Kitabı oku: «The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man», sayfa 3
Congo
Congo is the second-largest country in Africa and has always been rich in two particular things: natural resources and misery.
The most miserable period of all was when King Leopold II of Belgium used the country as his private rubber farm. He enslaved everyone he encountered and had upwards of ten million people killed. That’s an entire Sweden. Or an entire Belgium, if you prefer.
When Congo gained independence many difficult years later, a certain Joseph Mobutu ended up in the president’s chair. He became most famous for selling his country’s resources to the highest under-the-table bidder, keeping the money for himself, and changing his name to ‘the All-powerful Warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’.
This guy, thought the United States, was the future of Congo and Africa. And, with the kind aid of the CIA, the All-powerful Warrior remained in power for several decades. Uranium succeeded rubber as the most interesting natural resource. Indeed, the USA received the uranium for the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Congo and, as thanks for the help, assisted in the installation of a Congolese nuclear research facility under the leadership of the all-powerful one who left fire in his wake. It’s possible that this was not the United States’ brightest political decision in history.
In the country where everything was corrupt, no exceptions, large quantities of enriched uranium vanished. Some of it turned up here and there and could be secured, while an unknown amount remained missing.
Time passed. The most important security services in the Western world no longer had the energy to search for what couldn’t be found. What remained was to try to keep any more from reaching the black market. Some of those with operational units found comfort in the fact that at least the missing uranium lost strength with each year that went by.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, was in possession of knowledge that made her view of the whole thing rather less rosy. Frau Merkel had already been around longer than most of the world’s leaders and she was counting on being re-elected next autumn. Her background as a chemist told her that she would not be in her current position on the day the missing isotope no longer posed a potential threat to her country. To be sure, she still had a lot to give, even at the age of sixty-three, after twenty-eight years in politics. But even so, her own half-life was considerably shorter than that of enriched uranium: four point five billion years.
North Korea
Kim Jong-un had never asked to be the person he became. In fact, two older brothers were ahead of him in line, but one sealed his fate when he took his family under his wing and sneaked out of the country under a fake name to go to Tokyo for a lark. To Disneyland, to boot – he was 0 for 2. And their father, Kim Jong-il, considered his other son far too weak. That basically meant he was suspected of being gay. Here and there, it was considered questionable to love whomever you wished.
Their father Kim was quite advanced in age when he took over from Eternal President Kim Il-sung, and likely had plans for a similar run-in period for his youngest son. But the problem with life is that people both high and low die when they die. Suddenly there he was, the twenty-five-year-old son, expected to move forward the legacy of his just-deceased father. Or preferably further than that since his father had gone down in history as the man who had turned a hungry people into a starving people.
In the span of a few months, young Kim went from capable Game Boy player to three-star general. He wasn’t given terrific chances by international analysts. A puppy, commander of a series of battle-scarred officers, including the puppy’s own uncle? Surely that would never work out.
And it didn’t. For the uncle and the generals. It’s possible that they were scheming, but before they could finish they were purged, every last one. Young Kim proved to be a person not to be trifled with or herded about. The uncle was sentenced to death for, among other things, being unfaithful to his wife. Nowhere in the twelve-page verdict was there a word about the fact that young Kim’s father had had five children with three different women.
Several years earlier young Kim had attended school in Switzerland under a secret name while his mother travelled around Europe to shop for the sorts of things the average North Korean had never even seen a picture of. Kim was more interested in basketball and videogames than girls, but his grades were nothing to sneeze at. And when he hastily, and with a decent amount of enthusiasm, took over the entire nation his grandfather had created and his father had partially ruined, it was his grandfather he took after. He was an extrovert, liked to mix with his people, might thump the occasional citizen on the back when he was in the mood – he even spoke to them. Above all, he adjusted the dials of the homemade Communist system, after which the food didn’t run out on as many tables as quickly as it had before.
So, as the world continued to titter in horror over the puppy, he made sure that the citizens were no longer starving even as he realized that the country he’d inherited must either curl up and die or pick a fight with the whole rest of the world, which was striving to make sure that the former occurred.
He chose the fight-picking.
But there was a slight issue with North Korea’s inadequate finances. It would cost much more than they had squirrelled away to upgrade the aged Soviet tanks and ordnance. Better, then, to speed up the pace of the project Dad had helmed with a certain level of success.
Not many bombs. Just a few. But with a decent amount of oomph in them.
Nuclear weapons, in short.
By way of the development of the nuclear weapons programme and an eternal number of test-fired missiles, he informed the scornfully smiling world that North Korea was still in the game. Young Kim was rather satisfied when the world reacted with fear, sanctions and repeated condemnations. Incidentally, he was no longer ‘young Kim’ but Supreme Leader.
As a godsend, the United States replaced a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president with one who constantly fell into Kim Jong-un’s traps. Each time Donald Trump ran his mouth about how North Korea would be struck by ‘fire and fury’, he bolstered the Supreme Leader’s position.
During his first years in power, Kim Jong-un had achieved more than his father had done in his whole life. There was really only one thing that concerned him: the fact that the domestic plutonium factory had such trouble making it. The downside to plutonium is that it does not occur naturally in the earth. Anyone who wishes to play around with it, to build nuclear weapons for example, must first make sure he can create it.
And that’s no small task.
Even the production of five tiny grams is a tough job. But say you succeed in that. Then it must be stabilized, preferably to 99 per cent or greater, with the help of the element gallium, which in turn has the troublesome tendency to melt about as easily as a chocolate bar in the sun.
To stop the entire plutonium process slipping through your fingers, you must have a fancy centrifuge, and that is almost as complicated as the very process it is meant to aid.
All this for five grams of weapons-grade plutonium 239. For a nuclear charge worth mentioning, you need more like five kilos.
Things would probably have worked out if only the Russians had stopped giving the North Koreans the run-around. They had quietly promised to deliver a centrifuge, but now they were making excuses this way and that. It was not an option to wait out their dilly-dallying for eternity upon eternity. Kim Jong-un hated being anyone’s lapdog.
Incidentally, the Russians were masters of double dealing. They might vote for sanctions against North Korea on Monday, half promise a centrifuge on Tuesday – and offer up valuable uranium contacts before the week was out.
For the alternative to homemade plutonium was enriched uranium. It could be had on the black market in the darkest parts of Africa. But the proud Democratic People’s Republic had many enemies out there. Half a ton of material for nuclear weapons was not the sort of thing you could ship intercontinentally by DHL.
And now the schizophrenic characters in Moscow had tipped them off about enriched uranium in Congo.
But could the supplier be trusted?
And would the delivery method work?
Both questions were currently under investigation.
USA, North Korea
The new president of the United States had been forced to fire his security advisor after it turned out the advisor was a security risk. Beyond this, his focus during the initial period of his presidency was to try to get the media to shape up. It was going so-so.
As a result it was basically a welcome interruption for President Trump when the Supreme Leader in Pyongyang allowed four mid-range Pukguksong-2 missiles to be fired five hundred kilometres straight out into the Sea of Japan.
On the initiative of the United States, Japan and South Korea, the UN Security Council was convened, and it soon unanimously condemned the North Korean test. The American ambassador to the UN commented that ‘It is time to hold North Korea accountable – not with our words, but with our actions.’ What those actions might be, she was happy to hand over to the president, who in turn tweeted a number of suggestions.
It so happened that little Sweden was a member of the aforementioned Security Council that year. Margot Wallström, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, was known for her outspokenness and enterprising nature. It was said, but not confirmed, that Benjamin Netanyahu had a picture of her on his office wall in Jerusalem and liked to throw darts at it each time he needed to work out his frustrations. This was because Sweden, on the urging of Margot Wallström, had upped and recognized the state of Palestine. A state without borders, without a functioning government and, as Netanyahu and others saw it, a state full of terrorists.
But Wallström persisted. And now, on the Security Council, she aimed high. Among her colleagues she promoted the idea that she should personally visit Pyongyang to establish a direct line of contact with the leader about the serious nature of things, as a representative of both Sweden and the UN Security Council. The visit must first be sanctioned by North Korea, and it must be completely unofficial. A high-level diplomatic game, but also a serious attempt to tone down the war rhetoric coming from both sides.
No Western country had as genuine a diplomatic relationship with North Korea as Sweden did. The Security Council gave Wallström the green light. All that remained was to convince the Supreme Leader to do the same.
* * *
If Torsten Lövenstierna had been an athlete, he would have been world-renowned and a multi-millionaire. But instead he was a diplomat, so no one had ever heard of him.
During his nearly thirty years in the Swedish foreign service, he had quietly performed his highly qualified services in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan. Among his merits were a posting to the UN in New York, being a special advisor during the Iraq inspection, taking on a leadership role in Mazar-e Sharif, and serving as the Swedish consul general in Istanbul.
What Torsten Lövenstierna didn’t know about advanced diplomacy wasn’t worth knowing. Now he was Sweden’s ambassador in Pyongyang, perhaps the most complicated embassy posting of all.
According to some, he was a genius. Whatever, it was this man who had received the delicate task of bringing the North Koreans onto the track of discreet arbitration.
World peace was on the line. Torsten Lövenstierna prepared himself meticulously, as always. Following his preparations he requested, and was granted, an audience with the Supreme Leader. The ambassador wasn’t nervous – he’d been around far too long for that – but he was incredibly focused.
With great precision, deploying the right word at exactly the right moment, he conveyed the UN’s argument for why quiet arbitration in Pyongyang would be in the best interest of the aforementioned world peace. He was so skilled at his job that he managed to finish his speech without being interrupted even once. What Torsten Lövenstierna accomplished in front of the Supreme Leader was nothing other than a feat of diplomacy.
When he had finished, he expressed thanks for being allowed to take up the leader’s precious time, then awaited a response.
The leader looked the star diplomat in the eye and said, ‘A secret peace summit? Here? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
And with that, the audience was over.
‘Then I ask permission to withdraw,’ said Ambassador Lövenstierna, backing out of the Supreme Leader’s gigantic office.
And that would probably have been the end of that. If it weren’t for Allan Karlsson.
The Indian Ocean
Captain Pak Chong-un took the only empty chair left at the table in the first mate’s quarters. Allan and Julius were already sitting in the other two chairs.
The captain took out a pen and paper and began by enquiring what the gentlemen’s names were, where they were from, and why they had chosen to float around in a woven basket fifty nautical miles from land.
This was the sort of thing Allan was best at, Julius thought, and said nothing. Allan didn’t think much. Instead he said a lot.
‘My name is Allan. And this is my best friend Julius. He’s an asparagus farmer. I’m not anything, except old. I’m a hundred and one today, can you imagine?’
Captain Pak could imagine. He thought that this interrogation had got off to a difficult start. There was something carefree about the man who claimed to be older than should be reasonably possible. It made the interrogator both anxious and watchful.
‘Well, Mr Allan can be as old as he likes,’ said Captain Pak. ‘Where are you from and what are you doing here?’
‘What are we doing here?’ said Allan. ‘Please, dear captain, you’re the one who doesn’t want to let us off.’
‘No quibbling,’ said Captain Pak. ‘It’s possible that I will let you off before you even know it. It probably wouldn’t take more than ten, twelve days to swim from here to East Timor, if that’s what you’d prefer.’
No, neither Allan nor Julius would prefer that. Instead Allan explained that a birthday celebration on Bali had gone awry. They were supposed to take a hot-air balloon trip over the island, but instead the wind had changed and the balloon come loose. By the time the captain and his boat had done them the kindness of passing by, only the basket was left. Allan supposed it had looked very odd indeed, but there’s an explanation behind everything.
‘Isn’t that so?’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ said the captain.
‘That everything has an explanation. Everything really does – don’t you sometimes think that too, Captain?’
Julius looked at Allan in concern. He tried to communicate that it might not be advisable to run his mouth so much: the captain still had the chance to throw them overboard.
‘So you’re saying you’re Indonesians?’ Captain Pak asked sceptically.
‘No, we’re from Sweden,’ said Allan. ‘A lovely country. Have you been there, Captain? No? Well, a visit would absolutely be worth considering. Snow in the winter and long days in the summer. Nice people too. Generally speaking, that is. There are certainly some we could have done without, even in our country. I had a frightfully bad-tempered director at the old folks’ home where I lived before we ended up here. In Bali, I mean. I shudder to think of her. Perhaps you understand what I’m talking about, Captain?’
The captain was displeased that the old man was sending questions back across the table. If he didn’t watch out, he would lose control of the situation.
‘Let’s start from the beginning.’
And he wrote down Allan and Julius’s full names, nationalities and business. Their business was, in fact, nothing. It hadn’t been their intention to float around on the sea. As Captain Pak decided to believe their story, he also began slowly to believe he would survive this chapter of his life.
The interrogation paused at a knock on the door. The terrified sailor outside had been tasked with asking if there was a chance they would be serving the guests dinner. The captain thought that would be fitting. If fifteen or twenty minutes suited.
‘Is there still a ban on alcohol?’ Allan wondered, after the sailor had left.
The captain confirmed that there was. With their food they would be served water and tea.
‘Tea,’ said Allan. ‘Captain, are you really sure you wouldn’t like to drop us off somewhere along the way?’
‘That would put both our cargo and my life in jeopardy. If you behave yourselves, you may accompany us to the Democratic People’s Republic.’
‘If we behave ourselves?’
‘Exactly. There, the Supreme Leader will take care of you in the best way possible.’
‘The way he took care of his brother not long ago?’ Allan asked.
Julius swore internally. Couldn’t the old man control himself? Did he want to become shark food?
Captain Pak might not have had a black tablet like Allan’s, but he did have access to news from all corners of the world as long as he was at sea. He was aware of the accusations in the international media and said angrily that Mr Karlsson had clearly allowed himself to be taken in by imperialist propaganda. ‘No Korean leader would kill either relatives or visitors from other countries.’
For one second, Julius entertained the vain hope that the hundred-and-one-year-old would back down. When that second had passed, Allan said: ‘Oh yes they would. The only reason I’m sitting here today is that Mao Zedong saved my life a few years back, when Kim Il-sung intended to have me shot. As it happens, Mao himself had a change of heart at the last moment.’
What was Captain Pak Chong-un hearing? So much was wrong, all at the same time. A Caucasian blaspheming the name of the Eternal President of the Republic. The president who had stepped into said eternity twenty-three years previously.
‘A few years back?’ said Captain Pak, waiting for his thoughts to fall into order.
‘Oh, time flies. It was 1954, I think. When Stalin was putting on airs. Or was it ’fifty-three?’
‘Mr Karlsson, you … met the Eternal President of the Republic?’
‘Yes, him and his angry boy both. But, of course, they’ve both sailed on since then – not everyone can simply grow healthier with age, like me. Aside from my memory, that is. And my hearing. And my knees. And something else. I’ve forgotten – the memory part, you know.’
Captain Pak realized that the risk to his own life was not at all in the past. The man before him might constitute a direct threat to his health. For him to bring someone who might possibly have denigrated the Eternal President to Pyongyang could not reasonably lead to anything other than … other than what the imperialists claimed had afflicted the Supreme Leader’s brother.
Then again: to take the life of someone who had sat down with the Eternal President without first double-checking with that leader’s grandson …
Rock or hard place? Captain Pak weighed his options.
Julius was, to his own surprise, still conscious. Did Allan understand how high the stakes were, or was he just old? Whichever it was, the hundred-and-one-year-old had talked himself into a state in which the captain’s threat to throw them overboard was more topical than ever.
Julius considered how he might salvage the situation and heard himself saying, ‘Allan here is a great champion of freedom for the Democratic People’s Republic. And an expert in nuclear weapons, too. Isn’t that right, Allan?’
Captain Pak stopped breathing for a few seconds. He automatically brought his right hand to the safe key around his neck to make sure it was still there. A nuclear weapons expert? he thought.
Allan was thinking the same thing. He was afraid he had played a little too offensively against the suspected teetotaller across the table. And, as things were, it was best to play along with the make-believe his friend had started. ‘That was kindly put, Julius. Yes, I suppose we’re experts just about to a man, but in different areas. My speciality happens to be slapping together what we called atom bombs in the good old days. I’m almost as good at that as I am at making vodka out of goat’s milk. But, as I’ve understood it, vodka won’t win me any points on this ship. And, anyway, I don’t suppose there are any goats aboard.’
Allan noticed the captain’s hand seeking something around his neck whenever nuclear weapons were mentioned. That might, of course, have been mere chance. Or perhaps it explained somehow why he looked so tormented. The hundred-and-one-year-old had done some reading on the North Korean atomic weapons programme. Why, just a few days earlier, Kim Jong-un had sent a missile over the Sea of Japan, provoking fury from the rest of the world. This had prompted the old dynamiter to update himself via the black tablet, where you could read absolutely anything if you only knew where to look.
It turned out a lot had happened on the atom bomb front in the seventy-plus years since Allan had last had reason to delve into the topic. But the North Koreans seemed to be far from leaders in the field. ‘Beginners’ would be a better word. International pundits guessed that the country’s plutonium facilities hadn’t yet succeeded in delivering what they were meant to.
Should Allan mention this to the captain and see what sort of reaction he got? With a tiny promise embedded to be on the safe side? His and Julius’s options were no longer to be let off in Indonesia or North Korea, if they ever had been. Instead they would be let off in North Korea or tossed over the railing. North Korea sounded more pleasant. ‘Like I said, nuclear weapons and I are the best of friends. And you seem to have plenty of problems.’
Captain Pak’s hand immediately went back to the key.
Allan went on: ‘Judging by the puny strength of your country’s first nuclear weapons tests, either you haven’t quite figured out plutonium production or you have a severe lack of uranium. Or maybe both. One issue, when it comes to uranium, might be that you don’t understand how to maximize it. That’s what usually happens to nuclear weapons bunglers in general. No wonder people are laughing at you.’
‘Who’s laughing at us?’ Captain Pak said defensively.
‘Who isn’t?’ Allan said, and Julius prayed silently to himself that Allan would stop there.
But Allan had caught a scent. The captain wasn’t protesting at Allan’s account of things: instead he was lamely arguing about the laughter. Had Allan hit the mark more accurately than he could have guessed? ‘Uranium,’ he said, feeling his way forward.
That was it. Nothing more. And once again.
‘Uranium.’
Now the captain’s hand, clutching the key, almost turned white.
‘Why do you keep saying uranium all the time?’ he asked angrily and uncertainly all at once.
‘Because anyone who has two plutonium facilities at their disposal and still shoots off toy bombs likely has a problem. Anyone who can’t produce their own plutonium must seek solace in – you guessed it – uranium.’
Captain Pak tried to bring his hand to the key again, only to discover it was already there. Allan told the captain not to look so terrified. Surely it was no surprise that the world’s leading nuclear weapons expert, all humility aside, would understand the situation.
One person who didn’t was Julius. Had Allan become a mind-reader?
‘What situation?’ said Captain Pak, fearing the answer.
Allan was on the verge of betting that the captain’s boat was full of smuggled uranium. But if he was wrong, matters would deteriorate. ‘Let’s not spend too much time on the obvious,’ he said. ‘This sort of thing is best dealt with discreetly. But the captain will have to make his decision soon. Either Julius and I will come to Pyongyang and whip your puny attempts at nuclear weapons into shape. Or you will have to throw us overboard and justify it to the Supreme Leader after the fact.’
Captain Pak wanted to bury the two gentlemen a few thousand metres below the sea. At the same time, the older one knew so much. Perhaps more than the republic’s own experts. How patriotic would it be to feed the fish with all that knowledge?
Allan could tell that the captain hadn’t yet made up his mind. He gave it an extra go. ‘I believe this is your lucky day, Mr Lackey of a Captain. Let’s do this, for the good of everyone.’
And he promised to tell the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic everything he knew about the technology behind the new hetisostat pressure.
‘Hetistosat …?’ Captain Pak attempted.
‘Almost,’ said Allan. ‘Twice the power for a quarter the uranium, in short. Or, alternatively, the same amount but eight times the power. With my help, you could blow half of Japan sky-high without losing more than a few kilos. Although I don’t recommend it. The Japanese who were still around would be furious, I can tell you that much right now. And the Americans too, I’m sure, although they were once out to do the same thing. With a certain amount of success.’
‘Hetistosat …’ Captain Pak tried again, but Allan hushed him.
‘That’s not something that should be said aloud, Captain, even if you could get the pronunciation right.’
Captain Pak sat quietly in his chair, apparently awaiting Allan’s instructions about what to do next.
Well, first of all the captain must immediately revoke that fussy rule against alcohol. If he wanted to join in and share the champagne with Allan and Julius he could; otherwise he didn’t have to. If by chance there happened to be anything else good to drink hidden in the captain’s quarters, he was more than welcome to bring it out so the champagne wouldn’t feel lonely.
‘Revoke the ban on alcohol?’ the captain said.
‘Be quiet and let me finish.’
Julius closed his eyes as Allan snapped at the man who held their lives in his hands.
Allan went on to say that he would prefer to sleep in a separate room from Julius, as his friend tended to be a noisy sleeper, but in the interest of healthy cooperation he was able to overlook this. The captain should, however – once the bit about alcohol had been dealt with – get in touch with the Supreme Leader; Allan suggested doing so in an encrypted manner.
‘Say that you’ve snagged the solution to all his problems, and that the Democratic People’s Republic shall blossom like never before, thanks to hetisostat pressure and your resourcefulness. The Korean nuclear weapons programme will reach heights you never thought possible. Given the part about the champagne, that is. And the rest.’
Captain Pak made notes on his paper.
‘Het-iso-stat pressure,’ said Allan. ‘Hetisostat pressure one thousand two hundred is between sixty and eighty GDM more than the USA itself can produce. And that is double the pressure of Russia’s capacity.’
‘GDM,’ said Captain Pak, still writing.
‘Double, Mr Captain. Can you even comprehend such a thing?’
No, the captain couldn’t. Neither could Julius. Nor even could Allan, as it turned out, once the friends were alone once more.
‘I suppose I invented more than I actually needed to,’ he said.
‘Oh? How much was that?’ asked Julius.
‘All of it.’
* * *
Captain Pak made no promises as he left the friends’ cabin. No more than that he would ‘process things’.
To some extent he had already made his decision. The situation remained potentially fatal for him, but the potential upsides for the Democratic People’s Republic, and by extension himself, were great. To touch a hair on the head of, or even displease, the man who possessed the solution of the hetisostat-something technique would presumably be very stupid.
The captain felt that he had reached his conclusion. As far as he could, anyway. Soon he would sit down and formulate the to-be-encrypted message to his Supreme Leader. There was only one thing he needed to take care of first.
Ten minutes after the captain had left Allan and Julius to do his processing, there was a cautious knock at the gentlemen’s door. It was an on-duty watch sailor, who, with a greeting from Captain Pak Chong-un, handed over, first, the bottle of champagne, and, second, one of dark Cuban rum. Then he asked in Russian what else the gentlemen would like to drink with their meal.
‘I think we have enough to get by for now, thank you,’ said Allan. ‘If you like you could have our tea.’
The sailor bowed and made his exit. He left the tea. A few minutes later he was back with a meal of stewed meat and rice.
The friends gorged themselves. But the question was, with what would they wash down their food?
‘I think we should start with the rum,’ said Allan. ‘And have the champagne for dessert. Perhaps we could have used the tea to brush our teeth, if only we had brought toothbrushes. We can save thinking up something clever about hetisostat pressures and GDM for tomorrow.’
‘We?’ said Julius.
