Hans

Fritz sat in the electric lounge chair, wondering if this was the sixteenth or seventeenth lap.

"I won't mock the colonel. I won't mock the colonel. I won't..." A wave of panting interrupted the confession, which was passing in front of Fritz's station for the sixteenth or, who knows, seventeenth time.

"Forty-four more," Fritz grumbled from behind his newspaper

. "What do you mean? This is the seventeenth," the runner fretted

. "I'm telling you, forty-three

—I won't mock the colonel. No...

" "No, you won't," Fritz sighed .

Dressed in a T-shirt with the CPN logo, the man ran further down the corridor, assuring the microphone strapped to his chest that he wouldn't mock the colonel. Fritz turned a portion of his remarkably divided attention to the librarian standing in front of the freight elevator.

"Excuse me, do you need anything?"

"The director has increased the limit on additional paid leave. I'm going to eavesdrop on a secret meeting.

" "The freight elevator is only going to the cold store today; the foreman has rented part of the shaft to the director of a 20th-century sensation." If you wish to get to the top-secret meeting, please use the kitchen elevator. Second floor, to the left of the golf clubhouse.

" "No, thank you, I'll go to the cold store," the librarian replied coldly

. "You were planning to get to the meeting a moment ago." Fritz squinted.

"But I complied," the librarian squinted

. Faced with this biting retort, Fritz looked away, immersed himself in an article about the Mediterranean, and switched his chair to "relaxation-50 Volts." The librarian, struggling to squeeze into the kitchen elevator, was informed twice that the man we'll call Klaus for short, who was mocking the colonel, would not be mocking the colonel.

After the thirty-seventh lap, the freight elevator door opened in front of Fritz, and a group of frozen clowns burst out. Frozen Clown Two was actually a secret agent disguised as a frozen clown.

"How's it going in the cold room?" Fritz asked

. "Cold.

" "If you're going," Fritz leaned over the alpha angle, "to the secret meeting, ask Hans if he's changed his mind about the Soviet Union.

" "What union?

" "The Soviet Union. I bet him it wouldn't fall apart by tomorrow."

Hans had no intention of falling apart. He blamed the entire operation on the Soviet Union. There was a minute of silence, during which someone in Australia won a million grains of wheat in a competition for the most elegant nose.

"Excellent," broke the silence. Frozen Clown One.

"What, excellent?" Fritz, aka Fritzka, parried.

"Nothing, I said to myself. It reminded me of how in a movie someone broke the silence by saying "excellent." I wanted to see how it worked.

"I won't mock the colonel.

" "What?

" "I won't mock the colonel.

" "Aha.

" "That's enough for today, catch up on the rest tomorrow, I almost believed you wouldn't mock the colonel." Fritz stopped the tape on Klaus's shirt and helped him under the table, where Klaus had his bed on two folded banners. By this time, Frozen Clown Two was already far away in the kitchen, preparing a top-secret honey-filled pretzel. He casually turned around, and when, unable to stop the pretzel, he took out the rat-eaten batteries, he noticed the librarian through a hole in the pretzel, scrambling toward the kitchen elevator.

"You have a fascinating look

." "You're a charming secret agent

." "Hmm," the agent muttered, unintentionally demystifying himself and closing the oven door behind him.

"Ask Hans if he's changed his mind about the Soviet Union."

The librarian finally locked herself in the elevator and headed, along with the gastronomic highlight of the morning, to the third floor from the top, the second.

"A dog was found on the premises." Fritz boomed through the loudspeaker—

"a black one." He boomed after a moment with a clearing of the throat

. "The owner is requested to extinguish his cigarette and go to the duty room to clarify the dog's color. Please do not use the freight elevator."

Fritz aimed the loudspeaker at the loudspeaker in the hallway, retracted the clutch, and postponed the conversation. The secret meeting on the second floor was reaching its climax.

"Hmm," Hans muttered.

"Hmm," Jurgen muttered back. He drank the top-secret tea sitting on the stove, choked conspiratorially, then nodded to indicate he understood the conspiratorial murmur, which he understood nothing of. When the telephone rang with a spoon on the floor, a librarian entered the room to ask if Hans had changed his mind about the Soviet Union. Her unsecret presence caused the top-secret atmosphere of the meeting to begin to slip through the crack under the door. Jurgen then remembered that the knot on his finger was meant to serve as a reminder that walls have ears, so he excused himself and collapsed to the floor. The librarian stated that the situation indicated the highly secretive nature of the meeting taking place here, then turned and went to resurrect the kindergarten director.

"Do you think he'll write a transcript?" Hans muttered.

"Hmm," Jurgen muttered back, pleased that he had finally understood something. "I don't know." I suspect Thursday.

Jurgen's hand lifted the spoon and him from the floor and sat them both on a chair. The secret meeting required support, so Hans dropped a crushed ping-pong ball into his tea and settled back.

"Another game."

Meanwhile, at the main entrance, a discussion was underway between the kindergarten teacher, an unknown child, and the doorman, the child having no say in the matter.

"You have no say here, son," the doorman rang with his chainmail

. "Madam, is he one of them?

" "Not now, Tomaszek, can't you see I'm talking to you?

" "I already know he's one of them.

" "The boy talks well, you won't get in anywhere. At least not until the director is dead. And this could drag on.

" "You're being rude," Tomaszek stamped.

"Hmm," the doorman muttered. "That would be consistent with what they told me yesterday in the cafeteria," he thought

. "The boy talks well, we'll compromise." Let the principal lie down, and you come in. Watch out for the ceiling. Let this be the last time.

The preschool teacher, along with Henio and Tomaszek, went onto the porch and, as warned, avoided a piece of ceiling lying in the middle of the floor. A moviegoer was bored at the ticket office, closed on Thursdays and public holidays.

"Madam, is he one of them?

" "No, not yet, this gentleman just wants to buy a ticket, Tomaszek."

"Excuse me, you have an unusual child." The moviegoer shuddered

. "It's not mine, it's the system's child."

- kh - choked the moviegoer.

When Tomaszek and Heniu went to play pick-up sticks with Klaus, who was folded in his banners, and the kindergarten teacher was busy watching Tomaszek's progress, Michael Caine emerged from the corridor opposite the ticket office as an officer

- oh - the moviegoer shuddered again

- no need - Michael Caine greeted him with a slight smile.

To the even greater, then literal, incredible, unimaginable and finally inhuman surprise of the moviegoer, from the side corridors appeared Dolph Lundgren as an officer, Gene Hackman as an officer, Stefan Friedmann in a brown shirt and the terrifying, with a terrifying number of umlauts in his name, the original black and white officer himself.

"Oh," the movie buff remarked in a remarkable way.

Birds were chirping outside the window, and the sun, obscured by a shy tree, gleamed on the bald head of the kindergarten director, snoring in a crumpled suit, writing a letter to the higher authorities.

"Mr. Director, it's time.

" "Which way?" the director clicked in his sleep.

The librarian, realizing that all her efforts to revive the director had failed, helped herself to some chocolate, stroked the sleeping man's mirrored crown, curled up on the carpet, and fell asleep. From behind the door came the whispers of Hans and Jurgen, encouraging each other to invade the office.

"I knew it," Hans ventured, "there's protocol

," and the librarian, Jurgen astutely observed, wanting to add a fitting culmination to Hans's astute observation

, "will kill us," Hans stated coolly

, "for what?

" "We failed," Hans replied to the camera, ending the scene in the kindergarten director's office.