Nostradamus Ate My Hamster (5 page)

What was that language? It wasn’t French. Russell knew French, well
some
French. This was a bit like French.

Russell ducked down, slid beneath the window, then edged up, to peer into the shed.

And then Russell ducked back down again. And a look of horror appeared upon his face. His face that had quite enough upsetting its normal cheery balance already.

He had seen that, hadn’t he?

He had.

Seen that. Seen
them
.

“No,” whispered Russell. “I’m sure that I could not have seen
that
.”

He eased himself up once more and took another look into the shed. There was little enough in there to be seen: a trestle table, a couple of chairs. Three men. Three men were in there. Two were standing before the table. To attention. The other was sitting behind it. This other was the one doing all the ranting. Russell took a big long look.

The two that were standing wore uniforms. German uniforms. Second World War German uniforms. Second World War SS Nazi German uniforms. They had their backs to Russell, straight backs. Cropped blond hair beneath smart caps. Jack boots.

The one sitting behind the table …

Russell’s breath hung in his throat, his heart went bump, bump, bump, bump. The one sitting behind the table wore a light grey uniform, very sharp, well cut, he was small, hunched, thick set. A black swathe of hair hung over one eyebrow, a Charlie Chaplin moustache sat beneath the nose of the contorting face. The contorting face that could belong to no other being who had ever walked the earth, apart from the one it belonged to now.
Impossibly
now.

The contorting face of Adolf Hitler.

Russell sank down hard onto his bottom. This
wasn’t
happening. This could
not
be happening. He must be drunk. Or something terrible had been slipped into his pint. He had to be hallucinating. That man in there could not, by any stretch of the imagination, possibly be the
real
Adolf Hitler. He simply couldn’t, that was all there was to it. Russell felt suddenly faint and his hands began to shake. Have another look, just to make absolutely sure, sure that, well, sure of something. Russell took a very deep breath and hoisted himself back to the window.

And took another peep in.

It
was
him. It bloody well was. He was just as he looked in the old documentary footage. A bit smaller, but folk always look smaller in real life. Except for the tall ones, of course, although they
might
look smaller. It was just a bit more hard to tell.

Russell ducked down again and tried to think his way out.

But it
was
him. Actors never got him right, they always looked like Alec Guinness. Even Alec Guinness looked like Alec Guinness, but then he would, wouldn’t he?

Russell’s thoughts became all confused. Something had happened, something most odd. Had he entered something? Like some parallel world? The world of The Flying Swan, where the impossible was possible and this sort of stuff happened every day?
[12]

“It can’t be him.” Russell gritted his teeth and assured himself that it couldn’t be him. Well, it couldn’t. That was all there was to it.

Russell stuck his head up and took another peep. And found himself staring face to face with the monster himself. The very personification of all that was evil in the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler.

“Aaaaagh!” went Russell.

“Achtung! Achtung!” went Adolf and added further words of German which meant “Kill the spy!”

Russell didn’t know what they meant. But he
knew
what they
meant
, if you know what I mean. Russell took to stumbling, staggering legs and turned on his heels and ran.

As he ran through the bar the landlord thrust a brochure into his hand, “Discount on block bookings,” he said.

“Oh … oh … oh,” went Russell, running on, “Oh my goodness, oh.”

When Russell got back to Fudgepacker’s Emporium, which he did in a world-record time, he found Morgan sitting idly by the packing bench, smoking a cigarette.

“Morgan,” went Russell. “Morgan, I … Morgan … oh.”

Morgan looked up at the quivering wreck. “Whatever happened to you?” he asked.

“Morgan, I’ve been
there
. I’ve seen
him
. I saw him, he was there. What are we going to do? Oh dear. Oh, oh.”

“Russell are you all right?”

“No, I’ve been in this pub –”

“You’re pissed,” said Morgan. “Bloody hell, Russell, whatever came over you, you don’t drink.”

“I’m not pissed.”

Morgan sniffed. “You’ve chucked up, you pong.”

“Yes, I have chucked up, but I –”

“You’d better not let Frank see you in this state.”

“I’m not in any state –”

“Trust me, Russell, a state is what you’re in.”

“But I’ve been
there
, I saw him.”

“What, heaven? You saw God?”

“Not heaven, the opposite of heaven. Though there was an angel there, but because I didn’t drink Perrier water I didn’t get to take her out –”

“Russell, you’re gibbering. Are you doing drugs? You selfish bastard, you’re doing drugs and you never offered me any.”

“I don’t do drugs, I’ve never done drugs.”

“You’re pissed though.”

“I’m not pissed. I’m not. You’ve got to come with me now. No, we daren’t go back. We must call the police, no call the army. Call the SAS.”

“How about you just calming down and telling me exactly what happened?”

“Yes, right. That’s what I’ll do.” Russell took deep breaths and tried to steady himself. “Right, I’m OK, yes.”

“So tell me what happened.”

“I went out to see if I could find whether there really was a Flying Swan.”

“Oh,” said Morgan, “did you?”

“I did. And I found it.”

“Ah,” said Morgan, “did you?”

“Yes I did.”

“Go on.”

“What do you mean ‘go on’, aren’t you amazed at that much already?”

“Not really, but do go on.”

“I met Neville,” said Russell.

“Yes?” said Morgan.

“What do you mean ‘yes’? I just said I met Neville.”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean, which one?”

“Is this why you’re in all this state, because you think you found The Flying Swan and you think you met Neville?”

“No it’s not, and I don’t
think
I met him, I
did
meet him. But that’s not it. What it is, is really bad. Really terrible.
He’s
here, right now. He’s here in a shed.”

“Neville is in a shed?”

“Not Neville,
him
.”

“I’m up for this,” said Morgan. “Which
him
is in a shed?”

“A … Adolf H … Hitler,” stammered Russell. “Adolf Hitler! He’s here!”

“In a shed?”

“Behind The Flying Swan.”

“Behind The Flying Swan?”

“He’s there. I saw him. What are we going to do? We should call the army, shouldn’t we?”

“Russell,” said Morgan.

“Yes?” said Russell.

“I’m impressed.”

“Eh?”

“I’m very impressed.”

“What?”

“You’ve a lot to learn, but as a first-off I think you deserve at least nine out often for effort.”

“What?”

“I think where you’ve blown it,” said Morgan, “is that you’ve set your sights too high. Hitler doesn’t really fit the bill, what with him being dead and everything. You should have gone for someone else, someone feasible. Lord Lucan, you should have gone for. Lord Lucan hiding out in a shed.”

“
What?”
Russell said.

“But you also have to build up the plot. Rushing in and burbling ‘I’ve seen Hitler in a shed’ does have a certain impact, but you have to build up to it.”

“I’m not building up to anything. This is all true. I saw him, I did. I did.”

“You didn’t, Russell. You
really
didn’t.”

“I really
did
.”

“In The Flying Swan?”

“In a shed out the back.”

“And which pub exactly
is
The Flying Swan?”

“The Bricklayer’s Arms.” Russell still didn’t have all his breath back. “The Bricklayer’s Arms. And I can prove it. I can. I can.” He rooted about in his waxed jacket and pulled a crumpled piece of card from his poacher’s pocket. “There,” he said.

Morgan took the card and uncrumpled it. “The Bricklayer’s Arms,” he read, “alias The Flying Swan, famous pub featuring in the novels of blah, blah, blah.”

“It doesn’t say blah, blah, blah, does it?”

“It might as well do.”

“You can’t deny what’s in print.”

“Really?” Morgan fished into the back pocket of his jeans and brought out his wallet, from this he withdrew several similar pieces of card. “Here you go,” said Morgan. “The Princess Royal, alias The Flying Swan, The New Inn, alias The Flying Swan, The Red Lion, alias The Flying Swan. Even The Shrunken Head in Horseferry Lane, they
all
claim to be The Flying Swan. Do you know how many pubs claim that Oliver Cromwell slept there?”

“Did he sleep at The Flying Swan then?”

“No, he bloody didn’t. Half the pubs in Brentford claim to be
the original
Flying Swan. It’s bullshit, Russell. They do it for tourists.”

“But Neville?”

“Slouching bloke, rotten teeth, stained shirt?”

“That’s him.”

“Sid Wattings, been the landlord there for years.”

“Eh?”

“Is that blond barmaid still there? The one who can tuck her legs behind her head?”

Russell groaned.

“It’s a wind-up,” said Morgan. “I’m sorry, Russ.”

“Don’t call me Russ. I don’t like Russ.”

“It’s a wind-up,
Russell
If you’d told me you were going to look for The Flying Swan, I would have warned you not to waste your time. This Adolf Hitler you saw, how did he look?”

“He looked a bit rough, but he looked just like he did in the old war footage.”

“And you don’t think that a bit strange?”

“No,” said Russell. “That’s the whole point.”

“It’s not the whole point. It didn’t occur to you that he might have looked a bit older? Like
fifty years
older? Like he should have been at least one hundred years old?”

“Ah,” said Russell.

“Exactly,
ah
. This is where Sid’s slipped up. Hitler was dying anyway at the end of the war, he had all sorts of stuff wrong with him. Yet the Hitler you saw was no older. What did he do then, drink the elixir of life? The water of life?”

Russell let out a further groan as the image of a Perrier bottle swam into his mind, followed by certain other images of an erotic nature, some of them actually involving a Perrier bottle. “So it wasn’t really Hitler?”

“Could it
really
have been Hitler? Ask yourself, could it
really
have been?”

“I suppose not,” said Russell.

“I’m sorry, Russ, er, Russell. You’ve been had.”

Russell made a very miserable face and turned his eyes towards the floor. “I’ve made a bit of a prat of myself, haven’t I?” he said.

“It’s not your fault. That Sid’s getting a bit sneaky. Perhaps the competition’s getting too strong. Perhaps they’ve installed a Lord Lucan in a shed behind The New Inn. It’s a good wheeze.”

“It didn’t half look like Hitler,” said Russell. “But I suppose you must be right. It
was
a wind-up. It couldn’t really have been him.”

“Still,” said Morgan. “Look on the bright side, Russell. You actually had a bit of an adventure. It doesn’t matter that it was all baloney. I bet it got your adrenalin rushing about.”

“It certainly did that.”

“So you’ve lived a little. For a brief moment you weren’t reliable old Russell, who nothing ever happens to. For a brief moment you were actually having an adventure. And it felt pretty good, didn’t it?”

Russell raised his eyes from the floor and for a brief moment, a very brief moment, they really glared at Morgan.

“I’m going back to the office,” he said. And back to the office he went.

Of course Morgan had to be right, there was no possible way Adolf Hitler could really be in Brentford in the nineteen nineties, looking just like he did in the nineteen forties. Especially with him being dead and everything.

No possible way.

It’s a big statement though, “no possible way”, isn’t it?

There’s always
some
possible way. It might be an
improbable
way, or a way considered impossible, or implausible, or something else beginning with
im
.

For instance,
one
possible way springs immediately to mind and “immediately” begins with
im
. If we return once more to the contents of box 23. And had we been given access to the one on the chief constable’s high shelf in Brentford police station in May, nineteen fifty-five, we would have been able to read a statement placed there by a certain constable Adonis Doveston, which read thus:

I was proceeding in an easterly direction along Mafeking Avenue at eleven p.m. (2300 hours) on the 12th inst at a regulation 4.5 mph when I was caused to accelerate my pace due to cries of distress emanating from an alleyway to the side of number sixteen. I gained entry to said alleyway and from thence to the rear garden of number sixteen. And there I came upon Miss J. Turton in a state of undress. This state consisting of a brassiere with a broken left shoulder strap, a pair of camiknickers and one silk stocking. She was carrying on something awful and when I questioned her as to why this might be, she answered, “Why lor’ bless you, constable, but wasn’t I just whipped up out of me bloomin’ garden by a bloomin’ spaceship and ravished by the crew and when they’d had their evil way with me, then didn’t they just dump me back here without a by your leave or kiss my elbow.”

I later ascertained that this statement was not entirely accurate, in that Miss Turton had in fact had her elbow kissed, also her eyeballs licked and the lobes of her ears gently nibbled. I accompanied the lady into her back parlour, took off my jacket to put about her shoulders and was comforting her, prior to putting the kettle on, when her father returned, somewhat the worse for drink.

Would it be possible for me to have the Saturday after next off, as I am to be married?

A straightforward enough statement by any reckoning, a simple case of alien abduction, no doubt.

Or was it?

Behind this statement was stapled another statement and on this was scrawled a few lines, these being Miss Turton’s description of the alien crew:

Tall and blond, wearing grey uniforms with a double lightning-flash insignia and black jack-boots.

A description that would fit the dreaded storm troopers of Hitler’s
Waffen
SS. Those known as The Last Battalion.

Significant?

Not
significant?

Well, it’s bloody significant when viewed in the light of a certain scenario I am about to put forward, concerning how Adolf Hitler could turn up in Brentford in the nineteen nineties looking exactly the same as he did in World War Two.

You’ll kick yourself afterwards for not seeing how obvious it is.

It is a fact well known to those who know it well, that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis had all sorts of secret experimental research laboratories, working on all manner of advanced weaponry. And had they been able to hold out for a few more months they would have completed certain dreadful devices to wreak utter havoc upon the Allies.

One of these was the sound-cannon. A sonic energy gun constructed to project a low frequency vibrational wave that could literally shake apart anything within its path. Another was the
Flügelrad
(literally flying saucer), a discoid aircraft designed by Viktor Schauberger, powered by electromagnetic energy and capable of speeds in excess of 2000 km/hr.
[13]

Let us take a trip back to one of those secret establishments, New Schwabenland in Antarctica, “somewhere due south of Africa”. The year is 1945 and a fleet of U-boats has just arrived, having come by way of Argentina. On board are crack troops known as The Last Battalion, a number of the highest ranking Nazi party members and a certain Mr A. Hitler esquire.

They enter a vast hangar affair where several
Flügelrads
and other state-of-the-then-art craft are in various stages of completion.

It is a little after tea-time.

Adolf Hitler enters first, he is limping slightly, due to chilblains acquired on the long voyage, allied to his verrucas and athlete’s foot. He speaks.

HITLER
: Someone get us a bleeding armchair, me Admirals
[14]
are killing me.

GOERING
: And some sarnies, my belly’s emptier than a Führer’s promise. (Laughter from the officer ranks.)

HITLER
: (Adjusting his hearing aid.) What was that?

GOERING
: I said, praise the fatherland, my Führer. (Further laughter.)

HITLER
: You fat bastard.

Now before we go any further with this particular drama, it might be well worth identifying the principal players, explaining a little bit about them and a few things that are not generally known about the German language.

Firstly Hitler. Well, we all know about him, don’t we? Sold his soul to the devil at an early age, the rest is history.

Hermann Goering. One of Hitler’s original henchmen, drinking buddy from their old bierkeller bird-pulling days. In charge of something or other pretty big, it might have been the airforce. What is known is that although he was a fat bastard, a really fat bastard, he was also a fop who used to change his clothes as many as five times a day. He probably sweated a lot and this was before the invention of underarm deodorants.

Heinrich Himmler. He was the little sod with the pince-nez specs who masterminded the extermination camps. Described as looking “like a school teacher”. Sexual pervert and sadist. He’d have fitted in quite nicely at any of our public schools really.

Joseph Goebbels. Well, we all know him, he was the “poison dwarf”, in charge of propaganda, looked like Himmler only shorter.

Albert Speer. He was the architect who was designing the new Germany. Didn’t seem to have much in the way of imagination, as the new Germany was going to look just like Old Rome. Curiously enough, Prince Charles’ designs for a “new London” mirror almost exactly Speer’s vision of the new Berlin. I wonder if perhaps they are related.
[15]

Regarding the German language, what most people don’t realize is that it, like other languages, has regional accents. If we were to equate the German language with the English language and consider the way it was spoken by the players listed above, we would find: that Hitler spoke the German equivalent of broad Cockney; Goering, Yorkshire; Himmler, Eton and Albert Speer, Dublin!

Well, they speak English in Dublin (and for the most part better than we do).

So, if there’s anyone left who hasn’t been offended and is still prepared to read on, we rejoin the action back in the big hangar. Armchairs have been brought and sandwiches and Viktor Schauberger (who nobody knows anything about, but who a great deal of costly personal research on my part has revealed spoke very much like a Welshman) is getting down to business.

SCHAUBERGER
: Indeed to goodness, yacky-dah and leaks, isn’t it?

HITLER
: What’s this Zurich
[16]
on about?

HIMMLER
: If I might interpret for you, my Führer, he is trying to explain the major breakthrough that he and his colleagues have precipitated, using the advanced technology supplied by our off-world allies.

HITLER
: Our bleeding
what
?

HIMMLER
: The chaps from outer space, my Führer.

HITLER
: Foreigners? I hate bleeding foreigners.

GOERING
: That’s reet good, coming from an Austrian. (Laughter.)

SCHAUBERGER
: “Reet good’s” Geordie, isn’t it? Like “away the lads”.

GOERING
: Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. How’s that?

SCHAUBERGER
: More like it.

HITLER
: Can we get this over with? I want to get me Aryans
[17]
off and rub some lard on me Yiddishers.
[18]

HIMMLER
: I will explain everything, my Führer. As you may or may not know, Mr Schauberger here has been working on the
Flügelrad
project.

HITLER
: Yeah. Yeah. Disc-shaped aircraft, they’ve got as much chance of getting in the air as the allies have of winning the bloody war. (No laughter.)

HIMMLER
: Well, my Führer, far be it from me to disagree with a man who is virtually a living god, but the craft have already been test flown, and with the aid of the technology given to us from certain “allies” of our own, the craft not only flies faster than sound, but also faster than light, which is to say, faster than time.

HITLER
: Do what?

HIMMLER
: The fatherland has conquered time travel, my Führer.

HITLER
: Well, bugger me backwards.

HIMMLER
: Later, my Führer, but please allow Mr Speer to explain the details.

SPEER
: My Führer, as you might have noticed, we have not got underway quite as rapidly as we might have liked regarding the building of the new Germany. It does have to be said that the knocking down of the old one is well ahead of schedule, thanks to the Allies (some laughter, a soldier is taken away and shot). But the actual rebuilding is reckoned to take, oh, about mmmm years.

HITLER
: Speak up, how many years?

SPEER
: mmmmm years.

HITLER
: How many?

SPEER
: About seventy-five years, my Führer. Sir.

HITLER
:
How bloody many
?

SPEER
: Say sixty. Sixty years, no problem. As long as –

HITLER
: As long as
what
?

SPEER
: As long as
we
win the war.

HITLER
: Of course we’ll win the war.

HIMMLER
: Of course we will, my Führer. In fact we definitely will, have no fear of that. You see we can’t lose now. Might I explain?

HITLER
: Grunt.

HIMMLER
: Thank you, my Führer. The plan is this. Two
Flügelrads
have been completed. One designed to travel back in time and the other forward. The one going back will take details of how we, ahem, lost all our previous military campaigns and deliver them to the generals in question
before
they actually fight the battles, so they’ll win, see?

HITLER
: (stroking chin) Nice one. I like that.

HIMMLER
: The other will carry you forward one hundred years, so you can arrive at a predestined time and place to step from the craft into the glorious rebuilt Reich of the future.

GOEBBELS
: You will appear according to predictions prophesied, as the new messiah, my Führer, stepping from the craft to rule the entire world.

HITLER
: All right!

HIMMLER
: We’ll have an ambulance waiting.

HITLER
:
What?

HIMMLER
: Medical science will have advanced one hundred years, my Führer. All your little aches and pains, we’ll have them immediately sorted out for you.

HITLER
: Even my piles?

HIMMLER
: Even those.

HITLER
: And my flatulence?

HIMMLER
: Especially your flatulence.

HITLER
: Well, let’s not sit about here like a bunch of Russians
[19]
. Let’s get in them old
Flügelrads
, I’ve a future world needs ruling.

HIMMLER
: We’re right with you, my Führer.

HITLER
: No you bloody well aren’t. You lot go back and sort out all the cock-ups.

HIMMLER/GOEBBELS/SPEER/GOERING
: Aaawwww!

HITLER
: That’s show biz!

And so it came to pass. Or rather, it almost came to pass. If history is notable for at least
one
thing, then that
one
thing would be that the Germans did
not
win the Second World War. They came second, but they didn’t win it. It must be supposed that the reason for this was that something went wrong with the
Flügelrad
that travelled back into the past. Himmler, Goering and Co. came to well deserved sticky ends and Speer never got a chance to oversee the building of the thousand-year reich. Tough shit!

But it all does fall into place rather neatly, if you think about it. There is no real proof that they ever found Hitler’s body and for years rumours abounded that he escaped.

Where to?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Into the future, that’s where. Off one hundred years into the future, to step from his craft as the new messiah into a reich-dominated world.

Except there isn’t going to be one.

So what if, just if, his craft broke down on the way into the future? What if it crash landed in the nineteen nineties? And not in Germany? After all, the world spins around and if his coordinates were set for Germany and he landed too early, he could have ended up in England by mistake. In Brentford, in fact.

Well he
could
! It’s possible.

So the close (very close) encounter Miss Turton had in nineteen fifty-five could have been with a Nazi
Flügelrad
pilot and an engineer, or someone, stopping off on the way to the future for a bit of “how’s-your-Führer” and Russell might really have seen Mr Hitler looking just like he did back in the nineteen forties.