The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (22 page)

So Allan had been lucky, and now he was pushed into a drafty freight car with about thirty other fortunate dissidents. This particular load had also been allocated no fewer than three blankets per prisoner after the physicist Yury Borisovich Popov had bribed the guards and their immediate boss with a whole wad of roubles. The boss of the guards thought it was weird that such a prominent citizen would care about a simple
transport to the Gulag camps, and he even considered
reporting
this to his superiors, but then he realised that he had actually accepted that money so perhaps it was best not to make a fuss.

It was no easy matter for Allan to find somebody to talk to in the freight wagon, since nearly everybody spoke only Russian. But one man, about fifty-five years old, could speak Italian and since Allan of course spoke fluent Spanish, the two of them could understand each other fairly well. Sufficiently well for Allan to understand that the man was deeply unhappy and would have preferred to kill himself, if in his own view he hadn’t been such a coward. Allan consoled him as best he could, saying that perhaps things would sort themselves out when the train reached Siberia, because there Allan thought that three blankets would be rather inadequate.

The Italian sniffled and pulled himself together. Then he thanked Allan for his support and shook hands. He wasn’t, incidentally, Italian but German. Herbert was his name. His family name was irrelevant.

Herbert Einstein had never had any luck in his life. On account of an administrative mishap, he had been condemned – just like Allan – to thirty years in the correction camps instead of the death he so sincerely longed for.

And he wouldn’t freeze to death on the Siberian tundra either, the extra blankets would see to that. Besides, January 1948 was the mildest January for many a year. But Allan promised that there would be many new possibilities for Herbert. They were on their way to a labour camp after all, so, if nothing else, he could work himself to death. How about that?

Herbert sighed and said that he was probably too lazy for that, but he wasn’t really sure because he had never worked in all his life.

And there, Allan could see an opening. In a prison camp you couldn’t just hang around, because if you did then the guards would shoot you.

Herbert liked the idea, but it gave him the creeps at the same time. A load of bullets, wouldn’t that be dreadfully painful?

Allan Karlsson didn’t ask much of life. He just wanted a bed, lots of food, something to do, and now and then a glass of vodka. If these requirements were met, he could stand most things. The camp in Vladivostok offered Allan everything he wished for except the vodka.

At that time, the harbour in Vladivostok consisted of an open and a closed part. Surrounded by a two-metre-high fence, the Gulag correction camp consisted of forty brown barracks in rows of four. The fence went all the way down to the pier. The ships that were going to be loaded or unloaded by Gulag prisoners berthed inside the fence, the others outside. Almost everything was done by the prisoners, only small fishing boats and their crews had to manage on their own, as did the
occasional
larger oil tanker.

With few exceptions, the days at the correction camp in Vladivostok all looked the same. Reveille in the barracks at six in the morning, breakfast at a quarter-past. The working day lasted twelve hours, from half-past six to half-past six, with a half-hour lunch break at midday. Immediately after the end of the working day, there was supper, and then it was time to be locked up until the next morning.

The diet was substantial: mainly fish admittedly, but rarely in the form of soup. The camp guards were not exactly friendly, but at least they didn’t shoot people without cause. Even Herbert Einstein got to stay alive, contrary to his own ambition. He did of course work more slowly than any other
prisoner, but since he always stayed very close to the hardworking Allan, nobody noticed.

Allan had nothing against working for two. But he soon introduced a rule; Herbert wasn’t allowed to complain about how miserable his life was. Allan had already understood that to be the case, and there was nothing wrong with his memory. To keep on saying the same thing over and over again thus served no purpose.

Herbert obeyed, and then it was okay, just as most things were okay, apart from the lack of vodka. Allan put up with it for exactly five years and three weeks. Then he said:

‘Now I want a drink. And I can’t get that here. So it’s time to move on.’      

The spring sun shone brightly for the ninth day in a row and even though it was cool in the morning, Bosse set the table for breakfast out on the veranda.

Benny and The Beauty led Sonya out of the bus and into the field behind the farmhouse. Allan and Pike Gerdin sat in the hammock sofa and rocked gently. One of them was one hundred years old, and the other just felt as if he was. His head throbbed, and his broken ribs made it hard to breathe. His right arm was good for nothing, not to mention the worst of all – the deep wound in his right leg. Benny came by and offered to change the dressing on the leg, but he thought it was perhaps best to start with a couple of strong painkillers. They could then resort to morphine in the evening if necessary.

After which Benny returned to Sonya and left Allan and Pike to themselves. Allan thought that it was high time that the two men had a more serious conversation. He was sorry that – Bolt? – had lost his life out there in the Södermanland forests and that – Bucket? – ended up under Sonya. Both Bolt and Bucket had however been threatening them, to put it mildly, and perhaps that could be a mitigating factor. Didn’t Mr Pike think so?

Pike Gerdin answered that he was sorry to hear that the boys were dead, but that it didn’t really surprise him that they had been overpowered by a hundred-year-old geezer, with a little assistance, because they had both been hopelessly daft. The only person who was even more daft was the fourth member of the club, Caracas, but he had just fled the country and was well on his way to somewhere in South America, Pike wasn’t really sure where he came from.

Then Pike Gerdin’s voice grew sad. He seemed to feel sorry for himself, because it was Caracas who had been able to talk to the cocaine sellers in Colombia; now Pike had neither
interpreter
nor henchmen to continue his business. Here he sat, with God knows how many broken bones in his body, and without a clue as to what he should do with his life.

Allan consoled him and said that there was surely some other drug that Mr Pike could sell. Allan didn’t know much about drugs, but couldn’t Mr Pike and Bosse Baddy grow something here on the farm?

Pike answered that Bosse Baddy was his best friend in life, but also that Bosse had his damned moral principles.
Otherwise
, Pike and Bosse would by now have been the meatball kings of Europe.

Bosse interrupted the general melancholy in the hammock by announcing that breakfast was served. Pike could at last get to taste the juiciest chicken in the world, and with it watermelon that seemed to have been imported directly from the Kingdom of Heaven.

After breakfast, Benny dressed Pike’s thigh wound and then Pike explained that he needed to have a morning nap, if his friends would excuse him?

The following hours at Bellringer Farm developed as follows:

Benny and The Beauty moved things around in the barn so that they could rig up a fitting and more permanent stable for Sonya.

Julius and Bosse went off into Falköping to buy supplies, and while there became aware of the newspaper headlines about the centenarian and his entourage who had evidently run amok across the country.

Allan returned after breakfast to the hammock, with the aim of not exerting himself — preferably in the company of Buster.

And Pike slept.

But when Julius and Bosse came back from their shopping expedition, they immediately summoned everyone to a big meeting in the kitchen. Even Pike Gerdin was forced from his bed.

Julius told them what he and Bosse had read in the
newspaper
. Anyone who wanted to could read it in peace and quiet after the meeting, but to sum up, there were warrants out for their arrest, all of them except Bosse who wasn’t mentioned at all, and Pike who according to the newspapers was dead.

‘That last bit isn’t entirely true, but I
am
feeling a bit under the weather,’ said Pike Gerdin.

Julius said that it was, of course, serious to be suspected of murder, even if it might end up being called something else. And then he asked for everyone’s views. Should they phone the police, tell them where they were, and let justice run its course?

Before anyone could say what they thought about that, Pike Gerdin let out a roar and said that it would be over his half-dead body that anyone voluntarily phoned and reported themselves to the police.

‘If it’s going to be like that, then I’ll get my revolver again. What did you do with it, by the way?’

Allan answered that he had hidden the revolver in a safe place, bearing in mind all the weird medicines Benny had given to Mr Pike. And didn’t Mr Pike think that it was just as well that it remained hidden a little longer?

Well, okay, Pike could go along with that, if only he and Mr Karlsson could stop being so formal.

‘I am Pike,’ said Pike, and shook hands with the centenarian.

‘And I’m Allan,’ said Allan. ‘Nice to meet you.’

So by threatening to use weapons (but without a weapon) Pike had decided that they wouldn’t admit anything to the police and prosecutor. His experience was that Justice was
rarely as just as it ought to be. The others agreed. Not least on account of what would happen if Justice this time should turn out to be just.

The result of the short discussion was that the yellow bus was immediately hidden in Bosse’s huge warehouse, together with a lot of as yet untreated watermelons. But it was also decided that the only person who could leave the farm without the group’s permission was Bosse Baddy – that is, the only one among them who wasn’t wanted by the police or presumed dead.

As for the question of what they should do next, what for example should happen to the suitcase of money, the group decided to postpone the decisions until later. Or as Pike Gerdin said:

‘I get a headache when I think about it. At the moment I’d pay fifty million for a painkiller.’

‘Here are two pills,’ said Benny. ‘And they are free.’

It was a hectic day for Chief Inspector Aronsson. Thanks to all the publicity, they were now drowning in tips about where the presumed triple-murderer and his companions were holed up. But the only tip-off that Chief Inspector Aronsson had any faith in was the one that came from the deputy chief of police in Jönköping, Gunnar Löwenlind. He reported that on the main road somewhere near Råslätt, he had met a yellow Scania bus with a badly dented front and only one functioning headlight. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his grandson had just started throwing up in his babyseat in the back of the car, Löwenlind would have phoned the traffic police and tipped them off.

Chief Inspector Aronsson sat for a second evening in the piano bar at the Hotel Royal Corner in Växjö and once again made the mistake of analysing the situation while under the influence.

‘The northbound road,’ the chief inspector reflected. ‘Are you going back into Södermanland? Or are you going to hide in Stockholm?’

He decided to check out of the hotel the next day and set off home to his depressing three-room apartment in the centre of Eskilstuna. Ronny Hulth from the bus station at least had a cat to hug. Göran Aronsson didn’t have anything, he thought and downed the last whisky of the evening. 

In the course of five years and three weeks, Allan had naturally learned to speak Russian very well, but also brushed up on his Chinese. The harbour was a lively place, and Allan established contact with returning sailors who could keep him up to date on what was happening out in the world.

Among other things, the Soviet Union had exploded its own atom bomb one and a half years after Allan’s meeting with Stalin, Beria and the sympathetic Yury Borisovich. In the West, they suspected espionage, because the bomb seemed to be built according to exactly the same principle as the Los Alamos bomb. Allan tried to work out how many clues Yury might have picked up in the submarine while vodka was being drunk straight from the bottle.

‘I believe that you, dear Yury Borisovich, have mastered the art of drinking and listening at the same time,’ he said.

Allan also discovered that the United States, France and Great Britain had combined their zones of occupation and formed a German federal republic. And an angry Stalin had immediately retaliated by forming a Germany of his own, so now the West and East each had one, which seemed practical to Allan.

The Swedish king had gone and died, as Allan had read in a British newspaper which for some obscure reason had found its way to a Chinese sailor, who in turn remembered the Swedish prisoner in Vladivostok and so brought the newspaper with him. The king had admittedly been dead almost a whole year when it came to Allan’s attention, but that didn’t really matter. A new king had immediately replaced him, so things were fine in the old country.

Otherwise the sailors in the harbour mainly talked about the war in Korea. And that wasn’t so surprising. Korea was after all only about 200 kilometres away.

As Allan understood it, the following had happened:

The Korean Peninsula was kind of left over when the Second World War ended. Stalin and Truman each occupied a bit in brotherly agreement, and decided that the 38th parallel would separate north from south. This was then followed by
negotiations
lasting for ever about how Korea should be able to govern itself, but since Stalin and Truman didn’t really have the same political views (not at all, in fact) it all ended up like Germany. First, the United States established a South Korea, upon which the Soviet Union retaliated with a North Korea. And then the Americans and the Russians left the Koreans to get on with it.

But it hadn’t worked out so well. Kim Il Sung in the north and Syngman Rhee in the south, each thought that he was best suited to govern the entire peninsula. And then they had started a war.

But after three years, and perhaps four million dead,
absolutely
nothing had changed. The north was still the north, and the south was still the south. And the 38th parallel still kept them apart.

When it came to getting that drink – the main reason to escape from the Gulag – the most natural way would of course have been to sneak on board one of the many ships that stopped in the harbour in Vladivostok. But at least seven of Allan’s friends in the camp hut had thought the same over the years, and all seven had been discovered and executed. Every time it
happened
, the others in the barrack had mourned. And the biggest mourner was Herbert Einstein, it would seem. Only Allan knew that the reason for Herbert’s sadness was that, yet again, he hadn’t been executed.

One of the challenges of getting onto a ship was that every prisoner wore black and white prison clothes. It was impossible to blend in with the crowd. In addition, there was a narrow passageway to the ship and that was guarded, and well-trained guard dogs sniffed at every load that was lifted on to the ship by crane.

Also, it wasn’t exactly easy to find ships where Allan would be readily accepted as a stowaway. A lot of transports went to mainland China, others to Wonsan on the North Korean east coast. There was reason to believe that a Chinese or North Korean captain who found a Gulag prisoner in his hold would either turn back with him or throw him overboard (with the same final result, but with less bureaucracy).

Overland didn’t seem much easier. Northwards into Siberia where it really was cold was no solution. Nor was going
westwards
into China.

What remained was southwards, to South Korea where they would surely look after a Gulag refugee who would be assumed to be an enemy of communism. Too bad that North Korea lay in between.

There would be some stumbling blocks along the way, Allan realised, before he had even had time to work on something vaguely resembling a plan for his overland escape to the south. But there was no point in worrying himself to death because then he’d never get any vodka.

Should he try on his own, or along with someone else? In that case it would have to be Herbert, miserable though he was. In fact, Allan thought he could find some use for Herbert in his preparations. And it would certainly be more fun to be two on the run, than just one.

‘Escape?’ said Herbert Einstein. ‘Overland? To South Korea? Via North Korea?’

‘More or less,’ said Allan. ‘At least that’s the working plan.’

‘The chances that we will survive can’t be more than
microscopic
,’ said Herbert.

‘You’re probably right about that,’ said Allan.

‘I’m in!’ said Herbert.

After five years, everybody in the camp knew how little cognitive activity there was in the head of prisoner number 133 – Herbert – and even when there was evidence of
some
activity, it seemed to only cause trouble internally.

This, in turn, had created a certain tolerance in the prison guards when it came to Herbert Einstein. If any other prisoner didn’t stand the way he was supposed to in the food line, then at best he would be shouted at, second best he would get a rifle butt in his stomach, and in the worst case it would be goodbye for ever.

But after five years Herbert still couldn’t find his way around the barracks. They were all just the same brown colour, and all the same size; it was confusing. The food was always served between barrack thirteen and fourteen, but prisoner 133 could just as often be found wandering about beside barrack seven. Or nineteen. Or twenty-five.

‘Damn it, Einstein,’ the prison guards would say. ‘The food line is over there. No, not there, there! It has been there the whole damn time!’

Allan thought that he and Herbert could make use of this reputation. They could of course escape in their prison clothes, but to stay alive in those same prison clothes for more than a minute or two, that would be harder. Allan and Herbert each needed a soldier’s uniform. And the only prisoner who could get anywhere near the soldiers’ clothes depot without being shot immediately on discovery was 133 Einstein.

So Allan told his friend what to do. It was a question of ‘going the wrong way’ when it was time for lunch, because it was
lunchtime for the staff at the clothes depot too. During that half-hour the depot was guarded solely by the soldier at the machine gun in watchtower four. Like all the other guards, he knew about prisoner 133’s strange ways, and if he saw Herbert he would probably just shout at him rather than shoot him. And if Allan was wrong about that, it wasn’t a huge issue considering Herbert’s eternal death wish.

Herbert thought that Allan had worked it out well. But what was it that he was supposed to do, could he tell him one more time?

And of course it went wrong. Herbert got lost and for the first time in ages found himself in the right place for the food line. Allan was already standing there, and with a sigh he gave Herbert a friendly push in the direction of the clothes depot. But that didn’t help, Herbert went the wrong way again and before he knew it he found himself in the laundry room. And what did he find there, if not a whole pile of newly washed and ironed uniforms!

He took two uniforms, hid them inside his coat, and then went out around the barracks again. The soldier in watchtower four saw him, but he didn’t even bother shouting. In fact, the guard thought that it looked as if the idiot was actually on the way to his own barracks.

‘A miracle,’ he mumbled to himself and returned to what he was doing before, which was dreaming that he was somewhere else far away.

Now Allan and Herbert each had a uniform to show that they were proud recruits in the Red Army. Now it was just a matter of carrying out the rest of the plan.

Recently Allan had noticed a considerable increase in the number of ships on the way to Wonsan. The Soviet Union was
officially not in the war on the North Korean side, but lots and lots of war material had started to arrive by train in Vladivostok where it was then loaded onto ships that all had the same
destination
. Not that it was actually advertised where they were going, but Allan had the sense to ask the sailors. Sometimes you could also see what the cargo consisted of, for example rough terrain vehicles or even tanks, while on other occasions they were just wooden containers.

Allan needed a diversionary tactic like the one in Tehran six years earlier. Following the old Roman maxim of keeping to what you do best, he thought that some fireworks might be just the thing. And that was where the containers to Wonsan came into the picture. Allan couldn’t know, but he guessed that several of them contained explosives and if such a container were to catch fire in the dock area and if it started to explode… Well, then Allan and Herbert would have the opportunity to slip around the corner and change into the Soviet uniform. And then they would have to get hold of a car – which would need to have the keys in the ignition and a full fuel tank – plus no owner in sight. And then the guarded gates would have to open on Allan and Herbert’s orders, and once they were out of the harbour and Gulag area, nobody would notice anything strange at all, nobody would miss the stolen car and nobody would follow them. And all of this before they were even in the vicinity of problems like how they would get into North Korea and – above all – how they would then move from north to south.

‘I might be a bit slow,’ said Herbert. ‘But it feels as if your plan isn’t entirely ready.’

‘You aren’t slow,’ Allan protested. ‘Well, perhaps a little, but when it comes to this, you are perfectly right. And the more I think about it, the more I think that we should just leave it at that, and you’ll see that things will turn out like they do, because that is what usually happens — almost always, in fact.’
The escape plan’s first (and only) step thus consisted of secretly setting fire to a suitable container. For that purpose they needed 1) a suitable container, and 2) something they could set it on fire with. While waiting for a ship with a suitable container, Allan sent the notoriously stupid Herbert Einstein out on another mission. And Herbert showed that Allan’s faith in him was not misplaced by managing both to steal a signal rocket and hide it in his trousers before a Soviet guard discovered him in a place where Herbert had no right to be. But instead of executing or at the very least searching the prisoner, the guard just shouted something about it being not unreasonable to expect that after five years prisoner number 133 should be able to stop getting lost. Herbert said he was sorry, and tiptoed away. For the sake of the charade, he went in the wrong direction.

‘The barrack is to the left, Einstein,’ the guard shouted after him. ‘How stupid can you get?’

Allan praised Herbert for a job well done and for acting the part well. Herbert blushed, while dismissing the praise, saying that it wasn’t hard to play stupid when you are stupid. Allan said that he didn’t know how hard it was, because the idiots Allan had met so far in his life had all tried to do the opposite.

Then, what seemed to be the right day turned up. It was a cold morning, 1st March 1953, when a train arrived with more wagons than Allan, or at least Herbert, could count. The
transport
was obviously a military one, and everything was going to be loaded onto three ships, all destined for North Korea. Eight T34 tanks couldn’t be concealed as part of the load, but otherwise everything was packed in massive wooden containers without any labels. But the gaps between the planks were just big enough to allow a signal rocket to be fired into one of the containers. And that was exactly what Allan did when he had the chance after half a day of loading.

Smoke soon began to billow out of the container, but,
helpfully
, it took several seconds before the load caught fire, so Allan could get away and was not immediately suspected of being involved. Soon, the container itself was ablaze, immune to the effects of the sub-zero temperature outside.

The plan was for it to explode after the fire reached a hand grenade or some similar item in the load. That would make the guards react like headless chickens, and Allan and Herbert would be able to get back to their barracks for a quick change.

The problem was that nothing ever exploded. There was however an enormous amount of smoke, and it got even worse when the guards who didn’t want to go near the fire themselves ordered some of the prisoners to pour water onto the burning container.

This, in turn, led three of the prisoners to use the smoke as a screen while they climbed over the two-metre-high fence to reach the open side of the harbour. But the soldier in the
watchtower
saw what was happening. He was already sitting behind his machine gun and now he fired off salvo after salvo of bullets through the smoke towards the three prisoners. Since he was using tracer ammunition, he hit all three with a large number of bullets and the men fell to the ground dead. And if they weren’t already dead, then they most certainly were a second later, because it wasn’t only the prisoners who were hit. An undamaged container that stood to the left of the one on fire also received a hail of bullets. Allan’s container held 1,500 military blankets. The container next to it held 1,500 grenades. The tracer bullets contained phosphor and when a first bullet hit a first grenade it exploded, and tenths of a second later it took 1,499 others with it. The explosion was so powerful that the next four containers flew between thirty and eighty metres into the camp.