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

The German agent stood eighty metres away, looking on unhappily. There were no other Land Cruisers within view, and she had already come to understand the limitations of the taxi cabs.

B called her boss in Dar es Salaam to discuss the situation. He updated her on the latest news. The Americans had just sent information on the latest position of Honour and Strength . The vessel had only a few days left to reach the southern tip of Madagascar.

If nuclear weapons expert Karlsson’s earlier information was correct, there was a good chance a new delivery of enriched uranium would be made there and then. This load would be much larger than the first. The smuggling route was more or less known, thanks to the now-vanished laboratory assistant. The greatest challenge for the smugglers would be to cross the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. That was to say, about eighteen hundred kilometres from where Agent B was currently located.

B thought Karlsson might be part of the smuggling operation, after all, and that his earlier information had been meant to throw them off the trail. If anything could bring B joy, it was the chance to show up her boss.

‘What did you say he said he was going to do up there, that Karlsson?’

B reproduced portions of the conversation.

A chuckled. ‘Clairvoyance wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to have right now. Can’t you borrow a little of his?’

‘He’s gone , dammit!’ said the meek agent, in a slightly less meek tone than usual.

Lead Agent A lied and claimed to be suffering alongside his underling. For his part, he was about to pack his bags and head for the Mozambique border, where he planned to intimidate the head of border control. A man who was on their payroll.

‘You just stay up there, keeping Merkel happy. It’s not much fun for you but that can’t be helped. Same goes if it turns out I get all the credit when those five hundred kilos are neutralized. We all have our roles to play, now don’t we?’

Agent B sighed. There were only taxi cabs here. Surely very good on asphalt. Useless on the savannah, as she’d been made to understand.

‘Buy yourself a Land Cruiser, then,’ said her boss. ‘Or a helicopter.’

At least there was one positive thing about Karlsson: the BND had been given more money to play with.

Buy an off-roading vehicle? thought B. What she wanted most was to buy herself a new life. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, and hung up without saying goodbye.

They still had ten kilometres left to Olekorinko’s tent city for miracles when the traffic came to a standstill. That can easily happen when ten thousand people try to reach the same place at the same time and the road to get there is so narrow it can barely handle two-way traffic. Cars were constantly passing in the opposite direction because just as many freshly treated people were heading away from the camp.

Far from everyone arrived by car. Many were driving motorcycles or mopeds. Others were on bicycles. The very poorest ones walked. Each time the oxpecker twittered from the sky, everyone knew a herd of Cape buffalo had come too close for comfort. Those who weren’t already in a car climbed onto the nearest four-wheeled vehicle – onto the bonnet, the roof or someone’s lap. When the birds disappeared, the chaos returned to its original level. There was no reason to worry about lions or leopards. They slept during the day. And elephants could be seen and heard from a distance.

Now and then the traffic eased and the Land Cruiser with the three Swedes and the driver might advance five hundred metres or more before it had to stop again.

The man they’d hired as a driver was named Meitkini and he was worried he might not get back to camp and his job as a safari guide in time. Nevertheless, he didn’t regret his decision. The three travellers were pleasant. And they paid well.

Allan was in the passenger seat up front and had borrowed Meitkini’s binoculars. He gave a running commentary on everything he saw, from warthogs to giraffes, read aloud from the black tablet about what was going on in the world beyond the savannah, and got Meitkini to tell the better part of his life story. Julius and Sabine were in the next row of seats and did their best to contribute to the cheerful atmosphere. When Julius asked, Meitkini responded that he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t expect the climate of the Serengeti was optimal for asparagus.

Their driver was a Maasai from Kenya; it was unusual for him to spend time on this side of the border. The recently departed guests had insisted on flying out from Musoma. They refused to listen when their guide advised against it, and in the end he gave up caring. If not before, they would realize when they tried to leave Tanzania from the airport in Dar es Salaam that they had entered the country illegally.

‘One week in a lockup and a few thousand dollars in fines,’ Meitkini guessed.

‘Or a few extra thousand and no lockup at all?’ Allan suggested.

Yes, that might work, but the Tanzanians were proud. Meitkini recommended Karlsson obey the laws of the land.

‘I would never dream of doing otherwise,’ said Allan.

Julius squirmed in the back seat. This general law-abiding attitude was spreading from continent to continent like an epidemic.

Meitkini didn’t believe in hocus-pocus or miracle cures. What he did believe in was God, and in humankind’s ability to live in harmony with wild animals. The Maasai didn’t hunt any more; those days were several generations in the past. Back then, you hadn’t been a man until you had killed your first lion. Nowadays the coming-of-age ritual involved first being circumcised, then surviving under the open sky for a whole year. Those who succeeded were upgraded to real Maasai warrior. That’s what they called them, even though they never actually made war.

‘It seems Merkel is on her way to winning the German election,’ Allan said, referring to his black tablet. ‘That should keep Europe together for a while. Unless there’s a civil war in Spain. The Catalonians are thoroughly tired of Madrid. I know how they feel – I was there the last time this happened.’

‘In 1936,’ said Julius. ‘It’s possible some things have changed since then.’

‘Perchance,’ said Allan.

Julius turned to the driver. ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t work to grow asparagus here, Meitkini?’

Agent B was at the wheel of the Land Cruiser she’d just rented. Traffic was almost at a standstill, and at regular intervals people climbed into her car without asking. They stayed there for fifteen minutes or more with no explanation, then jumped down again as if at some sort of signal.

Absolutely everything had gone wrong. There was the part where B was likely thousands of kilometres from the action. But there was also the part where Allan Karlsson now knew who she was. How was she supposed to explain her presence among those miracle tents, if she ever arrived and had the misfortune of running into the very target of her surveillance? Then again, if she didn’t find the old man, what was the point of it all?

Incidentally, what was the point of it all?

Oh, well, they were starting to move now. Maybe this jam was about to break— No, it wasn’t.

‘I think we’re here,’ said Meitkini, waking Allan, who had been taking a nap.

Their trip was far from well planned. It was starting to get dark and the friends had nowhere to stay. The thousands of hopeful Tanzanians around them appeared to be preparing fires to sleep next to, in anticipation of a meeting with the miracle doctor the next day. Fire was something wild animals had avoided throughout time. A fire, along with a guard armed with spear and club standing watch in two-hour shifts through the night, increased the chances of survival to almost a hundred per cent.