There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 9

9. Children Can Be Killed Easily With Fire

"Right, Stevens." Nigel's arms were grimly folded, and his expression severe. "I am very disappointed. Do you know why I'm disappointed?"

Ant genuinely considered the question. "Because you've suddenly realized the utter pointlessness of your existence?"

The dormitory around Ant and Nigel rustled with semi-suppressed smaning. Nigel's ears reddened, but his face remained deathly white. "I am authorized to punish you, Stevens. I do hope you realize that."

Having been in a car crash earlier that day, dealt with a hostile alien life form later in the afternoon, and been threatened by a robotic killing machine only an hour ago, Ant was unimpressed. He flopped onto his bunk. "Hurt me, big boy."

Nigel's lip quivered. "Very well. You'll complete five hundred words for me on the subject of Personal Responsibility by nine a.m. tomorrow."

"No", said Ant, "I won't."

Nigel's face was blending in with his ears now. "I'll escalate the matter to Fräulein Meinck", he said, using his nuclear weapon of threats.

"Escalate away." Ant was fairly sure that, now Alastair Drague was weighing in to keep them in the Freizeitheim, neither he nor Cleo would be sent home, no matter how badly they behaved.

Nigel's lower lip was quivering uncontrollably now.

"Right", he said - as if the statement contained an unspoken, now you've done it! I shall unleash the Sword of Power! - and left.

A coffee-coloured hand reached down from the bunk above Ant. It contained a cigarette.

Ant had absolutely no idea what to do with a cigarette. He knew the theory - that whole putting it in the mouth and setting fire to it thing. His dad had also told him that it would kill him and turn him into a bloated, stinking sac of pasty white flesh just like his dad. He even knew what the inside of his body would look like after he had smoked it, thanks to helpful pictures from Her Majesty's Government.

He took the cigarette.

"Thanks."

He sat there on the bed with the cigarette for several seconds.

"Er -"

A coffee-coloured hand reached down from the bunk above Ant. It contained a cigarette lighter.

"Thanks."

"That was bare cool, Stevens", said Armand Jeffries from the top bunk. "Bare cool."

***

The ladies' toilets looked deserted. No-one was standing out by the sinks, and all the cubicle doors were ajar.

"Okay, so you have my personal mobile number too."

She transferred the phone to her left ear as she washed her hands in the sink. "Stop being polite to me, Alastair, you're threatening my family, remember?"

She wiped her hands on the towel roll. "Well, today's your lucky day. I'll do it."

Her hand shook on the handset as she listened. "You heard. Whatever information I get is yours. Just lay off my family, and I want them laid off of by the end of today, you understand? I want a joyful phone call from my mum telling me all charges have been dropped and that my dad is completely exonerated. But you're going to have to level with me. I don't even know what I'm looking for, what everyone's looking for.

"I hope you realize I'm betraying every friend I have, Alastair.

"Just promise me one thing - no-one goes to Alpha Four. Dartmoor, Parkhurst, some specially-built hell-hole in British Antarctic Territory, but not Alpha Four. And Ant goes free.

"Ant goes free or it's no deal, Alastair.

"Okay. Now tell me what it is we're looking for."

She sat back against the metal sink, supporting the elbow of her phone arm with the other.

"I see. No wonder you want it. And of course, you want to make sure the Americans don't get it either.

"I know you of old, Alastair. Whatever bargaining chip you have, you hold on to."

Cleo clicked the phone off, exhaled at great length, and sagged against the washbasin. Then, the middle toilet cubicle creaked slowly open; Cleo looked up in shock. Harjit Kaur was perched on the toilet smoking a cigarette. She blew out a smoke ring at Cleo.

"Shakespeare", said Harjit, "we really need to talk."

***

A fire was sniffling in the hearth, trying unsuccessfully to push back the cold. Spitzenburg Castle had never had central heating - the old, cold stone would swallow heat and money like an open air sauna. Winter beat hellishly on the windows, pushing the snow up into driftlets on the outside of each pane. The worst draughts had been plugged with rolled-up socks and dishcloths.

Jochen sat opposite his grandfather on the only end of the massive kitchen table that the family ever used. The table was big enough to make dinner for an entire castle - only a quarter of it was ever needed for meals for Jochen, his mother, and his grandfather. Der Alter's head was bowed under a heavy weight of years. At the other end of the room, out of earshot, Jochen's mother sat doing the café takings in a small pool of warmth created by a portable electric fire.

"That", said der Alter, "was how it happened."

"Why weren't you shot for treason?" said Jochen.

"Because I wasn't a traitor! I still believed, God help me, in much of what we had been fighting for. I thought that what had happened here at Spitzenburg was an isolated incident, that nothing so bad could possibly be happening elsewhere in the Reich. You must remember, I had just come from the Ostfront, where we had faced the Russians. American and British soldiers, when they finally turned up, were almost a polite cocktail party by comparison." Der Alter shuddered, only partly from the cold in the kitchen. "The Bolsheviks, the Russians, would come at us in waves, dense green waves, without thought or strategy, running onto our machine guns. Only half of them with any bullets in their weapons. Screaming "ZA STALINA!" even though every one of them knew Stalin was a monster, and would admit it the moment they were captured."

"That must have been terrifying."

"Not really. They were just as eager to retreat. You see, behind their lines were political commissars - not proper soldiers, cinema commissionaires in green uniforms, horrible little excuses for human beings. It was the commissars' job to look round every time a political announcement was made, watching to see who stopped applauding Comrade Stalin first. Those commissars would shoot the last man to attack and the first man to retreat right enough, but they would also take the names of any Russian soldiers who became trapped behind German lines and managed to fight their way back."

Jochen could see no logic here. "Why?"

"Because they had obviously been captured and turned into traitors by the Germans, of course. Soviet thought is a wonderful thing. And any man whose name was taken would end up, in nothing but the clothes he stood up in, locked in a compartment with sixty other men on a train bound for Siberia. Yes, I had been through an antechamber of Hell by the time I arrived back here. The horrible thing about Hell, boy, is that it is exactly the same colour as Christmas. Red, green, and white - red and green for the Bolsheviks' uniforms, white for the snow. Imagine how I felt when I got back here, hardly able to walk, with the Soviet bullet they'd taken out of my side in my pocket as a souvenir. Unfit for duty. Convalescent. Having to be helped off the train by a couple of boys. Fit only to command a local Volkssturm unit - old men and teenagers with no more bullets in their guns than the Bolsheviks. And then to find that we had been doing exactly the same things to our own people as the Russians had been doing to theirs...!"

The fire crackled softly, like the purring of a gigantic ginger cat, as the old man covered his face with his hands.

"On my own land", his voice came from between his hands. "In my own home. Commandeered and commanded by my own brother. Who had had every legal right to do so, being his father's eldest, favourite son. The heir to the castle.

"As soon as I knew what had been going on, I marched my Volkssturm unit to the castle and took charge of it. My old men and boys facing down trained SS men. I was prouder of them on that day than of any men I ever commanded. And we put the entire staff of the Spitzenburg concentration camp under arrest."

"The only concentration camp ever to be liberated by Germans", said Jochen.

"Yes. But you must understand, we knew that the work being done at the camp was very important, vital to the war effort. I did not believe in slave labour, but I knew that the work being done by the scientist, by Belzer, was on miraculous new weapons that could win us the war. Not on rockets, or peroxide submarines, or jet aircraft, but on devices on the edge of magic. So I organized labour from the town. Women and children volunteered to help. We were going to complete Belzer's weapon, his Raumschiffprojekt, and hurl the British and American bombers from our skies, avenge Dresden, wrestle the Bolshevik menace out of Europe. But then, as you know", he waved his hand in the air, "alles ist gleichzeitig schief gegangen."

Jochen nodded. He looked out at the night.

"Cold out there", he said.

Der Alter shivered, despite having his back to the fire.

"Not half as cold as it is on a midwinter night on the Dnieper."

He moved over to the windows, and raised his voice. "I will shut the curtains here. Anyone can see in."

Jochen's mother heard this, and looked up as if der Alter was mad. "Anyone hovering half a kilometre up in the sky."

Der Alter turned and shot a painful smile at Jochen, and shut the curtains.

***

Harjit was leaning on the metal towel roller, fixing Cleo with a piercing stare.

"All right", said Harjit. "Let us assume that I believe this line of mental floss you are throwing me. Or rather, let's assume that I believe you believe it. What's to stop you being someone who belongs in a place that has really comfy walls? How do I know, in short, that you aren't Bananas In Pyjamas Coming Down The Stairs?"

Cleo threw Harjit her beautiful pink mobile phone; Harjit caught it reflexively. "Make a call."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Phone anyone in the contacts list. Anyone but BEST FRIEND."

Harjit held the phone to her ear; then she took it away again and examined the screen carefully. She shook the phone experimentaly, as if batteries might be loose inside it.

"Says there's no signal", she said.

"Try another number on the list. Try any of them."

Harjit shrugged and tried another. After twenty seconds of holding the phone to her ear, she clicked it shut again and said:

"No signal again. So the mobile coverage is bad in this area. I can't get a signal on my mobe either. Neither can Narinder or Sukhbir, and they're on different networks. So what? We're at the bottom of a valley in the mountains."

"Try BEST FRIEND", said Cleo. "I guarantee it will work."

Looking watchfully at Cleo, Harjit selected the contact and held the phone up gingerly to her ear.

BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP -

"Hello?" said the phone.

"Hello?" said Harjit.

"Is this Cleopatra Shakespeare?" said the phone.

Harjit jerked her ear away from the phone as if scalded. She handed it to Cleo.

"It's for you", she said.

Cleo took the phone. "Hello, Alastair", she said. "I'm sorry to bother you. I imagine you were busy chaining someone to a table or something."

She held the phone at arm's length between finger and thumb. Very angry noises came from it. Eventually, she put it back to her ear. "I'm going to have to stop you there, Alastair. I'm sorry I phoned you. It was a slip of the finger. It won't happen again."

She clicked the phone closed and began wrapping it carefully in tinfoil.

"Why are you doing that?"

"So the phone can't make any outgoing calls", she said. "It tends to do so otherwise. And it'll get a signal anywhere on the surface of this planet, on the dark side of the Moon, and on certain worlds of the Alpha Centauri system. I have personally got a signal with it even on a small red planet orbiting Ross 248, which is a small red star you've probably never heard of. I'm not sure whether I'd get a signal at the bottom of a coalmine, but I'm prepared to bet on it."

Harjit looked at Cleo as steadily and unblinkingly as a snake that intended to swallow her head. "You're saying your mobile phone makes outgoing calls without your knowledge."

Cleo nodded. "To people who want to know what I'm up to. I really don't care whether you believe me or not, but please consider this. One of those worlds in the Centauri system is a place called Alpha Four, which used to be a happy American colony. It rebelled. It wanted independence. The Americans took it back. There was fighting. And then they took everyone who had been involved in the rebellion and took them to a desert in the middle of Alpha Four's largest continent, and put them to work, men, women and children, digging uraninite ore without protective clothing. I looked it up. Uraninite gives off radon gas. You know, that stuff your parents worry about if they find it in your cellar? You work with uraninite, you breathe it in in high concentrations, all day, every day. You get something called small cell carcinoma, usually in your lungs. You die. If you choose to believe me, that could happen to you." She smiled weakly. "I'm not selling this very well, am I?"

Harjit's expression still didn't change. "Maybe you're selling it better than you think." She had pulled out her own mobile phone, and was trying to get a connection on it. She held it up and shook it at Cleo. "But if I get a line on this, you're going to wish I hadn't, Shakespeare."

Cleo shrugged. "I've been tortured before." The matter-of-factness of it seemed to unsettle Harjit. Eventually, she snapped her own phone shut and looked up at Cleo.

"I'm going to need proof."

"You'll have more proof than you'll ever want or need."

Harjit extended a hand. Cleo took the hand and shook it.

"If this is a wind-up, I'm warning you, you are going to suffer like Jesus."

***

The firebell seemed to be ringing inside Ant's actual brain. His eyelids were vibrating in time with it. He was aware that he was dreaming. If he woke up, the firebell would stop.

He opened his eyes. He was still wearing his day clothes. His day clothes were soaking wet from the knees down. The firebell was still ringing.

"Wakey wakey Stevens, you en't been in bed ten seconds." Armand Jeffries was shaking his legs. "Get that fag out your mouth, we got to bail out. The buildin's on fire an", Jeffries wondered at the miracle of this, "it weren't me what set light to it. You stick close to yer Uncle Armand."

Bleary-eyed, Ant pulled himself upright and stumbled out of the dormitory. A tide of bodies was pouring downstairs, out through the big double doors into the snow outside. It was already dark outside, though the sun was still loitering furtively on the horizon with intent to set.

In the freezing cold, people were being herded into lines by the Freizeitheim staff. Anton, the receptionist, grabbed a Year Ten by the shoulder and wrestled her away from her little sister onto the end of a line. Some people had already been in slippers or bare feet and were now standing melting footprints into the snow. In front of it all stood the Geschäftsführer, Herr Schieß, his eyes on his wristwatch, his glasses reflecting the sunset, hiding his eyes.

The last girl out of the building, a very small Year Seven who had gone back in to get her teddy bear, was steered brutally into line by one of Herr Schieß's minions. Herr Schieß, still looking at his watch, raised his right hand gradually, as if supporting an invisible tray of drinks above his shoulder - then, he cut downwards with his hand at exactly the same moment the fire alarm stopped.

Herr Schieß looked up at the lines of children and beamed. He raised a small megaphone to his lips.

"VERY GOOT, MY LIDDLE FRIENDS, ZE NEXT TSCHENERATION OFF OUR GREAT CONTINENT OFF EUROPA. BUT IN ZE EVENT OF A REAL FIRE, YOU VILL HÄFF TO BE QVICKER! FIRE ÄLARMS ARE TESTED ÄT IRREGULAR INTERVALS ÄT ZE FREIZEITHEIM TO MÄINTÄIN ÄLERTNESS ÄT ALL TIMES. TSCHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE, BUT TSCHILDREN CÄN BE KILLED EASILY VIZ FIRE." He patted one of the shivering Year Sevens on the head, then raised his hand so quickly, chopping the air with it to illustrate his point, that the boy cringed in fear. "FIRE MÄY STRIKE ÄT ÄNY TIME! YOU ARE ZE MÖST IMPORDANT LIDDLE PERSONS TO US, ZE BRIGHT NEW HÖPE OFF A NEW TOMORRÖW, ZE NEW KIDS ON ZE BLOCK IN AMERICA WHO ARE ALL RIGHT. BUT YOU MUST OBEY ZE INSTRUCTCHIONS OFF ZE FIRE MARSHALS ÄT ALL TIMES! FOR YOUR SÄFETY ZEY ARE AUSORIZED TO USE PHYSICAL FORCE!"

Behind Schieß, Anton glared at Ant and cracked his knuckles meaningfully.

"IN ZE INTERESTS OFF SÄFETY YOU VILL ÄBIDE BY ZE FOLLOWINK RULES. YOU VILL NOT! LEAVE! ZE FREIZEITHEIM! PARTS OFF ZE GROUNDS ARE HEAVILY COMBUSTIBLE! YOU VILL NOT! TALK! AFTER ELEVEN P.M.! IF ZERE ISS TALKINK, VE MIGHT NOT HEAR A FIRE! BOYS VILL NOT! GO! INTO ZE GIRLS' QVARTERS! IN ZE GIRLS' QVARTERS ZERE ISS VONE BUNK FOR EVERY GIRL! ZERE ARE ZEREFORE NOT ENOUGH BUNKS FOR ÄDDITIONAL PERSONNEL! EXTRA BOYS OR GIRLS VILL ZEREFORE HÄFF TO OCCUPY FLOOR SPÄCE ÄND CONSTITUTE Ä TRIPPING HÄZARD!"

A coffee-coloured hand went up in the third row back.

"YES?"

"So - we can smoke, then?"

The entire crowd held its breath. Herr Schieß breathed in, his eyes flickering, for several seconds.

Then, he exhaled.

"ÄBSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTÄNCES MÄY YOU SMÖKE!"

"Oh", said Armand Jeffries. "I'll put this wun out then."

In the dark, a cigarette end could clearly be seen arcing to the ground, and heard sizzling in the snow.

The crowd rustled with furtive laughter.

"Tscheffries", warned Fräulein Meinck.

"Sorry miss", said Jeffries grudgingly.

"I HÄTE TO CRÄMP YOUR STYLE AND PUT ZE FRIGHTENERS ON YOUR VIBE", said the Geschäftsführer, "I DO NOT VISH TO BE KNÖWN ÄSS GRÄND DÄDDY BUZZ KILL. LET US BE ÖNLY ZE VERY BEST OFF FRIENDS. IN ORDER FOR US TO BE FRIENDS, PLEASE REMEMBER ZÄT ZERE VILL BE NO LEAVING ZE FREIZEITHEIM UNESCORTED! ZERE ISS ÖNLY VONE VÄY OUT OFF HERE! ÄND ZÄT ISS IN AN ÄIR CONDITIONED CÖACH!"

He took out a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his head. He was breathing heavily. Anton and another member of the Freizeitheim staff supported him, preventing him from falling.

"...I häff been öwercome viz emötion", said Herr Schieß, sobbing as he lowered his megaphone. His staff bustled him indoors.

Fräulein Meinck, who was now dressed in a very fetching pink flanelette dressing gown with pictures of cats and teddy bears, stepped forward clutching a hot water bottle cosy in the shape of a cow.

"Ahem. Ah - sank you for your cöoperation viz ze fire drill, everybody. You mäy all now return to your rooms."

She did not blow her whistle, though she did blow her nose. Evidently she was coming down with something. Before she left to go back into the building, Ant heard Herr Riemann say to her:

"Dies wird alles ein bißchen zu Befehl-ist-Befehl."

Fräulein Meinck nodded grimly. "Dies ist warum ich in England wohne."

At the door, Stefan, one of the Freizeitheim staff who had been in plain clothes on the square in Spitzenburg, was counting heads back indoors.

"This is it", said a voice from the dark beside Ant.

"Eh?" said Ant.

"We've both still got our day clothes on", said Jeffries' voice. "We could be over dat wall and gone." Beside Ant, Jeffries was breathing heavily with anticipation.

Ant could not see the logical pot of gold at the end of Jeffries' argumentative rainbow. "But there'd be no reason to run away from the Freizeitheim", he pointed out.

Jeffries was dumbstruck.

"You ad a reason?"

As they filed back into the building, Ant saw Cleo - who had already changed into a complete new set of colour-coordinated clothes - in the crowd.

"Cleo, what does -" began Ant.

"Herr Riemann said 'This is all getting a little bit too Orders-are-Orders'," said Cleo. "Then Fräulein Meinck said 'This is why I live in England'."

"My god", said Ant. "Fräulein Meinck and Herr Riemann are human? I thought they were German."

"Germans can be humans too, Ant." Cleo stood behind her team leader, Harjit Kaur, who was striding with her hands clasped behind her like a battlefield commander. Harjit nodded curtly at Ant, as one soldier to another.

"Stevens", she said.

"Oh my god", said Ant to Cleo. "You told her. You told her everything."

"Told er what?" said Armand Jeffries, who was still behind Ant.

"We need allies", said Cleo, "not enemies."

Harjit folded her arms in satisfaction. "And when we tell the others later on, you're going to have all the allies anyone could need."

"You're going to tell MORE people? Cleo, the prevention of interstellar war depends on people not knowing this stuff!"

Cleo shrugged helplessly, as if secrets just leaked out of her like wee did out of old people.

"Don't worry your frankly unattractive little head, my duck", said Harjit to Ant. "My girls can keep their mouths shut."

"If they can", said Ant, looking at Cleo in fury, "it'll be the first time in history."

"She hasn't told me everything", said Harjit. "Just given me a general feel for the whole we-are-fighting-aliens-from-another-planet, the-aliens-are-inside-Germans, some-of-the-Germans-are-all-right-but-we-don't-know-which-ones side of things. I'm still working up to the big explanation of how flying-saucers-have-landed-but-it's-okay-because-some-of-them-are-ours."

"And you believed her?" said Ant. "I wouldn't have believed her."

"Some of the aliens are insoide Germans?" said Jeffries, looking at Stefan as if figuring out how to open him and find out. "Cool."

"Oh, I don't believe her", said Harjit. "I am treating all of this as a fascinating intellectual exercise, up to the point where I am forced to go Gor Blimey Crikey O'Reilly, It's Actually True. Cleopatra here is going to prove it is true to me tomorrow by showing me an actual alien in a real live flying saucer actually attempting to destroy the Earth with death rays coming out of an actual antenna in its actual head", she said, "aren't you, Shakespeare." Harjit's breath was coming out in great silvery visible gasps now in the cold.

Cleo sighed and nodded.

"Vhy are you talkink?" said Stefan. "You should not be talkink. You should be re-enterink ze buildink." He held the door open helpfully for them.

"Stumm, stumm", said Ant. "Later."

"Stumm is German, Ant", muttered Cleo. "Being German, I imagine he is likely to understand it."

"I underständ all", confirmed Stefan, his glittering eyes reflecting the emergency lights on the side of the building.

"Later, Stevens", said Harjit.

"Later", said Ant.

"Später", said Stefan, and closed the door behind them, sealing them in a building full of potentially dangerous foreigners.

***

"So the Germans are really aliens in disguise", said Armand, sending a ping pong ball over the net at Ant. The ping pong table was the Freizeitheim's idea of entertainment. It sat in a room which contained neither television nor Playstation nor Megadrive. On one wall was a colossal faded poster showing happy christian children playing football on a sunny meadow with a football far bigger and pinker than any real football should ever have been. The poster said: SPORT MACHT FREI.

"Not all the Germans", said Ant. "And you'd only ever really be able to tell which ones for sure by holding all of them down and pouring drain cleaner down them, and, erm, we don't really want to do that, do we?"

Armand shrugged and batted the ball back over the table, though it was plain he disagreed.

"So what's the plan now?" he said.

Ant kept his eye on the ball. "As Alastair has been aware for a whole day now that we're here in the Freizeitheim", said Ant, "there will already be listening devices in every bunk and toilet. So I can't tell you what the plan is. Not here. Not yet." Erm. Because there isn't one yet.

Armand chipped the ball unexpectedly high; Ant knocked it back gently. "When can you tell me, then?"

The ball shot back and forth in a one-snowflake blizzard of furious swiping. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going out on a Mission. I, uh, can't tell you anything about it, apart from that Spitzenburg Castle is involved."

Armand frowned. "I knew there was summin. Like, I had this supernatural experience larst night, right? More of a round trip on the appy overcraft to la-la land, actually, you might have noticed. Someone was messin wiv me ead, see. Aliens", said Armand darkly, "was messin with my ead. And", he said, nodding with an expression of grim certainty, "it weren't the first time neither. When I find out what German's the alien done that to me, om gunna wear is green scaly skin as Lederhosen." He snapped the ball back at Ant like a bullet; Ant only barely parried it. "When I went Honey Nut Loopy yesterday, everyone said it was drugs, but I was clean. I always am clean, I mean, I can guarantee om cleaner than you. Foster-mummy and foster-daddy search my bedroom for drugs every night to make sure I am a clean and healthy little boy." He sent back a fierce swipe that Ant only just managed to bounce back over the net.

"Why do they do that?" said Ant, glad to be off the subject of who had made Armand go bananas the previous night.

"Because my dad died of a eroin overdose", said Armand, dropping this into the conversation as if mentioning that his cat had fleas. "I magine they think it's ereditary. An addictive personality. Was in one o them books foster-mummy Denise was reading larst week. She fell asleep an left it open at that page by accident, loike. She'd underloined the sentence in pink. She loikes pink, does foster-mummy Denise."

The ping pong ball pinged past Ant and ponged off the far wall. Ant's bat hand was paralyzed.

"Aha, the old tell-em-yer-dad-died-of-eroin strategy", said Armand. "Works every toime."

"Was it true?" said Ant. If what Armand had just said had been a lie told just to win a round of ping pong, he would have sunk lower than the carpet in Ant's estimation.

"For shizzle", said Armand ruefully. Ant believed this was Urban for 'yes'.

"Are you addicted to anything?"

"Cigarettes", said Armand. "Diamond White. Openin me mouth when other folks think I should be, you know, not openin it."

"We all do that", said Ant.

"Yeah, but you ent got an addictive personality", said Armand. The ball whacked back and forth with the speed of a photon. "You know what I done to get sent on this trip?"

"You did something to get sent here? This is a punishment?"

"Oh yeah, man! This is Germany, not bleedin Ibiza! You think I went downstairs all big-eyed one mornin an said Please, foster daddy Ron and foster mummy Denise, may I go somewhere even colder than England an learn a language with way too many Z's in it? I was sent on oliday by the Social. They thought I needed to be given an opportunity to unfold my personality like a beautiful flower, on account of I keep beatin up on people."

"Who did you beat up on?"

"That little waste of skin Jake Moss. E found out my mum left me butt naked in a bus station when I was a baby arfter my dad died. Started on me about it. Wunt shut up about it. Er. Well, e mentioned it at least wunce. To someone. Oo told someone. Oo told me."

Ant grinned despite himself. "And I suppose they sent you on the German trip at the last minute because Jake and Jeremy Moss couldn't go."

"Yeah. Yeah, that were funny, that." Armand's face grew thoughtful. "They went bananas at school, chucked emselves in the nettles. Almost loike I did last noight."

Ant hastily changed the subject. "So what did you do to Jake?"

Armand grinned back. "I reckon I got is ead about alfway round the U-bend before they pulled me off. Man, they ad to pull im out the bowl with surgical forceps, it musta bin like being born again out the wrong passage. E ad all sorts of fierce bad stuff in is air. Them Mutant Ninja Turtles what live inna sewers musta gone toilet on is ead." He glanced up at Ant. "Does that make me a psycho?"

Ant bounced the ball back at Armand. "Armand, from where I'm standing, it makes you a ruddy hero."

***

The girls' toilet now contained a semicircle of goggle-eyed Year Nines, Tens and Elevens, with Cleo standing in the centre giving a stilted history of man's secret exploration of space since the year 1945. Harjit's sisters, Narinder, and Sukhbir, were there, and so was Tamora. There had to be over ten girls in here. This was getting out of hand. Tamora, in particular, was listening without seeming to take any of it in, her eyes growing ever wider and less comprehending.

A hand went up at the back.

"Er - Cleo?"

"Yes?"

"If the Americans already ad interstellar spacefloight what they got off them Nazis ere in Spitzenburg, why did they build all them moon rockets?"

"For the look of the thing. Because the Russians had built rockets to launch Sputnik 1, the first satellite. The Americans had to be seen to be building some rockets of their own. The Russians didn't know about saucer drive back then. It was a big shock for them to find out that when they'd thought they'd been the first in outer space, the Americans had already put colonies in the Alpha Centauri system."

Another hand went up from one of the girls from Weston Favell. "What's an Alpha Centauri?"

"My dad's got an Alfa Romeo", said one of the other girls from Weston Favell.

"So - er - why did the Americans build all them moon rockets?"

Cleo waved her arms in exasperation. "I explained all of this! Because President Kennedy was the first President who hadn't been told America had colonies in space! He believed America had been humiliated when the Russians put up Sputnik and Vostok. He couldn't see why America wasn't fighting back. So he put billions of dollars into a totally unnecessary rocket programme to put an American on the moon."

She stopped and looked round the room cautiously. "Are you sure everyone in here can be trusted?"

"With their own lives, Shakespeare", said Harjit, "which will be forfeit if any of them breathe a word of it to anyone." She swept a stare round the room like a battleship's searchlight. Nobody met it. "Here you got Narinder, you got Sukhbir - we are family, I got all my sisters with me, and so forth. You got Tamora, who is your own sister, and if you can't trust your own sister, who can you trust? You got Porsche, spelt P-O-R-S-C-H-E - named after the Shakespearean character -"

"But the Shakespearean character's spelt P-O-R-T -"

" - named after the Shakespearean character - and Cubic Zirconia from the Weston Favell Massive. Porsh can be one hundred per cent trusted on account of we know she stuffs her bra and she don't want anyone else to know it, and Cubic Zirc on account of how we know she's got a crush on Mizz Termagant, the PE teacher."

Cubic Zirc coloured like a chameleon trying to hide on a pillarbox. She had the sort of incredibly pale skin that showed her emotions as clearly as a TV picture. Unfortunately, she also had a body that was as blocky and cumbersome as a TV.

"Between us, we got all sorts of skills. Porsh’s main skill is that she can be sick anywhere, any time, on cue." Porsh, who was dangerously thin, blushed prettily at the mention, then coughed pathetically, possibly because blushing was drawing on her already depleted blood reserves. "Zirc is our computer expert, got herself a CLAIT in spreadsheets and databases and everything, Sukhbir and Narinder can speak Punjabi fluently, and Tamora informs me she can make balloon animals. I, meanwhile, have a bronze badge from British Gymnastics and a silver lifesaving certificate. We are a highly trained elite crack unit. We are such a special force that we go on a special bus to a special school. We are here to solve your problems, whether or not you knew those problems existed previously. If you've got a job, we are here to do it. There is no mountain we cannot climb, there is no depth we cannot sink to."

"What appened about President Kennedy?" said Porsh.

"He were shot dead", said Zirc. "By Marilyn Monroe", she added.

Cleo paced back and forth mentally, searching for a way out. There was none.

"Eventually", she said, "he did find out about saucer drive, and he was furious. I mean, he'd wasted all that money. He wanted to go public with it. So they had him assassinated."

"Oo's they?"

"In America, an organization calling itself Majestic. In Britain, another one calling itself the Shadow Ministry. They are listening to us right now."

The girls looked round the room in alarm.

"They wouldn't bug a toilet", said one of the girls from Weston Favell, as if toilets were sacred to her religion.

"This is a man called Alastair Drague we're talking about, and I know him personally. He would bug a tampon if he thought he'd get useful information out of it."

One of the other girls from Weston Favell took out a packet of tampons and shook it nervously, listening for the sound of it listening back.

"So whatever we decide to do", said Cleo, "we can't decide to do it now. The enemy are listening. And I'm afraid that, because you're now all on tape, you also all have files with the Shadow Ministry."

The girls looked at each other in dismay.

One of the Weston Favell girls put up her hand.

"Will this affect me gettin on to Fashion Design an Couture at the University of Middle England?"

"It could do far worse than that", said Cleo.

The girl's jaw dropped.

"Om not gunna get my GCSE in Nail Care?" She was furious. "That were my wun GCSE, that were. I were gunna ace it."

"I think we're agreed", said Harjit, "that the Enemy are despicable. Of course, all of this sounds crazy ape fruit loop megabrush-mad, and I think everyone here will agree with me when I say that we need proof."

Heads were nodding all around the room. This seemed to be the first thing anyone could agree on.

"Until that point, we will treat Shakespeare as a harmless lunatic whose crazy theories pose no threat to anyone. But luckily she's going to prove all of it to us tomorrow morning. Aren't you, Shakespeare."

Cleo felt her face redden. There were smans from the audience.

"Yes", she said. "I certainly am."

***

"Cleo?"

The whispering came from the bunk above.

"Yes?"

"All this stuff. Aliens. Flying saucer drive. Alpha Centauri. You can prove it tomorrow, can't you?"

"Erm. Yes. Sure I can. Sure as eggs is, you know, the egg thing."

"Fine. Only, you know, if you can't, it'll be all round school that my sister's a fruit loop. And as the sister of a fruit loop, I will be, you know, loopy by association."

"I can prove it. Something weird and intergalactic will happen. It always does."

"Fine then...Cleo?"

"What is it now?"

"Why did you tell Harjit all this, and not me? I'm your sister."

And there you have it, sister. "I didn't exactly tell her. She was in the toilet when I was talking to Alastair Drague on my mobile phone."

"You were talking to the ENEMY? What were you talking about?"

"...stuff."

"What sort of stuff?"

"If-I-don't-work-for-Alastair-Drague-my-entire-family's-going-to-be-penniless-my-dad-will-be-in-prison-and-my-little-sister-will-never-get-to-be-an-airline-pilot sort of stuff."

"WHAT? YOU MEAN THEY DID THE WHOLE -"

"Keep your voice down! Yes, they did the whole! Dad being accused of taking bribes and everything!"

"I hate them!" The voice was small, but contained concentrated fury. "I want to kill them! How can I kill them, Cleo?"

"No-one's going to be killed, Tamora."

"DON'T CALL ME TAMORA."

"Sorry. Tazza."

"Taz. Taz sounds better. Taz is what Dad used to call me when we were little, after the Tasmanian Devil in the cartoon, when I used to drop stuff out the first floor window to hear what sound it made."

"Yeah, I remember. You had a sheet of A4 paper with SOUND DROP EXPERIMENT written at the top. Mum stopped you just before you dropped Tailrings."

"He was only a kitten."

"You wouldn't get away with that nowadays. You'd get a Mogging With Violence."

"Cleo?"

"Yes?"

"You wouldn't have really screwed your friends over just so I could become an airline pilot, would you?"

"I was going to. Harjit stopped me. I still haven't decided whether to go through with it or not."

"Well...thanks."

"Don't mention it. You're my sister. Go to sleep."

"YES. GO TO BLOODY SLEEP."

"I'LL SECOND THAT."

"WE'RE GUNNA PASTE YOU INNA MORNIN IF WE FIND OUT YOU'RE NOT ONNA LEVEL, SHAKESPEARE."

Cleo pulled the thin polyester covers over her and shuddered.

***

The springs of the mattress above Ant ground flat with a sound like a hand compressing a snowball. Ant's eyes flickered open.

The door to the dormitory was open. Light was coming in from the hall.

"STEVENS." The whisper was loud as a snake's hiss. Ant tumbled out of bed, fumbling blearily for the Orgonizer, finding nothing, of course. The night he needed it would have to be the night he'd cleverly hidden it.

Armand was sitting bolt upright in bed, like a zombie risen from the tomb. He was staring into the dark.

"SOMEONE WAS ERE", said Armand. He sniffed the air. "A GIRL. OR A WOMAN."

Not really wanting to know how Armand was able to smell whether someone was female, Ant held on to the bunk and struggled upright. Something fell from his chest and fluttered to the ground. A piece of notepaper.

He unfolded it. It was written on Freizeitheim notepaper, from the pad next to the public telephone in the hall. It had not been written using the proper English alphabet Ant's dad had proudly told him had been invented by William Shakespeare. It made no sense to Ant.

"What you got there, Stevens?" said Armand.

Ant passed him the note. "Someone put it on me while I was asleep. Someone not entirely unfriendly, I suppose."

"Owjoo know that?"

"Otherwise I'd be dead", said Ant. "Looks like Russian to me. I'll find a cybercafé and run it through Babelfish tomorrow. When I go to town."

"We're not going town tomorrow, Stevens. We're going to a Mediaeval Carstle. It moight have dungeons an oles for pourin boilin oil."

"You might be going to a Mediaeval Castle", said Ant, relaxing back on the bunk, hands behind his head. "I'm going places I shouldn't."

"Bare cool! What time do we start?"

Ant kicked himself; but the damage couldn't be undone now.

"Early", he said, winging it.

The seconds ticked by.

"Armand?"

"Yes, Stevens?"

"How could you smell it was a woman?"

"Hypnotic Poison", said Armand with absolute sincerity. "Oigh clarss scent, that; Christian Dior. Unmistakeable."

The springs twanged as Armand rolled over to get some sleep in preparation for getting up Early. Ant's eyes, meanwhile, stayed open staring dumbstruck at the dark.

***

Tamora woke up. It was cold.

"Bloody ell! Om freezin. Oo turna radiator off?"

A hand snaked out from under covers, felt the top of the radiator.

"This wun's on."

Tamora's teeth were chattering under the nylon sheet, which seemed thinner than mosquito netting. The sheets had been uncomfortable last night - too tight and insubstantial after years of sleeping under duvets. Now they were glacial.

"This wun's on too. Iss boilin. But iss colder than a snowman with is scarf off in ere."

She eased herself out of bed. It was almost too cold to move. Outside, through the window, the world was white.

"There's a draught", complained one of the Year Nines.

"There en't no draught. The window's shut. Iss double glazed."

"Maybe", said Sukhbir Kaur with a wide-eyed glance at Cleo, "it's a supernatural entity soaking up all the available energy before manifesting."

"Shut UP", said Harjit. "Supernatural entities are ghosts and werewolves and vampires, whereas we are clearly on Alien Robot Monsters. Right, Shakespeare?"

Cleo slid her feet out of bed, looking blearily down at the room as if seeing it for the very first time. Harjit shook her shoulder.

"Right, Shakespeare?"

Cleo looked up at Harjit, rubbed her eyes, and nodded.

"Right."

"Alien Robot Monsters?" said the Year Nine. She was not one of the Highly Trained Elite Crack Squad.

"Haha", said Harjit. "Alien robot monsters, what am I like, just my little joke."

"Yeah", said Tamora. "She meant to say Blue Alien Mind Control Amoebas."

The Year Nine stood looking at Tamora for even longer than the time it took for a Year Nine to really really know a boy was in love with her forever.

"You're tapped", she said, and went off to tell her Year Nine friends about how tapped Cleo was. Tamora could hear them whispering at the other end of the dormitory, looking in her direction and pointing.

"Up bright and early, eh, Shakespeare?" said Harjit. "You can prove everything you were saying yesterday."

Cleo nodded dully and slid her feet into her slippers. She did not shiver as she rose out of bed and took her place in the queue for the washstand.

Tamora's breath was almost crystallizing in the frigid air. Outside the window, an oak, its boughs groaning under great baskets of mistletoe, dripped icicles like a weeping willow. Tamora fought her way to the washstand and managed to pull a brush across her teeth before someone else took her place. The toothpaste was the bargain basement Tesco mouth sludge Mum had been buying ever since Dad had been having to pay expensive lawyers. It tasted vile, and Tamora suspected it had been made from ground-up dead people. Because it was Bargain Basement Tesco, she had hoped it would have blue and white stripes, but it was plain white, as suspiciously plain white as old people insisted dog do had been in the nineteen seventies.

She had a mouthful of economy value vileness, and had not had time to spit it out. She had to rejoin the queue for the washstand at the back, fighting the urge to heave, until the last person finished at the sink and she was able to spit out the goop and sluice out her mouth with water. The water was German water. It tasted wrong.

Everyone else had already left to bag a place in the showers. There were over twenty girls, and there were only five showers. At least one of those showers would be taken up for an entire half hour by the repulsive Serafina from Team Four. Serafina had the face of an angel, but seemed to think it required to be winched painstakingly into position every morning over a period of at least sixty minutes. Tamora would have to hurry, or she wouldn't shower at all before breakfast.

It was still cold in the dorm, and there was a draught. Now that the air was still, now that there was nobody else in the room, she could feel it too. Where was it coming from?

She walked across the room, turning to left and right to feel the cold breeze on her skin. The wind outside picked up, sweeping icicles off the branches, and she actually heard it make a noise like a kid blowing on a bottleneck, very close by.

She moved right up to the window. The double-glazed window. It had a perfect circular hole bored straight through both layers, letting in the winter from outside. Rendering the double glazing totally useless.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

Baffled, she picked up her towel and moved off towards the showers.

***

The canteen was quiet, full of the CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH of English teenagers eating continental breakfast in the same way prisoners faced their first bowl of porridge.

Team Two's girls were sitting mixed in with Team Three's boys, despite Nigel complaining that He Was In Charge And Would Be Obeyed, and Team Three Were To Return To Their Table Now. Ant now had, by his own count, five hundred words on the subject of Personal Responsibility, five thousand on the subject of Thinking Of Others Before He Thought Of Himself, ten thousand on Why It Was Unacceptable To Use Bad Language To Describe His Team Leader, and twenty thousand on Theft Of All Nigel's Underpants And Why This Was A Sin Before God.

Nigel was still bleating urgently at Ant and Armand to return to their team table. It was only a matter of time before Fräulein Meinck got involved. They had limited time.

"I hereby", said Ant, "call this morning's meeting of the Escape Committee to order." He banged on the table with a pepperpot. Cleo blinked at the pepperpot in faint curiosity. The girls continued gabbling about girl stuff on either side.

"ORDER", said Harjit once, and the girl stuff ceased.

"Tell us what the plan is, Stevens", said Harjit.

"Bearing in mind", said Ant, "that our voices are almost certainly being recorded right now, and that what I can say is limited - we are only allowed out of this place of imprisonment once per day, and that under strict supervision, in work gangs. We are taken to a place of forced labour, given handouts to fill in, and ordered to wander around the town square locating Chancellor Bismarck's statue and finding out Admiral Krummwurst's birthday. That is where the enemy are weakest; that is where we must strike."

"Yeah", said Armand enthusiastically. "Take 'em all out!" A chunk of garlic sausage fell out of his mouth as he punched the air. "Yeah!"

"No-one is going to be taken out", said Ant, "unless it's to a candlelit dinner at a really nice restaurant, because the object of the exercise is?"

"Oo!" Armand held his head hard to keep the thoughts in. "We did this! I know it I know it I know it -"

"Is to locate it", said Harjit. "It being somewhere in the area around Spitzenburg Castle."

"I knew that", said Armand.

"Unfortunately", said Ant, "we do not know what it is. First step, therefore, is to get more information on it. Our contacts from", he coughed in embarrassment, "outer space, will be able to supply this. Unfortunately, they were shot down before they could land. They are thought to be somewhere in Regensburg, a city thirty miles from here."

"What makes you think that?" said Tamora.

Ant looked up over Tamora's shoulder. Turning, Tamora did the same.

"Oh", she said.

On the TV screen was the word REGENSBURG, and a TV picture of men in Hi-Vis jackets moving sightseers away from an unrecognizable splat of smoking metal strewn among leafless trees. At the bottom of the screen, a news ticker read: AMERIKANISCHER TOP-SECRET-DÜSENJET IN FLUGUNFALL.

Emergency vehicles were visible to one side of the picture.

"I think 'TOP-SECRET' may be German for 'Top Secret' said Ant.

"One of those loan words, huh", said Harjit.

"It means 'Top Secret US Jet in Air Accident'", said Cleo boredly, munching at a slice of garlic sausage.

"A cover story", said Ant. "That's the wreckage of a Hawker Harridan. Even I can tell that. Look, you can see the edge of the Forellen Turbine."

Harjit squinted bravely. "No", she said. "No, I really can't. I'll have to take your word for it."

"It was shot down by the Enemy over Spitzenburg Castle. Whoever was flying that ship was one of ours, and they have no more understanding of life on Earth than you or I do of the dark side of the Moon. They're on their own on an alien planet. They could be killed strolling across the rails at a train station, and if they get picked up by the Other Side before that happens they'll wish it had. It is our duty to help them."

Tamora, meanwhile, was staring at Cleo in horror. Cleo looked up at her sister, sausage meat hanging from her mouth in rags. "What?" she said.

"Cleo...you're eating dead fluffy animal."

Cleo looked down at what she was doing, held her hands over her mouth, and ran from the room, knocking her chair over. The door to the girls' toilets banged open and shut.

Tamora was dumbfounded. "She was enjoying it."

"Can'g shee wha' all de fuzz izz abou'", said Armand, bits of dead fluffy animal hanging out of his own mouth like a red greasy beard.

Harjit's gaze lingered on the toilet door for a long, long time.

"OK Stevens", she said, "back to the plan."

Ant put down a salt pot on the table. "This, ladies and", he nodded at Armand, "gentleman, is our primary objective. Armand and myself will be visiting the secondary objective", he moved another piece of tableware, "thirty miles away."

Cubic Zirc's bushy eyebrows lowered in incomprehension. "Our secondary objective is a spoon?"

"The spoon represents the secondary objective", said Ant impatiently, pointing hard at the TV screen, which still said FLUGUNFALL REGENSBURG.

"Oh, Regensburg", said Cubic Zirc out louder-than-loud.

"SSSSSH", hissed Tamora.

"Don't shush me", said Cubic Zirc.

"Now, there will be considerable opposition to us going to Regensburg", said Ant, "which is where Operation, Operation um, er, Spoon comes in."

"You just made that up", accused Cubic Zirc.

"Of course I did. If I don't make things up on the spur of the moment, the enemy will guess our every move. Operation Spoon is complex and requires careful execution." He passed over a folded, grubby scrap of paper to Harjit.

"I thought the spoon was our secondary objective, not an operation", said Sukhbir.

Ant hastily replaced the secondary objective with a fork.

"It will be Team Salami's job to execute Operation Spoon", he said, reaching across the table and placing Team Salami next to the salt pot that represented Spitzenburg Castle.

"Hey! That was my salami!"

"I'll give it back. Operation Spoon will ensure that Herr Riemann and Fräulein Meinck never suspect Armand and myself are at the secondary objective. It is a cunning and foolproof plan."

Harjit looked up from the unfolded sheet of paper Ant had passed her. "Stevens, I have just read it, and it so is not."

Cubic Zirc put up a chubby hand. "I'm confused. Is Regensburg the secondary objective, or isn't it?"

"ZIRC", warned Harjit. Zirc fell silent; her hand went down.

"I take it we are Team Salami", said Harjit.

Ant nodded.

"Are you, perhaps, implying something porky about my bountiful and generous figure here, Stevens?"

"Absolutely not", said Ant, with a face so poker fireplaces could have been stoked with it.

"Are you, perhaps, Team Muesli? Team Croissant, perhaps? Team Toastrack?"

"Team Leaping Thunder", said Armand firmly.

"HARJIT! HARJIT! PORSH'S SHAKING THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE OVER HER BOILED EGG!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Ant could now see Nigel Devonport complaining urgently to Fräulein Meinck. As she listened, Fräulein Meinck's whistle was creeping towards her mouth.

"She's gunna blow it", said Armand in horrible anticipation.

"Do you know where his pants are?" said Ant.

Armand threw up up his hands in frustration. "Why is it always ME? Why, whenever pants get id, roight, does it always have to be ME?"

"It wasn't you?" said Ant.

Armand seemed equally puzzled that it hadn't been him. "No. No, it weren't. Dun't think so, anyway. Ooever it were, though, blessins upon em an their troibe, loike."

Nigel was scratching himself intimately, as if his polyester trousers were itching in some very special places. His lips formed the shape of the the word underwear several times as he spoke to Fräulein Meinck. The lips of people like Nigel never formed the shape of words like pants.

"We'd better get back to our table. Harjit", said Ant, looking toward the toilet door, "you're in charge if Cleo's ill."

Harjit looked up at Ant.

"What's this if Cleo is ill, Stevens?"

She reached across the table with a fork and quite deliberately ate Team Salami.

“Come on, Team!” Nigel clapped his hands to emphasize his authority. “Departure for Spitzenburg Castle in ten minutes! All kit must be packed, everyone must have their passports on them at all times, all personal belongings to be stowed away securely in lockers. Stevens, I want another ten thousand words from you by tomorrow on the subject of Obeying Instructions Given You By Your Team Leader At The Breakfast Table –“

He stopped dead at the entrance to the dormitory. Herr Schieß was standing in the centre of the room, his glasses reflecting the light from the hall, holding a tiny electronic device on the end of a pencil. Behind him, suitcases, bags and lockers were open, their contents strewn all over floors, bunks and tables, being combed through by two members of the Freizeitheim staff.

“Hey!” yelled one of the Year Eights. “That’s my stuff!” A hand in the chest stopped him from entering the dormitory.

“Ve häff found zese”, said the other Freizeitheim goon darkly, holding up a packet of cigarette papers. “Cigarettes cän be now viz zem”, he added.

“Oh, man”, said the Year Eight.

“Häff you found smökink tobacco?” said Herr Schieß. The man shook his head in evident disappointment.

“I was using them as Post-It notes”, said the Year Eight unconvincingly. “Really small ones. I have really small friends I need to write messages to.”

One of the Freizeitheim staff held up a miniscule box and shook it in his fingers.

“Ve häff also found zese”, he said. “Chocolates. Liqueur chocolates. Zey contäin alcohol. Ve must confiscäte zem”, he said, licking his lips. “It iss most unfortunäte.”

“Why are you going through our stuff?” said Ant.

“You häff been behäfink”, said Herr Schieß, opening a tub of athlete’s foot powder,sticking in a finger and licking it, “oddly. It häss been suggested zät you are Smugglink Trucks.”

“Trucks?” said Ant, for whom the only real trucks had eighteen wheels.

“Cläss Ä Hard Trucks”, said Herr Schieß knowledgeably, reading from a list he’d fished from his pocket, “such äss Smäck, Röach, Spliff and Bong. I häff been around. I know all ze nämes off all your English Trucks.” Rather disappointedly, he said: “But ve häff fount no Trucks.”

“However”, glowered one of the Freizeitheim searchers, “sings häff gone missink from ze Freizeitheim stores. From ze Creätive Educätion cupboard. Glue. Päper. Mäsking täpe. Red änd vhite paint. Scissors.” His face took on a confused expression. “Balloons.”

“Ah yes”, said Ant. “Very useful to your modern drug smuggler, paper and balloons.”

“Ze Trucks are put inside ze balloon”, said the searcher, who Ant believed was called Rolf, “and zen ze balloon iss svallowed.”

“Why?” said Ant.

“I do not know”, said Rolf. “It iss just vone of zese sings Truck Äddicts do.”

“And the paper?” said Ant.

“Ze Trucks gö on ze inside off ze päper”, said Rolf, “vhich iss zen rölled up in a Truck Cigarette.”

“And the glue?”

Rolf looked at Ant contemptuously. This one was easy. “Ze glue iss sniffed inside a plästic bäg”, he said, “or”, he continued triumphantly, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, “ä balloon, zereby destroyink ze mind off ze unfortunäte Truck User.”

“And the ladies’ knicker elastic?”

Rolf thought hard. “Ze ladies’ knicker elästic iss used to tie round ze arm before injectink ze Hart Trucks into ze Vein viz a Syrintsche.”

“And have you lost any ladies’ knicker elastic?”

Rolf glowered at Ant as if Ant was cheating.

More angry than he would have thought possible, Ant picked up a pair of pants from one of the bunks. “Care to tell me how I can get high from a pair of pants? Socks, maybe? Possibly the bedspread?”

“Erm”, said Nigel, “Herr Schieß, you haven’t found any of my pants, have you?”

“Calm please, younk persons”, said Herr Schieß. “Ve häff täken adwäntage off ze now zät you vere all at breakfast to search your rooms for contrabänd. I äm pleased to säy zät werry liddle contrabänd häss been fount. Howefer, it häss been unexpectedly interestink.” He smiled and held the device on the end of his pencil up to the light. “Ziss iss a listenink dewice. You vere perhäps plännink to listen to me? I äm not wery interestink to listen to.” He put the device calmly down on the carpet and ground it under his foot. “See how I häff crushed it like a tiny insect benease my heel.” He put his hand on a Year Eight’s head and ruffled his hair affectionately. “You mischievous urchins, vhat vill you get up to next.”

“Hey!” Armand nudged Ant in the ribs. “That’s a listenin device! That means the Enemy ent listenin to us no more!”

Ant shook his head. “That’s the easy one. The one we’re supposed to find. There will be others. The, uh, Enemy aren’t that stupid.” He crossed his fingers nervously as one of the Freizeitheim goons undid the straps on his own bag.

Don’t find it don’t find it don’t find it –

“AHA!”

Ant’s heart sank. The goon was holding up exactly what he had feared. Herr Schieß accepted it gloatingly as it was passed to him. He opened the flap on the box, pulled out the bottle inside. He read what was written on the outside of the bottle.

“TEDDY BYES: Ä goot night’s sleep for Tiny Tots.”

“My dad made me bring it”, said Ant miserably. “I don’t sleep well when I’m not in my own bed. Apparently.”

Herr Schieß noticed the rows of beaming faces and realized he had an audience.

“It häss a picture of a dear liddle Teddy Beär on ze front”, he said, holding the bottle up so everyone could see. He opened the bottle, sniffed its contents, wrinkled up his nose.

“It’s strawberry flavour”, said Ant.

Herr Schieß read the list of ingredients.

“It containss alcohol”, he said severely.

“It’s over ninety per cent alcohol”, said Ant. “I am reliably informed it has been banned in Britain since 1969. It does give toddlers a restful sleep”, he added.

“Ve are forced to confiscäte ziss”, said Herr Schieß gravely. “If you need to get to sleep, I vill get Rolf to come up änd sink you to sleep viz his Acoustic Guitar änd giant Teddy Beär suit.” Rolf scowled. Predictably, there was laughter.

“Teddy Byes.” Armand nudged Ant in the ribs again gleefully. Ant was painfully aware that he was now Teddy Byes for life.

“Ve häff known zät you vere hidink somesink”, said Herr Schieß loftily. “VE ALVÄYS KNÖW.” He held up a stern finger and departed.

“Come on, Ted”, grinned Armand. “Iss time to get ready for the big day ahead.”

***

"Oh, SHUT UP ABOUT THE BLOODY SALAMI. I'll buy you a bloody salami sandwich in the bloody Castle."

The teams were assembling outside the Freizeitheim, prior to being fed into the bus. Overnight, the snow had piled into drifts. Harjit, in between shouting about salami at Team Salami, was shepherding it into the bus. Fräulein Meinck had not needed to blow her whistle at all so far. She was watching Cleo, however, like a hawk, and Herr Riemann was doing the same with Ant. Nobody was going anywhere but on the bus today.

"Armand", whispered Ant through the corner of his mouth, "Plan Cornflakes."

Armand, standing beside Ant in the cold, nodded a millimetre. Ant had only just realized Armand was not wearing a coat. What sort of foster-parents sent their foster-kid out without a coat?

Maybe Armand had sold the coat to buy cigarettes. That would be Armand all over.

In any case, the lack of a coat explained Armand's need to jump about constantly out of doors. If he didn't keep moving in these temperatures, he'd freeze.

Right now, he was walking out of Nigel's line, out across the white unblemished lawn, hands held in front of him like a comedy zombie.

"I'VE AD ENOUGH!" he yelled. "BEIN KEPT BEHIND WIRE LIKE A BALLY ANIMAL! BEIN FED GARLIC SAUSAGE BY MEN OO LISTEN TO EIGHTIES ELECTROPOP! JERRY'S NOT HAVING ARMAND JEFFRIES' SOUL! CHOCKS AWAY, OM GOOIN BACK TO BLIGHTY!"

Fräulein Meinck was blowing her whistle frantically. Herr Riemann was already running towards Armand, together with two other Freizeitheim staff. Ant, meanwhile, had backed up one step, into a snowdrift out of which a single Schloß Spitzenburg coffee stirrer was sticking up like a beacon. Dipping down with one hand into the snow, he found what he was looking for and tucked it quickly into his coat.

***

"You got the Essential Mission Equipment, Ted?"

Armand was bruised, but happy. He had led Herr Riemann, Anton and Stefan a merry dance round the grounds before finally being brought down underneath all three men outside the Freizeitheim Peace Garden, Herr Riemann and Stefan holding his legs and Anton sitting on his head.

Ant nodded. "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah. Snow's soft, an them Germans dun't know ow to rugby tackle. Whatever the Essential Mission Equipment is, I ope it's worth it."

"It's, er, very boring. But it mustn't be allowed to fall into enemy hands." The coach was making heavy headway between giant banks of snow. Every time the wheels hit a bank, they span faster. Once the Freizeitheim buildings had been left behind, travelling in the coach was like being in a boat on a frozen sea. Out of the right hand window, Spitzenburg was like a Venice of the frozen north, surrounded by crystallized waves of snowdrifts.

"You know", said Armand, looking out through the window, "Manchester is the Venice of the North?"

"Who told you that?"

"The Manchester Tourist Authority. I mean, I always wanted to goo to Venice, but if iss just like Manchester, I mean, whass the point? Might as well go to Manchester."

At the back of the coach, Cleo was still gripping her seat with a face worse than death. Managing somehow to watch Herr Riemann, Fräulein Meinck and Nigel Devonport all at the same time, Ant jumped out of his seat and backed down the coach, dropping down into a crouch next to Cleo's seat.

"Hello Stevens", said Harjit, who was sitting next to Cleo.

"How are you feeling?" said Ant to Cleo.

"Very well thank you", said Harjit. "Shakespeare has yet to prove the existence of aliens to us, but we live in hope."

Ant ignored Harjit. "You look ill. Do you want to go through with the plan for today?"

"I'm all right", said Cleo through gritted teeth. "Give us a kiss."

"What?" said Ant, as if his grandmother had asked him the same thing.

"You're supposed to be my boyfriend", said Cleo. "Give us a kiss, you hunky beefcake."

Several rows behind Ant and Cleo, on the back seat, the dreadful Justin and Serafina were snogging as if their lives depended on it, firmly planted in each other's tonsils like mating snails. Ant looked back at them nervously as if imagining his own fate.

"I'll get back to you on that", he said, and waddled back down the centre aisle of the coach, not wanting to bob up into the driver's rear view mirror. He bounced back into his own seat.

"Lucky escape there", he said to Armand.

"Enemy nearly get you?" said Armand.

"Erm", said Ant, "I'm not really sure."