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

Sweden

Johnny Engvall woke up when someone placed a five-kronor coin in the white cup he was apparently holding. Where was he? Why was he freezing? Who had just given him a coin, and why?

He was suffering the side effects of a table lamp to the head and an overdose of sleeping pills. He didn’t remember the former; he could only guess at the latter.

He realized he was sitting on a park bench somewhere, but he didn’t have time to grasp where before someone bent over him.

‘What’s the matter, my dear?’

A woman. Her face was only a few decimetres from his own. Who was she? What was going on?

His vision returned, along with his personality. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘What business is that of yours? Plus, you’re ugly.’

The woman had taken pity on the beggar sleeping on the park bench, found a coin in her purse, and seen that the sleeping man was waking up. He looked dreadful, the poor thing.

‘Well, good heavens,’ she said. ‘There’s no reason to be angry with me, is there? Walk with me for a bit and maybe we can find somewhere for me to treat you to a bowl of hot soup.’

Soup? repeated Johnny’s muddled mind. He tried to stand up. The woman helped him.

‘Move it, you goddamn dispensable woman,’ he said, shoving the good Samaritan so hard she almost fell over.

Johnny’s vocabulary had returned. He informed the woman of what he and his knife wished to do to her. She backed away in horror, first one step, then another. But she was braver than most. ‘I’m moving, as you can see. But where do we stand on the soup?’

Johnny took out his American Army knife with its well-polished thirty-centimetre blade, and aimed it at her throat. ‘Say “soup” one more time,’ he said.

But the woman didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Johnny left without harming her. He had too bad a headache for anything else.

A few blocks away, the still-dizzy Nazi found a café where he could order a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and collect himself.

Until just now, his struggle to kill those who had so seriously degraded his brother on the day of his burial had been plagued by something quite akin to tunnel vision.

But just as he was about to fulfil his self-assigned task, a bolt of lightning had struck him out of the blue. He couldn’t just let it go. Or could he? He had four million euros and a cause to advance in Kenneth’s memory.

Johnny’s brainpower was not so limited that he didn’t understand he had been vanquished by an old woman and a minister for foreign affairs. There was no brushing it aside. It couldn’t even be dropped down the priority list. The four million and what could be accomplished with it would have to wait. The minister might be allowed to live if she didn’t cross paths with Johnny again, but that bitch and her crew? Never.

All he had to do was find them. It might take days, weeks or months, but so be it, thought Johnny, even as his phone flashed with an important news item.

Another suspected terrorist attack! This time at Kastrup, Copenhagen’s international airport.

Coffee and sandwiches could wait.