The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

North Korea

Allan and Julius met Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström in the breakfast room before the friends’ first workday in the plutonium factory north of Pyongyang.

As the three took their seats, she informed them that the diplomatic passports she’d promised were on their way from Beijing by courier. If all went well, she would be able to hand them over the next morning. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, but I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.’

‘Even this much has made our situation a little brighter,’ said Allan.

Julius just nodded. The minister for foreign affairs was still wonderful, but no one could be so fantastic as to cause him to stop brooding about how his life was almost over and he would never get to see his beloved asparagus again. Or the money it generated.

‘My meeting with Kim is tomorrow,’ Margot Wallström went on. ‘He’s already indicated that he wants me out of here afterwards, meaning that my departure will occur the next day at the latest. Have you had time to come up with a way to sneak out with me?’

‘Have we, Allan?’ Julius wondered.

But the hundred-and-one-year-old’s mind was elsewhere. Instead of responding he said that the black tablet seemed to be in the best possible mood at that very moment. First there was the Polish EU parliamentarian who maintained that women ought to be paid less than men on the ground that they were less intelligent. Speaking of male intelligence, Trump in the United States had just tweeted that one of the world’s most beloved and award-winning actresses was incompetent. And in Brazil, President Temer stood accused of corruption after having replaced the corruption-tainted Rousseff, who had been removed from office after taking over from Lula, who was now waiting to be locked up for corruption.

‘Wasn’t there someone who wrote that humans are to be pitied?’ Allan said, adding that, speaking of Trump, he didn’t quite understand what ‘tweeting’ was.

Julius gazed at his friend vacantly.

The minister said that, given the opportunity, she would be happy to explain to Karlsson the phenomenon that was Twitter, or for that matter let them delve into Swedish literary history. But for the moment, the more urgent matter at hand was whether the gentlemen had some plan for survival.

Allan said that if the minister was so determined to change the subject, then his response would be that ‘plan’ might be an exaggeration.

‘Then, Mr Karlsson, what would you call what you do have, if it’s not a plan?’

‘Nothing at all,’ said Allan. ‘Except problems. And a certain amount of confidence. Mostly problems, or mostly confidence, depending on which one of us is asked.’

Margot Wallström said she was addressing both of them. Since Julius appeared to have slipped into hopelessness, it was up to Allan to speak for them.

It seemed likely that much would clear up once they had completed their first workday at the plutonium factory. After all, sometimes solutions fall into your lap just when you least expect them, most recently when he and Julius were sitting with water up to their knees in a woven basket on the open sea. The water was warm, so they were doing fine in that respect, but they didn’t have much else to be happy about.

‘And then a ship came to our rescue. That was quite a stroke of luck.’

‘Was it?’ said Julius, who had woken from his paralysis. ‘Couldn’t that ruddy ship have been from a country other than this one?’

‘Eat your breakfast, Julius. There are worse countries to end up in. Or maybe there aren’t, but here we are. And the food may be strange, but it tastes good.’

The table was laden with rice, fish, yellow soup of unknown ingredients, and something they called kimchi. The whole spread was completed with Western coffee and French croissants in an unholy alliance.

‘I recall when I was in China just after the war, to blow up bridges. Coffee was out of the question back then. But they did have vodka made from rice. I can think of worse ways to start the day.’

The minister for foreign affairs didn’t know whether to be impressed by Karlsson’s carefree nature or join Jonsson in his anxious state. Neither option was actually relevant to the gentlemen’s situation, though, so she let it go.

‘As the time of my departure necessarily approaches, I will inform you of the exact hour. If you turn up you turn up. Otherwise I promise to cause the biggest diplomatic brouhaha I can as soon as I’ve landed in the West. I know better than to pull at any more loose threads around here. If our friend in the palace should get the idea that I’m breaking any laws, he might very well have me arrested. A representative of the UN Security Council imprisoned in North Korea! That would lead to a crisis beyond anything we’ve seen so far. Do you understand the fix I’m in?’

Allan noted that the minister had finished her breakfast and was about to stand up. ‘May I have that croissant? As long as the minister is leaving, I mean.’

‘Dammit, Allan,’ said Julius.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström said that Allan could help himself. With that she excused herself: she had business to attend to at the embassy to prepare for her upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un. To what end? one might wonder, but still.

So she went. As she waited in the lobby for the limousine to roll up, she heard Karlsson telling his friend about President Erdogan in Turkey, who had called the entire population of the Netherlands Fascists, Chancellor Merkel of Germany a Nazi, and Israel a terrorist state that devoted most of its resources to killing children.

‘I don’t give a crap about what’s-his-name,’ Julius said, annoyed.

‘Nor do I, actually,’ said Allan. ‘But don’t you think he’s exaggerating a bit, this Turk?’

Margot Wallström was invited into the limousine. As she settled inside, she asked herself if the world had made Karlsson crazy, or if it was the other way around.

While Allan seemed uninterested in anything but the contents of his black tablet, Julius shaped up and decided to do what he could to increase the odds of survival for them both. Knowledge, in this context, was not a stupid place to start. He decided to stretch his legs with the aim of studying.

Ryugyong had four public exits. At each stood two guards, although they were called guides, always ready to lead the Swiss man and his assistant back up to their room if they tried to take off on their own. It would not be as easy to escape this hotel as it had been the last one, with or without a balloon. What, incidentally, had they thought they would do next? Were they going to stroll all the way through Pyongyang to the airport? Call a taxi? At what phone number? In which language would they order a car? How would they pay? And what made them think the alarm wouldn’t sound if they made an attempt?

How about a private driver then? The man who would drive them to and from the plutonium factory each day, over the next six days. Perhaps he would do them the kindness of swinging by the airport? If Allan charmed him as only Allan could…

Julius returned to the hundred-and-one-year-old in the breakfast room. It was almost nine o’clock. Allan had eaten up his kimchi and the remaining croissants, except the very last one, which he had stuck into his coat pocket for future use. He welcomed Julius back and said he had found new information on the tablet. Before Julius could stop him, he said that the cost for the wall between Mexico and the United States was going to be four times higher than it would cost to end the famine in East Africa.

‘The famine in East Africa?’

Julius hated Allan’s black tablet and longed for the old man as he had been before all the misery of the world had overtaken him.

‘And listen to this,’ Allan went on. The new hospital in Greater Stockholm had just been supplied with 165 faulty bathrooms. It turned out the water ran in the wrong direction. So they all had to be rebuilt, and surely doing that would cost half an African famine.

Julius blew up. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I sympathize with starving children and faulty bathrooms, but can’t you get it into your skull that we’re on our way to being shot within a few days? What if, for God’s sake, we took things in the proper order?’

Allan pretended to be hurt. ‘Have you thought of something on your own, then, while I was updating myself on life? Or have you spent the whole time moaning and groaning?’

Julius told him about the guards at the exits and reminded Allan of the rules they had to stick to. These included, incidentally, that they must be sitting in a car outside the hotel in under a minute. That car might be the solution to their transportation woes. It, and the man behind the wheel.

‘Then I suppose we should go and say hello to him. It’s always exciting to meet new people. Come, my friend. And chin up!’

The driver welcomed the foreign guests with a salute. Then he asked the gentlemen to climb into the back seat, preferably without bringing with them any of the mud from the puddles.

‘I’d rather sit in front, so we can chat,’ said Allan. ‘My, what fantastic English.’

Julius climbed into the back, and the driver had no time to guide Allan into the same back seat before he was settling into the front.

‘Not entirely proper,’ he said, once he was behind the wheel again.

‘My name is Allan,’ said Allan. ‘What might our driver possibly be called? I understand Kim is common.’

The driver said that his name was as inconsequential as he was. But he took his job seriously. As they knew, the gentlemen were expected to be ready at nine o’clock each morning to be transported to the laboratory, with their return journey scheduled for sixteen hundred hours. The nameless man was supposed to wait outside the laboratory each day in case of unforeseen incidents.

‘I hear the airport is beautiful,’ said Allan. ‘Perhaps we could take a look at it tomorrow or thereabouts. Would that suit Mr Nameless?’

It would not. The only departure from the route between hotel and laboratory would occur that afternoon, for the driver had orders to take the gentlemen to the leading shopping centre in Pyongyang.

‘But surely a little detour couldn’t—’

‘Yes, it could,’ said the driver.

He was not charming. Allan took his extra croissant from his coat pocket. The driver reacted with horror. He stopped the car and said that consumption of any sort was strictly forbidden in his car.

‘Throw that food in the ditch immediately!’

Throw away food? Was that such a bright idea? If Allan understood correctly, food was less common in this country than military parades.

‘No one starves in the land of the Supreme Leader,’ said the driver. ‘Now throw it away!’

Allan did as he said.

‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t be hungry,’ the driver added.

Then no more was said in the car until the next time the driver opened his mouth.

‘We have arrived.’

‘Thanks for a pleasant journey,’ said Allan.

Coming and going as one wished was as impossible at the plutonium factory as it was at the hotel. But security was limited to a strict door guard, who inspected everything and everyone who passed in either direction.

‘Good day,’ said Allan. ‘My name is Allan Karlsson and I wonder if you – unlike our driver – might have a name as well?’

The guard assured Allan that he did. But right now his primary objective was to go through Mr Karlsson’s pockets. Nothing inappropriate could be allowed into the plant. Or out of it.

Allan said he hoped he and his friend Julius would not be classified as ‘inappropriate’, because that would lead to problems for all involved. But he hadn’t caught the guard’s name.

‘Good,’ said the guard, allowing the alleged Swiss men to pass.

Allan planned to spend most of the day talking nonsense with the laboratory director who had, some time earlier, replaced the colleague who had passed away. This was the same man who had met him and Julius at the harbour in Nampo the day before.

Allan persisted in wanting to know what people were called, but the North Koreans were playing hard to get.

‘You can call me Mr Engineer,’ said the laboratory director.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Allan. ‘If that’s the way it’s going to be, I want to be called Mr Karlsson.’

‘You already are,’ said the engineer.

Once the titles were sorted out, Allan devoted a considerable part of the day to wasting time. He gave a speech on the importance of keeping the laboratory clean, another about the fact that nuclear weapons were serious business, and a third about how the approaching spring was worth looking forward to.

The engineer grew impatient. ‘Isn’t it about time we got to work?’

‘Got to work?’ said Allan. ‘Just what I was thinking. I was thinking, Now it’s about time we got to work.’

Allan’s acutely incomplete plan was, of course, that he and Julius would leave the country with the four kilos of enriched uranium they’d arrived with. One positive factor was that they wouldn’t have to search for the briefcase because it was no longer on the Supreme Leader’s desk in the palace. Instead it was standing out in the open, against one wall of the laboratory, waiting to be needed.

‘First I will ask permission visually to inspect the uranium I’m here to refine,’ said Allan.

‘Why?’ asked the engineer.

Allan didn’t quite know why, but surely there was a good reason to know what the item you were supposed to steal looked like. ‘To make sure you haven’t been tricked,’ he said. ‘If you only knew how much fake uranium is for sale, Mr Engineer, you would be scared out of your wits. Although perhaps that’s already the case.’

‘What is?’

‘That you’re scared out of your wits. Well?’

The engineer shook his head at the possibly senile expert and went to fetch the briefcase. He placed it on the laboratory counter and opened it.

Enriched uranium has a high density and isn’t terribly dangerous from a radiation standpoint. What Allan could see was a package the size of a brick, encased in a thin layer of lead. He measured its length and width. ‘Twenty-eight by twelve centimetres. That should mean around twenty-seven by eleven inside the lead. That is perfectly correct! My congratulations, Mr Engineer.’

The engineer was surprised. Not so much by the pronouncement as how quickly it had come. ‘Have you already concluded your inspection? Don’t you want to open the package?’

‘No. Why would I? The measurements are correct. Now let’s just weigh it, to be on the safe side.’

Allan took it to the laboratory scale a few metres away.

‘What would the correct weight be?’ asked the engineer.

Allan didn’t respond until he saw the number on the scale.

‘Five point twenty-two kilos. Exactly right, if we include the eight-millimetre layer of lead. My double congratulations, Mr Engineer. You seem to be a man who knows what he’s doing, after all.’

The engineer didn’t follow. ‘After all?’ he said.

‘Let’s not quibble over words. Why don’t we put the briefcase back where it was, and then perhaps we can finally move on? We have a lot to deal with and far too little time.’

The engineer wondered inwardly how it could have become his own fault that they weren’t getting anywhere.

‘So, where were we?’ Allan asked. ‘Have we discussed how important it is to keep the laboratory clean?’

‘Yes,’ said the engineer. ‘Twice.’

‘And how important it is to make sure the uranium is the right weight?’

‘Wasn’t that what you just did?’

Julius looked on in silence. A greater natural talent than Allan’s could not reasonably be expected to exist.

The newly appointed director engineer was having a tough time. His future was entirely dependent on the results of Allan Karlsson’s work. Even more so since the engineer had put in a good word for him to the Supreme Leader after the brief meeting at the harbour.

The plutonium factory had, up to that point, not delivered what it should, and the Russians were humming and hahing about their promise to provide a centrifuge. As a last resort, the engineer had requested enriched uranium as an ingredient that would enable them to fulfil the Supreme Leader’s expectations.

To the engineer’s relative horror, the aforementioned Russians had arranged for a contact in Africa and now he had received a test shipment with which to prove himself. And into the bargain he’d got an ancient expert who was said to know how one could achieve a result multiplied five- or tenfold using the same amount of raw material. Hetisostat pressure one thousand two hundred? The engineer was no dummy, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t follow this concept to any comprehensible conclusion. Well, he still had five days. Tomorrow, he intended to keep a much tighter rein on the conversation.

As Julius dozed off in the back seat, on their trip to the shopping centre, Allan sat in front, thinking. After all, he had no one to talk to. And then he thought a little more. And after a while, he said to Julius: ‘Do you know what I have?’

Julius cracked open an eye. ‘No, I don’t. What do you have?’

‘A plan.’

Julius immediately woke up.

‘For us to get out of this country?’

‘Yes. That was what you wanted, after all. Or have you changed your mind?’

His friend in the back seat assured him that he had not. He wanted to know more this minute.

Allan’s idea was to trick the engineer into leaving so they could sneak out, take the briefcase of uranium with them through the security check, and convince the waiting driver to leave the car, since he would probably never agree to give them a lift to the airport.

Julius absorbed what Allan had just said.

‘That’s your plan?’ he said.

‘In short, yes.’

‘Aside from all the rest, how are you planning to get the uranium past the guard at the door? What will make the driver leave his car? And how do we get into the minister’s plane without being caught by the personnel at the airport?’

Allan said that was too many questions all at once for an old brain.

The largest department store in Pyongyang, and the only one worthy of the name, consisted of four storeys very full of wares and very empty of people buying them. The nameless driver guided Allan and Julius from floor to floor.

On the ground floor was men’s and women’s clothing. They already had the former; they didn’t need the latter.

The second floor sold shoes, coats, gloves and bags. Why not a coat each, as long as the Supreme Leader was footing the bill? It was chilly out.

On a shelf near the coats stood a row of around forty briefcases, all identical to one another – and to the uranium briefcase in the laboratory. It appeared that North Korea produced one model of briefcase alone.

‘Communism has its upsides,’ said Allan. He picked one up.

Julius realized that the hundred-and-one-year-old had just made up his mind to switch one briefcase for the other.

The third floor contained nothing of interest. On offer there were toys and various types of stationery and art supplies. Allan was first, Julius a few steps behind him, with the apparently bored driver a few steps behind Julius.

On the fourth floor, Julius picked up a roll of lead tape. ‘What do you say about this, Allan?’

‘Clever boy. I think we’ve finished shopping now.’

Back on the ground floor, a young woman stood at the cash register, waiting for customers. When Allan and Julius placed their coats, briefcase and lead tape on the counter, the driver said she should send the bill to the Supreme Leader, at which the woman fainted. The driver picked her up off the floor, apologized to the Swiss men and said he ought to have known better.

On the brief trip back to the hotel, the driver had time to emphasize to Julius in the back seat and Allan, who still insisted on sitting in the front, that it was strictly forbidden to bring anything from the breakfast table into the car the next morning.

‘Not even kimchi?’ said Allan.

‘Especially not kimchi.’

‘We hear what you’re saying, Mr Nameless. We’ll get up extra early to make sure we’re full and in fine form next time we see one another.’

Allan spent the rest of the evening sitting at his desk in the hotel room with the black tablet. This time he had paper and pen as well. He seemed to be writing down chemical formulas. And giving a contented ‘Hmm’ now and then. Meanwhile Julius searched the room for a suitable object to wrap in lead tape. At last he settled on the black box of toiletries he’d found next to the sink.

‘Good choice,’ Allan praised him. ‘The right size and everything.’

The shape and appearance of the box were rather like the engineer’s enriched uranium. It weighed a good deal less, to be sure, but what would the guard at the door know about that?

Just before midnight, Allan had finished surfing and writing. ‘There we go. Now the engineer and I will have a lot to avoid talking about tomorrow.’