‘Oh,’ said Sabine Jonsson. ‘They might as well be as free as the rest of it. My finances are going to pot anyway. I am, as you will have noticed, hopeless at running a business.’
What Allan noticed above all was that Sabine wanted to talk. Perhaps it wasn’t much fun for her, alone behind a counter all day long. Surely it didn’t help, having customers who couldn’t pay their way.
‘It seems to me you’re a generous person, Miss Sabine,’ said Allan. ‘Tell us a little about yourself, and I’ll eat this bun in the meantime.’
Allan’s analysis of the situation proved correct. It was like pushing a button.
What did he want to know? That she was fifty-nine years old, unmarried, and had neither friends nor relatives? At least, not on this side of existence.
‘On which side, did you say?’ Julius wondered.
‘This one. There’s another side too, if you ask my mother.’
Allan said he wanted to know more about the other side, and that he would be happy to ask her mother. ‘Where might she be?’
‘On the other side.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘Yes.’
Allan finished chewing his bun and swallowed. ‘In that case, would you mind, Miss Sabine, trying to summarize what your mother would have said if she were somewhere other than that?’
By all means. The spirits’ side was unfamiliar to most. But, as a child, Sabine had learned from her mother that, like her mother, she had gifts others did not. Her mother, Gertrud, was no longer alive, but until her death she had spent many years running Other Side AB, assisted by her daughter, who kept to herself the fact that she never saw what her mother seemed to see. Their speciality was consultations in the field of clairvoyance. This meant that mother and daughter held séances upon clients’ request and offered courses in finding spirits, handling malevolent spirits, and the best way to reward friendly spirits that watched over old houses. In their communications work they used pendulums, crystals, divining rods, sounds and scents, all with the aim of establishing a bridge between the world as we know it and the unknown on the other side. Hence the name of the business.
‘And the amulets around your neck?’ Allan asked.
‘Inheritances from Mum. Just about all she left behind. They’re symbols of earth, fertility and gifts. Or nonsense, nonsense and nonsense, if you prefer.’
‘You don’t believe in the other side?’ Julius asked.
‘I hardly believe in this one. My life is fairly miserable.’
Sabine had more to get off her chest. There were a lot of things that wanted to come out. But she thought it was her turn for something to nibble at. Time to hear from the gentlemen. What were they, besides shop robbers? Diplomats? No matter how much Sabine appreciated a good story, in this case she preferred to hear the truth.
Julius nodded in shame and apologized for the attempted robbery. But he’d been in such pain, both of sole and soul. And, incidentally, it hadn’t gone away.
‘There’s ibuprofen in a rack by the register,’ said Sabine. ‘You can put the money you don’t have on the counter.’
Julius thanked her and hobbled off. Meanwhile, Allan began his story. In certain respects, they were in fact diplomats – at least, they had diplomatic passports. The part about the wallet, though, wasn’t true. Happenstance had brought them on an involuntary journey from Indonesia, where they worked as vegetable merchants. On their journey they had met the Swedish minister for foreign affairs, who had helped them along the way and promoted them to diplomats, mostly for practical reasons, but still. In the United States, Allan and the minister had met President Trump, at the president’s own request. After that, it seemed best to return to Sweden. Earlier that day they had been standing at Arlanda with twenty dollars in their pocket. Unfortunate circumstances had led them to run out of that money. Without a single öre to their names, all they could do was walk. Until they could walk no more.
Vegetable merchants who had come to Sweden on diplomatic passports,after a meeting with the American president, but with no wallets: Sabine suspected there was more to the story, and Allan admitted that there was. ‘But perhaps we don’t have to cover it all at once?’
No, certainly not. Sabine was glad she hadn’t chased Allan and Julius off with a broom, an option she had weighed for quite some time.
‘It’s high time it was your turn again,’ said Julius.
He had already managed to become almost as enamoured of this woman as he had been of Minister Wallström. ‘What happened with Other Side AB? I assume business isn’t booming, given that you’re running a shop.’
What had happened was that her mother had died the previous summer. Eighty years and a few days old. She had been the driving force of the operation for all those years, communicating non-stop with spirits while high on LSD.
‘Was that often?’ asked Julius.
‘Non-stop, like I said. But then one trip went particularly awry last summer, and she took her life. Or else she just switched sides.’
‘Oh dear. How did the switch itself happen?’
‘She was supposed to go to a séance in Södertälje, and I thought I’d better go with her because she was really tripping and would never find her way there or back without me. On the platform she caught sight of a ghost no one else could see. She said it was hostile, and she chased it onto the track before I could stop either of them. And she was run over by the eleven twenty-five train from Norrköping.’
‘Oh dear,’ Julius said again.
‘How did the ghost fare?’ Allan asked.
That’s the kind of thing that can come from the mouth of someone who has never in his life thought before speaking.
Sabine aimed a weary gaze at Allan. ‘Ghosts are hard to kill.’
She went on, in a subdued tone, about how the income from Other Side AB had gone constantly towards tiny sweet LSD pills or towards the somewhat larger but equally sweet LSD stamps, with happy characters on them. Even so, mother and daughter were able to take care of themselves since they lived for free in a small cottage on Sabine’s grandmother’s land. Her grandmother had also passed on the previous summer, at the age of ninety-nine, and before her mother realized she’d inherited a whole house to blow on drugs, she had ghost-hunted her way to the other side, or wherever she was nowadays.
‘Ninety-nine,’ said Allan. ‘That’s not old at all. But, tell me, what sort of relationship do you and narcotics have?’
‘None,’ said Sabine. ‘That’s probably why I was such an incompetent student for Mum. She always said you had to free yourself. Maybe I think too much.’
‘Hmm,’ said Allan. ‘Julius here thinks just about all the time, but I’ve seldom noticed that it helps.’
The accused thinker ignored Allan’s comment. ‘So you inherited a whole house from your grandmother?’ he said instead.
Sabine nodded. ‘Once it was sold, and the funerals and everything were paid off, I had two whole million left over. I thought about what I wanted to do and came to the conclusion that being an entrepreneur was the life for me. I’m terribly good with numbers. It’s the most beautiful word in the world, if you ask me. Entrepreneur!’
Julius agreed. There were some words and expressions that stood out above the rest. Entrepreneur was one. Without a receipt was another.
But then everything had gone wrong. For one thing, of course, the money wasn’t enough for a location in central Stockholm, where all the customers were. Which was why she now sat where she was, forty kilometres north of all the action. For another, she had led herself astray doing what Allan had warned about: she had thought too much.
‘May one enquire what sort of thought led to a corner shop in Märsta?’ Allan asked.
‘I think you just did,’ said Sabine. ‘I sat down at my grandmother’s kitchen table with a paper and pen. I was thinking, you know, that the broader the potential target audience, the greater the chance of success. This led to two universal truths. One: all people eat food fo
r as long as they live. Two: despite this, they die eventually. All of them, no exceptions.’
‘Except possibly Allan,’ said Julius. ‘He turned a hundred and one not long ago.’
‘Wow,’ said Sabine. ‘That’s what I call having one foot in the grave. It’s too bad you don’t have any money, or I would have sold you a coffin.’
Allan looked around. There was no coffin section.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Is the funeral parlour next door part of this business as well?’
Sabine smiled at Allan’s deductive reasoning skills. ‘Well done!’ she said. ‘To live, you need food, hence the corner shop. And when you die, you get buried. Hence the production of coffins. Simple as that. Selling coffins.’
Sabine’s story caused Allan to become downright philosophical. ‘Life and death,’ he said. ‘And ghosts in between.’
‘But you could make money from the ghosts, or you could if you were prepared to kill yourself with drugs in the process. Life, at least in my version of a business plan, was useless even before you two started emptying the shop of goods without paying. And death has been even worse.’
Julius felt sorry for their new acquaintance. And he was slightly ashamed about his failed attempted robbery. ‘Didn’t you say you were terribly good with numbers?’
‘I am! If you like, I can tell you exactly how big my loss will be next quarter. And how much bigger, as a percentage, it will be the quarter after that.’
‘I see.’
Sabine went on: ‘It turned out that those who are alive don’t want to accept that it’s a transitory state. People don’t expect to die, which means they don’t arrange for a coffin ahead of time. Once they find themselves dead, to their own astonishment, it’s hopeless doing business with them.’
‘But they must at least have bought food before they died, right?’ Julius said. ‘To keep death at bay, I mean.’
‘Yes, I assume as much. But seldom from me.’
A first, last and only ad campaign (‘Comestibles and coffins at low cost’) in the local free paper had ended up as the beginning of a rumour that spread all the way to the municipal health and safety inspector, who paid a surprise visit to make sure no corpses were being stored with the dairy products.
‘That campaign was my worst idea yet, in a parade of bad ideas.’
Julius wondered what she would do now, if business was so bad on both sides of the wall. Sabine didn’t know. All she knew was that she was tired of everything. If only her mother hadn’t hammered all that supernatural stuff into her. What she really possessed, aside from her skill with numbers, was artistic talent.
‘Artistic talent?’ said Allan.
‘Yes, I can paint your portrait, if that might be of interest. Shall we say four thousand? Oh, no, of course not.’
Allan apologized for what Sabine had just remembered: he had no money.
‘But speaking of that, I feel responsible for this little youngster Julius and his well-being. The blister he’s been whining about incessantly ever since just before it appeared was not a pretty sight. Is there anything we could assist you with, Miss Sabine, that you might allow us to stay a night or two? We can sleep on the floor over there by the yogurt, if we must. I promise not to die in my sleep and cause more trouble with the food-safety authorities.’
Julius caught on. ‘And I’m good at carpentry. Perhaps the collection of coffins could use some new additions.’
Let them stay overnight? That would be moving fast, from customers with no money to overnight guests in under half an hour. But Sabine noticed again what she’d suspected early on: she enjoyed the old men’s company. So … why not? She turned to Julius. ‘Little youngster,’ she said. ‘Well, where else could you go, with those heels? If I understood correctly while you were robbing me, you don’t have anywhere to go even if you could walk.’
The truth was, she didn’t want to be rid of Allan and Julius, not at all.
‘I have a two-room apartment upstairs. One of you can sleep on the spare bed in the hall there, the other on the sofa in the coffin store. Or in one of the coffins if it would be more comfortable. You’ll find toothbrushes and toothpaste next to the bandages, and you already know where those are.’
‘Perhaps a razor too?’ said Allan. ‘I can’t imagine that will make a difference either way in the impending bankruptcy.’
‘Oh, take two. I’ll add it to the tab.’
Sweden
When Sabine came down from her apartment the next morning, Julius was in full swing building coffins. Allan was still on his sofa, watching.
‘What is he doing?’ she asked in surprise.
‘I don’t know,’ said Allan. ‘Preparing for his departure?’
‘Good morning,’ said Julius. ‘I’m compensating you for our room and board. I’ve always been good at carpentry. Did I mention that? Shouldn’t we go ahead and varnish the coffins as well? That might increase sales.’
‘From nothing to almost nothing?’ said Sabine. ‘Did you have time to grab some breakfast from the shop?’
They hadn’t dared. But Julius felt that if they were allowed to stay in the guest room and the carpentry shop for a few more days, he would be happy to open up each morning. That way Sabine could sleep in. Perhaps she didn’t often get the chance?
She responded that this was an offer worth considering, but that sort of decision shouldn’t be made on an empty stomach. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’
Breakfast consisted of a roll with cheese, juice, and coffee from the machine. Meanwhile the shop received four whole morning customers, each of whom made a small purchase. Julius seemed to be something of a lucky charm. And he proved that he could handle the cash register.
‘Fifty-eight kronor, please. Thanks. Two kronor change. Have a nice day.’
Sabine thought the fake diplomat seemed like a better sort than you would have expected at first. And so far his labour wasn’t expensive. Altogether, the cost ran to a box of bandages, a few cups of coffee, a bun, a roll, three decilitres of juice, and one or perhaps two ibuprofens. The one called Allan wasn’t quite as useful, but then again he was even cheaper.
So there were objectively good reasons to let the old men stay. Beyond the fact that she enjoyed their company.
‘Of course you can stay here for a while,’ she said. ‘But don’t build too many coffins – that will only drive up the cost of storage.’
USA
Chancellor Merkel had just finished her first meeting with President Trump in Washington. In it she had been informed that NATO was useless. And that NATO was fantastic. That Trump loved Germany. And also that Germany had to get its act together on a number of issues. That the bonds between the countries were strong. And that the only thing that united them was that they had both been wiretapped by Obama.
Now she was back at the German embassy, where she was immediately shown to a situation room that was protected from bugs. Waiting for her there were the German ambassador, the German UN ambassador, and the director of German intelligence in the United States.
The chancellor, who had thought her day couldn’t get any worse, realized that it absolutely could. The intelligence officer was leading the meeting.
The issue was, as the chancellor had already been informed, that North Korea had succeeded in smuggling four kilos of enriched uranium to Pyongyang via a ship called Honour and Strength. The Swiss nuclear weapons expert, whom Kim Jong-un had put on display at a press conference, had turned out to be Swedish. His name was Allan Karlsson and he was not on Kim Jong-un’s side, as they had feared earlier. Instead he had managed to leave Pyongyang and make it to New York. And he’d brought the enriched uranium with him.
‘To America? The uranium is here?’ said the chancellor.
‘Yes,’ the intelligence officer confirmed. ‘It’s very much here.’
A few days earlier, Allan Karlsson had met President Trump, with Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström, who was also Sweden’s representative o
n the UN Security Council.
‘Yes, I know who she is,’ said Angela Merkel. ‘A competent woman. Do we know what was said during the meeting?’
‘Not exactly. It seems President Trump stated that Wallström and Karlsson had not done anything wrong, and warned them not to do it again.’
‘Sounds like President Trump,’ said Angela Merkel. The chancellor had been around the block. She could sense in the air that there was more to come. ‘And?’ she said.
‘Well, after that meeting, Ambassador Breitner ran into Allan Karlsson outside UN headquarters. Admirably enough, the ambassador recognized a possibility for gaining intelligence and invited him and his friend Jonsson to dinner.’
The intelligence officer looked unhappy. But not as unhappy as the UN ambassador at his side.
‘And?’ said Angela Merkel again.
‘The ambassador promised to help Karlsson and his friend with a briefcase they wished to turn over to the Federal Republic. They said it contained important nuclear weapons-related information that Karlsson had originally intended to give President Trump, but he changed his mind after meeting the president in person.’
The chancellor felt a certain sense of solidarity with Karlsson. They seemed to have had similar experiences with the American president. ‘And now you’re going to hand the information to me so that I may consider sending it on to our analysts in Berlin.’
‘Well,’ said the intelligence officer, ‘the briefcase turned out to contain … the four kilos of enriched uranium. And a letter to you, Frau Chancellor. Written on three napkins.’
‘Three napkins?’ said the chancellor.
But what she was thinking was, Four kilos of enriched uranium? Here? At the German embassy in Washington?
By the time the intelligence meeting concluded, the chancellor had also learned that the previously intercepted code word ‘asparagus’ referred to actual asparagus, nothing more. And that Karlsson, by his own word, had heard Pyongyang was expecting a larger shipment of enriched uranium, five hundred kilos’ worth this time. The intelligence officer in Dar es Salaam had already been duly informed. Since the test shipment had made it all the way to Pyongyang from Africa, there was reason to believe the North Koreans would try the same route again.
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man Page 16
