What Margot Wallström had seen so far was no more than the airport and a few glances at the North Korean countryside and cityscape on her way into downtown Pyongyang. The countryside appeared poor but not shabby. In the city, the streets were wide, devoid of cars, edged by various monuments. The cult of personality was plain to see.
Like the diplomat she was, she responded by saying that she hoped to get the chance to enjoy the country before it was time to go home again; it struck her as both green and beautiful. The weather was also quite welcoming.
By the latter, the typical Swede means it’s above freezing, which it was.
The host nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Our motto is “a powerful and prosperous nation”. I see that you understand why, Madame Minister for Foreign Affairs.’
She did not wait for any response from Margot Wallström but turned to Allan. ‘And Mr Allan Karlsson. The world’s leading expert in hetisostat pressure one thousand two hundred. In possession of knowledge he would now like to share with the Democratic People’s Republic in the name of peace. What do you think of our beautiful country?’
‘Well, this isn’t my first time here,’ said Allan. ‘I had business here way back in the days of the Eternal President. It seems to me the roadblocks aren’t as numerous today as they were back then.’
Kim Jong-un signalled that he wished to be called onstage. As it happened, the host had prepared another question for the Swiss man, but the Supreme Leader didn’t trust that the old man would answer as he should. Roadblocks? What kind of talk was that?
The presentation of the Supreme Leader appeared to be magnificent. Exactly what was said was impossible to know for anyone who didn’t speak Korean. But now the formerly lukewarm audience stood up and gave an intense round of applause.
Kim Jong-un nodded first at the minister for foreign affairs, then the Swiss man, and joined them at the table.
The audience continued to applaud.
And more applause. It didn’t stop until the Supreme Leader ordered it to with his own hand. The host was able to make herself heard once more.
‘Supreme Leader,’ she said. ‘You are the world’s foremost champion of peace. How do you view the possibility that the aforementioned world would be a better place to live in under your leadership?’
Kim Jong-un nodded thoughtfully. A very good question. Almost as if he had come up with it himself. Which he had. ‘Peace between two parties presupposes cooperation by all. I cannot bring about peace on my own. I need help. Peace will come only when everyone wants it. It is with great sorrow I must say that the United States of America and its allies are instead trying to drive us all to destruction. But I do what I can, I do what I can. Hope is the last thing to abandon each individual in the Democratic People’s Republic. And I am glad we have the United Nations on our side in this struggle, represented here by Madame Wallström, who is also the minister for foreign affairs in the neutral country of Sweden. With the help of the equally neutral nation of Switzerland – represented by Mr Karlsson, as previously mentioned – the ultimate in nuclear strength can in the long term be relocated from the warmongers in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul to here, the centre of peace and love.’
Minister Wallström was about to flip out. Was that bastard standing there and placing the neutral countries of Sweden and Switzerland on the side of North Korea in a nuclear arms race? And where was this being broadcast? Wherever it was, it would become an international story at any moment.
‘May I say something?’
‘Yes, that is certainly the intent here,’ said Kim Jong-un. ‘We will begin our demanding work this very evening. The Democratic People’s Republic, the UN and the countries of Sweden and Switzerland, which have so proudly refused to fall in line with the North American hawks.’
The host realized that the show was over. She thanked her leader with a reverent bow and said she did not want to spend any more time standing in the way of the important work of the Supreme Leader and the others.
‘Go, Supreme Leader, in the name of peace. And feel the love of your people. Take your friends with you. Our love extends to them as well.’
Once again backstage, a very pleased Kim Jong-un said that everything had gone very well, didn’t Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström agree?
No, she did not.
‘With all respect, Supreme Leader, what we just experienced was not part of our agreement, and it complicates rather than facilitates our upcoming talks.’
Kim Jong-un smiled. ‘Oh, yes, our talks. I think one will be enough. As I said, you are welcome to the palace this evening for an early dinner. Now you will be escorted to your hotel and picked up again at around seventeen hundred hours. Do be sure to make the most of the fantastic service at Ryugyong until then. According to many reviewers, it is the best hotel in the world.’
The minister, as annoyed as she was bewildered, was herded back through the hallways alongside the Swiss-Swedish Karlsson. At last they found themselves alone in the back seat of Wallström’s limousine. There was no way the driver could hear what they said or in which language they said it. Once the car had gone a few hundred metres, the minister for foreign affairs thought the time was right.
‘I must say I find myself curious about a few things,’ she said quietly to Allan, in Swedish.
‘I can imagine,’ said Allan. ‘What might be the most curious part? We can start there and work our way down. Or up, whichever it is.’
Margot Wallström had actually been planning to stay at the embassy, but she needed more time with the remarkable man beside her. ‘Then let’s start with how it happens that a Swede pretending to be Swiss finds himself in Pyongyang on business, with a purpose diametrically opposed to the one I am here to represent.’
‘Good question,’ said Allan. ‘And well formulated. I don’t think I’ll start from the beginning, because we would never finish. That’s how old I am. Let me instead begin with my hundred-and-first birthday on a beautiful white-sand beach on Bali in Indonesia.’
And then came the story of the hot-air balloon. The crash into the sea. The rescue. The white lie about hetisostat pressure to survive at least in the short term, and the arrival in Pyongyang as recently as a few hours before her own. How he had become Swiss, he didn’t know. As far as he could remember, he had never been to Switzerland. ‘But I hear it’s lovely. And the Swiss are said to be orderly to a fault.’
‘Yes,’ said the minister. ‘But the question is, how happy will they be now that they’ve got a presumed traitor on their hands?’
‘They have?’
‘You, Mr Karlsson.’
‘Oh, that’s what you meant.’
* * *
Ryugyong Hotel was an impressive creation, 330 metres and 105 storeys tall. The North Koreans had been building it since 1987 without ever finishing it. It was slow going, since the state coffers were substantially used up by the production of nuclear weapons and military parades. After three decades, they hadn’t yet built more than the lobby and the first floor. At this rate, it would take another fifteen hundred years for the whole building to be finished.
Yet the ground floor was stylish. It consisted of a golden reception desk to the right, offering space for up to twelve simultaneous check-ins or check-outs, and a tastefully decorated piano bar to the left, with three pianists engaged to cover the better part of each day. Thus far the budget had not allowed for the acquisition of a piano, but it was a priority.
Julius was sitting on the edge of the bed in room 104, waiting for Allan to return from the alphabet soup KCNA. Since it was impossible to imagine what that place might be, he was succeeding, for the moment, in repressing the situation they had found themselves in. Instead he was thinking about his asparagus partner down in Bali. To be sure, that wasn’t much fun either. Now Gustav had to handle the operation all on his own. What would come of it?
There was a telephone on the nightstand. Could it possibly be functional, in contrast to the hotel’s eight lifts?
It was worth a try.
He called his business partner, the Indian Gustav Svensson. The call went through, but instead of a ringtone followed by Gustav, voicemail took over.
Julius recorded a few irritated sentences. In his haste, he forgot to mention that he was still alive, but perhaps his partner would work that out for himself.
Then he took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. He yawned and closed his eyes, trying to aim his thoughts in a direction other than that of asparagus and alphabet soup.
It didn’t work.
South Korea
How’s the asparagus?
Three deliveries this month too?
Any return shipments?
Will we make it to five hundred million before the year is half out?
On the top floor of a fourteen-storey building in the city of Goyang, north-west of the South Korean capital, a man and a woman wearing headphones sat in front of quadruple computer screens and various instruments. Both were civil servants. Nothing remarkable so far, except possibly the location: a simple two-bedroom apartment. And the fact that the state served by the civil servants was not the Republic of Korea but Germany.
The woman was a low-ranking diplomat; the man was the same, only a little lower. Officially they were involved in a number of German-Korean housing projects, but they were seldom seen in such contexts. Instead they sat where they sat on order of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND. They were distant colleagues to an arrogant site director and his meek colleague in Dar es Salaam.
The two fake diplomats’ primary task, in the apartment in Goyang, was to make recordings of the Americans’ wiretaps in North Korea. By doing so they avoided having to do the job themselves, and also got a dash of pleasure out of it. Winding up American intelligence services was one of life’s little joys.
One of their easier targets was the permanently unfinished showpiece Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. Seldom, bordering on never, did anything of interest come from there.
Today was an exception.
From room 104, a guest unknown to the BND had left a message on a powered-down cell phone in Indonesia that belonged to an equally unknown recipient. The message was in English, in code, and consisted of four questions.
How’s the asparagus?
Three deliveries this month too?
Any return shipments?
Will we make it to five hundred million before the year is half out?
What asparagus was code for, the fake diplomats couldn’t say. But the sum – five hundred million! – suggested narcotics or worse. The Germans knew that a small load of enriched uranium had just reached Pyongyang. It could hardly have cost half a billion. But what if this was a case of several ongoing deliveries? Such as three? Per month?
What was Kim Jong-un up to? Was he planning to start a war with the whole world? And where was he getting the money? Five hundred fucking million dollars! And 104 unfinished floors in the country’s only luxury hotel.
More questions without answers. A return shipment? What, in that case, was supposed to be transported out of North Korea? And how? And where was it going? Indonesia? Well, shit.
North Korea
Julius was involuntarily imprisoned in the capital of North Korea, and he longed for the peace and petty thievery he had known back on Bali. His goal of five hundred million rupiah – almost forty thousand dollars – had been realistic once, but perhaps not now that he wasn’t there to keep an eye on things.
On the other hand, his and Allan’s debts to the hotel and the boat-renter were much greater than that. In this sense it was economically advantageous to keep their distance, although visiting North Korea was certainly overdoing it.
When this mess was all over, perhaps they could move the asparagus operation to an area where they didn’t owe anyone any money.
‘Thailand?’ Julius said aloud, just as the door opened.
Allan held it open and allowed Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström to enter first. ‘Allow me to introduce my friend Julius Jonsson,’ said Allan. ‘He’s single, if the minister feels so inclined.’
Margot Wallström shot an angry look at Allan. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I have been happily married for over thirty years.’
Julius greeted the minister with the comment that she would have to forgive Allan. It must have to do with his age. The strangest things came out of his mouth sometimes. Most of the time, really.
Minister Wallström nodded and said she had noticed as much.
In the limousine after the horrid press conference, she had formed an approximate idea about Karlsson and Jonsson. The hundred-and-one-year-old really did seem to be a nuclear weapons expert, or at least he had been once upon a time. The only good news of the day was that he aspired not to help Kim Jong-un.
The truly bad part was that he had no plans about how to avoid doing so.
The general impression in the UN building was that North Korea had the capacity for nuclear weapons but so far that capacity was limited; the Supreme Leader was trying to make such a rumpus that no one would notice. In any case, the threat was real. Nuclear weapons are so powerful, of course, that even a small, half-failed load could destroy an entire city. Like Seoul, for example. Or Tokyo. Or a whole island, like Guam.
Margot Wallström shuddered at the thought. And at the apparent truth that the man who could sort out the North Korean nuclear weapons programme was in this very hotel room, digging through the empty minibar. And, furthermore, he was Swedish. Was Sweden going to be the primary reason behind a shift in the balance of worldwide power?
No, she had to stop it happening if she could. Preferably without ending up imprisoned in this country for thirty years or more, accused of espionage or whatever the Supreme Leader happened to dream up.
‘Do you think you could come with me on my plane out of here?’ she asked. ‘Twenty-nine of the thirty seats in the cabin are available.’
Julius lit up.
Allan stopped looking for liquor. ‘As empty as the minibar in this hotel room,’ he said. ‘The whole hotel, in fact.’
The minister for foreign affairs went on. ‘I can try to help you get diplomatic passports. I’m afraid you’ll have to sort out the rest on your own.’
‘The rest?’ said Julius.
‘Getting to the plane when it’s time to take off.’
Allan hadn’t listened beyond the first part of what had just been said. ‘Diplomatic passports?’ he said. ‘I haven’t had one of those since 1948, when Churchill and I flew home from Tehran together. Or ’forty-seven. No, ’forty-eight.’
‘Winston Churchill?’ said the minister.
‘Yes, that’s his name. Or it was. I suppose he’s been dead a long time, like most people.’
The minister for foreign affairs suddenly felt as if she was in a movie. And it made her stomach hurt to think of what she was about to do. Espionage wouldn’t be an entirely inaccurate charge. But she took portraits of Allan and Julius with her phone camera and promised them passports within a few days.
‘Sign the back of my business card so they’ll have something to go on at home.’
She’s one results-oriented woman, thought Julius. And delightful. Shame she’s taken.
* * *
The Swedish UN representative had been assigned room 105, next door to Allan and Julius. Once she was in the room, ostensibly to prepare herself for the evening’s dinner, she spent more time pondering how she could rescue the two Swedes and trick Kim Jong-un out of knowledge he shouldn’t have. It seemed as if the Supreme Leader didn’t want her around any longer than necessary, but she had to give Karlsson and Jonsson time to come up with a plan. Plus the diplomatic passports had to make it over. She wouldn’t be able to order them until she got to the embassy several hours later. Time seemed to be her greatest enemy right now. Although it was in serious competition with everything else.
She showered, changed clothes, spiffed herself up, and at last stood ready in front of the hall mirror. She looked at h
erself and said, ‘What am I doing here?’
Her mirror image gazed back but didn’t respond.
* * *
Kim Jong-un asked his guests to have a seat at the dining table as he remained standing at one end, his hands on the back of his chair. He appeared to have something to say.
Two of the waiting staff came through the doors, their arms full of plates, and a third walked in with two bottles of wine. But all three immediately turned back after a glance from the Supreme Leader.
Allan watched the food and drink come and go in the span of one second and was disappointed.
‘Friends,’ Kim Jong-un began.
‘Could we perhaps talk while we eat?’ Allan suggested.
The Supreme Leader pretended not to hear this comment. He launched into a speech about peace and freedom.
‘Peace’ seemed to involve supplying his country with ever more deadly weapons. What constituted ‘freedom’ was not quite as clear. Except possibly that every single citizen had the right to love their leader, combined with the duty to avoid not doing so.
With that, the Supreme Leader expressed his contentment that Providence had supplied him with Mr Karlsson, who had come all the way from Switzerland to contribute to the fight against American imperialism. And that UN Envoy Wallström had joined in for similar reasons.
‘Well,’ said Margot Wallström, ‘as Mr Kim is aware, my task is rather to try to open up lines of dialogue between different people, to begin talking to each other, like we’re doing now, instead of putting on performances here and there, like the one that took place in front of the TV cameras earlier today. I have already expressed my displeasure with that, have I not?’
She’s not only delightful, she’s brave too, Julius thought. Now, if only Allan remains calm …
Kim Jong-un looked at the UN envoy without listening to what she said. And went on with his speech.
He started on how happy everyone was in the Democratic People’s Republic, how well the crops were growing, and how much nicer the weather was in the northern half of the peninsula than in the south. Altogether, it was no wonder tens of thousands of Koreans fled from south to north each year.