Writing for Fun
March 2018
Mystery – A Stink In The Cabinet Room - Pete Norman
The most powerful man in the world sat back in the big chair and with some distain surveyed the twenty almost most powerful men in the world seated around the Cabinet Table. He had always thought that if the government was a gourmet meal then he was the Chateaubriand Steak and they were the vegetables. He was frustrated that he had to bear the burden of their incompetence when he was perfectly capable of running the entire world on his own without their interference. The Secretary directly opposite him was actually dozing, for Christ’s sake but he was well aware that for Willerson, a septuagenarian, this was nothing unusual at all.
Wilbur Willerson was vaguely aware of the background hum of the Cabinet around him but he had lived through the madness of a variety of previous Presidents and, as they rarely required any input from his obscure department, he was happy to doze until he actually was required. On the rare occasions that he surfaced again to full consciousness he liked to play a little game – a game of Where’s Wally. As the President began to speak, Wilbur snorted, opened his eyes and scanned the room. He found Wally easily enough because there he was, seated in the big chair directly opposite him.
The President opened up the big grey folder and the vegetables dutifully opened their own. ‘The first item on the agenda is the situation in North Korea but I must first appraise you of a developing situation which I consider poses a far more serious threat to home security.’ He looked carefully around the table as he added, ‘I am referring to the organisation known as Father Christmas.’
The look on their faces was an absolute picture. He had known all along that they would be incapable of understanding the concept – they were too dumb to think outside their comfortable boxes.
‘Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Pere Noel, Weihnachtsmann, Joulupukki . . . Every nation in the world has their own name for this man but who exactly is he, eh? and what is his ultimate goal? This is a mystery which disturbs me deeply.’
An incredulous Secretary General for the State Department said, ‘I always thought that his ultimate goal was to deliver presents to the children on Christmas Eve.’
The president threw his arms up in delight. ‘Exactly! Exactly! And are you telling me that you find nothing whatsoever suspicious about that?’
This time the Secretary wisely chose to remain silent.
‘What do they tell our children, eh? They tell them that if they open their eyes – if they should ever see the man – then their presents will all be taken away. Clearly this is the most devious subterfuge. The Coca Cola Company have come up with a picture of a fat jolly man with a white beard and a red suit but has anyone ever actually seen him to confirm this?’ Again he swept his eyes across their troubled faces. ‘Of course not! So in reality we have no idea what this man actually looks like. Also, this one man is supposed to achieve all of this – travelling the entire world in a single 24hr period and visiting every household – on a wooden sleigh weighed down by millions of tons of presents and pulled by six reindeer.’
The Secretary General for the State Department added cautiously, ‘I think you will find, Mr President, that there are eight reindeer.’
‘And how do we know that?’ he roared. ‘How do we know that if nobody has ever seen them?!’
He paused for a moment to recover his composure.
‘We are all . . .’ he glanced across at Wilbur Willerson before adding, ‘We are almost all of us intelligent, scientific thinkers and this is quite clearly a physical impossibility. We all know that reindeer can’t fly. It’s an urban myth. They eat magic mushrooms and then pee it out. Unbelievably the Eskimos drink the reindeer . . . cocktail. The bloody Inuits would think that the Empire State Building could fly.
‘No, it’s obvious to me that there has to be an enormous force of people out there using stealth technology vastly superior to our own and we are being duped into thinking that their sole purpose is to distribute billions of dollars’ worth of toys totally free of charge to our children. Gentlemen, no one, but no one is that altruistic – there has to be another motive – a far more sinister ulterior motive.’
He pulled a lollipop from his jacket pocket and slipped it into his mouth while he allowed them time to absorb the concept.
‘They say that he is based at the North Pole but the US has research stations all over the Arctic Circle, that area is over-flown more frequently than Pennsylvania – even the damned Space Station crosses it every few hours for Christ’s sake. If there ever was a secret toy factory at the North Pole then we would know about it by now.’
He glanced down at his notes. ‘This man, St Nicholas, originated in Lycia, which is now a Turkish state but in his time that would have been under the sphere of Communist influence and I firmly believe that this organisation remains so to this day. I think that their base is somewhere in the Siberian wastelands, not a million miles away from the vast commercial opportunities across the Chinese border. It is there that we should be concentrating our search.’
He switched the lollipop to the other side of his mouth while he paused for reply but a deathly silence had descended over the room.
The Director of the CIA was beginning to feel that history might yet vindicate him for his secret removal of the nuclear button from the Oval Office the moment this idiot was elected.
‘So, what can we deduce from this? That a quasi Russian organisation is travelling with impunity across every inch of US territory in invisible crafts and . . . entering every building in America unseen . . . just to leave a present for the kids?’
He pulled out the lollipop and snarled, ‘At what point does this child’s present switch to a bomb? Eh? With a Soviet bomb in every single house this country of ours could be wiped out,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘totally annihilated, in an instant!’
He turned to the Secretary of State for the Combined Forces. ‘At nightfall on Christmas Eve I want all 650 intelligence satellites to be re-assigned to cover the borders of our air space. Nothing whatsoever is to get through.’
To the Director of the FBI he said, ‘I want static surveillance cameras down the entire eastern seaboard on selected buildings which are known to contain children. You will of course include the White House despite the fact that there are no children resident there.’
The Director of the FBI disagreed with that statement in principle but he chose to remain silent.
‘And then the air force will . . .’
The door burst open and the Senior White House Medical Officer entered, flanked by two burly and menacing looking orderlies.
The President turned to confront the intrusion and in so doing failed to notice Wilbur Willerson who had surfaced from the land of Morpheus and was now pointing happily at Wally.
However, the most powerful man in the world was not about to go quietly. ‘What are you doing, you idiots? . . . Let go of me . . . I don’t need an afternoon nap . . . I’m your President!’
As he was being dragged to the door the Vice President slipped sideways into the big chair and picked up the grey folder. ‘Now, gentlemen, about the situation in North Korea . . .’
From the corridor outside could be heard, ‘I’m going to tweet something really nasty about you!’