Regrettably, it turned out to be the latter. Albert Einstein would not admit that he had given a moment’s thought to the technique of nuclear fission (even though it was common knowledge that as early as 1939 he had communicated with President Roosevelt about the matter, which in turn had led to the Manhattan Project). In fact Albert Einstein would not even admit that he was Albert Einstein. He maintained with idiotic stubbornness that he was instead Albert Einstein’s younger brother, Herbert Einstein. But Albert Einstein didn’t have a brother; he only had a sister. So that trick naturally didn’t work with Beria and his interrogators, and they were just about to resort to violence when something rather remarkable happened on Seventh Avenue in New York.
There, in Carnegie Hall, Albert Einstein was giving a lecture on the theory of relativity, to an audience of 2,800 specially invited guests, of which two were spies for the Soviet Union.
Two Albert Einsteins was one too many for Marshal Beria, even if one of them was a long way away on the other side of the Atlantic. It was soon possible to ascertain that the one in Carnegie Hall was the real one, so who the hell was the other one?
Under the threat of being subjected to procedures that nobody willingly undergoes, the false Albert Einstein promised to clarify everything for Marshal Beria.
‘You will get a clear picture of everything, Mr Marshal, as long as you don’t interrupt me,’ the false Albert Einstein promised.
Marshal Beria promised not to interrupt him with anything other than a bullet in the head, and he would wait to do that until it was beyond any doubt that what he had heard was pure lies.
‘So please go ahead. Don’t let me put you off,’ said Marshal Beria, and cocked his pistol.
The man who had previously claimed that he was Albert Einstein’s unknown brother Herbert, took a deep breath and started by… repeating the claim (at which point a shot was almost fired).
Thereupon followed a story, which, if it was true, was so sad that even Marshal Beria could not bring himself to execute the narrator.
Hermann and Pauline Einstein did indeed have two children: first Albert and then Maja. But papa Einstein hadn’t really been able to keep his hands and other parts of his body away from his beautiful (but dim) secretary at the electro-chemical factory he ran in Munich. This had resulted in Herbert, Albert and Maja’s secret and not-at-all legitimate brother.
Just as the marshal’s agents had already been able to ascertain, Herbert was virtually an exact physical copy of Albert, although he was thirteen years younger. But as for his mind, Herbert had unfortunately inherited all his mother’s intelligence. Or lack thereof.
When Herbert was two years old, in 1895, the family moved from Munich to Milan. Herbert followed along, but not his mother. Papa Einstein had of course offered to move her too, but Herbert’s mama was not interested. She couldn’t contemplate replacing bratwurst with spaghetti, and German with… whatever language they spoke in Italy. Besides, that baby had just been a lot of trouble; he screamed all the time for food, and was always making a mess! If somebody wanted to take Herbert somewhere else, that would be fine, but she herself intended staying where she was.
Herbert’s mother got a decent sum of money from papa Einstein. The story goes that she then met a genuine count who persuaded her to invest all her money in his almost-finished machine for the production of a life elixir which cured every existing illness. But then the count had disappeared, and he must have taken the elixir with him because Herbert’s impoverished mama died some years later, of tuberculosis.
Herbert thus grew up with his big brother Albert and big sister Maja. But in order to avoid scandal, papa Einstein referred to Herbert as his nephew. Herbert was never particularly close to his brother, but he loved his sister sincerely even though he had to call her his cousin.
‘To sum up,’ said Herbert Einstein, ‘I was abandoned by my mother, denied by my father – and I’m as intelligent as a sack of potatoes. I haven’t done any useful work in all my life, just lived on what I inherited from my father, and I have not had a single wise thought.’
Marshal Beria lowered his pistol. The story did have a degree of credibility, and the marshal even admired the self-awareness that the stupid Herbert Einstein had demonstrated.
What should he do now? The marshal got up from the chair in the interrogation room. For purposes of security he had put aside all thought of right and wrong, in the name of the revolution. He already had more than enough problems, he didn’t need another one to burden him. The marshal turned to the two guards at the door:
‘Get rid of him.’
Upon which he left the room.
It would not be pleasant to report on the Herbert Einstein cock-up to Comrade Stalin, but Marshal Beria was lucky, because before he had time to find himself out in the cold, there was a breakthrough at Los Alamos.
Over the years, more than 130,000 people had worked on the Manhattan Project, and naturally more than one of them was loyal to the socialist revolution. But nobody had managed to obtain the innermost secret of the atom bomb.
But they had found out something that was almost as useful:a Swede had solved the puzzle, and they knew his name!
It didn’t take more than twelve hours to find out that Allan Karlsson was staying at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, and that he spent his days just pottering about after the head of the Swedish atomic weapons programme had told him that they didn’t require his services.
‘The question is, who holds the world record in stupidity,’ Marshal Beria said to himself. ‘The boss of the Swedish atomic weapons programme or Herbert Einstein’s mum…’
This time, Marshal Beria chose a new tactic. Allan Karlsson would be persuaded to contribute his knowledge in exchange for a considerable number of American dollars. And the person who would take care of the persuading was a scientist like Allan Karlsson himself, not an awkward and clumsy agent. The agent in question ended up (to be on the safe side) behind the wheel as the private chauffeur of Yury Borisovich Popov, a sympathetic and competent physicist from the innermost circle of Marshal Beria’s atomic weapons group.
And everything had gone according to plan. Yury Borisovich was on his way back to Moscow with Allan Karlsson – and Karlsson seemed sympathetic to the whole idea.
Marshal Beria’s Moscow office was inside the walls of the Kremlin, at the wish of Comrade Stalin. The marshal himself greeted Allan Karlsson and Yury Borisovich in the lobby.
‘You are heartily welcome, Mr Karlsson,’ said Marshal Beria and shook his hand.
‘Thank you, Mr Marshal,’ said Allan.
Marshal Beria wasn’t the type to sit and chat about nothing. Life was too short for that (and besides he was socially incompetent). So he said to Allan:
‘Have I understood the reports correctly, Mr Karlsson, in that you are willing to assist the socialist Soviet republic in nuclear matters in exchange for a hundred thousand dollars?’
Allan replied that he hadn’t given the money much thought, but that he would like to give Yury Borisovich a hand if there was something he needed help with and there did seem to be. But it would be nice if Mr Marshal could wait until the next day, because he had travelled an awful lot lately.
Marshal Beria answered that he understood that the journey had been somewhat exhausting for Mr Karlsson, and told him that they would soon be having dinner with Comrade Stalin, after which Mr Karlsson would be able to rest in the very finest guest suite the Kremlin had to offer.
Comrade Stalin was not stingy when it came to food. There was salmon roe and herring and salted cucumbers and meat salad and grilled vegetables and borsht and pelmeni and blini and lamb cutlets and pierogi with ice cream. There was wine of various colours and of course vodka. And even more vodka.
Around the table sat Comrade Stalin himself, Allan Karlsson from Yxhult, nuclear physicist Yury Borisovich Popov, the boss of the Soviet state’s security Marshal Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria and a little, almost invisible young man without a name and without anyt
hing to either eat or drink. He was the interpreter, and they pretended he wasn’t there.
Stalin was in brilliant spirits right from the beginning. Lavrenty Pavlovich always delivered! OK, he had put his foot in it with Einstein, that had reached Stalin’s ear, but it was history now. And besides, Einstein (the real one) only had his brain; Karlsson had exact and detailed knowledge!
And it didn’t hurt that Karlsson seemed to be such a nice guy. He had told Stalin about his background, albeit extremely briefly. His father had fought for socialism in Sweden and then journeyed to Russia for the same purpose. Admirable indeed! His son had for his part fought in the Spanish Civil War and Stalin was not going to be so insensitive as to ask on which side. After that he had travelled to America (he had to flee, Stalin assumed) and by chance had found himself in the service of the Allies… and that could be forgiven, Stalin himself had in a manner of speaking done the same thing in the latter part of the war.
Only a few minutes into the main course, Stalin had learned how to sing the Swedish toast ‘Helan går, sjung hopp faderallan lallan lej’ whenever it was time to raise their glasses. Allan in turn praised Stalin’s singing voice, leading Stalin to tell of how in his youth he had not only sung in a choir but even performed as a soloist at weddings, and then he got up and gave proof of this by jumping around on the floor and waving his arms and legs in every direction to a song that Allan thought sounded almost… Indian… but nice!
Allan couldn’t sing. He couldn’t do anything of any cultural value, he realised, but the mood seemed to demand that he attempt something more than ‘Helan går…’, and the only thing he could remember straight off was the poem by Verner von Heidenstam that Allan’s village school teacher had forced the children to memorize.
Thus Stalin resumed his seat, while Allan got up and proclaimed the poem in his native Swedish.
As an eight-year-old, Allan hadn’t understood what he recited, and now that he declaimed the poem again, with impressive engagement, he realised that thirty-five years later he still hadn’t a clue what it was about. The Russian-English (insignificant) interpreter sat in silence on his chair and was even less significant than before.
Allan then announced (after the applause had died down) that what he had just recited was by Verner von Heidenstam. Had he known how Comrade Stalin would react to that news, Allan might have refrained from announcing it, or at least adjusted the truth a little.
Comrade Stalin had once upon a time been a poet, indeed a very competent one. The spirit of the times, however, had made him a revolutionary soldier instead. Such a background was poetical enough in itself. But Stalin had also retained his interest in poetry and his knowledge of the leading contemporary poets.
Unfortunately for Allan, Stalin knew all too well who Verner von Heidenstam was. And unlike Allan he knew all about Verner von Heidenstam’s love of – Germany. And about the love being mutual. Hitler’s righthand man, Rudolf Hess, had visited Heidenstam’s home in the 1930s, and shortly afterwards Heidenstam had been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Heidelberg.
All of this caused Stalin’s mood to undergo an abrupt metamorphosis.
‘Is Mr Karlsson sitting here and insulting the generous host who received him with open arms?’ asked Stalin.
Allan assured him that such was not the case. If it was Heidenstam who had upset Mr Stalin, then Allan apologized profusely. Perhaps it might be some consolation that Heidenstam had been dead for some years?
‘And “sjung hopp faderallan lallan lej”, what did that actually mean? Did you have Stalin repeat a homage to the enemies of the revolution?’ asked Stalin, who always spoke of himself in the third person when he got angry.
Allan answered that he would need some time to think to be able to translate ‘sjung hopp faderallan lallan lej’ into English, but that Mr Stalin could rest assured that it was nothing more than a cheerful ditty.
‘A cheerful ditty?’ said Comrade Stalin in a loud voice. ‘Does Mr Karlsson think that Stalin looks like a cheerful person?’
Allan was beginning to tire of Stalin’s touchiness. The old geezer was quite red in the face with anger, but about not very much. Stalin went on:
‘And what actually did you do in the Spanish Civil War? It would perhaps be best to ask Mr Heidenstam-lover which side he fought for!’
Has he got a sixth sense too, the devil? Allan thought. Oh well, he was already as angry as he could reasonably become, so it was probably just as well to come clean.
‘I wasn’t really fighting, Mr Stalin, but at first I helped the republicans, before – for rather random reasons – changing sides and becoming good friends with General Franco.’
‘General Franco?’ Stalin shouted, and then stood up so that the chair behind him fell over.
It was evidently possible to get even angrier. On a few occasions in Allan’s eventful life, somebody had shouted at him, but he had never, ever, shouted back, and he had no plans to do so to Stalin. That didn’t mean that he was unmoved by the situation. On the contrary, he had rapidly come to dislike the little loudmouth on the other side of the table, in his own quiet way.
‘And not only that, Mr Stalin. I have been in China for the purpose of making war against Mao Tse-tung, before I went to Iran and prevented an attempt to assassinate Churchill.’
‘Churchill? That fat pig!’ Stalin shouted.
Stalin recovered for a moment before downing a whole glass of vodka. Allan watched enviously. He too would like to have his glass filled, but didn’t think it was the right moment for such a request.
Marshal Beria and Yury Borisovich didn’t say anything. But their faces bore very different expressions. While Beria stared angrily at Allan, Yury just looked unhappy.
Stalin absorbed the vodka he had just downed and then he lowered his voice to a normal level. He was still angry.
‘Has Stalin understood correctly?’ asked Stalin. ‘You were on Franco’s side, you have fought against Comrade Mao, you have… saved the life of the pig in London and you have put the deadliest weapon in the world in the hands of the arch-capitalists in the USA.
‘I might have known,’ Stalin mumbled and in his anger forgot to talk in the third person. ‘And now you are here to sell yourself to Soviet socialism? One hundred thousand dollars, is that the price for your soul? Or has the price gone up during the course of the evening?’
Allan no longer wanted to help. Of course, Yury was still a good man and he was the one who actually needed the help. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that the results of Yury’s work would end up in the hands of Comrade Stalin, and he was not exactly Allan’s idea of a real comrade. On the contrary, he seemed unstable, and it would probably be best for all concerned if he didn’t get the bomb to play with.
‘Not exactly,’ said Allan. ‘This was never about money…’
He didn’t get any further before Stalin exploded again.
‘Who do you think you are, you damned rat? Do you think that you, a representative of fascism, of horrid American capitalism, of everything on this Earth that Stalin despises, that you, you, can come to the Kremlin, to the Kremlin, and bargain with Stalin, and bargain with Stalin?’
‘Why do you say everything twice?’ Allan wondered, while Stalin went on:
‘The Soviet Union is prepared to go to war again, I’ll tell you that! There will be war, there will inevitably be war until American imperialism is wiped out.’
‘Is that what you think?’ asked Allan.
‘To do battle and to win, we don’t need your damned atom bomb! What we need is socialist souls and hearts! He who knows he can never be defeated, can never be defeated!’
‘Unless of course somebody drops an atom bomb on him,’ said Allan.
‘I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don’t help us with the bomb!’
Allan noted that he had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minu
te or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan’s services after all.
But Allan wasn’t going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Allan.
‘What,’ said Stalin angrily.
‘Why don’t you shave off that moustache?’
With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted.
Plans were changed with all haste. Allan was not, after all, housed in the finest guest suite at the Kremlin, but instead in a windowless room in the cellar of the nation’s secret police. Comrade Stalin had finally decided that the Soviet Union would get an atom bomb either through its own experts working out how to make it, or by good old-fashioned honest espionage. They would not kidnap any more westerners and they would definitely not bargain with capitalists or fascists or both combined.
Yury was deeply unhappy. Not only because he had persuaded the nice Allan to come to the Soviet Union where death now certainly awaited him, but also because Comrade Stalin had exhibited such human failings! The Great Leader was intelligent, well-educated, a good dancer and he had a good singing voice. And on top of that he was completely bonkers! Allan had happened to quote the wrong poet and in a few seconds a pleasant dinner had been transformed into a… catastrophe.
At the risk of his own life, Yury tried cautiously, so cautiously, to talk to Beria about Allan’s impending execution and whether despite everything there was an alternative.
But Yury had misjudged the marshal. He did use violence against women and children, he did torture and execute guilty as well as innocent people, he did that and a lot more besides… but however revolting his methods, Marshal Beria did work single-mindedly in the best interests of the Soviet Union.