But there was a certain amount of gratitude involved in the manager’s relationship with Messrs Jonsson and Karlsson. The former had, in a fairly believable manner, suggested that more money would be on its way before the week’s end. And, after all, this wasn’t the first time Jonsson had clung to his money just a little too long. Maybe the whole issue was simply down to him loving his cash. And who didn’t?
All in all, the manager thought it prudent and strategically smart to lie low, and to join in celebrating the older man’s birthday on the beach, with cake and a few carefully selected words.
* * *
In addition to the birthday boy, Julius and the hotel manager, the hired balloon pilot was present for the party. Gustav Svensson would have liked to attend, but he had the good sense not to.
The balloon was inflated and ready. Only a classic anchor around a palm tree kept it from taking off on its own. The heat in the balloon was regulated by the pilot’s nine-year-old son, who was deeply distressed as he would much rather have been next to the cake a few metres away.
Allan stared at the hundred and one unnecessary candles. Imagine the waste of money. And time! It took Julius several minutes to get them all lit, with the help of the hotel manager’s gold lighter (which ended up in Julius’s pocket).
At least the cake tasted good. And champagne was champagne, even if it wasn’t grog. It seemed to Allan that things could have been worse.
And, all of a sudden, they were. For the hotel manager was tapping his glass with the aim of giving a speech. ‘My dear Mr Karlsson,’ he said.
Allan interrupted him. ‘That was well said, Mr Manager. Truly charming. But surely we can’t all stand around here until my next birthday. Isn’t it high time we took off in the balloon?’
The hotel manager became flustered and Julius gave the nod to the balloon pilot, who immediately put down his piece of cake. After all, his primary purpose for being there was to work.
‘Roger that! I’ll go and make the call to the weather service at the airport. Just want to be sure that the winds haven’t changed. Back in a minute.’
The danger of a speech had been averted. Now it was time for boarding. It was easy to step into the basket, even for a hundred-and-one-year-old. There was a set of six portable stairs outside and a slightly smaller variant with three steps inside.
‘Hello there, little man,’ Allan said, ruffling the hair of the nine-year-old assistant.
The nine-year-old responded with a shy ‘Good day.’ He knew his place and was good at his job. The anchor was no longer necessary, not with the added weight of the foreigners.
Julius asked the boy for a demonstration and learned that the heat and, as a result, the balloon’s altitude, was adjusted by way of the red lever at the top of the gas line. When it was time to take off, all you had to do was turn it to the right. And back to the left when you wanted to come in for a landing.
‘First right, then left,’ said Julius.
‘Exactly, sir,’ said the boy.
And now three things happened simultaneously, within the span of a few seconds.
One: Allan noticed the nine-year-old’s longing glances at the cake and suggested that the lad run over quick and help himself. Plates and cutlery were both on the table. The boy needed no coaxing. He hopped out of the basket almost before Allan had finished speaking.
Two: Julius tested the red lever, turning it both left and right, and twisted it so hard it came off in his hand.
Three: the balloon pilot exited the hotel looking unhappy, and said that the ride would have to wait for the wind was about to become northerly. The balloon was in a poor position for such a wind.
At this, three more things happened, also rather simultaneously.
One: the balloon pilot caught sight of his nine-year-old son with his nose in the cake and scolded the poor boy for leaving his post.
Two: Julius swore at the red lever that had come off just like that. Now hot air was streaming into the balloon, which …
Three: … began to lift off the ground.
‘Stop! What are you doing?’ cried the balloon pilot.
‘It’s not me, it’s this damned lever,’ called Julius.
The balloon was at an altitude of three metres. Then four. Then five.
‘There we go!’ said Allan. ‘Now this is a party.’
The Indian Ocean
It took quite some time for Karlsson, Jonsson and the balloon to float far enough across the open sea that they could no longer hear the screaming balloon pilot. After all, the wind was at his back.
They could still see him for a while, after he ceased to be audible – he was flapping his arms. They could also see the hotel manager at his side. Not quite as flappy. But likely just as unhappy. Or even more so. He was watching a hundred and fifty thousand dollars float away before his very eyes. Meanwhile, the nine-year-old boy returned to the cake while everyone else was otherwise occupied.
A few more minutes passed, and then they could no longer see land in any direction. Julius finished cursing the red lever and threw it overboard, having given up trying to reattach it.
The gas and the flame were irreversibly on. And, in certain respects, that was a positive thing. Otherwise they would certainly fall into the ocean, basket and all.
Julius looked around. On the other side of the gas tank he found a GPS navigator. This was good news! Not that there was any way to steer the craft, but now at least they would know when land could be expected.
As Julius delved into geography, Allan opened the first of the four bottles of champagne they had brought along. ‘Whoopsie!’ he said, as the cork flew over the edge of the basket.
Julius felt that Allan wasn’t taking the situation seriously. They had no idea where they were heading.
Of course they did, Allan thought. ‘I’ve been around the world so many times that I’ve started to understand how it looks. If the wind keeps up like this, we’ll end up in Australia in a few weeks. But if it turns a little that way we’ll have to wait a few more.’
‘And where will we end up in that case?’
‘Well, not at the North Pole, but you didn’t want to go there anyway. Likely the South Pole, though.’
‘What the hell—’ Julius said, but he was interrupted.
‘There, there. Here’s your glass. Now, cheers to us on my birthday. And don’t you worry. The gas in the tank will run out long before the South Pole. Have a seat.’
Julius did as Allan said, sitting down next to his friend and staring straight ahead with a vacant gaze. Allan could tell that Julius was concerned. He was in need of comfort. ‘Yes, things look dark right now, my friend. But they’ve been dark before in my life, yet here I am. You’ll see, the wind will change. Or something.’
Julius found Allan’s inexplicable calmness a little bit helpful. Perhaps the champagne could take care of the rest. ‘Pass me the bottle, please,’ he said quietly.
And he took four liberal gulps without bothering to use a glass.
Allan was correct: the gas did run out before land was in sight. The tank began to sputter and the flame danced irregularly for some time before it went out completely, just as the friends managed to drain the contents of bottle number one.
It was a gentle journey down to the surface of the Indian Ocean, which, that day, was practically a Pacific one.
‘Do you think the basket will float?’ Julius asked, as the surface of the water grew nearer.
‘We’ll soon find out,’ said Allan. ‘Look at this!’
The hundred-and-one-year-old had been digging through the balloon’s wooden box of supplies for unforeseen incidents. He held up a brand-new fitting for the red lever.
‘Pity we didn’t find this while there was still time. And look!’
Two rocket flares.
The crash landing in the sea went better than Julius had dared to hope. The balloon basket hit the water, plunging half a metre below the surface, thanks to its speed and weight, then tilted at
a forty-five-degree angle, straightened again, and bobbed like a fishing float with ever-waning movements.
Both old men were knocked over by the strike and the angle, and they ended up in a communal pile along one of the basket’s walls. Julius was quick to get up, a knife in his hand to separate the basket from the deflated balloon, which would no longer be of any use. It was temporarily spreading out on the water but would soon sink and take both basket and old men with it if it could.
‘Well done.’ Allan praised him from where he lay.
‘Thanks,’ said Julius, helping his friend back onto the bench.
Then Julius dismantled the heavy gas assembly and dumped it into the sea along with the four bracings that had held it up. With that, the vessel suddenly weighed at least fifty kilos less. Julius wiped the sweat from his brow and sank down next to his friend. ‘Now what?’ he said.
‘I think we should have another bottle of champagne so we don’t sit around here sobering up. Can’t you fire off one of those flares while I uncork it?’
Water was already seeping in through the sides of the basket, but it wasn’t so dire that they would sink before a few hours had passed, Allan thought. Or even more, if only they had something decent to bail with. ‘A lot can happen in two hours,’ he said.
‘Like what?’ Julius wondered.
‘Oh, well, a little can happen as well. Or nothing.’
Julius unwrapped the first flare and tried to make sense of the Indonesian instructions. He was tipsy and didn’t have the energy to be as desperate as he should have been. On the one hand, he knew he was soon to die. On the other, he was in the company of a man who was possibly immortal. A man who had not been executed by General Franco, had not been locked up for life by the American immigration authority, had not been strangled by Comrade Stalin (although it had been a close shave), had not been put to death by Kim Il-sung or Mao Zedong, had not been shot by the Iranian border patrol, had not had a hair touched on his ever-balder head in his twenty-five years as a double agent in the inner circles of the Cold War, had not been killed by Brezhnev’s bad breath, and had not been dragged along into President Nixon’s downfall.
The only thing to suggest that Allan might actually die, after having failed to do so for so many years, was the fact that he was sitting in a woven basket that was taking in water, in the sea somewhere between Indonesia, Australia and Antarctica. But if the recently-turned-hundred-and-one-year-old survived this too, one might reasonably expect that Julius could ride shotgun.
‘I reckon you just have to pull on this,’ he said, tugging on the right string in the wrong position, at which the emergency flare shot into the water and kept going until it presumably extinguished at a depth of a few hundred metres.
Julius considered giving up. But Allan popped the cork on the next bottle, handed it to his friend, and asked him to take a few sips – with or without a glass – because he appeared to need it.
‘Then I think you should try again with the other flare. But feel free to aim it upwards – I imagine it will be easier to see that way.’
The Indian Ocean
The official task of the North Korean bulk carrier Honour and Strength was to transport thirty thousand tons of grain from Havana to Pyongyang. A much less official task was to slow down the vessel south-east of Madagascar and, under cover of darkness, allow four kilos of enriched uranium to be brought aboard. This cargo had changed hands from courier to courier, from Congo to Burundi to Tanzania to Mozambique and on to the island east of the African continent, which Honour and Strength had a legitimate reason to pass.
The North Koreans understood that they had eyes on them. Just a few years earlier their sister ship had been caught in a rebel-controlled harbour in Libya; the captain had managed to bribe his way out, that time with a ship full of oil. To make a stop in Somalia, Iran or anywhere else with a similar reputation on the way home from Cuba would likely result in nothing but boarding by UN troops on the open sea. It had happened before, most recently outside Panama. That time there happened to be aircraft engines and advanced electronics under the grain, in violation of the current UN sanctions against the proud Democratic People’s Republic. Upset, the Koreans had informed the world that it was the world, not the Koreans, who had placed the engines and electronics there.
This time, the journey home from Cuba was going in the other direction; the earth was, after all, round. The official line was that the Democratic People’s Republic refused to allow itself to be wronged again in Panama. What was not mentioned was that they had an errand along the way.
Thus far everything had gone right instead of wrong. Captain Pak Chong-un had a hold full of high-quality grain that the Supreme Leader didn’t care about; he ate his fill anyway. But in addition there were now four kilos of lead-shielded enriched uranium, secured in a North Korean briefcase. The uranium was a necessity for the continued crucial battle against the American dogs and their allies south of the 38th parallel. The amount, four kilos, might not have been much upon which to build the nation’s future, but that was not the point. This was a test of the distribution channels as such. If all went well, the Russians promised, their efforts would be doubled many times over.
Captain Pak could feel the imperialist satellites following the ship’s path back to Pyongyang, prepared, as always, to find reasons to board, humiliate and disgrace.
Pak kept the briefcase in the safe in the captain’s quarters; the hooligans would find what they were looking for anyway, if it came to a boarding. But no sign of that yet. Still no mistakes made. Soon nothing could keep the captain from returning in triumph.
Pak Chong-un’s thoughts were interrupted when the first mate entered the room without knocking. ‘Captain!’ he said. ‘We’ve spotted an emergency flare four nautical miles to the north. What should we do? Ignore it?’
Blast! Just when everything was looking so good. Many thoughts flew through Captain Pak’s head all at once. Could it be a trap? Someone who intended to seize the uranium? Best to pretend they hadn’t seen it, of course, just as the first mate had suggested.
But some people were guaranteed to see it – the Americans. From space. And they were surely taking photographs. A North Korean ship ignoring someone in distress at sea – that would be a crime against maritime law, and an enormous PR disaster for the Supreme Leader (while Captain Pak himself would face a firing squad).
No, the least troublesome option would probably be to find out the reason for the flare.
‘Shame on you, sailor!’ said Captain Pak Chong-un. ‘Representatives of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea don’t leave those in distress in the lurch. Set a new course and prepare for a rescue action. That’s an order!’
The first mate gave a frightened salute and hurried off. He cursed himself for not doing a better job of watching his tongue. If the captain reported this, his career would be over. At best.
* * *
By now the water was up to the ankles of the friends in the basket on the sea. Allan sat with his black tablet, marvelling that it worked in the middle of nowhere. ‘Listen to this!’ he said.
And he told his friend that it wasn’t only presidents who made fools of themselves out in the world, like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, for example, the man who had defined homosexuality as ‘un-African’ and decided that it ought to be worth ten years in prison so the homosexual would learn. Recently Mugabe’s wife had allegedly used an extension cord to attack a girl who had spent time with the couple’s son at a hotel room. Apparently in that family they had issues with heterosexuality as well.
Julius was too distressed to have any opinion on his friend’s latest news and was just about to ask him to be quiet, so he could sit there and die in peace, when he was interrupted by a horn. In the distance he and Allan could make out a ship. Heading straight for the basket.
‘Isn’t that the damnedest thing?’ said Julius. ‘You’re going to survive this too, Allan.’
‘And so are you, it seems,’
said Allan.
* * *
The only items that accompanied the two old men onto the ship were Allan’s black tablet and the last bottle of champagne. Allan was holding the tablet in one hand and the champagne in the other as he and Julius met Captain Pak on the foredeck.
‘Good day, Captain,’ he said, once each in English, Russian, Mandarin and Spanish.
‘Good day,’ the astonished captain responded in English.
He had command of both Russian and Mandarin and, thanks to his many excursions to and from Cuba, he knew a certain amount of Spanish, but he was the only one of the crew who spoke English, and he felt instinctively that the fewer ears that listened and understood the better. At least until this mysterious situation cleared up.
Captain Pak informed the two castaways that their lives had just been saved in the name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and for the glory of the Supreme Leader.
‘Say hello and thanks to the Supreme One, if you run into each other from now on,’ said Allan. ‘Where might we be let off along the way? Indonesia would be great, if it’s not too much trouble. We didn’t bring any identification papers, and it’s always a little tricky to change countries, isn’t it?’
Yes, Captain Pak knew how tricky it could be to change countries. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did with ease where he came from. But that wasn’t enough reason to fraternize with foreign gentlemen plucked from a bucket on the open sea. And certainly not in front of the crew, no matter the language.
‘As commanding officer, I am bound by law to guard the cargo of this ship carefully during our journey, as well as watch out for the cargo owners’ interests more generally. According to the same law, I am duty-bound to conduct the ship with due promptness.’
‘What does that mean?’ Julius asked nervously.
‘It means what I just said,’ said Captain Pak.
‘It means he’s not going to let us off before Pyongyang,’ said Allan.