But as soon as the car clunked into gear the Napoleons leaped into action with cries of: 'Au secours! Les rosbifs's'échappent! N'oubliez pas Agincourt! Vite! Vite!' and then rushed the car. Stig got off a shot and managed to tranq a particularly vicious-looking Napoleon in the thigh. They smashed their cudgels against the car, broke the windows and sent a cascade of broken glass all over us. I thumped the central door-locking mechanism with my elbow as a Napoleon grappled with my door handle. I was just about to fire at point-blank range into the face of another Napoleon when there was a tremendous explosion thirty yards in front of us. The car was rocked by the blast and enveloped momentarily in a drifting cloud of smoke.

'Sacrebleu!' shrieked Napoleon, breaking off the attack. 'Le Grand Nez! Avancez, mes amis, mart aux ennemis de la République!'

'Go!' I shouted at Bowden, who, despite having been struck a glancing blow by Napoleon, was still just about conscious. The car juddered away and I grabbed the steering wheel to avoid a band of twenty or so Wellingtons of varying degrees of shabbiness who were streaming past the car in their haste to dispose of Napoleon.

'Up, guards, and at them!' I heard Wellington shout as we gathered speed down the road, past a smoking artillery piece and the abandoned cars we had seen on the way in. Within a few minutes we were clear of the wood and the battling factions, and Bowden slowed down.

'Everyone okay?'

They all answered in the affirmative, although they were not unscathed. Millon was still ashen and I took Bowden's gun off him just in case. Stig had a bruise coming up on his cheek and I had several cuts on my face from the glass.

'Mr Shgakespeafe,' I asked, 'are you okay?'

'Look about you,' he said grimly, 'security gives way to conspiracy.'

We drove to the gates, out of Area 21 and through the darkening evening sky to the Welsh border, and home.

34
St Zvlkx and Cindy

KAINE 'FICTIONAL' CLAIMS BOURNEMOUTH MAN

Retired gas-fitter Mr Martin Piffco made the ludicrous comment yesterday, claiming that the beloved leader of the nation was simply a fictional character 'come to life'. Speaking from the Bournemouth Home for the Exceedingly Odd where he has been committed 'for his own protection', Mr Piffco was more specific and likened Mr Yorrick Kaine to a minor character with an over-inflated opinion of himself in a Daphne Farquitt book entitled At Long Last Lust. The Chancellor's office dubbed the report 'a coincidence", but ordered that the Farquitt book be confiscated nonetheless. Mr Piffco, who faces unspecified charges, made news last year when he made a similar outrageous claim regarding Kaine and Goliath investing in 'mind-controlling experiments'.

Article in the Bournemouth Bugle, 15 March 1987