The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

  If it had been a mistake, she would probably have come back when she discovered the mix-up, because in her defence it had to be said that according to the tapes she hadn’t been there when the crate was transferred to the back of the truck. At that point she was still with the gatekeeper round the corner, signing the document.

  No, there could be no doubt. The secret agent from the Mossad, who had been decorated many times over, had been tricked for the second time in his career. By a cleaning woman. The same cleaning woman who had tricked him the first time.

  Oh well, he was a patient man. One day, sooner or later, they would meet again.

  ‘And then, my dear Nombeko Mayeki, you will wish that you were someone else. Somewhere else.’

  The camera at the embassy gates had also captured the licence plate of the red truck that had been used in the weapons heist. Another camera, the one in the embassy’s loading bay, had several clear images of the white man of about Nombeko’s age who had helped her. Agent A had printed out and copied several versions.

  After that, he had set off at full speed. Further investigation revealed that Nombeko Mayeki had absconded from the refugee camp in Upplands Väsby on the same day she had taken the bomb from the embassy. Since then she had been missing.

  The numbers on the licence plate led to an Agnes Salomonsson in Alingsås. There it turned out that the car was still red, but that it was no longer a truck but a Fiat Ritmo. So the plates were stolen. The cleaning woman was acting like a professional through and through.

  All that was left for Agent A to do in the very first phase of his work was to share the recent picture of the truck driver with Interpol. This didn’t lead anywhere, either. The person was not a known member of any illegal weapons ring. And yet he was driving around with an atomic bomb.

  Agent A drew the logical but incorrect conclusion that he had been tricked by someone who knew what she was doing in all respects, that the atomic bomb had already left Swedish territory, and that his focus ought to be on investigating all of the murky international trails he had.

  The fact that the South African bomb was joined, throughout the years, by other nuclear weapons that were on the loose made Agent A’s job that much harder. In conjunction with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, atomic bombs popped up here and there – both imaginary ones and real ones. Intelligence reports mentioned a missing nuclear weapon in Azerbaijan as early as 1991. The thieves had chosen between two available missiles and taken the one that weighed the least. For this reason, all they ended up with was the shell. At the same time, they proved that nuclear weapons thieves didn’t necessarily have an advantage over the general public when it came to brains.

  In 1992, Agent A was on the trail of the Uzbek Shavkat Abdoujaparov, a former colonel in the Soviet Army who had left a wife and children in Tashkent, disappeared and then shown up three months later in Shanghai, where he claimed to have a bomb to sell for fifteen million dollars. The price suggested something that could do considerable damage, but before Agent A even made it there, Colonel Abdoujaparov was found in a wet dock in the harbour with a screwdriver sticking out of his neck. His bomb was nowhere to be found, and it hadn’t shown up since.

  Agent A was stationed in Tel Aviv from 1994 on, and not by choice; it wasn’t an unimportant post, but it was much lower than would have been the case if the South African bomb incident hadn’t happened. The agent never gave up; he followed various trails from his home base, and he always carried a mental image of Nombeko and the unknown man with the truck.

  And then suddenly the night before, during a temporary and far too uninspiring assignment in Amsterdam, after seven years! On the television news. Images from a political disturbance on a square in Stockholm. Members of the xenophobic party the Sweden Democrats carrying away a counter-demonstrator. Dragging him into the subway. Kicking him with their boots. And there! A close-up of the victim.

  It’s HIM!

  The man with the red truck!

  According to the news: Holger Qvist, Blackeberg, Sweden.

  * * *

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Holger, ‘but what is this atomic bomb you’re talking about?’

  ‘Didn’t you get enough of a beating yesterday?’ said Agent A. ‘Finish your coffee if you like, but do it now because in five seconds you and I will be on our way to see Nombeko Mayeki, wherever she is.’

  Holger One thought so hard that his already very sore head hurt even more. So the man on the other side of the table was working for another country’s intelligence service. And he thought Holger One was Holger Two. And he was looking for Nombeko. Who had stolen an . . . atomic bomb from the man.

  ‘The crate!’ Holger One said suddenly.

  ‘Yes, where is it?’ said Agent A. ‘Tell me where the crate with the bomb is!’ Holger absorbed the truth that was now dawning on him. The mother of all revolutionary dreams had been in their warehouse on Fredsgatan for seven years without him knowing it. For seven years he had had access to perhaps the only thing that could get the king to abdicate.

  ‘May you burn in Hell,’ Holger One murmured, in English out of sheer momentum.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Agent A.

  ‘Oh, not you, sir,’ Holger apologized. ‘Miss Nombeko.’

  ‘I’m with you there,’ said the agent, ‘but I don’t plan to rely on faith that it will just happen. That’s why you must take me to her now. Where is she? Answer me!’

  Agent A had confidence in his firm voice. Furthermore, he now had a pistol in his hand.

  Holger was reminded of his childhood. Of his father’s battle. Of how he himself had become a part of it. And of his inability to carry it on.

  And now, the realization that the solution had been there all along.

  His main concern wasn’t that there was an agent from an unknown intelligence agency standing there, ready to shoot him if he didn’t take him to Nombeko and her crate. Rather, it was that he had been fooled by his brother’s South African girlfriend. And that it was all too late now. For seven years, he had had the opportunity on a daily basis to fulfil his father’s mission in life. Without knowing it.

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear my question,’ said the agent. ‘Would a bullet in the knee help you listen better?’

  A bullet in the knee, not between the eyes. For the time being, One was useful. But what would happen later? If he brought the agent to Fredsgatan, would the man with the pistol simply take the crate, which might weigh a ton, under his arm and wave goodbye?

  No, he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he would kill them all. But not before they helped him load the bomb into the back of the red truck.

  He would kill them all unless Holger did what he suddenly realized he had to do. Because the only thing he could do was fight for his brother’s and Celestine’s lives.

  ‘I’ll take you to Nombeko, Agent,’ Holger One said at last. ‘But it will have to be by helicopter if you don’t want to miss her. She and the bomb are about to leave.’

  This lie about the urgency of the situation had come out of nowhere. One might even say that it was an idea. If so, it was the first of its kind, Holger thought. And the last, because now he was finally going to do something useful with his life.

  He was going to die.

  Agent A had no intention of letting himself be tricked a third time by the cleaning woman and her crew. What was the catch here?

  Had Nombeko realized that Holger Qvist’s appearance on TV was a risk? Was that why she was in the process of packing up her things to leave? The agent could tell a Han dynasty goose from junk, and a rough diamond from cheap glass. And a lot of other things besides.

  But he could not fly a helicopter. He would have to rely on the pilot – that is, the man across from him. There would be two people in the cabin: one at the controls, and the other with a weapon in his hand.

  A decided to go with the helicopter, but he also decided to let B know first, in case anything were to go wrong.

  ‘Give me the exact coordinates
of the place where the cleaning woman is,’ he said.

  ‘The cleaning woman?’ said Holger One.

  ‘Miss Nombeko.’

  Holger did as he was asked. Using the office’s PC and mapping program, it took only a few seconds.

  ‘Good. Now sit still while I send a message to the outside world. Then we’ll take off.’

  Agent A had something as modern as an advanced mobile phone, from which he sent an encrypted message to his colleague B with a complete update on where he was, who he was with, where he was going, and why.

  ‘Departure,’ he said afterwards.

  Over the years, Holger One had racked up at least ninety practice hours with his pilot colleagues at Helicopter Taxi Inc. in Bromma. But this was the first time he would fly the machine by himself. His life was over now; he knew that. He would have loved to take that damned Nombeko with him into death – had the agent called her a cleaning woman? – but not his brother. And not the wonderful Celestine.

  As soon as he reached uncontrolled airspace, he levelled out at two thousand feet, at 120 knots. The trip would take just under twenty minutes.

  When One and the agent were almost at Gnesta, Holger did not prepare for landing. Instead, he turned on the autopilot, setting it to go due east and to maintain an altitude of two thousand feet and a speed of 120 knots. And then, as he was used to doing, he unbuckled his seatbelt, hung up his headphones, and crawled to the rear of the cabin.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the agent said to Holger, who didn’t bother to answer.

  As One unlocked the back door of the helicopter and shoved it to the side, the agent remained in the forward seat; he couldn’t really turn round to see what Holger was up to without first loosening his own four-point seatbelt. But how did it work? It was difficult and there wasn’t much time, but he tried anyway. He twisted his body; the belt tightened, and the agent threatened Holger:

  ‘If you jump I’ll shoot!’

  Holger One, who was normally anything but quick-witted, surprised himself:

  ‘So I’ll definitely be dead before I hit the ground? How do you think that will improve your situation, Mr Agent?’

  A was frustrated. He was about to be left alone in midair in an aircraft he couldn’t pilot himself. Being talked down by the pilot, who was about to take his own life into the bargain. He was about to swear for the second time in his life. He twisted his strapped-down body a little more, tried to move his weapon from his right to his left hand, and – dropped it!

  The pistol landed on the floor behind the rear seat and slid all the way over to Holger, who was standing there in the buffeting winds, ready to jump out.

  One picked up the pistol in surprise and stuck it in his inner pocket. Then he said that he wished the agent good luck learning how an S-76 helicopter works.

  ‘What bad luck that we left the instruction book back in the office.’

  Holger had nothing more to say. So he jumped. And for a second he felt a certain inner peace. But only for a second.

  Then he realized that he could have used the pistol on the agent instead.

  Typical, thought Holger One about himself. Usually thinking wrong, and always a little too slowly.

  His body accelerated to 150 miles per hour during his two-thousand-foot journey down to rock-hard Mother Earth.

  ‘Farewell, cruel world. I’m coming, Dad,’ said Holger, without even hearing his own voice in the rushing wind.

  Agent A was left behind in a helicopter on autopilot, headed due east straight out above the Baltic Sea at 120 knots, with no idea how to cancel autopilot or what to do if he managed to cancel it. With fuel for about 80 nautical miles. And with 160 nautical miles left to go to the border of Estonia. In between: sea.

  Agent A looked at the mess of buttons, lights and instruments before him. Then he turned round. The sliding door was still open. There was no one left to steer the aircraft. That idiot had pocketed the pistol and jumped. The ground under the helicopter was disappearing. It was being replaced by water. And even more water.

  The agent had been in tight corners before in his long career. He was trained to keep his cool. So he assessed his situation slowly and analytically. And then he said to himself, ‘Mummy.’

  * * *

  The condemned building at Fredsgatan 5 in Gnesta had been a condemned building for nearly twenty years before reality caught up with it. It started when the director of the environment department was out walking her dog. She was in a bad mood after having kicked out her live-in boyfriend the night before, for good reason. And things only got worse when the dog ran away after a stray bitch showed up. Apparently all men were the same, whether they had two legs or four.

  So she ended up on a substantial detour on that morning’s walk, and before she had caught her horny dog again, the director of the environment department had managed to discover that there seemed to be people living in the condemned building at Fredsgatan 5 – in the same building where that ad from several years ago said a restaurant had opened.

  Had the environment director been deceived? There were two things she hated more than anything else: her ex-boyfriend and being deceived. The combination of being deceived by her ex-boyfriend was the worst, of course. But this was bad enough.

  The area had been set aside by the city as industrial zone since 1992, when Gnesta broke away from the Municipality of Nyköping and set out on its own. The municipality had planned to do something with the area, but other things had got in the way. But that didn’t mean people could just live wherever they wanted. Furthermore, there seemed to be an unlicensed business in the old pottery factory on the other side of the street. Why else would the dustbin outside the door be full of empty bags of throwing clay?

  The director of the environment department was the sort of person who considered unlicensed businesses to be one step away from anarchy.

  First she took out her frustrations on her dog, and then she went home, poured bits of meat into a bowl in the kitchen, and said goodbye to Achilles, who, like any man, was asleep after having satisfied his sexual urges. His master went off to work to join her colleagues in putting a stop to the Wild West activities on Fredsgatan.

  A few months later, when the official and political mills had finished grinding over the matter, the owner of the property, Holger & Holger Inc., was notified that Fredsgatan 5 was to be seized, emptied and demolished in accordance with chapter two, paragraph fifteen of the constitution. The municipality’s obligations were fulfilled as soon as this notice was published in Post och Inrikes Tidningar, the government newspaper. But as a humane gesture, the director with the horny dog made sure that a letter was sent to anyone who might be living on the property.

  The letter arrived on the morning of Thursday, 18 August 1994. Along with references to various paragraphs of the law, it said that all tenants, if any, must vacate the premises by 1 December at the latest.

  The first to read the letter was the often so angry Celestine. That same morning, she had waved goodbye to her black-and-blue boyfriend, who had insisted on going back up to Bromma to work despite the previous day’s battering.

  She became angry again and rushed to find Nombeko, waving the horrid letter. Callous authorities throwing average, honest people into the street!

  ‘Well, we’re not really average or honest,’ said Nombeko. ‘Come with Holger and me to the cosy corner in the warehouse instead of standing there and being angry about every little thing. We’re just about to have our morning tea; if you like, you can have coffee for political reasons. It’ll be good to talk this through in peace and quiet.’

  Peace and quiet? When there was finally – finally – a protest to see to? Nombeko and Holger could drink their damned tea in their fucking cosy corner, but she was going to protest! Damn the man!

  The angry young woman crumpled the letter from the municipality and then, in a fury (what else?), she went down to the yard, unscrewed the stolen licence plates from Holger and Holger’s red truck, got into the d
river’s seat, started the engine, backed up and blocked the entrance that connected the warehouse to the street, and which led into their common yard. Upon doing this, she yanked the handbrake, wiggled her way out through the window, threw the keys into a well, and carefully slashed all four tyres so the truck was sure to stay where it was, effectively blocking any attempt to enter or exit.

  After this preliminary act of war against society, she took the licence plates under her arm and went to find Holger and Nombeko to tell them that there would be no more tea in the cosy corner (or coffee, for that matter), because now it was time to occupy their building! On the way she grabbed the potter; she wanted to gather as many people as possible. It was just too bad that her darling Holger was at work. Well, it couldn’t be helped. They must fight the fight whenever it happened.

  Holger Two and Nombeko were sitting close together on top of the bomb when Celestine stumbled in with the clueless potter in tow.

  ‘There’s a war going on!’ said Celestine.

  ‘There is?’ said Nombeko.

  ‘CIA?’ said the potter.

  ‘Why do you have the licence plates to my truck under your arm?’ said Holger Two.

  ‘Well, they’re stolen property,’ said the angry young woman. ‘I was thinking that—’

  At that instant, there was a sudden cracking sound above their heads. It was Holger One, who, having fallen at over 120 miles per hour for more than 2,000 feet, came straight through the leaky warehouse roof – and landed on the 50,640 pillows that happened to be in there at the time.

  ‘Why, hello, darling!’ The angry young woman lit up. ‘I thought you were in Bromma.’

  ‘Am I alive?’ said Holger One, touching his shoulder, which was the only part of his body that didn’t hurt after his assault, and which had now taken the brunt as he hit the roof, which immediately collapsed under his weight and speed.

  ‘So it seems,’ said Nombeko. ‘But why did you come through the roof?’