"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."
Jean de La Fontaine, The Horoscope

* * *

To say that Major Klaus von dem Eberbach was in a bad mood would have been somewhat of an understatement.

Klaus's normal bad mood could usually be somewhat alleviated by some snarling at subordinates, drinking a cup of Nescafe or by smoking a cigarette. His current mood was well beyond bad, because all of the above possibilities had been thwarted. It was not because the NATO HQ was empty and lacked coffee and cigarettes, which would at least have been acceptable in a way, but because of a damned cold. A damned cold that really made him feel like shit. His sore lungs attempted to jump out of his body at the mere sight of a cigarette, coffee made his pounding head ache even more, and his throat was so sore he could barely whisper, much less yell.

Without his usual stress relievers, the Major was feeling slightly homicidal, and whatever Alphabets had the misfortune not to be on assignment were being very, very inconspicuous, because even though the Major couldn't yell at them, he still could produce a good visual equivalent of a bellow. Even his sneezing was intimidating. The poor new J had mistaken it for gunfire earlier in the day and pulled his weapon. If so many agents weren't away, he would be well on his way to Alaska by now. Right now, he was on his way to Munich to investigate the uses of fertilizer in bombs. The Major's nose twitched and he grimaced, feeling another sneeze coming on. Most of the Alphabets present noticed that and began to pay particular attention to their typewriters. Klaus willed himself not to sneeze and tried to stave off the sneeze by pinching the bridge of his nose. It seemed to work, so he was about to return back to his work when-

"Ah-ah-hach-OOO!"

A loud thump accompanied the Major's thunderous sneeze, and a moment later G got up from the floor, where his office chair dumped him when it tipped over. After giving G a dirty look, Klaus tried, for God-knows-which time, to read through the intelligence report that was the reason for a possible new mission. He had read over the same paragraph several times already, and was slowly starting to think that coming in to work was not the best idea. Klaus hated being sick, and especially hated admitting that he was indeed sick. Illness always disrupted perfectly planned days, and usually he successfully avoided it - he couldn't remember one sick day in the last five years that was not injury-related - but this time it seemed that every cold he hadn’t gotten in his life was banding together and forming some new super cold determined to bring him down.

Giving up on the intel report for a little bit, Klaus got up from his desk, poured some hot water in a mug and threw a tea bag into it a little bit too vehemently, causing someone to gasp. Quickly turning around, Klaus noted that all the agents were suddenly furiously typing their reports. Raising an eyebrow and wincing when it made his head hurt, Klaus returned to his desk and began to watch the mug morosely as the clear water turned brown. Damned tea. That damned Eroica probably drank tea. With lots of sugar, too, just like the fatso Chief. From a dainty teacup, held by his thin, long fingers. If I could be that teacup-

Klaus snapped back to reality after that thought and wondered if he was hallucinating from a fever, because there was nothing else that could explain such perverse thoughts being thought by his mind. Telling his mind to get back on track, Klaus drank the tea in one gulp, burned his tongue, cursed hoarsely and almost dropped the mug. He swept the room with a murderous glance, pushed the empty mug away and returned to the file. After beginning to read it again he could see that the tea had helped - his head had cleared up a bit and he could follow the text again. At last, he finished reading the report and picked up a pencil, tapping it against the desk. This seemed to be a one-man mission - intel pick-up and not much else. Some Soviet double-agent had proof of KGB recruiting various Western European politicians, and he was ready to give it up to NATO for a decent sum of money.

Klaus looked around the room, frowned, and decided that he should probably be the one to take it on, because all of his three logical choices for this mission, Z, P, and F, were away on missions. He called the number indicated in the intel report, disguised as that of a travel agency, listened to the recorded message, noted down all the code words, and wrote down the meeting spot. Now all he had left to do was to make his travel arrangements and get on a train to Austria. The Soviet agent wanted to meet him at a ski resort in the Alps, of all places - which seemed like a scene out of a bad spy movie. But at least it was not in some seedy little Hungarian town, like his last meeting with suddenly conscientious KGB scum.

Klaus picked up his phone and called his butler, asking him to pack a small suitcase and to purchase him some cold remedies. After hanging up, he reserved a ticket to the small town in Austria, quickly read through the files remaining in his inbox, left instructions to various agents if those cases needed to be investigated during his absence, and finally, took on the veritable mountain of envelopes addressed to him. Most were just useless memos that he quickly memorized and threw away. Several envelopes contained bland holiday greetings from the various NATO bigwigs. The last envelope, deceitfully bland and gray on the outside, yielded a Christmas card with angels that looked a little bit too much like Eroica to be truly angelic and holiday greetings that were a decidedly new and perverted take on "All I Want For Christmas." Klaus glared at the card, thought about crumpling it up and throwing it out, but changed his mind and thrust it into his briefcase instead.

Since the Chief would be on vacation until next week, Klaus left A in command until his return, and taking his briefcase, strode out of the room, heading for the elevator. When it was almost in sight, Klaus noticed that one of his shoelaces had gotten untied and stopped to tie it. As he re-tied it into an accurate double-knot, he heard voices from the direction of the elevator, probably belonging to the secretaries, judging by their thick Rheinland accents.

"- that Major - I'm so grateful I'm not assigned to his department," one of them twittered.

"I so know what you mean, Lotte," another one chimed in. "Last week he yelled at poor Frieda for fifteen minutes when she inadvertently left a page out of the departmental briefing protocol copies. She almost quit. So 'ner fieser Möpp."(1)

"I quite agree!" the third woman exclaimed. "I wonder how anyone can stand him. That attractive gay man with the nice butt that works with him sometimes-"

"Oh?" the second one interrupted, sounding intrigued. "Gabi, is he the one - the one who-?"

"Yes, yes, the one who sent him those gorgeous roses for his birthday. He's in love with that horror of a Major - and he's - raderdoll(2), it's the only way to explain that! Only someone who has completely gone off the deep end can like that storm cloud. A pity, too. Oh, how I wish I could be a man sometimes, when he - what's his name?"

"They call him Eroica, but I've seen some pay slips to him made out to Lord Gloria," a fourth secretary said dreamily.

"-when Lord Gloria shows up. All the good-looking guys like him seem to be gay, unfortunately. But still, we're allowed to fantasize. How I'd love to see him in nothing but-"

Gabi noticed that her avid listeners had gone unnaturally quiet, and turned around, finding the "storm cloud" himself standing behind her. Blushing, she muttered something under her breath and hurried off for the stairwell, thinking that walking down several flights of stairs was much better then riding in the elevator with the Major. The other secretaries decided to follow her example, so when the elevator came, Klaus rode down alone, his mood entering a special category now, something like the human equivalent of a hurricane concentrated into a person. He marched to his car, almost broke the key off in the ignition, and drove to the Schloss faster than was necessary, seething at the secretaries' gossip, and slightly perplexed why they found Eroica attractive if he was gay. That's because he has "the nice butt", a snide voice in his mind supplied, and the Major almost stopped his car in the middle of the Autobahn. What was with these strange, perverted thoughts finding their way into his mind? It was the second one that day!

No more perverted thoughts visited him for the remainder of the drive. When he entered the Schloss, the suitcase was already packed and a clean suit awaited him in his room. After putting his briefcase next to the bed, Klaus proceeded to the bathroom, where he took off his clothes and folded them before dropping them into the laundry basket. After taking a long hot shower, Klaus felt more relaxed and a little less sick. Still, a look in the mirror proved to be somewhat discouraging, because his reflection had an overall greenish tinge to it along with a reddish nose and bloodshot eyes. Well, that would go away with time. After toweling himself dry and putting on a bathrobe, Klaus returned back to his bedroom, and sat down on the bed. He still had several hours until the train, and dinner was still an hour away, so he decided to rest a little bit. Normally, resting during the day was a foreign concept, but with the damned cold sapping all of his strength, he needed all the rest he could get.

Klaus tried to read, but he felt too distracted, and put the book down. He was thinking about the gossiping secretaries again. Their babble had been merely annoying - he didn't really care if people didn't like him, since he was not working in NATO to win popularity contests. But still, it kept tugging on something in his mind, and annoying the hell out of him, because he couldn't figure out why he cared at all about they were saying. To shift his mind to something else, Klaus reached into his briefcase and retrieved the Christmas card. The indecent angels smiled at him, their golden hair reflecting the light from his bedside lamp, reminding Klaus of the man who sent the card to him. He could easily imagine Dorian composing the indecent Christmas greetings in some decadent room, dressed in some kind of pseudo-pirate frippery, the tip of his tongue sticking out in concentration, a pen clasped in his fingers…

This mental image was disquieting, because he hadn't thought about anyone in so much detail for a while - a good long while. He didn't have any close friends or casual lovers - a career in counterespionage wasn't exactly the best one for keeping intimate confidants, and his temper didn't exactly help. He was used to being alone, period. He didn't mind spending his free time by himself, in fact, he often looked forward to it. His life was just right - it was structured, and except for the time he was on missions, Klaus barely, if ever needed to look at his watch, because he simply could tell the time of day from what he was doing. Any intrusion into his personal life threw him off that natural schedule, and he did not like that. He had tried having a girlfriend once, just when he started with NATO, but that turned out to be just horrible - he didn't enjoy the intimate moments very much, and she just pissed him off with her constant whining. He wasn't paying enough attention to her, he wasn't romantic enough, he was away too much - and so it went every time until he could no longer stand it and broke up with her. Since then, he avoided any relationships like the plague. He didn't love anyone, and he surely did not need anyone to love him. Which brought his thoughts back to the annoying pervert who was the bane of his existence.

Verdammter Schwuler!(3) Why did Eroica insist on pushing his way into his life, which didn't need his intrusion? And couldn't he see how different Klaus's way of life was from his own perverted lifestyle? He was so horribly unstructured! He wore clothes that attracted too much attention and looked just strange on a man. He didn't behave the way he should, given his position and his gender. He was outrageous! But he does have good qualities, the same unknown part of Klaus's mind that had insisted on thinking perverted thoughts earlier in the day insisted. After a momentary pause, the rest of his mind protested that the pervert had no redeeming qualities, but decided to listen to the crazy part out of curiosity. Yes, he's a lazy, spoiled, hedonist pervert most of the time, but he's good with people, and he is charming, the crazy part argued. And he really loves you, because if he were faking, he would have stopped bothering you a couple of years back. And you know that.

The phone rang, startling Klaus out of the argument with himself, and he snatched at the receiver, which stubbornly tried to evade his grasp, afraid that it was Eroica, having somehow read his mind from wherever he was. Fortunately, it was only the butler informing him that the dinner was ready. Klaus got up from the bed, dressed hurriedly, almost forgetting to put on his undershirt, and rushed downstairs, not noticing that his hair was in disarray and his tie was tucked into his trousers. Storming into the dining room, he attacked the dinner with vehemence, almost breaking the obscenely expensive china plate with his fork, full of anger at something that he couldn't identify.

When the dinner was finished, Klaus went upstairs to fetch his suitcase and his coat, resolved to ignore the existence of the man who could rile him up and bewilder him while being hundreds of miles away. Of course, that resolve took an immediate hit when he spotted the Christmas card lying on the bed and an unfamiliar feeling that felt uncomfortably like fondness swept over him. Klaus scowled and stared at the angels with disgust. He couldn't allow that fop to unsettle him so when he wasn't even present! Grasping the card, he furiously tore it apart and immediately felt stupid about taking his anger out on a piece of paper. Even taking his anger out on Eroica in person would have been stupid, because sending Christmas cards was not a crime, and it was not like he had been grievously harmed by a simple greeting card… He had to ignore him like he usually did. That would take care of the pesky feelings and thoughts! Klaus picked up the mutilated card and threw it in the trash can, and then hurriedly took his coat and suitcase and left the room, his thoughts once again pure and focused on the assignment only.