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

Germany

When the leader of the free world had spent long enough devoting his workdays to bullying selected portions of his own citizenry on Twitter, the world had to look for a replacement. This ended up being sixty-three-year-old Angela Merkel. As the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, she didn’t live in a palace but in an apartment in downtown Berlin.

She slept four hours a night from Monday to Friday, but sometimes at the weekend she would sleep all the way to sunrise. Among her excesses was a special passion for cabbage soup. She enjoyed a beer to wash it down; she was German, after all.

In her free time she worked a little more, or took her husband by the arm and went to the opera. On special occasions they went further – for a walk in the Italian Alps.

She was among many other things a physicist, he a professor of physical and theoretical chemistry. The physical chemistry between them had emerged sometime in 1984.

As chancellor, Angela Merkel was President Trump’s opposite. She was soft-spoken, thoughtful and analytical. She understood, more than anyone, the import of this in a troubled world. She’d been planning to retire in the coming autumn. But then what would happen, with Trump and Putin and everything?

So she decided: four more years, if the voters would have her. After that, they and the world would have to take care of themselves.

The German Security Service in Berlin had a few tricks up their sleeve. One was to make sure they were automatically notified if anyone they were keeping an eye on chose to travel with Lufthansa.

The Swiss-Swedish nuclear weapons expert Allan Karlsson had gone off the radar after dumping four kilos of uranium at the German embassy in Washington and thereafter jetting to Sweden.

But now the old man was on the move again. He had just travelled from Copenhagen to Frankfurt. Why on earth would he do that?

A closer look revealed that his full route would be Copenhagen–Frankfurt–Addis Ababa–Dar es Salaam. The question remained: Why on earth would he do that?

The four kilos had originally come from the enrichment facility in Congo that had once been sponsored by the CIA, in violation of all sound reason. Thanks to an on-site laboratory assistant, the BND collected enough puzzle pieces to follow the uranium’s route through Africa, with a certain amount of delay.

It was transported through Tanzania and south through Mozambique and Madagascar. There it was snatched up by the North Korean bulk carrier Honour and Strength, which, it so happened, was out on a new journey even now, another trip to Cuba and back. The same detour again, too, via the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

Was it time for a refill of depleted North Korean uranium stores? If it was, what role did Allan Karlsson play? He clearly knew something was up: he had told Chancellor Merkel so himself by way of a handwritten napkin. Five hundred kilos this time!

But the entire issue was difficult to analyse. If Karlsson was planning to smuggle out the greatest amount of uranium the world had ever seen, why tell the German chancellor so in advance? On a napkin?

The director of the BND wished to give a personal report to Chancellor Merkel, who really didn’t have time for him. The closer to the parliamentary election she got, the busier she was doing nothing. And saying nothing. The poll numbers were to her advantage. The fear that the Russians would try to meddle in the election with disinformation about her doings had also come to naught. In fact, the general view on social media seemed to be that the Social Democrat Schultz was incompetence personified. Plus that the ultra-right was getting grabby, of course, but it wouldn’t be enough.

Political analysts judged that Merkel’s relative success in the opinion polls was due, to a certain extent, to the fact that the opposition leader hadn’t found any weak point at which to attack the Merkellian façade, since they held more or less identical views. Just like the Germans in general. But for the most part it was considered to be due to the chancellor’s general competence, in combination with the fact that the rest of the world had become what it had become. The United States had a president who should be diagnosed with something. In Great Britain they had held an election a year earlier based on Cameron’s rhetorical question ‘Surely we shouldn’t kick out all foreigners?’ which received a ‘Why not? That’s a great idea!’ in response. In Poland they were protesting against democracy as best they could. In Hungary, they had already finished that job. Add to this Madrid’s inability to knock Catalonia into shape (or Catalonia’s to knock Madrid into shape), and the man who would soon be as wide as he was presumed to be dangerous: Kim Jong-un.

In the midst of it all: Chancellor Merkel, steady as an ancient oak in a field. The crops waved around her, but she stood where she stood.

If only world events and the debate over domestic politics would freeze solid until election day, she would have four more years ahead of her. To the relief of the entire world, except maybe Russia. And maybe the guy in the United States, who didn’t know what to think or why at one moment, and changed his mind at the next.

The director of the Bundesnachrichtendienst was expected. He knocked on the chancellor’s door and was duly admitted.

What he had to report was that the Swede and troublesome element Allan Karlsson had popped onto the radar again. In Frankfurt. On his way to Tanzania, of all places.

The chancellor was provided with the details, to the extent they existed, and reminded of the five hundred kilos of enriched uranium. She responded by raising the BND’s total budget by ten million euros on the spot.

Merkel added that the director of the BND must get back to her immediately with regard to whatever nuclear weapons-related activities Karlsson might be planning to take on (five hundred kilos of enriched uranium could not be thought out of existence, no matter how close to the election they were). The director blushed and admitted that he and his family were planning a trip to the Bahamas a few days later, but naturally he would be at her service during every minute of his vacation. It was just that he would be on a plane for at least ten hours, from Berlin to Nassau, and it wasn’t certain that he could keep in constant contact with the agents on-site from up there.

‘Forgive my boldness, Chancellor, but might it be reasonable to ask the East African director in charge to contact you directly in the event anything critical happens while I’m out of touch? If not, I will of course cancel my trip.’

Angela Merkel had a heart behind her chancellor mask. She didn’t want to make the director of the BND go home to his wife and children and tell them their holiday was cancelled because he had to sit by the phone.

‘Give my private number to the agent in charge in Dar es Salaam,’ she said, ‘with orders to call day or night as soon as Karlsson gets within three hundred kilometres of an enrichment facility or a suspected smuggler. Have a nice trip. Say hi to the wife and kids.’

Among the last things the director of the BND did, before taking time off for the first time in six years, was send a report to the two BND representatives who used Dar es Salaam as their base of operations. Karlsson and his crew would land at thirteen twenty hours the next day, on Ethiopian Airlines from Addis Ababa. The attached phone number went straight to the chancellor, in case of any drama, and should only be used if he couldn’t be reached.