March, 1969

The small café had outdoor seating, and the two men nursing their coffee were making no particular effort to hide the fact that, if the weather had not been unseasonably pleasant, they would probably have left at least half an hour before. The coffee wasn't that good.

But it was a warm, sunshiny afternoon and neither of them had anywhere pressing to be, nor anything more important to do than enjoy their own company, and they were taking full advantage of that fact. They'd already covered some of the more earthshatteringly important conversational topics, which involved a great many snapshots of children in various locations, the detailed recounting of letters and/or telephone calls from the more far-flung of their social circle, old jokes and reminiscences that had been dragged from the dusty wardrobes of memory only slightly embellished by the passage of time, and a few humorous anecdotes derived from the three months since their last visit, again only slightly embellished in the telling.

A few teens with guitars had set up shop on the corner nearest the café. One of them, a lanky young man with flaming red hair halfway down his back, cleared his throat, strummed a complicated series of arpeggios, and began belting out a song that had spent a great deal of time on the Top Ten lists that past winter, for reasons that probably made a lot of sense if you were nineteen and none at all to many members of the older generation.

It certainly made no sense to the small man at the table. LeBeau made a face only a step or two less revolted than the one he had worn the time Carter had inveigled him into trying something he'd called a 'corn dog.' The redhead, not noticing or not caring, informed the world at large that he was the Eggman, then, apparently changing his mind, announced that he was, in fact, the Walrus. Goo goo g'joob.

"Mon Dieu, Pierre," he sniffed. "Were we that stupid when we were that age?"

Newkirk glanced at the buskers. "Louie, when we were that age, we were crawling about in tunnels, blowing up bridges and trying to stay a step ahead of the Gestapo. Stupid was the least of it."

LeBeau rolled his eyes, not impressed with the logic. He was somewhat thicker around the middle than he'd been in the old days; he still had an appreciation for fine cuisine that bordered on the fanatical. He now owned and ran a restaurant in Paris, one that connoisseurs spoke of with hushed respect and that former employees spoke of with hushed terror. One of his former sauciers—now a successful restauranteur in his own right—had dubbed him 'Dante,' on the grounds that LeBeau put his people through Hell… with the express intention of bringing them through to Paradise. A stint at 'La Maison des Ours' was becoming a required part of any ambitious chef's resume.

Newkirk just grinned. His face was a bit more lined than it had been during the war, and his salt and pepper hair was rapidly losing the 'pepper' element, but he was still whipcord over bone, and to his friend's undisguised irritation, his diet still consisted in large part of black coffee, cigarettes, and nervous energy. He'd stayed in the service, and had enjoyed a long and presumably successful career doing what he would only describe as 'a little of this and a little of that.' 'This,' in the past, had involved dropping off the radar, often for months or years at a time, but nowadays he spent far more of his time at a desk than he did anywhere else, and he was not shy about complaining about it, either. And, naturally, 'that' was classified.

LeBeau had a pretty good idea of what his friend had spent his life doing, of course, and it had caused him some gut-wrenching nightmares over the years. Even cats only got nine lives, after all, and he figured that their time at Stalag 13 had to have already accounted for at least four or five of them. But he'd eventually come to terms with the fact that, someday, the other shoe would drop, and that the inevitable three AM phone call would come when it came. Newkirk had told him, more than two decades ago, that he had listed, as next of kin, Mavis, on the grounds that she had the right to know what had happened to him, and the Colonel, on the grounds that he had the clearance to know what had really happened to him. Furthermore, he'd said that he had asked the Colonel to tell the rest of them as much as he legally could. LeBeau suspected that, given their history, Hogan would tell them the truth, legally or not. He still wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.

But all that was in the hands of God and MI-6, not necessarily in that order. Until that phone call actually happened, he forced himself not to think too far into the future or press for explanations he was never going to get. About the only things he knew for absolute certain were that Newkirk had an impressive vocabulary of invective in five languages, including Russian, ex-girlfriends on four continents, and a great many scars about which he had said only, "Things happen, Louie."

Oh, and he also knew that Newkirk had been thrown out of the cinema during James Bond movies because he could not stop laughing. On three separate occasions.

"We were crawling through tunnels because we were fighting the worst danger the world had ever known. We were not howling nonsense and dressing like clowns. There is a difference."

"Maybe, maybe not," Newkirk said reasonably. "Every generation thinks the one before it is made up of senile old fossils and that the one after is full of brainless twits." He glanced at the buskers again. "Can't say I'm overly fond of their music myself, but they'll have nippers of their own who listen to something even worse. That enough revenge for you?"

"It is not just the terrible music, or the dreadful hair, though," LeBeau argued. "They don't… I don't even know. They just don't seem to care about the world. The world we fought to give them."

"As I recall it, we weren't too chuffed with the world our fathers fought to give us, either," said Newkirk. "Hell, I'm not always all that fond of the world we fought to give us. Maybe the kids have a point."

"Heh. You sound as though you're about to grow out your hair and begin playing the guitar."

"Shoot me first," said Newkirk with an expressive twist of his lip. "Sounds like torturing cats, and I imagine my landlord would have a few words to say to me on the subject of eviction. Or evisceration."

"And I wouldn't blame him. But indulge my curiosity. How have you managed to keep from alienating him this long?"

"Good looks, irresistible charm, and never once being late with the rent. Plus, a couple of lads who thought they were a great deal cleverer than they actually were broke in a couple of years back. I explained a few things to them, one thing led to another, and nobody else has tried it since."

"Professional courtesy?"

"Fear of God." Newkirk cocked his head; for a moment, a familiar predatory glint flickered through his expression, but it faded back into the even more familiar wry grin. "I certainly wouldn't call that lot anything close to professional. Positively disgraceful, I'd've called it. No craft what-so-bloody-ever, and Alfie would've had my hide for a tea cozy if I'd ever been as sloppy as that."

"You see? It is as I said. Young people these days… I don't know where this will end."

"Well, if you figure it out, I'd love to hear it." Newkirk drank the last lukewarm sip of coffee, made a face. "Cor. Maybe these blokes should consider using their coffeepot as a radio. You may hate pop music, but at least it's slightly less lethal than this sludge."

"Very slightly. But never mind. It is your turn to cross the Channel. Next time, we will meet in Paris, and drink something palatable for a change. Shall we say sometime in June?"

"Not sure, mate," said Newkirk. "I've some business to attend to; don't know yet how long it'll take. But I'll call you when I'm back in town, and we can arrange something, all right?"

LeBeau stifled a sigh. It was never a good sign when Newkirk had 'business' to attend to, because it always, always meant that something terrible was in the process of happening, somewhere in the world. And he read the newspapers; terrible things were already happening in so many places that it was sometimes difficult to keep them all straight.

Why all of those terrible things needed to rest squarely on the shoulders of an aging Cockney thief was a question LeBeau had never been able to entirely answer, but he knew better than to say so. Again.

"Ah, mais oui. I'll drop everything the moment you deign to grace us with your presence," said LeBeau, tartly. Then he smiled. "And bonne chance, mon pote. Be careful. We are not as young as we used to be."

"And a good thing, too. Else I really might have to grow out my hair and start dressing like a tramp, just to fit in with the others."

"If you do, don't bother coming to Paris, after all," said LeBeau. "It's bad enough you still sound like a barbarian, without looking like one, too."

"Groovy. Peace out, man," said Newkirk with a wink and an exaggerated American drawl.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's Note: Allegedly, 'I Am The Walrus' was written after Lennon learned that students were being asked to analyze Beatles lyrics; he decided to write something so utterly random that it would be impossible to assign any meaning to it. If the story's true, it backfired, because everyone and their grandmother has taken a stab at deciphering the song. Either way, it's awfully fun to sing, and I like it far more than LeBeau seems to. The title is drawn from the bridge of the song- 'Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun/ If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.'

Speaking of LeBeau; his restaurant's name, La Maison des Ours, means 'the home of the bears.' Or something like that. I thought of calling it 'Chez les Ours,' but Google Translate insisted that meant 'in the bears,' and that wouldn't have done at all.