thanks to you, I’m freezing!” Rebecca hugged the knobby bundle closer to her and trotted a little faster.

 

“I’m sorry, Becky, but it was the only way.”  His solemn tone belied the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

 

“Hm!” Rebecca said with an angry toss of her brown hair as she slipped into the safety of the warehouse containing the hot water heater.

 

“Is Miss Becky’s tongue frozen?” Dunder asked concernedly.  “I had that happen to me once.  It hurts.”

 

“Nah, she’s just givin’ me the cold shoulder.”

 

As he entered the warehouse a step behind Baloo, Dunder said, “Don’t worry, Miss Becky.  I’ll get some clothes for you so your shoulders won’t be cold. All I have to do is fill out a few dozen forms...”

 

The Balcony of the Glorious People’s Government Building
Several Hours Later…

 

This was the moment that Col. Spigot had been awaiting for nearly two decades.  In a few minutes, the High Marshall would declare war on that soft underbelly of the western world – Usland. And he, Col. Ivanov Spigot, would once again have a chance to shine in battle as he had done so many times in the Great War.

 

He rocked expectantly on his heels and peered between the stone balcony posts down at the large crowd of peasants assembled in the square. A few half-heartedly waved Thembrian flags.  Most just huddled together and shivered.  Like the High Marshall, Madame High Marshall, and all of the top, top officials who were gathered on the balcony, they weren’t smiling.

 

Proudly adjusting his helmet, Spigot looked up at the uniformed, bespectacled man next to him. “I’m Col. Spigot, Head of the Glorious People’s Air Force.  Perhaps you’ve heard of me?  The Terror of Tiny Tundra?  Beast of the Battle of Buldoon?  Death Dealing Demon of Dinswipe?”

 

The man, who happened to be the Head of the Ministry of Music and who had gotten stuck listening to that Col. Draindrip’s boring drivel on numerous occasions, leaned over the balcony and frantically signaled for the start of the Thembrian national anthem.  The full orchestra and booming choir on the stage below the balcony drowned out Spigot’s reminisces. 

 

It also drowned out the sound of a navy-and-white seaplane that circled overhead.

 

A Little While Later…

 

Col. Conrad pushed through the heavy rings of the Iron Curtain, muttering to himself. “Shere Khan can’t tell me what to do.  No one can tell me what to do.  I’m Col. Conrad and if I say that there’s gonna be a Cold Water War, then I reckon there’s gonna be a Cold Water War.  And the first casualty is gonna be the one thing that the High Marshall values most.”

 

He drew a hand grenade out of his pocket and was about to pull the pin and heave it at the hot water heater when…

 

Flash!

 

Momentarily distracted, Col. Conrad turned around. “What in the name of my Aunt Fanny’s corsets…?”

 

His curiosity was rewarded by a flashbulb going off right in his face. Flash!

 

It was Rebecca, dressed in a man’s suit and a grey trench coat. Completing her ensemble was a tattered fedora with a press card shoved in the hatband; it was pulled down to shade her face. “Fritz Kaddlehopper,” she said in a mannish voice. “Reporter for the Glorious People’s Press.”  She snapped another picture with her camera. Flash!

 

“Don’t I know you?  You look kinda familiar.”

 

Without answering, she put the camera a mere inch from his nose and took a close up shot to blind him.  While he was rubbing the spots out of his eyes, she touched the false grey mustache she wore to make sure it was still on.  “I’m here for an exclusive interview on the man who started the war.  The who’s.”  Flash!  “The why’s.”  Flash!  “And the how’s.”  Flash!  “Complete with pictures.”

 

Blinded by all the flashes, Conrad stumbled backwards, tripped over his own feet, and went sprawling. The grenade flew from his hand and went skittering across the tile floor where it stopped near the Iron Curtain. “Ya’ll can say that again,” he said with a pained moan.

 

“Complete with pictures.”  Flash!

When she was helping him up, Rebecca took off her engagement ring and slipped it into his pocket. Then, camera clicking away at the Colonel, she backed towards the Iron Curtain and the grenade, but he was too fast for her.

 

He dove for the grenade and tackled it like it was a football.  Scrambling to his feet, he demanded to know: “Hey, what in tarnation are you doing?”

 

“Just getting a close up of the famous weapon that started it all,” Rebecca replied, taking a picture of the grenade that he was tossing up and down.  Flash!  “The Glorious People love it when I dish the dirt.” Flash!

 

He drawled, “Waall, I love bein’ able to see, so stop doin’ that!”

 

“Sorry, sir, did I get your bad side?”  Flash! Flash! Flash! Flash!  As she snapped a series of blinding pictures of his other side, she slipped her hand through the Iron Curtain and waved.

 

On cue, Sgt. Dunder crashed through Iron Curtain. “What’s going on…?”  There was a pause as he untangled the barrel of his rifle from the iron rings.  “Sorry about that.”  Shouldering his weapon, he cleared his throat self-consciously, and said his line again.  “What’s going on in here?”

 

Briskly, Rebecca said, “Fritz Kaddlehopper, reporter for the Glorious People’s Press interviewing this Uslandian.”  Flash!

 

When Sgt. Dunder didn’t say anything, Rebecca repeated pointedly: “Interviewing this Uslandian.”  Flash!

 

Woodenly, Dunder said, “Uslandians aren’t allowed in here.  I’m gonna have to take you to Col. Spigot.”   Per Baloo’s instructions, the normally gentle sergeant roughly seized Col. Conrad by the arm, dragged him through the Iron Curtain, and towards the warehouse door.

 

“See this, you clodhopper?” Conrad tugged at the patch with the ambassador’s seal on his sleeve.  “I have diplomatic immunity, meaning I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.  And what I want to do right now is…”  He sank his perfect teeth into Dunder’s snout.

 

“Ouch!” Dunder cried, releasing the colonel, who flung open the door and escaped outside.

 

“I don’t remember that being part of the plan, Miss Becky.”  As he stood in the open doorway, Dunder touched his sore snout and winced. “But at least we kept him from blowing up the you-know-what behind the Iron Curtain and kept Col. Spigot from the firing squad.”

 

Rebecca removed her moustache and nodded.  She said softly, “It’s all up to Baloo now.” 

 

Col. Conrad’s plane sprayed them with snow blown from the warehouse roof as it soared overhead.

 

In the Martinique PB&J Seafarer…

 

The navy-and-white seaplane circled like a vulture several thousand feet over Mustgo Square.  Col. Conrad stuck his head out the open window; the freezing wind stung his eyes and ruffled his golden curls. A devious grin marred his handsome features.  He knew that far below, on the balcony of the government building, were all the Heads of State, waiting for the High Marshall to declare war.  He drew the grenade out of his pocket and dangled it out the window. “This’ll start the war off with a bang.” 

 

He jumped when a voice over the radio said, “Put it back, Connie.”

 

“It can’t be!  He’s supposed to be dead.”  With trembling fingers, Col. Conrad picked up the microphone.  “Baloo?”

 

A Thembrian plane, plated like an armored car and armed like a small tank, fell in line with his starboard wing.

 

“Comrade Baloo to you,” the big bear said, touching his fingers to the brim of his hat in a salute.

 

Not believing his eyes, Conrad grabbed the microphone. “You traitor!”

 

“Takes one ta know one.”  As if speaking to a small child, Baloo said very patiently, “Now, why don’t you put that nasty old grenade away before ya hurt someone, Connie.”

 

“Ya know what really hurts?  Bein’ ambassador to this stinking country!  Have you ever been forced to listen to hours of the High Marshall’s ice fishing stories?  But the kicker is he never catches anything, but ice!  Ice!  He keeps his biggest ‘catches’ in a cupboard at his summer home right next to the figurines he’s whittled out of ice.  And he’s the most interestin’ person in Thembria!  The rest of ‘em are all alike as peas in a pod and as blah as the gruel they eat, especially that Col. Nozzle.  Who cares what he did in the Great War twenty years ago?

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