The series
@When America Sneezes is the new series of novels that explores the repercussions of an undecided American Presidential election
Excerpt of novel
By Jim Gray
Aberdeen, Thorn International golf course. 3rd tee, Today
“I can’t let them take it away from me.” The suddenly irate former President of the USA went to slam his pitching wedge into the soft turf but stopped short. He stood upright and drawing in a long, slow breath; he allowed the cool Scottish breeze to wash the heat from his flushed face. On regaining his composure, he joined the General, and they stood side by side, watching the waitress depart.
“I’ll get her name this evening,” he muttered into the wind. Her tousled blond hair, outrageously tight orange blouse and slender legs, ending in snakeskin cowboy boots, certainly now captured his undivided attention. “Oh my, George, if I were twenty years younger.”
“Ha, you would still be twenty years too old.” The general cracked a nervous smile. Donald’s face at first darkened to a scowl, but then a grin turned to a belly laugh. George McCluskey, relieved at the acceptance of his witticism, joined in.
Donald, slapping the general harder than necessary on the back, said, “I can’t let the Commie fuckers take it away from me all over again, George.” His grin gone now, a dark, shadow mask crossed the politician’s face. Years of battling the American legal system came flooding back to mind. It boiled his blood. “Those bastards tried everything to bring us to heal, but we kicked their asses every time.” Donald gave the general a rueful smile. He knew McCluskey considered him a friend, but to Donald, this relationship was more crocodile and plover. Yet the symbiosis would benefit if you didn’t always bite their heads off, he thought. Donald constantly fought instinct.
Donald looked over his windswept links course in northeast Scotland. The soft salt spray air and cut green grass aroma reminded him why the Tee was his boardroom. Yes, answers came quicker in a smoke-filled meeting or while berating someone over a phone, but this delicate plan called for some bonding, moulding and God forbid, nuance. Compromise? He would consider letting the general win a hole or two, but that is as far as he would go with that.
Several meetings were scheduled here over the next few days. Thorn was ramping up his candidacy, firstly as the Republican nominee, and then for President. This time, the pieces of the jigsaw would be in place.
Donald breathed in deeply and released it slowly through his nose. He took a sip of beer to clear the lump in his throat. “I’m going to need your help, George.”
“You know that I will help you anyway I can, Mr President, but they are forcing me to retire soon and so I do not know how much help I can be.” Three deep lines crossed the General’s brow.
“Well I have a role in mind for you where you could do no end of good.” Thorn smiled. “How does Chief of the Joint Committee sound?”
The General’s face cracked a wide smile.
“Sir,” he said, “you know that has been my dream for many years. With you in the Whitehouse and me running the forces, we could finally get this country back on its feet.”
With a quivering hand, Thorn laid his glass back on the small table. Stifling anger was not his strong suit. McCluskey won’t be working with me, He thought, he will be working for me. But for now, the 58th President let it lie. He needed McCluskey like a plumber needed a plunger to get shit moving.
London Friday 1st November 2024
“Hey guys, check this. It’s Jane and Dana from the telly.”
Jane could tell the man already had too much to drink. His face was slack, and his spectacles perched precariously on the end of his nose. While it was great to be recognised sometimes, you never knew if they were a nutter.
“I am a huge fan. Are you recording just now?” He looked around for a camera crew.
“No,” said Dana as she outstretched a hand to stop the teetering man encroaching further, “we are out on the town having a laugh mate. Thanks for chatting but we gotta go.” She took Jane’s arm and continued walking up the street. He jogged to keep up.
“Can we do a selfie, Jane? My folks won’t believe I ever met you.”
“Okay, but just a quick one. We really have to be somewhere.”
The man swayed as he searched each of his pockets twice before finding the phone. Sidling up to Jane, he held it at arm’s length. Jane smiled, and as he clicked, he planted a kiss on her cheek. She wiped his drool and ducked out of his embrace.
“Thanks. Your tits are even better in real life,” he said, reaching to cop a feel.
Dana pulled Jane away. “Prick,” she said as the pervert gave up his assault and ran to catch up with his friends, shouting to them as he went, “Hey guys, I snogged Jane from the telly.”
“That’s going to be me.” Jane pointed to the stretch limo cruising past slowly. They walked up Regent Street, heading for one of London’s better nightclubs.
Dana looked at the car while running a comb through her long strawberry blond hair. “We could hire a limo next time we hit the town.”
“No, I’m not looking to pretend we’ve reached the top. I really want to make it.”
“Jeez, Jane, you’re the fecking face of politics on the telly.”
“I know, I know, but there has to be something more than this?” Jane motioned at the busy London Street. She knew she sounded like a petulant child.
“Give it time, girl,” said Dana as she returned the comb to her Gucci handbag.
Jane stopped and faced her friend. “Gravity is the only thing that comes to you and I in time. Soon there will be a perkier and prettier newsgirl standing in my place. That prick Dan will have a younger arse to slap each time he hands out an assignment.
“Dan’s not all that bad,” said Dana and Jane raised her eyebrows.
“He’s the chief prick amongst a team of pricks.” Was that hurt in Dana’s face? “Okay, he’s not all that bad, but I am fed up being used by incompetent men. I don’t just want to be a female presenter, or the face to get your jollies off at for guys like that,” Jane pointed back down the road. “I want to be something more.”
“Are you going all gender neutral on me, girl?” asked Dana.
Jane scowled. “Fuck off. You know what I mean. I want to be valued for who I am, not what I look like.”
Danna nodded in agreement, and they walked in contemplative silence for a while.
“You do have great tits though,” Dana laughed and ducked under the anticipated handbag swipe.
London, Saturday 2nd November 2024
Jane woke with the familiar morning desert tongue feeling and cracked leather lips. It was then she noticed there was a man on the other side of the bed. Unfortunately for Jane, this was not a unique occurrence.
“I need some water,” she said to the stranger.
“Okay,” He put his head back down on the pillow. “Kitchen is at the foot of the stairs.” It was only then that she realised she was not in her own bed.
She began to get up but halted as the duvet fell away and cold air touched her body. All of her body. Oh god. Not again, she thought. Though Jane liked to party, the thirty-five-year-old woman couldn’t keep up the pace that the younger model had.
She’d gotten badly out of practice during COVID. Working at the BBC, she never actually locked down the way the minions had to. With her being a BBC political correspondent, there were parties throughout the whole emergency. Life in London had hardly changed from Jane’s perspective, with one tiny omission – she didn’t get drunk once. It wouldn’t have looked good to be staggering about on the streets while everyone else was in doors.
So, Jane kept it on the downlow, and as a consequence, lost her drinking mojo.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she looked along the hallway for anything that resembled a kitchen. Seeing nothing like one, she realised there was a door to her left. Tentatively pushing it open a touch, it revealed a pine laminate floor. Bingo! She poked her head round the door to check the family and kids were not sitting down to cornflakes. The coast was thankfully clear.
While running the tap to get some nice, chilled water, she looked the place up and down. The kitchen units looked expensive to her. Curious the things that go through your head when naked in a stranger’s house, she thought.
From behind, there came a creak. Jane turned around, still emptying her water. Through the bottom of the glass, a figure stood silhouetted in the kitchen doorway. Her face reddening, Jane saw a girl, maybe late teens, early twenties, looking back at her. She wanted to run but instead tried to play it cool.
“Hi, I’m Jane.”
“Hannah,” the girl replied softly.
“Sorry,” Jane said. “I needed a drink and couldn’t find my clothes. I didn’t know there was anyone else here.” Hannah was wearing a pink onesie with a teddy bear motif on the breast pocket. Thankfully, the girl finally broke the stare.
“Hold on,” she said and disappeared down the corridor. Jane refilled her glass and took another long drink. The floor creaked again and announced Hannah’s return. She was carrying a white towelling dressing gown with a large ‘H’ embroidered on it. She handed it to Jane.
“Thanks,” Jane said, putting the gown on and tying it closed. “Really sorry about the whole naked stranger thing.”
Hannah paused before responding. “It’s…it’s okay…I guess. Did Colin…er…bring you here?”
Jane blushed again, “Is Colin the dark-haired guy with the worst moustache ever lying in bed upstairs?”
“Probably.” Hannah nodded.
“Then yes,” said Jane.
The quip about the moustache brought a fragment of memory from last night. Jane was in an exclusive London club with Dana and another couple of friends from the Beeb. None of them were due on shift today and so decided to have a night on the tiles.
She’d been standing at the bar, and the man started talking. Jane had always hated moustaches. In her experience, the men who wore them always had something to hide, or some weird agenda to espouse. Don’t even get me started on beards, she thought. Anyway, creepy moustache guy, or Colin, as she now knew, had actually been okay. He was asking more about Jane’s friend Dana, than trying to chat Jane up. She’d taken her leave and went back to the table. Unfortunately for Colin, Dana hated moustaches too, and he’d been given the cold shoulder.
But how she ended up here, in the man’s kitchen with either his sister or flatmate, she had no bloody idea.
Hannah left the room, and Jane followed her to the living room. There, on the sofa, were her clothes, but not in the condition she remembered. The very expensive designer blouse no longer had buttons, and her underwear was in pieces. She picked up the pile and headed back to the stairs.
“I’ll be out of your way in two minutes,” she said to Hannah.
“Are you Jane Clark?” Hannah asked. “From the news?”
Jane’s heart sank. Humiliation was bad enough but recognition too! This was not her day.
“Yeah.” Jane looked forlornly up the stairs. Glad that Hannah didn’t have a follow-up question, she turned away and headed back to the bedroom.
Colin stirred. He raised his head and rubbed his eyes. “Where did you find my wife’s dressing gown?”
“Oh fuck,” she replied.
Bahrain, Monday 24th February. 7am
Elling Sorensen hated fat people. They were everywhere these days. He’d just jogged past two of them, sunbathing at this ungodly hour. Being Bahrain, they hadn’t shown too much skin but more than enough for Elling. They should be made to wear bin liners until they lost the unsightly flesh, he thought to himself. The Norwegian’s anger issues kicked in at the sight of the two whales. It came close to cancelling his regular morning jog. He seldom missed one. Even today, while up on holiday from his home in Danman, Saudi Arabia, where he was based the last two years.
Elling worked for Aramco. At 29 Years old and a qualified reservoir engineer, he was doing well for himself, thank you very much. The weather in Saudi and here in Bahrain was infinitely preferable to the freezing North Sea, where he’d paid his dues. The Saudis also renumerated him extravagantly for his services. He intended to work down here for seven or eight years, ten at the absolute most, and then head back to Europe. The aim? To buy a holiday home somewhere warm. A few of his colleagues had already done so in places like Thailand. It gave you somewhere warm to spend downtime but also had positive tax benefits once you worked back in Europe.
As ever, it was a beautiful morning for a run. The cool of the Arabian night was receding, and the warm morning air rolled in from the Red Sea. The sun sat just above the horizon, causing the palm trees to his right to cast their long shadows over the hotel golf course. He ran on the sand, having been admonished for jogging over the course on the first day of his holiday. Elling hated golfers almost as much as fat people. Snobby pricks to a man. And they were all men down here, of course.
Headphones pumped up high, a mixture of K-pop and dance music kept the real world out, and Elling altered his pace as the tempo of the songs changed.
There were more ships than usual in the bay today. The closest was the IRIS Jamaran, but he couldn’t yet see the names on the other larger vessels or the myriad of smaller ones dotting about. A Kilometre along the glorious white sand, a group of smaller vessels were either about to launch or had come aground. There seemed to be a lot of activity down there for this time of the morning. It was still a long way away, but the men on the beach didn’t look like surfers or bathers. He realised that they were in light green military uniforms. It was not unusual to see the military on the streets of Bahrain or Saudi, the governments stayed in power by force after all. Here in Bahrain, the ruling class was Sunni, and the people were predominantly Shia. Strange how the West accepted totalitarian and undemocratic governments as long as they had oil, he thought and then laughed to himself. Unless they were commie thugs, he added. Venezuela actually had more oil than Saudi, but he didn’t see himself getting posted down there anytime soon. You could oppress women, kill gays, blow up the World Trade Center and that was dandy, but don’t you dare read the works of Marx. Elling realised he hated Americans and Western Europeans almost as much as fat people and golfers. The epiphany resulted in him laughing until he stopped jogging and bent over while pulling the headphones from his ears. The unrestrained belly laugh at his own little joke was cut short as he heard several cracks that he knew to be small arms fire. A loud rapport joined into the cacophony. One of the bigger ships offshore fired a broadside, and Elling was knocked backwards. His hotel that lay further down the beach disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
Quickly righting himself, he ran to the foliage that bordered the golf course, cutting it off from the beach. The fat couple that were sunbathing must have also clocked the situation and were waddling landward. The woman fell, and Elling watched, mouth open, as the guy she was with halted, looked down at her, turned and then resumed his course. She wasn’t moving. Elling’s mind thought she resembled one of the larger seals that he had clubbed on Northern Norwegian beaches in his youth.
“What a self-possessed prick,” he said as he watched the guy leave his partner lying on the sand. His familiar anger rising, Elling ran along the tree line toward the fat man. He quickly closed the gap between himself and the fleeing guy. As they approached each other, Elling saw the other man’s face was covered in sweat. His mouth was open, trying to get enough air into his fat-soaked body. The tubster was about to say something as Elling landed a punch right between his eyes. The fatty went down like a lead balloon, and Elling continued past him, hardly breaking his stride. He got to the edge of the cover nearest the woman and looked South down the beach to see (literally, he thought) if the coast was clear. Seeing no one, in particular, resting their attention on him, he broke cover and started to head toward the prone victim, but before he went two steps, he saw the huge hole in the back of the woman’s head. Turning on a heel, he quickly resumed cover and, for the first time, thought to himself, “What the fuck am I doing?”
Looking back down the path, there was the fat man sitting on his huge arse, rubbing his sweat-covered face. The blob was wearing a German football shirt, Elling realised for the first time. He looked back up the path at Elling with a distinct, “What the fuck?” expression on his face. Your average person would have softened their antipathy, having realised that the guy saw the hole in the back of his lady friend’s head before making for the trees. But for Elling, the German shirt pushed him over the edge. He ran back toward the man, and the intended victim’s look quickly changed from hurt to fear. Before the man could raise his bulk, Elling booted him firmly in the stomach. The man let out a shriek. Not half as big as the next one though, Elling booted him right in the family jewels.
Gerhardt Sturm felt the acid bile rise and fill his mouth. Five minutes ago, he sat on the beach relaxing. After a busy week of touting for valve business from local companies, he and the interpreter hired for the trip were taking a little downtime before the final meeting, which was due mid-morning. Gerhardt worked for a large industrial corporation in Germany, but his sales zone was Arabia. He was good at the job and earned a comfortable living. Both Christian and gay, he did not intend to let anyone know either detail in these parts. It was sort of his rule to let his customers know little about his personal life. Gerry, as many of his clients knew him, was friendly and loved entertaining good customers. A few of them had noted, though, that, after doing business for years and spending a lot of time dining and sometimes drinking if permitted, they knew little about the man. Gerry, though, knew every little detail about them. It was why he was so good at his job.
In what seemed like a flash, he was now lying on a golf course, holding his groin and about to be sick. Oh, and throw in that his interpreter was dead, and he had landed in the middle of World War Three. Schadenfreude.
His attacker didn’t seem to be with the others further down the beach. They had guns for a start. Even from his distant vantage point, they looked like they were Arabic. Iranians, to be precise. Gerhardt had spent a lot of time in that country selling his wares to both the nuclear and the oil businesses. He didn’t know why the Iranians were in Bahrain, but he was fairly sure it bode no good for the immediate future of the island. He kept his nose on world events out of interest but knew that business often relied on what seemed unconnected to the less educated man. The news that Saudi and Iran were able to patch things up a couple of years ago was certainly good for him. Sales and bonuses were through the roof. Before the first shot rang out and his colleague had her head blown off, the site of the Iranian frigate bearing down on them appeared little more than intriguing. Linking everything back to his financial position, Gerhard thought that this must be a result of the warming between the nations. Bahrain was, in all but name, an outpost of Saudi Arabia. Maybe the Iranians were here on a cultural exchange. That scenario had faded fast.
Sweat poured from his brow. It was no longer the sweat of an overweight man but now an omen he was about to throw up. There you go, he thought as he was sick into the foliage next to the path. Denied the euphoria that often followed regurgitation, the valve salesman was in too much pain from nose, stomach, and balls. What the fuck had that been all about?
He couldn’t inquire with the wiry, tanned jogger that wailed on him. Thankfully, his assailant was now a spec in the distance, crossing the golf course. He remembered seeing the man jog past as he sat on the sun lounger, and Gerhard, forgetting where he was, had been rating the guy out of ten. The jogger was an eight-point five, but Gerhardt now decided to knock a few points off for personality. The German had strange tastes and would not have been beyond paying the guy to treat him rough in other circumstances. Maybe not quite this rough, he decided, chucking up once more.
Slowly, the real world crept back into his misery. There were more guys down the beach that he really didn’t want to meet. Gerhardt struggled to his feet. He was fat, and this was hard for him at the best of times, but try it while holding on to parts he didn’t want to lose.
There was no going back to the hotel. It was a raging conflagration, and anyway, it seemed to be a collecting point for the soldiers. He certainly wasn’t going to follow the gay basher. That just left North along the beach. He had no idea what lay in that direction, but it was the better option. Maybe go a couple of Kilometres and then hook back and make his way to the oil depot that was on the far side of the holiday resort. He hoped to find a few of the engineers that he knew when he got there. They might be able to do something.
