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

by Jonas Jonasson

  Or it wouldn’t.

  Not at all, in fact.

  On the evening of 22nd March 1969, Allan placed himself strategically on the left of the main entrance to the Bolshoi Theatre. The idea had been that from such a position he would be able to recognise Yury when he passed by on his way into the auditorium. There turned out to be a problem, however: all the visitors looked almost identical. They were men in black suits under a black coat and women in long dresses which showed under a black or brown fur coat. They all came in pairs and rapidly went from the cold outside into the warmth of the theatre, past Allan where he stood on the magnificent stairway’s top step. And it was dark too, so how on earth would Allan be able to identify a face he had seen for two days twenty-one years ago? Unless he had the incredible luck that Yury recognise him instead.

  No, Allan didn’t have any such luck. It was of course far from certain that Yury Borisovich was now inside the theatre, but, if he was, he had passed a few metres from his old friend without noticing. So what could Allan do? He thought aloud:

  ‘If you have just gone into the theatre, dear Yury Borisovich, then you will pretty certainly be coming out again in a few hours through the same door. But then you are going to look just the same as when you went in. So I am not going to be able to find you. That means you will have to find me.’

  So be it. Allan went back to his little office at the embassy, made his preparations and returned well before Prince Calàf had made Princess Turandot’s heart melt.

  More than anything Secret Agent Hutton had impressed upon Allan the word ‘discretion’. A successful agent never made any noise. He should melt into his environment to such a degree that he was almost invisible.

  ‘Do you understand, Mr Karlsson?’

  ‘Absolutely, Mr Hutton,’ Allan had answered.

  Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli were called back to the stage twenty times by the applauding audience; the performance was a huge success. So it took an extra long time before people who all looked alike started to stream down the steps again. What everyone then noticed was the man standing in the middle of the bottom step, with both arms in the air holding a home-made poster on which could be read:

  I AM

  ALLAN

  EMMANUEL

  Allan Karlsson had of course understood Secret Agent Hutton’s sermons; he simply paid no attention to them. In Hutton’s Paris it was spring, but in Moscow it was both cold and dark. Allan was freezing, and now he wanted results. At first he had intended to write Yury’s name on the poster, but eventually decided that if he was going to be indiscreet then it should be on his own behalf.

  Larissa Aleksandrevna Popova, Yury Borisovich Popov’s wife, lovingly held on to her husband’s arm and thanked him for the fifth time for the fantastic experience they had just shared. Birgit Nilsson was pure Maria Callas! And the seats!

  The fourth row, right in the middle. Larissa was happier than she had been for a long time. And besides, this evening she and her husband would be staying at a hotel, and she wouldn’t have to go back to that horrid city behind the barbed wire for almost twenty-four hours. They would have a romantic dinner for two… just her and Yury… and then perhaps…

  ‘Excuse me, darling,’ said Yury and stopped on the top step just outside the theatre doors.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ Larissa asked anxiously.

  ‘It’s probably nothing… But do you see that man down there with the poster? I have to go and have a look… It can’t be… but the man is dead!’

  ‘Who’s dead, darling?’

  ‘Come on!’ said Yury and negotiated his way down the steps with his wife.

  Three metres from Allan, Yury stopped and tried to make his brain understand what his eyes had registered. Allan saw his crazily staring friend from long ago, lowered his poster and said:

  ‘Was she good, Birgit?’

  Yury still didn’t say anything, but his wife whispered, ‘Is this the dead man?’ Allan said that he wasn’t dead, and if the Popov couple wanted to make sure he didn’t freeze to death it would be best if they could immediately lead him to a restaurant where he could get some vodka and perhaps a bite to eat.

  ‘It really is you…’ Yury finally managed to exclaim. ‘But… You speak Russian…?’

  ‘Yes, I went on a five-year Russian course shortly after we last met,’ said Allan. ‘The school was called Gulag. What about that vodka?’

  Yury Borisovich was a very moral man, and the last twenty-one years he had felt very guilty for having involuntarily lured the Swedish atom-bomb expert to Moscow for subsequent transport to Vladivostok, where the Swede presumably – if not earlier – would have died in that fire that all reasonably well informed Soviet citizens knew about. He had suffered for twenty-one years, because he had instantly liked the Swede and his unstoppable ability to look on the bright side.

  Now Yury Borisovich was standing outside the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where it was -15°C, after a warming opera performance and… no, he couldn’t believe it. Allan Emmanuel Karlsson had survived. He lived. And he was standing in front of Yury this very moment. In the middle of Moscow. Speaking Russian!

  Yury Borisovich had been married to Larissa Aleksandrevna for forty years and they were very happy together. They hadn’t been blessed with children, but their mutual trust knew no bounds. They shared everything for better or worse and Yury had more than once expressed to his wife the sorrow he felt over the fate of Allan Emmanuel Karlsson. And now, while Yury still tried to make sense of events, Larissa Aleksandrevna took command.

  ‘If I understand correctly, this is your friend from the old days, the man you indirectly sent to his death. Dear Yury, would it not be a good idea if in accordance with his wishes we take him quickly to a restaurant and provide him with some vodka before he dies for real?’

  Yury didn’t answer, but he nodded and let his wife drag him over to the waiting limousine in which he was seated beside his until recently dead comrade while his wife gave instructions to the driver.

  ‘The Pushkin Restaurant, please.’

  They needed two good drinks for Allan to thaw out and two more for Yury to come to his senses again. In between, Allan and Larissa got to know each other.

  When Yury was finally able to replace shock with joy (‘Now we’re going to celebrate!’), Allan thought it was time to get down to business. If you had something to say, better just to say it right away.

  ‘What do you think about becoming a spy?’ asked Allan. ‘I myself am one, and it is actually rather exciting.’

  Yury choked on his fifth drink.

  ‘Spy?’ asked Larissa while her husband coughed.

  ‘Yes, or “agent”. I don’t really know what the difference is, actually.’

  ‘So interesting! Tell us more, please, Allan Emmanuel.’

  ‘No, don’t, Allan,’ Yury coughed. ‘We don’t want to know any more!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear Yury,’ said Larissa. ‘Let your friend tell us about his job; you haven’t seen each other for so many years. Go on, Allan Emmanuel.’

  Allan went on and Larissa listened with interest while Yury hid his face in his hands. Allan told them about the dinner with President Johnson and Secret Agent Hutton from the CIA and the meeting with Hutton the following day, during which Hutton suggested that Allan should travel to Moscow and find out how things were with the Soviet missiles.

  The alternative that Allan saw before him was to stay on in Paris where he would certainly have his hands full with preventing the ambassador and her husband from creating diplomatic crises just by opening their mouths. Since Amanda and Herbert were two, and Allan couldn’t possibly be in more than one place at a time, he agreed to Secret Agent Hutton’s proposal. It sounded less stressful. Besides, it would be nice to meet Yury after all these years.

  Yury still had his hands over his face, but he was peeping at Allan between his fingers. Had Yury heard Herbert Einstein’s name mentioned? Yury remembered him and it would certainly be g
ood news if Herbert too had survived the kidnapping and the prison camp that Beria had sent him to.

  Oh, yes, Allan confirmed. And then he told the story briefly, the story of the twenty years together with Herbert; about how his friend first wanted nothing more than to die, but when he finally did so, dropping dead at the age of seventy-six last December in Paris, he had completely changed his mind about that. He left behind him a successful wife – now widow – who was a diplomat in Paris, and two teenage children. The last reports from the French capital said that the family had coped well with Herbert’s death, and that Mrs Einstein had become something of a favourite in important circles. Her French was admittedly dreadful, but that was part of her charm; now and then she said stupid things that she couldn’t possibly mean.

  ‘But we seem to have got off our subject,’ said Allan. ‘You forgot to answer my question. What about becoming a spy. Isn’t it time for a change?’

  ‘But Allan Emmanuel, my good friend. This simply can’t be happening! I am more honoured for my services to the mother country than any other non-military person in the modern history of the Soviet Union. It is absolutely out of the question that I should become a spy!’ said Yury and raised his glass to his mouth.

  ‘Don’t say that, dear Yury,’ said Larissa, and let her husband knock back drink number six, as he had knocked back number five.

  ‘Isn’t it better to drink your vodka instead of spraying it all over?’ Allan asked kindly.

  Larissa Popova expanded upon her reasoning, while her husband again put his hands in front of his face. She and Yury would both be sixty-five soon, and what did they actually have to thank the Soviet Union for? Yes, her husband had received lots and lots of decorations and awards, and that in turn led to fine tickets at the Opera. But otherwise?

  Larissa didn’t wait for her husband’s answer, but went on to say that they were both shut up inside Arzamas-16, a city the very name of which would make anybody depressed. And behind barbed wire too. Yes, Larissa knew that they were free to come and go as they wished, but now Yury mustn’t interrupt her because she was far from finished.

  For whose sake had Yury slaved day after day? First it was for Stalin, and he was completely mad. Then it was Khrushchev’s turn, and the only sign that man showed of any human warmth was that he had Marshal Beria executed. And now it was Brezhnev – who smelled bad!

  ‘Larissa!’ exclaimed Yury Borisovich in horror.

  ‘Now don’t you sit there and Larissa me, dear Jilij. That Brezhnev smells – those are your own words.’

  She went on to say that Allan Emmanuel had come at a most opportune moment, because she had recently become more and more depressed at the thought of dying inside that barbed wire fence in the city that officially didn’t exist. Could Larissa and Yury even count on real gravestones? Or would you need coded language on them too, for security reasons?

  ‘Here lies Comrade X and his dear wife Y,’ said Larissa.

  Yury didn’t answer. His dear wife might have something of a point there. And now Larissa delivered the knockout blow:

  ‘So why not spy for a few years together with your friend here, and then we’ll be helped to flee to New York and once there we can go to the Metropolitan every evening. We’ll get a life, dear Yury, just before we die.’

  While Yury looked as if he was giving in, Allan went on to explain in more detail how this had come about. He had by a rather roundabout route met a Mr Hutton in Paris, and this Hutton was a man who seemed to be close to ex-President Johnson and also to have a high position within the CIA.

  When Hutton heard that Allan knew Yury Borisovich from long ago, and that Yury possibly owed Allan a favour, then Hutton had worked out a plan.

  Allan hadn’t listened very carefully to the global political aspects of the plan, because when people started talking politics then he stopped listening. It sort of happened by itself.

  The Soviet nuclear physicist had come to his senses, and now he nodded in recognition. Politics wasn’t Yury’s favourite subject, not in any way. He was of course a socialist heart and soul, but if anybody asked him to elaborate, he’d run into problems.

  Allan attempted to summarize what Secret Agent Hutton had said. It had something to do with the fact that the Soviet Union would either attack the USA with nuclear weapons, or it wouldn’t.

  Yury agreed that such was the situation. Either/or, those were the alternatives.

  Furthermore, the CIA man Hutton, as far as Allan could remember, had expressed concern as to the consequences a Soviet attack would have for the USA.

  Because even if the Soviet nuclear arsenal was only big enough to wipe out America once, Hutton thought that was bad enough.

  Yury Borisovich nodded a third time, and said that without a doubt it would be pretty bad for the American people if the USA was wiped out.

  But how Hutton tied all the ends together, that Allan couldn’t really say. For some reason, he wanted to know what the Soviet arsenal consisted of. When he had found out, he could recommend that President Johnson start negotiations with the Soviet Union over atomic disarmament. Although now, of course, Johnson wasn’t the president any longer, so… no, Allan didn’t know. Politics was often not only unnecessary, but sometimes also unnecessarily complicated.

  Yury was the technical boss of the entire Soviet nuclear weapons programme, and he knew everything about the programme’s strategy, geography and force. But during his twenty-three years in the service of the Soviet nuclear programme, he hadn’t thought – and hadn’t needed to think – a single political thought. That suited Yury and his health exceptionally well. He had over the course of the years survived three different leaders as well as Marshal Beria. To live so long and stay in a high position was not the fate of many powerful men in the Soviet Union.

  Yury knew what sacrifices Larissa had had to make. And now, when they really deserved a pension and a dacha by the Black Sea, the extent of her self-sacrifice was greater than ever. But she had never complained. Never ever. So now Yury listened all the more closely when she said:

  ‘Beloved, dear Yury. Let us, together with Allan Emmanuel, contribute a little to peace in this world, and let us then move to New York. You can give the medals back and Brezhnev can stuff them up his backside.’

  Yury gave up and said ‘yes’ to the whole deal (except for the bit about Brezhnev’s backside) and soon afterwards, Yury and Allan agreed that President Nixon probably didn’t need to hear the entire truth, but rather something that would make him happy. Because a happy Nixon would please Brezhnev, and if they were both happy then there surely couldn’t be a war, could there?

  Allan had just recruited a spy by holding up a poster in a public place, in the country with the world’s most effective secret police apparatus. Both a military GRU captain and a civilian KGB director were also at the Bolshoi Theatre the evening in question, together with their wives. Both of them, like everybody else, had seen the man with the poster on the bottom step. And both of them had been in the business far too long to sound the alarm to some colleague on duty. Anybody who was doing anything of a counter-revolutionary nature did not do so in such a public way.

  Nobody could be that stupid.

  In addition, there were at least a handful of professional KGB and GRU informers at the restaurant where the actual recruiting was successfully carried out that evening. At table number nine, a man spluttered vodka over the food, hid his face in his hands, waved his arms about, rolled his eyes and was told off by his wife — in other words, a completely normal scene in any Russian restaurant. Not worth noting.

  So it came about that a politically blind American agent was allowed to cook up a global peace strategy together with a politically blind Soviet nuclear weapons boss – without either the KGB or the GRU putting in their veto. When the European CIA boss in Paris, Ryan Hutton, received notice that the recruitment was completed, he said to himself that Karlsson had to be more professional than he seemed.

  The Bolshoi Theatr
e renewed its repertoire three or four times a year. In addition, there would be at least one annual guest performance like the one from the Vienna Opera.

  Thus there were a handful of occasions every year when Allan and Yury Borisovich could meet discreetly in Yury and Larissa’s hotel suite to cook up some suitable nuclear weapons information to be sent to the CIA. They mixed fantasy with reality in such a way that from an American perspective the information was both credible and encouraging.

  One consequence of Allan’s intelligence reports was that President Nixon’s staff at the beginning of the 1970s started to work on Moscow to bring about a summit meeting with mutual disarmament on the agenda. Nixon felt safe knowing that the USA was the stronger of the two.

  Chairman Brezhnev, for his part, was not actually against the idea of a disarmament treaty, because his intelligence reports told him that the Soviet Union was the stronger of the two. What complicated the picture was that a cleaning lady at the CIA section for intelligence reports had sold some remarkable information to the GRU. She had got hold of documents sent from the CIA office in Paris, which indicated that the CIA had a spy placed at the centre of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. The problem was that the information he sent was not correct. If Nixon wanted to disarm on the basis of false information that a Soviet mythomaniac sent to the CIA in Paris, then of course Brezhnev had nothing against it. But the whole thing was so complicated that it required time to think. And the mythomaniac had to be found.

  Brezhnev’s first measure was to call in his technical nuclear weapons boss, the unswervingly loyal Yury Borisovich Popov, and ask for an analysis of where the disinformation to the Americans could have originated. Because even if what the CIA had obtained severely underestimated the Soviet nuclear weapons capacity, the way the documents were formulated showed a worryingly good insight into the topic. Which was why expert assistance was needed from Popov.