whoever he or she is."

"Cheer up", said Ant. "That must mean they think the pilot's still alive. Though", he added, "the pilot'll probably wish he wasn't if Alastair gets his hands on him."

"Or her", said Cleo.

Hasselhoff slid alongside Cleo and leaned on her until she gave in, bent over and rubbed his stomach. He wagged his tail in ecstasy.

"There has to be an answer", said Cleo. "Right now we have more immediate problems." She looked up at the coach parked outside the Freizeitheim, snow still melting around its exhaust. "Escaping out was easy enough. Now we have to escape back in."

"It might be easy", said Ant. "They might not even know we've gone."

***

"Entschuldigung", said Cleo to the stern-faced man at the reception desk, "aber wir haben diesen Hund gefunden."

Hasselhoff sat back on his haunches and gave the receptionist his most intelligent expression, which was several degrees less cunning than many protozoa. His long pink tongue drooped half the way to the floor. It was clear that in Hasselhoff's estimation, the receptionist was the most wonderful man in the world.

"I call ze police", said the receptionist in English. He had long, lank black hair and a stud in his left ear, which looked infected.

"Was machen die Polizei mit dem Hund?" asked Cleo.

The receptionist shrugged. "Zey keep ze dog for a däy or two däys. Zen if zey cännot find out who iss beink his owner", he put a finger to his ear and cocked a thumb, "BANG."

Hasselhoff wagged his tail excitedly.

"SIE WERDEN IHN TOT SCHIEßEN?"

"Oh yes", said the receptionist. "Qvite dead. On ze continent", he explained, "ve häff räbies."

"Gosh", said Ant. "You look all right to me."

The man looked askance at Ant. He raised an accusing finger at Ant's sodden trousers. "You häff been outside ze Freizeitheim. Zät is forbidden."

"Is it?" said Cleo sweetly.

The man pointed to a sign with letters the size of babies' heads, which said: GÄSTE WERDEN GEBETEN, DAS FREIZEITHEIM NICHT ZU VERLASSEN.

Cleo squinted at the sign. "What does 'Gäste' mean?"

"It means 'Guests'."

"And 'werden gebeten'?"

"'Are reqvested'."

"And 'nicht zu verlassen'?"

"'Not to leave'", said the man.

Cleo opened her mouth to speak again. The receptionist beat her to it. "'Das' means, as you säy in English, 'the'", he said.

"Thank you", said Cleo. "That clears up my questions for the time being. In any case, we're back now. We've had an invigorating stroll around the building."

"You häff not", said the man. "You häff been to Spitzenburg Castle."

"We so have not", said Ant.

The receptionist looked at Ant's rucksack with an air of sneering triumph. Cleo followed his gaze.

"Oh, Ant", said Cleo.

"It's not my fault", complained Ant. "Jochen gave it to me."

Pinned to the rucksack was a large white badge saying I'VE BEEN TO SPITZENBURG CASTLE.

"The police also häff been lookink for you", said the receptionist.

"You can't possibly know that", said Cleo.

Silently, the receptionist pointed at a TV screen behind the counter. The screen showed serious-faced German policemen with small blond moustaches. Beneath the policemen, a caption said: FEHLENDE ENGLISCHE SCHÜLER - MORD GEFÜRCHTET.

"Uh - Cleo - what does ' FEHLENDE ENGLISCHE SCHÜLER - MORD GEFÜRCHTET' mean?" said Ant.

"It means", said the receptionist, "zät you are, äs you säy in England, 'busted'."

"We don't say that", said Ant. "It's only Americans who say that."

"Oh", said the receptionist, evidently disappointed. "Vhat do you säy instead?"

"We say", said Cleo with a heavy heart, "that we are up to our nostrils in it."

***

Jochen's grandfather had provided no explanation for the incident in the café, and had tried to continue life as normal, though he broke a plate in the kitchen that same afternoon, which he never did, and scraped the car on the wall on the way out of the courtyard, which he never did. He had also argued with Jochen's mother loud and long in the old dining room in the one tiny corner of the castle the von-und-zu-Spitzenburgs continued to inhabit. The rest of the castle - the massive master bedroom, the cavernous prospect chamber, the games room, an entire wing of guest bedrooms, a labyrinth of boot rooms and store rooms even grandfather had had to explore himself once the servants had vacated the premises in the 1940's - was empty, inhabited only by ghosts.

Jochen liked to tell himself that the ghosts with the worst axes to grind would have forgiven his side of the family. Besides, hadn't the majority of them died outside the castle, in the snow, or shivering in cold cells underground?

Jochen's part of the castle had housed servants. The von-und-zu-Spitzenburgs' servants had all been ethnic Germans, had all served the family loyally for generations, and still tipped their caps to der Alter in the town square. Their part of the castle would hold no ghosts. The rest of the building, though, was only to be explored in very broad daylight, and even then in the company of friends from the town - friends with a morbid curiosity about their town's unpleasant past.

"Was it here where the Americans accepted the surrender of the Volkssturm?"

"Was it from this tower that the guards used to shoot prisoners for fun?"

"Is if from here that the tunnel leads down to you know what?"

It was odd, then for his grandfather to suddenly take him by the arm and steer him upstairs to the old dining room and the locked steel anti-squatter door leading into the prospect chamber. Producing a massive three-lobed key and twisting it in the heavy lock. Walking the door open.

The prospect chamber was huge. Grandmother and grandfather had photographs of the way it had been in its heyday, in the nineteenth century, all massive, long, hand-carved tables, luminous oil paintings, and bullet-ridden suits of armour. Now most of all that, what grandfather always referred to as the 'Schminke' - the make-up, the greasepaint - was gone, sold, sitting in somebody else's prospect chamber in Japan, Saudi Arabia or New York. Only the most important things remained.

Two of the most important things were nailed up over a fireplace big enough for parachuting ninja dwarfs to easily gain access to the castle. Not nailed up so high that it wasn't possible to unhook them with a finger, though - Jochen had had friends in this room before who had been very interested in them, as boys about to become men were when suddenly introduced to killing weapons.

"Put that DOWN! It's SHARP!"

"Scared, Kleines? Pick up the other one! En garde!"

"Not likely! You want a fencing scar like my great uncle had?"

Der Alter pressed one of the Important Things into his hand.

"This is a fencing sabre - feel the weight. Springy and resilient, but light. A toy. Not very sharp either, even at the tip."

Jochen turned the handle round in his hand. The sword did not feel light. "Why are you showing me this, Opa?"

"Pay attention." The old man's hands were shaking as he pressed a second weapon into Jochen's left hand. "This is a cavalry sabre. One of the last military fighting swords ever made in this country. Your great-great-grandfather wore it at the Kaiserschlacht. Of course, it did him very little good there. The enemy had machine guns on that occasion. Feel the weight."

As the old man let go, Jochen's left arm plummeted like a stone towards the floor. He nearly dropped the sword on the stone flags. The old man grinned and winked.

"Heavy, oder? Also sharp, the whole length of the blade. I defended myself with this sword at Kursk, had to draw it and use it to beat the Bolsheviks back from Tante Ilse's turret. They'd run out of ammunition; we'd run out of ammunition. In the twentieth century!" He removed the fencing sword from Jochen's right hand. "You keep the proper sword; I'll take this horrible thing."

He separated from Jochen with frightening speed; his sword rose to eye height. "Put your sword up, so; this is the sixte, upwards to your right. Upwards to the left is quarte, downwards to the right octave, downwards to the left septime. Your opponent will, unless he is left-handed, also start from the sixte. With a sabre, he may cut as well as thrust." The training sabre whipped to right and left, making a hissing sound as if it was unzipping the air, then stabbed forward juddering with a sound like an elevator cable pulling taut. "Typically, he will attack the face, as he is unimaginative and is aware from all the previous fights he has had, which have been conducted with his fists, that a blow to the head finishes an opponent quickly. There is also a very short travel between the sword arm and the face, and it takes longer to reach the legs and body. For that reason, expect an attack against the face, and launch your own attack upon the legs." He stepped forward and whipped the blade across Jochen's knees, missing them by millimetres.

"But Opa", said Jochen, "aren't the legs an illegal target for a sabre?"

Der Alter nodded. "In fencing, yes. But I am not teaching you to fence. I am not teaching you to play a game. I am teaching you how to kill a man. Coup droit!" He lunged forward suddenly; Jochen knocked the blade away, though it had slowed while already centimetres from his throat.

"Good but slow", said the old man. "Because you were holding the sword too close to you, because your arm is tiring. You must learn to move from your legs and waist, not your arm. Then your arm will not tire. Hold the sword with a nearly straight arm; then you will be forced to use your legs. Coup double!" He moved in again; Jochen flicked the attack away more easily, though the sword felt like a leaden weight on the end of his arm, and his grandfather's blade simply rose back to his throat each time as though magnetized.

"Opa", said Jochen, "I am not so sure learning to kill a man with a sword will protect me."

"Achtung!" The sword darted in again, levered Jochen's parry expertly aside; the blade jumped out of Jochen's fingers and clattered to the floor. Jochen's grandfather's blade rose again to Jochen's throat.

"Really?" said the old man, looking Jochen in the eyes with the coldness of a Russian winter. "And why would you think that?"

"Because", said Jochen defiantly, daring to look Sturmbannführer von und zu Spitzenburg directly in the eye, "I am afraid that, on this occasion, the enemy may have a machine gun."

Der Alter's face stiffened; then, just as abruptly, it relaxed. The sword dropped.

"Perhaps you are right", sighed the old man. "I believe we have a machine gun of our own. Perhaps you should go and fetch it."

***

"Cleopätra, I äm very disappointed." Fräulein Meinck pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose to hide the fact that she was wiping away tears. "You häff lied to my, änd it iss ze lyink I cännot ständ." Next to her, Herr Riemann, incapable of complex communication, stood looking down at Ant and Cleo like a pit bull on a short leash, just begging for its owner to let it go.

"You and I, Anthony", said Nigel, are going to have a conversation on the subject of trust." Nigel had his arms folded to make himself more grown-up and severe.

"Later, Shakespeare", said Harjit. This, to Cleo, was a far more terrifying prospect.

Nigel and Harjit, being team leaders, had been allowed to stand in the Geschäftsführer's office with Fräulein Meinck and Herr Riemann while Ant and Cleo were, in Fräulein Meinck's words, 'severely reprimänded'.

The Geschäftsführer, Herr Hornig, was apparently the boss of the Freizeitheim, and had beamed happily throughout the reprimand process. The walls of his offices were covered in music magazine pictures and framed vinyl records. The fact that the vinyl records were framed seemed to ensure that they would never again be played. One of them was called 'DA DA DA', and was by someone called TRIO. Herr Riemann was wearing a T shirt which said: NEUE DEUTSCHE FRÖHLICHKEIT. This, as far as Cleo could make out, meant NEW GERMAN HAPPINESS. Herr Hornig was short, bald and fat, wore bifocal glasses, and looked like the sort of kindly uncle who put on a frozen smile and called you a young scamp, then threw a hissy fit and started shrieking grown-up swear words when you spilt your coffee on his best Ikea rug. His hands were steepled precisely in front of him.

The entire room was looking at him now, waiting for his opinion.

Herr Hornig's fingers unsteepled.

"Ve häff here", he said, "a liddle problem off ze boundaries. You, Änthony, änd you, Cleopätra, you like our Tscherman countryside so much zät you vant to valk around it yourselves, on your own time. You vant to do your own Sing", he said, clicking his fingers like some sort of horrible hep cat jazz daddy, "yes?"

"I'm sorry", said Cleo, "I don't understand the question."

"To do your own sing! To be yourselves, to go vhere ze music täkes you, vhere ze rhyzm makes you, to go vhere you vanna go, do vhat you vanna, vanna do, äss if you vere on some sort off lovely holidäy, yes?" He grinned at Cleo.

"Well", said Cleo nervously, "yes, I suppose -"

Geschäftsführer Hornig's hand slammed down on the table repeatedly. "YOU - ARE - NOT - ON - HOLIDÄY! ZISS ISS NOT A HOLIDÄY CÄMP! YOU ARE HERE TO LEARN! YOU - ARE HERE - TO BE EDUCÄTED!"

Almost immediately, his expression became calm and serene again, as if the outburst had never happened. This, if anything, was more disturbing than the outburst itself had been.

"Now vhat äm I to do in such a situätion? I vant to let you gö off on your öwn, like a Rölling Stöne, but I HÄFF A BUSINESS TO RUN -" the stationery on his desk bounced as he pounded the formica again with a pudgy fist - "änd I simply cännot allow zät. Cän you see? Cän you valk a mile in my moccasins? Cän you feel my päin?"

His smile had returned. The only sign that he had ever flown into a violent rage was a slight disarray of his Kraftwerk paperweights.

"Häff a sveet", beamed Herr Schieß, rattling a dish of gummi bears on his desk. "I häff täken out ze green vones."

"Why?" said Cleo.

"Because ze green vones are MINE ÄND MINE ÄLÖNE", snapped Herr Schieß, then instantly lapsed back into placid amiability. He extended the dish and shook it, smiling. Cleo and Ant took one each, very carefully.

"Ve häff sought", said Herr Riemann maliciously, "zät zey vere smugglink drugs."

"You häff found drugs?" said Herr Hornig, alarmed.

"No", said Herr Riemann regretfully. "Ve häff searched zem werry soröughly. Ve häff found nossink. It iss werry suspicious."

Cleo's expression darkened.

"Now just a minute here. I have nothing to do with drugs. My mind is perfectly well expanded and my consciousness does not require enhancement, thank you." She narrowed her eyes at Herr Schieß. "You do know green gummi bears contain a food colouring which has been known to cause tentacles to grow on laboratory mice, I assume."

Herr Schieß stared at Cleo for a moment. He opened his desk drawer absent-mindedly. The entire drawer was filled with green gummi bears. He selected one, moved it up to his mouth, and bit its head off slowly and deliberately.

"Ve vould normally", said Herr Schieß, gesturing with the remains of the gummi bear, "be sendink you bäck to Greät Britain after such bäd, bäd behäfiöur. But I häff received a TELEPHÖNE CALL", he held up the phone on his desk as if in triumph that he possessed one, "from a very important tschentleman in England who häss asked me - me, Helmut Schieß - to do a very greät fävöur to your Qveen änd Country by ällowink you to remäin here. He säys it iss very important for you to learn äss much äss you cän by beink here in Spitzenburg. Hiss näme iss -"

"Alastair Drague", finished Cleo coldly.

"He iss a very nice män", said Herr Schieß. "You should be very gräteful zät you häff such nice friends. You mäy stäy here. Änd ve häff not yet", he added slyly, "informed your parents. Herr Drägue believes ziss vill not be necessäry, äs you vill bose be behäfink yourselves beautifully from now on."

Ant and Cleo behaved themselves beautifully.

"But be varned", continued Schieß, "vhile you are here, ZERE VILL BE NO GÖINK OUT OFF BOUNDS! ZERE VILL BE NO GÖINK OFF ON YOUR ÖWN ÄND FOLLÖWINK YOUR ÖWN STAR! I, ZE GESCHÄFTSFÜHRER, HÄFF SPÖKEN!" The paperweights danced on his desk again as he pounded the wood-effect plastic.

"I understand your point of view", said Cleo.

"Good", beamed Herr Schieß. "I feel ve vill now be ze best off friends." He looked up at Herr Riemann and Fräulein Meinck. "You mäy now return zem to zeir sleepink qvarters. Tomorröw, zey häff a mägical däy ahead of zem. Zey are göink to a Fäirytäle Castle."

Ant exchanged glances with Cleo.

"Look! Guck mal! Already viz ze Fäirytäle Castle ve häff aväkened ze tschildish joy in zeir tender liddle hearts!" He looked down at his paperweights in consternation, as if he couldn't quite remember how they had gotten out of order. "You mäy gö now. I must rearränge my desk späce."

Cleo's phone rang in her bag. As the ring was Nokia standard, half the people in the room also grabbed for their own handsets, then scowled at Cleo for daring to share ringtones with them. Cleo pulled the phone out, looked uncomprehendingly at the number on the screen, held it to her ear.

"Hello?"

Her expression settled into a grimace. She looked up at the others in the room.

"I think I really need to take this", she said. "Would you please excuse me?"