The wide, high-ceilinged halls of Gestapo Headquarters were eerily empty as Hochstetter made his way through the building towards the records room. Granted, they were, by virtue of being inside Gestapo Headquarters, always eerie, and usually deserted at this late hour, anyway, but Hochstetter was currently on a less-than-legal errand, which made the deathly silence a lot more noticeable than usual. The sound of his boots on the polished floors echoed loudly through the hall as he walked, keeping a steady, if somewhat swift, pace. He gripped the handle of his briefcase a little tighter.

He'd been preparing for Mama Bear's latest mission almost a week in advance. Tomorrow, a prominent member of the Berlin Underground was going to be broken out of Headquarters by a team of local operatives dressed in Gestapo uniforms. They would be carrying in their memories a very detailed map of the building and all of its weak points, which had been supplied to them by a mysterious, handsome, and dashing secret Allied agent. And, perhaps most importantly, vital information that had been seized by the Gestapo when they arrested the future escapee would be escaping with them. The fact that the escapee in question happened to be Zolle's prisoner was just icing on the cake.

Hochstetter reached the records room at the end of the hall, pulled open the door, and stepped inside, nodding to the guard, who sat behind a flimsy metal desk between the door and the shelves. The man's name was Bauer, and he was big and dumb as an ox. This made it easy for files to disappear during his shift, with no one the wiser.

Bauer acknowledged him with a big, dumb smile and a little wave. Hochstetter scowled and plunged into the maze of shelves. They were long, grey, and nearly nine feet tall, and they seemed to extend into eternity, pressed so closely together that it was almost impossible for a man of Hochstetter's fairly average width to walk comfortably between them. Each shelf was packed with identical cardboard boxes, indistinguishable except for their small rectangular labels, upon which someone with a meticulous hand had written a series of letters and numbers similar to a library call number.

Making his way through the aisle between the ends of the shelves, Hochstetter scanned the labels as he passed, mentally running through the general route he would need to follow in order to find what he was looking for. Intentionally or otherwise, someone had set the records room up as a fiendish maze, and it was entirely possible to become lost down here. It had happened to Hochstetter during his third week on the job; he'd been rescued after three hours when he'd stumbled upon a Kriminalkommissar who had been dropping breadcrumbs behind him to form a trail to the exit. Now, however, he knew this place like the back of his hand. It gave him a distinct advantage over his Gestapo colleagues, and made doing his real jobs a lot easier.

One of the bare, dingy lightbulbs on the ceiling above him flickered as he turned a corner and slid in between two rows of shelves. He ran the tips of his fingers along the lids of the boxes he passed. "PT2198… PT2199… PT2200.B6…" He stopped walking, then crouched down and dropped his briefcase, his fingers resting on the lid of a fat box on the bottom shelf. "PT2200.J4 S38," he murmured, gently lifting the lid off the box and placing it beside him on the floor.

He flipped through the files inside the box, scanning the labels on the tabs of the manilla folders until he found the one that read "Schäfer, Jannis." He pulled the file out of the box, then flipped it open, sorting through its contents and removing the pages, lists, and photos that needed to disappear. He then opened his briefcase and slipped the materials inside, into one of his own case files. That accomplished, he replaced the Schäfer file and put the lid back on the cardboard box. The lightbulb above him flickered again.

Still crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet, he began to hear the faint 'clack' of a man's shoes. Very close. His heart raced, but he stayed where he was, resisting the urge to bolt. Any sudden moves would make him look guilty.

The footsteps stopped somewhere off to his left. Then there was a voice. "Hochstetter… was machst du denn hier?"

Scheiße. Hochstetter rose slowly to his feet. It was Zolle.

The Kriminalrat grinned, the cold light from the ceiling bulb glinting off the round lenses of his glasses and casting the left side of his face in shadow. "It's nearly 20:00," he said, hands shoved into the pockets of his black trench coat. "Quite late to still be at the office, don't you think?"

Hochstetter eyed him warily. "I always work late," he said. "You're the one who said you were going home two hours ago."

Zolle twitched. "I just came to retrieve a file for one of my cases."

Hochstetter couldn't resist smirking. Zolle had left the office on that errand at the same time he'd said he was going home. He'd probably gotten lost down here. "You should have asked Kriminalkommissar Pfeiffer to share his breadcrumbs."

Zolle took a step forward, looking down at him. His smile seemed to twist. There was something… unhinged about the expression. Something dangerous. "You little rat," he said. "Don't think I don't know what you're up to." He gestured towards Hochstetter's briefcase. "Sneaking materials from my file on Jannis Schäfer…"

Hochstetter's blood ran cold. His hand began to stray towards the Luger in his side holster.

Zolle tilted his head slightly and looked down his nose at Hochstetter. His lips were drawn back thin over his teeth, bared in a smile and gleaming in the harsh light from above. "You're planning on interrogating Schäfer yourself, hm? Trying to learn something where I could not, to embarrass me in the eyes of my superiors and then take all the credit." His eyes narrowed. "Well, it's not going to work."

Hochstetter blinked. It took him a moment to process what had just happened. Once he did, he stood as straight as he could and hid his surprise and intense relief behind an evil smirk. "Oh, we'll just see about that," he said, resisting the temptation to let out a villainous laugh or twirl his mustache. "Your silly gadgets will never hold a candle to my superior interrogation techniques. Schäfer will be putty in my hands."

An angry snarl twisted Zolle's features for a second, then was gone, replaced by a look of smiling superiority. "Well, you're certainly welcome to try. Though I will not be in town tomorrow, I look forward to hearing of your failure."

Hochstetter began to get a sense of foreboding. Zolle was grinning at him like a maniac - it was obvious that he wanted to be asked where he was going. Hochstetter grimaced, indulging him with a robotic "And where will you be tomorrow?"

"Oh," Zolle said, adopting an infuriatingly pleasant attitude. "Just a little town in Bayern. There's a prison camp there - Stalag 13. Perhaps you have heard of it?"

Hochstetter froze. "...I'm not sure," he said cautiously. He remembered that Zolle had confiscated Hogan's file, but beyond that, there was no way of telling how much he knew or suspected. "The name seems familiar. But why are you going to a prison camp?"

"Just investigating a hunch," Zolle said. "The camp's no-escape record seems a little too good to be true, that's all."

The look on Zolle's face told Hochstetter that there was more to it than that, but he didn't want to seem too interested. "Fascinating," he grumbled. "Is there any chance you won't be coming back?"

Zolle's smile twitched. "Hee hee hee," he giggled mirthlessly. "Oh, you and your little jokes. But, you know, I might find something." His expression became darkly serious. "We'll see who's laughing then."

Hochstetter fixed him with a cold glare. "I don't care what you find at Stalag 13. I don't know why you seem to think that this prison camp has anything to do with me, but I'm not going to take any more of this harassment."

Zolle tsked. "Careful, Hochsty. You may have Herr Bösemann's favor for now, but I still outrank you. One of these days, you'll come to regret antagonizing me."

The corner of Hochstetter's mouth twitched upwards in a half-smile, but the hard look in his eyes didn't change. "I don't think I will." He took a step forward. "And if you call me 'Hochsty' one more time," he said, still deadly serious, "I will snatch those glasses right off your weaselly little face."

Zolle reflexively adjusted the frames of his spectacles, as if to make sure they were still there. "Don't worry," he said, "I have spares." He turned back towards the center aisle. "Well, it's always nice" he put a special, venom-laden emphasis on the word "talking with you, but I really ought to be going. Tschüßi!"

Hochstetter watched him take a few steps into the aisle, then pause. He stood still like that for a long time.

Hochstetter almost laughed when he realized why. He started making his own way towards the center aisle. "You can follow me back to the exit if you like, Gretel," he said, grinning when Zolle's shoulders stiffened.

He retraced his steps back through the records room, and Zolle trailed behind him, coincidentally at the recommended foot surveillance distance, directing a hateful glare at his back that vanished whenever he turned around to look. After he exited the room, Zolle disappeared into a darkened side hallway like a wraith, leaving Hochstetter alone in the huge, empty hall.

He walked swiftly through the building, slipped out the front double doors, and made it a block and a half towards his apartment before the rush of adrenaline that had been building since he'd first entered the records room filled him with such an overflow of energy that he nearly broke out into a very suspicious sprint. He had to stop and press himself back against the darkened front window of a florist's shop to get his breathing under control. It was dark and the night was cold, and there were very few people on the sidewalks, but he was still too close to Headquarters to be able to assume that no one could see him. He tried to suppress the grin that was spreading across his face.

He himself had narrowly escaped being compromised, and now 'Nimrod' had a big problem. But he couldn't help feeling the rush of excitement that came with a successful mission. The brush with death might have even made it more exhilarating.

Hochstetter spent a few more moments calming down to a reasonable level, then pushed himself off the window and continued down the sidewalk. Once he got home, he'd call Klink, let him know to expect a very unpleasant visitor. Tomorrow, he'd 'lose' the stolen materials from Schäfer's file in a place where the underground would know to find them, then find some excuse to get out of the office and trek down to Hammelburg. He didn't trust Klink to keep an eye on Zolle.

And knowing the strange things that tended to happen in that camp, something was bound to go wrong. He was almost looking forward to it.

- - Stalag 13 - -

A gust of cold wind blew through the camp, and Schultz shivered and retreated onto the porch of the Kommandantur. He'd been in the cold for hours now, and his face stung. He needed to find an excuse to stand by a stove for a while. LeBeau and Newkirk had already kicked him out of Barracks 2; it seemed they didn't need him for any of their monkey business tonight.

Schultz hmphed, huddling into the corner of the porch. He hadn't been at all surprised when Kommandant Klink had told him that he thought Hogan was actually an Allied spy called 'Papa Bear.' It was more of a surprise to him that Klink had been able to reach that conclusion at all, since the man really didn't know the half of it. Though Schultz would continue to claim that he didn't know anything, either.

Klink had told him that he'd had a long talk with General Burkhalter about this whole 'Papa Bear' business, and the conclusion the two of them had reached was that they would follow a previous order from London to stay out of his way. The three so-called 'Nimrods' seemed to have a sort of collective fear of Hogan, which, considering the horrible, explosive fate the man had visited on the Inspector General three days ago, wasn't unreasonable. Schultz, knowing a little more than they did, believed that, despite the difficulty and risk it might take to convince him, Hogan would make a much better friend than an enemy. If the American knew what they were really doing, he might not try to blow them up, at least.

The wind seemed to change direction, and suddenly Schultz's hiding place was not safe anymore. He shuddered. "Ach, du lieber," he muttered, feeling the harsh wind sting his cheeks. He decided that he had to take drastic action, and darted into the outer office.

Once he closed the door behind him, he waddled on legs stiff with the cold over to the stove and stretched his hands out over it, letting out a long sigh of pleasure.

Helga, who stood in front of her desk buttoning up her coat, gave him a quiet smile. "Do you need something, Oberfeldwebel Schultz?"

"Äh…" Schultz looked away nervously, trying to think of an excuse to be there. "That is a good question…"

Helga finished with her coat and reached for her hat, a knowing look on her face. "Oh, you've come to lock up the office for me, haven't you?" she said, a little loudly. "That's very considerate of you."

Schultz caught her drift, and smiled. "Oh, don't mention it," he said, then paused. "Are you going home?"

Helga pulled her hat down over her ears, her eyes wandering towards the closed door of the Kommandant's office. "Yes. I have got to get out of here before - "

She was interrupted by a long, drawn-out screech, like nails on a chalkboard. Then there was a pause, and another long screech, this time at a different pitch. The casual listener might be tempted to call these sounds the cries of a dying velociraptor, but they were, in fact, something far more sinister: Kommandant Klink was tuning his violin.

Helga grimaced. "...Guten Abend, Schultz." She grabbed her handbag off the desk and sprinted out the door. It was amazing how fast she could run in those heels.

Schultz sighed, inching a little closer to the stove. He could put up with the noise for the sake of staying warm.

A few minutes later, Klink had finished tuning and started butchering one of Brahms' Hungarian Dances, and Schultz was about to give up and go back outside to brave the cold when the phone on Helga's desk rang. He glanced around the office, then trudged over to the desk and picked up the phone. "Kommandant Klink's office, Oberfeldwebel Schultz speaking."

"Schultz," grumbled the voice of Wolfgang Hochstetter. "Put me through to Klink."

Schultz glanced towards the door to Klink's office, wincing as the violin hit an ungodly high note. "He is, ah, busy at the moment…"

"Was zum Teufel is that noise?! It sounds like a buzzsaw."

Schultz smiled a little. That was actually fairly accurate. "The Kommandant is practicing his violin."

"Violin?" Hochstetter echoed, with a hint of disbelief. "Klink doesn't play the violin."

"That's true," Schultz said. "He bought one from the local music store. He says he wants to learn how to play, but really he just makes horrible noises with it to torture the prisoners. I think it is some kind of passive-aggressive revenge for all the trouble they cause him."

Hochstetter groaned. "He's causing extensive collateral damage."

Schultz flinched as Klink tried to execute a run, hitting just as many wrong notes as right ones. "That's fine for you to say; all you have to do is hang up the phone."

Hochstetter acknowledged the truth of that with a quiet 'hmph.' It wasn't often that he and Schultz were able to speak civilly to each other, much less agree on something. Hochstetter still didn't trust Schultz, and Schultz was still rather sore at Hochstetter. Hard to be friendly with someone who suggested having you killed. But it seemed that the undercover Gestapo man was in a good mood tonight.

"Well," Hochstetter said with biting sarcasm, "I wouldn't want to interrupt the maestro. Tell him that he's going to have a surprise visitor tomorrow."

"A visitor?" Schultz felt a twinge of fear. "You don't mean - "

"One of my coworkers," Hochstetter said. "He's very dangerous. You'll have to be careful." He paused. "Who am I kidding? No amount of warning is going to make Klink not be an idiot. Just try not to die." And with that inspiring vote of confidence, he hung up.

Schultz placed the receiver back in its cradle, the tortured strains of Klink's violin now taking on a strangely eerie note. "A surprise visitor," he muttered, trudging back over to the stove. That wasn't a very helpful warning. They had lots of surprise visitors at Stalag 13. But if Hochstetter said this one was dangerous, they were probably in trouble.

Schultz sighed heavily. He should have just stayed outside.

The next morning, Klink was a nervous wreck. He paced around his office, while Schultz stood by the door. "A surprise visitor," he muttered, pausing to address Schultz. "That's not a very helpful warning."

"I know, Herr Kommandant," Schultz said, shrugging. "But that is all that he told me."

"Mmph." Klink returned to his pacing. "Well, if Hochstetter says he's dangerous, then we are in trouble." He gazed out the window as he paced; he could see Hogan's posse milling about in the center of the compound. They had that familiar 'up to something' look about them. Klink turned around to pace in the other direction, then froze, eyes widening as a realization struck him. "Schultz, confine the prisoners to the barracks!"

Schultz looked confused. "But why?"

"Now!" Klink shouted, startling the Feldwebel into letting out a hasty "Jawohl!" and scurrying out the door.

Klink watched nervously through the window as Schultz led the guards in herding the prisoners back into their barracks. He noticed that the men from Barracks 2 weren't exactly going willingly, but they did eventually file into the long wooden building and allow Schultz to close the door behind them. Klink let out a sigh of relief. He couldn't guarantee that this would stop Hogan from causing any trouble while their mysterious visitor was here, but at least he could say that he'd tried. After all, if a Gestapo man was coming to the camp to investigate, Papa Bear could be in just as much danger of being compromised as Nimrod was.

Not five minutes after the last prisoner had been cleared from the compound, there was something of a commotion at the front gate. Klink squinted through the window. It looked like a staff car had arrived, and was being waved through. He gulped. Time to find out just who this 'very dangerous' visitor was.

He threw on his coat and hurried out onto the porch. The staff car pulled up in front of the Kommandantur, and the driver got out and held open the door to the backseat. Klink struggled to see into the car, but it was too dark. Whoever was inside was clearly of some importance, though. Was it an SS general? He hoped it wasn't the one with the eyepatch. Testing out his violin technique on that man might not have been the best idea he'd ever had.

The staff car's occupant stepped out onto the packed dirt and straightened, surveying the compound. Judging by his uniform, he was a general in the Heer. Klink squinted at his face, then gasped in recognition. "Hans Stofle?"

The man turned towards him, then grinned, spreading his arms. "Putzi!"

"Hansi!" Klink cried, practically leaping off the porch to greet him. He was excited to see his old classmate, certainly, but was actually far more relieved. Hochstetter must not have known that Klink had been best friends with his 'surprise visitor' back in university. There was no way Hans Stofle was dangerous. He'd gotten all worked up over nothing.

Stofle pulled him into a firm but appropriately brief hug, then slapped him lightly on the back. "Ah, Klink! It's been a long time!"

"So it has, so it has," Klink said, smiling broadly. "It's so good to see you! You're looking quite well."

"So are you," Stofle said, looking Klink up and down with a mildly amused smile on his face. "Though it would appear that Emil Fischer owes me fifty Marks; we made a bet before graduation that you would be completely bald the next time we saw you." He laughed.

Klink laughed along awkwardly, his good mood deflating a little. "Ah, why don't we catch up in my office?" he said, motioning towards the Kommandantur.

"Certainly," Stofle said, looking around and lowering his voice a little. "It would actually be best if I told you why I'm here in private."

"Oh, of course," Klink said, leading the other man up the porch steps and into the Kommandantur. He was starting to get a vaguely bad feeling about this - things tended to go wrong whenever anyone came into camp with something secret to tell him - but he decided to ignore it. He knew Stofle well. There were no unknown factors today; no mad scientists, and no Gestapo, either. It was always the odd things like that which threw him off. This time, he was merely entertaining a very normal visit from a normal old acquaintance. Even if a situation arose, which he doubted, he was sure he would be able to get it under control.

He might as well relax.

Hogan stood, leaning back against the desk in his office with his arms folded, and watched Kinch fiddle with the coffee pot. "What's wrong with the darn thing now?"

Kinch shrugged, wiggling the plug in the wall socket. "The men aren't quite used to it being a listening device, I guess. They keep trying to make coffee in it." He gave the plug a long look. "...Or maybe this outlet's on the fritz."

"That's not as funny, though, is it?" Hogan said, then jumped a little when the coffee pot let out a loud burst of static. "Does that mean it's working?"

"I think so," Kinch said, rising and moving to join Hogan in front of the desk. There were voices coming through the speaker inside the pot, but they were garbled. Kinch gave the gadget a light whack, and soon the familiar wheedling voice of the Kommandant filled the office.

"...Stofle, the great tactician of the Afrika Korps, my guest."

Upon hearing the words 'Afrika Korps,' Kinch turned to look at Hogan, silently raising an eyebrow. Hogan smiled. This sounded promising.

In Klink's office, a second voice, presumably Stofle, spoke up. "To my old classmate at university, then two grades ahead of me, now two grades behind." He let out a loud, mean-spirited laugh. Hogan, having spent a lot of time since he'd arrived at Stalag 13 studying the Kommandant and learning to predict his reactions, could easily picture the way the man's expression had to have fallen after that remark. The frown, laden with frustration and perhaps a bit of shame, would inevitably disappear in a few seconds. Even though the two had apparently known each other, Stofle was still a general, and if there was anything Wilhelm Klink was good at doing, it was acting cheerful around generals. The man didn't even have the spine to be offended.

True to Hogan's predictions, Klink soon perked up and began rambling something about a dueling scar. Kinch shook his head. "Somehow it doesn't surprise me that Klink's 'old friend' turns out to be a jerk."

Hogan gave him a side glance, a half-smile on his lips. "What, feeling sympathy for the devil?"

Kinch snorted. "Klink's not a devil, he's just an idiot. And it's not that I sympathize with him…" He paused, listening to Stofle suggest that Klink return to combat with him and Klink subsequently start nervously babbling about his 'iron hand' and his 'duty' to Stalag 13. Kinch shook his head again. "This is just sad."

Hogan smirked. "The guy may have terrible friends, but at least he's got great enemies."

Kinch chuckled, then lapsed into silence. The two men listened to the… well, 'clink' of the Kommandant's crystal decanter, followed by the ever-obliging voice of the owner. "A little more cognac, Hansi?"

Stofle grunted. "Ja, ja." There was a brief silence, then some rustling.

"Now," Klink said, "I will arrange for a luncheon at the officer's club; just standard soldier's fare, a little relaxation before returning to battle…"

A loud scooting noise, that of a chair against the floor, burst suddenly through the speaker. "What do you know about my returning to battle?!"

Hogan couldn't resist smirking. The general sure sounded mad. This was some good intel, alright.

"Nothing!" Klink said hastily. "No one even knows that you are here, Hansi!"

"Gut!" barked Stofle. "No one must know."

"I would wager the success of your next campaign on that," Klink said, with a rather hilarious level of confidence.

Stofle seemed skeptical. "The Allies would give anything, Putzi, to know where I am."

"But how could they possibly find out?" Klink asked, all innocence.

Hogan almost laughed. Priceless. If he didn't know better, he could have sworn the man actually knew just how possible it was, and was setting Hogan's joke up for him. "Simple: Kinch, radio London and tell them."

Author's Note: This chapter features lines from the episode "Hello, Zolle," though I have tweaked certain things (like Klink being surprised by Stofle's visit instead of knowing about it beforehand) for the sake of further comedy.

Today's German translations:

Was machst du denn hier?: What are you doing here?

Tschüßi: Bye-bye! (Very cutesy)

Ach, du lieber: Literally, "Oh, you dear - " Here, an expression of frustration. This is technically a fragment, since "lieber" is an adjective and should be followed by a noun (ex. Ach du lieber Himmel), but it's pretty common to hear it this way, nonetheless (and Schultz says it quite a bit on the show). I live in an area with lots of German influence, so I hear this a lot.

Was zum Teufel: What the devil