Allan said that although it had been nice and quiet while the priest kept silent, it was probably preferable in the long run that when one man spoke, the other answered.
‘Besides, we’re going to try to get out of here, and it would perhaps be best if we can do so before the murder boss gets back from London. So we can’t just sit, grumpily, in our corners, can we?’
The Reverend Ferguson agreed. When the murder boss came back, they would probably face a short interrogation and then simply disappear. That was what the Reverend Ferguson had heard happened.
The holding cell was not in a real prison, with all the security and locks that went with that. On the contrary, the guards sometimes didn’t even bother to lock the door properly. But there were never fewer than four guards at the building’s entrance and exit, and they were unlikely to just stand and stare if Allan and the priest tried to slip out.
Would it be possible to create some sort of tumult or distraction? Allan wondered. And then sneak out in the midst of the general disarray?
Allan wanted peace to work, and he therefore assigned the priest the task of finding out from the guards how long they had. That is, exactly when would the murder boss be back?
The priest promised to ask as soon as he got an opportunity. Perhaps even right away, because there was a rattling sound at the door. The youngest and kindest of the guards stuck his head in and with a sympathetic look said:
‘The prime minister is back from England and it’s time for questioning. Which of you wants to go first?’
The head of the department of domestic intelligence and security was in a dreadful mood.
He had just been to London where he had been told off by the British. He, the prime minister (well as good as), head of a government department, one of the most important elements of Iranian society, had been told off by the British!
The shah did nothing but make sure that the arrogant Englishmen were kept happy. The oil was in the hands of the British, and he himself made sure they weeded out everybody and anybody who tried to bring about change in the country. And that was no easy matter, because who was really satisfied with the shah? Not the Islamists, not the communists and definitely not the local oil workers who literally worked themselves to death for the equivalent of one British pound a week.
And for this he had now been told off, instead of being praised!
The secret police chief knew he had made a mistake when a while ago he had been a little heavy-handed with a provocateur of unknown origin. The provocateur had demanded to be set free because the only thing he was guilty of was insisting that the line in the butcher’s shop should be for everyone, not just employees in the state’s secret police.
When the provocateur had put forward his case, he folded his arms and refused to answer any more questions. The police chief didn’t like the look of the provocateur (it was indeed provocative), so he made use of a couple of the CIA torture methods (the police chief admired the inventiveness of the Americans). It was only at that point that it transpired that the provocateur was an assistant secretary in the British Embassy and that, of course, was most unfortunate.
The solution was first to tidy up the assistant as best they could, then let him go, but only so that he could immediately be run over by a truck which then disappeared from the scene. That is how you avoid diplomatic crises, the police chief reasoned, pleased with himself.
But the British Embassy picked up what was left of the assistant secretary, and sent all the pieces to London where they went through them with a magnifying glass. After which the police chief was summoned and asked to explain how the assistant secretary suddenly turned up on a street outside the head office of the secret police and was immediately so drastically run over that marks of the torture he had previously been subjected to were barely visible.
The police chief had of course firmly denied all knowledge of the affair, that was how the diplomatic game worked, but this assistant secretary happened to be the son of some lord or other who in turn was a good friend of the recent prime minister, Winston Churchill, and now the British were going to take a firm stand.
As a result of all this, the department for domestic intelligence and security had now been relieved of responsibility for the visit that same Winston Churchill was to make to Tehran in just a couple of weeks. Instead, the amateurs in the shah’s own bodyguard would take care of the visit, which was of course far beyond their competence. This was a major loss of prestige for the police chief. And it estranged him from the shah in a way that did not feel good.
To dispel his bitter thoughts, the police chief had summoned the first of the two enemies of the state that were said to be waiting in the holding cell. He anticipated a short interrogation, a quick and discreet execution, and a traditional cremation of the corpse. Then lunch and in the afternoon he would probably have time for the other enemy of the state, too.
Allan Karlsson had volunteered to be first. The police chief met him at the door of his office, shook hands, asked Mr Karlsson to have a seat and offered him a cup of coffee and a cigarette.
Though he had never met a murder boss before, Allan had assumed that they would be more unpleasant of manner than this murder boss seemed to be. And then he thanked him for the coffee and asked if it would be OK with Mr Prime Minister if he declined the cigarette.
The police chief always chose to start his interrogations in a civilized manner. Just because you were soon going to kill someone, you didn’t have to behave like a yokel. Besides, it amused the police chief to see how a flutter of hope rose in the eyes of his victim. People in general were so naive.
This particular victim didn’t look so terrified, not yet. And he had addressed the police chief in the manner in which he liked to be addressed—an interesting and positive beginning.
During the interrogation, Allan – lacking a well thought-out survival strategy – provided selected episodes from the later part of his life story: namely that he was an expert on explosives who had been sent by President Harry S. Truman on an impossible mission to China to combat the communists, and he had subsequently started his long walk home to Sweden and that he now regretted that Iran had lain in the way of that walk, and that he had been obliged to enter the country without the requisite visa, but that he now promised to leave the country immediately if Mr Prime Minister would just let him do so.
The police chief asked him a lot of supplementary questions, not least why Allan Karlsson was in the company of Iranian communists when he was arrested. Allan answered truthfully that he and the communists had met by chance and agreed to help each other across the Himalayas. Allan added that if Mr Prime Minister planned a similar walk, then he shouldn’t be too fussy about whose help he accepted because those mountains were dreadfully high when they were in the mood for it.
The police chief didn’t have any plans to cross the Himalayas on foot, nor did he intend to set Allan free. But perhaps he could make some use of this explosives expert with his international experience before letting him disappear for good? With a voice that perhaps sounded a little too keen, the police chief asked Mr Karlsson what experience he had with secretly killing people who were famous and well-guarded.
Allan had never done that sort of thing, consciously sitting and planning to kill a person as if you were blowing up a bridge. And he had no wish to do so either. But now he had to think ahead. Could this chain-smoking murder boss have something special in mind?
Allan searched his memory and in his haste found nothing better than:
‘Glenn Miller.’
‘Glenn Miller?’ the police chief repeated.
Allan could remember from his time at Los Alamos a couple of years earlier how shocked everyone had been on hearing the news that the young jazz musician Glenn Miller was missing after his US Army Air Forces plane had disappeared off the coast of England.
‘Exactly,’ Allan confirmed in a hush-hush tone. ‘It was supposed to look like an accident and I succeeded in that. I made
sure both engines burned up, and he crashed somewhere in the middle of the English Channel. Nobody has seen him since. A fitting fate for a defector to the Nazis, if you ask me, Mr Minister.’
‘Was Glenn Miller a Nazi?’ asked the astonished police chief.
Allan nodded in confirmation (and silently apologized to all of Glenn Miller’s surviving family). The police chief, for his part, tried to accustom himself to the news that his great jazz hero had been running errands for Hitler.
Now Allan thought it was perhaps best to take charge of the conversation before the murder boss asked a lot of other questions about what happened to Glenn Miller.
‘If Mr Prime Minister so wishes, I am prepared to get rid of anybody, with maximum discretion of course, in exchange for us then parting as friends.’
The chief of police was still shaken after the sad unmasking of the man behind ‘Moonlight Serenade’ but that didn’t mean that he was anyone’s fool. He certainly wasn’t planning to negotiate over Allan Karlsson’s future.
‘If I want you to get rid of somebody, you will do as you are told. And it is just possible that I will consider letting you live,’ said the police chief as he leaned across the table to stub out his cigarette in Allan’s half-full coffee cup.
‘Yes, that is what I meant, of course,’ said Allan, ‘although I expressed myself a little vaguely.’
This particular morning’s interrogation had turned out differently from what the police chief was used to. Instead of getting rid of the enemy of the state, he had adjourned the meeting to accustom himself to the new situation in peace and quiet. After lunch, the police chief and Allan Karlsson met again and plans were laid.
The intention was to kill Winston Churchill while he was being protected by the shah’s own bodyguard. But it must happen in such a way that nobody could find any possible link to the department for domestic intelligence and security, let alone to its boss. Since it could safely be assumed that the British would investigate the event with extreme attention to detail, there must be no slip-ups. If the project succeeded, the consequences in every possible way would be to the police chief’s advantage.
First and foremost it would shut those arrogant British up, the British who had taken away the police chief’s responsibility for the security arrangements during the visit. And furthermore, the police chief would most certainly be entrusted with sorting out the bodyguard, after its failure. And when the smoke had cleared, the police chief’s standing would be greatly strengthened, instead of what it was now – weakened.
The police chief and Allan worked out a plan as if they were best friends, although the police chief did stub out his cigarette in Allan’s coffee every time he felt the atmosphere became too intimate.
The police chief told Allan that Iran’s only bulletproof motor car was in the department’s garage in the cellar below them. It was a specially built DeSoto Suburban. It was wine-red and very stylish, the police chief said. There was the greatest likelihood that the shah’s bodyguard would soon ask for the car, to transport Churchill from the airport to the shah’s palace.
Allan said that a well-proportioned explosive charge on the car’s chassis might be the solution to the problem. But bearing in mind Mr Prime Minister’s need not to leave any clues that could lead back to him, Allan proposed two special measures.
One was that the explosive charge should consist of exactly the same ingredients that Mao Tse-tung’s communists used in China. This was something Allan knew a lot about, and he was certain that he could make it all look like a communist attack.
The other measure was that the charge in question should be hidden in the front part of the DeSoto’s chassis, but that it should not detonate immediately but be designed to drop from the car and explode a few tenths of a second later when it hit the ground.
During that time the car would have travelled a short distance so that the position where Winston Churchill would be sitting and smoking his cigar would now be directly above the explosion, which would rip a hole in the floor of the car and send Churchill to eternity. It would also leave a large crater in the ground.
‘In that way we’ll get people to think that the explosive charge was buried in the street instead of somebody having hidden it in the car. That little deception would surely suit Mr Prime Minister perfectly?’
The police chief giggled with joy and anticipation, and flicked a lighted cigarette into Allan’s newly poured coffee. Allan said that Mr Prime Minister could do as he wished with his cigarettes and with Allan’s coffee, but that if he really wasn’t satisfied with the ashtray he had in front of him, and if Mr Prime Minister would consider giving Allan a short period of leave, then he would go out and buy a nice new ashtray for the Prime Minister.
The police chief ignored Allan’s talk about ashtrays, but immediately approved Allan’s explosive plan and asked for a complete list of what he needed to prepare the car in the shortest possible time.
Allan listed the names of the nine ingredients that he needed to make up the formula. In addition, he included a tenth – nitro-glycerine – which he thought might be useful, and an eleventh – a bottle of ink.
Furthermore, Allan asked to borrow one of Mr Prime Minister’s most trusted colleagues as an assistant and purchasing manager, and to have his cellmate, the Reverend Ferguson, as his interpreter.
The police chief muttered that what he would like most of all was to do away with the priest straight away, because he didn’t like clerics, but now there wouldn’t be time. Yet again he stubbed out his cigarette in Allan’s coffee, to indicate that the meeting was at an end and to remind Allan who was boss.
The days passed, and everything went according to plan. The boss of the bodyguard did indeed get in touch and announce that he would pick up the DeSoto the following Wednesday. The police chief boiled with anger. It had been an announcement rather than a request. But in fact, it fitted perfectly with Allan’s plan. What if the bodyguard hadn’t contacted the department about the car? And in any case, the boss of the bodyguard would soon get his comeuppance.
Allan now knew how much time he had to prepare the charge. Unfortunately, the Reverend Ferguson had also eventually fathomed what was going on. Not only was he going to be an accomplice in the murder of former Prime Minister Churchill, but he also had good reason to believe that his own life would end shortly afterwards. To stand before the Lord as a murderer was not something the Reverend Ferguson looked forward to.
But Allan calmed the vicar, promising that he had a plan to solve both those problems. First, there was a good chance that Allan and the priest would be able to abscond, and second, it need not necessarily happen at the cost of Mr Churchill’s life.
But the whole scheme required the priest to do what Allan said when the right moment arrived, and the priest promised to do so. Allan was his only hope of survival, since God still wasn’t answering his prayers. And it had been like that for almost a month now. Could God possibly be angry with the priest for his attempt to ally himself with the communists?
Wednesday arrived. The DeSoto was rigged and ready. The explosive charge on the car’s chassis happened to be rather larger than the task demanded, and yet it was still completely hidden, if anyone were to look to see if there was anything strange there.
Allan showed the police chief how the car had been rigged and how the remote control worked, and explained in detail what the final result would be when it went off. The police chief smiled and looked happy. And stubbed out that day’s eighteenth cigarette in Allan’s coffee.
Allan then pulled out a new cup, one that he had kept hidden behind the toolbox, and placed that strategically on a table next to the stairs leading to the corridor, the holding cell and the entrance. Without making a fuss of it, Allan then took the priest by the arm and left the garage, while the police chief walked round and round the DeSoto, puffing on the day’s nineteenth cigarette, delighting in the thought of what would soon happen.
The priest understood from Allan�
��s firm grasp that this was for real. Time to obey Mr Karlsson to the letter.
They walked past the holding cell and continued towards reception. Once there, Allan didn’t bother to stop by the armed guards, but continued right past them, still keeping a firm hold on the Reverend Ferguson.
The guards had become accustomed to Karlsson and the priest and they had not thought there was any risk of an escape attempt, so it was with some surprise that the officer in charge called out:
‘Halt! Where do you think you are going?’
Allan stopped with the priest on the very threshold to freedom and looked very surprised.
‘We are free to go. Hasn’t Mr Prime Minister informed you?’
Mr Ferguson was terrified, but forced a little oxygen into his nostrils so as not to faint.
‘Stay exactly where you are,’ said the officer in charge, in an authoritative tone. ‘You are not going anywhere until I have Mr Prime Minister’s confirmation.’
The three guards were ordered to keep a careful eye on the priest and Mr Karlsson, while the officer in charge went down the corridor to the garage to ask for confirmation. Allan smiled encouragingly at the priest and said that soon everything would be sorted out – unless the opposite happened and it all blew up.
Since firstly the police chief had not given Allan and the priest permission to leave, and, secondly, did not have any plans to do so, he reacted forcefully to the officer’s query.
‘What? They’re standing by the entrance and brazenly lying? They are bloody well going to pay for that…’
The police chief rarely swore. He had always been careful to keep a certain dignity about him. But now he was furious. And as was his custom, he stubbed his cigarette into that damned Swede’s coffee cup, before heading for the stairs.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared Page 16