The largest department store in Pyongyang, and the only one worthy of the name, consisted of four storeys very full of wares and very empty of people buying them. The nameless driver guided Allan and Julius from floor to floor.
On the ground floor was men’s and women’s clothing. They already had the former; they didn’t need the latter.
The second floor sold shoes, coats, gloves and bags. Why not a coat each, as long as the Supreme Leader was footing the bill? It was chilly out.
On a shelf near the coats stood a row of around forty briefcases, all identical to one another – and to the uranium briefcase in the laboratory. It appeared that North Korea produced one model of briefcase alone.
‘Communism has its upsides,’ said Allan. He picked one up.
Julius realized that the hundred-and-one-year-old had just made up his mind to switch one briefcase for the other.
The third floor contained nothing of interest. On offer there were toys and various types of stationery and art supplies. Allan was first, Julius a few steps behind him, with the apparently bored driver a few steps behind Julius.
On the fourth floor, Julius picked up a roll of lead tape. ‘What do you say about this, Allan?’
‘Clever boy. I think we’ve finished shopping now.’
Back on the ground floor, a young woman stood at the cash register, waiting for customers. When Allan and Julius placed their coats, briefcase and lead tape on the counter, the driver said she should send the bill to the Supreme Leader, at which the woman fainted. The driver picked her up off the floor, apologized to the Swiss men and said he ought to have known better.
On the brief trip back to the hotel, the driver had time to emphasize to Julius in the back seat and Allan, who still insisted on sitting in the front, that it was strictly forbidden to bring anything from the breakfast table into the car the next morning.
‘Not even kimchi?’ said Allan.
‘Especially not kimchi.’
‘We hear what you’re saying, Mr Nameless. We’ll get up extra early to make sure we’re full and in fine form next time we see one another.’
Allan spent the rest of the evening sitting at his desk in the hotel room with the black tablet. This time he had paper and pen as well. He seemed to be writing down chemical formulas. And giving a contented ‘Hmm’ now and then. Meanwhile Julius searched the room for a suitable object to wrap in lead tape. At last he settled on the black box of toiletries he’d found next to the sink.
‘Good choice,’ Allan praised him. ‘The right size and everything.’
The shape and appearance of the box were rather like the engineer’s enriched uranium. It weighed a good deal less, to be sure, but what would the guard at the door know about that?
Just before midnight, Allan had finished surfing and writing. ‘There we go. Now the engineer and I will have a lot to avoid talking about tomorrow.’
North Korea
It was clear that Allan had some sort of plan, after all. And, what was more, Julius had partly gathered what it would involve. But only partly.
In the breakfast room the next day, Allan found a lidded plastic box full of teaspoons under one of the serving tables. He dumped its contents onto the table with the aim of keeping the box, at which point a waitress who had heard the clatter hurried over and asked what he was doing.
Allan instructed Julius to bribe the waitress with the gold lighter he’d stolen from the Indonesian hotel manager.
‘I didn’t steal it,’ Julius protested, as he made a quick deal with the woman. ‘It just ended up in my pocket.’
Allan didn’t bother to start a discussion on the definition of kleptomania. Instead he gave instructions to the overjoyed waitress: ‘Fill this box with muesli and milk, please. Then put the lid on good and tight and leave the rest to the man whose lighter you have just inherited.’
The young woman stopped looking at her reflection in her new possession and dashed off.
‘Muesli and milk must be the last thing our driver wants in his car,’ Julius said.
‘We’re on the same page,’ said Allan.
The mixture was necessary to lure the driver out of his car. Neither Allan nor Julius had the muscles to lift him out, and two things were certain: first, the driver would never leave his car voluntarily; second, he was not going to drive them to the airport, no matter how hard they tried.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström joined them. She had a cup of coffee and a French-Korean croissant while standing at the gentlemen’s table, saying she was in a rush. The diplomatic passports had arrived as they should. The minister handed them over, wrapped in a napkin.
‘Much obliged, Madame Minister,’ said Allan. ‘When might the departure take place? We have a few things to take care of today. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to know.’
Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström was just getting to that. Kim Jong-un had conveyed the message that their next meeting would not only be their last but would be followed by her departure from the country that very afternoon.
‘In short, he doesn’t want anything to do with me. In contrast to President Trump, whose staff have given me orders to come and explain a few things. The airport has confirmed that my plane will take off at fifteen thirty.’
‘Today?’ Julius asked anxiously.
‘What is it the American president wants explained?’ Allan asked.
‘I can’t rule out the possibility that your name may come up, Mr Karlsson.’
The minister looked sad. Julius felt sorry for her. But mostly he felt sorry for himself.
‘As I said, fifteen thirty,’ said the minister. ‘I hope you will be there.’ She wasn’t sure she would ever see Messrs Jonsson and Karlsson again.
Julius wasn’t either. ‘Today?’ he repeated. ‘How on earth are we going to have time—’
‘Don’t start, Julle,’ said Allan. ‘Either this will all work out or it won’t. I have a hard time envisaging any other option. Come on, it’s already nine, and we have a job to mismanage. And bring the muesli.’
‘My name is not Julle,’ said Julius.
* * *
The guard at the entrance to the plutonium factory had strict and detailed instructions. Everyone who came and went got the same treatment.
On day two, Karlsson and Jonsson showed up, each in a new coat. The guard went through all the pockets and corners but found nothing remarkable.
Karlsson, in addition, was carrying a briefcase that contained a silver package of some sort, as well as a few documents full of handwritten formulas.
‘What are these?’ the guard enquired, of the formulas.
‘These are the proud Democratic Republic’s nuclear future,’ said Allan.
The guard put back the papers in horror. ‘And this?’
He held up the package.
‘Those are toiletries,’ Allan said truthfully. ‘Wrapped up as a gift for Mr Engineer. But please don’t say anything – it’s supposed to be a surprise.’
This was extraordinary and mundane at once. On the one hand, the nation’s future, on the other … What?
The guard allowed himself to become suspicious. He carefully unwound the tape until he was able to confirm that the strange old man had told the truth. In the black box he found a razor, shaving cream, soap, shampoo, conditioner, a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste. He opened a few of the bottles to sniff their contents.
‘Do you think he’ll like it?’ Allan asked.
The toothpaste smelt like toothpaste; the shampoo smelt like shampoo. The razor was clearly a razor.
‘I don’t know …’ said the guard. Could it truly be proper to bring in unfamiliar liquids like this?
‘I’m going to have to ask you to tape this up again,’ said Allan. ‘Mr Engineer might arrive at any moment, and it would certainly be a nuisance if …’
And then he arrived. Peevish. ‘What is going on? We were supposed to start ten minutes ago.’
The guard, in all haste, taped up the gift again as Alla
n entertained the engineer with the story of how what was going on was quite simply that the guard was just doing his job, and honourably at that. Mr Engineer ought to think seriously about whether it wasn’t time to promote the man. As far as Allan could tell, the guard was primed to take on greater tasks. Lead guard, at the very least. Although that would necessitate increasing the number of guards by at least one or he would have no one to lead.
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: ‘MgSO4 – 7H2O CaCO3Na2B4O7 – 10H2O.’
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 doo
r, and took the opportunity to give his comrade some brief instructions.
‘Distract him when he comes back.’
‘Distract him?’ said Julius. ‘How?’
‘Just distract him. So I can switch the briefcases.’
‘Why not switch them now while he’s not here?’
Allan looked at his friend. ‘Because I didn’t think of that. I don’t always manage to get as far in my reasoning as those around me feel I ought to. For the most part, this suits me just fine, but on certain occasions …’
That was as far as he got before the engineer returned.
‘We have eight hectograms of gallium in storage,’ he said. ‘Now, in what way is this relevant to compressing the uranium? Please explain it to me as if I were an equal, not an idiot.’
‘Only eight hectograms,’ said Allan, a look of concern on his face.
Then Julius fell headlong to the floor. ‘Help, I’m dying!’
The engineer was thoroughly frightened. Even Allan was startled, although he was the one who’d put in the order.
‘Ow!’ Julius cried, where he lay. ‘Ow!’
Allan stayed where he was as the engineer hurried to Julius’s aid.
‘What’s the matter, Mr Jonsson?’ he said, kneeling beside the possibly dying assistant. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
Julius realized that Allan had already managed to exchange one thing for the other.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I just had a sudden bout of homesickness.’
‘Homesickness?’ said the engineer. ‘You collapsed in a heap on the floor.’
‘Severe homesickness. But now it has passed.’
The engineer, who had thus far considered Julius the more sensible of the two foreigners, had the feeling he was just as bad as his colleague. ‘Shall I help you up, Jonsson?’
‘Thank you, kind engineer,’ said Julius, putting out his hand.
* * *
The engineer found himself in a desperate situation. First, because he’d had only a few short minutes at the Nampo harbour to determine whether Karlsson was a charlatan, aware that if he found he was, the engineer himself would have been forced to produce results faster than he might have been ready for. So he had decided Karlsson was the genuine article, the most pressing reason being that the engineer wanted him to be so out of sheer desire to survive. Then had come the painful realization that he was probably neither a charlatan nor in full possession of his mental faculties. And that the assistant’s situation might be equally unfortunate.