The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

But first of all: sleep. Nombeko stepped into her apartment and closed the door.

  * * *

  When she took inventory of the situation the next morning, she found that Holger One had left early to deliver pillows in Gothenburg and had taken the angry young woman with him. The three Chinese girls had awoken, eaten up the Falu sausage and fallen asleep again. Holger Two was sitting in the cosy corner of the warehouse with some administrative work (and simultaneously guarding the bomb), and because most of what he had to work on was in Swedish, Nombeko couldn’t help him.

  ‘Should I go and get to know the potter in the meantime?’ she said.

  ‘I wish you the best of luck with that,’ said Holger Two.

  ‘Who is it?’ the potter said through the door.

  ‘My name is Nombeko,’ said Nombeko. ‘I’m not from the CIA. However, Mossad is on my heels, so please let me in.’

  Because the potter’s neurosis concerned the American intelligence agency and not the Israeli one, he did as she asked.

  The fact that his visitor was both black and a woman mitigated the way he viewed the circumstances. Certainly the American agents that were out in the world assumed every conceivable colour and shape, but the archetype was a white man in his thirties.

  The woman also displayed evidence that she knew an African tribal language. And she could account for so many details from her alleged childhood in Soweto that it was impossible to rule out that she’d actually lived there.

  Nombeko, for her part, was rather fascinated by how much of a nervous wreck the potter seemed to be. Her tactic would have to be frequent but short visits in order to build up trust.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said when she left.

  One floor up, the Chinese girls had woken up again. They had found knäckebröd in the pantry, and they were sitting there crunching on it when Nombeko joined them.

  Nombeko asked what the girls were planning to do next, and heard in reply that they hadn’t had time to think about it much. But they might go to see their uncle Cheng Tao, since he lived nearby. In Basel. Or maybe it was Bern. Or Bonn. Possibly Berlin. Their uncle was an expert at creating antiques, and they were sure he wouldn’t say no to some help.

  Among all the things Nombeko had absorbed from the library in Pelindaba was a certain amount of knowledge about the European continent and its cities. So she considered herself to have every reason to guess that neither Basel, Bern, Bonn nor Berlin was exactly next door. And she thought it might not be easy to find the uncle even if they managed to figure out which city he was in. Or at least which country, for starters.

  But the girls replied that all they needed was a car and some money; the rest would take care of itself. It wasn’t important whether it was Bonn or Berlin; they could always ask their way. In any case, it was Switzerland.

  Nombeko had an abundance of money for the Chinese girls, of course. At least in an indirect form. The seam of what had been her only jacket since her adolescence in Soweto still contained a fortune in diamonds. She fished one out and went to the local jeweller in Gnesta to get it appraised. But the jeweller had previously been cheated by an assistant of foreign extraction, and for this reason had found himself concurring with the global opinion that foreigners cannot be trusted.

  So when a black woman came into his shop and spoke English as she placed a rough diamond on the counter, he asked her to go away, otherwise he would call the police.

  Nombeko had no desire for close contact with representatives of Swedish law and order, so she picked up her diamond, apologized for the bother and left.

  No, the girls would have to earn their own money and get their own car. If Nombeko could be of help with the little things, then she absolutely would, but no more than that.

  The same afternoon, Holger One and the angry young woman came back. One discovered that his brother’s pantry was bare, and he had no choice but to go to the shop. This gave Nombeko the opportunity to have her first private conversation with the angry young woman.

  Her plan was twofold. First get to know the enemy – that is, the angry young woman and Holger One – so that she could then lead them away from the bomb, figuratively and preferably also literally.

  ‘Aha, the American,’ the angry young woman said when she saw who was knocking at her door.

  ‘I told you, I’m South African,’ said Nombeko. ‘Which origin, above all others, are you?’

  ‘I’m Swedish, of course.’

  ‘Then you must have a cup of coffee to offer me. Or even better, tea.’

  She could probably fix some tea, even if coffee was preferable because she’d heard there were better working conditions on the South American coffee plantations than on the Indian tea ones. Or else that was just a lie. People told so many fucking lies in this country.

  Nombeko sat down in the angry young woman’s kitchen and said there was probably an awful lot of lying in every country. And then she opened the conversation with a simple and general question:

  ‘So how are things with you?’

  The angry young woman turned out to be angry about everything. She was angry about the country’s continued dependence on nuclear power. And oil. About all the rivers harnessed for hydro-electric power. About the noisy and ugly wind power. About how they were going to build a bridge to Denmark. With all the Danes, because they were Danes. With mink farmers because they were mink farmers. With animal breeders in general, actually. With everyone who ate meat. With everyone who didn’t (she lost Nombeko here for a moment). With all the capitalists. With almost all the Communists. With her father because he worked at a bank. With her mother because she didn’t work at all. With her grandmother because she had some noble blood. With herself because she was forced to be a wage slave instead of changing the world. And with the world, which didn’t have any good wage-slavery to offer.

  She was also angry because she and Holger lived in the condemned building for free, because this meant there wasn’t any rent she could refuse to pay. God, she so longed for a protest! What made her angriest of all was that she couldn’t find a single good protest to go to.

  Nombeko thought that the angry young woman ought to take a job as a black person in South Africa for a few weeks, and maybe empty a latrine barrel or two in order to get some perspective on her life.

  ‘And what is your name?’

  Imagine that; the angry young woman could become even angrier. The fact was, her name was something so horrid that she couldn’t say it.

  But Nombeko insisted, and she finally managed to get the name out.

  ‘Celestine.’

  ‘Wow, that’s so beautiful,’ said Nombeko.

  ‘It was my father’s idea. That bank manager. Damn him!’

  ‘What may I call you without risking my neck?’ Nombeko wondered.

  ‘Anything but Celestine,’ said Celestine. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Nombeko.’

  ‘Well, that’s a hell of a name, too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Nombeko. ‘May I have a little more tea?’

  Because Nombeko had the name she did, she was given permission after her refill to call Celestine Celestine. And to shake her hand as she left, as thanks for the tea and the conversation. On the stairs as she left she decided to wait until the next day for Holger One. It was taxing to get to know the enemy.

  The best thing that came out of her meeting with the girl who didn’t want to be named what she was named was that she didn’t mind if Nombeko used her Gnesta library card. The defected political refugee was in need of a library card, while the angry young woman had realized that all you could borrow was bourgeois propaganda of one sort or another. Except Das Kapital by Karl Marx. That was only half-bourgeois, but they only had it in German.

  During her first time at the library, Nombeko borrowed a Swedish language course with accompanying cassettes.

  Holger Two had a tape player, and they did the first three lessons among the pillows on the crate in the warehouse.

  ‘H
i. How are things? How are you? I am well,’ said the tape player (in Swedish, of course).

  ‘Me, too,’ said Nombeko, who was a quick learner.

  Later that same afternoon, she felt ready to take on Holger One. She found him and got straight to the point.

  ‘So I hear you’re a republican?’

  Yes, Holger One said that he was. Everyone ought to be. The monarchy was depraved. The problem was that he was so desperately empty of ideas.

  Nombeko said that even a republic can have its downsides, like for instance the South African one, but by all means. She was there to try to help.

  What she meant was that she wanted to help One stay away from the bomb, but she left plenty of room for other interpretations.

  ‘It would be terribly nice of you to help, Miss Nombeko,’ he said.

  In accordance with the plan she had started to formulate, she asked Holger to tell her about the republican thoughts he had had in the months since the king had fallen on his father.

  ‘Not the king! Lenin.’

  Holger One admitted that he wasn’t as clever as his brother, but that he still had an idea to bring to the table. It was to kidnap the king by helicopter, get him onboard while leaving his bodyguards behind, take him to some sort of place and then get him to abdicate.

  Nombeko looked at One. Was that what he had managed to think up?

  ‘So. What do you think, Miss Nombeko?’

  Nombeko couldn’t say what she thought. Instead she said, ‘That idea might not be quite complete, don’t you think?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Well, where had he been planning to get a helicopter, for example? Who would fly it, where would they kidnap the king, where would they take him, and what was their argument for why he should abdicate? Among other things.

  Holger One sat there without saying anything. He lowered his eyes.

  It was becoming more and more obvious to Nombeko that Two hadn’t received the short end of the stick when the combined amount of general intelligence had been divided between the brothers. But she didn’t say that, either.

  ‘Let me think it over for a week or two, and then I’m sure everything will work out, but right now I want to go and find your brother. As a change of pace.’

  ‘Thank you so much, Miss Nombeko,’ said Holger One. ‘Thank you so much!’

  Nombeko went back to Two and told him she had started a conversation with his brother and that her plan was to think of a way to get him to think of other things besides crates with secret contents. Her half-finished idea involved making One believe that he was getting closer to a revolution, when in reality he was just getting farther away from the bomb.

  Holger Two nodded his approval and said it sounded like everything would work out for the best.

  CHAPTER 11

  On how everything temporarily worked out for the best

  The Chinese girls, who had been responsible for the kitchen at Pelindaba, soon grew tired of blood pudding, Falu sausage and knäckebröd, and they opened a cafeteria for themselves and everyone else living at Fredsgatan. Since they really could cook, Holger Two was happy to finance their operation with the pillow-sale profits.

  At the same time, and on Nombeko’s initiative, Two managed to get the angry young woman to agree to taking over responsibility for the distribution, even if their negotiations were difficult at first. Not until the latter understood that she would be forced to illegally drive a truck with stolen licence plates did she become curious enough to hear more.

  There were, of course, three megatons of reasons for the angry young woman not to draw the attentions of the police to Fredsgatan (even if she herself didn’t understand this). The licence plates on the otherwise unremarkable truck had already been stolen, so the truck couldn’t be traced back to Gnesta. But that didn’t mean its driver should be seventeen years old and without a licence. So she was instructed not to say anything, above all not her name, if she were pulled over.

  The angry young woman didn’t think that she could manage to remain silent if faced with the police. She hated them far too much for that. So Holger Two suggested that she could sing a little tune instead; that would be sure to irritate them while also making sure that nothing was said.

  When all was said and done, Two and the angry young woman had agreed that Celestine, should she be stopped by the police, would call herself Édith Piaf, look a little crazy (Two thought she had it in her), and start singing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien.’ She would do no more than that before she got the chance to borrow a phone and call Holger. And their conversation could consist of the same melody; Holger would understand.

  Holger Two stopped there, letting the angry young woman interpret this to mean that he would immediately come to her aid, when in reality he planned to spirit the bomb out of the warehouse while she was safely in custody.

  The angry young woman liked what she heard.

  ‘God, it’ll be so cool to mess with the pigs. I hate Fascists,’ she said, promising to learn the lyrics to the French classic by heart.

  She looked so full of expectation that Holger Two had to emphasize that being taken into custody by the police was not an end in itself. Rather the opposite: part of being a pillow deliverywoman was to try not to end up in jail.

  The angry young woman nodded. She was no longer as pleased.

  Did she understand?

  ‘Yes, for fuck’s sake. I understand.’

  At about the same time, Nombeko managed beyond expectations to get Holger One to think about something other than the crate in the warehouse. She had investigated the idea of enrolling him in classes to get a helicopter pilot certificate as a distraction. She could see no danger in it; the chances that he’d ever succeed in carrying out his so-called idea were infinitesimal.

  The path to a certificate would take a normal student at least one year; that is to say, it would take this student almost four. This was a length of time that was likely to be more than sufficient for Nombeko, Two and the bomb.

  Upon closer inspection, however, it turned out that One would have to be examined in aviation systems, flight safety, performance, flight planning, meteorology, navigation, operating procedures and aerodynamics – eight things that, in Nombeko’s opinion, he could not manage. Instead he would get tired of it in a few months, if he hadn’t already been kicked off the course by then.

  Nombeko reconsidered. And Two helped her. They read employment ads in the newspapers for several days before they found something that might work.

  All that was left to do was a small cosmetic operation. Or ‘forgery of documents’, as it is otherwise known. They had to get Two’s exceedingly unqualified brother to appear to be something else. Two drafted, cut, and pasted according to Nombeko’s instructions. When she was satisfied, she thanked him for his help, took the finished product under her arm, and went to find Holger One.

  ‘What if you went out and looked for a job?’ she said.

  ‘Ugh,’ said One.

  But Nombeko hadn’t meant just any job. She explained that Helicopter Taxi Inc. in Bromma was looking for a customer service representative and jack-of-all-trades. If One were to get the job, he would both make contacts and learn a bit about how to fly a helicopter. When the time was right, he would be ready.

  She said, without believing a word of it.

  ‘Brilliant!’ was Holger One’s opinion.

  But how was Miss Nombeko thinking he would get the job? Well, the thing was that the library in Gnesta had just procured a new copy machine, one that made fantastic four-colour copies of anything one asked it to.

  And then she showed him ready-made certificates of employment and strong recommendations in One’s (and for that matter Two’s) name. It had taken a good deal of fiddling and many torn-out pages from publications at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. But on the whole, it looked impressive.

  ‘The Royal Institute of Technology?’ Holger One wondered.

  Nombeko said non
e of what she was thinking. Instead she went on:

  ‘Here’s your degree from KTH, the royal department of engineering; you’re an engineer and you know a great deal about aircraft in general.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Here you have four years as an assistant air traffic controller at Sturup Airport outside Malmö. And here you have four years as a receptionist at Taxi Skåne.’

  ‘But I’ve never—’ One began, but he was immediately cut off.

  ‘Now go and apply for the job,’ said Nombeko. ‘Don’t think. Apply.’

  So he did. And sure enough, he got the job.

  Holger was satisfied. He hadn’t kidnapped the king with a helicopter, and he still didn’t have a helicopter certificate, an aircraft, or an idea. But he worked next to a helicopter (or three), he was learning, he got free lessons now and then from the taxi pilots, and he was – completely in line with Nombeko’s plan – keeping his muddled dream alive.

  When he began his duties, he also moved into a roomy studio apartment in Blackeberg, which was several lengthy stone-throws away from Bromma. The gaze of Holger Two’s simple-minded brother had been drawn away from the bomb for the foreseeable future. It would have been optimal if his possibly even more simple-minded girlfriend had gone with him, but she had exchanged the energy issue (where all known forms of energy were evil) for women’s liberation. She considered this to include the right, as a woman, to drive a truck before one was old enough to get a licence and to carry more pillows at one time than any man could. So she remained in the condemned building and kept at her wage slavery; she and her beloved Holger commuted to see each other.

  The potter’s general condition was also among the things that seemed to be going well for the time being. Nombeko noticed that he grew less tense every time they met. And that it also helped him to have someone to talk to about the threat from the CIA. She was happy to help, because it was as interesting to listen to him as it had once been to hear Thabo’s tales of his many grand exploits in Africa. According to the potter, the American intelligence agency was pretty much everywhere. Nombeko learned that the new automatic taxi dispatch systems all over the country were produced in San Francisco. The potter thought that said it all. But calling around from a telephone booth had taught him that at least one company had refused to fall into line with the American intelligence agency. Borlänge Taxi was still sticking to manual service.