Юнас Юнассон - The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

It was difficult to think about something that didn’t exist, but this was a reflection with which Allan didn’t want to trouble Julius. His friend seemed unbalanced enough as it was.

At that moment, a smaller door just past the desk opened. A soldier with a holstered pistol stepped in and stood guard. Behind him came the Supreme Leader. Noticeably short of stature, thought Allan.

‘Please have a seat,’ said Kim Jong-un, pointing at two chairs on the other side of the desk even as he himself sat down.

‘Thank you, Supreme Leader,’ Julius said, his words as nervous as they were fawning.

‘Agreed,’ said Allan. ‘Is there anything tasty to drink to break the ice? We can hold off on the food for a bit, if that would be too much trouble.’

Kim Jong-un had no need to break any ice. But, still, he ordered a pot of tea by way of his Soviet intercom from the seventies. The order arrived under a minute later, delivered by a North Korean soldier who, with a certain amount of difficulty, tried to combine a straight back with a level tray and an apology in Korean that might have expressed regret for the delay.

The Supreme Leader sent the soldier away and raised his cup to the guests.

‘A toast to a long and fruitful cooperation. Or the opposite.’

Allan pretended to drink. Julius drank, and felt concerned about the Supreme Leader’s part in what they had just toasted. But when the terrible tea had sunk into his soul, he decided to allow Allan to continue saving their lives on his own. The hundred-and-one-year-old certainly had his issues, but if there was anything he was good at, it was surviving. Then again, better safe than sorry. Julius did his best to put the ball in Allan’s court in the hopes of benching himself.

‘Supreme Leader,’ he said. ‘My name is Julius Jonsson and I am the executive assistant to the world’s leading nuclear weapons expert, that is, my dear friend Allan Karlsson here. I will hereby gladly hand things over to him.’

‘Oh no you won’t,’ said Kim Jong-un, with a smile. ‘This is my meeting, and I decide who speaks. You’re the executive assistant, you say? Where are the other assistants?’

Julius immediately lost the speaking ability he had so briefly managed to muster. Allan noticed, and rushed to his assistance.

‘Supreme Leader,’ he said, ‘I hereby request the right to say something important while my friend the executive assistant gathers his thoughts. Very important, even. Depending on how concerned you are about your country’s future, of course.’

Kim Jong-un was extremely concerned about his country’s future. Not least because it was inextricably linked with his own. ‘Granted,’ he said, and with that, his grip on poor Julius loosened.

‘Good,’ said Allan. ‘Then I’d like to begin by praising you for your out-and-out battle against the evil that surrounds you. You are furthering the legacy of your father and grandfather in an exemplary manner.’

Julius still didn’t dare to speak, but he was regaining a faint hope of survival. Allan was obviously in his rubbing-up-the-right-way mood!

‘What do you know about that?’ Kim Jong-un asked, in a defensive tone.

The truth was, Allan knew very little about Kim Jong-un’s doings – no more than he’d read on his black tablet. And it wasn’t always pretty. ‘I know all about it,’ he said. ‘But to sit here and praise your many accomplishments would take up far too much of your precious time.’

It was true that time was precious. Or, at least, short. At any moment, the Swedish minister for foreign affairs, UN envoy Margot Wallström, would land at Sunan International Airport and, in that moment, the Supreme Leader’s PR plan would enter a critical stage.

‘Well, then,’ said Kim Jong-un. ‘Tell me this important thing you had to say. I assume it has to do with hetisostat pressure?’

‘That’s exactly right,’ said Allan. ‘My humble suggestion is that my assistant and I teach North Korea everything worth knowing about hetisostat pressure and, in return, you help us reach Europe after our task is completed. As fantastic as your country is… well, there’s no place like home, as they say.’

Kim Jong-un nodded and gave the impression that he felt the same. An arrangement of that sort didn’t seem like too much trouble to sign off on, especially given that he had no intention of keeping his side of the bargain. If this man was as competent as he was old, he couldn’t be allowed to loaf around Europe or anywhere else with his knowledge. It belonged permanently in the Democratic People’s Republic. End of.

‘Agreed!’ said the Supreme Leader.

And then he openly stated that Karlsson and his assistant had four kilos of enriched uranium to play with, with another five hundred on their way. Incidentally, the first four kilos had arrived on the same boat as the gentlemen.

‘Properly lead-encased,’ said Kim Jong-un, and with that he placed his hand on the brown briefcase on the desk. Annoyingly enough, there was no time at the present to hear what hetisostat pressure might achieve with the contents of the briefcase. An assistant had snuck into the room to whisper something into the Supreme Leader’s ear.

‘Thank you,’ said Kim Jong-un. ‘I would have liked to hear more about your pressure, but we must get moving. We’re going to KCNA. All three of us. No, scratch that, we have no use for the executive assistant there, so we’ll send him directly to the hotel.’

Kim Jong-un stood up and signalled the gentlemen to follow him.

Julius didn’t know which was worse – being forced to visit a mysterious jumble of letters with Kim Jong-un, or not being allowed to come.

‘KCNA?’ he whispered anxiously to Allan. ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m sure it is whatever it is,’ said Allan. ‘I hope that, unlike the tea, it can be drunk. Or at least eaten.’

Korea had held together as a united empire for 1274 years. Then it had gone downhill fast. After the Second World War, the Americans and Russians couldn’t agree on what the Koreans wanted, and neither thought it was an option to ask the Koreans. The Russians placed a Communist in power in the north; the Americans, an anti-Communist in the south. The guy in the north thought he had the right to all of Korea. The one in the south thought the same thing, but the other way around.

This led to the violence that history books call the Korean War. Of course there had been wars on the peninsula before, but people have such short memories.

After two million Koreans (plus the occasional foreigner) had died in battle, enough was enough. They pointed at a line in the ground (the same line that had been there since before the war) and decided that, until further notice, they would keep to their own sides.

The Communist in the north invented ‘self-reliance’ as a political ideology, while his counterpart in the south, sensibly enough, did not label the dictatorship he created with any honest name.

Years passed. Leaders on both sides came and went, as leaders tend to do. The dictatorship in the south gradually lost its hold, while the self-reliance in the north prospered so extensively that people began to starve.

It’s easy for someone who trusts only themselves to become suspicious of others. When the south allowed American tactical nuclear weapons to be placed on their side of the border, those in the north took it all wrong. At least from an arms reduction perspective.

The Swedish manufacturer Volvo, outside Gothenburg, was full of celebration after the delivery of a thousand shiny new cars to Pyongyang. This celebration later turned out to be premature. For the North Koreans had rearranged their priorities. They chose to build test sites for nuclear weapons instead of paying what they owed. To this day, Volvo hasn’t received a single North Korean won in return.