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

Was Karlsson planning to talk about nothing today as well? This could not continue.

‘Come along!’

While Allan was prattling, the guard had time to return the engineer’s present to its original condition, at which point he handed the closed briefcase to the Swiss nuclear weapons expert. He hadn’t found anything more of which to make note (the muesli mixture was still on the floor in the back seat of the car). He spent a long time gazing after Allan, Julius and the engineer as they went on their way.

Lead guard, he thought. Now that would be something.

The engineer led Karlsson and Jonsson into the laboratory. He had, after the first day, reported to the Supreme Leader that the task of draining the old Swiss man of knowledge was moving slowly, but in the right direction. After all, the fellow was over a hundred years old: perhaps it would be best if he was allowed to work at his own pace? The Supreme Leader agreed. The engineer had five more days to get everything the man knew out of him. This still seemed like plenty of time.

‘Now let’s see,’ Allan said, placing his many pages of freshly written formulas on the engineer’s desk. ‘In my day, of course, fission was the answer to all problems. These days, fission and fusion go hand in hand, but perhaps Mr Engineer is already aware of this.’

The engineer squirmed. That bit about fusion belonged in the category of ‘stating the obvious’. Oh, well, at least the old man had come up with some notes that might be worth studying.

‘No peeping, Mr Engineer. If we move too quickly, it will go wrong.’

The engineer felt there was no risk of moving too quickly, but he decided to be patient for a little longer.

Allan went on: ‘What we see before us is the issue of how much we can compress the uranium you have so successfully gathered.’

‘I know that’s the issue,’ said the engineer. ‘I also know you are expected to have the answer. Is that in these documents?’

Allan looked at the engineer, affronted. Wasn’t it obvious that he had the answer? But they were going to hold off on the documents for now: had the engineer already forgotten this? Allan reiterated that his greatest worry was that his pupil wouldn’t be able to follow their conversations. In which case there was no point in having them.

The engineer said that Mr Karlsson shouldn’t worry about that. A child could follow, at the speed Karlsson went. And the engineer, for his part, had devoted nearly a decade to these issues.

‘With limited results,’ Allan said, then excused himself. There was something he needed to discuss with their private driver, outside the door. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, walking off.

Julius realized that Operation Create Confusion had just begun. He shrugged reassuringly as he met the engineer’s gaze. ‘He has his own way of doing things,’ he said. ‘But it always works out in the end.’

With any luck, he thought.

The hundred-and-one-year-old walked straight past the guard, coat, briefcase and all, and the guard bounced up off his chair and cried, ‘Stop! Where are you going now, Mr Karlsson?’

‘To see my driver,’ said Allan. ‘About an important matter.’

The guard had appreciated Karlsson’s earlier suggestion of a promotion, but that didn’t mean he had any intention of shirking his duties. Thus Allan would have to submit to having his coat and briefcase searched once more. The contents of the briefcase were the same as they had been a few minutes before, minus the documents full of formulas. That was fine: formulas could be taken in but not out.

The driver was polishing the dashboard with a white cloth when Allan knocked on the window to attract his attention. ‘Back to the hotel, sir? Already?’ said the driver.

‘No, I just wanted to check on things here. It’s not too warm? If it is, roll down the window, and there will be improved ventilation.’

The driver looked at the old man. ‘It’s three degrees outside,’ he said.

‘Not too warm?’

‘No,’ said the driver.

Allan’s black tablet was waiting for its master on the passenger seat.

‘If you like, Mr Nameless Driver, you may borrow that while you wait. There’s quite a bit of nudity in it, I’ve noticed.’

Horrified, the driver informed Allan that he had no such plans.

‘That’s that, then,’ said Allan, turning and walking back to the entrance. He almost made it past the guard. But only almost.

‘Give me the coat, please. And the briefcase.’

Allan said he hadn’t taken anything from the car, if memory served, but added that Mr Guard shouldn’t take his word for it. ‘I’ve noticed that at my age things are likely to go wrong when I mean them to be right, and not necessarily right just because I was thinking wrong. Check whatever you need to check. Caution is a virtue. I know the Supreme Leader is of the same opinion.’

The guard became nervous each time the Supreme Leader was mentioned.

Back in the laboratory, Allan said: ‘Listen, I thought of something.’

‘What’s that?’ the lead engineer wondered.

Allan appeared to brace himself before rattling off, at a rapid pace: ‘MgSO 4 – 7H 2O CaCO 3Na 2B 4O 7 – 10H 2O.’

The engineer did not follow. ‘Say that again,’ he said.

‘That is, if we’ll be satisfied to double the explosive charge. But I’m talking more along the lines of a tenfold increase.’

‘Say that again,’ repeated the engineer.

‘Of course,’ said Allan. ‘But we have to do everything in the right order. Haven’t I mentioned that already? Otherwise, in my experience, something will go wrong. And wrong is the wrong way to go, don’t we agree?’

The engineer mumbled that he agreed that wrong would be wrong, while Julius stood next to him, rendered totally mute. Where had all that come from?

It had come, of course, from the black tablet. To the untrained eye (Julius) or the unprepared one (the engineer), it might well have been the solution to the proud nation’s every nuclear weapons-related problem.

But it wasn’t. It was a formula that, in the right hands, described the makeup of bath salts, toothpaste and bleach, respectively. Allan had looked for something nuclear, but instead ended up on a site run by a Canadian hobby-chemist. The chemist wanted to tell the world what he had in his bathroom and cleaning closet. In contrast to what Allan proclaimed far and wide, there was nothing wrong with his memory. Beyond what he’d already said, he still had in reserve formulas for aspirin, baking powder, oven cleaner and a few more. All thanks to a young man in Missisauga on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The engineer could have used an aspirin (but hardly baking powder or oven cleaner). He was back in his impatient mood.

‘Now, once and for all, can we make some progress here?’

‘Of course we can,’ said Allan. ‘I just have to…’

And then he went to the bathroom, where he remained for fifteen minutes.

By the time the great breakout was at hand, Allan had gone on another errand to the nameless driver (to ask if the driver was freezing, considering that it was only three degrees outside) and had guided his conversations with the engineer another few steps forwards, or at least sideways. Meanwhile, Julius did his best to keep the engineer and himself in a decent mood.

In all his haste, Allan had forgotten to brief Julius on his most important contribution that day: keeping the engineer’s attention elsewhere at a specific moment so that Allan could switch one briefcase for the other. The hundred-and-one-year-old made up a reason for the engineer to visit the cold storage room next door, and took the opportunity to give his comrade some brief instructions.