Klaus decided to approach homosexuality like a mission - namely, with as little interference from that bloody thief as possible.

His first objective was to gather more intel, and verify the accuracy of his information.

He still felt surprisingly normal. No overwhelming desire to start wearing foppish clothes or spouting drivel, no sudden urge to start throwing himself at any halfway attractive man in sight. His Alphabets showed no sign of suspecting anything, and continued to respect and fear him. He could still shoot better than anybody else in NATO, and punch KGB agents hard enough to knock them out - he'd tested that multiple times, just to be completely sure. He still liked tanks, and disliked sappy love songs, and a tour of Schloss Eberbach's priceless art collection confirmed that it still looked like a bunch of fat women in too few clothes to him.

So far, conceding to homosexual urges wasn't quite the slippery slope into wild degeneracy he'd been led to believe.

Maybe he'd made a mistake; temporary madness brought on by heatstroke and long-term exposure to idiots. He needed to do some more research before he jumped to hasty conclusions.

Procuring appropriate research materials required a degree of subterfuge. He informed the butler he was needed at work at the weekend, and then drove out to a town selected entirely at random. After securing a hotel room, Klaus spent the afternoon leaving misinformation at locations across the town that would have made suitable drops. If he was under observation, the activity would both excuse his presence and potentially mislead the KGB as a bonus.

Then he visited several businesses, and at each establishment bought a single low-priced item. He was careful to show no deviation from the pattern when he finally arrived at his true target. Treating it strictly as a mission made it easier to enter the seedy little backstreet shop, scan the shelves for what he required, and present it for purchase with a quelling glare that ensured no attempt at conversation. He repeated the procedure at several further shops before he made his return to the hotel. A flawless cover.

All the same, he felt uncomfortably transparent, as if anyone who looked at him would know exactly what kind of magazine he had tucked away at the bottom of his bags. Klaus had never feared being waylaid by enemy agents before - in fact, on less eventful days he relished the thought - but today he was near paralysed by terror of being caught and searched. Or worse, killed in action; his father would surely have a heart attack upon hearing what had been found on his person when he died.

By the time Klaus was back in his room, he was so tense he wanted nothing other than to throw the magazine in the wastebasket and set it on fire before it could be spotted. But he reminded himself sternly that he had a mission, and made himself leave the incriminating evidence on the bed while he swept the suite for bugs. He had to do it twice, since he was too distracted to trust that the first check had been sufficiently thorough.

No evidence that he was under surveillance. Of course, that could be all part of the plot to lull him into a false sense of security... no, that was paranoid. Phase one of the plan had been a complete success.

Which meant he now had to look at his... research materials.

His father was in Switzerland. The butler was back at the Schloss. The nuns who'd educated him were far off in the south of the country. He knew this, and yet all the same, it was hard to shake the conviction that any one or all of them would surely burst through the door the moment he took the magazine out of its plain brown paper wrapper.

Klaus was too busy flinching in anticipation of that possibility to pay much attention to the actual magazine at first. He hastened past the cover, which promised MEN! in lurid letters, and several other things that would most likely rob him of his nerve if he took the time to dwell on them.

He flipped through the pages at speed, unwilling to let his eyes linger on them for too long, though his trained gaze still took in far more detail than he wanted. He was frankly somewhat dubious of the claim that the models depicted within were 'men'. Fops, more like, artfully posed in the trappings of masculine occupations that didn't look remotely convincing on them. Posed more than half out of said outfits, all oiled skin and gym-honed muscles that bore no resemblance to those earned by genuine hard labour.

Klaus shuddered. This was crass and artificial, utterly unappealing. Behind the disgust there was a measure of relief. Perhaps he wasn't a homosexual after all. It had clearly been a temporary madness. He turned the pages in the second half still faster, determined to get the distasteful task over with quickly. There was nothing here for him. It was all entirely-

Something about one of the pictures he was flicking through caught his eye, and he turned the page halfway back for a closer look. Just something about the angle of the neck and shoulder, the shadowed hint of an armpit, that raised a faint twinge in his stomach; the faint line of dark hair that trailed down towards-

He closed the magazine fast enough to crumple the paper, and tossed it immediately into the wastepaper bin. Filth. Disgusting. Nothing he was interested in. He determinedly ignored it while he lit a cigarette and paced.

He should burn it. Get rid of the evidence now. There was no need to spend any further time on such degeneracy.

He pulled the magazine back out to take another look.

Well, that was one question resolved, he supposed.

Having verified his homosexual tendencies, there was now the matter of deciding what to do about them. 'Repress them', would seem by far the wisest answer, but if the last few decades of his life were any indication, it was a strategy that could only last so long. Better, then, to find some sort of discreet outlet so he could take care of... urges... without the risk of it spilling out into his working life.

Unfortunately, Klaus had next to no clue how to go about that. He'd spent his whole life avoiding getting into such situations with women, and determinedly not thinking about getting into them with men. The idea still caused him to break out in a cold sweat, although there was now a new thread of nervous anticipation mixed in with the anxiety and dread.

He was vaguely aware there existed a kind of gentlemen's clubs quite different from the kind that actual gentlemen would mean when they used the term. He was even, thanks to his profession, sufficiently adept at spotting them to recognise when suspects frequented such locations. He had not, however, ever allowed himself or his men to be lured inside one, which left him at a distinct disadvantage when it came to the matter of exactly what sort of behaviour might be expected.

His imagination was no help, having developed a rather alarmingly lurid streak of late. Trying to picture potential scenarios tended to rapidly become... distracting.

Obviously he needed to get those urges taken care of sooner rather than later.

Over the next few months Klaus visited several more randomly chosen towns, surveilling possible locations. The first club he staked out proved to be under observation by at least one rival intelligence agency; he took notes and a few photographs of their operation, so at least it wasn't a wasted weekend. The second he found was far too indiscreet for his purposes: loud thumping music, flashing lights, and half the clientele in outfits that even the Earl would reject as tacky and over the top.

The third location, however, looked promising. No agency activity in the area that he could spot, and the club itself looked enough like any ordinary pub that he could easily claim to have been ignorant of its true nature if he had to abort the mission for any reason. Phase two was on.

Professional instincts came to his aid in betraying no sign of nerves or hesitation as he strode into the building.

At first glance for anyone other than a trained professional it would have looked like any normal pub. Klaus's first glance was analytical enough to encompass the complete lack of women, even among the bar staff; the fact that more than one person in the room was still wearing make-up, nonetheless; the poorly observed boundaries of personal space, stray hands resting on knees and arms draped around shoulders here and there. A second glance, probing into the smoky shadows, glimpsed half-seen figures engaged in kisses and rather more intimate touches.

More discreet than he'd feared, but still entirely too much of a public demonstration for his taste. Klaus stomped stiffly over to the bar and ordered a beer. Some level of intoxication was almost certainly going to be necessary, but he didn't want to risk anything strong enough to make him truly drunk. Who knew what might befall a man with his defences down in a place like this?

He might have decided he was willing to let certain things befall him, but he definitely wanted to be sober enough to have some control over the process. While still drunk enough to let it actually happen.

He took up a position on a bar stool and observed the clientele in the mirror above his head. They mostly seemed to divide disfavourably into the young and frivolous versus the old and disreputable. Drippy young men of a similar breed to Caesar Gabriel; overly girlish types who reminded him too much of G - and even worse, of, well, women; a few pot-bellied old letches like the Director pawing at anyone who got too close.

Klaus stood out starkly among them, as he had known he would. He doubted he would find suitable companionship tonight - his mind was still skirting cautiously around directly acknowledging what he was seeking companionship for - but the visit could still be worthwhile in terms of acclimatisation. Reconnaissance. Practising not threatening to shoot anyone who made risqué overtures.

He supposed he should thank Eroica for his prior training in that field. Compared to the Earl's antics, the approaches he received from others seemed positively tasteful and restrained.

If still more overt than he was fully comfortable with. His fingers tightened around his empty beer glass as a young man with a shiny shirt three buttons too far undone by Klaus's standards approached his table.

"Well, hello, tall, dark and handsome, can I buy you a drink?"

His first instinct was to bellow in outrage at the imposition, but he stamped it down. The last thing he wanted was to make himself memorable by causing a scene - and besides, he could hardly object to receiving propositions of the sort he had come here to get, even if they came from unsuitable quarters.

"No," he said curtly, and then grudgingly, "thank you."

The boy raised both his hands and his eyebrows as if halfway stung, half amused by the sharpness of the rejection, but at least he moved away without further argument. It was a slight relief to learn that Eroica's insane persistence was apparently unique to him.

A deviant among deviants. Klaus really should have guessed. After all, he might have conceded that he... happened to share a certain amount of common ground with the others in this club... but that didn't mean he was anything like that ridiculous fop. Klaus understood the concept of being discreet about his entanglements, for a start.

Assuming he managed at some stage to actually entangle with anyone, which was looking increasingly unlikely as the evening wore on. His impatience was rapidly growing as he received similar approaches from equally unsuitable men, and his rejections grew blunter and more forceful each time. Apparently nobody here had any observation skills - a fact he should probably be grateful for, but nonetheless, it was irritating to be repeatedly approached by idiots who seemed unable to intuit anything about his preferences from the fact he kept turning their fellows down. Every man here imagined himself to be the exception to the rule.

He braced himself for more of the same when another body filled the seat next to him, but the new arrival ignored him in favour of ordering a whiskey. Klaus observed him in the mirror; older than most of the clientele, but in respectable shape, with short hair greying at the temples and discreet dark clothes. Possibly ex-military or law enforcement from his bearing and degree of alertness, but not, Klaus decided after a tense moment, likely to be an agent sent here on his tail. An intelligence operative would be better selected to blend in, and would hold off approaching so closely unless making a direct attempt to entrap him.

The man calmly sipped his drink while Klaus had to fend off yet another amorous young idiot. The club was beginning to grow busy, and the earlier soft murmur of conversation had become a louder buzz. Perhaps it was time to take his leave and chalk this up as a failed preliminary foray.

He finished his beer and pushed the glass away.

"Not your scene?" the man next to him said, glancing up at him as he stood to go.

Not exactly a particularly shrewd observation, but more insight than the rest of the rest of the men here were apparently gifted with. Klaus gave a vaguely affirmative grunt, eager to leave.

"It's quieter in the back," his drinking companion suggested, tilting his head subtly towards the archway to the rear. Klaus hadn't realised there was a second section to the club, but perhaps if it was where the more discreet clientele met up it would be more to his taste. He offered no objection as his seatmate rose to guide him through into the back.

"I'm Karl," the man said, shifting closer to speak above the hubbub. More than likely a false name, but that suited Klaus well enough.

"Josef," he said in return. He had the paper trail to prove it if necessary, and beneath that cover identity a second cover in the form of a believable reason to be meeting an informant in this place. If this turned out to be an ambush by an enemy agency after all, he would simply stick religiously to his cover as Josef Klein. They would know he was Iron Klaus, but they would believe he was Iron Klaus here on a mission. There was no reason to fall prey to nervousness.

Or maybe there was. As he followed Karl through to the rear of the club, he quickly realised that the back rooms were smaller and more private than he'd anticipated, several of them with closed doors and a muffled soundtrack that evoked a mix of distaste and morbid curiosity. It occurred to him that he perhaps hadn't fully thought through the implications of accepting an invitation to move elsewhere.

Karl's hand was at the small of his back, the soft touch burning hot through the layers of jacket, shirt and undershirt.

He almost balked, his stomach tensing and an outraged bellow rising towards his lips. But instead he swallowed it down; this was what he'd come here for, after all. Karl was... unobjectionable as a... candidate - indeed, as Klaus had noted before, he was commendably physically fit, and there was something about the line of his jaw that was oddly striking in this dim and smoky light.

And perhaps, if Klaus was honest, the familiar surge of heat rising through him hadn't been anger after all.

When he left the club rather later that night he was somewhat flushed and ruffled, feeling at once both slightly ashamed of himself and distinctly mellow about life in general. If nothing else, he was forced to concede that it had been a far more successful encounter than any of his abortive attempts to find out what other people saw in women.

So that was that; hypothesis confirmed, inconvenient urges dealt with, and now he could go home and forget all about the whole faintly sordid business. Klaus reasoned that, having survived decades without resorting to such an outlet, he could surely go at least five, perhaps ten years before needing to do so again.

This proved to be more optimistic estimate than he'd anticipated.

By quite a wide margin.

Apparently there was something to this 'slippery slope into degeneracy' theory after all. Thoughts of further such dalliances preyed on his mind more frequently than he'd expected; not while he was at his work, naturally - his discipline was absolute - but in his free hours outside the office he found himself idly imagining returning to the club to seek out 'Karl' again.

That would, of course, be a fatal mistake, career-wise if not wholly literally. Patterns of behaviour could be analysed; frequenting any location, regularly meeting any person outside of his normal routines inevitably led to dangerous attention. Randomly timed visits to many different establishments would be safer, but only if they were too widely spaced to create an observable pattern - and the more different locales he visited, the greater his chances of being spotted, whether it be by enemy agents, an ally, or worst of all, associates of his father's.

He couldn't take the risk.

The knowledge chafed. Klaus was not a man who shied away from doing his duty, but nor had he ever put up with others placing arbitrary restrictions on his behaviour. Even as a schoolboy he'd never seen the need to accept petty punishments for actions that he deemed perfectly reasonable, like shouting at idiot teachers or beating up people who tried to intimidate him. He could decide very well for himself what was or wasn't acceptable.

He'd determined to his satisfaction that occasional liaisons wouldn't compromise his work, and therefore he saw no reason to deny himself. He simply needed to arrange his trysts in a way that wouldn't draw undue attention.

That meant acquiring a trustworthy regular partner, someone he could meet with intermittently without it creating any visible shift in routine. But who? Until recently, Klaus would have sworn he was surrounded by hordes of homosexuals, but now that the time came to tally his prospects he found them oddly thin on the ground.

G was the most obvious candidate, but if he'd wanted someone who looked like a woman he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place, and besides, only degenerates like the Director interfered with men under their command. Best to rule out all NATO candidates entirely, to avoid potential accusations of impropriety. Besides, he'd never been entirely sure if the NATO barber was actually insinuating something, or just very excited to have the chance work on someone with long hair.

His neighbours in Eberbach were out - far too much chance of word reaching the servants, and through them, his father. That left people he regularly came into contact with on missions... but who among them would value the chance of involvement with him higher than the blackmail material?

Klaus slowly thumped his head against the wall.

No. He refused to accept it. Those could not possibly be his only options. Eternal celibacy, or surrender to that idiotic English fop? Perhaps his childhood lessons had been right after all: there really was a special circle of hell reserved for homosexuals.

He lit another cigarette and began to pace.

Well, he wasn't going to go crawling to that wanker and humiliate himself. If Eroica wanted him he could bloody well woo him - properly this time, with none of that romantic drivel. Klaus wouldn't surrender, he would just... wait, and see if Eroica ever finally got it right.

Probably effectively the same thing as resigning himself to eternal celibacy.

Hmmph.

End