The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

  ‘Well?’ said Gertrud.

  Nombeko asked if their hostess might be open to a little business deal.

  ‘I will tell you the whole story, from beginning to end. As a result, I’m pretty sure you’ll throw us out, even if we would really like to stay for a while. But to thank me for my honesty, you let us stay overnight. What do you say? Have some more casserole, by the way. Shall I refill your glass?’

  Gertrud nodded and said that she would consider agreeing to this arrangement, provided that they stuck to the truth. She didn’t want to hear any lies.

  ‘No lies,’ Nombeko promised. ‘Let’s get going.’

  So she did.

  She gave the short version of the whole story from Pelindaba on. Plus the story of how Holger and Holger had become Holger & Holger. And the atomic bomb, which had originally been meant to protect South Africa from all the world’s evil Communists and had later been on its way to Jerusalem as protection against all the equally evil Arabs, and which had ended up in Sweden instead, as protection against absolutely nothing (Norwegians, Danes and Finns weren’t generally considered sufficiently evil), and had gone to a warehouse in Gnesta that had unfortunately burned down.

  And now, the very unfortunate fact was that the bomb was on the trailer and the group needed somewhere to stay while waiting for the country’s prime minister to have enough sense to answer their calls. They were not wanted by the police, although there were reasons why they should have been. On the other hand, they’d happened to annoy a foreign nation’s security service along the way.

  When Nombeko was finished, everyone waited for their hostess’s judgement.

  ‘Well,’ she said when she had finished thinking, ‘you can’t leave the bomb right outside the door like that. Make sure to move it to the back of the potato truck behind the house and then put the whole thing in the barn so none of us will be harmed if it should go off.’

  ‘But that probably won’t help—’ Holger One had time to say before Nombeko cut him off.

  ‘You have been admirably quiet ever since we got here. Please keep it up.’

  Gertrud didn’t know what a security service was, but it sounded safe. And since the police weren’t on their heels, she thought they could stay for a while or two, in return for a chicken casserole now and again. Or a roast rabbit.

  Nombeko promised Gertrud both casserole and rabbit at least once a week if she didn’t make them go. Holger Two, who, unlike One, wasn’t forbidden to speak, thought he should guide the conversation away from bombs and Israelis before the old woman had time to change her mind.

  ‘What is your story, ma’am, if I may ask?’ he said.

  ‘My story?’ said Gertrud. ‘Oh, goodness me.’

  * * *

  Gertrud started by telling them that she really was a countess, plus a grandchild of the Finnish baron, marshal and national hero Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Holger One.

  ‘As you’ve been told, your most important job this evening is to keep your mouth shut,’ said his brother. ‘Please go on, Gertrud.’

  Well, Gustaf Mannerheim went to Russia early in his career, and there he swore eternal allegiance to the Russian tsar. This was a promise he kept for the most part, until it became irrelevant once the Bolsheviks killed the tsar and his entire family in July 1918.

  ‘Good,’ said Holger One.

  ‘I said be quiet!’ said his brother. ‘Please go on, Gertrud.’

  Well, to cut a long story short, Gustaf had made himself an exceptional military career. And more besides. He rode to China and back as the tsar’s spy, he felled tigers whose jaws could swallow a man whole, he met the Dalai Lama, and he became the commander of an entire regiment.

  But his love life wasn’t as grand as his career. Yes, he had married a beautiful Russian-Serbian woman of high birth, and they had one daughter and then another. They also had a son just before the turn of the century, but the official word was that the boy was stillborn. Then, when Gustaf’s wife converted to Catholicism and left to become a nun in England, their chances of having more children together decreased dramatically.

  Gustaf became depressed and got his mind off things by taking part in the Russo-Japanese war where, of course, he became a hero and was awarded the Cross of St George for extraordinary bravery on the battlefield.

  But the thing was, Gertrud knew that the stillborn boy hadn’t been stillborn at all. This was just something the nun-to-be had told her constantly absent husband. Instead the little boy was sent to Helsinki and placed in a Finnish foster home with a name tag around his wrist.

  ‘Čedomir?’ the baby’s new father had said. ‘No chance. His name will be Tapio.’

  Tapio Mannerheim-alias-Virtanen didn’t inherit much of his biological father’s heroism. Instead his foster father taught him everything he knew. That is, how to counterfeit banknotes. At only seventeen, the young Tapio had nearly mastered this art form, but a few years later, after father and foster son had fooled half of Helsinki with their art, they realized that the surname Virtanen was so sullied that it was no longer functional in their chosen branch.

  By that time, Tapio knew all about his noble background, and he himself was the one who came up with the idea of becoming a Mannerheim again for business purposes. Their business took off like never before until the day Gustaf Mannerheim came home from a trip to Asia where he had been hunting wild animals with the King of Nepal. One of the first things that Gustaf heard when he came back was that a fake Mannerheim had fooled the bank of which he himself was the chairman.

  When all was said and done, Tapio’s foster father had been seized and arrested, while Tapio managed to escape to Swedish Roslagen via Åland. In Sweden he started calling himself Virtanen again, except when it came to his work with Swedish banknotes, where Mannerheim had a better ring to it.

  Tapio wedded four women in a short amount of time; the first three married a count and divorced a rascal, while the fourth knew Tapio Virtanen’s true nature from the start. She was also the one who got him to quit the banknote business before things went as they had in Finland.

  Mr and Mrs Virtanen bought a small farm, Sjölida, north of Norrtälje and invested their criminally procured family resources in three hectares of potato fields, two cows and forty hens. Whereupon Mrs Virtanen got pregnant and had her daughter Gertrud in 1927.

  The years went by, and there was war in the world once again. As usual, Gustaf Mannerheim succeeded in all that he did (except that bit about love), becoming a national war hero once again, and eventually also the marshal of Finland and the president of the country. And a stamp in the United States. All while the son he didn’t know he had pottered about a Swedish potato farm with a moderate amount of dignity.

  Gertrud grew up to have about the same luck in love as her grandfather had had, in that when she was eighteen she went to a party in Norrtälje where she was courted by a petrol-pump attendant bearing vodka and Loranga orange soda. Just like that, she got pregnant behind a rhododendron bush. Their romance was over in less than two minutes.

  Afterwards the attendant brushed the dirt off his knees, said he had to hurry to catch the last bus home, and departed with a ‘See you when I see you.’

  They did not, however, see each other again. But nine months later, Gertrud gave birth to an illegitimate daughter while her own mother withered away from cancer. Those left behind at Sjölida were Gertrud, her father Tapio and newborn Kristina. The former two continued to toil in their potato fields while the girl grew up. When she was about to start upper secondary school in Norrtälje, her mother took the opportunity to warn her about rotten men, whereupon Kristina met Gunnar, who seemed to be anything but rotten. They became a couple, got married, and had little Celestine. And would you believe it? Gunnar ended up as a bank manager.

  ‘Yeah, damn him,’ said the angry young woman.

  ‘You shut up, too,’ said Holger Two, but in a milder voice so as not to disturb Gertrud.

  ‘
I suppose life hasn’t always been terribly fun,’ Gertrud said in summary, and she drained the last of her beer. ‘But at least I have Celestine. It’s so wonderful that you’re back, dear girl.’

  Nombeko, who had spent the last seven years reading her way through an entire library, knew enough about the history of Finland and Marshal Mannerheim to point out that Gertrud’s story had some weak points. She didn’t think it was necessarily the case that the daughter of a man who had made up the fact that he was the son of a baron would herself be a countess. So she said, ‘Well, good heavens! We’re having dinner with a countess!’

  Countess Virtanen blushed and went to the pantry to get more to drink. Holger Two saw that One was about to protest at Gertrud’s story. So Two beat him to it and said that he ought to shut up right now more than ever. This wasn’t a matter of genealogy but of accommodation.

  * * *

  Gertrud’s potato fields had lain fallow since her retirement a few years earlier. She had a small truck, her potato truck. Until now she had taken it to Norrtälje for provisions once a month, and it sat where it sat behind the house for the rest of the time. Now they turned it into a transitional nuclear storage facility and rolled it into the barn 150 yards away. Nombeko took command of the keys for safety’s sake. The grocery shopping could be done with the help of the Toyota the Blomgrens had been so kind as to lend them for an unspecified amount of time. Gertrud no longer needed to leave Sjölida at all, and this suited her just fine.

  There was plenty of room in the house. Holger One and Celestine got their own room next to Gertrud’s, one floor up, while Two and Nombeko were quartered in the room next to the kitchen on the first floor.

  Early on, the latter two had a serious talk with One and Celestine. No more demonstrations, no ideas about moving the crate. In short, no nonsense. It would risk all of their lives, including Gertrud’s.

  In the end, Two got his brother to promise not to devote himself to any society-overthrowing activities and not to try to get at the bomb. But One added that Two ought to think about what he would say to their dad on the day they met again in Heaven.

  ‘How about “Thanks for ruining my life”?’ said Holger Two.

  * * *

  On the next Tuesday it was time to meet the police in Stockholm. Two had asked for the meeting himself. He suspected that he would be questioned about possible tenants in the condemned building, as part of the hunt for the terrorists who had never existed, much less died in a fire.

  The solution was to cook up a believable story and let the angry young woman come along. There were risks involved, but Nombeko explained to her again and again the sort of trouble she would bring upon the group if she didn’t stick to what they had decided. Celestine promised that she would not call the fucking pigs that during their conversation.

  Holger Two introduced himself as his brother, and he also introduced Holger & Holger’s sole employee, young Celestine here.

  ‘Hello, Celestine,’ said the police officer, extending his hand.

  Celestine took it and replied something like ‘Grmpf’ because it’s impossible to speak and bite one’s tongue at the same time.

  The officer began by offering his sympathies that the entire company had burned down, warehouse and all. It was a matter for the insurance companies at this point, as Mr Qvist surely understood. He was also sorry if this incident had left Miss Celestine unemployed.

  The investigation was still in its infancy; they couldn’t yet say, for example, who the terrorists had been. At first they had expected to find them in the charred remains of the building, but all they had found so far was a hidden tunnel through which the terrorists might have fled. It was all very unclear, because the National Task Force’s helicopter had happened to crash-land right where the tunnel came out.

  However, a municipal official had given a statement saying that there seemed to have been people living in the condemned building. What did Mr Qvist have to say about that?

  Holger Two looked alarmed, because he decidedly was. Holger & Holger AB had had a single employee; that was, of course, Celestine here, and she took care of the warehouse, administration and other things, while Holger himself was in charge of the distribution in his free time. The rest of the time, as Mr Officer perhaps already knew, he worked at Helicopter Taxi Inc. in Bromma, although he would no longer be working there due to an unfortunate incident. Holger couldn’t imagine that anyone had lived in that dilapidated shack.

  At this point, in accordance with their plan, the angry young woman started to cry.

  ‘Dear Celestine,’ said Holger. ‘Do you have something to say?’

  Through her sniffles she managed to say that she’d had a fight with her mum and dad (which was, of course, true) so she had stayed in one of the awful apartments for a while without asking Holger for permission (also true, after a fashion).

  ‘And now I’m going to jail.’ She sniffled.

  Holger Two comforted the girl and said that she had done a stupid thing, and now Holger had been sitting there lying to the officer without knowing any better, but that it probably wouldn’t come to prison – just steep fines. Or what did Mr Officer think?

  The officer cleared his throat and said that temporarily living in an industrial area was certainly not allowed, but that it had very little – though not nothing – to do with the ongoing terrorist investigation. In short, Miss Celestine could stop crying; no one need be any the wiser about this. Here was a tissue for the young lady should she want one.

  The angry young woman blew her nose, thinking that on top of everything the cop in front of her was corrupt – crimes ought to be prosecuted no matter what they were, right? But she didn’t say this.

  Holger Two added that the pillow company was now out of business for good, so there would be no question of any more unofficial tenants. Perhaps that brought this investigation to an end?

  Yes. The police officer had no further questions. He thanked Mr Qvist and young Miss Celestine for taking the trouble to come in.

  Holger thanked him back, and Celestine grmpfed once more.

  * * *

  After murdering a newly deceased man, escaping from the police, preventing an atomic bomb from burning, and Holger One’s being assaulted on Sergels Torg then jumping without a parachute from two thousand feet, the new guests at Sjölida were in need of peace and quiet. Meanwhile, Agent B, at his end, was striving for the opposite.

  Several days earlier, he had allowed Nombeko and her crew to roll off with the bomb, down Fredsgatan in Gnesta. Not because he wanted to, but because he had no choice. An Israeli intelligence agent fighting over an atomic bomb on a public street in Sweden with fifty police officers as witnesses – no, that was not the best way to serve one’s nation.

  But that didn’t mean his situation was hopeless. B now knew that the bomb and Nombeko Mayeki were still together. In Sweden. It was as clear as it was inconceivable. What had she been doing for the last seven years? Where was she now? And why?

  B had checked into a hotel in Stockholm under Michael Ballack’s name to analyse the situation.

  On the previous Thursday, he had received an encrypted message from his colleague Agent A. It said that one Holger Qvist (as seen on TV) had been located and was about to take him to Nombeko Mayeki, the blasted cleaning woman who had fooled them not once but twice.

  He had not heard from A since. And now A wasn’t responding to B’s messages. He had no choice but to assume A was dead. Before his death, however, A had left an impressive number of trails for B to follow. Such as the geographical coordinates of the place where the cleaning woman and the bomb supposedly were. And the address of Holger Qvist’s presumed apartment in something called Blackeberg. And his workplace in Bromma. Nothing seemed to be a secret in the Swedish system, and this was a dream for any secret agent.

  B had started by looking up Fredsgatan 5, which no longer existed. It had burned to the ground the night before.

  Apparently someone had rescued the
bomb from the flames just in time, because it was sitting on a trailer just beyond the barricades, its crate scorched. It was a surreal sight. It became even more surreal when the cleaning woman slid up beside the agent, greeted him cheerfully, took the bomb and left.

  Agent B soon did the same. He bought and stumbled his way through several Swedish newspapers. A person who knows German and English can understand a word of Swedish here and there, and guess at the occasional situation. In addition, there were a number of articles available in English at the Royal Library.

  Apparently the fire had broken out during a terrorist incident. But the chief terrorist, Nombeko, had just stood there calmly outside the barricades. Why didn’t they arrest her? Surely the Swedish police couldn’t be so incompetent as to pull a 1700-pound crate out of the flames and then forget to see what was in it before they let people roll it away. Right?

  And his colleague A? Left behind in the flames at Fredsgatan 5, of course. There was no other explanation. If he wasn’t in Tallinn. What would he be doing there, anyway? And what did the cleaning woman know about it? The man next to her had introduced himself as Holger. That is, the man whom A had had under control just the day before. Had Holger managed to overpower B’s colleague? Had he sent him to Tallinn?

  No, A was dead; he must be. The cleaning woman had fooled them three times now. It was too bad that she could die only once in return.

  Agent B had a lot to go on. Some were the clues that A had given him, and some were his own, like the licence plate number of the trailer the bomb had rolled away on. It belonged to a Harry Blomgren, not far from Gnesta. The agent decided to pay a visit.

  Harry and Margareta Blomgren were very bad at English and hardly better at German. But as far as the agent could understand, they were trying to get him to compensate them for a fence someone had driven through, plus a stolen car and trailer. They thought he represented the cleaning woman somehow.