Arthur's legs were killing him.

'Peddle faster!' X said. 'I can see it!'

The prospect of land was a relief after so much time spent over open water — ever since the incident with the mustard farmers. Arthur just hoped his knees would hold out.

And it was hot — he was hot. Sweat was forming in little pearls on his forehead and precipitating over the Everest of his matted eyebrows before monsooning into his eyes. Just a little longer... that was all he asked.

The British guard blinked mid-bite of his ham sandwich as he saw something fluttering in the Spanish sky. Beside him his colleague dozed and the guard didn't wish to wake him — at least, until he knew what it was he was seeing. Anyway, his friend had recently started acting very strangely — something about his mind not being what it once was. The guard had no wish to hear that again from a man younger than himself.

Leaning forward, having placed the sandwich back into his lunchbox, he squinted at the black silhouette that was getting slowly bigger and accompanied a strange chuffing noise. Grabbing binoculars dutifully inscribed in gold with 'Robert', given to him by his fiancé, the guard stared at the site of what appeared to be a large spinning top heading his way, driven by some guy on the back of a bike looking like his was about to pass out.

The lenses lowered as they strange vessel hoved into view. And Bert watched agog as the wooden frame hovered slowly past, indeed piloted by a deeply red-faced man on a bike, while another had been eating a baguette. The less said about the third man in the light grey pullover, hugging the circular base and with his eyes clamped shut, the better. Two of the three were watching Bert with indifference as they went by, though the baguette-eater suddenly beamed and grabbed mustard from the guard's lunchbox just before the flying device got out of range during its ascent up toward the trees that lined Gibraltar's famous Rock.

Arthur pulled back on the steering column — and then everything went horribly wrong. 'Ohbugger!' he said quickly, as he felt the screw lurch awkwardly.

The da Vinci screw landed with as much grace and efficacy as the Roswell UFO. In the final moments, Arthur peddled hard to draw them level with the canopy of trees. As the craft peered above the top of the rock, the downdraft of wind crossing over it forced them suddenly downward into the copse of trees that lined the rim. The pine needles proved immediately ruinous to the canopy of the 'copter, which began to shred and tear.

'Brace for —' Arthur squealed breathlessly.

The 'copter came to a shuddering and crashing stop amid the dense net of pine needles and broad branches....

'I think we're —'

The bough upon which they had come to rest gave up its titanic struggle to support the weight of three fully-grown men and the flying artefact they had arrived in and snapped neatly in two. The 'copter lurched awkwardly down from branch to branch. With each impact the splintering of yet more branches and delicate artistry could be heard, until, at last, Arthur and X landed with an indelicate thump amid the ruined wreckage of the helicopter that had carried them from Paris.

Arthur came to his senses first. 'X? X, are you all right?'

'I think I broke something,' X winced as he held up the flattened remains of his sandwich. 'I mean, it's ruined.'

Arthur disregarded his partner's obsession with food and looked for Sfret. 'Sfret?' he shouted.

'Sfret?!' he called again. Nothing.

His search was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a rifle being pointed at him. Several rifles. The long sort, packed with bullets. 'I don't know who the hell you are, or what that thing is,' boomed the figure behind the rifle, kicking a piece of broken sail from around his feet, 'but this is British territory and you are trespassing! Hands where I can see them!'

X slowly stood up, and raised his arms.

Arthur turned around slowly and looked the captain in the eye. He raised his arms, but kept his right one crooked. 'I am reaching for my ID,' he said, slowly moving his arm towards his inner jacket pocket. The guns followed him every inch. 'We are Agents of Her Majesty's Government and we are on a mission. We are not terrorists.' The guns didn't waver. 'This can all be cleared up in one moment and no-one is going to have shoot anyone.'

Arthur's hand reached his suit lapel; he fingered his way into his jacket and prized open his inner pocket. Reaching in, the tips of his fingers delicately felt for his Agency warrant card. Instead, all they found was the torn lining of the pocket. His fingers poked out of the hole.

'Ah,' he said. His eyes widened a little.

There was a universal sound of safety catches being removed.

'Now wait just one second,' Arthur started to say.

At that most exquisite of moments, Sfret leapt out of the tree he'd be clinging to like a rabid koala. He landed on top of the captain's head and bit him.

The captain's machismo had drained immediately once Sfret leapt on him to cries of 'Get it off' and 'It's in my hair'.

'If we could just see the governor?' Arthur began negotiations trying to be politely formal.

'Oh you'd like that, wouldn't you, terrorist?' laughed the captain's second-in-command as his superior flailed and staggered about in the background. 'You'll have to do better than that.' He waved his rifle in the Agent's direction while glancing to the captain, wearing a look of concern.

Arthur eyed the barrel of the gun, so close he could pick out the individual ridges on the inside of the barrel. 'X,' he called back. 'X, do you have? — X!'

One arm raised, X was now sharing his snapped bread with a large cream-brown monkey with a pink face, dunking its own half of baguette in the mustard splattered against X's chest.

'X!!'

'Mm?'

'Do you have your Agency ID?' Arthur asked, pointing furiously at the grizzled Gibraltar veteran with the gun while, in the far distance, the senior officer continued flailing around with Sfret.

'Oh, I might do.' X fumbled around his attire and pulled out a card with his face on with a thick beard and dreadlocks.

A private lumbered over to X and took the card. 'What does it say, Piltdown?' snapped the second-in-command, whose name was Smythe.

Private Piltdown blinked, squinted at the ID of a bearded dreadlocked X and spoke with a thick Yorkshire accent. 'It says 'is name is Rasta Halal Ben Laden. An' someone's written "Death to the honky oppressors" on the back. An' it's a membership card for the "United Criminal Council to Subvert & Destroy the Western World"...' He scratched his head. '..."Hackney branch".'

'X!' hissed Arthur desperately.

'Ah, was wondering where that had gotten to. Remember that infiltration op, old chum? Things turn up in the oddest pockets, I swear...'

'Cuff them!' shouted Smythe. 'Gag them! Manacle them! Fetch some matching orange jumpsuits and socks! They're going directly to Colwyn Bay Detention Centre. And get some kind of restraint for that thing on the Captain's head.'

Sfret was dragged off the Captain and trussed up, where he shuffled about in the dust growling. Arthur and X kneeled stiffly as handcuffs were clapped on their wrists. The Captain escorted Arthur and X path that led towards a small army outstation. Sfret, who kept snarling at the arresting soldiers for good effect, was bundled into a dark sack, where he felt much happier away from all the sunlight and fresh air.

The three prisoners were escorted down the rock face via a funicular rail that was designated for armed forces use only. It led to a small port at the base of the security station. They were led inside and brought before the Chief.

Arthur and X were lined up in front of the impressive mahogany desk. Behind it a large, dark swivel chair was turned away from them in authoritarian disdain.

'What,' boomed a voice, 'are you doing on my rock?!'

X was about to say something very rude indeed when Arthur clapped a hand over his mouth.

'I know that voice...' said Arthur, stunned.

The chair paused and swivelled. Arthur was aghast.

'Major-General Sir Thomas Arguthy Fort-William!! What are you doing here?' Arthur spluttered, unashamedly gawking like a goldfish.

'Art!' exclaimed the Major-General, raising his hands into the air amicably. 'Graduated at last, eh?'

Arthur looked momentarily embarrassed.

X, rigid, glanced side-long at his partner. 'You... re-sat the exam?'

'Let us not speak of this now,' said Arthur, grinning rictus-like.

X smirked.

Major-General Sir Thomas Arguthy Fort-William came over and gave Arthur a manly hug. Appearing to notice X for the first time, he gestured his hand is ferocious avuncularity. X accepted the handshake gingerly and nearly had three fingers broken and his shoulder dislocated. The Major-General gripped like a boa and shook like an alligator. And he smiled a big, wide display of perfect dentures that disturbed his wide, grey handlebar moustache upward like a pair of arching eyebrows or a lady's crimpoline dress hitched up in a curtsy.

The security captain looked utterly distraught. 'B-B-B-But sir!' he protested 'These are my prisoners! They're under arrest.'

'Nonsense! Art was one of the pips I trained at the barracks back in the day. I'll not see one of my lads bound and trussed like some hog dinner. You can untie them, Smythe!'

'But sir! They're under arrest. You can't un-arrest them!'

'I can't do what, hmm?' The Captain accepted the reproach in sullen mode and undid their cuffs with a snap of the key, then slinked off miserably.

As he shut the door, the one called Bert could briefly be heard complaining bitterly about the high crime of theft of sandwich fillings.

Major-General Sir Thomas Arguthy Fort-William lounged back in his chair and lit a thoroughly politically incorrect pipe and took a good chug on it. 'Now then, gents, what can I do for you?'

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