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

by Jonas Jonasson

  Popov read what he and his friend Allan had cooked up, and shrugged his shoulders. Those documents, Popov said, could have been written by any student at all after a bit of research in a library. It was nothing for Comrade Brezhnev to worry about, if Comrade Brezhnev would allow a simple physicist to have an opinion on the matter?

  Yes, that was exactly why Brezhnev had asked Yury Borisovich to come. He thanked his technical nuclear weapons boss heartily for his help, and sent his regards to Larissa Aleksandrevna, Yury Borisovich’s charming wife.

  While the KGB set up discreet surveillance on literature related to nuclear weapons at two hundred libraries in the Soviet Union, Brezhnev continued to wonder how he should respond to Nixon’s unofficial proposals, right up until the day – the horror of it! – when Nixon was invited to China to meet that fatty Mao Tse-tung! Brezhnev and Mao had recently told each other to go to hell once and for all, and now there was suddenly a risk that China and the USA might form an unholy alliance against the Soviet Union. And that must not be allowed to happen.

  So, the following day, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, received an official invitation to visit the Soviet Union. This was followed by hard work off stage and when one thing had finally led to another, Brezhnev and Nixon had not only shaken hands but also signed two separate disarmament treaties: one concerning anti-ballistic missiles (the ABM Treaty) and the other concerning strategic weapons. As the signing took place in Moscow, Nixon seized the opportunity to shake hands with the agent at the American Embassy who had so brilliantly supplied him with information about the Soviet nuclear weapons capacity.

  ‘You’re welcome, Mr President,’ said Allan. ‘But aren’t you going to invite me to dinner too? They usually do.’

  ‘Who does?’ asked the astounded president.

  ‘Well,’ said Allan. ‘The people who were satisfied with my help… Franco and Truman and Stalin… and Chairman Mao… although he didn’t give me anything but noodles… but it was very late in the evening of course… and the Swedish prime minister only gave me coffee when I come to think of it. Mind you, that wasn’t so bad either, considering there was rationing in those days…’

  Luckily President Nixon had been briefed as to the agent’s past, so he could calmly say that there was regrettably not time for dinner with Mr Karlsson. But then he added that an American president could not readily be less obliging than a Swedish prime minister, so a cup of coffee was definitely called for, and cognac to go with it. Now this very minute, if that suited?

  Allan thanked him for the invitation, and asked if a double cognac might be in order if he refrained from the coffee. Nixon answered that the American national budget could probably support both.

  The two gentlemen had a pleasant hour together, or at least, as pleasant as it could be for Allan to listen to President Nixon talk politics. The American president asked about how the political game worked in Indonesia. Without mentioning Amanda by name, Allan described in detail how careers in politics came about there. President Nixon listened carefully and seemed to be giving the subject his serious attention.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Interesting.’

  Allan and Yury were pleased with each other and with the developments. It seemed that the GRU and KGB had calmed down when it came to searching for the spy, and Allan and Yury found that comforting. Or as Allan put it:

  ‘It is better not to have two murder organisations on your heels.’

  Then he added that the two friends ought not to spend too much time on the KGB, GRU and all the other abbreviations, which they in any case couldn’t do anything about. Instead, it was high time to cook up the next intelligence report for Secret Agent Hutton and his president. Considerable rust damage to the middle-range missile store in Kamchatka, could they elaborate on that?

  Yury praised Allan for his delightful imagination. It made it so easy to put the intelligence reports together. And that meant more time for food, drink and good company.

  Richard M. Nixon had every reason to be satisfied with most things. Right up until the time when he didn’t have any reason at all.

  The American people loved their president and re-elected him in 1972, in a landslide. Nixon won in forty-nine states, George McGovern just managed to win one.

  But then everything got more difficult. And even more difficult. And in the end, Nixon had to do what no other American president had done before.

  He had to resign.

  Allan read about the so-called Watergate scandal in all the available papers at the city library in Moscow. In summary, Nixon had evidently cheated on his taxes, received illegal campaign donations, ordered secret bombings, persecuted enemies and made use of break-ins and telephone bugging. Allan thought that the president must have been impressed by that conversation over a double cognac in Paris. And then he said to the newspaper picture of Nixon:

  ‘You should have gone in for a career in Indonesia instead. You would have gone far there.’

  The years went by. Nixon was replaced by Gerald Ford who was replaced by Jimmy Carter. And all the while Brezhnev stayed where he was. Just like Allan, Yury and Larissa. The three of them continued to meet five or six times a year, and they had just as good a time on every occasion. The meetings always resulted in a suitably imaginative report about the current status of the Soviet arsenal of nuclear weapons. Over the years, Allan and Yury had chosen to tone down the Soviet capacity more and more, because they noticed how much more satisfied this made the Americans (regardless of who the president was, it seemed) and how much more pleasant the atmosphere then seemed to be between the leaders of the two countries.

  But what joyous thing lasts for ever?

  One day, just before the SALT II treaty was signed, Brezhnev thought that Afghanistan needed his help. So he sent his elite troops into the country, and they happened to kill the sitting president, so that Brezhnev had no choice but to appoint his own.

  This of course irritated President Carter (to put it mildly). The ink on the SALT treaty had barely dried. So Carter arranged a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow as well as increasing the secret CIA support to the mujahidin, the fundamentalist guerrilla forces in Afghanistan.

  Carter didn’t have time to do much more than that, because very soon Ronald Reagan took over and he had a much shorter temper when it came to communists in general and the old relic Brezhnev in particular.

  ‘He does seem to be dreadfully angry, that Reagan,’ Allan said to Yury at the first agent spy meeting they had after the new president had been sworn in.

  ‘Yes,’ Yury answered. ‘And now we can’t dismantle any more of the Soviet arsenal of nuclear weapons because then there would be nothing left.’

  ‘In that case, I suggest we do the opposite,’ said Allan. ‘That is bound to soften up Reagan a bit, just wait and see.’

  So the next spy report to the USA, via Secret Agent Hutton, bore witness to a sensational Soviet initiative in their missile defences. Allan’s imagination had gone right out into space. From up there, Allan thought up the idea that Soviet rockets would be able to pick off everything that the USA intended to attack with down on Earth.

  With that, the politically blind American agent Allan, and his politically blind Russian nuclear weapons boss Yury, had laid the foundations for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because Ronald Reagan blew his top when he read the intelligence report that Allan sent, and he immediately embarked upon his Strategic Defence Initiative, also known as Star Wars. The description of the project, with its satellites with laser guns, was almost a copy of what Allan and Yury had cooked up some months earlier, in a hotel room in Moscow, under the influence of what they thought was a suitable anount of vodka. The American budget for defence against nuclear weapons reached astronomical sums. The Soviet Union tried to match this, but couldn’t afford it. Instead the country started to crack at the seams.

  Whether it was from the shock over the new secret American military plans (Reagan wouldn’t e
ven tell the American people about it until 23rd March 1983), or for some other reason, one can’t say, but on 10th November 1982, Brezhnev died of a heart attack. The following evening, Allan, Yury and Larissa happened to have one of their intelligence meetings.

  ‘Isn’t it time to stop all this nonsense?’ Larissa asked.

  ‘Yes, let’s stop this nonsense,’ said Yury.

  Allan nodded, and agreed that everything must come to an end, especially nonsense perhaps.

  And he added that the following morning he was going to phone Secret Agent Hutton. Thirteen and a half years of service to the CIA was enough; that most of it had been make-believe was neither here nor there. All three agreed that it was best to keep that part secret from Secret Agent Hutton and his so irascible president.

  Now the CIA would have to see to it that Yury and Larissa were airlifted to New York, they had already promised that, while Allan himself was wondering what things were like in good old Sweden.

  The CIA and Secret Agent Hutton kept their promise. Yury and Larissa were transported to the USA, via Czechoslovakia and Austria. They were given an apartment on West 64th Street in Manhattan, and an annual stipend that wildly exceeded their needs. And it wasn’t particularly expensive for the CIA either, because in January 1984 Yury died in his sleep and three months later his Larissa followed him, dying of sorrow. They were both seventy-nine years old and they had their happiest year together in 1983, which was when the Metropolitan Opera celebrated its hundredth anniversary with an endless array of unforgettable experiences for the couple.

  Allan, for his part, packed his bags and informed the administrative section of the American Embassy in Moscow that he was about to leave for good. That was when the section discovered that Allen Carson for unclear reasons had only been paid his additional foreign allowance during the thirteen years and five months he had been in service.

  ‘Didn’t you ever notice that you didn’t get a salary?’ asked the official.

  ‘No,’ said Allan. ‘I don’t eat much and vodka is cheap here. I thought it was more than enough.’

  ‘For thirteen years?’

  ‘Yes, how time flies.’

  The official gave Allan a strange look and then promised to make sure that the money would be paid via cheque as soon as Mr Carson, or whatever he was really called, reported to the American Embassy in Stockholm.

  Chapter 27

  Friday, 27th May–Thursday, 16th June 2005

  Amanda Einstein was still alive. She was now eighty-four years old and lived in a suite at the luxury hotel in Bali that was owned and run by her eldest son, Allan.

  Allan Einstein was fifty-one years old and had quite a brain, just like his one-year-younger brother, Mao. But while Allan had become a business specialist (for real) and eventually hotel director (he had been given the hotel in question by his mother on his fortieth birthday), his little brother Mao went in for engineering. At first things hadn’t gone too well with his career, because Mao was exceedingly fussy about details. He had been given a job in Indonesia’s leading oil company with the task of ensuring the quality of the production system. Mao’s mistake was that he did. Suddenly, all the mid-level management in the company found that they were no longer able to siphon off various sums under the table when they had to order repairs, because there was no longer any need to order any repairs. The efficiency of the oil company increased by thirty-five per cent and Mao became the most unpopular person in the organisation. When the general bullying from his colleagues turned into more direct threats, Mao Einstein thought it wise to withdraw and instead got a job in the United Arab Emirates. He soon increased efficiency there too, while the company in Indonesia to everyone’s relief soon returned to its old level.

  Amanda was endlessly proud of her two sons. But she couldn’t understand how they could both be so clever. Herbert had once told her that there were some good genes in his family, but she couldn’t really remember what he was referring to.

  Be that as it may, when Amanda received the telephone call from Allan she was overjoyed and she wished him and all his friends a warm welcome to Bali. She would immediately discuss the matter with Allan Junior; he would have to kick out some other guests if the hotel happened to be full. And she would phone Mao in Abu Dhabi and order him to come home for a holiday. And, of course, they served drinks at the hotel, with and without a parasol. And yes, Amanda promised not to get involved in the actual serving of the drinks.

  Allan said that they would all turn up soon. And then he ended with some encouraging words about how he thought that there wasn’t a single person in the world who had gone so far with such a limited intelligence as Amanda had done. And Amanda thought that was so beautifully said, that tears came to her eyes.

  ‘Hurry up and get here, Allan dear. Hurry up!’

  Prosecutor Ranelid opened the afternoon’s press conference with the sad revelation about police dog Kicki. She had indicated the presence of a corpse on that inspection trolley at Åkers Foundry, and that in turn had led to a number of assumptions on the part of the prosecutor – which of course were correct when based on the dog’s indications, but nevertheless wrong, so very wrong.

  It had now come to light that just before this assignment the dog in question had lost her mind and was on that account not to be trusted. There was, to put it simply, never any corpse in that place.

  It had just come to the prosecutor’s notice that the police dog had been put down, and the prosecutor thought that was a wise decision by its handler. (Kicki, under an assumed name, was on her way instead to the dog-handler’s brother in the north of Sweden, but the prosecutor never got to know that.)

  Furthermore, Prosecutor Ranelid regretted that the Eskilstuna Police had neglected to inform him as to the new, and most honourable, evangelical direction of the Never Again organisation. Had he been in possession of that knowledge, the prosecutor would most certainly have given other instructions to further the efforts of the investigation. On behalf of the police, Prosecutor Ranelid would like to apologize for the conclusions that he had drawn. They were based partly on a crazy canine, partly on the information supplied – and wrongly so – by the police.

  As for the discovery of the corpse of Henrik ‘Bucket’ Hultén in Riga, it was likely that a new murder investigation would be instigated. The case of the similarly deceased Bengt ‘Bolt’ Bylund was, however, now closed. There were strong indications that the said Bylund had joined the French Foreign Legion. Since all legionnaires join up under a pseudonym, it was not possible to confirm definitively, but it was nevertheless highly likely that the said Bylund was a victim of the suicide bombing that had taken place in the centre of Djibouti a couple of days earlier.

  The prosecutor presented a detailed account of the various protagonists’ relationships, and in that context showed the assembled media representatives the copy of the super thin bible that he had received earlier that day from Bosse Ljungberg. At the end of the press conference, the journalists wanted to know the whereabouts of Allan Karlsson and his entourage so as to obtain their version of events, but Prosecutor Ranelid had no information to give them on that score (he had absolutely nothing to gain from allowing the senile geriatric to spout on about Churchill and God knows what else with representatives of the press). So the focus of the journalists was now switched to Bucket Hultén. He had presumably been murdered, and the previously presumed murderers were no longer suspected. So who had killed Hultén?

  Ranelid had hoped that the matter would be conveniently forgotten, but now he had to emphasize that the investigation would be started immediately after the conclusion of the press conference and he said that he would return to that subject on a later occasion.

  To Prosecutor Ranelid’s amazement, the journalists accepted that, and all the rest of what he had said. Prosecutor Ranelid, and his career, had survived the day.

  Amanda Einstein had asked Allan and his friends to hurry up and travel to Bali, which was what the friends wanted too. At any
moment, a far too skilful journalist might find his way to Bellringer Farm, and it would be safest for all concerned if the place was abandoned. Allan had done his bit by contacting Amanda. The rest was up to The Beauty.

  Not far from Bellringer Farm lay the Såtenäs military airfield and there was a Hercules plane that could swallow an elephant or even two with ease. The plane in question had on one occasion roared over Bellringer Farm and almost scared the elephant to death, and that was what had given The Beauty the idea.

  The Beauty spoke to a colonel at Såtenäs, but he was far more stubborn than he needed to be. He wanted to see every manner of certificate and permission before he could even think of intercontinental transport assistance for a number of people and animals. For example, the military was absolutely forbidden from competing with commercial airlines, and they would need a certificate from the Department of Agriculture that such was not the case. A transport would further require four stopovers, and at each airport a vet would have to be present to check the status of the animal. And as regards the elephant, there was no question of anything less than twelve hours’ rest between flights.

  Damn and blast the Swedish bureaucracy, said The Beauty and instead phoned Lufthansa in Munich.

  They were only slightly more cooperative. They could of course pick up an elephant and a number of accompanying travellers, and that could be done at Landvetter Airport near Gothenburg, and they could of course transport them all to Indonesia. All that was required was a certificate of ownership of the elephant, and that a registered veterinarian accompanied them in the aircraft. And of course necessary documents would need to be provided for admittance to the Republic of Indonesia, for people as well as animals. When those conditions were fulfilled, the airline’s administration could plan the transport within the next three months.