December, 1950

Well, here he was again. Another Christmas, another cheerless room, another bottle of something that was either very bad wine or very good varnish remover. And another war.

He could sympathize with Kinch a lot more, now; trying to be a spy was hard at the best of times. Trying to be a spy in a country where nobody looked like you was damned near impossible. It was maddening. He'd picked up Korean fast enough, even the unfamiliar alphabet, but he was never going to blend in the way he had in Germany, and if there was anything less pleasant than feeling frustrated, feeling frustrated and useless was surely it.

He flopped down at his desk and scowled at the stacks of papers. He'd mentally categorized them into 'bad news,' 'very bad news,' 'God, how did the Colonel do this without going crackers news,' and, let's not forget that perennial favorite, 'why don't you just hang me now and save us both some misery news.'

There had been a 'good news' category, earlier this evening. He was currently drinking it.

And—of course there was—there was a pile of envelopes in his mail tray. The things he usually found in that tray also had a mental classification. It was the one he thought of as the 'there's probably a good reason I stayed in the service and I bloody well wish I knew what it is' stack.

He picked up the bottle, tossed back another swallow. It burned all the way down. Wretched stuff. It made the old Stalag 13 bathtub brew look good by comparison, a feat that really shouldn't have been possible. He put it back on the desk, shoved it to the side. Even the good news in this place was too dismal to bear. Unconsciously, he twined his hands together. His sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up well past his elbows, and his watch was already in the desk drawer, and had been all day. Most of the time, he didn't mind having something clasped around his wrist, but it was Christmas. 'Most of the time' didn't apply.

He flipped through the envelopes. Bad news, more bad news—ooh, new category; 'my superiors are ruddy lunatics news'—and… a letter with a Parisian postmark. He tore it open. There was only a single sheet of paper inside.

A toast, mon pote. Peace on earth. It will happen.

Louis

He shook his head, a small smile flickering at the edge of his mouth. Good old LeBeau. How did he do it? How did he always know, even from halfway across the world, exactly how to make this nightmare of a holiday even slightly bearable? It had been, God, ten years since fate, in the guise of a very cross Kraut guard, had thrown them together. Saving his sanity, and almost certainly his life, in the process. Ten years. Where did the time go?

Well, on with the ritual. He poured a bit more alleged wine into his coffee mug, and held it up, gazing into the middle distance as though he could see Paris from this room somewhere in Korea. As though he could see the radio shack, deep in the bowels of Stalag 13. As though he could see a small man in a tattered red sweater sitting across from him. "To peace on earth, Louie. And soon, damn it all," he murmured. "Peace on earth and good will to man. And 'appy Christmas, mate. 'Appy Christmas..."

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Author's note: This story is part of my own personal head-canon, in which Newkirk stayed in the intelligence service after the war. Really, where else could he have exercised his various skills to their utmost in at least a quasi-legal sort of way? Although I imagine he'd have been a bit more useful in post-war Germany or Cold War USSR for the reasons outlined here. But the UK was involved in the Korean War, at least to some degree, and would therefore have been in need of a good intelligence agent. When only the best will do, the best is what you get.