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

Tanzania

Olekorinko’s miracle-medicine tent city was in the Serengeti, right on the banks of the Mara River. When Allan, Julius and Sabine got into a taxi outside the airport in Dar es Salaam, they learned from the cheerful driver that it would take a day to get there by car, then half a lifetime to find their way. The Mara River had the peculiarity of being four hundred kilometres long, and the Serengeti about fifteen thousand square kilometres in size.

‘They have Lebensraum, those lions,’ said Allan.

‘We need a more accurate address,’ said Julius.

‘And some form of transportation other than a car,’ said Sabine.

It was five hundred metres from Julius Nyerere International to the domestic terminal.

Since the trio were already sitting in the taxi, they changed their order from a one-day journey to a two-minute one. The driver was no longer quite so cheerful: he’d hardly had time to switch the meter on before it had to be turned off again. He ought to have driven first and explained later.

Behind the taxi a black Passat contained two highly focused agents from the Bundesnachrichtendienst, whose task was not to let Karlsson out of their sight. And immediately to inform the top director of the BND, or alternatively the chancellor, if the elderly man got up to anything stupid.