The Snake in the Grass

[paulinho86]

Act 1 - You had me at hello...

The call came in the dead of the night. My wife, Joanne, bless her little cotton socks, told me to “turn that f”cking phone off you f’cking pr’ck, I’m trying to f’cking sleep. Have some f’cking respect you absolute d’ckhead.” 

God I love how passionate she is. Every day I love her that little bit more, but for as long as she held onto my secret I would have to. Who knows, maybe one day the truth would out. I could only hope that wouldn’t be the case, but human beings are human beings. They can slip up at any time. I hoped I wouldn’t have to do to her what I did to Mavis, but one could never be too careful. For now though, that construction site would house only one former Mrs Dawson; bless her soul. I’m doing a lot of blessing here, and Joanne was doing none, especially when I sneezed 15 minutes later just after she had got back to sleep.

With one sleepy hoarse voice at one end, and a disguised French accent at the other; the call went thusly;

“Dawson?”
“One of many.”
“Jack Dawson?”
“The original.”
“I’ve got an assignment.”
“Then you know not to call this number.”
“Which do I call?”
“You don’t. 8am, Charnock Richard Service Station on the M6, in the mini-mart. I’ll be in a green hat fingering the pasties.”
“Fingering the…? Right. Good night.”
“We’ll see.”

14 minutes later, I sneezed.
----------------------------------------------

I woke at 6am, cursing that I’d said Charnock Richard when I lived an hour and a half from there and hadn’t lived near Charnock Richard in 6 years. The tired brain plays interesting games. I had a cold shower to wash off the intense lust brought on by Joanne screaming at me for “waking me up at this f’cking time?? It’s 6am! This is my only day off this week you absolute…” you get the picture.

As I headed down the stairs, inwardly screaming from the torment of my 6 year old’s son waywardly landing-stored lego torturously pile-driving it’s way into the soles of my bare feet, I mused on the events of the day ahead. “Who was the call from?”, I thought, over the deafening roar of the crunching consumption of my cornflakes. “Why did they call so late into the night?”, I considered, through the devastating burn of my blisteringly hot coffee. “What is this all about?”, I wondered, through the excruciating screams of the mailman as he tustled with Dolly, our criminally deranged poodle. A blood-stained letter containing my salary payment notification was forced through the door. “Could this be some multi-levelled symbolism of the day ahead?”, I pondered, whilst I pushed a coal poker through the door to the grasping mailman. 
Good luck and godspeed, Mr Mailman.

After throwing a pound of bacon through the window into the pond to distract Dolly, I sprinted to my car and climbed in, mashing the service station details into my Satnav. A call rang through on the Bluetooth in my car.

“Dawson here.”
“We will be waiting for you, Mr Dawson.”
This time a Russian voice. Curious.
“How do you have all of my numbers?”
*Click*

I zipped up the motorway singing along to Sam Cooke’s, “A Change is Gonna Come”, yelling tunelessly at the top of my lungs, “I WAS BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORN, BY A RIVER”, when a second call arrived;

“Dawson.”
*Heavy breathing*
*Click*

A little while later I was poking at a sausage roll just off the M6 when I heard behind me a pair of voices,

“Is that a pasty?”
“I’m not sure, it looks like a flaky turd.”
“Google it.”
“Okay, pasty, pasty. How do you spell it?”
“P. A. S. T. Y.”
“I’m not sure. There’s lots of different ones here.”
“English food is so awful.”
“Savages.”

“Gentlemen”, I said as I turned around.

Two people stood before me, a fat man and an alleged female. They started to shush each other before striding forward to greet me.

It took very little time for anybody over the age of 3 years old to disassociate the fake nose and moustache from the man underneath, unmistakably clear as daylight being one Mr Sepp Blatter. His friend, holding Sepps hand; even accounting for the cocktail dress, red lipstick, and a permed black wig, had achieved little to disguise the fact that it was the looming figure of one Vladimir Putin. Men of resource I see. But what, oh what… could I do for them?

[paulinho86]

Act 2 - The Introduction

 

Sepp and I sat in the costa coffee having awkward conversation whilst we waited for Vlad to adjust his panties in the toilet. He went into the men's to do it,which I admire him for, but I remained uncertain as to why he had chosen to wear women's underwear when presumably his goal was a general outward, albeit flawed, appearance of womanhood.

 

Once he had returned to the table, hobbling ineffectively on 8 inch heels, we began to talk.

 

"Mr Dawson, we have been tracking you for some time. Your...skillset interests us."

"Which skillset would that be?" I said, as I slurped at my frappucinno.

"You are a chameleon," rasped Vlad, as he touched up his lipstick in a curiously well-used pocket mirror.

I of course knew precisely the skills he was referring to. I was intrigued what the link was between our two fellows and how that related to me.

"What do you know about football?", Sepp asked.

"I'm a regular follower. I know less than an expert but more than my nan".

"We have a proposition for you. Your greatest test."

He obviously was blissfully unaware of the 6 inches of pain I had dropped in the toilets of these very services 3 years ago after a vindaloo. 

"I like a challenge. Go on."

Sepp and Vlad smiled at each other. They actually made quite a cute couple. I noticed a little rouge on Sepps shirt collar.

"Anything you don't know, I can teach you. Some day soon I will reveal to you who we really are."

****. I had to go into feigned surprise mode. Did they really not realise it was obvious? I tried to channel the feigned surprise from the time my wife discovered our TV had subscribed itself to Television X; which remains my greatest chameleonic act yet.

 

"Well okay...until then...what is this assignment? What is my role?"

"Your role...is one of infiltration. Of a scale never before seen," said Vlad, his voice rising. "You will be our puppet, our spy, ...our...SNAKE IN THE GRASS," he yelled, now standing on his feet with his arms stretched wide.

"Okay. But...what is the assignment?"

"That will come later," Sepp said whilst giving Vlad a polite pat on the bottom reminding him to take his seat, "for now we just need to know you are interested."

"I am."

"Then good. Me and Vlad...i...nosivic...ia... Err... Will be in touch soon. My name is Mr Big."

"Okay, I will wait to hear from you Mr Big. Thanks for your time... Miss Vladinosivicia."

Putin curtseyed and then walked away, linking arms with "Mr Big".

 

This should be interesting.

[paulinho86]

Act 3 - Mavis & Beryl

I got back home at half 10 in the morning and went straight into the study to go on the computer. Joanne had left her "Plenty of fish" profile open on the screen, which usually means that I've left my underpants on the floor, not put the toilet seat up, or that she really is "looking for an up-for-it golden-age guy with more millions in the bank than years left on god's green earth". If it's the latter then fair play to her, I do leave my underpants on the floor an awful lot.

 

I searched on "Putin" and "Blatter" on Google to see if any recent links came up that might give me a hint on their ploy. I wasn't expecting anything because really that's the point when you get involved in espionage. Sure enough nothing came up. I really couldn't put two and two together but all would become clear at some point I guess. I was amazed to see that there was no mention of them on social media, surely somebody had spotted them and taken a photo? Alas no, Putin had literally managed to walk through a service station dressed like a 1930s hooker, gone into men's toilets and sat in a cafe for half an hour...entirely unnoticed. It must be the fault of the millennials. Wandering around with their heads glued to their phones, tweeting out tinder notifications at restaurants to book hipster appointments. 

 

In the evening I headed down to the construction site to visit Mavis. I often did when I had things on mind. I told her the whole story but she wasn't a great help if I'm being truthful. I was distracted from my thoughts by the rare arrival of another car. I wandered over to find a lady dragging a suspect bag out of her trunk and dumping it into the still curing concrete. 

"Hi!"

The lady wheeled around, clearly absolutely sh'tting herself.

"Oh Jack! Thank god, you scared me!"

"Sorry Beryl. Another one?"

"Yeah he wouldn't sign up to life insurance so I thought what's the bloody point?"

"Beryl, that's the second one this year. It's only April."

"Good men are getting harder to find, Jack."

She's not wrong.

 

I started my walk home, having been brought somewhat back down to Earth. It was like I had been in a dream all day. Was it all really real? Maybe? I don't know.

A notification came up on my phone stating that I had a flight to Zurich departing in 24 hours. 

 

I see. So....not a dream then.

[paulinho86]

Act 4 – The Plot

I landed in Zurich and was met at the airport by a glamorous looking fat woman (Blatter) and a dwarf with a sack over his shoulder that patently contained Vlad’s lower legs in kneeling position.

“I believe you met our associates in England.”
“I believe I did.”
“Please…come with us.”

We got into a car and a bag was placed over my head as I was driven off somewhere. About half an hour later, after being lead out of the car, up what appeared to be a gravel driveway, and into a building of some kind, I finally had the bag removed from my head to find I was sat at a large circular table, in a wooden-panelled room with large portraits on the walls, and servants in the corners.

As I looked around the table, I saw Putin and Blatter of course, and various other fellows that I didn’t recognise. All told there was 10 of us in the room. The tenth being one David Moyes.

“I see you have spotted David Moyes, our …006…if you will. The special agent before you, when our plan was in it’s infancy.”

The plot thickened further.

“Jack, first of all, it was Vladimir and I, Sepp Blatter, who met you in Charnock Richard services, and who met you at the airport earlier on.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me I didn’t know at all I had absolutely no idea wow what a shock goodness me that was some performance I thought that was a woman and my oh my how did you manage to pretend to be a dwarf Vlad that is simply incredible jeez you really had me going you got me good.”

Putin stood up, smiling smugly, “you are not the only chameleon in the room, Mr Dawson.”

Clearly.

The servants were ushered out of the room.

“Mr Dawson, I shall hand you over to our associate, Mr Small, who will outline the plan.”

A slender man of about 50 stood up and circled the room to a projector screen in the corner, extending a pointer-stick as he moved.

“Mr Dawson, British football is ruining the world.”
“And your journalists are mean.”
“Thank you, Sepp. Your journalists are very mean. The money in English football has had a peculiar effect. At once draining the talent from other leagues, whilst simultaneously stock-piling middle-ranking teams in the premier league that make little to no effect on European competition. This is a situation that will not remain so forever, as eventually all talent will be sucked into the UK and England will rule football purely given the vacuum of talent left elsewhere.”

It seemed far-fetched, yet not entirely unrealistic.

“We have created a multitude of personas for you, complete with back-stories, verifiable birth certificates, qualifications and past-life experiences. Your task is simple in it’s explanation, but devilishly difficult in its execution.”

Vladimir turned the lights down and then trained a miniature spotlight on our Speaker, Mr Small, whilst the men around the table began to hum menacingly.

“Your task is to end English football as an entity for good. Our connections are far and wide, our influences incalculable, and our resources immeasurable. We will place you in control of a succession of elite sides and you shall put in place measures to dismantle English football forever. You will financially cripple clubs and make them utterly undesirable for any influence to ever consider taking on the challenge to return them to their glory. English football must crash in the world rankings, below even Ligue 1.”
A laugh broke out around the room.
“This seems…highly unlikely…or possible.”
“We understand, and we have learnt our lessons of the past. Our last agent was…careless.”
“Alright…”, David whimpered from the corner.
“He started well after we dropped him into Manchester United, signing Fellaini, giving Wayne Rooney a huge contract, dropping United out of the Champions League….but this was reversed in a matter of years and succeeded only in creating a hole for somebody else to step into.”
Mr Small poured himself what appeared to be a brandy.
“This is why we have hired you. And once you have done one job, we will parachute you into your next. Do not worry about the hows or whens, these are for us to consider.”

I sat there speechless. Except for one tiny thought.

“And my pay?”
“$2m US dollars for each club you ruin, and if the effects are lasting, $100m 5 years later.”

“I’ll do it.”

I paused.

“Is there going to be a projector presentation or….”

[paulinho86]

Act 5 – The Hidden Genius

My plane touched down in Heathrow and I switched my phone on to have an instant indication of my first assignment. The news online was of ablaze with stories of Jose Mourinho’s potential departure from Manchester United. Rumours were spreading that a variously-referred-to manager of either “complete unknown” origin or “hidden genius” depending on where you read the news, was about to be shipped in to replace him. They had clearly spread their spindly fingers far.

Barney Ronay of the Guardian was astounded by the story and wrote that he had found masses of information about the new manager online having never heard of him, though Paul Hayward of the Daily Telegraph reported that he had followed keenly the career of our hereto non-existent legend.

Regular people commented broadly on the story online, with comments ranging from;

“Who the f’ck is this joker??”

To;

“We are an absolute laughing stock, never heard of him!!”

As the minutes went by these comments were flooded and lost in the sea of Russian-bot comments that commended United’s fine choice, pointing out the new manager was clearly the worlds best.

I googled “myself”, “Lucho Son Chung”. According to an extensive Wikipedia page I was a born of a Brazilian father and a South Korean mother, somehow creating a caucasion baby. I had been the Director of football at FC Seoul, Guanzhou Evergrande, Zenit St Petersberg, FC Basel and Dynamo Kiev at various points in time, and I was credited with being the one who made all the tactical decisions on the pitch, the managers at the time just being my mouth-piece.

I was the Hidden Genius.

The chairman at each of these clubs had given extensive interviews about how I revolutionized their clubs and they wished nothing but success for me, and various players had come out to say they looked up to me and I had turned them into the players they had become.

It was a bewildering storm of compliments from players that I’d watched at world cups and in the Champions League.

My stomach felt sick, though it may have been the scrambled green eggs I had on the flight; a notion further reinforced by the speed and liquid form of their exit from my body in a woefully unprepared toilet cubicle at the airport. I grasped for toilet roll however the roll ran dry. Having heard the tell-all groan from my cubicle that had immediately followed the tell-all explosive splatter, my cubicle neighbour rolled a new toilet roll under the raised wall. “I’ve got your back, mate. And your back-side.” Little did this guardian angel know, he had prevented Manchester United’s next manager from wiping his arse with his underpants and stuffing them into the toilet bowl.