George Washington's Ghost

The King remembered his luncheon guests; it was inexcusable ignoring them this way!

“I’ll rely on you to keep us abreast of developments, George,” he declared and ushered Eleanor back into the dining room.

That there were no riots on the streets of Berlin that afternoon was probably a good sign; however, neither the King or the Queen, or their senior ministers took much comfort from this. They had come to the German capital with a secret to manage, and to divulge to, they assumed, the Crown Prince, upon his accession to the Imperial Throne. Now they had no way of knowing if ‘coming clean’ would be for the good, or ill. Or even if Wilhelm, bless him, given that he had been the candidate of both the Army and the Navy, would meekly accept the decision of the other twenty-three Electors.

Concern deepened on this score as the minutes ticked by without anybody being able to contact the disposed Crown Prince. If he chose to seize the throne denied him by the princelings of the other half – well, slightly less than half by population, wealth and acreage of land – it was well within Wilhelm’s ability to mount a coup; Berlin was, after all, the capital of his kingdom, Prussia.

As time went by the phone lines to London began to burn.

And then, at around seven that evening, as the light faded and dark, rain-bearing clouds began to collect over Saxony, a cortege of half-a-dozen big black limousines pulled into the square in front of the Charlottenburg Palace, the red and blue lights of several motorbike outriders sparkling brightly through the light rain and the thickening darkness.

“King Wilhelm of Prussia requests an audience, sir,” the King’s Secretary reported. “He apologises for quote: ‘suddenly turning up like this”

“Summon the Foreign Secretary please.”

The King was already on his feet.

Six black-garbed troopers of the Prussian Royal Guard had preceded their monarch into the building and taken up protective positions, and postures, the muzzles of their automatic rifles pointed to the floor, their eyes searching, searching as if they fully anticipated a battalion of assassins to spring, as if by some dark magic, from the doors, or even from the very walls themselves of the high-ceilinged reception room. Fortunately, the men and women of the British Royal Protection Squad were not entirely unaccustomed to the uncompromising methods of their Germanic counterparts, and contented themselves with merely fingering their mostly, concealed and rather more discreetly carried firearms. The principle which applied was: when in Rome behave as one has observed the Romans behaving.

Wilhelm Frederick von Hohenzollern, Wilhelm IV of Prussia and until a few hours ago, Crown Prince and in effect, de facto Regent, of the German Empire, strode into the Charlottenburg Palace in the uniform of a Colonel of the 1st Mounted Regiment of the Deutsches Heer, the Imperial German Army, his ceremonial sword jangling at his side.

He wore the tabs of the Grosser Generalstab – the Great General Staff – on his lapels. The King tried hard not to frown: he had never known his cousin to sport those tabs in all the years of their acquaintance and had a horrible premonition that everything could suddenly fly out of hand at any moment.

The forty-four year-old son of the former Kaiser was hot, flushed, and angrily impatient until he realised that Eleanor and one of her ladies in waiting were present. Instantly, he mellowed, bowed gallantly and miraculously, with a supreme effort of will, sobered.

“I’, sorry about this,” he growled. “Turning up like this without a by your leave, and all that! I must speak to you alone,” he continued, looking directly at the King.

The monarch raised an eyebrow.

“And with Sir George and Ellie, obviously,” their visitor agreed tersely.

Eleanor stepped forward and assured him that they were delighted to see him. Because it was her, Wilhelm almost believed it. Soon his seconds and the crowd of courtiers had been invited to leave the day room into which Wilhelm, the Royal couple and the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary had gravitated.

Nobody sat down and briefly the only sound was of the rain beginning to batter at the tall windows overlooking the landscaped grounds of the Palace.

“The bastards didn’t tell me until the old fool was dead,” Wilhelm complained, starting to pace. By way of a preamble it failed to communicate anything other than his seething inner outrage. “And none of those bloody ‘Electors’ have a clue! Not one of them! And as for that dummkopf Ludwig…”

The King and Queen exchanged looks.

It was Sir George Walpole who asked pertinent question.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he bowed imperceptibly. “Might one presume to inquire what exactly ‘they’ did not tell you?”

The King of Prussia scowled, shook his head like a Rottweiler just out of the rain.