New World Order

The most important deals funny take place in meeting rooms

"Don't make me laugh!"

Franklin grinned his Machiavellian grin, his cigarette holder at an incongruously jaunty angle. "Winnie, my boy," he said in his cultured New England accent, "it's no joke and no laughing matter. And there's no other way." He paused. His smile widened into a shark smile. "And you know it."

Churchill looked at him crossly, chewing his cigar. Then he did laugh. "Rosy, my boy, I believe you could steal hell out from under the devil's feet and make him tapdance on ice, you wily old son of a bitch!"

Roosevelt sat in his wheelchair, teeth clamped on the cigarette holder. "We need to be in this war on both sides of the world, Winnie. We'll win it; you and I both know it. And when we do? Well, simply put: we split what's left down the middle—Britain keeps her colonies, America gets the rest. Yes?"

"Of course, I'll want Russia, including the oil in the east." Churchill's face was lit with the smile of a true horse trader.

Franklin winked at him. "So long as I get China. If I can sell your people all the crops they'll need, I'll buy the oil you pull from the Caucasus." He held out his hand. "We have a deal?"

Churchill looked at the man several moments, going over the details they had discussed in his mind. His mind finally made up, he didn't even blink; he reached out, took the hand and pumped it twice, confidently. "My word on it, Mr. President."

"Mine as well, Mr. Prime Minister." Roosevelt pulled his hand back and began to turn the wheelchair away. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to arrange for a certain radar in Hawaii to be turned off..."



(Word Count: 292)