James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (25 page)

Makepeace:
By bombing Kiev.

Mrs Keener:
Worked, didn't it?

Makepeace:
Cuba?

Mrs Keener:
Just helping along an inevitable process. The regime there was on its last legs. Like a racehorse that couldn't run no more, it needed putting out of its misery. So we did that, and now Cubans are happier and better off they ever were, and what's more, any American can spark up a nice fat Havana cigar these days without guilt or shame.

Makepeace:
Beirut? Jordan? Equatorial Guinea? Kashmir? The Basque region?

Mrs Keener:
What's your point here, darling? What are you trying to say?

Makepeace:
Nothing. I'm just listing all the sovereign nations which have been exposed to the Keener brand of, er, intervention in the past few years. It's quite a lengthy list. In fact, there hasn't been a single day since you took office when US military personnel haven't been engaged in active service somewhere or other in the world.

Mrs Keener:
You say that like it's a bad thing. I know a number of five-star generals who'd think different. What's a standing army for anyway if it ain't for mobilising and deploying? It sure ain't there just to
stand
. Manifest Destiny, Pete. Manifest Destiny. It's like in my home. If I see some dirt somewhere, why, I'm gonna fetch my broom and sweep it away. It's called doing your domestic duty.

Makepeace:
I suppose one might reasonably ask, where's next? Who's Mrs Keener got lined up in her sights next? Have you spotted another patch of dirt that needs attending to?

Mrs Keener:
Your country, of course. The motherland, the guys we kicked into touch back in 1776, the good old UK. I'm visiting next month, ain't I? And your Prime Minister Clasen has been pretty blunt about his dislike for me and what I get up to. He's forever running to the UN and griping about me like the preppy little schoolkid that he is. Maybe I'll use my state visit to Britain next month as an opportunity to launch regime change there. Clasen ain't so popular, is he? He's been trying to handle y'all's discontent over food shortages and the high mortality rate among the elderly and the hospitals not coping and the trains not running and all of that, and he ain't been making that great a job of it. I've heard his approval ratings are abysmal, like, the worst ever. Maybe I should come along and bump his sorry backside out of Downing Street. What do you think to that?

Makepeace:
[
voiceover
] She's joking. At least, I like to think she is. It's apparent that my line of questioning has irritated her. She told my producer originally that no questions would be off-limits, but I seem to have overstepped an unspoken boundary. Some sort of mollifying gesture is in order.

Makepeace:
I spoke to Ted earlier today. He told me he's looking forward to "date night" tonight.

Mrs Keener:
Oh, that Ted! I tell you, we're like two teenagers sometimes, courting all over again.

Makepeace:
I get the impression he thinks you've changed.

Mrs Keener:
For the better, I trust.

Makepeace:
He used the word "rediscover." In this context, what does that...? I'm not sure if I...

Mrs Keener:
That's what I meant - two teenagers courting. Perhaps what he was saying is he feels he doesn't know me quite so well any more, on account of I'm so goshdarn busy all of the time. Just makes it all the more fun getting reacquainted, though, doesn't it?

Makepeace:
[
voiceover
] We're in
Marine One
, flying over the Potomac river to the Pentagon. The president is off to one of her regular meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don't know if we're going to be allowed much further than the Pentagon heliport, but I'm going to try my best.

Audio Description Commentary:
Marine One
sets down in front of the Pentagon.

Makepeace:
[
voiceover
] These weekly get-togethers are one of Mrs Keener's own innovations. Such is the intensity and frequency of American military operations overseas that they've become almost a necessity.

Audio Description Commentary:
President Keener exits the helicopter with her aides, heading towards a waiting limousine. Peter gets out too. Security men block the way, preventing him and the film crew from following the president into the limo.

Makepeace:
[
shouting above the helicopter engine noise
] That's as far as we get, apparently. It seems there are, after all, certain areas of the president's political life we're not going to be privy to. So... off she goes in that big black armour-plated car, to a room where the fate of American troops, and possibly of civilians of a foreign nation, is about to be decided. Like anyone else, all we can do is stand on the sidelines and wait.

Makepeace:
Bryan, Carol Ann, what would you say your mother's strongest attributes were?

Bryan Keener:
She's a great mom and everything. I really, like, admire her. She's a role model. She doesn't take no BS from anybody.

Carol Ann Keener:
Bryan, you can't say BS on television.

Bryan Keener:
Yeah, you can. British television is like, they don't care. You can say BS, you just can't say bullshit.

Audio Description Commentary:
Bryan claps a hand over his mouth.

Carol Ann Keener:
[
giggling
] Oh my Lord, Mom's gonna kill you. You said a cuss word.

Bryan Keener:
It wasn't that bad of a cuss word. She won't get mad, will she? Will she? Not too mad. You won't show that bit, huh, Mr Makepeace?

Makepeace:
Does your mother get cross easily?

Carol Ann Keener:
She's got kinda a temper, sometimes. Shouts a bit. 'Specially after she took this job. It's 'cause she's so stressed out and everything. She didn't use to be like that, before. Used to be much gentler with us.

Bryan Keener:
But she never shouts 'less we deserve it. And she's got high standards, you know what I'm saying? For herself as much as for us. You promise you won't show that bit?

Makepeace:
I can't not ask. The big red button. How does it feel to have your finger on that? How does it feel to know that the power to destroy the world is in your hands? It must be - I don't know if exciting is the best way to describe it - exhilarating? Or terrifying?

Mrs Keener:
It's a solemn responsibility that I take seriously, very seriously indeed. There ain't a day goes by that I don't wonder, am I going to have to make that decision today? Am I going to have to make that judgement call?

Makepeace:
That Judgement Day call, ha ha.

Mrs Keener:
Ha ha, trying to trip me up there, ain't you, Pete? In that sneaky, snide English way of yours.

Makepeace:
No. No, I -

Mrs Keener:
Maybe get me to admit I'm one of them religious fundamentalists, one of them, whatchemacall, End Timers, believing we're in the Last Days and Armageddon's waiting just around the corner.

Makepeace:
No, it was just a pun, a turn of -

Mrs Keener:
It'd make for a good headline, huh? "Holy Wackjob Has Finger On Nukular Trigger." But you've got me wrong. I don't want to see the world end, Pete. Not that way. In a big ball of fire? That'd be just plain wrong.

Makepeace:
Do you think the world
is
ending? I mean, as we're on the subject. These snowfalls, the low temperatures, three years of almost constant winter... There are some who would say civilisation is teetering on the brink. We can't withstand many more years of this. We won't be able to maintain a stable society if the situation continues.

Mrs Keener:
Pish and poppycock! Things'll pick up. They surely have to.

Makepeace:
And if they don't? Your critics have said you're being remarkably casual about what has the potential to be total environmental cataclysm. You haven't instituted a single policy to tackle it or even investigate the cause.

Mrs Keener:
We know the cause. Volcanoes. What're we gonna do? Stop 'em all up with giant corks? Heck, maybe I
should
explode a few atomic bombs. Maybe that'd help melt all the snow away. Joshing, Pete, just joshing. The look on your face!

Makepeace:
But have you -

Mrs Keener:
Let me say something, Mr Documentary Maker Man, just so's the viewers back home in the UK don't get the wrong idea. I've made plans to deal with what's going on. Contingency measures are in place. Things have been trialled which need to be trialled, and no, I'm not gonna tell you what I mean by that, 'cause it's top secret. If there's anyone out there doubts I have the grit or gumption to go through with my intentions - when appropriate - let them be under no illusion. I do. I very much do. Where's that camera? See my face. Look into my eyes. I am not to be rejected or ignored or trifled with. I am not the type to take any kinda challenge or insult lying down. I am here to respond to things as best I see fit, and you would do well not to underestimate my depth of feeling or my determination to act in the name of what I consider is right. Is that clear?

Makepeace:
[
voiceover
] As firm a reiteration of Lois Keener's presidential credo as there's ever been. And perhaps a hint as to her attraction to ordinary middle-class American voters. That forthrightness. That plain speaking. Although I can't help feeling she's strayed somewhat off-topic. When did the bad weather become an adversary needing to be faced down? I can't follow the logic.

Makepeace:
[
in studio, to camera
] So, what have I learned during my time with the president? She is not someone to be crossed lightly, yet she retains an essential charisma. She has a rigorous command of the facts of any given situation, yet she also relies heavily on her instincts, and her faith. She is fearsome and fearless. She is a woman who has undergone a profound spiritual metamorphosis, one that has taken her from smalltown Georgia anonymity and propelled her into the driving seat of earth's last true superpower. There is steel beneath that courteous feminine exterior, yet warmth as well. She is a president of contrasts. Her true nature is elusive, slippery, tricky. Perhaps only she knows her own mind fully, she and one other, the God to whom she has dedicated herself wholeheartedly, believing implicitly in His plan, His mission for her, relying on His guidance. I've come away from making this documentary with a profound respect for Mrs Keener, coupled with a nagging unease. It's as if, for all that she's beguiled me, there's a part of me that recoils from that. The only way I can describe it is like being hypnotised by a cobra - the allure of something beautiful but dangerous. I'm hoping that her imminent visit to Britain will be as anodyne and uneventful as such state occasions normally are. And the very fact that I'm hoping that at all unnerves me. I'm Peter Makepeace. This has been
Makepeace Meets...
Thank you for watching, and goodnight.

Twenty-Eight

The tape ended. Skuld snapped the television off.

For a time no one said anything, so I felt pressure to break the silence.

"She's a foxy lady and no mistake," I said. "Not sure she's completely all there, up top." I tapped my temple. "But that's not necessarily a drawback. The more screws a girl has loose, the looser a screw she is."

Odin and the Norns just looked at me.

"What? I grant you, not the most PC remark ever made, but..."

Still looking at me.

"
What
? Am I missing something here? I am, aren't I? I thought I was going to find out who your Big Bad is, and then all you do is show me a programme about..."

Gid Coxall, king of the slowly dropping pennies.

"Oh no. You are kidding."

Their faces.

"You're not kidding."

I recalled the book Odin had lent me while I was recuperating from the accident.

"When you gave me her autobiography," I said to him, "I thought it was just... Well, at first I thought you must be a fan of hers. Admired her politics. I was halfway to thinking the Valhalla Mission was some kind of neo-Nazi outfit, and you approved of her views on gays and abortion rights and the rest. And then I thought, maybe not. Maybe you oppose her because she's big government. She's The Man. That was before I got the whole Norse gods thing clear, of course. But if you're against her, if she's the enemy... It is her, isn't it? You haven't got anything against Peter Makepeace? Because he's smarmy, yes, a bit of a prick and a know-all, but that's not a reason to set up an army. I mean, there are plenty of other TV personalities I can think of that deserve merciless hounding and execution. Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan spring to mind. Nothing wrong with those two that couldn't be solved with a Claymore mine down the underpants. But not Makepeace."