The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (28 page)

The duties involved in Allan’s position at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris were not arduous. The new ambassador, Mrs Amanda Einstein, gave him a room of his own and said that Allan was now free to do whatever he wanted.

‘But it would be kind of you if you could help as an
interpreter
if things should ever get so bad that I need to meet people from other countries.’

Allan responded that he couldn’t exclude that things would get exactly as bad as that, considering the nature of the
assignment
. The first foreigner in line would surely be waiting the very next day, if Allan had understood correctly.

Amanda swore when she was reminded that she would have to go to the Élysée Palace for accreditation. The ceremony would last no more than two minutes but that was more than enough for someone who had a tendency to say something stupid, a tendency that Amanda thought she had.

Allan agreed that now and then something unsuitable did come out of her mouth, but that it would be fine with President de Gaulle, as long as she made sure that she only spoke Indonesian during her two minutes, and otherwise just smiled and looked friendly.

‘What did you say he was called?’ asked Amanda.

‘Indonesian, speak Indonesian,’ said Allan. ‘Or even better, Balinese.’

Upon which Allan went out for a walk in the French capital. He thought that it wouldn’t do any harm to stretch his legs after fifteen years in a beach chair, and also he had just seen himself in a mirror at the embassy, and was reminded that he hadn’t had
a haircut or a shave since some time after the volcanic eruption in 1963.

It turned out, however, that it was impossible to find an open barbershop. Everything was closed, virtually everybody seemed to have gone on strike and now they were
occupying
buildings and demonstrating and pushing cars onto their sides and shouting and swearing and throwing things at each other. Riot barriers were being put up along and across the streets where Allan was walking along, keeping his head down.

It was all like the Bali he had just left — just a bit cooler. Allan turned around and went back to the embassy.

There he met a furious ambassador. The Élysée Palace had just called to say that the two-minute-long accreditation ceremony had been replaced by a long lunch and that the ambassador was warmly welcome to bring along her husband and of course her own interpreter, and that President de Gaulle for his part intended to invite the Minister of the Interior Fouchet and – not least – that the American President Lyndon B. Johnson would be there too.

Amanda was in despair. She might have managed two minutes in the company of the president without risking immediate deportation, but three hours and with yet another president at the table…

‘What’s happening and what shall we do, Allan?’ asked Amanda.

But the development from a handshake to a long lunch with double presidents was just as incomprehensible to Allan. And trying to understand things that were incomprehensible was not in his nature.

‘What should we do? I think we should find Herbert and have a drink. It is already after noon.’

An accreditation ceremony with President de Gaulle on the one side and an ambassador from a distant and unimportant nation on the other usually lasted at most sixty seconds, but might be allowed to go on twice as long if the diplomat in question was talkative.

In the case of the Indonesian ambassador it had suddenly become completely different for major political reasons, ones that Allan Karlsson would never have been able to work out even if he had cared to try.

As it happened President Lyndon B. Johnson was sitting in the American Embassy in Paris and longing for a political victory. The protests the world over against the war in Vietnam were now raging like a hurricane and the person most
associated
with the war, President Johnson, was undeniably
unpopular
everywhere.

Johnson had long since abandoned his plans to run in the November elections, but he wouldn’t mind being remembered by some more attractive epithet than ‘murderer’ and other
unpleasant
names that were being shouted out all over the place. So first he had ordered a break in the bombing of Hanoi and had actually organized a peace conference. The fact that there then happened to be semi-war raging on the streets in the city where the conference came to be held was something President Johnson found almost comical. There was something for that de Gaulle to get his teeth into.

President Johnson thought that de Gaulle was a jerk. He seemed to have completely ‘forgotten’ who had rolled up his sleeves and saved France from the Germans. But the rules of politics were such that a French and an American president can’t be in the same capital together without at least having lunch.

So a lunch was booked, and would have to be endured. But luckily the French had evidently messed things up (Johnson was
not surprised) and had double-booked their president. So now the new Indonesian ambassador – a woman! – was joining them. President Johnson thought that was just fine; he could talk to her instead of that de Gaulle.

But it wasn’t actually a double booking. Instead, President de Gaulle had personally and at the last moment had the brilliant idea of pretending that was the case. In that way, the lunch would be endurable, he could converse with the Indonesian ambassador – a woman! – instead of that Johnson.

President de Gaulle didn’t like Johnson, but it was for
historical
rather than personal reasons. At the end of the war, the USA had placed France under American military jurisdiction – they had intended to steal his country! How could de Gaulle forgive them that, regardless of whether the sitting president was actually involved? The sitting president, for that matter… Johnson… He was called Johnson. The Americans simply had no style, thought Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle.

Amanda and Herbert soon agreed that it would be best if Herbert stayed at the embassy during the meeting with the presidents in the Élysée Palace. In this way, they both thought, the risk that something would go totally wrong would be
almost
exactly halved. Didn’t Allan think so too?

Allan was silent for a moment, considering possible answers, before he finally said:

‘Herbert, you should stay at home.’

The luncheon guests were gathered and waiting for their host, who in turn was sitting in his office waiting just for the sake of waiting. And he intended to keep on waiting a few minutes more, in the hope that it would put that man Johnson in a very bad mood.

De Gaulle could hear the noise of the demonstrations from far away, as riots raged in his beloved Paris. The Fifth French Republic had started to wobble, suddenly and from nowhere. First, it was some students who were for free sex and against the Vietnam War. As far as that went, this was OK with the
president
because students will always find something to complain about.

But the demonstrations became bigger and bigger, and more violent too, and then the trade unions raised their voices and threatened to take ten million workers out on strike. Ten million! The whole country would grind to a halt!

What the workers wanted was to work less for a bigger wage. And that de Gaulle resisted. Three wrong out of three, according to the president who had fought and won much worse battles than that. Leading advisors at the Ministry of the Interior told the president to treat tough protests with equal toughness. This was not about anything big, for example a communist attempt orchestrated by the Soviet Union to try to take over the country. But, of course, over coffee Lyndon Johnson would speculate that this
was
the case given half a chance. After all, the Americans saw communists hiding in every bush. To be on the safe side, de Gaulle had taken along Interior Minister Fouchet and his
especially
knowledgeable senior official. These two had been
responsible
for handling the current chaos in the nation and so they could also be responsible for defending themselves if Johnson started to stick his nose in things.

‘Ugh! Damn and blast! [but in French],’ said President Charles de Gaulle and got up from his chair.

They couldn’t delay the lunch any longer.

The French president’s security staff had been especially careful when it came to checking the Indonesian ambassador’s bearded and long-haired interpreter. But his papers were in order and they
had made certain he was not carrying a weapon. Besides, the ambassador – a woman! – vouched for him. Thus, the bearded man was seated at the dining table between a much younger and more smartly dressed American interpreter and, on the other side, a French copy of the same.

The interpreter who was worked hardest was the bearded Indonesian, since Presidents Johnson and de Gaulle directed their questions to Madame Ambassador instead of to each other.

President de Gaulle started by enquiring as to Madame Ambassador’s professional background. Amanda Einstein said that really she was rather a blockhead, that she had bribed her way to the position of governor of Bali and then bribed her way to re-election in two subsequent elections, that she had made pots of money for herself and her extended family for many years until the new President Suharto had, quite out of the blue, phoned and offered her the position of ambassador in Paris.

‘I didn’t even know where Paris was; I thought it was a country, not a city. Have you ever heard anything so crazy,’ said Amanda Einstein and laughed.

She had said all of this in her mother tongue and the
long-haired
and bearded interpreter translated it into English, taking the opportunity to change almost everything Amanda Einstein had said into something he felt more appropriate.

When the lunch was coming to a close, the two presidents were in agreement over one thing, even though they weren’t aware of the fact. They both thought that Madame Ambassador Einstein was entertaining, enlightened, interesting and wise. She might, of course, have shown better judgment when it came to her choice of interpreter, because he looked like the Wild Man of Borneo.

Interior Minister Fouchet’s especially knowledgeable senior official, Claude Pennant, was born in 1928 in Strasbourg. His
parents were convinced and passionate communists, who had gone to Spain to fight against the fascists when war broke out in 1936. With them they had their eight-year-old son, Claude.

The entire family survived the war and by a complicated path fled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, they offered their services to further the interests of international communism. And they presented their son, now eleven years old, and announced that he already spoke three languages: German and French from back home in Strasbourg, and now Spanish too. Could that perhaps, in the long term, serve the revolution?

Yes, it could. The young Claude’s talent for languages was carefully checked and after that his general intelligence in a number of tests. And then he was put in a language-
cum-ideology
school and before he was fifteen years old he spoke fluent French, German, Russian, Spanish, English and Chinese.

When he was eighteen, just after the end of the Second World War, Claude heard his mother and father express doubts as to the course the revolution was taking under Stalin. Claude reported these views to his superiors and before long Michel and Monique Pennant had been both convicted and executed for non-revolutionary activity. The young Claude thus gained his first award, a gold medal for the best pupil of his year, 1945–46.

After 1946, Claude started to prepare for service abroad. The intention was to place him in the West and let him work his way up in the corridors of power, if necessary as a sleeper agent for dozens of years. Claude was now under the protective hawk-like wings of Marshal Beria and he was carefully kept out of all official engagements where he might possibly end up in a photograph. The only work the young Claude was allowed to do was an occasional bout as interpreter, and then only when the marshal himself was present.

In 1949, at the age of twenty-one, Claude Pennant was sent back to France, but this time to Paris. He was allowed to keep his own name, although his life history had been rewritten. He started up the career ladder at the Sorbonne.

Nineteen years later, in May 1968, he had risen to the
immediate
vicinity of the French president himself. The last two years he had been Interior Minister Fouchet’s right hand man and as such he now served the international revolution more than ever. His advice to the interior minister – and thus in extension to the president – was to react harshly to the ongoing student and worker uprising. To be on the safe side, he also made sure the French communists sent false signals, implying that they were not behind the demands of the students and workers. The communist revolution in France was at most one month away, and de Gaulle and Fouchet didn’t have a clue.

After lunch, there was an opportunity for everyone to stretch their legs before coffee was served in the drawing room. Now, the two presidents had no choice but to exchange pleasantries with each other. It was while they were doing this, that the
long-haired
and bearded interpreter came up to them unexpectedly.

‘Excuse me for disturbing both the Mr Presidents, but I have to talk to Mr President de Gaulle and I don’t think it can wait.’

President de Gaulle was just about to call a guard, because a French president most certainly did not mix with just anybody in that manner. But the long-haired and bearded man was perfectly polite, so he was allowed to speak.

‘Very well, but be quick about it. As you can see I’ve got more important things to do than chat with an interpreter.’

Oh indeed, Allan promised not to go on. The simple fact was that Allan thought the president ought to know that Interior Minister Fouchet’s special advisor was a spy.