All he had to do was find them. It might take days, weeks or months, but so be it, thought Johnny, even as his phone flashed with an important news item.
Another suspected terrorist attack! This time at Kastrup, Copenhagen’s international airport.
Coffee and sandwiches could wait.
Denmark, Sweden, Germany
For the second time in a short period, Sabine had to admit that Allan had made himself useful. She was behind the wheel and had instructed him to search on his tablet to find out how soon they could hop onto a flight to Dar es Salaam. What Allan found first was very soon. It would be a little circuitous, with stopovers in Frankfurt and Addis Ababa, but it would work. If only they made it to the airport in time. Sabine speeded up a little more and decided to park as creatively as possible once they arrived.
She found a suitable spot on the pavement immediately outside the correct terminal at Copenhagen’s international airport. It took some slaloming between double no-parking signs and traffic cones, but she made it. Even Julius, who’d never had a soft spot for the legal, was impressed.
They bought tickets at the counter; they only had carry-ons and hardly even that, since Allan had forgotten to bring their joint suitcase from the apartment when the other two had their hands busy.
‘You had one thing to remember,’ said Sabine. ‘One thing.’
‘The silver lining is, there wasn’t more,’ said Allan.
But check-in went even faster for this reason, and they were in their seats in the second row on the plane, destination Frankfurt, twenty minutes after their arrival at the airport.
‘Champagne?’ asked the flight attendant.
‘Are you a mind-reader?’ said Allan.
Lufthansa Flight 831 was the last one that managed to take off before the airport closed. The security threat was already elevated, but it had been raised even higher after the attack in Stockholm. And now a suspicious vehicle was parked in a particularly rule-violating manner immediately outside the entrance to Terminal 3.
A common belief in Denmark was that their neighbour Sweden had made a full-time career of importing suicide bombers. During the war in Syria, more people than the entire population of Denmark had fled tanks, bombs and aerial attacks with chemical weapons. Most of them ended up in Turkey, where they weren’t welcome, so many wended their way north, doing their best to avoid traps, like Hungarian electric fences and well-aimed tear gas.
Those with six thousand dollars in their pocket could avoid tear gas in favour of the chance to keep moving towards even more distant nations, where they weren’t welcome either. Like Denmark, for example. Which in turn guided them onwards to Sweden. Where no one knew which way was up. Still, the Swedes decided against electric fences and tear gas in favour of roofs over heads, since it had not been established that all of those who said they had fled for their lives were in fact terrorists (a select few Swedes knew better, though, and did their best to burn down as many refugee camps as they could, to teach the terrorists a lesson).
The result of all this was that the Danes concluded that the hearse with a Swedish registration plate was full of explosives, meant to cause great destruction. All departures were immediately cancelled; approaching planes were rerouted; the terminal was evacuated; the police brought in their bomb robot.
Just a few minutes after the alarm had sounded, the news hit the internet. An unidentified black hearse, strategically placed perilously close to thousands of travellers.
‘Oho! So that’s where you are,’ said Johnny Engvall. ‘And you made sure that you won’t get away. You fucking idiots.’
He assumed that Sabine Jonsson and her crew were as stuck at the airport as everyone else. Since his own car was several kilometres away, he flagged down a taxi on the street.
‘Rosengård, please.’
Once they arrived, of course, the driver wished to be paid, but Johnny realized he had neither wallet nor car keys in his possession. He asked the driver to wait as he broke into his own boot. With the help of the automatic weapon he stored there, he changed the driver’s mind.
‘What’s your name?’ Johnny asked, the barrel of the gun pressed to the driver’s forehead.
‘Bengt,’ said the driver. And started to cry.
‘Nice to meet you, Bengt,’ said Johnny. ‘Do you think you and I can come to an agreement where you will drive me to Kastrup airport with no compensation?’
‘Please don’t kill me.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
* * *
When they reached the Øresund Bridge, Bengt made an attempt to slow down to pay the toll.
‘Surely you’re not about to fatten up the Swedish state with a bridge toll?’ Johnny said angrily.
During the journey Bengt had managed to become more terrified than he had been when they’d started out. After all, the radio was broadcasting the news that a suspected terror attack was under way at the very airport to which he and the man with the automatic weapon were driving. The only logical conclusion was that this man, too, was a terrorist.
So Bengt did as he was told: he stepped on the gas and drove at 120 kilometres per hour toward the tollbooth as the security cameras took pictures.
And even faster over the bridge. Kastrup was only a few minutes away now.
Thus far, the collected intellect of the Aryan Alliance had not analysed the situation in the least. But, with just a few kilometres left to the airport, he ordered his involuntary chauffeur to slow down. It was crucial to take the right steps now, not the wrong ones.
No rash decisions, right?
Okay, so the trio who had besmirched Kenneth’s memory had got stuck at Kastrup, for reasons they’d orchestrated themselves. According to the live updates from the Jew media online, no one had yet been apprehended. So they had to be with all the other evacuated travellers in the hangar the radio had mentioned.
Priority number one was to find that hangar.
* * *
People fled from war, terror and desperate poverty. For reasons not difficult to comprehend, if at all possible they sought refuge in places where war, terror and desperate poverty for the most part didn’t exist. After all, there would have been no point in fleeing otherwise.
Sweden lacked all three aforementioned characteristics; thus it was a country people fled to rather than from. This meant, in turn, that the Swedish-Danish border patrol on the Swedish side of the Øresund Bridge was more or less one-way. Each vehicle that came to Sweden was subjected to inspection, while those going in the other direction had only to pass a pay station.
But that didn’t mean it was possible to drive through such a station at, for example, 120 kilometres per hour and expect no reaction. In such cases, the police on the Danish side were supplied with the make and colour of the car, as well as its licence plate number. If, at the time in question, there also happened to be a suspected terror attack under way at, for example, the international airport of Copenhagen, no other measure was taken than to enter the fee evasion into a database of ongoing investigations, where it would be labelled ‘inconclusive investigation results’ and written off.
One exception to this might be if the driver of the suspicious vehicle were imprudently to encounter a police checkpoint and stop for it.
* * *
Eight hundred metres from the international departures terminal at Kastrup, the police had set a boom across the road, put out cones, and allowed you the chance to turn round and go back where you’d come from. The driver of each vehicle was met with a salute and given a brief statement about police activity at the airport, which was closed until further notice. The driver and potential passengers were advised to follow media reports for information about when it might reopen. While a constable shared this message, a more junior constable took the opportunity to check the registration plate, purely as a matter of routine.
The more senior Constable Krogh found himself on guard as soon as he initiated contact with the driver of the Swedish-regis
tered taxi he was dealing with now. The man behind the wheel looked terrified. And beside him, in the passenger seat, a very focused customer was obviously hiding something under his leather jacket. Then, when the more junior Constable Larsen cleared his throat, he realized that the registration plate had suggested something and he had a case on his hands.
‘May I see your ID?’ asked the senior constable. ‘Yours too, please,’ he said to Johnny Engvall.
Almost two dozen heavily armed colleagues nearby took notice that something might be going on.
Bengt had his cab-driver ID.
‘Unfortunately I left my driving licence at home,’ said Johnny.
Constable Krogh received a brief from Larsen. The vehicle had just neglected to pay the bridge toll on its way over from Sweden.
That was all? Oh, well, closer scrutiny was still in order.
‘May I ask you to step out of the car? Both of you, please,’ said Constable Krogh.
Bengt opened the door, set one foot down, then the other – and threw himself headlong to the ground. ‘Terrorist!’ he shouted. ‘The guy in the car is a terrorist! And he has a rifle!’
The last bit was not a correct description of Johnny’s automatic weapon, but still.
A violent life had taught Johnny that thorny situations were best handled with weapon in hand. Since the Danish police are not nearly as trigger-happy as, for example, their American colleagues, he therefore had time to bring out his automatic weapon and almost release the safety before he was scrupulously fired upon by the twelve of twenty officers who had not been struck by inability to act. The other eight stood there at a loss, but that had no effect on the end result. Johnny was gravely injured by the first shot and killed by the next; he died an indeterminable number of times more from the next thirty-five.
Fifteen minutes later, the hearse was secured. It contained none of what they had had reason to fear.
With that, the attack against Copenhagen’s international airport had been averted, the suspicious vehicle taken into evidence, and a heavily armed terrorist eliminated. And, for what it’s worth, the hero of the day was Swedish. His name was Bengt Lövdahl and he was a taxi driver.
During their stopover in Frankfurt, Sabine, Allan and Julius bought themselves a new wardrobe before they sat down to wait for the next flight. Allan had his tablet, of course.
He said it was a good thing they’d left Scandinavia behind because, believe it or not, the terrorists had struck for the second time in a short period. This time it was at Kastrup, where they had been just hours earlier.
‘Wow,’ said Sabine. ‘What is the world coming to?’
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 Schulz 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.
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man Page 26
