The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

  ‘Do we have an agreement, then?’ said Agent A, thinking that everything was working out for the best.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nombeko. ‘We have an agreement. But there’s one more thing.’

  One more thing? Agent A had a well-developed sense for the sort of business he did. He suddenly suspected that he and his colleague had counted their chicks before they hatched.

  ‘I realize we don’t have much time,’ said Nombeko. ‘But there’s something I need to take care of before we can leave.’

  ‘Take care of?’

  ‘We’ll meet here again in one hour, at one twenty; you probably ought to hurry if you’re going to have time to get both an airline ticket and antelope meat before then,’ she said, and she left the room through the door behind the engineer’s desk, to the room the agents didn’t have access to. The agents were left alone in the office.

  ‘Have we underestimated her?’ said A to B.

  B looked concerned.

  ‘If you get the ticket I’ll get the meat,’ he said.

  * * *

  ‘Do you see what this is?’ Nombeko said when the meeting resumed and she placed a rough diamond on Engineer Westhuizen’s desk.

  Agent A was a multifaceted man. He had, for instance, no problem dating a pottery goose from the Han dynasty to 1970s South Africa. And he could immediately tell that the object before him now was probably worth about a million shekels.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Where are you trying to go with this, Miss Nombeko?’

  ‘Where am I trying to go? I want to go to Sweden. Not to a hole behind a bush on the savannah.’

  ‘And for that reason you want to give us a diamond?’ said Agent B, who, unlike Agent A, might have still been underestimating Nombeko.

  ‘What kind of person do you think I am, Mr Agent?’ she said. ‘No, I just want to use this diamond to make it seem plausible that I managed to get a small package out of the facility since we last saw one another. Now you must decide whether you believe I succeeded in doing so, for example with the help of another diamond like this. And whether I subsequently received confirmation that the package in question reached its destination with the help of yet another diamond. And whether you believe that one of the two hundred and fifty proud and constantly underpaid workers at Pelindaba might have agreed to such an arrangement. Or whether you don’t believe it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Agent B.

  ‘Well, I suspect the worst,’ Agent A mumbled.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nombeko, smiling. ‘I recorded our last conversation, in which you confessed to murdering a South African citizen, as well as to the theft of one South African weapon of mass destruction. I am sure that both of you understand the consequences you and your nation would face if the tape were to be played in . . . well, who knows? I’m not going to tell you where I sent it. But the recipient has confirmed via the messenger I bribed that it is where I want it to be. In other words, it is no longer here on the base. If I pick it up within twenty-four – no, sorry, twenty-three hours and thirty-eight minutes – time flies when you’re having fun – you have my word that it will disappear for ever.’

  ‘And if you don’t pick it up, it will become public?’ A filled in.

  Nombeko didn’t waste time on a reply.

  ‘Well, I think this meeting is over. It’ll be exciting to see if I survive my trip in the boot. It certainly feels like my chances have increased. From zero.’

  And then she stood up, said that the package of antelope meat should be delivered to the department of outgoing post within thirty minutes, and that she herself would make sure the same went for the larger crate; after all, it was in the next room. Beyond that she was looking forward to receiving proper documentation: stamps and forms and whatever else was necessary for the crate would be sufficiently inaccessible to each and every person who didn’t want a diplomatic crisis on his hands.

  A and B nodded sullenly.

  * * *

  The Israeli agents analysed the situation. They considered it likely that the damned cleaning woman did have a tape of their earlier conversation, but they weren’t so sure that she had managed to smuggle it out of Pelindaba. There was no question that she had at least one rough diamond in her possession, and if she had one she could have more. And if she did have more of them, it was possible that one of the many workers with high security clearance at the facility had fallen into temptation and secured his family’s financial position for the rest of his life. Possible, but not certain. On the one hand, the cleaning woman (they no longer called her by name – they were far too annoyed to do so) had been at the facility for eleven years; on the other hand the agents had never seen her with a single white person, except for the late engineer and the agents themselves. Had one of the 250 workers really sold his soul to the woman they called Kaffir behind her back?

  When the agents added the dimension of sex – that is, the possibility, or rather the risk, that the cleaning woman had added her body to the pot – the odds were shifted to the agents’ disadvantage. Anyone who would be immoral enough to run errands for her for the sake of a diamond would also be immoral enough to report her. But anyone who could expect the added possibility of future sexual adventures would just be biting himself in the arse. Or somewhere else, if only he could reach.

  All in all, Agents A and B figured that there was a 60 per cent chance that Nombeko really was sitting on the trump card she claimed to have, and a 40 per cent chance that she wasn’t. And those odds were too poor. The harm she could bring them and – above all! – the country of Israel was immeasurable.

  Thus their decision had to be that the cleaning woman would come along in the boot as planned, that she would receive a ticket to Sweden as planned, that her twenty pounds of antelope meat would be sent to Stockholm as planned – and that she would not receive the shot to the back of the head as planned. Or to the forehead. Or anywhere else. She was still a risk as long as she was alive. But now she was an even greater risk if she was dead.

  Twenty-nine minutes later, Nombeko received airline tickets and the antelope meat Agent A had promised her, as well as duplicate copies of properly filled-in forms for the diplomatic post. She thanked them and said that she would be ready to leave within fifteen minutes; she just wanted to make sure that both packages were handled correctly. What she meant by this – but didn’t say – was that she was going to have a serious talk with the Chinese girls.

  ‘One large and one small package?’ said the little sister, who was the most creative of them. ‘Would Miss Nombeko mind if we . . .’

  ‘Yes, that’s just it,’ said Nombeko. ‘These packages must not be sent to your mother in Johannesburg. The small package is going to Stockholm. It’s for me, and I hope that’s reason enough not to touch it. The large one is going to Jerusalem.’

  ‘Jerusalem?’ said the middle sister.

  ‘Egypt,’ the big sister explained.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ said the little sister.

  Nombeko wondered how the engineer could ever have come up with the idea of putting these three girls in charge of the post.

  ‘Yes, but don’t say anything to anyone. I’m going to be smuggled out of here in a little bit. I’m going to Sweden. I guess we have to say goodbye now. You’ve been good friends.’

  And then they hugged one another.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Nombeko,’ the Chinese girls said in Xhosa.

  ‘再见,’ Nombeko replied. ‘Farewell!’

  Then she went to the engineer’s office, unlocked his desk drawer and took her passport.

  ‘Market Theatre, please, the marketplace, downtown Johannesburg,’ Nombeko said to Agent A as she crawled into the boot of the car with its diplomatic plates.

  She sounded like any old customer talking to any old taxi driver. It also seemed as if she knew Johannesburg inside out – and as if she knew where she was going. The truth was that a few minutes earlier she had paged through one last book among those in
the Pelindaba library and found what was probably the most crowded place in the whole country.

  ‘I understand,’ said Agent A. ‘Will do.’

  And then he closed the boot.

  What he understood was that Nombeko wasn’t planning to let them drive her to the person who held the tape so that they could kill them both. He also understood that once they had arrived, Nombeko would manage to disappear in the crowd in under two minutes. He understood that Nombeko had won.

  Round one.

  But as soon as the bomb had arrived in Jerusalem, there would no longer be any physical evidence on the loose. After that, the tape could be played any number of times, anywhere at all; all they had to do was deny it. Everyone was against Israel anyway; of course there were tapes of that nature circulating. Believing them just because they existed, however, would be silly.

  Then it would be time for round two.

  Because you don’t mess with the Mossad.

  * * *

  The agents’ car left Pelindaba at 2.10 p.m. on Thursday, 12 November 1987. At 3.01 the same day, the day’s outgoing post was transported through the same gates. It was eleven minutes late because they’d had to switch vehicles due to an extra-large item.

  At 3.15 the director of the investigation surrounding the death of Engineer van der Westhuizen confirmed that he had been murdered. Three independent witnesses had given similar testimonies. Furthermore, two of them were white.

  Their testimonies were corroborated by the observations the director of investigation made at the scene. There were traces of rubber at three points along the engineer’s demolished face. It must have been run over by at least three tyres – that is, one tyre more than a normal car has on each side. Thus the engineer had either been run over by more than one car, or – as the witnesses unanimously agreed – several times by the same car.

  It took another fifteen minutes, but by 3.30 security at the research facility was increased by one level. The black cleaning woman in the outer perimeter was to be dismissed immediately, along with the black cleaning woman in the central G wing and the three Asians in the kitchen. All five would be subjected to the intelligence service’s risk analysis before they were at the most possibly set free. All entering and exiting vehicles would be checked, even if the commander of the army himself were behind the wheel!

  * * *

  Nombeko asked her way around the airport, followed the stream of people and was past the security check before she even understood that it existed and that she had been subjected to it. She realized after the fact that diamonds in the lining of a jacket won’t set off a metal detector.

  Because the Mossad agents had had to buy tickets at such short notice, only the most expensive seats were available. Her seat in the cabin was, accordingly, a good one. It took the staff quite some time to convince Nombeko that the glass of Champagne de Pompadour Extra Brut she was offered was included in the price. Just as was the food that followed. She was also kindly but firmly shown back to her seat when she tried to help clear the other passengers’ trays.

  But she had figured it out by the time she received dessert, which consisted of almond-baked raspberries, and which she washed down with a cup of coffee.

  ‘May I offer you some brandy with your coffee?’ the flight attendant offered kindly.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Nombeko. ‘Do you have Klipdrift?’

  Soon thereafter she fell asleep. She slept serenely and well – and for a long time.

  When she arrived at Stockholm Arlanda airport, she followed the instructions of the so elegantly duped Mossad agents. She went up to the first border policeman she saw and asked for political asylum. The reason she gave was membership of the banned organization the ANC, which sounded better than saying she had just helped another nation’s intelligence agency steal a nuclear weapon.

  Her initial interrogation with the Swedish border police took place in a bright room with windows looking out onto the runway. Something was happening out there, something Nombeko had never before experienced. It was snowing. It was the first snow of winter, right in the middle of the South African spring.

  CHAPTER 8

  On a match that ended in a draw and an entrepreneur who didn’t get to live his life

  Ingmar and Holger One were in agreement that the best way to honour Mum was to continue their fight. Two was sure that his father and brother were wrong about that, but he settled for asking who they thought was going to bring money into the household, in that case.

  Ingmar frowned and admitted that he hadn’t prioritized that part, in the midst of everything he’d had to consider recently. There were still a few hundred-krona notes left in Henrietta’s sugar bowl, but they would soon be just as gone as Henrietta herself.

  For lack of a better idea, the former postal clerk decided to reapply for his job as assistant to the accountant, who now had only two years left until retirement. And who replied that under no circumstances was he planning to let Mr Qvist spoil them.

  The situation was rather troublesome – for another few days. And then Ingmar’s father-in-law died.

  The angry Communist who had never met his grand-children (and who couldn’t get his hands on Ingmar) died at the age of eighty-eight, full of bitterness, with a lost daughter, a wife who had disappeared, and capitalism blooming around him. At least he didn’t have to watch everything he owned be taken over by the Holgers and Ingmar, though, since he no longer existed. Holger One, the one who did exist, inherited it all.

  Alongside his political activities, the leader of Södertälje’s Communists had imported and sold products from the Soviet Union. Until the very end he had travelled around Swedish marketplaces to promote his goods along with his opinions of the greatness of the Soviet Union. Things went so-so with both the former and the latter, but in any case, his profits were enough to cover the bare necessities of life plus a colour TV, two visits a week to the off-licence and three thousand kronor per month as a gift to the party.

  Included in One’s inheritance from his grandfather was a truck in good condition and a garage-slash-warehouse bursting with stuff; for all these years the old man had made purchases at a slightly greater pace than he had managed to sell them.

  Among the goods were black and red caviar, pickles and smoked krill. There was Georgian tea, Belarusian linen, Russian felted boots and Inuit sealskins. There were all sorts of enamel containers, including the classic green rubbish bin with a pedal. There were furashki, the Russian military caps, and ushanki, the fur hats that are impossible to freeze in. There were rubber hot-water bottles, and shot glasses with mountain-ash berries painted on them. And size forty-seven braided straw hats.

  There were five hundred copies of The Communist Manifesto in Russian and two hundred goat-hair shawls from the Urals. And four Siberian tiger traps.

  Ingmar and the boys found all of this and more in the garage. And, last but not least:

  An eight-foot-tall statue of Lenin, made of Karelian granite.

  If Ingmar’s father-in-law had still been alive, and if moreover he had wished to converse with his son-in-law instead of strangling him, he could have told him that he had bought the statue on the cheap from an artist in Petrozavodsk who had made the mistake of giving the great leader human features. The steely grey gaze of Lenin had turned out somewhat abashed, and the hand that was meant to point straight into the future seemed to be waving at the people Lenin was meant to lead. The mayor of the city, who had ordered the statue, became upset when he saw the result, and he told the artist to vanish immediately, or else the mayor would see to it that he did.

  Just then Ingmar’s father-in-law had shown up on one of his shopping rounds. Two weeks later, the statue was lying there and waving straight at a garage wall in Södertälje.

  Ingmar and One browsed through the riches as they chuckled happily. This would be enough to support the family for years!

  Two was not as delighted about this development. He had been hoping that his mother hadn’
t died in vain, and that things would change for real.

  ‘Lenin might not have the world’s highest market value,’ he tried, but he was immediately snapped at.

  ‘God, you’re so negative,’ his father, Ingmar, said.

  ‘Yeah, God, you’re so negative,’ said Holger One.

  ‘Or The Communist Manifesto in Russian,’ Two added.

  * * *

  The goods in the garage were enough to support the family for eight whole years. Ingmar and the twins followed in Ingmar’s father-in-law’s footsteps from marketplace to marketplace, making enough to support a tolerable standard of living by a certain margin. This was in large part because the Communists in Södertälje no longer received a portion of this income. Neither did the tax authorities, for that matter.

  Two constantly longed to get away, but he took comfort in the fact that during their years of marketing, at least there wasn’t any extra time for the republican tomfoolery.

  After those eight years, all that remained was the eight-foot-tall Lenin statue in Karelian granite as well as 498 of the 500 copies of The Communist Manifesto in Russian. Ingmar had managed to sell one copy to a blind man during the market days in Mariestad. They had needed the other on the way to Malma Market, when Ingmar got a stomach bug and had to stop the car to squat in a ditch.

  To some extent, then, Holger Two had been correct.

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Holger One, who had never had an idea in all his life.

  ‘Anything you want, as long as it has nothing to do with the royal family,’ said Holger Two.

  ‘No, that’s exactly what it has to do with,’ said Ingmar. ‘There’s been far too little of that sort of thing recently.’

  Ingmar’s idea for continued survival involved modifying the statue of Lenin. The fact was, he had recently realized that this particular Lenin and the King of Sweden had a considerable number of common features. All they had to do was hack the moustache and beard off the old man, tap a little here and there at his nose, and turn his cap into wavy hair – and presto! Vladimir Ilyich would be the spitting image of His Majesty!