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

North Korea

It was clear that Allan had some sort of plan, after all. And, what was more, Julius had partly gathered what it would involve. But only partly.

In the breakfast room the next day, Allan found a lidded plastic box full of teaspoons under one of the serving tables. He dumped its contents onto the table with the aim of keeping the box, at which point a waitress who had heard the clatter hurried over and asked what he was doing.

Allan instructed Julius to bribe the waitress with the gold lighter he’d stolen from the Indonesian hotel manager.

‘I didn’t steal it,’ Julius protested, as he made a quick deal with the woman. ‘It just ended up in my pocket.’

Allan didn’t bother to start a discussion on the definition of kleptomania. Instead he gave instructions to the overjoyed waitress: ‘Fill this box with muesli and milk, please. Then put the lid on good and tight and leave the rest to the man whose lighter you have just inherited.’

The young woman stopped looking at her reflection in her new possession and dashed off.

‘Muesli and milk must be the last thing our driver wants in his car,’ Julius said.

‘We’re on the same page,’ said Allan.

The mixture was necessary to lure the driver out of his car. Neither Allan nor Julius had the muscles to lift him out, and two things were certain: first, the driver would never leave his car voluntarily; second, he was not going to drive them to the airport, no matter how hard they tried.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström joined them. She had a cup of coffee and a French-Korean croissant while standing at the gentlemen’s table, saying she was in a rush. The diplomatic passports had arrived as they should. The minister handed them over, wrapped in a napkin.

‘Much obliged, Madame Minister,’ said Allan. ‘When might the departure take place? We have a few things to take care of today. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to know.’

Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström was just getting to that. Kim Jong-un had conveyed the message that their next meeting would not only be their last but would be followed by her departure from the country that very afternoon.

‘In short, he doesn’t want anything to do with me. In contrast to President Trump, whose staff have given me orders to come and explain a few things. The airport has confirmed that my plane will take off at fifteen thirty.’

‘Today?’ Julius asked anxiously.

‘What is it the American president wants explained?’ Allan asked.

‘I can’t rule out the possibility that your name may come up, Mr Karlsson.’

The minister looked sad. Julius felt sorry for her. But mostly he felt sorry for himself.

‘As I said, fifteen thirty,’ said the minister. ‘I hope you will be there.’ She wasn’t sure she would ever see Messrs Jonsson and Karlsson again.

Julius wasn’t either. ‘Today?’ he repeated. ‘How on earth are we going to have time—’

‘Don’t start, Julle,’ said Allan. ‘Either this will all work out or it won’t. I have a hard time envisaging any other option. Come on, it’s already nine, and we have a job to mismanage. And bring the muesli.’

‘My name is not Julle,’ said Julius.

The guard at the entrance to the plutonium factory had strict and detailed instructions. Everyone who came and went got the same treatment.

On day two, Karlsson and Jonsson showed up, each in a new coat. The guard went through all the pockets and corners but found nothing remarkable.

Karlsson, in addition, was carrying a briefcase that contained a silver package of some sort, as well as a few documents full of handwritten formulas.

‘What are these?’ the guard enquired, of the formulas.

‘These are the proud Democratic Republic’s nuclear future,’ said Allan.

The guard put back the papers in horror. ‘And this?’

He held up the package.

‘Those are toiletries,’ Allan said truthfully. ‘Wrapped up as a gift for Mr Engineer. But please don’t say anything – it’s supposed to be a surprise.’

This was extraordinary and mundane at once. On the one hand, the nation’s future, on the other… What?

The guard allowed himself to become suspicious. He carefully unwound the tape until he was able to confirm that the strange old man had told the truth. In the black box he found a razor, shaving cream, soap, shampoo, conditioner, a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste. He opened a few of the bottles to sniff their contents.

‘Do you think he’ll like it?’ Allan asked.

The toothpaste smelt like toothpaste; the shampoo smelt like shampoo. The razor was clearly a razor.

‘I don’t know…’ said the guard. Could it truly be proper to bring in unfamiliar liquids like this?

‘I’m going to have to ask you to tape this up again,’ said Allan. ‘Mr Engineer might arrive at any moment, and it would certainly be a nuisance if…’

And then he arrived. Peevish. ‘What is going on? We were supposed to start ten minutes ago.’

The guard, in all haste, taped up the gift again as Allan entertained the engineer with the story of how what was going on was quite simply that the guard was just doing his job, and honourably at that. Mr Engineer ought to think seriously about whether it wasn’t time to promote the man. As far as Allan could tell, the guard was primed to take on greater tasks. Lead guard, at the very least. Although that would necessitate increasing the number of guards by at least one or he would have no one to lead.

Was Karlsson planning to talk about nothing today as well? This could not continue.

‘Come along!’

While Allan was prattling, the guard had time to return the engineer’s present to its original condition, at which point he handed the closed briefcase to the Swiss nuclear weapons expert. He hadn’t found anything more of which to make note (the muesli mixture was still on the floor in the back seat of the car). He spent a long time gazing after Allan, Julius and the engineer as they went on their way.

Lead guard, he thought. Now that would be something.

The engineer led Karlsson and Jonsson into the laboratory. He had, after the first day, reported to the Supreme Leader that the task of draining the old Swiss man of knowledge was moving slowly, but in the right direction. After all, the fellow was over a hundred years old: perhaps it would be best if he was allowed to work at his own pace? The Supreme Leader agreed. The engineer had five more days to get everything the man knew out of him. This still seemed like plenty of time.

‘Now let’s see,’ Allan said, placing his many pages of freshly written formulas on the engineer’s desk. ‘In my day, of course, fission was the answer to all problems. These days, fission and fusion go hand in hand, but perhaps Mr Engineer is already aware of this.’

The engineer squirmed. That bit about fusion belonged in the category of ‘stating the obvious’. Oh, well, at least the old man had come up with some notes that might be worth studying.

‘No peeping, Mr Engineer. If we move too quickly, it will go wrong.’

The engineer felt there was no risk of moving too quickly, but he decided to be patient for a little longer.

Allan went on: ‘What we see before us is the issue of how much we can compress the uranium you have so successfully gathered.’

‘I know that’s the issue,’ said the engineer. ‘I also know you are expected to have the answer. Is that in these documents?’

Allan looked at the engineer, affronted. Wasn’t it obvious that he had the answer? But they were going to hold off on the documents for now: had the engineer already forgotten this? Allan reiterated that his greatest worry was that his pupil wouldn’t be able to follow their conversations. In which case there was no point in having them.

The engineer said that Mr Karlsson shouldn’t worry about that. A child could follow, at the speed Karlsson went. And the engineer, for his part, had devoted nearly a decade to these issues.

‘With limited results,’ Allan said, then excused himself. There was something he needed to discuss with their private driver, outside the door. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, walking off.

Julius realized that Operation Create Confusion had just begun. He shrugged reassuringly as he met the engineer’s gaze. ‘He has his own way of doing things,’ he said. ‘But it always works out in the end.’

With any luck, he thought.

The hundred-and-one-year-old walked straight past the guard, coat, briefcase and all, and the guard bounced up off his chair and cried, ‘Stop! Where are you going now, Mr Karlsson?’

‘To see my driver,’ said Allan. ‘About an important matter.’

The guard had appreciated Karlsson’s earlier suggestion of a promotion, but that didn’t mean he had any intention of shirking his duties. Thus Allan would have to submit to having his coat and briefcase searched once more. The contents of the briefcase were the same as they had been a few minutes before, minus the documents full of formulas. That was fine: formulas could be taken in but not out.

The driver was polishing the dashboard with a white cloth when Allan knocked on the window to attract his attention. ‘Back to the hotel, sir? Already?’ said the driver.

‘No, I just wanted to check on things here. It’s not too warm? If it is, roll down the window, and there will be improved ventilation.’

The driver looked at the old man. ‘It’s three degrees outside,’ he said.

‘Not too warm?’

‘No,’ said the driver.

Allan’s black tablet was waiting for its master on the passenger seat.

‘If you like, Mr Nameless Driver, you may borrow that while you wait. There’s quite a bit of nudity in it, I’ve noticed.’

Horrified, the driver informed Allan that he had no such plans.

‘That’s that, then,’ said Allan, turning and walking back to the entrance. He almost made it past the guard. But only almost.

‘Give me the coat, please. And the briefcase.’

Allan said he hadn’t taken anything from the car, if memory served, but added that Mr Guard shouldn’t take his word for it. ‘I’ve noticed that at my age things are likely to go wrong when I mean them to be right, and not necessarily right just because I was thinking wrong. Check whatever you need to check. Caution is a virtue. I know the Supreme Leader is of the same opinion.’

The guard became nervous each time the Supreme Leader was mentioned.

Back in the laboratory, Allan said: ‘Listen, I thought of something.’

‘What’s that?’ the lead engineer wondered.

Allan appeared to brace himself before rattling off, at a rapid pace: ‘MgSO₄ – 7H₂O CaCO₃Na₂B₄O₇ – 10H₂O.’

The engineer did not follow. ‘Say that again,’ he said.

‘That is, if we’ll be satisfied to double the explosive charge. But I’m talking more along the lines of a tenfold increase.’

‘Say that again,’ repeated the engineer.

‘Of course,’ said Allan. ‘But we have to do everything in the right order. Haven’t I mentioned that already? Otherwise, in my experience, something will go wrong. And wrong is the wrong way to go, don’t we agree?’

The engineer mumbled that he agreed that wrong would be wrong, while Julius stood next to him, rendered totally mute. Where had all that come from?

It had come, of course, from the black tablet. To the untrained eye (Julius) or the unprepared one (the engineer), it might well have been the solution to the proud nation’s every nuclear weapons-related problem.

But it wasn’t. It was a formula that, in the right hands, described the makeup of bath salts, toothpaste and bleach, respectively. Allan had looked for something nuclear, but instead ended up on a site run by a Canadian hobby-chemist. The chemist wanted to tell the world what he had in his bathroom and cleaning closet. In contrast to what Allan proclaimed far and wide, there was nothing wrong with his memory. Beyond what he’d already said, he still had in reserve formulas for aspirin, baking powder, oven cleaner and a few more. All thanks to a young man in Missisauga on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The engineer could have used an aspirin (but hardly baking powder or oven cleaner). He was back in his impatient mood.

‘Now, once and for all, can we make some progress here?’

‘Of course we can,’ said Allan. ‘I just have to…’

And then he went to the bathroom, where he remained for fifteen minutes.

By the time the great breakout was at hand, Allan had gone on another errand to the nameless driver (to ask if the driver was freezing, considering that it was only three degrees outside) and had guided his conversations with the engineer another few steps forwards, or at least sideways. Meanwhile, Julius did his best to keep the engineer and himself in a decent mood.

In all his haste, Allan had forgotten to brief Julius on his most important contribution that day: keeping the engineer’s attention elsewhere at a specific moment so that Allan could switch one briefcase for the other. The hundred-and-one-year-old made up a reason for the engineer to visit the cold storage room next door, and took the opportunity to give his comrade some brief instructions.

‘Distract him when he comes back.’

‘Distract him?’ said Julius. ‘How?’

‘Just distract him. So I can switch the briefcases.’

‘Why not switch them now while he’s not here?’

Allan looked at his friend. ‘Because I didn’t think of that. I don’t always manage to get as far in my reasoning as those around me feel I ought to. For the most part, this suits me just fine, but on certain occasions…’

That was as far as he got before the engineer returned.

‘We have eight hectograms of gallium in storage,’ he said. ‘Now, in what way is this relevant to compressing the uranium? Please explain it to me as if I were an equal, not an idiot.’

‘Only eight hectograms,’ said Allan, a look of concern on his face.

Then Julius fell headlong to the floor. ‘Help, I’m dying!’

The engineer was thoroughly frightened. Even Allan was startled, although he was the one who’d put in the order.

‘Ow!’ Julius cried, where he lay. ‘Ow!’

Allan stayed where he was as the engineer hurried to Julius’s aid.

‘What’s the matter, Mr Jonsson?’ he said, kneeling beside the possibly dying assistant. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

Julius realized that Allan had already managed to exchange one thing for the other.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I just had a sudden bout of homesickness.’

‘Homesickness?’ said the engineer. ‘You collapsed in a heap on the floor.’

‘Severe homesickness. But now it has passed.’

The engineer, who had thus far considered Julius the more sensible of the two foreigners, had the feeling he was just as bad as his colleague. ‘Shall I help you up, Jonsson?’

‘Thank you, kind engineer,’ said Julius, putting out his hand.

The engineer found himself in a desperate situation. First, because he’d had only a few short minutes at the Nampo harbour to determine whether Karlsson was a charlatan, aware that if he found he was, the engineer himself would have been forced to produce results faster than he might have been ready for. So he had decided Karlsson was the genuine article, the most pressing reason being that the engineer wanted him to be so out of sheer desire to survive. Then had come the painful realization that he was probably neither a charlatan nor in full possession of his mental faculties. And that the assistant’s situation might be equally unfortunate.

The engineer toyed with the idea of explaining to the Supreme Leader that the original question was one of charlatanry, and that nothing had been mentioned about the potential levels of senile dementia. But he realized that wouldn’t work. It left the option of lying to the Supreme Leader (a mind-boggling thought) and saying that the gentlemen were no longer needed: the engineer had come to understand the mechanics of pressure and within a few weeks would be able to convert that knowledge into practical results. In which case he either had the given number of weeks left to live, or he would have to deliver on his promise.

Karlsson had proved to have chemical formulas in his aged skull, and he’d put some of them on paper. When the Swiss men left for the day, the engineer planned to take a closer look.

During lunch he’d lost his temper with Karlsson, who had been reciting from his black tablet by memory about an American TV show host who had first committed a series of sexual harassments, then said he was angry with God, who hadn’t rushed to his defence. The engineer roared his displeasure and said he didn’t give a damn about God or all the Americans in the world, or about hetisostat pressure and what it could do, because he was about to have five hundred kilos of enriched uranium to deal with. When that shipment arrived they would no longer need Karlsson. The engineer promised to drag the old man out of the laboratory if he didn’t shape up immediately.

Five hundred kilos? That was the second time Allan had heard this. Even four kilos was bad enough.

‘There, there, Mr Engineer,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to take that tone with one another, do we? Comrade Stalin in Moscow was once angry with me too, and for that sole reason sent me all the way to Siberia. But all that brought him was a stroke. A bad temper is no good for your health, I like to say.’

The engineer was not feeling well. But he didn’t drop his battle with the muddle-headed Karlsson.

At some point, the hundred-and-one-year-old took a closer look at a photograph on the wall in which the grinning Supreme Leader stood next to a mid-range missile. The Swiss man seemed to be focusing his attention on the tip of the missile; he was contemplatively mumbling another formula. Properly deciphered, it was a combination of vitamin C and smelling salts, but the unprepared engineer thought there might be hope after all.

At one minute to two, it was time. Allan had buttered up the engineer to such an extent that he didn’t even protest when the self-proclaimed expert asked him to run yet another pointless errand to the cold storage room. It was something about the use-by date of the distilled water. Bottle by bottle.

When the engineer had vanished, Allan said: ‘I think it’s time to take off. He probably won’t be back for a few minutes.’

‘Wrong shampoo,’ said Allan, placing the briefcase on the guard’s table and opening the lid. ‘It didn’t smell as much like lavender as it should have. Or whatever it was. The engineer is a quality-oriented gentleman. You can count on another package tomorrow.’

Before the guard had time to take a closer look at the package he recognized, Allan wriggled out of his coat.

‘But you had better check this properly. More than once I have stuck things into my pockets without remembering what or why. Once when I was out shopping I found a padlock in one. To this day I can’t imagine where I had been planning to hang it.’

The guard dug through Karlsson’s pockets and soon had Jonsson’s coat.

‘I’m the same way,’ said Julius. ‘Although I’m more inclined in the direction of cigarette lighters.’

The guard’s eyes darted from coat to coat as Allan calmly closed the lid of the briefcase.

‘We can’t stand here chatting all day, no matter how pleasant it may be. The Supreme Leader is waiting. Done with the coats? That’s good. Come along, Julius.’

The old men walked towards the waiting driver, Julius very eagerly, Allan at his usual pace. They got into the vehicle, which drove off while the guard stood there pondering padlocks, cigarette lighters, the Supreme Leader, and what had just happened.

Thirty seconds later, the engineer came to the entrance. Angrier than ever.

‘Where did those damned idiots go?’

‘Why, they left, Mr Engineer.’

‘Lovely. Tomorrow I’m going to throttle Karlsson.’

The nameless driver was surprised that the international guests wished to return to the hotel when it was only two o’clock.

‘Not the hotel, my dear Whatever-your-name-is. First we’re going to the palace to pick up the Supreme Leader. Important meeting. Exciting, isn’t it?’

The driver went totally pale. To a North Korean civil servant, having the Supreme Leader in your car would be the equivalent of a pastor riding around with Jesus Christ Himself. In fact, the man had orders to drive the guests to the hotel and nowhere else, but the palace was on the way.

‘I understand if this is nerve-racking,’ Allan said. ‘But I know the Supreme Leader well. He’s very amicable. There’s really only one thing that irritates him. Or two, if you include the United States.’

The nameless driver nervously asked what it might be.

‘Filth,’ said Allan. ‘Filth, dust, trash and messes. I recall one time when a poor assistant happened to spill a glass of juice on… Well, we don’t need to discuss that any further. Rest in peace. Now I’ll have to ask you to speed up. We don’t want to keep the Supreme Leader waiting.’

The trip went ever faster. Allan asked Julius, in Swedish, to become part of the action.

‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘I get car sick.’

‘Did I mention we were in a rush?’ Allan said.

It was, of course, impossible to speed up and slow down simultaneously. The driver judged that the Supreme Leader was more important than the less elderly man in the back. Many times more important.

Once they reached the deserted highway, Julius complained about the high speeds again. The nameless driver continued to ignore him, encouraged by Allan, who spoke uninterrupted about all the fine qualities of the Supreme Leader, as well as how upset he became when faced with a mishmash of messiness.

‘I must say, your car is in fantastic condition,’ he said. ‘The Supreme Leader will be very pleased with you. One pleasant thought is that he might ask you to introduce yourself by your name, and then we’ll finally learn what it is.’

The nameless man was now steering the car with one hand and wiping the already clean dashboard even cleaner with the other.

‘I feel sick,’ said Julius, cautiously picking up the box of milk and muesli from the floor. It had become terrifically mushy during the day.

This was immediately followed by the absolute worst sound the nameless man had heard in all his fifty-two years. Julius feigned noisy vomiting and splashed the muesli mixture across the seat back, between the front seats, and onto the driver’s neck. The nameless driver completely panicked, according to plan. He swerved 180 degrees into the other lane, braked hard in a parking spot, and threw himself from the vehicle. How big a catastrophe was this?

When you’re a hundred and one, you are no longer a flexible wonder, if you ever were in the first place. Even so, Allan managed to reach across, close and lock the door after the driver. This occurred even as Julius locked the doors in the back and crawled into the front. That only went so-so too – after all, he was nearing seventy. But after a few seconds, he was in the driver’s seat. With the most astounded driver on the Korean peninsula outside.

‘Now let’s see how this machine works,’ he said, putting it into gear and driving off.

‘We need to go in the other direction,’ Allan reminded him.

So it came to be that the friends turned the car around not far down the deserted road and happened to pass the nameless driver where he stood without having worked out what was going on. Allan rolled down the window to say goodbye.

‘Farewell. We won’t need to be picked up tomorrow morning. Although you wouldn’t have anything to pick us up in, now that I think about it.’

The journey continued southwards, towards Sunan International. Allan said that they were in good shape timewise, and that Julius did not need to drive like the car thief he had once been. Also, the risk of traffic jams seemed small. Or the risk of traffic at all.

Julius nodded, and wondered if Allan had considered how they should proceed once they arrived. That was a matter both of them had repressed while so much else was standing in the way.

But Allan had already fallen back into the clutches of his black tablet.

‘Oho. Speaking of being out driving, apparently women are going to win the right to do the same in Saudi Arabia. Prince Abdulaziz seems to be a pragmatic fellow. No wonder the Saudis have a spot on the UN women’s commission.’

‘Can’t you put down that goddamn news machine and devote just one second to our survival?’ said Julius, who recognized this very type of frustration from earlier.

‘On the other hand, everything is relative,’ Allan went on. ‘The prince is a Wahhabi and Wahhabis are against most things, as I’ve understood it. Such as Shiite Muslims, Jews, Christians, music and vodka. Have you ever heard anything so awful? To be against vodka!’

Julius swore at Allan’s further exposition.

‘Would you tell me what we’re going to do? Should we drive straight through the fence and up to the minister’s plane? If we get caught, it’s all over! Or should we drive in the regular way? What will we say to the guards at the sentry gate, in that case? Should we shoot them? With what? Jesus Christ, Allan!’

The hundred-and-one-year-old turned off his black tablet and thought for a moment.

‘Wouldn’t it be best to leave the car in the short-term car park, take our briefcase and our diplomatic passports, and check in?’

One of the check-in desks was different from the rest. It was off to the side and had a gold-framed sign above the counter with Korean words and an explanation in English below: Premium Check-In.

Allan greeted the man at the counter with ‘Good day,’ introduced himself as Special Envoy and Diplomat Karlsson from the kingdom of Sweden, and wondered if Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström’s plane had already pulled up for boarding.

The man behind the counter took Allan’s and Julius’s passports and looked at them.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have not received information that you…’

‘Information isn’t exactly in keeping with the spontaneous nature of hush-hush diplomacy,’ said Allan. ‘People like us stay in the wings. Would you please be so kind as to show us to the plane?’

No, the man did not wish to be so kind.

‘One moment,’ he said, and left to find his boss.

Julius thought Allan was behaving admirably at the airport, but they hadn’t accomplished anything yet. After a minute or so, a man in uniform arrived to ask how he could be of service.

‘Good day, Colonel,’ Allan said to the man, who wasn’t a colonel at all, but the head of airport security.

‘What is this about?’ asked the head of security.

‘Are you the one who will be taking us to Minister Wallström’s plane? Wonderful! Would you please carry this suitcase for me? We’re travelling light, but I’m old and worn out,’ said Allan, placing the briefcase of uranium on the counter.

‘I won’t be leading you anywhere, not before we’ve found out who you are,’ the head of security said defensively.

At that instant, a miracle occurred.

‘Attachés Karlsson and Jonsson! Are you here already? Splendid!’ said Margot Wallström, as she strode towards them from the main entrance. ‘I’ve just come straight from lunch with the Supreme Leader. We talked almost exclusively about you, Mr Karlsson, and he sends his kindest greetings to you both and offers you a warm welcome back as soon as possible.’

The head of security went pale. He knew who Madame Wallström was – he was the one who’d met her two days earlier and welcomed her according to his orders.

‘Now, where were we?’ said Allan. ‘Will you be helping me with my briefcase?’

Two seconds of reflection. Five. Ten. Then the head of security said: ‘Of course, my dear sir.’

At which he guided the minister-slash-UN-envoy, her two attachés, the envoy’s suitcase, and the one attaché’s briefcase past all the checkpoints and all the way to the freshly refuelled aeroplane, ready and waiting.

Eighteen minutes later, thirty-six minutes ahead of schedule, the Swedish minister for foreign affairs’ plane exited North Korean airspace, carrying two more passengers than it had when it landed two days earlier.

Three hours after that, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flew into a rage the like of which were seldom seen. And he hadn’t even yet been informed, by the engineer at the plutonium factory, that the briefcase of enriched uranium now contained instead a diverse selection of pleasantly scented toiletry articles. This, in turn, was because the engineer had just hanged himself in his cold storage room (straight after he had deciphered Karlsson’s first formula as the main ingredient in a nylon stocking). The name- and limousine-less driver, for his part, had to spend twenty-five minutes waiting at the edge of the highway before, at last, a truck approached for him to step out and plant himself in front of. The head of airport security did not share this death wish. Even so, he was allowed to live for only two more days, before being summarily charged in court and duly executed by firing squad.