#but you better believe we’re flying into munich

[sehrgefaelltmir]

my choices of settings are so questionable bruh. müllendowski fic that could have taken place entirely in munich? nuh uh. dubai. fic that shouldn’t have anything to do with munich? strap in motherfuckers we’re going to munich

[shortace]

Descant Brill and the Bank Break-in

Fairies do not like the cold. Descant Brill shivered, and cursed himself for volunteering for this task. Although if he hadn’t, Opal Koboi would simply have ordered him to anyway. Or killed him. He wondered briefly if sheer terror was a sufficient substitute for the loyalty Opal demanded of him and his brother Merval. He decided it was.

On a winter night in Munich the temperature can get as low as -3 degrees centigrade. He supposed he was lucky that it was only just on zero tonight. There was a light coating of snow on the ground, which meant that he couldn’t walk - on the off chance anybody was around, footprints left by a shielded fairy would raise questions Scant would rather not have to answer. Fortunately Opal had thought to stock a secret warehouse with all manner of equipment prior to entering her cleansing coma, so tonight Scant was equipped with whisper-silent wings and a near-invisible cam-foil suit. There was no way any human would see him tonight, no matter what surveillance and security they had in place. Opal Koboi and her employees laughed in the face of bank security.

Of course, this wasn’t just any bank. This was the International Bank, renowned for having the most secure safety deposit boxes in the world. By human standards, anyway. Scant admitted to himself - and only himself - that he was a little bit apprehensive. Not scared. Just apprehensive. He glanced around nervously, half-believing that Opal could feel his tension, despite the miles of rock between them.

‘It’s a piece of cake,’ he tried to tell himself, muttering aloud. A nearby cat puffed itself up, on the defensive, at hearing the unexpected voice out of nowhere. ‘Human security. Nothing to worry about.’ The cat twitched its ears, then turned tail and ran.

He finally reached the front door of the International Bank, and hovered, shivering, for a moment to see what he was up against. A night guard sat on duty behind a desk, although his eyelids drooped with fatigue. Scant had to squint to make sure the huge keyring, including the safety deposit box master key, was on his belt. This had been a key part of the plan, and if he didn’t have the key, he would have to resort to Plan B, which he did not relish. It involved tunnel blue spiders, which turned Scant’s stomach even when it was somebody else who swallowed them.

However, as it was, the key was visible, and the tunnel blue could stay safely shut away. Glancing around to be sure nobody was watching, he briefly unshielded to use an omnitool on the locks. Of course, the guard saw him at that point, and was immediately awake and alert, striding towards the glass door with a hand on his gun.

‘Stop!’ he shouted, loud enough to be heard through the door.

Scant mimed deafness: one hand to his hear, mouthing exaggeratedly, ‘I can’t hear you.’ The omnitool beeped and the door slid silently open. Immediately Scant dropped the deaf act and looked directly into the guard’s eyes. He wore no sunglasses - being the middle of the night - and as he took a breath to shout another instruction, Scant Brill spoke, voice layered with magical mesmer: ‘You don’t need the gun,’ he crooned, ‘I’m a friend. We’re buddies. Pals. We go way back.’

The guard hesitated. ‘I don’t need the gun,’ he confirmed, ‘because we’re friends. But I still can’t let you in.’

Scant sighed, feining disappointment. ‘You can let me in,’ he said, ‘and then you can forget all about me.’

‘I can let you in,’ said the guard, apparently changing his mind. ‘And then I can forget… what am I supposed to forget?’

Scant grinned. ‘Perfect.’ He plucked the keyring from the guard’s belt, and watched as the guard blinked a few times and then went back to his post, completely ignoring the pixie standing right in the middle of the foyer.

Descant pressed the transmit button on the communicator on his throat, connecting him to Opal Koboi and his brother Merval. ‘I’m in,’ he said. ‘The guard is ignoring me, and I’ve got the key.’

‘Good,’ Opal replied. ‘Now plug in the flash drive.’

Scant tried to remember the diagrams and lessons on human computers the boss had made him examine. A USB port would be somewhere on the side of the guard’s laptop, he thought. He tried a couple of different holes, then remembered to turn the flash drive up the other way. Finally it slotted in and Opal’s program popped up on the screen. Run program, he clicked. Under his breath he sang three verses of the old Riverbend classic, Between You and a Dwarf, I’d Choose a Stinkworm Every Time, to give the virus time to infiltrate the security system. As he murmured the closing line, every creature has its purpose, and yours is to make stinkworms look good, the computer beeped and the monitors above blinked. On-screen, Scant was nowhere to be seen. The video was showing a loop recorded earlier in the night - same sleepy guard, same light snow, same everything - but no Descant Brill. Furthermore, every clock on every computer and monitor was now showing 10.34am. Business hours. The safety deposit boxes couldn’t be accessed by anybody outside of business hours. Now, they’d open like a flower. A very utilitarian flower, full of cash and stolen paintings.

One stolen painting in particular.

Once in the safety deposit box room, Scant hesitated, and swore: ‘D’arvit.’ He’d forgotten to check the computer to find out which box was Sparrow and Crane’s. Human computers confused him, with their strange letters inscribed on oddly-ordered buttons, and a mouse that didn’t even squeak. He’d been so relieved to get the flash drive in and the virus working correctly that he’d forgotten the other computer-related task.

Not to worry. He’d just open all of them. There was an emergency override button next to the master key hole for just that purpose.

He inserted the key, turned it, and smacked the button.

Immediately the small room was filled with the sounds of alarms and klaxons, as the individual security from each box’s owner was activated. Scant nearly screamed at the sudden cacophony.

‘What did you do?’ Opal shrieked into the communicator. ‘What is that? Descant Brill, what did you do?’

Scant stammered for a moment before recovering himself. ‘Not to worry, Miss Koboi,’ he said, despite being, in fact, very worried.

Three blocks from the bank, a light was flashing in a police station. The unfortunate constable on watch duty didn’t see it immediately, as she was reading a particularly good Artemis Fowl book. Reading was technically prohibited on the job, but who’d know? The only other person on duty was the guy in the canteen who made fantastic chips and horrific coffee.

‘Shut it off!’ Opal commanded, forgetting for the moment that Scant had no idea how to do so. Circuits had been broken by the opening safety deposit boxes; simply closing them again would not re-wire each alarm. However they were, gradually, one by one, going silent. None of them had been intended to last long; the aim was to cause terror in would-be thieves and attract attention from negligent bank guards.

‘It’s about twenty different alarms,’ Scant told her. ‘I think it’s just to scare thieves. I don’t think it does anything.’

‘I don’t pay you to think!’ Opal screeched.

Scant forebore to point out that he’d specifically said that he didn’t think. ‘No, Miss Koboi. Anyway, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll just boobytrap the painting, these will all shut off soon, and I’ll be gone.’

Unbeknownst to Opal and the Brills, one of the boxes had been wired to do more than just make noise. It was this which had set the light flashing at the police station.

Hands shaking slightly, and distracted by the noise, Scant finally located Herve’s painting in its tube, and carefully injected the bio-bomb’s tracking device in through the rubber seal. It was virtually microscopic, and left no visible external trace. ‘All done, Miss Koboi,’ he reported. ‘I’m out of here.’ He slammed the boxes closed hurriedly, just as the last klaxon went silent.

At the police station, the light still flashed. Finally, the officer glanced up from her book and saw it. She frowned slightly, and tapped it. It still flashed. International Bank patrons were notorious for being paranoid, and false alarms were fairly frequent, but still, better follow procedure. She grabbed her radio and asked a nearby unit to do a drive-by.

Descant Brill was already out the front door, shielded and flying, by the time it arrived. All they would find was a dopey guard and nothing whatsoever missing from the bank. Just another false alarm from another paranoid billionaire. Scant heaved a sigh of relief, and headed back for the chutes.

[footballxwrites]

Ridiculously in love with your writing so giving another one😂

So read reports that Christian pulisic maybe going back to the bundesliga to play for Bayern so maybe you could write one on that where he feels guilty for not having been able to probably make it work in Chelsea. He’s been with his fiance since they were like 12 and she’s a British citizen and an arsenal fan so she was definitely the happiest when they moved to london as because she runs her own company and their main office is in London. Christian feels like a crap fiancé also because now she’ll have to travel up and down every other week like she did when they were in Dortmund, and she’s done and sacrificed so much for him and he couldn’t even make it work so she can be in her hometown for once and also be with her family, plus they’re looking to start a family so this travelling business and not having grandparents around the corner isn’t ideal either. With all this plus not starting games plus family stuff weighing him down, he starts to be distant from her and she obviously notices. She gives him a bit of space at the beginning but then quickly realises that they should talk about it like they always have in their relationship. So she brings it up and he lets out everything and she’s like “ don’t be stupid, I want the best for your career and if that’s in freaking Finland well go there, you’ve had a tough year and not the ideal start to your time at Chelsea ans that’s okay. Everyone has set backs but we need to make a comeback so we’re gonna do what’s best for you and then go from there. Europe is small and London to Munich or wherever it is isn’t too bad at all, plus you know I genuinely like travelling for work. And when the kids come we’ll just figure out a schedule that puts them first and have you seen our parents, they’re gonna be coming and seeing us all the time. It’s fine, we’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be just fine” and then Christian is just crying by then because how did he get so lucky blah blah blah... can’t wait for this one xxxxxx

Long Distance Love ♡

𝖧𝖺𝗁𝖺 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗄 𝗒𝗈𝗎! 𝖨 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗋𝖾𝗊𝗎𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖨 𝗁𝗈𝗉𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗂𝗌 𝖺𝗅𝗋𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍 (𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂𝗍 𝗆𝖺𝗄𝖾𝗌 𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗌𝖾 𝗅𝗈𝗅)...𝗈𝗇𝗅𝗒 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗂𝗌 𝖨 𝖼𝗈𝗎𝗅𝖽𝗇’𝗍 𝖻𝖾 𝖻𝗈𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗌𝗉𝖾𝗅𝗅 𝖼𝗁𝖾𝖼𝗄 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗌𝗈 𝖺𝗇𝗒 𝗆𝗂𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗄𝖾𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗍𝗈𝗍𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗈𝗇 𝗆𝖾 😅𝗑

January 10 2021

Suddenly, you felt him stir slightly, readjusting his arms that were snaked around your body, which made your head shoot up to gaze at him, seeing his eyes fluttering open and a lazy smile creep upon his lips as he leaned into a kiss. His arms were quick to pull your waist against his so your head was flat on his chest, listening to the peaceful sound of his heartbeat, instantly making you feel at home. You little moment was cut short when his phone went off and he rushed out the room with a groan, leaving you annoyed and your heart pounding, having a feeling you knew exactly what the phone call was about, hoping he come back and give you the answer you wanted to hear...

“It’s gone through...the transfer” he sorrily spoke, making your breath hitch in your throat, although knowing it was a high possibility of the move actually happening, a part of you was certain he’d be staying here in central London for at least another year. “Guess you’d better get packing then” you softly laughed, feeling disheartened to say the least, the words of “it’s happening” not being the ones you wanted to fall from his lips, “look can we talk about this properly-“ he began, reaching for your hand as you swiftly dodged his grip and made your way to the bathroom, ready for a complete meltdown about everything, “No I have to get ready for work...while I still have my own business” you trailed off, letting the door close behind you with a slam...

————————————————

January 2 2019

"The real question is, how did I get so lucky?" you giggled before he gently pushed the mug of coffee into your hands while leaning in to plant a small kiss on your forehead. Instantly, that warm feeling flew through your body just from the smallest, loving touch he gave you, it never getting old. “Good morning, beautiful." he mumbled against your lips, before wrapping his arms around your neck and resting his head on top of yours, “and a very good morning to you handsome” you smiled, feeling the most relaxed you’ve felt in a while, lifting your gaze to him, love dancing in your eyes as you leaned in to clasp your mouths together.

"Kissing you never gets old," you mutter softly as you both pull away, Christian flashing you a cheeky grin before spotting his luggage packed and ready for the off beside the front door of your new complex, a sigh falling from his lips, “can’t believe I arrived here a week ago and I’m already flying back to Germany” he frowned, pulling a pout. “It’s only six months and it’ll be over before you know it, I’m not going to lie I will miss living over there, especially the weather” you giggled, messing up his perfectly gelled hair to which you got no thanks for, “hands off, this took ages to do” he said, pretending to be serious and grabbing your hand as if to say ‘go on do it again I dare you’. “I’m gonna miss you, the apartment’s gonna seem empty without you here...and it means I have to build all the flat pack furniture from IKEA myself” you huffed, pointing at the hundreds of cardboard boxes filling the spacious room as he laughed, culling your face and running a finger along your cheek, “you’ll be fine, we’ll FaceTime every night and whenever we have a minute spare because you’re gonna be busy as hell now...my super business woman” he winked as you shook your head, still not quite believing you actually own a company, like a whole ass company belonged to you and it was mad to just even picture it.

“Ah shut up, you’re making me blushing Mr Pullisic, now go before you miss that flight of yours” you grinned, going in for one last peck while shoving him out the door with a struggle, feeling like his clingy self wasn’t ever gonna leave, “I love you, see you in half a year” he happily said, grabbing his many cases and walking out, letting the door gently fall closed...

——————————————————

July 1 2019

The classic iPhone ping went off as an incoming text message lit up your phone screen, instantly opening the pic attachment of him saying ‘en route’ which meant he was on his way and by god you couldn’t wait to just see him in person after all this time. He barely got through the front door before you took a leap, linking your legs around his torso as his hands secured under your thighs to carry your weight. Squeezing him tight, you rested your head in the crook of his neck, enjoying his presence as a laugh escaped his lips, “missed me just a bit?” he stupidly asked, not even bothering to let you answer before smashing his lips on yours for the first time what felt like in forever.

Gently tapping your legs, he slowly placed you feet on the ground and then cupped your face, pulling you in for another long, loving kiss, “so how’s everything been then, and by the way you’ve done a good job decorating this place” he nodded, eyes gazing at all the modern interior, “funny you asked, I managed to open two more branches this week, one in Gateshead up north and the other in Manchester!” you exclaimed letting out a small squeal, not able to control your excitement any longer as his eyes went wide with joy. “I didn’t think you could make me any prouder but I guess I was wrong eh” he gushed, heading over to sort out his cases, “I’m saying the same about you” you laughed as he pulled out a couple man of the match awards along with a jersey signed by all the teammates. “It felt strange to say goodbye to them after all these years...but it’s time for a fresh start, here in London with Chelsea Fc and with you” he whispered, excited for the new chapter in your lives to finally begin.

——————————————————

The next year could only be described as perfect for the both of you, his career taking off and loving every moment at the club, getting along with everyone in the dressing room and then loving the fans and atmosphere within the stadium, and knowing you were in the stands somewhere cheering on your ‘captain America’ made it all the more special. As for you, your company was doing beyond amazing, going from National to world wide, owning buildings in Dubai, Spain and you’ll never guess where, Germany. Your main branch was of course London, where the company was founded and to which was the office you managed and were based at, meaning you rarely visited the abroad ones but you weren’t complaining, with you being a London gal to be in your home city with your own bloody business was unimaginable, not to mention you were only a 20 mins drive from your family.

Oh yeah and he popped the question about four months into the move on your eight year anniversary which you of course said yes to, already having planned out your dream wedding, the pair of you agreeing to have it here rather than America with work and travel and all that malarkey.

For the first time in ages, it all seemed to be coming together for yous...

———————————————————

January 10 2021

8 hours later and the two of you hadn’t spoken all day, with him going off to what you assumed was his last training session and proceeding to ignore you and your many questions, you decided to go to work too, trying to get this whole moving countries once again after only one fucking year back home thing off your mind.

“Right that’s it, you’re going to talk to me Christian because you must think I’m a mind reader or something and I can just tell what’s going in in that brain of yours” you said, stumbling through the door and throwing your keys in the side before throwing yourself on the sofa beside your sad looking boyfriend. “I’m sorry” was all he could say, looking down at the ground leaving you with a confused frown on your face, “enough with the apologies, I just want to know what this means, for us” you sighed, placing a hand on his cheek and giving it a small pinch, hoping it’d put a smile on his lips.

“Well I’m definitely leaving Chelsea, guess not everything works out...but it means I’m back off to Germany” he said as you slowly nodded, “you have to do what’s best for your career, ok?” you smiled, running a hand through his hair as he was quick to shake his head, “no I can’t. I don’t wanna leave you, not again. And anyways we’re supposed to be trying for a baby and that’s going to be a challenge if we’re in different countries don’t you think?” he’s spoke with a slight laughter. “I’m not arguing with you Pullisic, go and sign that contract and get yourself away to Germany to revive your job. I’m not saying I’m going to drop everything and move again because I have my work and life, but I can easily fly out and visit, you’re forgetting I have an office over there. As for kids, we’ll get to that part when it comes around...so just take one step at a time and get on the phone to your agent to tell him you’re taking the transfer” you blurted out with a soft smile, knowing exactly what you were saying and that this was just another step in your life, at the end of the day, life isn’t life without it’s challenges along the way...❤️

———————————————

If you got this far reading it, I hope you enjoyed it! x

@kingkepa @champagne-coys @footballcloud @footballmagical @alexajanecollins @masonmounts @hoely-pavard @hazardybala @jamesmaddiscnx

[ifliamsmile]

Body to Body - Dick Grayson Imagine

summary: Dick and the reader loved each other for so long, but nothing was ever said to each other. Somehow, life found a way to make them finally say each other the truth when he almost lose her.

pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

warnings: *Smut*, mention of death, a bit of angst maybe?

*** Y/S/H/N is your super-hero name.

notes: i hope you all like it.xx and a special thank u to my partner in writing @boyy-wonder-grayson

“Y/n, can I ask you something?” Dick said looking intently at you as he took  a sip of his beer. Only the two of you remained sat in the table.

You both loved long conversations, talking about life, and  Bruce; about  things you’ve already seen in life and tonight was one of those nights.

Just two best friends enjoying a quiet night.

You've been crushing on Dick for as long as you can remember; the way he would always be a gentleman to you, helping you in every little thing you needed,and his smile, oh his smile was breathtaking. You needed to do your best to pretend you were not in love with him.

You weren't sure about how he felt about you, buy the way he always treated you gave you hope that someday,maybe he will confess his undying love for you.

“Yes, wonder boy. Tell me” You replied

“Why do you always defend me? I’m not a saint, you know?” he took other sip of is beer 

“I have my fare share of bad moments, but you were still the one who stood up for me, just like in that day with Hank and the whole Jericho affair. I deserved to be punished." He asked looking at you pointedly.

You didn’t know how to respond.

How much you wanted to tell him everything; that you did it because you loved him and you’d do everything you could to protect him.

But you were afraid he wouldn’t feel the same.

“Because I believe in you D. If you ever did something wrong, it was with a good intentions and nothing more than this. I know you enough to provei it"

You replied trying to repress the guilt you felt for not telling him the truth.

“So i guess i’m pretty lucky to have a friend like you" Dick answered truly happy to have you, but he surely expected something more. 

Dick wished you could know how he felt  about you. He loved you but he was afraid that he would lose you as a friend if you didn't feel the same. 

And he couldn’t give it a chance of happening, even if it meant keeping his feelings buried deep down.

----

A week went by and tonight you had a date.

You were fixing yourself in front of your mirror, checking that everything was okay. You met a guy in the bar next to the tower, his name is Liam. 

A week ago you decided that you needed to get drunk after you saw that Barbara Gordon sent Dick a text, they kept in touch even through everything and You felt like shit imagining that he could be with her.

 So you did what you thought best. Get wasted, and that's how you met Liam. You had a good time with him, and by the end of the night you got yourself a date.You were in love with dick, but you had waited far too long. It was time you start living your life.

You wore a tight but elegant mini black dress with high heels and a purse. You made your way to the living room where Dick, Hank, Jason and Donna were.You greeted you teammates and went straight to the elevator.

“Wow, Y/N, you look  amazing!” Donna said to you and you blew her a kiss.

"You going out?” Dick asked looking at you, at how stunning you looked.

“Yes, I  should be back soon. It’s just a dinner” You smiled at him and his heart stopped, you were going out to dinner. And it wasn’t him who was going to be there with you. “Bye, guys.” you wave your hand and get into the elevator.

“Be careful” the brown haired boy said at the same time the doors of the elevator closed.

“You’re a dumbass, you know that, right?” Donna asked Dick.

“Why?” he asked playing dumb.

“Make a move man, or you’ll lose her for good” said Jason that was listening to the conversation.

The boy didn’t get the chance to reply because Rachel entered the room.

“Dick, Bruce's calling you" She said.

“Sorry guys,I have to take care of that" he said practically running out of the room.

“Saved by the bell, Grayson” Hank said and Dick chuckled.

The boy entered the room, and sat down to talk to his father.

“Hey Bruce, what’s up?"

“Hey son, I have something to tell you. Diana was in germany when she found out that Penguin have been causing trouble. He escaped prison and reopened the Iceberg Lounge to cover his acts.” Bruce said

“Dammit, not again" Dick said running a hand through his face in frustration.

“I know son,I know. That’s why I need you and Y/N to fly to germany today.  we could use your help. I already took care of everything. See you later Dick" Bruce ended the call before Dick could answer.

Dick picked his phone and called you. Great he would interrupt your “thing” and for a minute he considered that maybe it wasn’t that bad, and the boy smiled to himself.

--

You were in the restaurant, In the middle of a good and calm conversation with Liam when you felt your phone vibrate on you purse; you looked down at the screen and saw his name.

Dick was calling and it should be important, otherwise he wouldn’t interrupt you, but you barely knew that he did it gladly.

“I’m sorry, Liam, I have to answer this call, give me a minute.” You told the man.

“Sure, no problem” He smiled reluctantly at you and you leave the table looking for somewhere to talk to Dick.

“Hey, Dick, what’s up?” You asked.

“Y/n, I’m sorry to interrupt but Bruce called, he need us to take a plane to Germany. I’ll tell you more when you get here.”

“Okay, i’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Fine. Be careful.” You wish he could stop being so caring about you so you could fall in love with him a little less. But it seemed impossible.

You came back to the table where Liam was waiting for you.

“Liam, I’m sorry, I believe i told you about my job as a nurse. Something come up, it's and emergency. I'll make it up to you okay?” You smiled at him apologetically. You couldn’t tell him about your hero life so you told him you were a nurse and that you had shifts to cover. Well, it was the best you could make up.

“Sure no problem” Liam got up and walked you outside where you both said goodbye and went on separate ways.

[8:50, Titans Tower]  

When the elevator’s door opened, you could already see Dick with his bags ready.

“Hey Dick, i’m back. What was that about? Everything is okay”? You asked him.

“Bruce called he said Diana called him from Germany, Penguin escaped and it's being a pain. They need us there.” The boy told you

“By the way, I’m sorry for the interruption” Well, that part was half a lie because he was happy now that you were with him, but he couldn’t be that selfish, love isn’t 100% perfect, is it?

“Don’t worry. It’s not a big deal. We should go then, let me just pack some things. I’ll be right back.” You said walking to your room.

You and Dick were on your way to the airport. Passports and tickets were already in hands and also your coats. It was winter in Germany, and the weather was cruel.

“We’re supposed to met them in Sofitel Munich Bayerpost, we’re going to Munich.” He told you looking at you quickly and turning his eyes to the road again.

“I couldn’t expect less from Bruce. This hotel is the best one rated in Germany.” you said looking at your phone.

“Let’s just say he values our comfort.” Dick said with a smile. You smiled at him, resting your head on the car’s backrest.

[4p.m, Munich, Germany, Sofitel Munich Bayerpost]

You and Dick arrived at the hotel after 14 hours of flying, your noses had a shade of red from the weather that was absurdly cold, but inside the building things got a little warmer. You head to the room 809 where Bruce and Diana were waiting for you and Dick.

After one knock, a black haired tall woman opened the door.

“Hey guys, it was time.” She said hugging you and Dick.

“Hey, Diana, i missed you” You said.

“I missed you too, I’ll take you back with me to Themyscira when it’s over, I promise.”

“I think Dick wouldn’t like having her so far from him like this, Diana” Bruce said mockingly, which made Dick's face turned red.

“Dad” Dick says greeting him with a shake.

The justice league members explained the situation to the two of you; how it started and how it got to this point.  The penguin built bombs in the Iceberg Lounge, that was supposed to be working as a nightclub.

The thing was: he planned to plant all of those explosives in the center of New York. But of course you wouldn't allow that.

It was early morning when Dick found that the place was located in a further spot in Munich.  It was close to Lake Isar and a dense wood. The four of you suited up and left the hotel, heading to their location.

----

Bruce stopped the car away from there and you made the rest of the way on foot to avoid any kind of suspicion. Penguin needed to be caught red handed.

“Nightwing, Y/S/H/N, I need you two in the back. I believe they have a basement down there, Diana will deal with the guys on the first floor while i’ll go down. You two stay alert to my signal, I’ll tell you when it's time” Bruce explained simply.

“There's a bag hidden behind a marked three. It had everything we need in case of an emergency" The tall black haired woman explained to you both.

Everyone decided yesterday that it would be better if there was a bag with things the four would need in case something went wrong.

“Fine, be careful everyone, me and Y/S/H/N will stay here.” Nightwing assure the elders as they left.

Fifteen minutes have passed and and nothing. No news, nothing. You were about to complain to Dick when suddenly.

“Nightwing, it’s Batman, it’s a trap, there’s nothing here and the place is full of bombs, run, go”

“Batman, get out of there, where’s Diana?”

“Go, Nightwing” he told Dick and he looked at your with worry.  

You started to run heading towards the south. Dick found the emergency bag covered in snow. You started running again and when you both least expected, you found a frozen lake. There was nowhere to go, you had to cross the lake or you both wouldn’t be able to run from the bomb.

“What do we do?” You asked.

“We gonna have to cross it” He replied  and you noticed how the cold hurt your face. It needed to be quick. “Do you trust me?”

“In these”

“I’ll go first to see if it's safe,and then we keep going.” He proposed

“Fine, let’s do that”  you agreed.

You were almost at the end of the frozen lake  when suddenly you heard noise, when you both looked back to check what it was and you could see one of penguin henchman's. 

He tried to shoot you, but instead he shot the frozen lake making the ice crack and you immediately fell on the river.

“Y/N” Dick yelled, he threw a batarangue at the guy and hit him right in the chest.

It happened so fast. The cold water embraced your body and pushed you further down. You didn’t have time to react, you tried to grab onto something but everything was water.

Dick yelled your name so many times, you could hear it, you prayed to God that he could save you, because you started to lose consciousness. With the last strength you had on your body you started to punch the ice so Dick could hear you.

And he did. He beat the ground until it broke and he pushed you out of there.

“Oh god, you’re alive. You’re alive, Y/N, don’t do this to me. Please” He hugged you.

The boy noticed you were unresponsive.he tried to give cpr but it didn't work. he wasn't getting scared the more it took you to wake up.

He would do anything to save you, he couldn’t lose you and he wouldn’t. So the next thing he did was grab you and the bag and head to somewhere safe in the woods. He found a space between the threes and he set up a tent.

“Here, come here” He helped you to get inside the tent. The fact that you and him were still in the costumes make it a bit hard to move in the little place. You were still unconscious, your lips were blue. You tried to move, you wanted to talk to him, to thank him

Dick thought about a thousand ways to help you, he was afraid you would die from hypothermia, there was only a blanket which was wet now. So he laid you down “Y/N, i’m sorry but i have to do this, I can’t let you die.” You tried to nod  to tell him that it was alright, but you weren’t sure if it was enough to make him understand. So he did the only thing that seemed viable in the moment.

He took off his suit  and then yours. When both of you were naked, he hugged you, placing you in his chest and covering you with the blanket. It was about body warmth, he was trying to raise you body temperature with his.

Time passed and you weren't sure how long have you two been like this, in his embrace. You started to gain consciousness and opened your eyes.

When you looked up to see his face, the boy was asleep. You felt the hotness of his body, the way you both were absolutely connected in this moment, you survived because of him. God, you never thought you could love someone like this.He felt your move and woke up.

“Hey, you’re awake” he smiled softly, still embracing your body with his arms and it was so good that he couldn’t let it go.

“Dick, kiss me” he look at you with questioning eyes. You only nodded. You wanted this, you wanted it right now.

So he kissed you. The snow kept falling from the sky and you were pretty sure it was freezing out there, but the warm rising between you and Dick was bigger. So much bigger.

He kissed with the passion that’s been building up for the past years. He didn't want for something like this to happen to confess his feelings but here you were. And right now he just wanted to love you like there was no tomorrow.

The kiss turned hotter and hotter and he touched you gently hearing you moan softly,  reacting to the movement of his fingers. You were facing each other when he switched the positions and now he was on top of you, looking at you deeply, his hands made its way to your breasts, caressing them gently, and he moaned in your mouth when he kissed you.

The weight of his body on top of yours accelerated your heartbeat in an indescribable way, you placed your hands around his neck intensifying the kiss. Dick tightened his hold on  your waist.  He kissed your neck sending shivers through your body. He thrusted in you with strength and a loud moan escaped from your mouth. You’ve waited so long for this, and now it felt like your bodies were made to be together.

“Am i hurting you?” He asked, looking in your eyes. his voice laced with pleasure. 

“If this is hurting, I don’t even wanna imagine when you start caressing me”

He smiled at you and you involved your legs around his hips with more strength than before with the hope of pull him even closer to you as he placed his lips in your neck trying to muffle his moanings. 

“Dick” You called his name when you were close to your climax.

“Fuck” the boy said as he came soon after.

“I love you” He said kissing you face. He looked  at you with such intensity that you believed he could see through your soul. Your heart was beating faster while  the rest of your body remained numb by the pleasure. Dick laid by your side breathing heavily

“I love you, Dick” You looked at him and said “I love you" Finally saying you loved each other brought a feeling of freedom to both of you. The brown haired and sweaty boy smiled at you and pulled you closer, you nestled in his arms.

“I’m sorry I took your clothes off, I couldn’t lose you so I tried to warm your body.” His said with guilt.

“Hey, don’t apologize for saving my life.” You touched his face

“So you’re saying that i’m like your guardian angel?” he asked you smiling

“Kind of. But i bet that if the angels start being like you, heaven would be way more fun” You replied to him and you laughed together.

“I’d have done this a thousand times if it meant i would have you alive, with me.” he said “Tonight was the best night of my life”

“Just like mine” You told him and you finally let your body rest, sleeping in his warm and comfortable chest.

After looking at you tenderly, Dick also fell asleep, he would wait until morning so both of you could walk  to the car and leave. He was sure Diana and Bruce found a way to leave, so he felt okay with it for this night.

Maybe you would never be able to explain, how safe you felt with him. You fell in love with your best friend, with the one who accepts you at your worst, the person who knows you better than yourself. And somehow, in this moment, he managed to keep you with him forever.

[creativitytoexplore]

The Konigsberg Affair by David W Landrum https://ift.tt/34GKli0 In Nazi Germany, a US diplomat discovers a clandestine smuggling operation, and must make a difficult choice; by David W Landrum.

My secretary told me the meeting with Golper was on and that he was waiting for me at a small restaurant seven miles away. Since it was urgent, I left at once. I stuck the reports of the incident that involved him into a diplomatic case, headed to the garage, and threw the satchel into the sidecar of my BMW R75 motorcycle. I am the only US diplomat who lives in this part of the German state of Prussia. We have a Consulate in Konigsberg, but there are enough Americans in the local settlements and surrounding countryside to warrant having a representative for them so they did not have to go all the way to K-Town when they needed something or got into a scrape. I pulled out on the road that led to the largest town in the area. To my left, the Baltic, grey and choppy, spread north toward Scandinavia and the Arctic. Gulls screeched. The road was clear that morning. I turned the throttle open and felt the cold, raw morning air buffet my face. I liked riding in weather like this. Sometimes after a long ride on a blustery day my face felt like the top layer of skin had been sandpapered off, but the pain was worth the thrill of riding fast, of wind, mist, and rain on my skin - and of nothing ahead but the air and the road. My R75 ran like a dream. The Germans know how to build machines. For a little while, I could forget my job as a diplomat. Americans over here got in trouble. They had affairs with German wives, young boys, underage girls; they got drunk and in fights in bars; they swindled people and took advantage of the local populace. Then they ran (sometimes literally) to the house where I lived and worked to ask for help - or for refuge. Sometimes I felt like a priest who, through years of sitting in the confession booth, knows the pathetic or shocking sins of the people in his parish. I knew the sins of my countrymen - and countrywomen. Though I could shove these sordid episodes into a compartment in my mind, they always were there to emerge and mess with my gut. The outlines of the small city where I was to meet Golper appeared. I saw the old church tower and the roofs of the buildings around the city square. People were out shopping, visiting, transacting business. On the courthouse a Nazi banner flapped in the sea breeze. I slowed to a halt, parked my motorcycle at the address the ambassador had given me, climbed off, and headed for the gasthöff where Golper had agreed to meet with me. I went in and saw him sitting at a table, a stein of beer in front of him. His three bodyguards - I assumed they were this - sat at a table near the front door. Two local citizens sat and played dominoes at a table a little further off. Golper looked up and gave me a crooked smile. "Welcome, Mr. Popper." I sat down, looked over at his bodyguards and back at him. "You guys are causing me woe," I said. "We're sorry, of course. I guess I should have been a good little boy and let those bastards beat the hell out of me like they did to the Kaltenborn family, Samuel Bossard, Harold Dahlquist and Roland Velz." He had recited the names of American citizens assaulted by German paramilitary the past few months. Meacham Golper had lived here several years. He came from New York and had grown up in the ethnic sprawl of the Big Apple. From a German-speaking home, he fit right into this area of Europe. He spoke Deutsch so well the Germans could not believe he was not a native. He also spoke fluent Polish - besides English and Yiddish and Russian. His polyglot abilities landed him in international business. He managed a highly profitable shipping firm in Konigsberg, though he lived out in the country in a palace built by the Teutonic knights. Of late, he had landed in a conflict with the government. Government - it would be more accurate to say he got in a conflict with the thugs and criminals running in packs across Germany now that Hitler and Röhm had come to power. The brownshirts loped through the streets of German cities like gangs looking for people to intimidate. They had frightened most of the population of Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt, into submission. Konigsberg too. Every now and then a contingent of them showed up in our small city. They strutted around flying Nazi banners and singing patriotic songs. Everyone knew to give the arm-extending Hitler salute when the passed by. Foreigners who did not do so, and German citizens who were not aware of the new requirement, were roughed up. Golper caused a row by turning the tables on the brownshirts one afternoon. Out for a stroll, he turned a corner and came upon a parade of maybe twenty Sturmabteilung marching down the main street of town. Five of them in the rear beat drums and played trumpets and fifes. Two in front carried Nazi standards - the now-familiar red banner with a white circle and black swastika in the center. The town folk, most of who were politically conservative and did not like the Nazis, knew enough to cheer and stick their arms up. Some even said, "Sieg heil," or "Heil Hitler." Golper knew what was expected but stood with his hands in his pockets and watched the troupe go by. The reaction came immediately. The two commanders of the brownshirt unit broke ranks and strode over to where he stood. They demanded he give the salute. "I'm an American," he answered in his flawless, unaccented German. "Since I am not a citizen of your country, I am not compelled to salute the symbol of your ruling party. I only salute my own nation's flag." They stood, fulminating. Legally, he was right. Still, they were piqued and wanted to have the last word. This is where the trouble started. "Maybe so," one of them said. "But people who observe that you do not salute the symbol of our Fatherland might get the wrong idea. They don't know you are an American. They might suppose you are a disloyal German - or a Communist or a Jew." "I am not a Communist," Golper said, "but I am a Jew." The younger of the two, I was told by a couple of eye-witnesses, turned beet red and, in a spasm of rage, drew back his arm to strike Golper. He never delivered the blow. In a split second, one of Golper's bodyguards knocked him cold. The other brownshirt leader, who was older, stared a moment, stunned, roared out his anger, and lunged at Golper. Another KO put him down on the cobblestones. The parade had stopped and the brownshirts gaped at what had just befallen their leaders. Most of them were just kids - members of the Jungenbond, a sort of perverted version of the Boy Scouts the Nazis had come up with. They stared and, seeing Golper's tall, Aryan-looking bodyguards eyeing them, turned tail and ran. Now I had to undo the damage at the diplomatic level. "We need to talk about it," I said. "Beer always helps," he answered. He ordered me one. Golper had red hair and the kind of ruddy face that went along with having red hair. I would put his age at a little over forty. I knew from my file that he had fought with distinction in World War I. He had built his shipping business up from nothing. Today he was worth millions. The waitress brought a stein over. The Germans drink their beer at room temperature. "I do miss a good cold one," Golper said, reading my expression. "A toast." I raised my glass indicating that he could propose it. "To the Sturmabteilung - bad health and short life." He said this in German. I scanned the room, afraid someone had heard us. The two men up front did not look up from their game of dominoes. The waitress had walked back to the bar and was washing glasses. "I see they have you on edge too." "It might be best to accommodate them." "Popper, I would rather shovel shit than show deference to those goddamned thugs. Shoveling shit is an honest living, so it would be preferable to accommodating the stormtroopers, as they call themselves - which is also a travesty. I fought against General Hutier's stormtroopers in France during the War, and I respected them. They were tough. These paltry bastards wouldn't have lasted two days in one of his units." I looked over at the three men sitting at the table on the other side of the room. "So who are your bodyguards?" I asked. "Would you like to meet them?" We got up and went over to see them. They rose as we approached. Ironically, the men looked like they could have been members of the Sturmabteilung. Tall, blond, they had the bearing of soldiers. They were trim, fit, and muscular. "Gentlemen, let me introduce you to my friend. This is Shimen Lapid, Eli Shalit, and Michael Hartman. Gentlemen, may I present to you the representative of the United States government for this district, Solomon Popper." "Joel," I said. This rankled me. I go by my middle name, Joel, not by my given name of Solomon. That bastard Golper knew I was a Jew and meant to make a point of it. The way I was raised, I feel as out of place in a synagogue as a snake-handler from Kentucky would feel in an Episcopal Church. Except for having a little better food on the Sabbath and my sisters getting married under a canopy, there was nothing to distinguish me from any other New Yorker. When questionnaires had a set of choices for "Religious Preferences," I always checked "Other." Of the three men, two were American and one Russian. I found out, in our short conversation, that all of them were Zionist settlers from British Palestine. A report circulated to the Consulate suggested Golper had a connection with the endeavor of settling Jews in that territory, though we had no more information on it. Their presence suggested the connection was more significant than the embassy imagined. The men, polite but taciturn, settled back to their beer. Golper and I returned to our table. "I didn't know you had a connection with the Palestinian project," I told him when we were seated and sipping our beer once more. "I have a connection, yes. I'm even helping your friend and mistress Anoushka get there. She and her family will be safe when the Nazi tyranny fully engulfs this land." I had broken up with Anoushka three months ago. Golper seemed to have his own private intelligence-gathering agency and a thick file on me. "Anything else you would like to tell me about myself that I don't know?" He laughed. "I don't normally get mixed up in local politics, especially with a bunch of overgrown boys who like to play soldier and think wearing a swastika arm band makes them one. But this time I couldn't put up with the insults." "I'll grant as much, but what you did will only provoke more harassment." "Like what happened to those Americans in Berlin? Is our government going to stand by and let those gangsters abuse us like they've been doing lately?" "We've filed protests over all of those incidents. Of course, your bodyguards complicated things." "Were they supposed to just stand by and let the krauts beat me up so you could lodge a protest?" "We're doing all we can, Mr. Golper, to protect our citizens over here. You called the brownshirts a gang, and your characterization is accurate. They are a gang and they act like a gang. They'll want to avenge the members of their band of thugs that you hurt. They're mobilizing the ST units from Konigsberg, Zinten, and Insterburg to converge on our city for a rally that could easily turn violent. You might be targeted." "Can't you protect the Americans in this region?" "We'll try our best. But picking fights with the brownshirts is not a good strategy for creating a peaceful environment." "I won't gainsay that. I'll try to be more careful." He looked around and lowered his voice. "And, by the way, Mina sends her greetings." Up to now he had failed to get a rise out of me. This jab hit home. I sat silent a long moment and then spoke. "You must spend a lot more time over in Palestine than I realized." "I've got to go now. Come to my place tonight at six. Dinner. I'll explain it all to you. You might find it an interesting conversation." He drained his beer and left me sitting there. His three bodyguards followed him out the door. When I got back on my bike, I opened it up all the way. The motorcycle shot along the road at top speed. I felt the vibration of the engine shake my body and the wind batter my frame, chilling me to the bone. Back at my residence I told my valet I did not want to be disturbed, poured a whisky, and down in a chair. I gazed out the window at the grey sky and the slate-colored water of the Baltic Sea. Though the water was rough, five cargo ships went by as I sat there and drank. All of them might have belonged to Golper. He knew something about Mina Lavington, who, since she had settled in Palestine, went by the name of Chava Zurer. Mina was my first lover. Golper knew how to throw good punches. I never imagined he could reach into my life to pluck a string that would resonate so painfully. I knew her in school. We went to a rough school, and as a Jewish girl she took a lot of crap from people. She got it from teachers as well as students. Mina was smart and sharp - athletic too. She did gymnastics and played on the girls' softball team. Our families were friends. She graduated in the top ten of our class. I think she might have been valedictorian if some of her teachers had not graded her so hard because she was a Jew. We hung out. I got my first kiss from her. And, one night, after we went to see the Dodgers play, she asked me to come to her family's apartment. I was so naïve I focused my mind on how to make a good impression on her family. When we got there, the place was deserted. It was the first time for both of us, I remembered our clumsiness, her hymeneal blood, my over-eagerness, but I also remember how sweet it was. She and I were lovers from our junior year. We might have walked the old familiar road of marriage and kids but that she went away for a summer to work on a farm - she called it a kibbutz - in the Jewish area of Palestine. She left in May and returned in August. I registered amazement when I saw her. Of course, there was the tan, but she looked taller and stronger. She seemed more confident. Talking with her, I found out she had become an ardent Zionist. This rattled me. Mina had never been political. A lot of kids in my school had picked up on the Marxist ideas going around, but Mina never paid much attention to any sort of ideology. When she came back from Palestine, though, she had brought the notions of the Zionist movement hook, line, and sinker. I wondered if maybe she had found a new guy over in the Promised Land. If she had, it did not end what she and I had shared. Three days after we were back, and at her bidding, we rented a room and spent the night. She felt so different in my arms I could hardly believe it was the same woman. We made love at dusk and then at night and again at three am. We sneaked out before the sun came up and constructed alibis about where we had been. Her increased strength seemed to have increased her desire, which was fine with me. She talked a lot about Palestine, the Jewish people, and Zionism. I listened to her stories. Her eyes lit up as she talked about the increasing number of Jews settling in the British colony; of how they were draining the swamps and transforming the country from a fen to a place of productive farms where everyone owned a share and lived as equals. "We work hard. We do strength training. We've got to be strong to defend ourselves. So I've done calisthenics, weight work-outs, hiking and running." "Who do you have to defend yourself against?" "Bandits. Arab militants. They attack us sometimes. I think you would like it there, Joel. You could train some guys there to box." Inspired by Barney Ross, Max Baer and other champion Jewish fighters, I had trained at boxing clubs since I was in high school. "You should come over with me next summer." As it turned out, I did not go with her. I finished a second whisky and went to clean up and change. Dinners at Golper's place were usually fancy affairs. I didn't ride my motorcycle. The US government knows that good-quality vehicles are necessary to create a classy impression of their diplomatic corps and had blessed me with a Cord 812 Phaeton - a car that dazzled the Germans to no end. I drove through the deepening darkness and arrived at Golper's place. The windows were brightly lit. Stars gleamed over the turrets of the old castle. I had expected something like a gala, but only my vehicle occupied the circular driveway. I parked. A valet came to escort me inside. Golper, dressed elegantly for dinner, greeted me. Standing not far from him was Mina. I had not seen her in eight years. In high school, she was just a girl - a beautiful, strong, mature girl to be sure, but not quite an adult. Now I saw her in the fullness of her womanhood. She wore her hair long. She still possessed the strength that I had noticed the first year she came back from Palestine, but looked comfortable with it, whereas that first year she had seemed awkward with it. Now, settled into herself, she wore her strength and her full maturity with confidence. I admired, just for a second, the light brown hair, green eyes, symmetrical face that was square and beautifully featured, eyes, straight nose, a small, slightly bowed mouth, her strong shoulders and full breasts mounted atop a slender waist and long legs. She wore a simple blue blouse and a black skirt that came to the middle of her knees. I had to remind myself not to stare. In a flash my mind remembered her in her beautiful white nakedness: the slope of her arms and shoulders, her breasts with dark nipples above her flat stomach and powerful rib cage, the strong thighs and swath of dark brown hair that thatched her opening. Her firm knees and ankles gave uplift to the top part of her body. I thought of the gasping way she made love, of how she had educated me into the mysteries of sexuality, and of what a marvelous teacher she had been. It seemed like a dream now. She stepped forward. "Hello, Joel. It so good to see you again." She took hold of my shoulders and gave me a kiss. The kiss generated even more specificity of memory. "Wonderful to see you, Mina. You're more beautiful than ever." "I like to think I'm better looking than when I was a gawky eighteen-year-old girl." "Gawky you never were." Golper, who had been watching all this with benign amusement, gestured toward the dining room. "Shall we eat?" He escorted us to the next room. A long table occupied the center. Two young women in black maid's livery stood nearby. Broad windows on the north side looked out on the Baltic. Stars pulsated white and blue and reflected in the expanse of water. Lights of ships moving across the sea-lanes added their artificial glow to the night. The servers brought in salad to begin the meal. I felt too anxious to talk to Mina - like when I was fifteen and too nervous to talk to girls I liked. She looked over at me and smiled. I remembered her smile in her bedroom when her parents were away, the lights of the City filtering in, the shadows on her body accentuating her curves and lines. "I hear some good things about you, Joel," she said. "I'm surprised anyone in Palestine hears about me." "Quite the opposite. Your journalism is popular. Your article on the anti-Semitism in the State Department circulated all over the protectorate." "That was a stupid thing to do and I'm still wondering why I did it. It made me lots of enemies in Washington. I'll probably never go very far in the foreign service because of it." "Why would you want to work for people like that?" "Only a few people in the State Department are biased. I hoped calling attention to it would change that. I think I can do some good by staying in and calling attention to what's wrong on Capitol Hill." "Admirable. It's a lonely post you have." She hardly knew how lonely it was. "Sometimes," I replied. "And you, Mina - I haven't heard much of what you're doing these days." "I live on a communal settlement. We work together - mostly farming. We've started a couple of business ventures as well. I'm also trained as a soldier. We have to fight to defend ourselves." I had already noticed how strong she looked. Even through her dress made out of thick material I could see her strength. As we ate, she gave me a detailed description of her life in a Jewish enclave in Palestine. "We call a collective farm a kibbutz. It's Hebrew. It means 'clump' or 'gathering.' We're learning to speak the language of the ancient Israelites." "Speak it? For everyday conversations? You're using the sacred tongue to talk about how much manure to spread on the cabbage patch?" "Why not? King David did. The settlers who come to our farm and the adjoining area speak Russian, German, Yiddish, Polish, Lithuanian, English... you name it. Rather than trying to accommodate one language, we're just going to start new - going back to our roots." "I'm impressed." "You should be," Golper commented. "And maybe you should be over there yourself." Golper had no doubt done research on me and knew my lack of religious fervor. "I think I can do more good by serving in the US Diplomatic Corps - at least for right now." "We're in agreement on that," Golper said. We had just finished dessert and wine. The serving women would bring us coffee soon, but I could see that the words my host had just spoken were a cue. He had brought me here to ask something of me. Now I would find out what it was. Mina was in on it. The request would undoubtedly relate to the current situation in Palestine. "Do you know much about what's going on in Palestine?" Golper asked. "Only what's been in the news. The settlers and the Arabs are fighting." "The British are worried that the Arabs will support the Germans when war breaks out - and it will break out pretty soon. They have restricted Jewish immigration and will continue to do so." I began to get annoyed. "Look, why don't you just tell me up front what's going on and why you brought me here?" Golper looked over at Mina and then back at me. "I think I can safely tell you, Popper. I'm in the resettlement business. I use my ships to take Jews who emigrate from Russia and the Baltic nations and ferry them to Palestine - Ertz Israel it will eventually be. Now that the British are clamping down, limiting the number of settlers we can bring, we have to do this clandestinely. We also run guns so the settlements can defend themselves." "You didn't invite me over to tell me this." "Do you remember Marion Warner?" he asked. I knew Marion from school. He had been a gung-ho advocate of the Zionist project to settle Jews in Palestine. I liked him because, like me, being a Jew was more of a cultural thing. Unlike me, being Jewish in the secular sense did matter a lot to him. I especially remembered him because he had taken me up in an airplane. He had money, had learned to fly, and owned a DH 60 Cirrus Moth. One sunny afternoon he and I flew the two-seater out to sea. I remembered the exhilaration of flying and the sense of freedom it gave. Marion eventually served four years in the Army Air Corps and then, like Mina, emigrated to Palestine. "I remember him. How does he fit into this?" "He flies for us," Golper said. "For us?" "Mina and I are involved in the immigration project - to get our people to Palestine before war breaks out and Europe shuts down." I glanced out at the Baltic. So that was it. "Your ships from Konigsberg aren't carrying what's on the cargo manifesto?" "They carry what I list. It's just that, below decks, they have a few hundred people we're smuggling into the land." "And how does Warner fit into this?" "He flies missions for us. The Nazis caught him." "Caught him?" "He had some engine trouble and had to land in a field not far from here. The brownshirts captured him. He had a Russian - a military leader we want to get to Israel; the Russians want to keep him for when the Germans attack. The brownshirts are holding them both. He also has some documents on him we don't want them to see." "Why are they holding him?' "They're suspicious. You know how these people work. They have no legal reason to hold him, but they think they are above the law. He's an American citizen. They're holding him illegally." "The consulate in Konigsberg has a lot more clout that I do. Why don't you call them?" "We don't want the Consulate to know about our operation." "Why not?" "A lot of people in Washington are not far from being brownshirts themselves. And there are a whole knot of bankers who are afraid if we antagonize the Nazis they might default on the debts Germany owes us. If they find out we're running an unauthorized operation taking thousands of German Jews out of the country, they'll shut us down." "So you think I'm a loyalist?" "I think you might become one. I know you're not keen on your heritage. Let's be frank and lay our cards on the table. We need your help and you are on our side whether you want to be or not. We know you can trust us because of that." Silence fell - a very tense silence. For a moment I wondered if Golper had brought Mina along to offer to me as a reward if I agreed to the mission, but I dismissed the idea. Still, I thought I would ask. "How does Miss Zurer fit into this?" "I fit in because we used to be in love and because I know our people matter to you." "I've never been religious." "Neither have I. What we're doing is building a homeland. It will be for the religious, yes. But also for people like you and me. Can you help us out?" I looked at her. God, what a beautiful woman, I thought. She and Golper waited for me to reply. "If I agree," I said, "what Mina's role in the deal?" "She will accompany you when you go to arrange for Marion's release. He knows you, of course, but would think you are simply coming because you're the embassy contact in this part of the country. She will be the signal to him that you're okay and that he is to cooperate. And she also will keep you safe." I looked at him and over at her. They were dead serious, though Mina's eyes were soft. I liked to think I saw a spark of the old-time feeling there. The silence had grown too tense. "All right," I said. "I'll see if I can get them to free him." "I think you can, Joel," Golper said. "I hope I'm not overstepping the bounds of propriety by calling you that." "We can be on a first-name basis. Your first name is Meacham, but you've always gone by Melvin." He smiled. "I wouldn't think you could find something like that out." "We have a file on you." Afterward, we went to the parlor. Golper lit up a cigar. I had never smoked. Apparently Mina didn't either. We had some good brandy - too good. After a couple of hours and several glasses of the stuff, Golper stretched in his chair. "You'll never make it home, Popper. You're soused. I don't want you to get in an accident. You can stay here." I might have objected but when I got up out of my chair I almost fell over. I nodded as he chuckled. Mina maintained an austere silence. Golper led me to a room. I settled into a comfortable bed and fell asleep at once. A noise woke me early in the morning and opened my eyes the sky pre-dawn grey over the sea. More noise. I rolled over to see Mina standing just past the door to my room. She wore a simple white cotton nightgown. She smiled at my startled expression. "Nothing has changed, Joel," she said. She pulled the nightgown off. Without any ado or fanfare, she got in bed with me. The grogginess and headache from drinking too much last night miraculously disappeared. She lay down beside me. I gripped and pushed into her. The ripple of strength that came down her back into her hips then into the muscles around her velvety opening sent shocks of pleasure through me. I thanked my lucky stars (couldn't thank God, since I didn't figure he would approve of this) that I had continued to train as a boxer and that my strength was at least equal to hers. I worked out at a local boxing club and sparred with Germans who were into fisticuffs. Mina bucked like a colt, twisted her hips, locked her legs around mine, bit me, swore and cursed in English, Polish, and what I assumed was Hebrew. We went off at the same time. Afterwards, it took me a couple of minutes to get my breath and orient myself. I realized we had not used protection. We lay side by side. I wanted to talk to her, but there are times when silence is the proper utterance. After what must have been ten minutes, she spoke. "I love you." I tried not to laugh and the effort brought a twisted grin to my face. "I can hardly believe that, Mina." "Why?" "You've forged a new life for yourself - without me." "Who says I was without you? A person can live in another person's heart and mind." "You're not in love with one of your fellow kibbutzniks?" "I won't say I haven't had my flings - but they're different - ideological and manipulative. The kibbutz men are like most converts - not to Judaism but to Zionist ideology. They are too zealous and too sure they're absolutely right and the rest of world is wrong. They scorn anyone who compromises what they believe is orthodoxy." I did not reply. A long silence passed then she spoke. "I hope you don't think I slept with you to get you to go on our mission. You can banish that thinking from your mind. I'm not that much of a slut." "You were never a slut." A long silence, then she said, "Come with me to Palestine." "Who's the convert now?" "Not me. I'm not urging you to become a convert to anything. In fact, I want you there so I don't become a convert." "It would be hard to leave what I have." "What do you have, Joel?" "A job I like. The chance at a career." "You shot your career in the foot when you wrote those articles. Those rich goyim don't forget. They won't forget that you called attention to what they don't want anybody to know." She was probably right. I regretted writing those opinion pieces. I had already felt a chill from the higher ups in Berlin (except for Ambassador Dodd, but he was an exceptional man). "Let's get on the other side of this little undertaking. Then we'll talk about the future." I felt a twinge of shame as I looked at her, the curve of her breasts, the beauty of her light hair falling over her shoulders. "You're the most beautiful woman in the world," I said. A sad look crossed her face. "All I hear back home is that I'm a good comrade; or a fine, strong woman who could give birth to a whole platoon of healthy Jewish settlers - like I was breeding stock - a cow or a healthy filly. I get sick of it." "I can't imagine how any man would think of you that way." "They do," she said curtly. She went off to clean up. I lay back and enjoyed the feeling. It had been a while. Occasionally I made it with a woman from the expatriate community - Anoushka Blacoviac being my most frequent lady friend. When she was not able to arrange to be around much, a trusted German associate discretely arranged for me to rendezvous with various whores. It had been a long time since I had slept with a woman I loved - it had, in fact, been the last time I was with Mina. I came down to breakfast. Golper greeted me with a grin that was not supposed to be knowing, but he could not disguise his glee. Mina sat at the table and ate a grapefruit. She had put on a sensible business suit. She would pose as my secretary. As we ate, he gave me the details. The brownshirts had detained Warner and the man he was flying out of Russia. They had not officially arrested him. They did not have authority to make arrests and were afraid they had overstepped their jurisdiction and might get in trouble. Rudolf Diels, the head of the German secret police, was not overly friendly toward the brownshirts. But they suspected Warner of wrongdoing, even of espionage. I needed to get there before they made definite plans. If the Nazi party in Berlin decided to question Warner, he might reveal vital information about the smuggling operation. And, worse, they would recognize the Russian, whose name was Mosin. He was a man the Germans would love to get out of circulation so their troops would never have to fight him. Mina and I headed off in the Cord. The weather had turned cold. The sun and clouds fought for dominance of the sky. A cold, stiff wind blew off the sea. The brownshirts had located their headquarters in an old farmhouse maybe twelve miles from Konigsberg. Swastika banners festooned it. Scores of vehicles circled the place. Armed guards stood near the doors. I saw additional guards had posted farther out from the house. They raised their rifles when we approached, though we had called to tell them we were coming. I slowed. The guards demanded I identify myself and when I did they pointed us to a parking slot. We climbed out of the car and were escorted inside the old, spacious house that had served as residence for a big farming family. It was warm inside. The brownshirts had stoked a fire in the fireplace. Two swastika flags covered the walls. It seemed these people had to have one of those everywhere they went. Guards stood on either side of the desk where their commander sat. He identified himself as Jergen Eibeling - about thirty years old with short blond hair and Nordic face. Like many young Nazis, he looked trim and fit. I wondered if he would give the Nazi salute and expect me to return it. He did not. He got right to the point. "Mr. Council, we are not convinced by your explanation of Mr. Warner's activities." "He is an American citizen, Captain Eibeling. As far as I know, he has committed no crime. He had permission to fly from the Soviet Union into Germany." "And bring a Russian with him?" "He is authorized to carry passengers. The passenger had a valid passport and the necessary paperwork to authorize entrance into the country. Again, no crime was committed." (Mosin's paperwork, Golper had told me, was forged.) He had nowhere to go. He might waste my time and his through obfuscation, but it looked like he did not intend to do so. "We will release him. Your American compatriots, like Mr. Golper, seem to like to make trouble for us. Of course, we would expect as much of Jews." I did not reply. I wondered if he knew I was a Jew - or Mina. Probably not. He would have no way of knowing. The German shuffled a sheaf of paper and then tapped them on the desktop to get them straight. "Take him and the other one too." "The embassy will contact you about the recovery of his aircraft." In a moment they had brought Warren and Mosin in. They looked weary but unharmed. Warren recognized me, though he apparently thought I had just come as a representative of the US government. I gave him a look and he communicated that he would not greet me or seem familiar. It might complicate the procedure if the local commander knew we were friends. And I could also tell he recognized Mina and knew we were working for his spy cell. The four of us went out into the cold, clear day. We got Mosin and Warren into the Cord. Just as Mina was crossing in front of the Cord to get in one the passenger side, a hubbub broke out. I heard shouting and, worse, footsteps of running jackboots and the clatter of arms. Someone shouted, "It's Mosin, it's Mosin!" I turned. Mina ran around to the front of the car. Two brownshirts with rifles rushed toward us. One closed in from the other side. Someone had identified the Russian. They did not intend to let him get away. As I stood there, paralyzed with fear, not certain what to do, shots rang out. The two Germans coming at me fell to the pavement only a foot away, their bright blood spurting out, staining the cobblestones, and smoking in the chilly air. A shot sounded behind me. I turned. Mina stood over the prostrate body of a stormtrooper. She had shot him with a pistol. She looked up. "Let's get out of here." I broke from my lethargy. More shots sounded. Brownshirts swarmed out of the building but were brought down by rifle and machinegun fire coming from a copse of trees fifty yards beyond their headquarters. I caught a glimpse of Lapid, Shalit, and Hartman. They were our back-up. They had taken down the first two Germans and now were engaging the group of them that had surged from their headquarters building. I sped around to the driver's door. As I did, Mina turned to get into the car. I saw three stormtroopers round the corner of the building. They were only thirty feet away. Instinct for protection kicked in. I dove, picked up one of the rifles from the fallen guards, leveled it, and fired just as they were drawing a bead on Mina. The bullet glanced off the rifle the brownshirt in the middle had aimed. I think (I was never certain) its velocity knocked the weapon out of the center guard's hands and ricocheted, hitting the one to his left. The one in the center fell, knocking the third guard over. I fired at them as they tried to get up. If they got a shot off, they could hit Mina or me. They could puncture the tires or the engine or gas tank on my Cord. I'm not a good shot, but I hit all three of them, threw down the rifle, and dove into the front seat. (I later found out I had wounded all them severely, but they did recover, fought through and survived the war.) Gunfire rang as I screeched out of the compound and on to the road. I immediately got off the main highway and and on to the rural routes and backroads I knew from riding my motorcycle. Fortunately, the Phaeton was a fast car and we rapidly put distance between us and the Germans. When we were a safely away from the compound, I turned to Mina. "So," I said. She looked at me. Those eyes. "So?" "So this was a set-up?" Warren and Mosin began to converse quietly in the back seat, speaking Russian. "Not like you think. We knew things might not go as planned. We had a back-up course of action." "So Golper's bodyguards were in place and armed, and you had a gun?" "Yes. And we have a plan to get you out of Germany." Realization struck. This incident that would cost me my job and my freedom. Diplomats do not shoot nationals of the country where they are posted. The fallout would be intense. I would be hung out to dry. I would probably spend the rest of my life, or the best part of it, at Sing-Sing or Alcatraz with Al Capone and Baby-Face Nelson. "We've arranged for you to get on a ship and come to Israel." I looked at her. I stared so long I almost ran off the road. "We? Who are 'we'?" "Mr. Golper and his associates." I gripped the steering wheel. Mina leaned toward me. "We didn't want this to happen, Joel," she said, trying to express her sincerity through tone of voice. "But we knew it could happen. We had plans if it did." "Plans that mean exiting the life I've lived up to now?" "What life, Joel? You've never married. From what Meacham tells me, you don't have many friends. After those articles you wrote, your career will go nowhere. Those high-ups in Washington who hated your exposé of their attitudes toward us will delight to see you tarred and feathered and sent to prison." I said nothing. By now our two passengers had quieted down and were listening to our conversation. She went on. "That's not because you couldn't have all of those things I mentioned that you don't have. You had them with me. I had them with you. Since we went our separate ways, neither of us has much of anything in life." She paused. "They'll to block the roads. Can you find Niederwerrenstrausser?" "It's about a mile up ahead." "We'll ditch the car there. Someone will pick us up and take us to the ship." "To take me to Palestine?" "It's your choice. You can stay here and face the music if you want to." The full impact of what I had done began to register even more clearly. The mission to free Warren was unauthorized. I had allied myself with a clandestine organization. In my role as a representative of the United States Foreign Service, I had shot and possibly killed three representatives of the new German government - a government with whom our relations were tense. Mina had nailed it. I had interfered with the arrest of two figures the Germans considered criminals opposed to their government. I was a dead duck. We turned on Niederwerrenstrausser. A mile down the road I saw Golper and his three bodyguards (who had emerged from the gunfight unscathed). We all got out of the car. I wanted to slug Golper but restrained myself. He had me by the balls. My life depended on his good will. He knew it too. He grinned. "You'll like Palestine, Popper," he said. "We've got everything set up. You'll go there with Mina." I looked over at her. Her beauty brought a little comfort in the grimness of the whole thing. I had no choice, but at least I would be with her. It would be like old times, though I would never have wanted it to happen like this. "I'll see to it that you get your car. We've already stolen your motorcycle and packed it on a freighter - and your clothes and personal belongings. I think we got most everything you own. If you'll trust me with your access number, I'll transfer all your money to a Swiss bank before they freeze your assets." He would know I owned no property. Looking out to the sea, I saw a ship sitting at anchor. Two men were speeding from it in a motorboat. They would get us on the ship and take us to Palestine. No choice and no way out. I nodded. Mina came over and took my hand. We stood by the grey, choppy waters of the Baltic and watched as the boat slowed down and drew to shore.

[weloseeveryweek]

a change of results

Retrospection is such a human trait, and it seems to come to the fore in sports. Match reports are actually pointless, if you think about it; what for review something that’s already happened and will never happen again? Greatest XIs, players you’d have liked to play with – all these are things that you would have liked to have had but never will. And so this question begs that kind of answer: fantastical, self-indulgent, and nothing more than a wish, a dream.

The go-to result I say when I think of this question is the Champions’ League final of 2009. I remember reading the papers the morning after and being bitterly disappointed. My dad, from the doorway, said, “that was way too easy,” and I said, “but still.” If we’d won that not only would we have been one shy of Liverpool’s record, we would also have been the first team in the modern era to have won it back to back, Madrid be damned.

There are other candidates in this vein, of course. Reversing the 6-1 defeat against City that would have left us with the league; some result in the 94/95 season for similar result; any one of the FA Cup finals we’ve lost; the 1996 semi-final against Germany for England. Any of these are easy to explain. But the real result I settle on, regardless of trophies and glory and everything that’s shiny in our lives, is different from that. Instead of wanting us to win a game, I want us to have lost.

Let me take you back almost sixty years, now. There’s a bunch of fellows dressed in natty suits waiting in a German airport. I assume all their ties were red. They’ve had two false starts, because it’s snowing heavily outside, but they’re optimistic about this third time being their last. They board the plane. They’re chatting, talking about cards and home and football, of course. They’re into the semi-finals of the European Cup – who wouldn’t be cheerful?

You know what comes next. Everyone does. I cried once in the National Football Museum and that was at the telegram Duncan Edwards sent to his landlady – ‘all fights cancelled. Flying tomorrow. Duncan.’ There’s this one picture in the Guardian from the 7th of February, 1958, dull and dark, the sheen of the moon or some kind of light reflecting dimly on the pavement. Hundreds, thousands of people are lined along the road. They’re all waiting for something. You can’t make out their faces but some have their heads bowed, some have their hands clasped. On the back of the photograph it says – Old Trafford at midnight, crowds waiting for cortege of coffins of Manchester Utd.

I don’t suppose I can adequately explain the collective grief that a football club experiences when something like this happens. It happened to Chapecoense and the world mourned with them, as they should have, but when you are a fan of that club tragedy is a completely different thing. To understand this you must understand how fans relate to football. I know that we’re fond of saying ‘it isn’t just a game’, but there isn’t any other way to put it. It’s not just a game, pure and simple. It becomes a part of your life; it is that which defines you and that with which you define yourself. When you become a fan of a club you’re buying into a common identity, a culture, a different society. And tragedy affects all of these things. As a Singaporean I’m still affected by the Japanese Occupation even though I hadn’t even been born, because it is a defining moment in our history that shapes it. So too for tragedy in football, and especially when it happens to the team.

Because the team represents the club, represents its values, represents – as it were – your soul; and the Busby Babes were United. Strong and brave and bright and young. I was reading Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man recently and he says that Munich is different from other disasters, like Milan’s, because Edwards and the rest represented the beginning of what could have been a future. It is their unfulfilled, unknown potential that hurts the most. They were already through to the semi-finals – they could have been the first ever English team to lift the trophy. They were already league title winners. They were midway through the FA Cup (and, incidentally, still reached the final that year). Their names could have gone down in history as champions, winners, legends; not sad ghosts so cruelly snatched away, with nothing more than black and white photographs and a memorial every year.

You might think me mechanical for reducing the tragedy to mere trophies. I’m aware that winning isn’t everything, but football is everything, and in football the narrative goes with the most dizzying of wins, the jaw-dropping last minute victories (snatched preferably from reviled opponents). This is not to define their lives in terms of winning – they had families, wives, children, mothers and fathers – but to explain why their loss is felt so keenly. They gave people something to believe in, and taking away a team is like taking away hope. They are your father, brother, son. And you feel the loss just as keenly. Danny Boyle in the Class of ‘92 mentions how the last photograph of the Busby Babes was the biggest photograph in his family album. Eric Harrison says that he was pulled out of class to be told the news, like when a relative passes. In The Football Man, Hopcraft on visiting Dudley (Edwards’ hometown) related this anecdote told by Edwards’ father: lorry drivers with Manchester accents, stopping on the long run home from somewhere south to visit Duncan’s grave.

Sir Alex Ferguson was fond of saying that a club is like a family. When something happens everyone, regardless of how far away they are, feels it. This doesn’t just ripple through support at the time; it ripples through time itself, because of how human it is. At the end of the day eight boys died. The oldest was twenty-eight. Big Duncan was twenty-three. Hopcraft writes about the grief of Edwards’ parents, the way they kept all his medals and England caps and United shirts in his room. In the Dudley Cathedral there is a stained glass window featuring him in his United kit kicking a ball. Football is about remembering. About telling stories. About not forgetting what came before, be it a treble or a tragedy.

The more cynical people in the world have accused Manchester United of turning Munich into a publicity stunt, a circus fest of memorials and pointless sentiment; all right, perhaps there are those who would do that, but I’ve no doubt that any true United fan understands the gravity of the occasion, and behind the so-called memory industry there is a swelling of feeling that manifests itself in the spontaneity of people who gather in the Munich tunnel quiet and solemn. Class of ’92 highlights the comparisons between the Busby Babes and Fergie’s Fledglings, and about the shadow of Munich that settled over the club always. Duncan Hamilton, in his book about George Best, wrote about the 1968 European Cup semi-final against Real Madrid. Bill Foulkes, a Munich survivor, scored the winner, and ‘turns towards his own half, slightly spreading his arms and softly clenching together the fingers of both hands. His face is almost stony.’ Hamilton delves into hyperbole and imagination here, but you can’t help agreeing with him when he posits that one image must have been ‘whirling through [Foulkes’s] mind then. Of men who would never age, would never go grey and would always wear United Red.’

Tragedy has moulded us as a club, for better or for worse. To accuse Munich of being manufactured would be to accuse us of lacking a soul. Yet some stories are better left untold. I know that Munich has added to the club mythology and sense of self and our way of being, but all the same I wish that there was a less awful way of doing this than having to know that twenty-three people died. How much better would it have been for our story, our spirit to have been written in the silver engravings on the bottom of trophies than the stone embossing on shrines. How much more important should the names on that empty lineup against Sheffield Wednesday be filled, that twenty-three families, and United itself, could have gone on.

Which is why the game I would change, even though I know I will never be able to, is a game in the European Cup run of Manchester United in 1957/58. Perhaps instead of winning 3-0 against Dukla Prague on the 20th of November, Pegg and Taylor amongst the scorers, we could have lost 3-0 instead. The next leg was lost 1-0 at home, and we would never have made it through to play Red Star Belgrade. Never stopped at Munich to board a plane. They would have come home from Prague awfully disappointed, their spirits down, a bitter taste in their mouths, faced with insurmountable odds. But they would have come home.

Mark Jones – Roger Byrne – Geoff Bent – David Pegg – Eddie Colman – Bill Whelan – Tommy Taylor 

[365footballorg-blog]

Stejskal: Dan Hunt explores how FC Dallas can fix their attack for 2019

USA Today Images

November 9, 201811:46AM EST

For the second year in a row, FC Dallas came out of the gate flying.

And for the second year in a row, a late slump ended the club’s season far earlier than they’d hoped.

Their 2018 slide didn’t approach the depths of their brutal second-half collapse in 2017, but it was just about as costly. FCD managed to return to the playoffs this year, but they were bounced immediately, losing at home to the Portland Timbers in the Knockout Round last Wednesday.

The defeat was the fourth in a row for Dallas, who entered their final three games of the regular season in first place in the Western Conference, four points ahead of second-place Sporting Kansas City. They still had some work to do to secure the top spot in the West heading into their Oct. 13 match at D.C. United, but a top-two seed and a bye to the Conference Semifinals looked relatively secure.

Then, the wheels fell off. FCD lost 1-0 at D.C., fell 3-0 at home to SKC on Oct. 21 and conceded twice in the final 10 minutes to lose 2-1 at Colorado on Decision Day presented by AT&T. The final capitulation against Portland followed a few days later.

The common thread throughout the losing skid? A dried-up attack. Dallas, who finished the regular season tied for the third-fewest goals in the West, scored just twice in their final four matches. Their forwards repeatedly failed to put away quality chances, they had difficulty building through the middle and their wingers struggled with the final ball. The problems proved fatal in the loss to Portland, when Dallas couldn’t break down a Timbers team that played down a man for the final 30 minutes.

“We’ve got to be cleaner in front of the net and we’ve also got to be cleaner on those entry passes into the box,” FCD owner and president Dan Hunt told MLSsoccer.com on Thursday.

Hunt knows Dallas needs to improve in the final third in 2019, but he isn’t yet set on how to best achieve that. The most obvious solution would be to upgrade at striker, where FCD got minimal production this season. Maxi Urruti was streaky at the position before moving into a deeper role after Mauro Diaz was sold in July; Dominique Badji scored just two goals in 10 games after he was acquired later in July as part of the deal that sent Kellyn Acosta the other way; Designated Player Cristian Colman played and scored sparingly before tearing his ACL in early October.

Despite all that, Hunt isn’t entirely convinced that Dallas need a dominant No. 9. Hunt and VP of soccer operations Luiz Muzzi, who is leading the technical staff while technical director Fernando Clavijo is on leave due to health reasons, are “interested in looking at the position,” but they’re also weighing alternative options. They’re considering moving nominal winger Michael Barrios into “more of a Josef Martinez-type” role in the middle, where they believe the Colombian could thrive.

Hunt also praised Colman’s ability to “create a lot of chaos” in the attacking end and pointed to his injury as a major reason for Dallas’ downfall. He still believes in Urruti as a striker. And he noted that SKC, Real Salt Lake and Portland don’t have a standout No. 9 and are yet all those teams are still in contention for the 2018 MLS Cup.

“We’ve spent a long time thinking about goalscoring and, at least from my statistics, [13] of the league’s top-25 goal scorers didn’t even make the playoffs; four were eliminated in the play-in game. So, [17] of the league’s top-25 didn’t even make it past the first round of the playoffs,” he said. “That leads you to sort of think about things maybe in a little bit of a different way.

“It’s the more balanced scoring approach that you see from teams like Kansas City, Salt Lake has a more balanced scoring approach, Portland. I think we’re frankly a little more balanced, although not with the volume that we’d had in past years. So, is that a more successful model? Or is the out and out 15-goal guy, of which there were only seven of those in the league this year? I think the jury’s still out on some of that.”

Hunt is right about SKC, RSL and the Timbers goals-by-committee approach working fine this season, but a quick glance at a list of recent MLS Cup winner belies the apparent need for a top striker. Toronto had Jozy Altidore in 2017; Portland had Fanendo Adi in 2015; LA had Robbie Keane in 2014, 2012 and 2011. A league champ emerging without a dead-eye No. 9 is more of the exception than the rule.

Dallas could still add at the position; they’re just not yet committed to the idea. They’re also not likely to spend huge amounts of money this winter. The club already have three DPs on the books for 2019 in Colman, Santiago Mosquera and Carlos Gruezo, and while all could be bought down using TAM to open space for a new DP, Hunt said he didn’t expect that would happen this offseason.

If they don’t sign a new striker – Badji and Urruti, like Colman, also have guaranteed deals for 2019 – Hunt said that they could add on the wing. He liked what he saw from Mosquera when he was healthy in 2018 and predicted that the 23-year-old would be a “double-digit goal scorer next season.” He also noted that the club got decent production from Barrios, who had six goals and six assists this season. Both are also guaranteed for next year.

The club have an option on fellow winger and team co-leading scorer Roland Lamah, who, according to the MLS Players Association, was FCD’s highest paid player in 2018 with a $ 818,500 salary. Another wide attacker, Tesho Akindele, is FCD’s lone out of contract player, though Hunt said Dallas are interested in bringing him back.

One position where FCD likely won’t make any new signings is No. 10, where 21-year-old summer acquisition Pablo Aranguiz and 18-year-old Homegrown Paxton Pomykal will compete for the 2019 starting role.

“We’re excited about Pablo. We spent a lot of time looking at him, scouting him, understanding him. He’s got a lot of similarities to Mauro Diaz, and when he was on the field we saw a lot of really great things,” said Hunt. “As his playing time lessened down the stretch, that, obviously, I don’t think that helped him in his development, but he’s a major piece for this next season. As is, I would tell you, Paxton Pomykal. I have big hopes for Paxton here. He’s having a very good Under-20 tournament [with the U.S.] and there’s a lot of belief in his ability, so I think you’ll see that playmaker role shared between those two for 2019.”

Pomykal isn’t the only Homegrown who Hunt expects to get more out of in 2019. He also name-checked Jesus Ferreira and Thomas Roberts as players who should see minutes next season. Even if they’re not first-team regulars, they’ll finally have an outlet for playing time with FCD’s newly-announced USL League One side.

Hunt said that the team, which will announce their name, home stadium, head coach and technical staff in the coming weeks, will be composed mainly of developing MLS players, first-teamers rehabbing injuries and academy players. It could be a vital step for Dallas, who Hunt admitted have lacked a bridge from their academy to the first team for far too long.

Another Homegrown, defender Chris Richards, might not be back in Dallas at all next season. The US youth international is on loan to Bayern Munich through the end of the calendar year. He’s impressed with the German giants to the point that Hunt indicated he could remain in Bavaria via permanent transfer after his loan expires at the end of December.

Of course, the defense isn’t the problem. Not with all four backline starters and the top-two goalkeepers from a stingy group guaranteed for next season. The attack is where the questions lie for FC Dallas. Hunt is still confident in his club’s model, staff and players and he doesn’t have any regrets about moving Diaz or Acosta this summer, but he knows that if Dallas don’t take a step forward in the final third, they could once again fall short in 2019.

“We’re not doing this for any other reason than to try to win a championship,” he said. “We’ve got to get better. Exiting the playoffs in this entry round is not where we want to be.”

Series: 

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Stejskal: Dan Hunt explores how FC Dallas can fix their attack for 2019 was originally published on 365 Football

[capecodcurmudgeon-blog]

For the people of the modern Czech Republic, the Munich agreement of 1938 was a betrayal. “O nás bez nás!” “About us, without us!”

Nazi propaganda depicting German Anschluss with Austria

Intent on avoiding war with Nazi Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain had convened in Munich that September, to resolve German claims on western Czechoslovakia.  The “Sudetenland”.  Representatives of the Czech and Slovak peoples, were not invited.

On September 30, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to London, declaring “Peace in Our Time”.  The piece of paper Chamberlain held in his hand bore the signatures of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Édouard Daladier as well as his own, annexing the Sudetenland, to Nazi Germany.

To Winston Churchill, it was an act of appeasement.  Feeding the crocodile (Hitler), in hopes that he will eat you last.  For much of Great Britain, the sense of relief was palpable.

In the summer of 1938, the horrors of the Great War were a mere twenty years in the past.  Hitler had swallowed up Austria, only six months earlier.   British authorities divided the home islands into “risk zones”, identified as “Evacuation,” “Neutral,” and “Reception.”  In some of the most gut wrenching decisions of the age, these people were planning “Operation Pied Piper”, the evacuation of millions of their own children, in the event of war.

  When Nazi Germany invaded Poland the following September, London mayor Herbert Morrison was at 10 Downing Street, meeting with Chamberlain’s aide, Sir Horace Wilson.  Morrison believed that the time had come for Operation Pied Piper.  A year to the day from the Prime Minister’s “Peace in our Time” declaration, Wilson protested.  “But we’re not at war yet, and we wouldn’t want to do anything to upset delicate negotiations, would we?”

Morrison was done with the Prime Minister’s dilatory response to Hitler’s aggression, practically snarling in his thick, East London accent “Look, ’Orace, go in there and tell Neville this from me: If I don’t get the order to evacuate the children from London this morning, I’m going to give it myself – and tell the papers why I’m doing it. ’Ow will ’is nibs like that?”

Thirty minutes later, Morrison had the document. The evacuation, had begun.

Next weekend, Superbowl 52 will be played at U.S. Bank Stadium, in front of a crowd of 66,655.

Forty-five times that number were mobilized in the first four days, primarily children, relocated from cities and towns across Great Britain to the relative safety of the countryside.  BBC History reported that, “within a week, a quarter of the population of Britain would have a new address”.

What must that have sounded like?

Zeppelin raids had killed 1,500 civilians in London alone, during the ‘Great War’.  Since then, governments had gotten so much better at killing each other’s citizens.  As early as 1922, Prime Minister Lord Arthur Balfour had spoken of ‘unremitting bombardment of a kind that no other city has ever had to endure.’  As many as 4,000,000 civilian casualties were predicted, in London alone.

BBC History describes the man in charge of the evacuation, Sir John Anderson, as a “cold, inhuman character with little understanding of the emotional upheaval that might be created by evacuation”.

Children were labeled ‘like luggage’, and sent off with gas masks, toothbrushes and fresh socks & underwear. None of them knew to where, or for how long.

The evacuation of all that humanity ran relatively smoothly, considering.  James Roffey, founder of the Evacuees Reunion Association, recalls ‘We marched to Waterloo Station behind our head teacher carrying a banner with our school’s name on it. We all thought it was a holiday, but the only thing we couldn’t work out was why the women and girls were crying.’

Arrivals at the billeting areas, was another matter.  Many kids were shipped off to the wrong places, and rations were insufficient.  Geoffrey Barfoot, billeting officer in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, said ‘The trains were coming in thick and fast. It was soon obvious that we just didn’t have the bed space.’

Kids were lined up against walls and on stages, and potential hosts were invited to “take their pick”.

For many, the terrors and confusion of those first few days grew into love and friendships, that lasted a lifetime.  Others entered a hell of physical or sexual abuse, or worse.

For the first time, “city kids” and country folks were finding out how the “other half” lived, with sometimes amusing results.  One boy wrinkled his nose on seeing carrots pulled out of muddy fields, saying “Ours come in tins”.  Richard Singleton recalled the first time he asked his Welsh ‘foster mother’ for directions to the toilet.  “She took me into a shed and pointed to the ground. Surprised, I asked her for some paper to wipe our bums.  She walked away and came back with a bunch of leaves.”

John Abbot, evacuated from Bristol, had his rations stolen by his host family. He was horsewhipped for speaking out while they enjoyed his food, and he was given nothing more than mashed potatoes. Terri McNeil was locked in a birdcage and left with a piece of bread and a bowl of water.

In the 2003 BBC Radio documentary “Evacuation: The True Story,” clinical psychologist Steve Davis described the worst cases, as “little more than a pedophile’s charter.”

Eighty years later, the words “I’ll take that one”, are seared into the memories of more than a few.

Hundreds of evacuees were killed because of relocation, while en route or during their stays at “safe havens”.  Two boys were killed on a Cornish beach, mined to defend against German amphibious assault. Apparently, no one had thought to put up a sign.

Irene Wells, age 8, was standing in a church doorway, when she was crushed by an army truck.  One MP from the house of Commons said “There have been cases of evacuees dying in the evacuation areas. Fancy that type of news coming to the father of children who have been evacuated”.

When German air raids failed to materialize, many parents decided to bring the kids back home.  By January 1940, almost half of evacuees had returned.

Authorities produced posters urging parents to leave the kids where they were, and a good thing, too. The Blitz against London itself began on September 7. The city experienced the most devastating attack to-date on December 29, in a blanket fire-bombing that killed almost 3,600 civilians.

Sometimes, refugees from relatively safe locations were shipped into high-risk target areas. Hundreds of refugees from Gibraltar were sent into London, in the early days of the Blitz. None of them could have been happy to leave London Station, to see hundreds of locals pushing past them, hurrying to get out.

This story doesn’t only involve the British home islands, either.  American Companies like Hoover and Eastman Kodak took thousands of children in, from employees of British subsidiaries.  Thousands of English women and children were evacuated to Australia, following the Japanese attack on Singapore.

By October 1940, the “Battle of Britain” had devolved into a mutually devastating battle of attrition, in which neither side was capable of striking the death blow. Hitler cast his gaze eastward the following June, with a surprise attack on his “ally”, Josef Stalin.

“Operation Steinbock”, the Luftwaffe’s last large-scale strategic bombing campaign of the war against southern England, was carried out three years later.  285 German bombers attacked London on this day in 1944, in what the Brits called the “Baby Blitz”. You’ve got to be some tough cookie, to call 245 bombers a Baby Blitz.

Late in the war, the subsonic “Doodle Bug” or V1 “flying bomb” was replaced by the terrifying supersonic V2.  1,000 or more of these, the world’s first rocket, were unleashed against southern England, primarily London, killing or wounding 115,000. With a terminal velocity of 2,386mph, you never saw or heard this thing coming, until the weapon had done its work.

In the end, many family ‘reunions’ were as emotionally bruising as the original breakup.   Years had come and gone and new relationships had formed.  The war had turned biological family members, into all but strangers.

Richard Singleton remembers the day his mother came, to take him home to Liverpool.  “I had been happily living with ‘Aunty Liz and Uncle Moses’ for four years,” he recalled. “I told Mam that I didn’t want to go home. I was so upset because I was leaving and might never again see aunty and uncle and everything that I loved on the farm.”

Douglas Wood tells a similar story.  “During my evacuation I had only seen my mother twice and my father once,” he recalls. “On the day that they visited me together, they had walked past me in the street as they did not recognise me. I no longer had a Birmingham accent and this was the subject of much ridicule. I had lost all affinity with my family so there was no love or affection.”

The Austrian-British psychoanalyst Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, commissioned an examination of the psychological effects of the separation. After a 12-month study, she concluded that “separation from their parents is a worse shock for children than a bombing.”

January 29, 1944 Operation Pied Piper For the people of the modern Czech Republic, the Munich agreement of 1938 was a betrayal. “O nás bez nás!” "About us, without us!"

[touristguidebuzz]

CEO Interview: Trainline Aims to Steal Airline Share Down the Line

Clare Gilmartin, Chief Executive of Trainline. The company has expanded from the UK into mainland Europe in recent years. Trainline

Skift Take: Rail travel still remains a stubbornly offline mode of transport when it comes to booking a ticket. Companies like Trainline are trying to change this by making it easier to search and buy tickets across Europe.

— Patrick Whyte

Rail travel has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years.

New high-speed rail lines are springing up across the world and the rolling stock used on existing routes is also being upgraded. While this is all good news, what is almost as important is the work going on behind the scenes.

Unlike airlines, which have had their ticketing standardized for decades, rail transport remains fragmented and it has been left to individual companies to attempt to declutter the data and pull it all together.

UK-based Trainline, the leading rail-bookig site in the UK, is one of those businesses. Just like with Sabre and Amadeus, Trainline was originally developed by a transport operator before being spun off. In 2015, private equity firm KKR bought the company for an estimated $756.5 million.

Since the acquisition, Trainline has expanded, buying Captain Train in 2016. The deal not only improved its in-house technology, but also gave it greater access to European markets.

This looks to have been a shrewd move given that rail travel continues to grow. In 2015, rail passengers increased by 2.1 percent to 9.4 billion, compared with the previous year.

Trainline has also spent a great deal of time and money developing tools to improve the overall user experience. The latest of these is what it claims is the rail industry’s first price prediction tool.

The person who has driven this expansion is CEO Clare Gilmartin. We spoke with her about rail’s ability to compete with air, the evolution of rail ticketing, and why there are so few female tech CEOs.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Skift: Could you, for an international audience, explain how Trainline works and a little bit about its history?

Clare Gilmartin: Trainline was started in the late ’90s because the rail network was starting to fragment in Europe.

We’re now operating across 24 different European countries, serving customers in 173 different countries, and we have 137 carrier partners, so Trainline is one place where you can come – single app, website – and buy all of rail.

Our mission is ultimately to create the world’s single biggest rail platform, just making rail a lot more accessible for everybody, making it easy to compare across carriers, making it easy to buy and giving people a lot more travel information on the go through mobile specifically.

Skift: In terms of your revenue stream, you get your money from commission from the train operating companies?

Gilmartin: Train companies pay us a commission for every ticket that we sell. That’s good because it means we’re only successful if they’re successful and vice versa. We also partner with many global travel brands, B2B and B2B2C, we provide rail for them. Then the third piece of our business is white label where we provide the online retailing for many of the train companies, and that’s both giving them an app as well as mobile web and desktop.

Skift: I guess the benefits of using you, rather than the operating companies themselves, is that you can compare fares, because you charge a booking fee and some people don’t. Why do customers go to you and not direct? What’s making them come to Trainline.com as a platform?

Gilmartin: Well there are a few things. As I said, we are the place where you can combine different carriers and you can compare across carriers where multiple carriers compete on the same route. We have a world class app and website, so it’s one click to make a purchase with all your familiar payment methods, languages, all that sort of stuff.

We have created, over the last few years, data driven features specifically because we believe customers want real-time travel information and they want predictive machine-learning driven travel information.

Consumers wouldn’t say it that way, but things like predictive congestive information, predictive price information, predictive delay information, all that sort of stuff. We’re both the single place to buy everything and cross-compare by multi-carrier journeys, but also a real-time travel companion on the go.

Skift: It seems like in the past, maybe 10 years ago, Trainline was mainly transactional. Now you’re trying to get people to use you more for other things as well, making it more of a full-service proposition.

Gilmartin: Yeah, I think that’s fair. We’ve invested heavily in our technology team over the last three or four years. We have 250 rail tech engineers now, which I think is the single biggest technology team in rail probably globally. We’ve invested a lot in mobile very specifically because it’s such a natural mobile category.

Over 77 percent of our visits today are through mobile to give you an example, which seems a lot higher than many travel players. We’ve invested in data science, leveraging our scale and our data to translate that back into helpful features for travelers on the go. I think there’s so much more potential in that quite honestly.

Skift: You’ve also grown your geographical reach in the last couple years. Can you tell us a bit about that and how you’ve gone into Europe and how it all kind of fits together for Trainline?

Gilmartin: Yeah, absolutely, so in early 2016, we acquired a company called Captain Train, which we rebranded quickly to Trainline, and what they had done is they’d built out the European partnerships in rail and the combination, therefore, of the two means we’re now present in 24 different countries supply-wise, and we have over 137 different supply partners.

And I guess the market dynamics in Europe are similar to what they were in the UK 20 years ago in the sense that the market is liberalizing and fragmenting. You now have multiple players operating in most markets and indeed the European Commission has been on a journey to open the market up further by 2023, all the domestic markets will be open to private tender and private competition.

We saw the same opportunity in a way across Europe as we have seen in the UK all that time ago. That is to bring it all into one app, one website, deliver a world class online experience, not just world class for rail but world class in general, and layer in all this machine learning and artificial intelligence by way of helpful data driven features on the go to encourage people to take the train more because rail is such a better way to travel than short-haul air.

Today, there are 10 times more rail journeys in Europe than there are air journeys, so I firmly believe that rail needed a great travel companion, that it needs to be more accessible online. It needs to be more transparent and that’s the job that we’re doing.

Skift: There’s a new route opening from London to Amsterdam and you can go to the South of France, you can go to Belgium and as long as you can connect all these different journeys up, it’s going to make it easier for customers.

Gilmartin: Exactly. It’s not just the fragmentation of the supply base, and you know there’s now over 300 different rail carriers in Europe, which is probably 50 percent more than there were 10 years ago, so it’s fragmented fast.

But it’s not just fragmentation, it’s also the fact that the high-speed network is growing massively in Europe. I mean it started in France in the late 80s, but now most major governments across Europe are investing in high-speed rail, and if current plans are followed through on, the high-speed rail network in Europe will quadruple over the next, say, 10 years, up to 30,000 kilometers.

Every time a major artery or a major line converts to high speed, we see a dramatic share shift from air to rail. I mean London-Paris is probably the best example, but Berlin-Munich has opened, there’s a whole host more, Madrid- Barcelona, Milan-Rome, all of those have seen a dramatic shift from air to rail and it’s because it’s a much better customer experience.

Whether you’re traveling for leisure – people see it as part of the destination experience, the café style experience – or whether you’re traveling for work, it’s just much more productive time.

You don’t have all the stop-start friction that you have in air, so all of that together with the fact that it’s so much better for the environment than traveling by air. I mean one twentieth of the CO2 emissions. I think if you stand back, the right thing for us to be doing as a society is to be encouraging people to take the train more instead of air, but also instead of road.

Skift: Do you think it’s realistic in say the next 10, 20, 30 years’ time that these journeys that were done maybe by flying or driving will be replaced by rail, or at least rail will have a greater chance to take those customers from cars and from planes?

Gilmartin: Yeah, yeah, I do. I think our customer research suggests around four hours is the journey time, anything four hours or less is when people will typically choose rail over air and yes, as services get better, as more and more journeys become high speed, it brings more of those air routes into contention for a rail.

I think people have a growing awareness of the detrimental environmental impact of transport as well. I think that will be a consideration factor of the medium to long term.

Skift: You mentioned before about the EU’s influence and the EU has had a massive impact on the air industry. It liberalized it and made it easier to fly. Train travel within Europe, until recently has been left behind. Do you see a bright future for it?

Gilmartin: We’ve seen a dramatic change in terms of the number of carriers operating in the market over the last 10 years. In Italy you have Trenitalia and Italo competing head-to-head on many of the major lines, and that’s been great for customers. In Germany, you have HKX competing against Deutsche Bahn but also many regional players also operating in the network. In France, you have Trenitalia and SNCF competing on some lines, so across Europe really, we’re seeing the market fragmenting and multiple carriers competing and I think that’s great for customers, better service, better punctuality, more choice.

Skift: In terms of you accessing the tickets from these European players, do you just plug in to the direct feeds from these companies. How does it work?

Gilmartin: Rail is a data scientist or a technologist’s dream because it is not standardized at all. The data isn’t standardized. There’re 35,000 train stations in Europe, there’s only 2000 airports, ish.

And there’s no standardization for station names, for ticket types, for adult versus child, nothing, so we’ve had to create our own proprietary data standardization and equally we’ve had to create our own proprietary journey search, so we’re the only operators, to the best of our knowledge, that combines multiple carriers in the same journey. Be that outbound with one, return with another or be it multiple carriers delivering different journey lengths.

All of that we’ve had to create from scratch quite frankly because it didn’t exist in rail. What you had before was quite siloed train carrier inventory systems.

Skift: In terms of the future, how far ahead are you looking because there’s blockchain and the threat it poses to intermediaries like Trainline. Are you worried about it?

Gilmartin: I’ve been in technology now for 15 years. I think there will always be new technologies and new innovations. What we do, is stay incredibly close to our customers and as I said, we have with the 250-strong rail tech engineering group, we have probably the biggest engineering and development team in online rail globally and our job is to continue to listen to customers and tailor what we do exactly for them.

I mean it’s certainly served me well over the last 15 years. Of course, we stay tuned to advances in technology, be they through payments or voice or whatever it is. We have multiple R&D projects on most of those.

Skift: How difficult or challenging would it be to add the U.S. or Asia to the overall Trainline experience?

Gilmartin: Not difficult at all.

Skift: Are there any competitors over there who are doing something similar?

Gilmartin: Not especially, not especially. As I said, to the best of our knowledge, we’re the biggest online independent rail platform in the world. I mean in essence, customers are, the customer’s needs are quite similar, globally. You know, I need complete transparency on all my options, I need to be navigated to the cheapest or the fastest journey, I need to be able to buy in one click, and I need real time travel information and data and journey information along the way.

That’s the same regardless of what country or the complexity is often in the carrier connections and the interfaces and harmonizing the data and you know, all the backend stuff, but that’s what we’re here for.

Skift: It just seems at the moment, it seems there’s quite a lot of change going on because Voyages-SNCF bought Loco2, Expedia bought SilverRail. Does this mean people are catching on to what you’ve been doing?

Gilmartin: We have a bunch of things happening I think. Rail is a huge vertical within the overall travel landscape. It’s $230 billion, so it’s huge, and as I said, 10 times more rail journeys than air journeys, so it’s a big vertical.

Yet today still 70 percent is offline, and clearly, we’re blazing a trail to convert more of that offline into online by aggregating everything up and doing all the things I described. I think others are taking interest because it’s a huge opportunity. It doesn’t surprise us that there’s activity in the space. We’ve long believed that this a huge opportunity. It seems, you know, finally others think the same.

Skift: Expedia obviously see the benefit of having rail holidays, rail travel integrated within the wider travel landscape, which makes me think that there’s plenty of untapped potential for rail.

Gilmartin: Yeah, yeah. I mean I started at Trainline nearly four years ago now, and I couldn’t get over how much of rail was still bought offline.

That horrible queuing experience where you look at people in front of you, they’re stumbling at the ticket machines, and this happens right the way across Europe. You’re worried that your train’s about to leave, I mean, it’s possibly the most stressful, horrible situation imaginable, and technology can solve it.

Ticket machines, much as they did serve a role in the past, they get updated every two years and we change our UX 200 times a week. So clearly, a more mobile and online driven user experience can deliver so many more benefits to customers, it can be personalized, amongst other things. It was the vertical that I think probably has the biggest online upside from where we sit today

Skift: There’s also the potential, as we’ve seen with apps like CityMapper, in multimodal, so you know, rail to taxi or rail to plane, and bringing the whole system together. Is that something you’ve thought about?

Gilmartin: Yeah. We have, we’ve built out our long-distance coach offering across Europe, it’s not as big obviously as rail overall, but there are many examples of journeys where coach can fulfill the last leg, or in times of disruption, coach offers an alternative.

Skift: Do you feel that the travel and tech industry could do more to support female leadership?

Gilmartin: I think we have far too few female CEOs in general, not just in travel and tech, and I don’t think travel is particularly better or worse, but yes, in general I don’t think we have enough women in leadership roles, be it business, politics, healthcare, whatever it is.

I see is as my generation, our generation’s job to change attitudes, to change how work gets done, to encourage more women to go further in their careers, and I’m quite bloody-minded about that. I work incredibly hard. We’re very focused on results here, but I equally get to see my kids in the evenings and at weekends, and you know, that’s what I mean.

I think a lot of the policy changes were made by previous generations to help women continue in careers, but a lot of the more subtle attitudinal changes need to be driven now by us.

We try to do that. We’ve created a Women At Trainline group, which is really a network so that women can share stories and in a way, derive confidence from the things that others have done. That’s hugely helpful. We have a mentoring program to help both women and men actually learn from those that are five or ten years ahead of them, which has always helped me. We’re reaching out to Code First: Girls and others to just encourage more women into tech.

Skift: Are you optimistic or do you still think it’s a long way away?

Gilmartin: I mean, many people before me have been asked that question and I have as well and I’ll be asked I’m sure many times again. I am really hopeful to be honest with you. I think you know we’ve hired some great women at Trainline over the last few years, and they are thriving, women and men.

I think it’s up to us to share stories and to help make leadership seem achievable together with the other priorities women have in life.

[rollinbrigittenv8]

CEO Interview: Trainline Aims to Steal Airline Share Down the Line

Clare Gilmartin, Chief Executive of Trainline. The company has expanded from the UK into mainland Europe in recent years. Trainline

Skift Take: Rail travel still remains a stubbornly offline mode of transport when it comes to booking a ticket. Companies like Trainline are trying to change this by making it easier to search and buy tickets across Europe.

— Patrick Whyte

Rail travel has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years.

New high-speed rail lines are springing up across the world and the rolling stock used on existing routes is also being upgraded. While this is all good news, what is almost as important is the work going on behind the scenes.

Unlike airlines, which have had their ticketing standardized for decades, rail transport remains fragmented and it has been left to individual companies to attempt to declutter the data and pull it all together.

UK-based Trainline, the leading rail-bookig site in the UK, is one of those businesses. Just like with Sabre and Amadeus, Trainline was originally developed by a transport operator before being spun off. In 2015, private equity firm KKR bought the company for an estimated $756.5 million.

Since the acquisition, Trainline has expanded, buying Captain Train in 2016. The deal not only improved its in-house technology, but also gave it greater access to European markets.

This looks to have been a shrewd move given that rail travel continues to grow. In 2015, rail passengers increased by 2.1 percent to 9.4 billion, compared with the previous year.

Trainline has also spent a great deal of time and money developing tools to improve the overall user experience. The latest of these is what it claims is the rail industry’s first price prediction tool.

The person who has driven this expansion is CEO Clare Gilmartin. We spoke with her about rail’s ability to compete with air, the evolution of rail ticketing, and why there are so few female tech CEOs.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Skift: Could you, for an international audience, explain how Trainline works and a little bit about its history?

Clare Gilmartin: Trainline was started in the late ’90s because the rail network was starting to fragment in Europe.

We’re now operating across 24 different European countries, serving customers in 173 different countries, and we have 137 carrier partners, so Trainline is one place where you can come – single app, website – and buy all of rail.

Our mission is ultimately to create the world’s single biggest rail platform, just making rail a lot more accessible for everybody, making it easy to compare across carriers, making it easy to buy and giving people a lot more travel information on the go through mobile specifically.

Skift: In terms of your revenue stream, you get your money from commission from the train operating companies?

Gilmartin: Train companies pay us a commission for every ticket that we sell. That’s good because it means we’re only successful if they’re successful and vice versa. We also partner with many global travel brands, B2B and B2B2C, we provide rail for them. Then the third piece of our business is white label where we provide the online retailing for many of the train companies, and that’s both giving them an app as well as mobile web and desktop.

Skift: I guess the benefits of using you, rather than the operating companies themselves, is that you can compare fares, because you charge a booking fee and some people don’t. Why do customers go to you and not direct? What’s making them come to Trainline.com as a platform?

Gilmartin: Well there are a few things. As I said, we are the place where you can combine different carriers and you can compare across carriers where multiple carriers compete on the same route. We have a world class app and website, so it’s one click to make a purchase with all your familiar payment methods, languages, all that sort of stuff.

We have created, over the last few years, data driven features specifically because we believe customers want real-time travel information and they want predictive machine-learning driven travel information.

Consumers wouldn’t say it that way, but things like predictive congestive information, predictive price information, predictive delay information, all that sort of stuff. We’re both the single place to buy everything and cross-compare by multi-carrier journeys, but also a real-time travel companion on the go.

Skift: It seems like in the past, maybe 10 years ago, Trainline was mainly transactional. Now you’re trying to get people to use you more for other things as well, making it more of a full-service proposition.

Gilmartin: Yeah, I think that’s fair. We’ve invested heavily in our technology team over the last three or four years. We have 250 rail tech engineers now, which I think is the single biggest technology team in rail probably globally. We’ve invested a lot in mobile very specifically because it’s such a natural mobile category.

Over 77 percent of our visits today are through mobile to give you an example, which seems a lot higher than many travel players. We’ve invested in data science, leveraging our scale and our data to translate that back into helpful features for travelers on the go. I think there’s so much more potential in that quite honestly.

Skift: You’ve also grown your geographical reach in the last couple years. Can you tell us a bit about that and how you’ve gone into Europe and how it all kind of fits together for Trainline?

Gilmartin: Yeah, absolutely, so in early 2016, we acquired a company called Captain Train, which we rebranded quickly to Trainline, and what they had done is they’d built out the European partnerships in rail and the combination, therefore, of the two means we’re now present in 24 different countries supply-wise, and we have over 137 different supply partners.

And I guess the market dynamics in Europe are similar to what they were in the UK 20 years ago in the sense that the market is liberalizing and fragmenting. You now have multiple players operating in most markets and indeed the European Commission has been on a journey to open the market up further by 2023, all the domestic markets will be open to private tender and private competition.

We saw the same opportunity in a way across Europe as we have seen in the UK all that time ago. That is to bring it all into one app, one website, deliver a world class online experience, not just world class for rail but world class in general, and layer in all this machine learning and artificial intelligence by way of helpful data driven features on the go to encourage people to take the train more because rail is such a better way to travel than short-haul air.

Today, there are 10 times more rail journeys in Europe than there are air journeys, so I firmly believe that rail needed a great travel companion, that it needs to be more accessible online. It needs to be more transparent and that’s the job that we’re doing.

Skift: There’s a new route opening from London to Amsterdam and you can go to the South of France, you can go to Belgium and as long as you can connect all these different journeys up, it’s going to make it easier for customers.

Gilmartin: Exactly. It’s not just the fragmentation of the supply base, and you know there’s now over 300 different rail carriers in Europe, which is probably 50 percent more than there were 10 years ago, so it’s fragmented fast.

But it’s not just fragmentation, it’s also the fact that the high-speed network is growing massively in Europe. I mean it started in France in the late 80s, but now most major governments across Europe are investing in high-speed rail, and if current plans are followed through on, the high-speed rail network in Europe will quadruple over the next, say, 10 years, up to 30,000 kilometers.

Every time a major artery or a major line converts to high speed, we see a dramatic share shift from air to rail. I mean London-Paris is probably the best example, but Berlin-Munich has opened, there’s a whole host more, Madrid- Barcelona, Milan-Rome, all of those have seen a dramatic shift from air to rail and it’s because it’s a much better customer experience.

Whether you’re traveling for leisure – people see it as part of the destination experience, the café style experience – or whether you’re traveling for work, it’s just much more productive time.

You don’t have all the stop-start friction that you have in air, so all of that together with the fact that it’s so much better for the environment than traveling by air. I mean one twentieth of the CO2 emissions. I think if you stand back, the right thing for us to be doing as a society is to be encouraging people to take the train more instead of air, but also instead of road.

Skift: Do you think it’s realistic in say the next 10, 20, 30 years’ time that these journeys that were done maybe by flying or driving will be replaced by rail, or at least rail will have a greater chance to take those customers from cars and from planes?

Gilmartin: Yeah, yeah, I do. I think our customer research suggests around four hours is the journey time, anything four hours or less is when people will typically choose rail over air and yes, as services get better, as more and more journeys become high speed, it brings more of those air routes into contention for a rail.

I think people have a growing awareness of the detrimental environmental impact of transport as well. I think that will be a consideration factor of the medium to long term.

Skift: You mentioned before about the EU’s influence and the EU has had a massive impact on the air industry. It liberalized it and made it easier to fly. Train travel within Europe, until recently has been left behind. Do you see a bright future for it?

Gilmartin: We’ve seen a dramatic change in terms of the number of carriers operating in the market over the last 10 years. In Italy you have Trenitalia and Italo competing head-to-head on many of the major lines, and that’s been great for customers. In Germany, you have HKX competing against Deutsche Bahn but also many regional players also operating in the network. In France, you have Trenitalia and SNCF competing on some lines, so across Europe really, we’re seeing the market fragmenting and multiple carriers competing and I think that’s great for customers, better service, better punctuality, more choice.

Skift: In terms of you accessing the tickets from these European players, do you just plug in to the direct feeds from these companies. How does it work?

Gilmartin: Rail is a data scientist or a technologist’s dream because it is not standardized at all. The data isn’t standardized. There’re 35,000 train stations in Europe, there’s only 2000 airports, ish.

And there’s no standardization for station names, for ticket types, for adult versus child, nothing, so we’ve had to create our own proprietary data standardization and equally we’ve had to create our own proprietary journey search, so we’re the only operators, to the best of our knowledge, that combines multiple carriers in the same journey. Be that outbound with one, return with another or be it multiple carriers delivering different journey lengths.

All of that we’ve had to create from scratch quite frankly because it didn’t exist in rail. What you had before was quite siloed train carrier inventory systems.

Skift: In terms of the future, how far ahead are you looking because there’s blockchain and the threat it poses to intermediaries like Trainline. Are you worried about it?

Gilmartin: I’ve been in technology now for 15 years. I think there will always be new technologies and new innovations. What we do, is stay incredibly close to our customers and as I said, we have with the 250-strong rail tech engineering group, we have probably the biggest engineering and development team in online rail globally and our job is to continue to listen to customers and tailor what we do exactly for them.

I mean it’s certainly served me well over the last 15 years. Of course, we stay tuned to advances in technology, be they through payments or voice or whatever it is. We have multiple R&D projects on most of those.

Skift: How difficult or challenging would it be to add the U.S. or Asia to the overall Trainline experience?

Gilmartin: Not difficult at all.

Skift: Are there any competitors over there who are doing something similar?

Gilmartin: Not especially, not especially. As I said, to the best of our knowledge, we’re the biggest online independent rail platform in the world. I mean in essence, customers are, the customer’s needs are quite similar, globally. You know, I need complete transparency on all my options, I need to be navigated to the cheapest or the fastest journey, I need to be able to buy in one click, and I need real time travel information and data and journey information along the way.

That’s the same regardless of what country or the complexity is often in the carrier connections and the interfaces and harmonizing the data and you know, all the backend stuff, but that’s what we’re here for.

Skift: It just seems at the moment, it seems there’s quite a lot of change going on because Voyages-SNCF bought Loco2, Expedia bought SilverRail. Does this mean people are catching on to what you’ve been doing?

Gilmartin: We have a bunch of things happening I think. Rail is a huge vertical within the overall travel landscape. It’s $230 billion, so it’s huge, and as I said, 10 times more rail journeys than air journeys, so it’s a big vertical.

Yet today still 70 percent is offline, and clearly, we’re blazing a trail to convert more of that offline into online by aggregating everything up and doing all the things I described. I think others are taking interest because it’s a huge opportunity. It doesn’t surprise us that there’s activity in the space. We’ve long believed that this a huge opportunity. It seems, you know, finally others think the same.

Skift: Expedia obviously see the benefit of having rail holidays, rail travel integrated within the wider travel landscape, which makes me think that there’s plenty of untapped potential for rail.

Gilmartin: Yeah, yeah. I mean I started at Trainline nearly four years ago now, and I couldn’t get over how much of rail was still bought offline.

That horrible queuing experience where you look at people in front of you, they’re stumbling at the ticket machines, and this happens right the way across Europe. You’re worried that your train’s about to leave, I mean, it’s possibly the most stressful, horrible situation imaginable, and technology can solve it.

Ticket machines, much as they did serve a role in the past, they get updated every two years and we change our UX 200 times a week. So clearly, a more mobile and online driven user experience can deliver so many more benefits to customers, it can be personalized, amongst other things. It was the vertical that I think probably has the biggest online upside from where we sit today

Skift: There’s also the potential, as we’ve seen with apps like CityMapper, in multimodal, so you know, rail to taxi or rail to plane, and bringing the whole system together. Is that something you’ve thought about?

Gilmartin: Yeah. We have, we’ve built out our long-distance coach offering across Europe, it’s not as big obviously as rail overall, but there are many examples of journeys where coach can fulfill the last leg, or in times of disruption, coach offers an alternative.

Skift: Do you feel that the travel and tech industry could do more to support female leadership?

Gilmartin: I think we have far too few female CEOs in general, not just in travel and tech, and I don’t think travel is particularly better or worse, but yes, in general I don’t think we have enough women in leadership roles, be it business, politics, healthcare, whatever it is.

I see is as my generation, our generation’s job to change attitudes, to change how work gets done, to encourage more women to go further in their careers, and I’m quite bloody-minded about that. I work incredibly hard. We’re very focused on results here, but I equally get to see my kids in the evenings and at weekends, and you know, that’s what I mean.

I think a lot of the policy changes were made by previous generations to help women continue in careers, but a lot of the more subtle attitudinal changes need to be driven now by us.

We try to do that. We’ve created a Women At Trainline group, which is really a network so that women can share stories and in a way, derive confidence from the things that others have done. That’s hugely helpful. We have a mentoring program to help both women and men actually learn from those that are five or ten years ahead of them, which has always helped me. We’re reaching out to Code First: Girls and others to just encourage more women into tech.

Skift: Are you optimistic or do you still think it’s a long way away?

Gilmartin: I mean, many people before me have been asked that question and I have as well and I’ll be asked I’m sure many times again. I am really hopeful to be honest with you. I think you know we’ve hired some great women at Trainline over the last few years, and they are thriving, women and men.

I think it’s up to us to share stories and to help make leadership seem achievable together with the other priorities women have in life.