Ghosting in on the Blind Side - Excerpts

Here are the first and tenth chapters of our post-Edwardian football - cum - espionage yarn - Ghosting in on the Blind Side, by Josh Rogan and Alexandra Haines.

The two chapters will not seem linked in any way shape or form; this is because there are two sub-plots which run parallel for much of the first part of the tale, and these then come together in rather dramatic fashion. Read on …


1

 
An Encore With Boots On


Saturday January 11th 1913

IT WAS THE FIRST ROUND of the 1913 FA Cup. In the home team’s dressing room there was noise and laughter from most of the players, but this was a bluff as it always was in the dressing room before any game, but far more so before big games like this – Nelson Corinthians had been drawn at home to Manchester United.

Nelson Corinthians were a good, solid first division side; they had never won any honours but they always finished in the top half of the table and won more games than they lost. When on their best form they were more than a match for the big guns such as Arsenal or Liverpool, and on their travels had silenced the massive crowds at Highbury and Anfield on more than one occasion in the thirty years of their existence. Their home ground was Grindlay Park, less than a mile from Nelson town centre, in a valley below the Lancashire moors.

Jokes, cheers, jeers, and hearty boasts about what they would do to the opposing team’s centre-forward were in reality efforts to hide trembling, butterflies in the stomach, and even the odd urge to throw up. But one player was neither nervous nor queasy, but nor did he join in the revelry with his team-mates.

Eric Ramsbottom was Nelson Corinthians’ thirty-nine year old centre-forward. He did not look his age, was of average height with a slim build, and had a boyish face, brown eyes and sandy coloured hair. He had an almost obsessive dedication to his training which had kept him lean and fit. He ignored the camaraderie which kept his team-mates from running a mile and hiding in the nearest barn before matches, and was something which Eric was usually at the centre of. But not today. Instead, he just sat on the bench in the middle of the changing room, seemingly looking down at his feet; his mind at that moment was far, far away, but his thoughts were then disturbed by a familiar voice.

“Last game, eh?” said Derek ‘Lofty’ Arkwright, his long time friend and team-mate. Lofty’s time at the club from boy to man was only three years shorter than Eric’s; but Lofty was also five years younger than Eric and had played in defence for all that time – he was the centre-half and with a physique something akin to a brick wall.

Most teams, whether playing at grand stadiums packed to the rafters each Saturday, or who play in the quagmire to a few hundred fans stood around the touchline, always squeeze a few more years out of the boys at the back. Broad shoulders, thighs like full hams and a head seemingly made of concrete – and an innate desire to keep hospitals busy at weekends, are more important than speed and niftiness. By comparison this makes it even more unusual for any player past their early thirties to still be playing upfront, but as Eric had indeed bucked the trend this meant that he and Lofty had been together through thick and thin, over many years.

“Never mind, mate,” continued Lofty, “by next week you’ll be glad to be out if it; no more training in foul weather, and you can sit back, relax, and look back on a great career. Still playing up front at forty-nine! Amazing!”

“Thirty-nine,” said Eric, in a small voice and still looking down.

“Oh, yeah … sorry,” said Lofty.

Eric looked up at his good pal and team-mate, and they both burst out laughing.

“Listen, the lads are all feeling as if they could throw up for England; best go and take their minds off things. So, don’t forget – I’ll punt ‘em…”

“I’ll blast ‘em…” replied Eric with a smile.

The pair had said this to each other since their first day together in the team many years earlier…

*

A younger and rather more arrogant Eric Ramsbottom, star of the team, had started the tradition off by strutting around the dressing room and singling out the new boy, one Derek ‘Lofty’ Arkwright, who was only sixteen but looked – and acted – much older. Eric looked at Lofty and said, “Never mind what Spratty said, just you punt the damn thing up to me, I’ll blast it in the net, simple as that. Got it, sprog?”

But Eric got the shock of his life. Lofty did not get his nickname because he had high business or political ambitions; he was the tallest boy in all eight schools he had attended before leaving to become a brick layer when he was twelve; he was the biggest boy to ever have been in the Army Cadets but was thrown out for violence before lunch time on his first day – but the Cadets’ loss as well as the building trade’s, was football’s gain. He stood, raised his fists, and Eric only came round five minutes before kick-off. But Lofty rather oddly did as he was asked (although to the chagrin of the rest of the team): he did indeed punt the ball up to Eric as often as he could, and more often than not Eric would blast the ball into the net.

Eric and Lofty became firm friends, even before the swelling on Eric’s face had fully gone down.

*

Lofty went back to gee up the lads, leaving Eric alone with his thoughts, musing over the events over the years which had brought him to this very moment…

 END OF CHAPTER ONE

START OF CHAPTER TEN

10

 

The Day of the Gate Rattler


Thursday January the 9th – 1913 – London

IT WAS AN OTHERWISE PERFECTLY ordinary Thursday evening. But anyone right at that moment who happened to be passing Prussia House on Carlton House Terrace in London’s St. James’s district, would have witnessed a sight which would have been an unusual sight on any evening – or even in broad daylight. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Herbert Henry Asquith, was rattling the gates of the German Embassy like an angry husband trying to get in the house, before the lover could jump from the window and make good his escape while carrying his pants. But with terror for half the world on the horizon, the time for Earl Gray tea and upside down cake between senior diplomats of both nations was over. This time things had to be dealt with at the very top, the Kaiser’s absence from proceedings notwithstanding.

The soldier on guard duty looked to the angry gate rattler and his friends, and then across the short gravel path to the huge oak double doors of the large house that was actually the Embassy. A few seconds later a rather snooty, thin-faced, silver haired, straight-backed gentleman in a black velvet suit and black bow-tie looked across to the source of the commotion, then looked to the guard and nodded. The soldier opened the gates and let the three gentlemen in.

Led by the round-faced rotund figure of Mr Asquith, the three men strode purposefully up the path and up to the doors, and then took off their hats as they were greeted by the man in the velvet suit.

    “I take it you know who I am?” asked the Prime Minister. He had seen the man before on his many visits to the German Embassy, but the two had never spoken before now.

“Yes, of course, sir; what may I do for you?” the man replied in a tone of voice which rather made the delegation feel like tradesmen calling for their money, and was even more annoying as the man spoke perfect English with only a slight trace of a German accent.

“We are here on very urgent business; we need to see the Ambassador at once,” replied the Prime Minister.

“I will see if His Excellency can receive you…” said the supercilious Secretary to the German Ambassador.

“You will do more than that, my man! Please take us to Prince Lichnowsky at once!” demanded the Prime Minister, a demand which brought grim faces of agreement from the two men on both flanks.

The secretary turned to the three men in turn, looked them up and down, and then with rather a snooty look on his face said, “Follow me, gentlemen…” and gestured for them to follow him down the hallway.

“If you would be so kind as to just wait here a moment,” said the secretary as they reached a large red leather-cushioned door on the right of the wide hall, “I will inform His Excellency you are here.”

The secretary knocked, opened the door without waiting for an answer, and then went in and closed the door behind him. The Prime Minster and the other two gentlemen just stood there grimly, fingering their hats in their hands.

The door opened again and the secretary stepped back out into the hallway.

“Please go in, gentlemen, the Ambassador will see you now.”

The Prime Minster harrumphed and went in, but one of the other gentlemen said, “Thank you; much appreciated.”

“Ah, welcome! Come in, come in! Do sit down,” said the man sitting at his desk, a small slightly built man with a black moustache and thinning grey hair. This was one Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky, German Ambassador to Great Britain.

“Tea? Or perhaps a brandy to dispel the cold?” he then asked of his guests, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, and Sir Vernon George Waldegrave Kell who was Head of British Intelligence. They were all now sat on large ornately carved high-backed chairs with satin covers.

“No, thank you, no. Your Excellency, we are here on a matter of such gravity, that … that war may exist between our two nations in a matter of days, if we cannot resolve this, immediately,” stated the Prime Minster, with real urgency in his voice. They may have been in the physical realm of the diplomat, but diplomacy was not on the agenda today. Total frankness and honesty was needed if war was to be averted, for this week at least.

“War? Between us?” said Prince Lichnowsky. “But we are so near to reaching an agreement, how can you say we may soon be at war?” replied the Prince.

He sounded convincing, but the world-weary and cynical gentlemen on the other side of the desk were uncertain as to whether Prince Lichnowsky was still operating within the purview of the diplomat, or if he was genuinely shocked by the Prime Minister’s words.     

“Sir Edward, we need tarry no longer: show him the file,” said Mr Asquith to Sir Edward Grey.

Sir Edward reached into his cloak and then into the wide pocket of his jacket; he pulled out a small buff coloured file and placed it on the desk in front of Prince Lichnowsky.

“What is this?” enquired the bemused Ambassador, but no one replied so he opened the file and began to peruse the contents.

“OH MEIN GOTT! WAS IST DAS?!” exclaimed the Ambassador. Prince Lichnowsky, now white faced, was looking at incontrovertible proof that one of his own junior members of staff, one Gerhard Weber, was acting as a spy.

    As he continued studying what was legible and viewable of the heavily censored file, stopping only to mop his now sweating and furrowed brow, he found pictures of Weber, himself carrying a camera taking pictures of naval dockyards, of army barracks and airfields, and then worst of all several pictures of one of the men standing before him, Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of Great Britain. He quickly flicked on; there were more highly suspicious pictures of Weber skulking in hedgerows and sometimes brazenly walking around the field guns and vehicles parked up on the tarmac of an army barracks.

British Intelligence had been put on to Weber after a clumsy slip up.

Weber had been spotted looking through a gap in the perimeter fence of a naval dockyard: he was reported as having alternated between using binoculars, taking photographs and making notes. While naval security were sent to detain Weber, officers immediately passed on their suspicions to British Intelligence. Unfortunately, by the time security had reached the fence, Weber had disappeared, an amazing feat for a man with a wooden leg. Once his rage had died down upon hearing the suspected spy had escaped, Vernon Kell was of course curious as to the man’s identity, and most importantly, wanted to know what his mission was. Through further presumed slip-ups by the suspect, it wasn’t long before he was identified as being one Gerhard Weber, and was actually known to the British; he had not previously given cause for concern, and had seemed to fulfill his role as junior courier between Berlin and London with typical Prussian efficiency. But Kell was forming a plan: for now, surveillance rather than arrest was the way forward; although the more cynical members of the intelligence community had put this down to the fact that they didn’t seem able to catch him anyway, but they were wrong: Vernon Kell did indeed have method in his perceived laxness, if not madness.

The two British agents assigned to tail him were thankfully soon back on the trail; they later reported to their superiors that Weber had the ability to fit in no matter what situation he found himself in. When he had been challenged by the duty guard at an airbase after walking right up to the prototype Avro 504 Biplane and snapping away with his camera, he had simply smiled and said, “Sorry, old bean, should have thought; but, I always think to myself, ‘Ah, what might have been if it were not for that terrible night in Palestine.’ Well, toodle pip,” He had then affectionately patted the aircraft’s engine and limped away on his wooden leg.

If the pictures were not bad enough then Weber’s own hand had made things even worse.

In a notepad very recently found, only hours before in fact, the public appearances and schedules of everyone from the King down to the entire cabinet had been written out and were terrifyingly accurate. But the head of British Intelligence had taken no chances and had ensured the details of the schedules were deleted, before showing anyone from the German Embassy. What the British delegation chose not to share with the Ambassador was that Weber had again given his tails the slip only a few hours before.

A white-faced Prince Lichnowsky now looked up to his three visitors.

    “Mein Gott! I am very, very sorry to have to tell you, gentlemen that we appear to have a rogue agent on the loose. I can categorically assure you that this has not been sanctioned by my government, not with a peace agreement at stake. The question is, what do we do about Weber?”

Mr Asquith gave Vernon Kell a fleeting look; in return, Kell gave the barest of nods. If anyone knew if the Ambassador’s reaction was genuine, he did. This was not noticed by the Prince.

“Your Excellency, I am glad that at least you understand the gravity of the situation, and tha…”

Mr Asquith trailed off as he noticed that he did not now seem to have the attention of the Ambassador, who instead just stared down at his desk, his face now ashen.

A million thoughts a second were racing through Prince Lichnowsky’s mind; he loved living and working in Britain despite the dire reason for his tenure as Ambassador, which was to prevent war between the two nations – if this was at all possible. Unusually for a member of a German Royal House, he was not related to the British monarchy, but through both his diplomatic status and his familiarity with many European monarchs and their families, he nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the trappings enjoyed by the English aristocracy – and their German cousins. All this was now in jeopardy due to some maniac of an upstart whose intent was obviously to scupper any chance of an agreement between Germany and England, concerning France, Belgium, the Balkans, Russia, and a goodly slice of far flung colonial outposts.

“Your Excellency?” said the Prime Minister. No answer. “Your Excellency?” he said again, a little louder. No answer. “AMBASSADOR! PLEASE!” he shouted in desperation.

“Umm? Oh, I am dreadfully sorry, Prime Minister. This is dreadful news, truly dreadful…”

He looked up at his guests with an expression that suggested sadness, anger and fear, and with a little boy lost expression mixed in as well, all at the same time.

    “We have to leave you now: we must call a meeting with our own Chiefs of Staff. I must impress upon you the need to strip this man of his diplomatic immunity, and to declare him a criminal at large, in your own country and territories, as we will do on behalf of the British Empire. At the very least – our two nations will be at one in this … for now,” said Mr Asquith.

“I will call for my secretary to escort you out,” said the Prince.

“No need, no need; no time for such piffle at such a time as this. Goodbye, Your Excellency; let us hope we can catch this man and soon, for all our sakes…” said the Prime Minister.

“Yes, yes, I quite agree, more than you could possibly know…” replied the Ambassador, but so quietly and so distractedly, his guests could not work out what he had said.

THE END OF EXCERPTs From GHOSTING IN ON THE BLIND SIDE


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Tags: Dark, Scary, Humor, Love, Happy, Sad,