The Banana Garden

By Eggert Gunnarsson

With little warning, government security and military bodies around the world lock down their countries and go underground as storms on unprecedented  scale hit all regions of the globe with ferocity never seen before. Resulting in millions of

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637679234

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Eggert Gunnarsson

Paperback: 978-1-63767-922-7

eBook: 978-1-63767-923-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022909365

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction.

Ordering Information:

BookTrail Agency

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

The making of and the writing of my first novel The Banana Garden took a little while. The following people supported me through that process and I would like to thank them all from the bottom of my heart.

The list below is in a random order but all of the people contributed invaluably in their own way.

Thank you all:

Ævar Þór Benediktsson

Björgvin Franz Gíslason

Thomas Peter Ekenberg

Ragnheiður Gröndal

Fiona Crockford

Hallfríður Ólafsdóttir

Vigdís Ólafsdóttir

Arnbjörg Hlíf Valsdóttir

Engilbert Imsland

Guðmundur Friðriksson

Guðjón Guðmundsson

Berglind Anna Aradóttir

Þorkell Hreiðarsson

Árni Áskelsson

Guðrún Birna Le Sage De Fontanay

Magnús Rannver Rafnsson

Daði Kolbeinsson

Eva Þengilsdóttir

Vilhjálmur Hjálmarsson

Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir

Hafdís Ásgeirsdóttir

Elín Björk Heiðardóttir

Ingimundur Birnir

Jóhann G. Jóhannsson

Ragna Árný Lárusdóttir

Anna Bjargey Gunnarsdóttir

Kjartan Darri

Kristín Erna Arnardóttir

Páll Einarsson

Ólafur Engilbertsson

Þóra Kolbrá Sigurðardóttir

Þór Játvarður Jakobsson

Marteinn Þórsson

Magnús Birgisson

Erna Björk

Lovísa María Gunnarsdóttir

Grétar Skúlason

Kristín Eva Þórarinsdóttir

Haraldur Jóhannsson

Markús Þ. Þórhallsson

Yours sincerely,

Eggert Gunnarsson

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

— Noam Chomsky

Chapter 1

I am not one for boasting, but it has to be said that in my opinion, I did have the best job in the world helping a great man, well, a man who used to be great, to run a government — being the adviser who was called upon when shit hit the fan to fix the complications of the British Government navigating the foreign and domestic affairs of the 2020s. There was the threat of terrorism, always impending economic strife and just the normal blunders of the drunken, the unfaithful, the ignorant and right- down stupid shenanigans of the members of government and the members of parliament. The member’s employees were not free of these blunders either. They ranged from errors of judgment, extramarital affairs, people reaching into the coffers of the government, others trying to further their gains by saddling up with big business and corporations, and yet others who wittingly, or unwittingly, got into trouble with organised crime.

The July morning was particularly warm and as I walked out of my house in Weldon Crescent. The sun was brilliantly bright and it was very pleasant walking up Springfield Road and through the St. Georges Shopping Centre and into the Harrow on The Hill Railway and Underground Station. My dress code hadn’t changed for years: black jeans, black T- shirt, black nondescript, laced boots and a black casual jacket. My black rimmed glasses rhymed with the rest of my attire. My wardrobe was the most boring wardrobe there was but it suited me well as I had very little interest in having to spend too much time shopping or, for that matter, contemplating what to wear every day. As nondescript as this dress code is, it allows me to travel in most circles.

I was born and raised in Harrow, a very middle-class suburb of London. I was too young when the punks ruled the streets of London but basked in their echo in the eighties and observed the work of the right-wing governments of Margaret Thatcher and her counterpart Ronald Reagan in the US. In my early twenties, while at university studying media and film making at Harrow College of Higher Education, I was exposed to a critical way of thinking, and during that time, I was a loner who read everything I could get my hands on. In many ways I would have been categorised as a nerd, but my fascination was not for the beauty of languages or the structure of the story, it was about the world’s authors like George Orwell, Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov and J.R.R Tolkien, and thinkers like Noam Chomsky, fashioned. I loved the unexplained of the world, the stories of the UFO’s that were continually being reported, the minuscule life of the nucleus and the enormity of the universe that no one managed to capture. I even went as far as taking a dislike to the Big Bang Theory, as I found it completely inconceivable and completely unbelievable, with no scientific knowledge to back up my belief. During my twenties, I loved to sit it pubs getting inebriated on beer, discussing and debating anything and everything, and strangely, that activity helped me a great deal in later life when I had to look at the problems in front of me in all conceivable ways to navigate the media storm I sometimes created, but on other occasions, had to help the politicians I was working for and with, to get through.

I was never outgoing; my father was always stunned by my lack of interest in sport and lack of competitive nature of the physical kind. His rants about me being a weakling that would never amount to anything, did not help me when it came to finding the person I wanted to spend my life with. I was so medium in every respect that it bordered on being boring. I never found my mojo, so continued being a loner for a long time.

I finished my education and earned the scorn of both my parents when I joined the Labour Party and campaigned for them. I knew that my mother and father would never forgive me, but it was the same as with the Big Bang Theory — I just could not understand why there needed to be inequality, especially in terms of health services, education and being able to live a decent life whatever your occupation is.

In 1997, I was a junior on Alistair Campbell’s team — the team that helped propel Tony Blair into 10 Downing Street. During the celebration party, after the landslide the Labour Party had won by had become a fact, I met my wife- to-be. Our first meeting was as random as it could possibly be. Both of us were hopping up and down in celebration with a throng of other people around us. As it turned out, it was a very uncharacteristic activity for the both of us. In the heat of the moment, seeing the Tories finally defeated, for some reason, we hugged and danced and as the night wore on, we managed to horde a lot of drinks and found a quiet corner where we sat till dawn, talking about anything and everything that came to mind. It was like we had known each other all our lives. Sue was the opposite to me in terms of science. She had studied natural science and specialised in conservation of endangered species, being in the forefront of the scientists who wanted to try to find alternative ways of powering our lives. She spoke about climate change when that term was near enough unheard off and really a fringe topic. When we took the plunge, got married and bought our house in the Centre of Harrow, we did everything possible to decrease the energy consumption and when we travelled, we did go to Paris, but only for a short visit. We had other more exotic and curious destinations like Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Cuba and Kosovo on our travel plan. There we looked at different cultures and trying to imagine how the wealth of these nations could be more evenly distributed. We were the left-wing know-it-all’s but had no great resonance in the Globalisation Movement that was engulfing the world. It was a big step when Sue decided to run for Parliament. She decided to stick with the Labour Party even though the Tony Blair tenure was a big disappointment to her. She managed to scrape it through and become a member of parliament. She was never a Blairite but supported some of his policies, while she never forgave him for his decision to take part in the invasion of Iran in 2003 and the overthrow Saddam Hussein. This was, as well, the time we started drifting apart politically. Sue became ever more radical in her thinking, but I, on the other hand, believed everything could be solved through dialogue. That was probably the medium setting I had always been on despite all my thinking and reading. The years went by, and Sue and I each carved out a career. We somehow never got around to moving away from of Harrow, and as it happened, we both enjoyed the ride on the Metropolitan Line — it was time we never regretted. The years passed us by, and when we hit middle age, I was well on my way to becoming one of the most powerful unelected people in the UK. Sue, in her own way, was the love of the green revolution and was on her way to change attitudes when she was diagnosed with cancer and died just before her forty-fifth birthday. This was a huge blow to me, and I reacted in the only way I knew how — drowning myself in work and starting to form the operation later known as the Office.

There was never a dull moment in this world of political intrigue, and it does make me wonder how some of these people got to the highest office in one of the most revered governments in the world. This astounds me even to this day. All of them fought elections, promising to fight in the corner of Joe blogs and to make sure they would render a good service for the Queen and country. When the Office, as my operation was called, had to clean up the mess, there was often the question of who the fall guy would be. This person would be the one we threw to the dogs… well, less literally, to be torn apart by the media and after that seeing his career thrown on the scrap heap of failed politicians. In some cases, we would find the unfortunate one a position in a quiet corner of the establishment where they would try to rebuild their lives and have a semblance of a career.

I had never met John Hunt, the prime minister. It was deemed better that there was no direct contact between the two of us as I often had to make calls that were not in line with the government agenda, even though they often worked for the benefit of the government. Hunt is also a bit of a recluse as he avoids the media as much as possible and tries to keep to organised events and not to be caught up in a media scrum where there were often irregularities that was hard to control.

This theatre, as I like to call it, looks, from the outside, like a maze of corridors of political power, but in fact, there are not that many people who really matter. In the political arena, there are the frontbenchers who are the people who have positions in the government. The backbenchers are the pawns, but they need to be reckoned with. They are a formidable force when they get together and form alliances and pressure groups. The government itself was my responsibility and to make the Prime Minister and his inner circle look capable and on the ball in all situations. I used to be part of that inner circle of the government and my phone book contained the names and numbers of the main movers and shakers of the media in the world that runs on the need to get ratings, that in turn attract advertisers who bring in the money to run the show and give the shareholders their share. I also had a number of the main business leaders on my short dial list. They are a bit more fickle, because CEOs come and go and their life span within the big corporations is not long in most cases. The CEOs that get to the heights of running the large corporations are not that many, and when leaving one post, they often take on another on a similar level. The number and email might change but my research team was pretty quick in getting the contacts up and running again. The media is immensely powerful in getting the message across. To get an MP on prime-time TV with the carefully written statement that can be hacked down to short sound bites is often what saves the day. To carefully choose and coach the right representative to carry the message is the trickiest bit. These men and women are still elected by the general public and do need to answer to their electorate in the hope of being re-elected. Some of these people are still of the persuasion they are representing the people and that invariably causes a bit of a stir when they need to carry a message that is the government’s and not their constituents’ and might actually go against the will of their voters. It is not enough to talk to the local media companies anymore because the global players are the ones that reach the biggest audience in the shortest time span and the local companies feed from them. As business is global, this is increasingly important, and the events that shape the global agenda, more and more. The owners of the capital have reduced considerably in numbers as wealth gathers in fewer and fewer hands. These people are also the owners of the mass media companies so there are always underlying agendas tied to their business interests.

To arrive at work was my favourite time of day. The city, its noise, and the numerous people you meet on the way, always fascinates me. I travelled from Harrow on The Hill on the Metropolitan line to Baker Street and changed over to the Bakerloo line that took me to Charing Cross station. When sitting on the tube, I normally had a tablet with me like so many others. I observed that other passengers were deeply ingrained in their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Snap chat, scrolling up and down, reading and writing. That was advantageous for me because I had employed people to distribute the material I needed through those networks. News travels incredibly fast on the internet and that speed is what I always counted on to get our messages across.

The tablet was a good mask to hide behind, hiding the fact that I was actually spying on my fellow passengers and observing and making up stories about them. Tales that I would never get confirmed as the possibility of meeting the people again was very slim. I never knew if the stories I made up were wright or wrong. For example, this particular day, I saw a scruffy-looking man in his late twenties that seemed to do all he could to look down and out and had an air of being a drug addict. In my mind’s eye, this was not the case; the designer glasses that poked out of his jacket pocket gave it away, as well as the mobile phone in the worn, battered cover being a new model of a Samsung phone that fetched a hefty price in the high street shops. It was likely that he worked for an ad agency or some creative company like a film or television production company. This man was most likely on higher wages than I could ever dream of getting. The man sitting across from him had a different story. Impeccably well groomed, not a single hair misplaced. Clean-shaven, in his mid-fifties. The suite he was wearing was not new and the cut was not quite right for him. He had not bought new clothes in years. Either it had been bought at a second-hand shop or the man sitting there was obviously fretting over something, fiddling with his briefcase that was worn as the clothes he wore. The shoes had been brushed so they sparkled but there were spots so faded that even hours of military stile shoe shine would not bring them to their former splendour. My story about this man was that he had lost his mid-level job, probably in the insurance sector or a computer IT related role, abruptly. He had not been one of the memorable people but had always done his job with much pride. When he was called upon, the jobs he delivered sparkled like his shoes could have done if they had not been so tattered. This morning, I imagined, he was on his way to yet another job interview. An interview he knew would be futile, like the string of others he had been to in the past. He had noticed the offers of interviews were getting fewer and fewer each month and his spirit sank lower each time he got a rejection letter. I wondered how long he would keep on scouting out the jobs pages and faithfully sending in his resume in the vain hope he would have better luck next time.

Another passenger was a woman who slumped in her seat and continually fell asleep while the Tube shot through the tunnels between stations. She looked quite exhausted and was probably a nurse coming home after a long and difficult night shift. She had most likely taken on an extra shift to be able to buy school uniform for her child who would be up alone, eating a bowl of cereal with chocolate milk poured over it and watching cartoons on early morning TV when his mother came through the door.

The Tube rolled on through the tunnels and I sat happily observing my fellow commuters. The book I was pretending to read is a travel essay about Papua New Guinea, an independent island state just north of Australia. The island is split in half and the western part is occupied by Indonesia who has imposed a ruthless form of government there. The eastern part is an independent state. Since Sue and I had travelled to this country, that is like no other, many things had changed. The cancer of corruption had been cured and the economy had been kicked into shape in such a way that education and health services were truly free. The government of James Marape had rebuilt the infrastructure of the country, laid rail tracks where viable, and rebuilt the road system, making it possible for the subsistence farmers to access markets, thereby helping them become more independent and prosperous than before. Had I known I would need all the information contained in this book, and more, I might have paid closer attention to its content. What I gleaned from the sporadic reading I did on the Tube, was that this country and its nation are quite unique in every respect; the complex structure of their society, the land ownership and the violence that bubbled underneath the very Christian façade the population abided by.

The doors of the Tube carriage opened with the monotonous call Mind the Gap! It is like so many things on the Tube, iconic and not possible to separate it from the feel of London, the city where so many historical events have taken place. Most of my fellow passengers rushed out of the carriage, but I had, a long time ago, found out that rushing on the London Underground is not a great idea. It creates frustration that is counterproductive and takes the enjoyment of travelling with all these people away. A steady pace will take you through the swarm of people much faster than a maddening dash for the turnstiles.

On the platforms and in the tunnels, the screens show public announcements about the weather outside, the likelihood of a terrorist attack and where those attacks might take place. Demonstrations of all types were very common in the city as well, and they were highlighted on the screens. The weather had turned quite unpredictable and nasty and information about the often, freak weather conditions that London, and in fact the whole country, had been suffering, was very handy. It was not nice being hit by hail as large as a tennis ball or to be caught walking during a torrential rain that turned the streets into rivers that carried pedestrians, cars and busses with their current. The frost during the wintertime could be dangerous as well. Many people had lost fingers and even the tips of their noises after braving the icy conditions. The climate of the country had changed immeasurably and was credited by the majority of the science community to be due to global warming.

Walking from Trafalgar Square Tube and Train station down to White Hall was my thinking time. I navigated the streets, and after having