Glanders. My Kingdom for a Horse

This novel is inspired by the true events that occurred when war broke out in Europe during 1914. The economic powerhouse of the world, the USA, declared its neutrality immediately from the conflict. Britain began blockading the America's eastern ports allowing it and its allies unlimited access to US trade but restricting German trade to only non-military items. To counter and undermine Britain's position in the USA, German Intelligence began covert operations against her. This ranged from biological warfare on equines, putting firebombs on British ships, and transmitting anti-British propaganda in both English and German to Americans.
Every West European warring country in August 1914 was short of horses and mules. This animal shortage affected every army's logistics and thus their initial performance on the battlefield. The best place for the belligerents to overcome this shortage was to buy equines in the USA. Britain had bought American equines during the Boer War, 1899-1902, when it had created a network of animal buying centres across the USA. Britain revived this network when war broke out.
As war broke out in Europe, Germany's Military Intelligence Department in Berlin and its Secret Service Agency in New York implemented existing plans to combat British influence and its trade with the USA. Germany recognised that whatever they did might be interpreted as a hostile act by the American Government, if it was discovered, and might lead to the US joining the war on the Allied side. Biological warfare against the equines by spreading disease, was seen as an ideal way of attacking British animal purchases because the spread of diseases would appear natural and therefore hidden beneath American law enforcements prying eyes.
In the19th century huge numbers of German language immigrants arrived in the USA. Those immigrants and their descendants often still spoke and read German; many had the Kaiser's photograph on their walls in 1914. The tens of thousands of German army reservists living in the US blockaded from returning to Europe became potential agents for spying purposes or for bombing factories producing ordnance for Britain and her allies. Americans from this diaspora, particularly scientists, took advantage of their background by studying or working in Germany. One such American citizen a scientist and a doctor then in the German army agrees to return to the USA and lead the biological warfare attack on Britain bound horses and mules. As an American citizen who would suspect what he was doing was for Germany?
New York's Wall Street close financial connections to the City of London enabled Britain to borrow capital from US bankers easier than the Germans could. Britain had never had secret agents in the US before the war because it concentrated on Europe and the British Empire. The British Secret Service had nobody combatting or evaluating German threats to British interests anywhere between America's east and west coasts.
Gareth Pugh, a writer of war propaganda in a secret British government, previously has worked in the USA. He was a financial journalist before the war is selected to be Britain's Secret Service spy in the USA. Pugh plays a medieval game known as Real, Royal or Court tennis. A club near Wall Street, another outside New York, both have real tennis courts with ultra-exclusive membership but they both welcome players from overseas as guests.

Dettagli