The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

by Jonas Jonasson

  Or rather, that was his intention, but he didn’t get any further than the coffee cup. Because this time it didn’t contain coffee, but pure nitroglycerine mixed with black ink. There was a huge explosion and the vice prime minister and the officer in charge of the guards were ripped to bits. A white cloud billowed out of the garage and made its way along the corridor at the other end of which Allan, the priest and the three guards stood.

  ‘Time to go,’ Allan said to the priest. And off they went.

  All three guards were sufficiently alert to think that they really ought to stop Karlsson and the priest from leaving, but only a few tenths of a second later – and as a logical consequence of the garage now being a sea of fire – the charge under the DeSoto, the one intended for Winston Churchill, also detonated. And in so doing, it proved to Allan that it would have amply served its intended purpose. The entire building immediately leaned over, and the ground floor was in flames when Allan changed his order to the priest:

  ‘Let’s run out of here, instead.’

  Two of the three guards had been blown into a wall by the pressure wave and had caught fire. The third found it impossible to gather his thoughts sufficiently to attend to his prisoners. For a few seconds, he wondered what had happened, but then he ran away to avoid ending up like his comrades. Allan and the priest had gone off in one direction. The only remaining guard now ran off in the other.

  After Allan in his own special way had arranged for himself and the priest to be somewhere other than the headquarters of the secret police, it was now the vicar’s turn to be useful. He knew where most of the diplomatic missions were located and he guided Allan all the way to the Swedish Embassy. Once there, Allan gave him a warm hug to thank him for everything.

  Allan asked what the priest himself was going to do. Where was the British Embassy?

  It wasn’t far away, said the vicar, but why would he need to go there? They were all Anglicans already and didn’t need converting. No, the priest had thought up a new strategy. If there was something the last hour or so had taught him, it was that everything seemed to start and finish at the department for domestic intelligence and security. So it was a matter of changing that organisation from the inside. Once all the people working for the secret police, and all those who helped them, were Anglicans – well, the rest would be easy as pie!

  Allan said that he knew of a good asylum in Sweden if in the future the priest should happen to come to some sort of self-understanding. The priest answered that he didn’t want to appear ungrateful, not in any way. But he had once and for all found his calling, and now it was time for him to say goodbye. The priest was going to start with the surviving guard, the one who ran off in the other direction. He was basically a nice, easy-going boy, and he could probably be led down the path of the true faith.

  ‘Farewell!’ said the priest solemnly and walked off.

  ‘Bye for now,’ said Allan.

  He watched the priest vanish into the distance, and thought that the world was crazy enough that the priest might survive the course he was now taking.

  But Allan was wrong. The priest found the guard wandering around in a daze in the Park-e Shahr in the middle of Teheran, with burns on his arms and an automatic with the safety catch off in his hands.

  ‘Well, there you are, my son,’ said the priest and walked up to embrace him.

  ‘You!’ shouted the guard, ‘It’s you!’

  And then he shot the priest twenty-two times in the chest. It would have been more but he ran out of bullets.

  Allan was allowed into the Swedish Embassy because of his regional Swedish accent. But then things got complicated, because he didn’t have any documentation that proved who he was. So the embassy could not give him a passport, nor could they help him back to Sweden. Besides, said Third Secretary Bergqvist, Sweden had just introduced special personal identity numbers and if it was the case that Karlsson had been out of the country for many years, then there would be no Mr Allan Karlsson in the Swedish system back home.

  To that, Allan answered that regardless of whether all Swedes’ names had now become numbers instead, he was and would remain Allan Karlsson from the village of Yxhult outside Flen and now he wanted Mr Third Secretary to be so kind as to arrange papers for him.

  Third Secretary Bergqvist was for the time being the most senior official at the embassy. He was the only one who hadn’t been able to attend the diplomatic conference in Stockholm. It was just his luck that everything suddenly happened at once. It wasn’t enough that some parts of the centre of Tehran had been on fire for the last hour: now on top of that an unknown person turns up claiming to be Swedish. There were of course hints that the man was telling the truth, but this was a situation where it was important to follow the rules so as not to jeopardize his future career. So Third Secretary Bergqvist repeated his statement that no passport would be forthcoming unless Mr Karlsson could be properly identified.

  Allan said that he found Third Secretary Bergqvist to be exceptionally stubborn, but that they could perhaps solve everything if only the third secretary had a telephone available.

  The third secretary did. But it was expensive to make long-distance phone calls. Whom did Mr Karlsson intend to phone?

  Allan was beginning to tire of the difficult third secretary so he didn’t answer, but instead asked:

  ‘Is Per Albin still the Swedish prime minister?’

  ‘No,’ said the astounded third secretary. ‘Tage Erlander is prime minister. Prime Minister Hansson died last autumn. But why…’

  ‘Could you please be quiet for a moment so we can clear this up?’

  Allan phoned the White House in Washington, and was put through to the president’s senior secretary. She remembered Mr Karlsson very well and she had also heard so many good things about him from the president and if Mr Karlsson really considered it important then she would see if they could wake the president. It was only eight in the morning in Washington, and President Truman was not an early riser.

  A short while later the newly awoken President Truman came to the phone and he and Allan had a hearty chat for several minutes, catching up with each other’s news before Allan finally mentioned his errand. Could Harry possibly do him a favour and phone the new Swedish Prime Minister Erlander and vouch for who Allan was, so that Erlander in turn could phone Third Secretary Bergqvist at the Swedish Embassy in Tehran and inform him that Allan should immediately be issued a passport.

  Harry Truman would of course do this for him, but first please spell the third secretary’s name so that he got it right.

  ‘President Truman wants to know how you spell your name,’ Allan said to Third Secretary Bergqvist. ‘It would be easier if you told him directly.’

  After Third Secretary Bergqvist, almost in a trance, spelled out his name letter by letter for the president of the United States, he replaced the receiver and didn’t say anything for eight minutes. Which was exactly how long it took before Prime Minister Erlander phoned the embassy and ordered Third Secretary Bergqvist to 1) immediately issue a passport with diplomatic status to Allan Karlsson, and 2) without delay arrange to get Mr Karlsson back to Sweden.

  ‘But he hasn’t got a personal identity number,’ Third Secretary Bergqvist attempted.

  ‘I suggest that you, Third Secretary, solve that problem,’ said Prime Minister Erlander. ‘Unless you wish to become the fourth or fifth secretary instead…’

  ‘There is no such thing as a fourth or fifth secretary,’ the third secretary attempted.

  ‘And what conclusions do you draw from that?’

  War hero Winston Churchill had somewhat unexpectedly lost the British elections in 1945, the British people’s gratitude having run out.

  But Churchill planned his revenge and marked time by travelling the world. The former prime minister suspected that the Labour incompetent who now governed Great Britain would introduce a planned economy at the same time as handing over the Empire to people who couldn’t administer it. />
  Take British India for example, which was now on its way to falling to bits. Hindus and Muslims could not get along, and in the middle sat that damned Mahatma Gandhi with his legs crossed, having stopped eating because he was dissatisfied with something. What sort of war strategy was that? How far would they have got with such a strategy against the Nazi bombing raids over England?

  It was not quite as bad in British East Africa, not yet, but it was only a matter of time before the Africans also wanted to become their own masters.

  Churchill understood that not everything could remain as it was, but nevertheless the Empire needed a leader who could announce what was needed, and do so with authority. They did not need a sneaky socialist like Clement Attlee.

  As regards India, the battle was lost, Churchill knew that. It had been developing that way for many years, and during the war it had been necessary to send signals about future independence to the Indians so that in the midst of the struggle for survival the British would not also have to deal with a civil war.

  But in many other places there was still plenty of time to stop the process. Churchill’s plan for the autumn was to travel to Kenya and evaluate the situation. But first he would drop in on Tehran and drink tea with the shah.

  He had the misfortune to land amidst chaos. The day before, something had exploded at the department for domestic intelligence and security. The entire building had collapsed and burned up. The idiot of a police chief had evidently died in the explosion too, the same man who had previously been clumsy enough to use his harsh methods on innocent British Embassy staff.

  The police chief was no great loss, but apparently the shah’s only bulletproof car had been consumed by the flames too, and this led to a much shorter meeting between the shah and Churchill than had first been envisaged, and for reasons of security it took place at the airport.

  Nevertheless, it was a good thing that the visit came off. According to the shah the situation was under control. The explosion at the headquarters of the secret police was something of a bother, and so far they couldn’t say anything about the cause. But the shah could live with the fact that the police chief had died in the explosion. The man was beginning to lose his touch.

  So they had a stable political situation. They were about to appoint a new chief for the secret police. And they were seeing record results for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Oil provided fantastic wealth to both England and Iran. Mainly England, if the truth be told, but that was only fair because Iran’s sole contribution to the project was cheap labour – and of course the oil itself.

  ‘Mainly peace and prosperity in Iran then,’ Winston Churchill said to the Swedish military attaché who had been assigned a place in the plane on the way back to London.

  ‘Glad to hear that you are satisfied, Mr Churchill,’ Allan answered, adding that he thought Churchill was looking well.

  Allan finally landed at Stockholm’s Bromma airport, after a stopover in London, and stood on Swedish soil for the first time in eleven years. It was late in December 1947, and the weather was the usual for that time of year.

  In the arrivals hall, a young man was waiting for Allan. He said he was Prime Minister Erlander’s assistant and that the PM wished to meet Allan as soon as possible, if that could be arranged.

  Allan thought it could, and he willingly followed the assistant, who proudly invited Allan to sit in the brand new government car, a black, shiny Volvo PV 444.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything so swanky, Mr Karlsson?’ asked the assistant, who was interested in cars. ‘Forty-four horsepower!’

  ‘I saw a really nice wine-red DeSoto last week,’ Allan answered. ‘But your car is in better condition.’

  The drive took Allan to the centre of Stockholm and he looked around him with interest. To his shame, he had never been in the capital before. It was a beautiful city indeed, with water and bridges everywhere, and none of them had been blown up.

  The prime minister welcomed Allan with a ‘Mr Karlsson! I have heard so much about you!’ Upon which he pushed the assistant out of the room and closed the door.

  Allan didn’t say so, but he realised that he himself had heard nothing whatsoever about Tage Erlander. Allan didn’t even know if the prime minister was Left or Right. He must certainly be one of them, because if there was one thing life had taught Allan, it was that people insisted on being one or the other.

  Anyway, the prime minister could be whichever he liked. Now it was a question of hearing what he had to say.

  The prime minister had, it transpired, called President Truman back and had a longer conversation about Allan. So now he knew all about…

  But then the prime minister stopped talking. He had been in the job less than a year and there was a lot left to learn. He did, however, already know one thing; in certain situations it was best not to know or at least best not to leave any way of proving that you knew what you knew.

  So the prime minister never finished his sentence. What President Truman had told him about Allan Karlsson would be forever a secret between them. Instead the prime minister came straight to the point:

  ‘I understand that you don’t have anything to come back to here in Sweden, so I have arranged a cash payment for services rendered to the nation… in a manner of speaking… Here are ten thousand crowns for you.’

  And the prime minister handed over a thick envelope full of banknotes and asked Allan to sign a receipt. Everything had to be by the book.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister. It occurs to me that with this fine and generous contribution I will be able to afford new clothes and clean sheets at a hotel tonight. Perhaps I’ll even be able to brush my teeth for the first time since August 1945…’

  The prime minister interrupted Allan just as he was about to describe the condition of his underpants, and informed him that the money was of course without any conditions, but that since some activities connected to nuclear fission were being carried out in Sweden at this time, the prime minister would like Mr Karlsson to have a look.

  The truth was that Prime Minister Erlander had inherited a number of important issues when his predecessor’s heart had stopped the previous autumn, and he had no idea what to do about them. For example: what stance should Sweden take with regard to something called an atom bomb. The commander-in-chief had been telling him about how the country must defend itself against communism, since they only had little Finland between Sweden and Stalin.

  There were two sides to the question. On the one hand, the commander-in-chief happened to have married into a rich upper class family and it was generally known that he sometimes drank a bit of the hard stuff with the old Swedish King. But Social Democrat Erlander couldn’t bear the idea that Gustav V might imagine that he could influence Swedish defence policy.

  On the other hand, Erlander could not exclude the possibility that the C-in-C might be right. You couldn’t trust Stalin and the communists, and if they should get it into their heads to widen their sphere of interest westwards then Sweden was unpleasantly close.

  Sweden’s military research department had just moved its few nuclear energy specialists to the newly created Atomic Energy PLC. Now these experts were trying to figure out exactly what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, their mission in more general terms was to ‘analyse the nuclear future from a Swedish perspective’. It was never spelled out, but Prime Minister Erlander had understood that the vaguely formulated task – had it been put in plain language – would have read:

  How the hell do we build our own atom bomb, if necessary?

  And now the answer was sitting right across from the prime minister. Tage Erlander knew that, but above all he knew that he didn’t want anybody else to know he knew. Politics was about watching where you put your feet.

  So the previous day, Prime Minister Erlander had contacted the head of research at Atomic Energy PLC, Dr Sigvard Eklund, and asked him to invite Allan Karlsson for a job interview at which he could thoroughly
question him as to whether he could be of use in Atomic Energy PLC’s activities – assuming that Mr Karlsson was interested.

  Dr Eklund was not at all pleased with the prime minister involving himself in the atom project. He even suspected that Allan Karlsson might be a Social Democratic spy. But he promised to interview Karlsson, even though, oddly, the prime minister would not say anything about the man’s qualifications. Erlander had just emphasized the word ‘thoroughly’ when he said that Dr Eklund ought to thoroughly question Mr Karlsson about his background.

  Allan, for his part, said that he had nothing against meeting Dr Eklund or any other doctor, if that would please the prime minister.

  Ten thousand crowns was an almost excessive amount of money, Allan thought, and checked in at the most expensive hotel he could find.

  The receptionist at the Grand Hotel had his doubts about the dirty and badly dressed man, until Allan showed proof of his identity with a Swedish diplomatic passport.

  ‘Of course we have a room for you, Mr Military Attaché, sir,’ the receptionist announced. ‘Would you like to pay cash or should we send the bill to the Foreign Ministry?’

  ‘Cash would be fine,’ said Allan. Did he want payment in advance?

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Attaché, sir. Of course not!’ The receptionist bowed.

  If the receptionist had been able to see into the future, he would most certainly have answered differently.

  The next day, Dr Eklund welcomed a newly showered and more-or-less well dressed Allan Karlsson to his Stockholm office. The doctor offered him coffee and a cigarette, just as the murder boss in Tehran used to do. (Eklund, however, stubbed his cigarettes out in his own ashtray.)

  Dr Eklund was unhappy with the way the prime minister had interfered with his recruiting process. And Allan, for his part, felt the negative vibe in the room and for a moment was reminded of the first time he met Soong May-ling. People could behave how they liked, but Allan considered that in general it was quite unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to.