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

Not without help.

Money wasn’t the issue. Gennady and his friends had billions, if you counted in kronor. Several hundred million in euros or dollars. How much it amounted to in roubles was less relevant. But to pump up the Sweden Democrats, Finn Party and others financially would be risky and, most importantly, not a viable way forwards. Human logic functioned such that very few people considered themselves extremists. As long as the Sweden Democrats were the most extreme party Sweden had to offer, there would always be plenty of people who refrained from voting for them, even if those voters agreed with their platform. Nothing about that would change just because Gennady managed to fortify the party coffers, so they could tell the same truths even louder.

If, however, he contributed to an alternative voice, to the right of those who were furthest right, two things would happen: first, the Sweden Democrats would point fingers at the neo-Nazis and say, ‘Look how terrible they are! We are certainly not like them !’ Second, people would agree. In one fell swoop, voting Sweden Democrat would become more socially acceptable. Fifteen per cent voter support might become thirty; the third-largest party could become the second-largest, or perhaps even the largest. A Sweden Democrat prime minister wouldn’t necessarily mean Sweden would leave the EU, because that would take a majority vote in Parliament. But the political map would be redrawn. The conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats would all have reason to overhaul their foreign policy. Few wish to die, after all. That went for political parties as much as it did people.

And, above all, if the experiment worked in little Sweden, then in the future a person would only have to do the same thing where it would truly matter.

Like in Germany.

Gennady Aksakov had to choose between the established Nordic Resistance Movement and the newly formed Aryan Alliance. The problem with the former was that it was generally known in Gennady’s circles that the Swedish Security Service had infiltrated the organization to the extent that it was no longer possible to know who was what. The problem with the Aryan Alliance, on the other hand, was that thus far they were absolutely nothing.

But Gennady wasn’t in much of a hurry. Better done right than done fast.

He met with Kenneth Engvall and his brother on a Monday. Under a fake name, of course. By Tuesday he had put four million euros at the disposal of the Aryan Alliance’s honourable mission. The Engvall brothers believed what they wanted to when it came to Gennady’s origins and devotion to the good cause. And with that everything would probably have gone just fine, if only those idiots had managed to stay alive.

Investee Kenneth Engvall perished suddenly in connection with a spontaneous political manifestation.

It began when the brothers arrived at a shopping centre in Bromma, not far from Stockholm’s domestic airport. Little brother was behind the wheel, looking for parking. Big brother beside him caught sight of a beggar at one of the entrances to the shopping centre. He was monumentally displeased and made a snap decision.

‘Wait here with the engine running. We’ll go shopping somewhere else. I’ve just got to… make a point.’

Johnny understood more or less what Kenneth was getting at and agreed with his analysis: that, as a result, it would be best to find a different place to shop.

Big brother left the car and approached the Romanian who was sitting by the entrance in the hope that passers-by would give him a krona or two, since the Roma minority’s life back home in Romania was far beyond hopeless (even as those in Sweden preferred to discuss the legality of being a beggar rather than that EU member-state Romania ought to shape up).

‘Hi,’ said the Romanian, when he caught sight of Kenneth Engvall.

‘Hi yourself, you fucking Gypsy!’ Kenneth said, as he pulled his cap down on his forehead and walked faster, intending to give the needy man a powerful kick in the throat with a boot, as if that was the primary need of the needy man.

Except it so happened that someone had tossed a circular, advertising sale-priced minced beef, on the ground into a puddle. Kenneth planted his foot on the meat (organic, country-of-origin Sweden, 109 kronor per kilo), slipped, lost his footing on the other leg, spun ninety degrees above the ground, missed the beggar, landed on his back, and hit the concrete base of the waste-bin the beggar was huddled behind to keep out of the wind. Kenneth Engvall cracked open his temple, was struck by a massive brain bleed, and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Sweden’s perhaps most dangerous person was no more. In one blow, the Aryan Alliance had lost half its members. All that remained for the other half to do was plan a funeral.

Johnny had just returned home from such an event. The interred was an acquaintance as well as a courier of hard drugs. He was an underling of one of the eight in the cocaine cartel that was on Kenneth and Johnny’s secret kill list. Phase one in the takeover, according to Kenneth, was to infiltrate. He hadn’t had time to say what phase two would be.

But now, in any case, the underling no longer had to worry about getting smoked when the day came, for smoked he already was. It happened when he turned his back on a desperate junkie, a tiny woman, light as a feather, incapable of harming a fly.

Or not.

The courier had just informed her that there would be no replenishment of drugs unless the woman coughed up some money. Since he was sure she would be unable to cough up anything, except maybe blood, he walked off. And was extremely surprised to feel a stabbing pain in his back. The featherweight woman had had the nerve to stick him with a knife. Well, she was about to fucking…

That was as far as he got. You can’t get much further when you’ve just had your sub-clavian artery severed. Loss of consciousness occurs after five seconds, and soon thereafter permanent cardiac arrest.

Johnny’s acquaintance was buried two weeks later and consigned to the annals of eternity. The remarkable thing about the funeral wasn’t that the courier had been killed by a junkie – that sort of thing happened on occasion. No, it was the coffin . It was a shiny black-lacquered Harley Davidson coffin with the words ‘Highway to Hell’ on both sides. Johnny had never before seen anything so tasteful and dignified in a church.

Johnny Engvall was not as strategic a thinker as his older brother Kenneth, but he had a reputation almost as authentic. There’d been at least three murders over the years. A fag, a wog and a policeman who was a wog besides. The last one happened after a Nazi demonstration in downtown Stockholm. One of the uniforms came a little too close, grabbed Johnny by the arm, and started to say something.

‘Don’t touch me, you fucking pig!’ said Johnny.

‘Take it easy, dammit,’ said the cop. ‘I just want to…’

But Johnny had already taken his 1984 Colt Trooper from his inner pocket. With it, he shot the police officer in the throat from a distance of a few decimetres.

Johnny was later able to admit to himself that he had acted rashly. But no one is perfect. There was quite a hullabaloo, of course. And the cop didn’t even have an old lady or any brats at home to cry in the newspapers. He was probably a fag.

The advantage to things turning out the way they did was that ever since Johnny had enjoyed great respect in the right circles for so much more than being his brother’s brother. The disadvantage was that he would never ever find out what that blatte -fag actually wanted.