“I know that you want to be a movie star, yes.”

“And I’m going to be. The biggest that ever there was, now you’ve brought the programmer. Oh yes indeed.”

Bobby Boy dropped onto one of the terrible chairs, which let out a terrible groan. Russell settled uncomfortably onto the other.

“Do you want a drink?” asked Bobby Boy.

“Yes, actually I do.”

Bobby Boy produced a bottle of Scotch and a pair of glasses from a desk drawer.

Russell viewed the label on the Scotch bottle. It was Glen Boleskine. The very expensive stuff that Mr Fudgepacker kept in his drinks cupboard for favoured clients. Russell raised an eyebrow.

“Look, Russell,” said Bobby Boy, “there’s no point in beating about the bush. I’m dishonest, I know it. Always have been and probably always will be. My father was dishonest and so was my grandfather before him. Actually my grandfather was an interesting man, did you know that he knew the exact moment he was going to die?”

“Get away?” said Russell, accepting a glass of stolen Scotch.

“Yes, the judge told him.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“No, but it’s true.”

Russell sipped the Scotch. He’d never tasted it before, although he’d always wanted to and he did have ready access to the drinks cupboard. It tasted very good.

“So,” said Bobby Boy, “I will tell you the story, which you promise you will divulge to no-one and you will give me the programmer.”

“All right,” said Russell, tasting further Scotch.

“All right,” Bobby Boy took out a packet of cigarettes, removed one, placed it in his tricky mouth and lit up. Blowing smoke in Russell’s direction, he began the telling of his tale.

“It was about a week ago –”

“Which day?” asked Russell.

“What do you mean, which day?”

“I mean,” said Russell, “Which day exactly. I want the truth from the very beginning.”

“Thursday,” said Bobby Boy.

“Truly?”

“All right, it was Wednesday. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Go on.”

“It was last Wednesday. I had the day off because I was sick.”

“I bet you weren’t really sick.”

“All right, OK, I wasn’t really sick. Look, do you want to hear this or not?”

“Go on,” Russell finished his glass of Scotch and reached out for a refill. Bobby Boy gave him a small one.

“It was last Wednesday and I was off work, skiving. Actually I’d gone to an audition. I had, truly. They were casting for a movie based on one of the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers. Death Wore a Motorhead T-shirt, adapted from the book Death Wore a Green Tuxedo. I was hoping to get the part of third-menacing-hood-in-alleyway. I didn’t get it though. They said I didn’t look tricky enough. Anyway I didn’t get back until quite late and I was taking a short cut across the allotments, checking the sheds to make sure they were all locked up properly.”

Russell raised an eyebrow once more.

“They were, as it happens. When out of the blue, or the black really, as it was quite late at night, comes this god-awful racket. Like engines failing. I thought it must be a plane about to crash. And I remember thinking, that’s handy, because I could help.”

Russell raised the other eyebrow.

“All right. Well it didn’t sound like a big aircraft. A light aircraft. Maybe carrying drugs or something. But it wasn’t an aircraft. I looked all around and I couldn’t see anything. Then out of the black, out of absolutely nowhere, in fact, that thing in the hangar. That Flügelrad materializes in the air about twenty feet in front of me and crashes right down onto the ground. I nearly shat myself, I can tell you. And I ran. I won’t say I didn’t. You’d have run. I ran for a bit and then I thought, Roswell. Alien autopsies. Video rights. What would a dead alien be worth? You’d have thought the same.”

Russell shook his head.

“No, you wouldn’t have thought the same. But I thought it, so I crept back and hid and watched. And after a while the hatch opens and the ladder comes down and then out they come. Not aliens, like I was expecting, but Nazi soldiers. SS blokes, all the uniforms and everything, and they climb down and look around. Looking really baffled. And then there’s all this shouting in German, like ranting. And I thought, I’ve heard that voice and then –”

“Adolf Hitler got out,” said Russell.

“Adolf Hitler got - What do you mean? How did you know that?”

“A lucky guess?”

“Hm. Well, it was him, Russell. It really was. Looking exactly the same as he did in the pictures.”

“I believe you,” said Russell. “I really do.”

“Blimey,” said Bobby Boy. “Well, it was him. And he gets out and climbs down the ladder and shouts at these SS blokes and they shrug and continue to look baffled. And one goes back in and gets a map or something. And they study this and then they all march off. And I watch them go and when they’re well away into the distance, I creep over and have a shifty inside. Wait until you see it. It’s all old radio valves and dials and turncocks and levers. So I’m inside and I’m wondering what to do. It seems as if this thing’s crash landed and I think, well, should I pull out a few bits so it can’t be mended and phone the newspapers and do a deal? I mean, well, this has to be news, doesn’t it? So I’m tinkering about, wondering which bit to remove when I twiddle this dial and the next thing that happens is the ladder retracts, the hatch snaps shut and the whole thing shakes like crazy. And once again I have to hold onto my guts.”

Russell had finished his second stolen Scotch and he rattled his glass on the desk top. Bobby Boy poured another small measure into it.

“So I’m thinking, Get out before the frigging thing blows up. But then the rattling stops, the hatch opens again and the ladder goes down. So I rush out. And this is where it gets weird.”

“Oh, this is where it gets weird.”

“This is where it gets really weird. You see, it isn’t night any more. Only a few minutes have passed inside the Flügelrad but outside it’s daytime. And it isn’t the next daytime either. Oh no. When I take a look outside, everything’s different. The Flügelrad –”

“Why do you keep calling it that?”

“Because that’s what it is. I found the instruction manual and notes and stuff. I got a German dictionary from the library.”

“They don’t let you take out dictionaries, they’re in the reference section.”

“I nicked one, all right? But I managed to do a translation. But that’s later on, let me tell you what happened next. I get out and I’m not on the allotment any more. Well, I am. I am where the allotment used to be. Now it’s a park. A nice park and all around it are these smart new houses. But they’re futuristic houses. I’m in the future, Russell.”

Russell made the face that says, Yeah, right! without actually saying it.

“OK, I didn’t know it then. The Flügelrad has landed in amongst a load of bushes and it’s pretty well hidden. I’m standing up on the dome looking around, so I figure that as I’m here, wherever I am, I might as well have a look round. So I get out and take a walk. I cross the park and I go out into the street. And the first thing I see is The Bricklayer’s Arms. It’s hardly changed. Except for the name on it, now it’s called The Flying Swan, and the road isn’t the Ealing Road any more, now it’s the something-strazzer or something.

“German name, right? I’m pretty shaken up by this, as you can understand, but I go walkabout. And up where the Great West Road should be, there’s this huge shopping centre. Huge. Oh yeah, Russell, and there’s cars. Flying cars, I kid you not. Volkswagens they are. But sort of souped up and flying. Landing in car parks on top of the shopping centre.”

“What about people?” Russell asked.

“Yeah, there’s people. They look pretty hot. Tall and blond, really well dressed. The women have these golden scaley dresses. The men have the futuristic uniforms, like Star Trek, but they’ve got swastikas on them. Freaky, right? Well, I’m pretty sure now that I must be in the future, but I know there’s one way to find out – because they always do it in the movies – find a newspaper shop and check the date. Well, there’s no newspaper shop, because there’s no newspapers.”