Warning: Please be advised that this story is very, very silly.

Also, Hochstetter swears auf Deutsch. Like, a lot. Tut mir leid. (Sorry!)

"My dear Colonel,

Clever, the way you got Wagner out of that prison camp. Kindly be just as clever and get these plans out of this one.

Until we meet again…

Nimrod."

"..."

"...Herrgott, Goethe." The man known as Kant slowly and deliberately raised a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on.

"Wie bitte?" The man known as Goethe blinked wide, uncomprehending eyes at him, his mouth hanging open slightly. Kant wanted to strangle him every time he made that face. Which, unfortunately, was often. He could never quite tell if it was real or an act. If it was an act, it was flawless, brilliant, a mask that never, ever came off. Kant almost hoped the so-called "stupid look" was, in fact, a result of un-faked stupidity, because the alternative suggested a level of sadism that he didn't want to contemplate. Was Goethe really just messing with them every single second of his life? For years? It was actually rather horrifying to think about.

The man known as Hegel looked vaguely alarmed. He was a trusting soul and he trusted in Goethe, God bless him, but even he had to know that signing their name to those plans would have consequences eventually. "Haben Sie das wirklich geschrieben?"

Goethe gave a shaky chuckle. He seemed to be slowly coming to the realization that they were all very angry with him. "J- Ja… es war nur einen Witz. Lustig, nicht wahr?"

"Lustig?!" This came from the man known as Nietzsche, who looked like he was about to kill someone. Granted, he always looked like that, but the throbbing veins in his forehead had become more obvious as of late. Kant suspected that his blood pressure had been rising steadily since 1939, a condition that would, someday, inevitably culminate in a messy explosion that he would pay good money to see. "Du… du wirst uns alle töten!"

The woman known as Wittgenstein sighed. "Beruhige dich, Nietzsche. Nur Hogan und seine Männer haben es gesehen."

"Jaaa, aber es ist doch Hogan!" Nietzsche let out a long, frustrated groan, throwing his hands up in the air. "Mein Gott, vor ihm hab' ich Todesangst."

Kant made a quiet noise of amusement. "Du hast immer Todesangst."

"BAH!" Nietzsche attempted to sit down into a nearby wooden chair as huffily as possible, but only succeeded in catching the edge of the seat with his rump and tumbling to the floor in an undignified heap. Rather than stand back up and acknowledge his failure, he chose to remain on the floor like he'd planned to sit there, glowering up at the group with his arms folded across his chest. "Ja, weil ich immer in eure Nähe bin! Ihr Leute seid alle doch verrückt!" He extended his pointer finger, spittle flying from his mouth as he ranted. "Besonders du, Goethe, du Dummkopf, du Trottel! Du… du…"

Goethe smiled a thin, nervous smile. "Nimrod?" he supplied helpfully. His shoulders were raised, stiff; body language that could, no doubt, be attributed to nerves. But it seemed, to Kant, that at moments like this, the man's mask slipped a little. Somewhere deep inside, he was laughing uproariously. Kant was sure of it.

He decided that Nietzsche was right. They were all crazy. Absolutely, irrevocably, unabashedly stark raving mad. If only he'd realized sooner.

- - September 17, 1939 - -

"You two are stark raving mad."

Three men trudged through the layer of dead leaves that coated the forest floor, wandering aimlessly through the game preserves around the Tegeler See, just north of Berlin. They all carried hunting rifles, and were dressed in a way that suggested they had seen hunters in magazines and assembled their outfits based on the fact that they really wanted to look like hunters. The shortest man in the group, the one who had spoken, glanced around the forest with an air of paranoia and clutched his rifle close to his chest. "Was zur Hölle are we even doing here, hah?"

The tall, rather rotund man on his right made a harsh noise that sounded like a cut-off laugh, trailing the butt of his rifle on the ground. "We're certainly not hunting," he said dryly.

The tallest, thinnest, and baldest member of the group tapped a gloved finger on his chin. His other hand kept his rifle tucked firmly under his armpit. "Oh, do you think anyone will be suspicious if we do not shoot anything?"

The short man gave him a withering glare. "If we tell them you were with us, they will be surprised that we did not shoot each other."

While the balding man laughed unconvincingly, the larger man, Colonel Albert Burkhalter, let out a quiet sigh, idly kicking aside the leaves with the tip of his boot. How he had become friends with these two, God only knew. Though, of course, "friends" here was used in the loosest possible sense. Wolfgang Hochstetter, while providing interesting conversation and an able verbal sparring partner, was also insufferable. And Klink… well, he'd just always kind of... been there. Burkhalter frowned. Could he remember a time when he hadn't known Wilhelm Klink? The eventual realization that he couldn't made him feel immensely disappointed in himself.

Oblivious to Burkhalter's thoughts, which was just as well, Klink waved the barrel of his rifle, indicating a large rock off to their right. "Why don't we stop there? It looks like as good a place as any."

Hochstetter took a step back, eyeing Klink's rifle. "Fine. You need to put that thing down before you hurt yourself."

Klink huffed. "I was in combat with the Heer during the Great War, you know! I can handle a weapon."

"Oh, ja, natürlich," Hochstetter said sarcastically. He started to make his way over to the rock, stomping through the leaves. "And I've been with the Berliner Kripo for ten years, and I can't tell you how many grisly deaths I've seen that have boiled down to 'idiot with gun.'"

Klink took the barb with only a quiet 'hmph' and a clenched fist, following Hochstetter. Burkhalter trailed behind him, watching Hochstetter clamber up onto the rock and sit down cross-legged, holding his rifle across his lap and scowling at the surrounding forest. Klink slid carefully onto the left edge of the rock, next to Hochstetter but with conspicuous space between them. Burkhalter knew he wouldn't be able to fit in that space, which was fine with him, as he hadn't been planning on dirtying his coat by trying to sit on that rock anyway. Though Hochstetter and Klink had little in common, they were both prone to acting like schoolboys. Burkhalter had accepted his role as "the mature one" long ago.

Once they had all settled into their positions, Klink and Hochstetter on the rock and Burkhalter standing behind them, silence reigned for a few minutes. Burkhalter idly studied the barrel of his rifle. "...Alright, since the last time we met, we've somehow gotten into another war. Who wants to start complaining first?"

"Bah!" Hochstetter leaned back on his hands. "Is that all this is to you? Complaining?"

Klink looked thoughtful. "Well, technically - "

"We all get together once a month to talk treason, and this time we've covered it up by pretending to go on a hunting trip," Hochstetter said, scowling. "Verdammt, we've been doing this since '35. I don't think 'complaining' quite covers it."

"Treason?" Klink fidgeted. The "T" word was evidently too strong for him. "But we all love our country! How can having a few casual conversations about the way things are going be treason?"

"I doubt your Wehrmacht colleagues would see it that way," Hochstetter grumbled. "Why did we even start doing this in the first place? And why are we still doing it?!"

Burkhalter sighed. "Why, indeed."

The reason was, of course, that all of them were frightened. Though they would never say so out loud. Klink, the old soldier, was frightened that things would never go back to the way they were in the "good old days," and Hochstetter, the detective, was frightened of the Gestapo and its lawlessness. As for Burkhalter, he was frightened of humanity itself. The Nazis had stormed into existence and touched some secret thing in the heart of every Deutscher, a bestial, violent thing. And he was frightened of it, because he had felt it stirring inside himself, in Nürnberg on a chilly September day just like this one.

The three of them had found each other in Berlin in 1935, two years after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor. Klink and Burkhalter had, unfortunately, known each other long before then; Hochstetter they met in a cafe. He'd appeared out of nowhere, sitting himself down in one of the extra chairs at their half-empty four-seater table and tearing into a Käsebrot like an animal before explaining that he only had half an hour for lunch and couldn't (or wouldn't) wait for any of the other tables to free up. The three of them had gotten in some chit-chat before Hochstetter stood up and flew out of the cafe without another word. Bewildered but somehow strangely fascinated by the experience, Burkhalter and Klink went to the same cafe the next day at the same time, and the same thing happened again. This time, it was clear that their table guest had been having a bad day at work, and he grumbled about everything from the rent (zu verdammt hoch!) to the case he was working on (was für ein Idiot tötet sich selbst durch einen Stromschlag, wegen einer Gabel stecken in eine Steckdose?!) to, shockingly, the new regime (Schwachköpfe!). After getting him to lower his voice, both Klink and Burkhalter had been forced to agree, giving vent to their own frustrations in hushed tones that belied the wonderful release they felt. The three of them had been meeting, sometimes publicly and sometimes in secret, to continue that conversation ever since.

But that's all it was: a conversation. Three men who normally couldn't stand each other coming together to gripe about things they weren't supposed to be griping about. It was a bit pathetic, and Burkhalter was beginning to get tired of it. "If all we ever do is sit around and whine, what is the point?" he said, sounding harsher than he'd meant to. "We all know full well that we will never do anything about it, and Klink and I will undoubtedly be very busy from now on, so I think it's best if we call these meetings off and go back to our lives like nothing happened."

"Bah! Something has happened!" Hochstetter spread his hands. "The Heer is in Polen and Wilhelmshaven has been bombed by the RAF!"

"Ja, and expressing our displeasure to each other in the middle of the woods is not going to change anything," Burkhalter snapped, hefting his hunting rifle and turning to go. "This entire exercise has been nothing but a waste of time."

"...Well, then why don't we try doing something?"

Burkhalter whipped back around to face the rock. He hadn't just heard what he thought he'd heard… had he? "Hochstetter, you said that, right?"

Hochstetter, who was staring at Klink with wide eyes, shook his head. "I am not that crazy."

Klink wilted under the combined weight of their gazes, and began blithering. "I- It was just a thought, of course, but it's true that we are all in positions to have easy access to sensitive information, like troop movements and air base locations and - "

"Klink!" Burkhalter shouted, alarmed. "We might have been in murky territory before, but this is definitely all-out treason! Just for saying that, you could get all of us shot!"

"Well, yes, I know, but…" Klink quivered visibly, looking absolutely terrified. And yet, there was something in his eyes that vaguely resembled... resolve. "You said it yourself, we've just been wasting time. And in that time, so much has happened." He dropped his gaze and said, quietly, "This isn't the Deutschland I love anymore."

The three of them fell silent, conspicuously looking everywhere but at each other. Burkhalter found himself angrily wondering just what had come over Klink. That outburst had been distinctly… un-Klink-like. Why did the man have to pick this moment to stop being a sniveling coward? And why did he have to do it in such a way that made Burkhalter feel ashamed?

After a long, awkward silence, Hochstetter tsked and raised his rifle. "So are we going to try to shoot something or not?"

There; that was it. Sweep it back under the rug. Burkhalter breathed a silent sigh of relief and lifted his own gun. "It will seem odd if no one hears any gunshots while we're out here 'hunting.'"

Hochstetter flicked off the safety. "Right… what should I aim for?"

Klink leaned forward slightly, pointing off to the right at a clump of undergrowth. "Birds like to hide in bushes, right?"

Burkhalter held up his hands. "Don't look at me, I have no idea."

Hochstetter shrugged. "Who knows, maybe I'll hit something." Bracing the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, he fired a single shot into the bushes.

The harsh report of the gunshot was immediately followed by a scream of agony. A decidedly human scream of agony.

The three of them were frozen in place for a moment. Then Klink paled. "Mein Gott, you shot someone!"

"Jesus, Maria, und Josef," Burkhalter breathed.

Hochstetter's eyes widened. "Heilige Scheiße!" he cried, tossing his rifle to the ground and scrambling off the rock and towards the bushes.

Burkhalter ran after him, vaguely aware that Klink was trailing behind him. His thoughts were in a panic. If Hochstetter had shot someone in the bushes, that meant that someone had been in the bushes. And if someone had been in the bushes, that someone had probably heard…

By the time he reached Hochstetter, the Kripo detective had already started checking his hapless victim, who was lying face-up on the ground, eyes closed, unmoving. There was a bright red splash of blood near his temple, and Klink gasped. "You shot him in the head!"

"No I did not!" Hochstetter screamed, dropping to his knees and rolling up the man's right trouser leg. "I shot him in the calf! He must have hit his head when he fell." Reaching up towards the man's head, he unwound the white scarf from around his neck and started wrapping it around his leg, just below the knee. "You two are Wehrmacht people," he said, not bothering to look up. "Am I doing this right? The victims are usually dead by the time I get there."

Burkhalter scowled. "We're officers, not medics." He knelt down and inspected the man's leg anyway. There was a raw, red wound on the side of his calf, just below where Hochstetter was tying the tourniquet. "It looks like you only grazed him," Burkhalter said, frowning. "Schade."

Klink looked up at him with wide eyes. "What do you mean by that? This is good, isn't it?"

"No, this is definitely not good," Hochstetter said, tying a knot in the scarf and leaning back. Evidently, he'd come to the same conclusion Burkhalter had. "What was this man doing here?! He could have heard our conversation! The Gestapo could have sent him, for all we know!"

Klink went white as a sheet. "The Gestapo..?"

"Hochstetter, you see the Gestapo everywhere," Burkhalter muttered, mostly to calm both of them down. He gave the unconscious man a quick once-over; brown hair, average build, mustache. He actually looked a bit like Hochstetter, now that he thought about it. Though his face seemed nicer, somehow. Less weasley. The man wore a dark blue ulster coat, dirtied by the fall and a bit… lumpy. No hat.

Hochstetter, who had also been studying the man, gasped suddenly, leaned over, and started frantically unbuttoning the coat. Burkhalter raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing?"

"Checking for secret pockets!" Hochstetter said, flinging open the coat and patting the lining.

Klink looked confused. "Why would he have secret pockets?"

"THE GESTAPO'S POCKETS ARE ALWAYS SECRET!"

Burkhalter decided to commit that little gem to memory, for later taunting. For now, he simply said, "You look like you are having a stroke."

"But I was right!" Hochstetter crowed, ripping open the lining of the coat to reveal a sheaf of papers. He grabbed them from their hiding place and held them before his face, his dark eyes flitting back and forth and glinting with a wild light. After a while, though, he began to look confused. "These… are not things a Gestapo agent should have," he muttered.

Burkhalter's brow furrowed. "Why, what are they?"

"Well, I suppose a Gestapo agent could have them on him, but if he was investigating us, he would have had no reason to bring sensitive materials like this." Hochstetter looked up at him, then held out the papers. "They look like codes and contact names, all written in English. And maps of Deutsche factories."

Burkhalter's eyes widened as he leafed through the documents. Could it be… espionage?

Suddenly, there was a loud crackling sound from behind them, followed by a distorted voice. "This is Mama Bear calling Nimrod, repeat, this is Mama Bear calling Nimrod. Nimrod, are you there? Over." The voice had spoken in English, with a distinctly British accent. Hochstetter blinked. "What - "

"M'yes, this is Nimrod," said a second, distinctly British accent. "What seems to be the trouble, Mama Bear?"

Burkhalter looked down at the man lying on the ground in front of them; still unconscious. He turned around slowly, prepared to bolt if necessary. What he saw froze him in place.

It was Klink. Klink, holding the man's missing top hat. Klink, talking into a small radio concealed inside said top hat. Klink, talking in a smarmy posh British accent into a small radio concealed inside said top hat.

Klink. KLINK.

The voice of Mama Bear returned. "Sorry, old boy, but there's been a slight change of plans. The Underground needs those codes and contacts by tonight."

Klink sighed theatrically. "You simply mustn't keep doing this to me, Squiffy. It's dreadfully inconvenient."

"Nimrod, I have told you to stop calling me Squiffy."

"The codes will be delivered tonight, then," Klink continued, ignoring Mama Bear. "Just to be sure, would you mind running through the handoff with me once more?"

Mama Bear sighed. "Tonight, at 2100 hours, you will meet up with our Underground contact in the woods behind the Tegeler See. There's a giant rock, you can't miss it. The contact will tell you, 'I hear the gooseberries are doing well this year, and so are the mangoes.' You will respond with, 'Mine aren't, but the Big Cheese gets his at low tide tonight.' Got that?"

"Ah, who's the Big Cheese?"

"Nobody, it's just part of the code." Mama Bear seemed to cough. "A lot of lives are riding on this one, Nimrod. Good luck." With that, the connection went dead.

For a long time, nobody moved. The woods were silent. Time itself seemed to have stopped.

Then Klink dropped the hat like it was made of fire ants and held his head in his hands. "Aaaaagghh what have I done?!"

Burkhalter's mind was still too shocked to come up with any more coherent thoughts than basic panic. Hochstetter grabbed Klink by the shoulders and shook him. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

"I don't know!" Klink bawled, letting Hochstetter whip him back and forth like a rag doll. "I found the radio in the hat and then the voice came through and I thought about what we said before and I just - "

"You just agreed to carry out an Allied spy mission THAT IS WHAT YOU DID!" Hochstetter screamed, still shaking Klink. "And now we're all going to DIE!"

Klink was in full babble mode now. "But but but but but - "

"Both of you, get a grip!" Burkhalter said sharply. He'd been tempted to overreact, himself, but somebody had to keep his head if they were going to fix this. "We might not die, but you have to stop acting like chickens with your heads cut off."

Klink nodded meekly, glancing down Hochstetter's hands, which were still gripping his shoulders. After a second or two of glaring daggers at Burkhalter, Hochstetter released his grip and straightened, putting his hands on his hips. "Fine. FINE. Alles gut. What do you suggest we do about this, then, huh? HUH?"

Burkhalter focused the finest icy glare he could muster on Klink, who squirmed. "Well? Are you really Nimrod?"

"No, I swear!" Klink squawked, holding up his hands. "I was just caught up in the moment, I didn't really mean to…" He trailed off.

Burkhalter sighed. He'd believe in Cthulhu before he believed that Klink was a British spy. "How did you get such a perfect British accent?"

"Technically, it's an English accent - "

"Klink!"

"I have some acting experience," he stammered, flinching.

Burkhalter stared at him. "You played Peter Pan one time in Gymnasium!"

Klink shrugged. "Our musical director was big into dialectology."

Hochstetter scowled. "Dialectology?! Bah! How did you know to call that man 'Squiffy?!'"

"I didn't!" Klink protested, holding up his hands again. "I just thought 'Squiffy' sounded like a very English nickname…" He twiddled his thumbs. "Was it too much? Should I have settled for 'chap?'"

Hochstetter let out a long, frustrated groan, making strangling motions with his hands. Klink wisely took several steps back.

Burkhalter folded his arms. He had a good idea of what kind of situation they were dealing with now. "Listen up; the way we get ourselves out of this mess is simple. So, Gott im Himmel, don't screw this up." He gestured towards the still-unconscious man. "All we have to do is take him to the hospital, claiming it was a hunting accident. We replace his secret papers, perhaps with a note from Mama Bear about tonight's handoff. His injuries are not serious, so he will surely be able to get back to his spying by then. And we will have nothing more to do with this."

Klink nodded glumly. Hochstetter frowned. "Alright, but what if something happens? What if we fall under suspicion?"

"Then we were not in this part of the woods," Burkhalter said. "And if it comes down to it, we throw Klink under the bus."

"Wie bitte?!"

"Don't look so worried," Burkhalter said, giving Klink a sour look. "Do you honestly think the Gestapo would even believe it if we told them the truth?" He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and started trudging back towards the rock, where he'd left his rifle. "Nothing is going to happen," he said firmly. "After today is over, everything will go back to normal."

As he crunched through the leaves, he glanced briefly up at the grey sky. Lieber Gott, please, let everything go back to normal.

Author's Note: First Hogan's Heroes fic, yay! I hope it's not too stupid, eh heh heh. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the idea of there being more than one 'Nimrod' was inspired by Deliverer's "Who Could Nimrod Be?" … though that story is serious and this one is… not.

That at least gives me an excuse for my divergences from canon. The timeline of what people were doing before the war is really confusing; I read in one place that Klink was at Stalag 13 when it opened in 1939, but somewhere else said that he wasn't assigned there until 1942. I'm going to go with the later date. Also, Hochstetter was probably actually already in the Nazi party long before this, and he started off in the Allgemeine SS before transferring to the Gestapo, but for the purposes of this story, I'm going to ignore all that. The radio in the top hat should have tipped you off that this isn't exactly going to be the most realistic of fics...

There probably aren't going to be any more long, drawn-out conversations exclusively in German after that one at the beginning, in case you find that annoying (which you probably do). Here are all the translations:

Herrgott, Goethe: Good lord, Goethe.

Wie bitte?: Pardon?

Haben Sie das wirklich geschrieben?: Did you really write that? (ridiculously politely)

J- Ja, es war nur einen Witz. Lustig, nicht wahr?: Y- Yes, it was only a joke. Funny, right?

Lustig?! Du… du wirst uns alle töten!: Funny?! You… you're going to kill us all!

Beruhige dich, Nietzsche. Nur Hogan und seine Männer haben es gesehen: Calm down, Nietzsche. Only Hogan and his men saw it.

Ja, aber es ist doch Hogan! Mein Gott, vor ihm hab' ich Todesangst: Yeah, but it's Hogan! My God, I am deathly afraid of him.

Du hast immer Todesangst: You're always deathly afraid.

Ja, weil ich immer in eure Nähe bin! Ihr Leute seid alle doch verrückt! Besonders du, Goethe, du Dummkopf, du Trottel!: Yeah, because I'm always around you! You people are all crazy! Especially you, Goethe, you idiot, you moron!

Was zur Hölle: What the he**

Natürlich: Naturally

Deutscher: German

Käsebrot: Cheese sandwich

Zu verdammt hoch: Too dang high

Was für ein Idiot tötet sich selbst durch einen Stromschlag, wegen einer Gabel stecken in eine Steckdose?!: What kind of idiot gets electrocuted to death by sticking a fork in an outlet?! (This is the one where I'm not sure if my grammar is correct because it was really hard, so if you're German PLEASE HELP ME.)

Schwachköpfe!: Morons!

Polen: Poland

Heilige Scheiße!: Holy sh*t!

Schade: Too bad

Alles gut: It's all good

Gymnasium: Actually, high school. Not gym class.

(P.S.: The introduction code given by Mama Bear to 'Nimrod' is actually a reference to a certain British comedy show… did you recognize it?)