The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (16 page)

One was that the explosive charge should consist of exactly the same ingredients that Mao Tse-tung’s communists used in China. This was something Allan knew a lot about, and he was certain that he could make it all look like a communist attack.

The other measure was that the charge in question should be hidden in the front part of the DeSoto’s chassis, but that it should not detonate immediately but be designed to drop from the car and explode a few tenths of a second later when it hit the ground.

During that time the car would have travelled a short distance so that the position where Winston Churchill would be sitting and smoking his cigar would now be directly above the explosion, which would rip a hole in the floor of the car and send Churchill to eternity. It would also leave a large crater in the ground.

‘In that way we’ll get people to think that the explosive charge was buried in the street instead of somebody having hidden it in the car. That little deception would surely suit Mr Prime Minister perfectly?’

The police chief giggled with joy and anticipation, and flicked a lighted cigarette into Allan’s newly poured coffee. Allan said that Mr Prime Minister could do as he wished with his cigarettes and with Allan’s coffee, but that if he really wasn’t satisfied with the ashtray he had in front of him, and if Mr Prime Minister would consider giving Allan a short period of leave, then he would go out and buy a nice new ashtray for the Prime Minister.

The police chief ignored Allan’s talk about ashtrays, but immediately approved Allan’s explosive plan and asked for a complete list of what he needed to prepare the car in the shortest possible time.

Allan listed the names of the nine ingredients that he needed to make up the formula. In addition, he included a tenth – nitro-glycerine – which he thought might be useful, and an eleventh – a bottle of ink.

Furthermore, Allan asked to borrow one of Mr Prime Minister’s most trusted colleagues as an assistant and
purchasing
manager, and to have his cellmate, the Reverend Ferguson, as his interpreter.

The police chief muttered that what he would like most of all was to do away with the priest straight away, because he didn’t like clerics, but now there wouldn’t be time. Yet again
he stubbed out his cigarette in Allan’s coffee, to indicate that the meeting was at an end and to remind Allan who was boss.

The days passed, and everything went according to plan. The boss of the bodyguard did indeed get in touch and announce that he would pick up the DeSoto the following Wednesday. The police chief boiled with anger. It had been an announcement rather than a request. But in fact, it fitted perfectly with Allan’s plan. What if the bodyguard hadn’t contacted the department about the car? And in any case, the boss of the bodyguard would soon get his comeuppance.

Allan now knew how much time he had to prepare the charge. Unfortunately, the Reverend Ferguson had also
eventually
fathomed what was going on. Not only was he going to be an accomplice in the murder of former Prime Minister Churchill, but he also had good reason to believe that his own life would end shortly afterwards. To stand before the Lord as a murderer was not something the Reverend Ferguson looked forward to.

But Allan calmed the vicar, promising that he had a plan to solve both those problems. First, there was a good chance that Allan and the priest would be able to abscond, and second, it need not necessarily happen at the cost of Mr Churchill’s life.

But the whole scheme required the priest to do what Allan said when the right moment arrived, and the priest promised to do so. Allan was his only hope of survival, since God still wasn’t answering his prayers. And it had been like that for almost a month now. Could God possibly be angry with the priest for his attempt to ally himself with the communists?

Wednesday arrived. The DeSoto was rigged and ready. The explosive charge on the car’s chassis happened to be rather larger than the task demanded, and yet it was still completely
hidden, if anyone were to look to see if there was anything strange there.

Allan showed the police chief how the car had been rigged and how the remote control worked, and explained in detail what the final result would be when it went off. The police chief smiled and looked happy. And stubbed out that day’s eighteenth cigarette in Allan’s coffee.

Allan then pulled out a new cup, one that he had kept hidden behind the toolbox, and placed that strategically on a table next to the stairs leading to the corridor, the holding cell and the entrance. Without making a fuss of it, Allan then took the priest by the arm and left the garage, while the police chief walked round and round the DeSoto, puffing on the day’s nineteenth cigarette, delighting in the thought of what would soon happen.

The priest understood from Allan’s firm grasp that this was for real. Time to obey Mr Karlsson to the letter.

They walked past the holding cell and continued towards reception. Once there, Allan didn’t bother to stop by the armed guards, but continued right past them, still keeping a firm hold on the Reverend Ferguson.

The guards had become accustomed to Karlsson and the priest and they had not thought there was any risk of an escape attempt, so it was with some surprise that the officer in charge called out:

‘Halt! Where do you think you are going?’

Allan stopped with the priest on the very threshold to
freedom
and looked very surprised.

‘We are free to go. Hasn’t Mr Prime Minister informed you?’

Mr Ferguson was terrified, but forced a little oxygen into his nostrils so as not to faint.

‘Stay exactly where you are,’ said the officer in charge, in an authoritative tone. ‘You are not going anywhere until I have Mr Prime Minister’s confirmation.’

The three guards were ordered to keep a careful eye on the priest and Mr Karlsson, while the officer in charge went down the corridor to the garage to ask for confirmation. Allan smiled encouragingly at the priest and said that soon everything would be sorted out – unless the opposite happened and it all blew up.

Since firstly the police chief had not given Allan and the priest permission to leave, and, secondly, did not have any plans to do so, he reacted forcefully to the officer’s query.

‘What? They’re standing by the entrance and brazenly lying? They are bloody well going to pay for that…’

The police chief rarely swore. He had always been careful to keep a certain dignity about him. But now he was furious. And as was his custom, he stubbed his cigarette into that damned Swede’s coffee cup, before heading for the stairs.

Or rather, that was his intention, but he didn’t get any further than the coffee cup. Because this time it didn’t contain coffee, but pure nitroglycerine mixed with black ink. There was a huge explosion and the vice prime minister and the officer in charge of the guards were ripped to bits. A white cloud billowed out of the garage and made its way along the corridor at the other end of which Allan, the priest and the three guards stood.

‘Time to go,’ Allan said to the priest. And off they went.

All three guards were sufficiently alert to think that they really ought to stop Karlsson and the priest from leaving, but only a few tenths of a second later – and as a logical consequence of the garage now being a sea of fire – the charge under the DeSoto, the one intended for Winston Churchill, also detonated. And in so doing, it proved to Allan that it would have amply served its intended purpose. The entire building immediately leaned over, and the ground floor was in flames when Allan changed his order to the priest:

‘Let’s run out of here, instead.’

Two of the three guards had been blown into a wall by the pressure wave and had caught fire. The third found it impossible to gather his thoughts sufficiently to attend to his prisoners. For a few seconds, he wondered what had happened, but then he ran away to avoid ending up like his comrades. Allan and the priest had gone off in one direction. The only remaining guard now ran off in the other.

After Allan in his own special way had arranged for himself and the priest to be somewhere other than the headquarters of the secret police, it was now the vicar’s turn to be useful. He knew where most of the diplomatic missions were located and he guided Allan all the way to the Swedish Embassy. Once there, Allan gave him a warm hug to thank him for everything.

Allan asked what the priest himself was going to do. Where was the British Embassy?

It wasn’t far away, said the vicar, but why would he need to go there? They were all Anglicans already and didn’t need
converting
. No, the priest had thought up a new strategy. If there was something the last hour or so had taught him, it was that everything seemed to start and finish at the department for domestic intelligence and security. So it was a matter of changing that organisation from the inside. Once all the people working for the secret police, and all those who helped them, were Anglicans – well, the rest would be easy as pie!

Allan said that he knew of a good asylum in Sweden if in the future the priest should happen to come to some sort of
self-understanding
. The priest answered that he didn’t want to appear ungrateful, not in any way. But he had once and for all found his calling, and now it was time for him to say goodbye. The priest was going to start with the surviving guard, the one who ran off in the other direction. He was basically a nice, easy-going boy, and he could probably be led down the path of the true faith.

‘Farewell!’ said the priest solemnly and walked off.

‘Bye for now,’ said Allan.

He watched the priest vanish into the distance, and thought that the world was crazy enough that the priest might survive the course he was now taking.

But Allan was wrong. The priest found the guard wandering around in a daze in the Park-e Shahr in the middle of Teheran, with burns on his arms and an automatic with the safety catch off in his hands.

‘Well, there you are, my son,’ said the priest and walked up to embrace him.

‘You!’ shouted the guard, ‘It’s you!’

And then he shot the priest twenty-two times in the chest. It would have been more but he ran out of bullets.

Allan was allowed into the Swedish Embassy because of his regional Swedish accent. But then things got complicated, because he didn’t have any documentation that proved who he was. So the embassy could not give him a passport, nor could they help him back to Sweden. Besides, said Third Secretary Bergqvist, Sweden had just introduced special personal identity numbers and if it was the case that Karlsson had been out of the country for many years, then there would be no Mr Allan Karlsson in the Swedish system back home.

To that, Allan answered that regardless of whether all Swedes’ names had now become numbers instead, he was and would remain Allan Karlsson from the village of Yxhult outside Flen and now he wanted Mr Third Secretary to be so kind as to arrange papers for him.

Third Secretary Bergqvist was for the time being the most senior official at the embassy. He was the only one who hadn’t been able to attend the diplomatic conference in Stockholm. It was just his luck that everything suddenly happened at once. It wasn’t enough that some parts of the centre of Tehran had
been on fire for the last hour: now on top of that an unknown person turns up claiming to be Swedish. There were of course hints that the man was telling the truth, but this was a situation where it was important to follow the rules so as not to jeopardize his future career. So Third Secretary Bergqvist repeated his statement that no passport would be forthcoming unless Mr Karlsson could be properly identified.

Allan said that he found Third Secretary Bergqvist to be exceptionally stubborn, but that they could perhaps solve everything if only the third secretary had a telephone available.

The third secretary did. But it was expensive to make
long-distance
phone calls. Whom did Mr Karlsson intend to phone?

Allan was beginning to tire of the difficult third secretary so he didn’t answer, but instead asked:

‘Is Per Albin still the Swedish prime minister?’

‘No,’ said the astounded third secretary. ‘Tage Erlander is prime minister. Prime Minister Hansson died last autumn. But why…’

‘Could you please be quiet for a moment so we can clear this up?’

Allan phoned the White House in Washington, and was put through to the president’s senior secretary. She remembered Mr Karlsson very well and she had also heard so many good things about him from the president and if Mr Karlsson really considered it important then she would see if they could wake the president. It was only eight in the morning in Washington, and President Truman was not an early riser.

A short while later the newly awoken President Truman came to the phone and he and Allan had a hearty chat for several minutes, catching up with each other’s news before Allan finally mentioned his errand. Could Harry possibly do him a favour and phone the new Swedish Prime Minister Erlander and vouch for who Allan was, so that Erlander in turn
could phone Third Secretary Bergqvist at the Swedish Embassy in Tehran and inform him that Allan should immediately be issued a passport.

Harry Truman would of course do this for him, but first please spell the third secretary’s name so that he got it right.

‘President Truman wants to know how you spell your name,’ Allan said to Third Secretary Bergqvist. ‘It would be easier if you told him directly.’

After Third Secretary Bergqvist, almost in a trance, spelled out his name letter by letter for the president of the United States, he replaced the receiver and didn’t say anything for eight minutes. Which was exactly how long it took before Prime Minister Erlander phoned the embassy and ordered Third Secretary Bergqvist to 1) immediately issue a passport with diplomatic status to Allan Karlsson, and 2) without delay arrange to get Mr Karlsson back to Sweden.

‘But he hasn’t got a personal identity number,’ Third Secretary Bergqvist attempted.

‘I suggest that you, Third Secretary, solve that problem,’ said Prime Minister Erlander. ‘Unless you wish to become the fourth or fifth secretary instead…’