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

‘You goddamn fucking I-don’t-know-what,’ he said. ‘Here I invite you to…’ (play a round of golf, he was about to say but, of course, Allan was nothing more than a supervisor of Puerto Ricans).

‘To what, Mr President? To what?’

Allan’s repetition put the president in an even worse mood. He brandished his five-iron at the old man, unable to form words.

‘It seems to me the president ought to do a better job of reining in his impulses,’ said Allan, upon which the president failed to do so.

‘My impulses? No one has better impulse control than me. No one!’ said the president, and threw the five-iron over the head of the Puerto Rican, who might have been as lazy as the president suggested, after all, for, luckily enough, he had just sat down. ‘I am more stable than anyone!’

‘Well, I counted seven foolish things during our brief journey in the air. Eight, if we count hitting the ball into the bunker just after we landed. If you avoid saying the same thing twice in a row, that’s cutting down on lies by half.’

Donald Trump couldn’t believe his ears. So he was a Communist, after all, this bastard. The President of the United States certainly couldn’t fraternize with that type of person.

‘Get out of here!’ he said.

‘Happy to, Mr President. But I’ll send you off with one last thought. I don’t know anything about therapy or other such modern conveniences, but if I were you I would try having a drink. Aren’t you past seventy by now? I suppose seventy years without vodka could make anyone crazy.’

With that, the encounter was over. A Secret Service agent moved to stand between the president and his guest; another tugged at Allan’s arm and said he would immediately be flown back to the UN building.

‘I’ll help you on board. Come on!’

‘Can we wait for just a minute?’ said Allan. ‘It would be fun to see how this guy is planning to get out of the bunker.’

Allan found his friend on the park bench outside UN headquarters where he’d parked him just over an hour earlier. Julius was still sitting there, the North Korean briefcase on his lap. The switch from North Korea to the United States had been a step in the right direction, but the realization that this was a country where the possession of enriched uranium could bring you a few hundred years in prison had captured his anxious attention all over again.

‘How was the meeting?’ he asked Allan by way of a greeting.

‘Agreeable.’

‘Good. Does that mean you’ve finally made sure we’ll be rid of this?’

He held up the briefcase as if Allan didn’t already know what he meant.

‘No, it wasn’t quite that agreeable. That Trump is not getting our briefcase. He seems awfully close to exploding all on his own.’

‘What? Then what are we going to do with it? And with ourselves? You said you had everything worked out. Exactly what have you worked out?’

‘Did I say that? Well, you say a lot of things when you’re my age. I don’t know, dear Julius, but it will all sort itself out. May I have a seat here next to you?’

Allan didn’t wait for a response, assuming one wouldn’t be forthcoming anyway. He sat down and said it felt nice to rest his legs a bit, because the hallways in the UN building had been both long and plentiful. Add to that the time difference and other oddities…

But Julius did not allow himself to be sucked in. Didn’t Allan understand that they were in the United States with four kilos of enriched uranium, and that there was no way they could leave the country with the briefcase in hand? It would immediately set off alarms at the airport no matter how hard they waved their diplomatic passports.

Allan said he did understand, now that Julius had reminded him.

Julius went on: ‘If the president was angry today, what do you think is going to happen when he finds out what we’re strolling around his country with?’

‘Then we’ll have to try not to tell him,’ said Allan.

At which he felt around a bit, asked Julius for the briefcase, and placed it on one end of the bench with the North Korean coat on top. This provided a temporary bed with four kilos of enriched uranium and a coat as a pillow. He lay down and closed his eyes in the fresh air.

‘So now you’re just going to lie down and die?’ Julius said acidly, shifting in the other direction to keep his trousers away from the dirty soles of Allan’s shoes.

No, Allan had no such plans. He was just going to recuperate a little; it had been a long day. After all, it was not much later than it had been half a day earlier, such was the design of the earth.

As he lay there, the hundred-and-one-year-old looked both tired and pathetic, on top of how extremely old men look in the first place. In under a minute a passing woman had already asked if he was okay and if she could help somehow. She was probably South American. The surroundings in the UN district were fairly international. Allan politely declined the offer of aid, saying that he felt fine and would soon be on his feet again.

Julius kept up his anxious talk of the briefcase and the future, but Allan stopped listening. Julius seldom came up with any new ideas when he was worried, and the old ones brought no joy to anyone.

After a few more minutes, a man stopped. He was perhaps sixty years old and wearing a hat. Just like the woman, he wondered if everything was as it should be, and if he could be of any service.

Julius was grumpy and said nothing, but Allan realized what he was missing. He looked up and enquired if the gentleman had something to drink. The fact was, he had just suffered through a meeting with the American president and there was a man about whom one could say a lot of things. An ill-natured scoundrel. With a temper as uneven as a rural North Korean highway. Who apparently had never had a drink in his entire life.

‘The president?’ said the man in the hat. ‘The American one? Trump? That’s terrible. Let’s see if I have anything for comfort.’ He dug through his shoulder bag and brought up two small bottles wrapped in brown paper. ‘It’s not much, but it’s something. Underberg. Good for the stomach.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Allan’s stomach,’ said Julius. ‘Don’t you have anything for his head?’

‘Yes, there is,’ said Allan. ‘Depending on the alcohol content, of course.’

The man in the hat thought it might be forty per cent or more; he hadn’t checked. In any case, he never travelled abroad without a few of these brown bottles in his luggage. Good for the stomach. Had he mentioned that?’

Allan sat up with a certain amount of difficulty, accepted the hat man’s offer, unscrewed the cap of the small bottle, and drained its contents in one gulp.

‘Brrrr!’ he said, his eyes sparkling. ‘You’ll want to hold onto your hat before having any of that.’

The hat man smiled. Julius saw what good the little bottle seemed to do for Allan and quickly reached for the other. Soon he had caught up and both men gazed contentedly at their new acquaintance.

‘I’m Ambassador Breitner,’ he said. ‘Representative here at the UN for the Federal Republic of Germany. I have one bottle left in my bag, but I think I had better keep it, because you gentlemen might fight over it.’

‘Maybe not fight,’ said Allan. ‘We’re not violent. Violence seldom leads anywhere. Julius here certainly tends to take a dim view of most things, but it always stops there.’

Julius was on the verge of taking a dim view of what Allan had just said, but chose to smile along with his friend and the man in the hat.

‘So, another UN employee. Then we’re colleagues,’ said Allan. ‘I myself, and this fellow here, who doesn’t seem to be quite as surly any more, are diplomats and assistants to UN Envoy Wallström from Sweden. My name is Allan and this is Julius. A good man, deep down.’