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  It was a terrifying time, but at last, thank God, the game was over. I don’t know why it was over or how it ended, Varga simply announced, “That’s it! We’ve won—me and Maxxie! The winners! Well done, Maxxie, you were wonderful. Are you sure you’ve never played this before?” And the two sentries, who had been standing at the side of the lawn looking bored to death, put their rifles over their shoulders and clapped like lunatics.

  “Lunch now. Lunch everybody. Come along.”

  At the other side of the lawn, French windows opened in the side of a building of golden stone and a steward in a white drill uniform came out, it seemed without moving his legs, like the little wooden farmer who looks out from one of those damned stupid chalets they make to let you tell the weather.

  Max said, “It’s not even ten o’clock yet.”

  “Lunch starts with drinks, Maxxie. Lots of drinks. Don’t you know anything, you silly boy?”

  It was the first time I’d felt hopeful for a long time. I reckoned that I could come a good third place behind Max and Tifty in any drinking contest and Varga would be unconscious before the soup arrived but, even if that failed and he went ahead with his plan to have us shot, at least I’d be drunk when he did it.

  We made our way across the lawn to the French windows, and the steward stood there and fawned with an undertaker’s smile, pointing the way to the dining room as if it were the way to the grave.

  I wonder if I am making this up. Am I making this up? I swear I’m not, but I feel like a fraud, like a kid who remembers clearly every little detail of a photo from his granny’s album and all the stories that go with it: who stood where, who said what just at that very moment when the picture was taken, although it was taken a year before he was born. Or like an old uncle reciting the same anecdote over and over again for years so the whole family knows every word of it and remembers where to laugh.

  But even the kid with his granny’s photo album can be telling the truth. Even if he didn’t see it, the story can still be true.

  And when the old uncle tells his stories, there’s something at the bottom of them. He knows it all off by heart because that’s how it was when it happened and he got it all sorted out in his mind and told the story and told the story and told the story until it stuck like that. But it’s still true. Those boys up there tonight in the bombers, if they come through this, if they don’t get themselves killed trying to kill me, they’ll have stories to tell their grandchildren, and the grandchildren will be bored to tears, but the stories will be true anyway. Am I boring you? I never thought of that. That would be embarrassing. I’m sorry. But I can’t stop. I have to get this written. You can stop reading, of course. Stop for a bit and come back to it, snap the book shut and shut me up with it. I hope you’ll come back. Carry me round in your pocket until you’re ready to sit down and listen to the story again. I hope you’d like to do that. Just don’t, for God’s sake, throw this book away, please. Read it or don’t read it. Give it away to somebody else who might want to read it. Or keep it under your bed in an old shoebox so it ends up in a junk shop after you’re dead too and maybe forty years from now, or fifty, or into the next century even, somebody will find it and buy it for almost nothing and start to read it and say, “That can’t be right!” just like that poor little bastard this afternoon. Just don’t throw this away. Out there, outside this little tin caravan, people are dying, lives are ending, disappearing as if they had never even been here. Nothing left but blizzards of ashes floating by on the wind. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to leave a tiny little scratch in the dust of history. Don’t let that happen to me. I’m relying on you. I’m gambling on you. But it doesn’t matter what you do—I have to get it written down anyway.

  I was wondering if I might just be making this stuff up because of all the food. Maybe it’s because there’s so little of it these days. Get your hands on a month-old turnip and it’s like Christmas Eve, but it seems to me I can remember everything about that meal with Varga. Can there really have been so much? Those piles of fruit? My God, he had oranges, just sitting there in dishes on the sideboard, heaps of them. Oranges! I can’t have made that up, surely.

  And I know I haven’t invented the drink. It started the minute we walked through those fancy French windows. No sooner had the little ginger lunatic put down his damned stupid croquet bat than he unsheathed his cutlass and I have to admit I might have gone just a tiny bit squirty when I saw that bloody great knife in the hands of that tiny little madman, but it was just more show-offery. He led the way, running in from the garden like he was storming the decks of an enemy vessel, although I doubt he would have been at the front of the charge if there had been anything more terrifying than champagne bottles waiting to meet him. But there were battalions of champagne bottles waiting in that dining room and little Varga snatched up the first one he came to and set about it with his cutlass, one long swipe up the neck that took the top right off it so it spluttered a jet of foam and soaked the carpet, a lovely, celebratory way to die.

  “Have a drink!” he said, and it sounded like an order, not an invitation. So we had a drink and another one and another one and the steward with his white drill jacket and his piped trousers and his gold buttons went twittering about between us, smirking and pouring, smirking and pouring and, thank God, he opened all the other bottles in the traditional way, with his fingers.

  Sarah came up to me, giggling. “I’ve never had champagne before,” she said. “The bubbles go up your nose.”

  Every girl I ever knew who ever had champagne always said that “the bubbles go up your nose” as if it was some deep and original insight. It’s not, of course. You know what it is? It’s old age and death knocking on the door. When a girl says, “The bubbles go up your nose,” and you think it’s boring and silly, when she laughs with the undiscovered joy of it and you don’t, when you can’t share in the fun of something that’s wonderful and new, then that’s a nail in your coffin, my friend. When a little kid laughs at a balloon or cries when it bursts and you don’t, that’s another one and, I’ll tell you this, there are only thirteen nails in a coffin. Don’t use them up too quick.

  I laughed and gave her a quick little peck. “See if your dad can pry Max away from Varga. Engage him in conversation about naval badges of rank or something. I need to have a private word with Max.”

  She managed it, the minx. I think the Professor must have used his mind-control powers or something, but before too long he had Varga jammed in between the wall and the sideboard and he wouldn’t let him escape until he’d wrung every drop of information out of him.

  Max took his chance and wandered over. “My old boots! For God’s sake, Otto, you’ve got to rescue me. He fancies me rotten.”

  “Aww, shut up and take it like a man!” I poured him some more champagne. “Look, you know I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Just play along with him for a bit. Sit beside him at lunch. Play footsie with him under the table. Christ, hold his hand if he wants. Please. I’ve got this under control.”

  “You’d just better.” But he wasn’t convinced.

  And then there was more champagne until Tifty and Sarah hugged each other round the neck and hooted with laughter and, at last, the steward came fawning up to Varga, who clapped his hands and announced, “Time to eat,” and led us to the table.

  Lunch. There was soup to start with, I know that, and mountains of food—mountains of it—and more drink, a different wine with every course, and meringues to finish and liqueurs and coffee, but the thing that sticks in my memory the most is the camel, standing tethered at the window and flicking at the rose bushes with his long purple tongue.

  Varga was at the head of the table, of course, with Max beside him, and from time to time, between drinks, he reached out to give Max’s hand a little squeeze. I was at the far end of the table—which was a bit of a comedown for an actual Graf and the Keeper of the Imperial Camels—but it gave me the chance to slop some drink into the so
up tureen when Varga wasn’t looking.

  He was never the sort of bloke you could call quiet, but by the time that creepy little steward came round with the nuts Varga was making my ears bleed. I’ve always said that drink is a magnifying glass. Drink makes you the person that you already are but just a bit more. If you’re a happy person, drink makes you happier. If you’re a miserable person, it just makes you more miserable, and I understand that our great leader is a staunch teetotaller, which is probably just as well, since his magnificence magnified would be more than we mere mortals could bear. For my own part I tend to find that the more I drink, the more attractive I become to women, but Varga, well, Varga was a vicious little turd stone-cold sober, and drink did nothing to add to his luster. Down at the other end of the table, I could see things were getting out of hand. Max was doing his best to stick to the plan—even though he had no idea what the plan was and, to tell the truth, neither did I—but once or twice he looked down the table at me with a glance that said, “This guy’s really asking for it!”

  I made soothing gestures and Max could see that I was watching, keeping an eye on things while I played with my brandy glass, but then Varga’s hand disappeared under the table, and the very next second Max shot to his feet, his left fist winding backward for a punch.

  “Herr Schlepsig!” I said, not yelling, but with that kingly authority I was learning to cultivate. “Herr Schlepsig, that will do!”

  I wasn’t loud, but silence fell across the drunken table after I spoke the way it comes rolling back after a thunderclap. Nobody knew where to look. Max sat down and I stood up, my cigar in one hand, my brandy glass in the other, and I walked slowly up the length of the table to Varga. “You are not a gentleman,” I told him. “You are a disgrace to the uniform of the Emperor. You have taken unspeakable liberties with my servant, a man so far below you in society as to be unable to defend himself, a man who looks to me as his master for protection.”

  “You don’t object, do you, Maxxie?”

  “I object,” I said, and I emptied my brandy glass over his head. “I’m calling you out, Varga. I demand satisfaction.”

  He sat there, wiping brandy out of his hair with one of his big swanky napkins and tittering like the madman I knew he was. “Bloody fool. Why should I shoot you when I can simply have you shot? A man doesn’t keep a dog and bark himself, you know.” He gave his face one more wipe and smacked his lips to catch the last drops of brandy. “Anyway, dueling is illegal.”

  “Technically,” said the Professor, who seemed to be taking extra care over his words. “Technically only officers may duel and technically of course, in law and following the letter of the Bishops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is entirely illegal and improper for any officer to take part in a duel in any way.”

  “See? What did I tell you? Now be a good fellow and go out outside and stand against the wall. I’ll have somebody come out and shoot you shortly.”

  “On the other hand, as recently as 1884, Josef Hintner, Lieutenant of Reserves of the Tyrolese Jaeger Regiment, was cashiered for ‘absolute refusal of a duel.’ Stripped of his rank and kicked out in disgrace.”

  “Step outside,” I said. I heard Tifty gasp, and behind me Sarah was whispering my name over and over, like a charm. “Otto, Otto. Oh, Otto.” Exactly what she had said the night before. Exactly the same frantic whisper, but this time it meant something different.

  “It was thirty years ago,” said Varga.

  “For ex-Lieutenant Hintner, it must seem like yesterday. Fight me, you bloody coward. You might win.”

  I knew then, with that hesitation, that if I could make him fight me, he would lose. I’ve been in a few fights in my time and I can tell you this—maybe the most useful bit of information I have to pass on to you—nine times out of ten, it’s not about who’s the biggest or the strongest, nor who’s fastest on the draw; it’s about resolve. Resolution, that’s what it is. Determination The man who is determined to do this thing and no half-measures, just get it done, whatever it takes, that’s the man who’s going to win, and the other man, it’s the other man who’s going to lose and I was ready to kill Varga then. I was resolved to do it, and he wasn’t. He was happy enough to kill me if he could get somebody else to do it. He’d have stood around laughing his stupid ginger head off if we’d been obliging enough to line up for his firing squad, but he wasn’t ready to do it himself, not if he might get his hands dirty and certainly not if there was any chance anybody might try to hit him back.

  I leaned in close to where Varga was clawing at the tablecloth as if he was trying to keep from falling off his chair. “I am challenging you to a duel, Herr Fregattenkapitän. Come outside and try to kill me if you dare.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Max said, “You don’t have to do this on my account. It’s not that important.”

  “Oh, but it is,” I said. “And you know it is, don’t you, Varga? I’ve called you out. And your little friend the waiter over there knows I’ve called you out. Those sailors standing outside with their rifles at the ready—he’s going to tell them that I called you out and it’ll be all over the naval college this afternoon, it’ll be all over town tonight, all over the dockyards, all over every ship in the navy, sailing out all over the world.” I kept my eyes drilled into him and I said, “You see, Herr Schlepsig, if he doesn’t come outside and fight me right now, his name is mud. He either kills me, or he might as well kill himself.”

  Varga let go of the tablecloth. “I take it, as the party facing the challenge, I may choose the weapons.”

  “If you like.”

  He stood up. “I assume you have no sword.”

  “It’s in my other trousers.”

  He drew that cutlass again, the same one he used to open our first bottle of champagne, and it came out of the scabbard with a hiss of warning. “Have mine,” he said, and then, with a smart bow, he indicated the way out through the French windows. “After you, Erlaucht.”

  I went outside, out into the middle of Varga’s damned stupid croquet lawn. I took my coat off, rolled my sleeves up, swung that big knife around a bit, limbered up a little. When I looked back to the house, there was the steward, hunched over, whispering to the two sailors who stood, gripping their rifles, looking from him to me and back to him. My friends stood crowded round the doorway, Max and Tifty looking worried, Sarah clinging to her father and babbling to him, telling him the story he could not see. Her face was the color of the wall and I suppose mine must have been too. I may tell you, friend, I was damned near shitting myself.

  Varga came out, pushing his way past Sarah and the others and down the steps on to the grass. “Ready?” he said. He was walking toward me pretty quick but he was still a good way off. “Shall we begin?” and, before I had time to answer, he said, “Good!”

  And then that little turd reached into his jacket and came striding across the lawn toward me with a gun in his hand aiming right at me. That first bullet damned near brushed my whiskers. If he’d had enough brains to stand still and take a proper aim, I reckon he could’ve put one between my eyes, but I wasn’t about to make myself a target. I ran. Not away. I didn’t run away. I’ve never run away and, like I told you, it’s resolution that counts. Resolution is the only thing that counts. The willingness to fight, that’s what matters. No, I ran right at that little bastard and he was squaring up to fire on me again when I threw myself into a flick-flack, hands down, feet up, spring, roll, feet down, hands up, bouncing across the soft, flat green grass with the bullets whizzing and spitting and chewing up the turf, until I hit him, skittled him right over and his gun went flying and the air went out of his lungs with a wheeze. I put the point of that sword on his throat and I looked at him for a bit.

  I said, “I want a boat, Varga. Just whatever you’ve got lying round. Something big enough for a camel. Nothing too fancy. A cruiser should do nicely.”

  He gritted his teeth and chewed on his mustaches for a time and he said, “I can�
��t do that! I’m not giving you a warship.”

  “Too bad,” I said, and I leaned on the blade a tiny bit, just so he could feel the point of it through his white collar.

  “Wait, wait!” He was flapping and wriggling on the grass like a newly landed fish. “I’ll give you my yacht!”

  My mate Max was the first to reach us. He bent down to the grass and palmed Varga’s pistol, “Just in case,” he said. “There are two bullets left, so don’t get any funny ideas. I told you, you are not allowed to shoot my friends. I take a dim view of that.”

  I reached down and offered Varga a hand up, but he ignored me, rolled on to his knees and stood up. “Where did you learn to bounce around like that?” he said.

  “Never mind me, where did you learn to shoot? Four bullets and every one of them wasted. You couldn’t hit a cow’s ass with a banjo if you were standing behind the cow. Now, Max here, Max is a crack shot. He could blow off a gnat’s goolies at ten paces.”

  “I quite believe it,” said Varga. “A crack-shot camel wrangler and the bouncing Graf. You might be a traveling circus act for all I know, but I know this much—you are not quite a gentleman.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.” It gave me great pleasure to stab Varga’s sword through the fine turf of his croquet lawn and leave it standing there while I put my jacket back on. I think Varga might have cast a troublesome eye on it for just a moment, but I heard Max say, “Steady,” in the way he spoke to the camel, and nothing came of it.

  And then Sarah arrived with my hat, fussing and clucking and fretful and full of solicitous kisses and a few tears as well.

  “He might have killed you!”

  “Well, I didn’t let him.”