The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man. Jonas Jonasson
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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.
Julius had no desire to see North Korea. ‘But please, dear Captain,’ he said. ‘We happen to have a bottle of champagne here. We thought it might come in handy if we were picked up as we now have been. It’s not quite as well chilled as it ought to be, but if the captain doesn’t mind that, we’d be happy to share it. We can get to know each other and see what sorts of solutions might be hiding just around the corner.’
That was well put, Allan thought, holding up the bottle in support.
The captain took it from his hand and informed them that it was being confiscated as no alcohol was allowed on board.
‘No alcohol?’ said Julius.
No alcohol? Allan thought, on the verge of asking to return to the basket.
‘You gentlemen will be interrogated for information in two hours. For the time being you are not under suspicion of any crime, but that can always change. I intend to conduct the interrogation myself. The first two questions will be, who are you and why did you elect to float around in a woven basket on the open sea? With a bottle of champagne. But we’ll deal with that then.’
Captain Pak turned to his first mate, who was told he must take his belongings and move down with the crew, since he had just been relieved of his officer’s cabin. He should instead have the two foreign men installed there. Furthermore, the first mate should make sure a sailor stood watch outside the cabin, unless he chose to guard it himself, to make sure the two gentlemen didn’t come to any harm or, for that matter, get up to causing any harm.
The first mate gave a salute. He wasn’t happy about this development. Forced to associate with the crew for the sake of two aged whites … No, the captain should have left them at sea. This could only end as poorly as it had begun.
Captain Pak Chong-un sensed trouble brewing. Once again he checked the contents within the otherwise securely locked door to the safe in the captain’s quarters. He kept the key on a chain around his neck.
The safe contained all the mandatory ship’s logs, a copy of maritime law, and a briefcase full of four kilos of lead-shielded, enriched uranium.
The task he had personally been delegated by the Supreme Leader was now only three days from completion. There were no clouds on the horizon of this task. In a literal sense, that was. Which meant, as always, that the American satellites were keeping a watchful eye on him. That was a cloud in and of itself, albeit a metaphorical one. Another was the two foreign men in the first mate’s cabin just on the other side of the wall.
Captain Pak allowed himself to sum up the situation before walking the few steps to the neighbouring cabin. ‘Ugh.’ He stared at the watchman until said watchman realized he should open the door for his captain. And then he stared again until the watchman closed the same door.
‘Gentlemen, it is time to be interrogated,’ said Captain Pak Chong-un.
‘Lovely,’ said Allan.
Congo is the second-largest country in Africa and has always been rich in two particular things: natural resources and misery.
The most miserable period of all was when King Leopold II of Belgium used the country as his private rubber farm. He enslaved everyone he encountered and had upwards of ten million people killed. That’s an entire Sweden. Or an entire Belgium, if you prefer.
When Congo gained independence many difficult years later, a certain Joseph Mobutu ended up in the president’s chair. He became most famous for selling his country’s resources to the highest under-the-table bidder, keeping the money for himself, and changing his name to ‘the All-powerful Warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’.
This guy, thought the United States, was the future of Congo and Africa. And, with the kind aid of the CIA, the All-powerful Warrior remained in power for several decades. Uranium succeeded rubber as the most interesting natural resource. Indeed, the USA received the uranium for the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Congo and, as thanks for the help, assisted in the installation of a Congolese nuclear research facility under the leadership of the all-powerful one who left fire in his wake. It’s possible that this was not the United States’ brightest political decision in history.
In the country where everything was corrupt, no exceptions, large quantities of enriched uranium vanished. Some of it turned up here and there and could be secured, while an unknown amount remained missing.
Time passed. The most important security services in the Western world no longer had the energy to search for what couldn’t be found. What remained was to try to keep any more from reaching the black market. Some of those with operational units found comfort in the fact that at least the missing uranium lost strength with each year that went by.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, was in possession of knowledge that made her view of the whole thing rather less rosy. Frau Merkel had already been around longer than most of the world’s leaders and she was counting on being re-elected next autumn. Her background as a chemist told her that she would not be in her current position on the day the missing isotope no longer posed a potential threat to her country. To be sure, she still had a lot to give, even at the age of sixty-three, after twenty-eight years in politics. But even so, her own half-life was considerably shorter than that of enriched uranium: four point five billion years.
Kim Jong-un had never asked to be the person he became. In fact, two older brothers were ahead of him in line, but one sealed his fate when he took his family under his wing and sneaked out of the country under a fake name to go to Tokyo for a lark. To Disneyland, to boot – he was 0 for 2. And their father, Kim Jong-il, considered his other son far too weak. That basically meant he was suspected of being gay. Here and there, it was considered questionable to love whomever you wished.
Their father Kim was quite advanced in age when he took over from Eternal President Kim Il-sung, and likely had plans for a similar run-in period for his youngest son. But the problem with life is that people both high and low die when they die. Suddenly there he was, the twenty-five-year-old son, expected to move forward the legacy of his just-deceased father. Or preferably further than that since his father had gone down in history as the man who had turned a hungry people into a starving people.
In the span of a few months, young Kim went from capable Game Boy player to three-star general. He wasn’t given terrific chances by international analysts. A puppy, commander of a series of battle-scarred officers, including the puppy’s own uncle? Surely that would never work out.
And it didn’t. For the uncle and the generals. It’s possible that they were scheming, but before they could finish they were purged, every last one. Young Kim proved to be a person not to be trifled with or herded about. The uncle was sentenced to death for, among other things, being unfaithful to his wife. Nowhere in the twelve-page verdict was there a word about the fact that young Kim’s father had had five children with three different women.
Several years earlier young Kim had attended school in Switzerland under a secret name while his mother travelled around Europe to shop for the sorts of things