The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Russia

‘Good morning, Volodya. How are things? You look concerned.’

Yes, that was true. President Putin had some thinking to do. His colleague Trump was about to go entirely off the rails.

‘That idiot in Washington has seriously riled that fool in Pyongyang,’ he said. ‘What will we do, Gena?’

Gennady Aksakov took a seat at his friend’s desk. They were an unbeatable pair. Not just good, they were the best. Just as they had once been on the sambo and judo mats.

But, as they say, it’s possible to be too successful. That was more or less what the Russian president was brooding over now.

Under Gena’s discreet leadership, Russia had started a war with the United States without telling anyone. A whole army of young men and women had marched onto the internet, literally donned American baseball caps, opened a Dr Pepper and gone on the attack.

From within.

The battles took place on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blogs and websites. From those positions, the fake American web soldiers aimed shots in every direction: they undermined left-wing movements one day and right-wing movements the next, supporting NFL players’ right to kneel before the flag on Facebook and calling those same players unpatriotic on Twitter. They expressed support for stricter gun laws and protested against the very same thing. They demanded walls against Mexico and the opposite. They praised and cut down every new attempt at health-care reform. Opined every possible opinion on LGBTQ issues. They fired up the masses, no matter who the masses were and what they stood for.

The point was to set American against American. A divided country was a weakened country, after all.

When the dust of war settled, the president and his friend found that their troops had won every single battle. But what about the war itself?

Putin wondered if it had all gone too well. Gena had even managed the impossible: placing the extreme divider Trump in the White House. Was it a Pyrrhic victory? Had they created a monster that could no longer be reined in?

The United States was definitely going to pieces; that part was good. But nations are like the Siberian tiger: a wounded one can be lethal. The USA was still the greatest military power in the world. The man who was running his own country into the ground, with Russia’s help, might now, in his monumental unsuitability for the job, be on his way to a nuclear war with North Korea. Which was in the immediate vicinity of eastern Russia.

That hadn’t been part of their calculations. And it was impossible to predict what it might lead to. In hindsight, they never should have sent over that goddamn plutonium centrifuge.

‘Perhaps not,’ his friend admitted. ‘But what’s done is done.’

What had once seemed like a good idea was about to bite them in the butt. One or more true nuclear weapons tests in North Korea, while the United States and China were talking trade agreements, was meant to mess things up for them. It was not in Russia’s best interest for the Americans and the Chinese to enjoy each other’s company.

The risk now was that they would realize they had a common enemy. And Xi Jinping had found a way to talk to Trump. Or maybe he’d just made sure to lose by the proper number of strokes on the golf course. Whatever he was doing, it appeared to be working.

‘What’s done is done,’ Gennady Aksakov said once more. ‘Let it go, Volodya. Let’s focus on Europe.’

Putin nodded. ‘You swung by Sweden, then? How are things there?’

Gena made a face. ‘You don’t want to know. Let’s talk about Spain and Germany instead. I have some good German news for you.’

Putin smiled. ‘Oh, really? Does that mean Merkel isn’t sitting as securely on her fat arse as she thinks?’