When everything came to light, no amount of apologies or explanations would be sufficient. If everything she’d learned about the inherent dynamics of the media was accurate, she would instead be ripped apart by newspapers and on TV.
Oddly enough, the realization that all was lost made her feel calmer. She would stand for what she had done and fall into the abyss with her head held high.
But she could still do good, before reality caught up with her. The very next day would bring a meeting of ministers for foreign affairs in Brussels. The next week she had a full day scheduled with the prime minister to analyse the new French president’s first days in office and how they might relate to the upcoming election in Germany. Back when the meeting had been scheduled, the assumption had been that the future of the entire European Union was at stake. Later had come the realization that the sitting President of the United States of America had a screw loose. Thus the future of Europe became increasingly that of the world. Sweden had an important role to play in all of this. Even as the country’s minister for foreign affairs, as well as representative to the UN Security Council, stood in a room in a Malmö suburb with a knocked-out and drugged neo-Nazi at her feet.
‘Listen to this,’ said Allan, who had found the time to grab his black tablet after having been separated from it for several minutes. ‘Donald Trump has just ordered his own secretary of state to undergo an IQ test.’
What had she just heard?
No, she would not simply give up. The world still needed Margot Wallström, and that was that. ‘I’m leaving now,’ she said.
She met her two bodyguards outside the car on the street.
‘Everything okay, Madame Minister?’ said one.
‘Of course,’ said Margot Wallström. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
* * *
The minister for foreign affairs and her bodyguards took off. Allan, Julius and Sabine stood in a semicircle around the sleeping Nazi on the floor. He must be moved out of there and dumped somewhere before he got it into his head to regain consciousness.
‘Can we roll him up in a rug?’ said Julius.
‘If we had one,’ said Sabine.
‘He can borrow my coffin,’ said Allan.
Sabine’s face lit up. ‘Imagine! Something sensible finally came out of you, Allan.’
Julius and Sabine lifted the unconscious man while Allan walked alongside, digging through the Nazi’s pockets.
‘What are you doing?’ Julius asked.
‘Getting to know the enemy,’ said Allan.
He found car keys, a tin of snuff, and a wallet containing a driving licence, credit cards, and 3700 kronor in cash.
‘Thanks, Johnny Engvall,’ he said, to the picture on the licence.
He kept the Nazi’s money and tossed the rest into the bin.
When the lugging was over, Sabine stationed the hundred-and-one-year-old at the kitchen table with his black tablet and ordered him to remain there until he received further instructions. This was a solution that suited Allan.
Julius was given the task of stuffing the trio’s belongings into the newly bought suitcase while Sabine went to fetch the hearse. They couldn’t exactly stroll four or five blocks in broad daylight with a coffin between them. Sabine designated herself and Julius pallbearers, while Allan would be in charge of the wheeled suitcase.
One and a half hours after the séance with the minister for foreign affairs and the Nazi, the trio were leaving the apartment. Julius and Sabine struggled with the coffin full of sleeping Nazi, Allan humming a few paces behind them. It was only a half-flight of stairs down to the front door, but it was difficult. Naturally they met a neighbour, a woman holding double grocery bags. She looked at the coffin in horror.
‘Overdose,’ said Allan. ‘Heroin. Terrible stuff.’
The woman didn’t respond. Perhaps she was a foreigner.
‘Heroinski,’ Allan clarified.
Sweden, Denmark
Allan, Julius and Sabine crowded into the front seat of the hearse, since the Nazi was hogging the back.
Ten minutes later they had managed to divorce themselves from their unconscious problem. Johnny Engvall was now sitting on a bench in a decently empty park not far from downtown. While Julius and Sabine did the grunt work, Allan found a white plastic cup between the front seats in the car. He placed it in the Nazi’s hands, instantly transforming him into a presumed beggar who had fallen asleep on the job.
‘Don’t sit here too long, Mr Johnny, or you’ll catch a cold,’ was Allan’s farewell.
The situation remained intensely complicated. The Nazi problem was, of course, far from over. But with all the carrying-around and the fresh air, Sabine had her brain function back.
Now was the time to use it to think new thoughts. Or, at least, big ones. Best-case scenario, also good ones.
Sabine made up her mind.
Julius noticed that she seemed to know where she was going. He didn’t say anything, for he thought the next move should be hers.
They left Malmö, ended up on a highway, and soon found themselves approaching the bridge to Denmark. Sabine slowed and prepared to pay the bridge toll.
‘In light of what has happened, it’s best if we switch countries,’ she said.
‘Denmark,’ said Julius.
‘I love Denmark,’ said Allan, who had returned to his coffin and made himself comfortable. ‘I think. I’ve never been there. Or have I?’
‘Denmark won’t be far enough, if we’re going to keep away from everyone who wants to kill us,’ said Sabine. ‘And assuming we want money to put food on the table, our current business model will never do.’
She continued by saying that she had, in tandem with other topics, put a great deal of thought towards their future. It had all come to a head when the Nazi turned up to get a table lamp to the head.
‘That lamp knew where to land,’ Allan said. ‘If I’m alive next year I’ll be danged if I don’t vote Social Democrat.’
‘You vote?’ Julius asked.
‘Not that I know of.’
Sabine asked the old men to keep quiet for a bit and went on: ‘Anyway, I had time to do some thinking. We can’t drive around in the hearse any more. It will be recognized by the Nazi who, we know with all certainty, is angrier with us than ever.’
Allan was on the verge of gauging the Nazi’s presumed rage in comparison with that of Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump but realized he had been asked to keep quiet.
‘So, no more hearse,’ Sabine reiterated. ‘And no Sweden.’
Allan sat up in the coffin. This conversation looked promising. He couldn’t keep not saying anything. ‘It sounds to me as if young Miss Sabine has an idea.’
‘Agreed,’ said Julius.
She did. If their séance operation was to blossom, and they were to survive for more than a week, they had to think internationally. The Nazi and his gang would have a much harder time finding them out in the big, wide world. On the other hand, the competition in the spiritual branch would be much tougher than it was in their homeland. It wouldn’t be enough to hawk ghosts and the chance to speak with those who had already spoken their last.
‘So what do we need?’ Julius wondered.
‘Product development,’ said Sabine.
‘And where on our good green earth can we best develop our product, do you think?’
‘Are you sitting down?’ Sabine asked.
‘I am sitting, as you can see,’ said Julius.
‘I just lay down again, but by all means,’ said Allan, and sat up.
‘Good. Right now we’re driving to Kastrup, where we’ll permanently park the car and buy three plane tickets to Dar es Salaam.’
‘Dar es what?’ said Julius.
Russia
After a series of setbacks of a varied nature, Gennady Aksakov could smell the scent of victory once more. And a sensational one at that. He appeared to be the only one who realized that Merkel, in Germany, was on her way to defeat. After all, a victory
was no victory if it wasn’t possible to rule after winning.
Gennady administered grotesquely large sums of money for himself and his best friend. The capital was safely held abroad, made even safer in that it was protected by Gennady’s Finnish passport. No matter what sorts of sanctions the world decided to slap on Russia and its citizens, no one could freeze the Finnish Aksakov’s assets. He was financially secure, and so was the president.
Lately they’d had varying levels of success. With the help of 116,000 Twitter accounts, Aksakov and his army of internet soldiers had worked on the voters of Britain before the Brexit referendum. Only an amateur would allow all the accounts to be automated bots: people would notice that. The secret was a perfectly balanced mixture of fully automated, half-automated, and one hundred per cent human accounts. The message, however, was relatively uniform – namely, that the Brits should turn their backs on Europe.
Volodya cackled with joy and thumped Gena on the back when the results turned out to be 52–48 ‘leave’. Gena responded humbly that, even without his help, it might easily have been 51–49.
Not long after Brexit there was the American presidential election, which had gone so frightfully well that by now it was just frightful.
The parliamentary elections in the Netherlands and France, though, showed that Gena and Volodya weren’t invincible after all. Despite massive support from Moscow, the numbers of the Dutch PVV didn’t increase enough to bring about political chaos. It took over two hundred days for the centre right to put together a coalition government, but in the end they succeeded.
In France, the Russians nearly lost in a walkover. The plan was to take sides on both right and left and polemize to the extent that Marine Le Pen would dash past all but one competitor, at which point the Russians would sink said competitor. But when that bastard made a complete fool of himself before Moscow was ready to sink him, a new middle-of-the-road candidate popped up out of nowhere. Gena had no time to reposition, and France ended up with an EU-friendly president. The trolls’ disinformation about Macron’s secret life as a homosexual only fired up Macron and his voters. If there was anything you were allowed to devote yourself to in France, it was diverse alternative romantic encounters.
Up next after that blunder was the fiasco in Sweden: the four million euros in support of the neo-Nazi whose thanks for the financial aid involved getting himself killed. The neo-Nazi’s brother had, according to unanimous intelligence reports, been the one subsequently to shoot a funeral parlour to hell. What was absolutely inconceivable about this story was that the brother (who was just as much a Nazi) had tried to take the life of Allan Karlsson of all people! The hundred-and-one-year-old who had caused such a kerfuffle in Pyongyang had been promoted to diplomat, at which point he had evidently entered the funerary trade and, for the second time in a brief period, acted in direct opposition to Russian state interest. All of these conclusions had been drawn from an intercepted conversation between an individual police inspector and the Swedish minister for foreign affairs, who had, carelessly enough, used a non-secure phone within her department. Perhaps Kim Jong-un was right: they should have tracked down that old man and slit his throat. But now, in any case, he had disappeared again.
Gennady decided to wait a week or two, then get in touch, once again, with the dead neo-Nazi’s living brother to repeat the terms and conditions, or, alternatively, remove him from the equation.
While he waited, he would have to try to relish the thought that it would soon be time for revenge. Everyone said Merkel was the obvious victor in the German election, that the Social Democrat candidate was too weak. No one wanted to see what Gennady saw: the Social Democrats would refuse seats in Merkel’s government if they did poorly in the election, for anything else would be political suicide. The Russian tactic was to further weaken what was already weak, combined with genuine but secret party support to the right-wing nationalist party, AfD. This way they were attacking Merkel on two fronts without actually touching her. So she would win the election, but she wouldn’t be able to build a coalition government. When this dawned on her, she would finally give up. The last thing Russia needed was that hopelessly strong bitch in Berlin.
‘The Social Democrats lost three more percentage points in the latest poll,’ Gennady Aksakov told his president. ‘Two of them landed with our friends in AfD.’
‘You’re a genius, Gena,’ said President Putin. ‘Have I mentioned that before?’
‘Many times, Mr President.’ His best friend smiled. ‘So many times that I’m starting to believe you.’
Denmark
Sabine sat quietly behind the wheel as they crossed the bridge and drove through the tunnel on their way to Copenhagen’s international airport. She thought through her decision to emigrate one more time.
Olekorinko in Tanzania had been in her thoughts so long that she had just about exalted it to a truth that he was the solution to everything. The country in and of itself also brought many advantages. For example, Tanzanian Nazism had not yet been invented. There probably weren’t many snakes to speak of either, up at that high altitude. Snakes, in general, were among the few things Sabine disliked more than Nazis. She disliked snakes, Nazis, wars and deadly illnesses. In that order. With Karlsson a close fifth. War and violence were not on the list of things the country had to offer. That left deadly illnesses, but it seemed likely they’d have cures for such things down there. Not least with Olekorinko’s help, if everything her mother had told her about him was to be believed, which of course it was not.
Sabine had done her homework. There were further sources of inspiration to be found nearby. The Kenyan side of the border was the domain of a businesswoman named Hannah. She called herself the Queen and spent Monday through Friday curing clients’ ailments, breaking curses and giving life advice based on what could be read in the coals left by a fire. For extra money she also took on the more serious cases of cancer and AIDS. She spent Saturdays resting and on Sundays she went to church, to be on the safe side.
Hannah was happy to show off her luxury home and her fifteen cars to anyone who wanted to see them. ‘I’m a witch and I’m good at it,’ was her standing refrain among the cars. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’
Hannah was impressive in many ways. But, still, Sabine didn’t find her sufficiently attention-grabbing. Sabine already knew how to scrape through glowing coals.
The retired evangelical pastor Olekorinko and his concept were wildly different from what the Queen practised. The pastor had built up a tent city on the savannah in the Serengeti. He kept a laboratory in an annexe to the main tent, and there he created his miracle medicine, according to a precise and partially secret recipe.
He took only very limited payments, focusing instead on the masses. For the medicine only worked there, in the tent city, and only in the moment when it was blessed by the pastor.
Sabine wanted to know more about his process. Mass meetings would be something new in modern European clairvoyance. Her mother had understood this. And it was the way forward for Sabine, her beloved assistant and the hundred-and-one-year-old who came with them, whether they wanted him or not.
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.
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man Page 25
