The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (17 page)

Round one.

But as soon as the bomb had arrived in Jerusalem, there would no longer be any physical evidence on the loose. After that, the tape could be played any number of times, anywhere at all; all they had to do was deny it. Everyone was against Israel anyway; of course there were tapes of that nature circulating. Believing them just because they existed, however, would be silly.

Then it would be time for round two.

Because you don’t mess with the Mossad.

* * *

The agents’ car left Pelindaba at 2.10 p.m. on Thursday, 12 November 1987. At 3.01 the same day, the day’s outgoing post was transported through the same gates. It was eleven minutes late because they’d had to switch vehicles due to an extra-large item.

At 3.15 the director of the investigation surrounding the death of Engineer van der Westhuizen confirmed that he had been murdered. Three independent witnesses had given similar testimonies. Furthermore, two of them were white.

Their testimonies were corroborated by the observations the director of investigation made at the scene. There were traces of rubber at three points along the engineer’s demolished face. It must have been run over by at least three tyres – that is, one tyre more than a normal car has on each side. Thus the engineer had either been run over by more than one car, or – as the witnesses unanimously agreed – several times by the same car.

It took another fifteen minutes, but by 3.30 security at the research facility was increased by one level. The black cleaning woman in the outer perimeter was to be dismissed immediately, along with the black cleaning woman in the central G wing and the three Asians in the kitchen. All five would be subjected to the intelligence service’s risk analysis before they were at the most
possibly
set free. All entering and exiting vehicles would be checked, even if the commander of the army himself were behind the wheel!

* * *

Nombeko asked her way around the airport, followed the stream of people and was past the security check before she even understood that it existed and that she had been subjected to it. She realized after the fact that diamonds in the lining of a jacket won’t set off a metal detector.

Because the Mossad agents had had to buy tickets at such short notice, only the most expensive seats were available. Her seat in the cabin was, accordingly, a good one. It took the staff quite some time to convince Nombeko that the glass of Champagne de Pompadour Extra Brut she was offered was included in the price. Just as was the food that followed. She was also kindly but firmly shown back to her seat when she tried to help clear the other passengers’ trays.

But she had figured it out by the time she received dessert, which consisted of almond-baked raspberries, and which she washed down with a cup of coffee.

‘May I offer you some brandy with your coffee?’ the flight attendant offered kindly.

‘Yes, please,’ said Nombeko. ‘Do you have Klipdrift?’

Soon thereafter she fell asleep. She slept serenely and well – and for a long time.

When she arrived at Stockholm Arlanda airport, she followed the instructions of the so elegantly duped Mossad agents. She went up to the first border policeman she saw and asked for political asylum. The reason she gave was membership of the banned organization the ANC, which sounded better than saying she had just helped another nation’s intelligence agency steal a nuclear weapon.

Her initial interrogation with the Swedish border police took place in a bright room with windows looking out onto the runway. Something was happening out there, something Nombeko had never before experienced. It was snowing. It was the first snow of winter, right in the middle of the South African spring.

CHAPTER 8

On a match that ended in a draw and an entrepreneur who didn’t get to live his life

Ingmar and Holger One were in agreement that the best way to honour Mum was to continue their fight. Two was sure that his father and brother were wrong about that, but he settled for asking who they thought was going to bring money into the household, in that case.

Ingmar frowned and admitted that he hadn’t prioritized that part, in the midst of everything he’d had to consider recently. There were still a few hundred-krona notes left in Henrietta’s sugar bowl, but they would soon be just as gone as Henrietta herself.

For lack of a better idea, the former postal clerk decided to reapply for his job as assistant to the accountant, who now had only two years left until retirement. And who replied that under no circumstances was he planning to let Mr Qvist spoil them.

The situation was rather troublesome – for another few days. And then Ingmar’s father-in-law died.

The angry Communist who had never met his grand-children (and who couldn’t get his hands on Ingmar) died at the age of eighty-eight, full of bitterness, with a lost daughter, a wife who had disappeared, and capitalism blooming around him. At least he didn’t have to watch everything he owned be taken over by the Holgers and Ingmar, though, since he no longer existed. Holger One, the one who did exist, inherited it all.

Alongside his political activities, the leader of Södertälje’s Communists had imported and sold products from the Soviet Union. Until the very end he had travelled around Swedish marketplaces to promote his goods along with his opinions of the greatness of the Soviet Union. Things went so-so with both the former and the latter, but in any case, his profits were enough to cover the bare necessities of life plus a colour TV, two visits a week to the off-licence and three thousand kronor per month as a gift to the party.

Included in One’s inheritance from his grandfather was a truck in good condition and a garage-slash-warehouse bursting with stuff; for all these years the old man had made purchases at a slightly greater pace than he had managed to sell them.

Among the goods were black and red caviar, pickles and smoked krill. There was Georgian tea, Belarusian linen, Russian felted boots and Inuit sealskins. There were all sorts of enamel containers, including the classic green rubbish bin with a pedal. There were
furashki
, the Russian military caps, and
ushanki
, the fur hats that are impossible to freeze in. There were rubber hot-water bottles, and shot glasses with mountain-ash berries painted on them. And size forty-seven braided straw hats.

There were five hundred copies of
The Communist Manifesto
in Russian and two hundred goat-hair shawls from the Urals. And four Siberian tiger traps.

Ingmar and the boys found all of this and more in the garage. And, last but not least:

An eight-foot-tall statue of Lenin, made of Karelian granite.

If Ingmar’s father-in-law had still been alive, and if moreover he had wished to converse with his son-in-law instead of strangling him, he could have told him that he had bought the statue on the cheap from an artist in Petrozavodsk who had made the mistake of giving the great leader human features. The steely grey gaze of Lenin had turned out somewhat abashed, and the hand that was meant to point straight into the future seemed to be
waving
at the people Lenin was meant to lead. The mayor of the city, who had ordered the statue, became upset when he saw the result, and he told the artist to vanish immediately, or else the mayor would see to it that he did.

Just then Ingmar’s father-in-law had shown up on one of his shopping rounds. Two weeks later, the statue was lying there and waving straight at a garage wall in Södertälje.

Ingmar and One browsed through the riches as they chuckled happily. This would be enough to support the family for years!

Two was not as delighted about this development. He had been hoping that his mother hadn’t died in vain, and that things would change for real.

‘Lenin might not have the world’s highest market value,’ he tried, but he was immediately snapped at.

‘God, you’re so negative,’ his father, Ingmar, said.

‘Yeah, God, you’re so negative,’ said Holger One.

‘Or
The Communist Manifesto
in Russian,’ Two added.

* * *

The goods in the garage were enough to support the family for eight whole years. Ingmar and the twins followed in Ingmar’s father-in-law’s footsteps from marketplace to marketplace, making enough to support a tolerable standard of living by a certain margin. This was in large part because the Communists in Södertälje no longer received a portion of this income. Neither did the tax authorities, for that matter.

Two constantly longed to get away, but he took comfort in the fact that during their years of marketing, at least there wasn’t any extra time for the republican tomfoolery.

After those eight years, all that remained was the eight-foot-tall Lenin statue in Karelian granite as well as 498 of the 500 copies of
The Communist Manifesto
in Russian. Ingmar had managed to sell one copy to a blind man during the market days in Mariestad. They had needed the other on the way to Malma Market, when Ingmar got a stomach bug and had to stop the car to squat in a ditch.

To some extent, then, Holger Two had been correct.

‘What do we do now?’ said Holger One, who had never had an idea in all his life.

‘Anything you want, as long as it has nothing to do with the royal family,’ said Holger Two.

‘No, that’s exactly what it has to do with,’ said Ingmar. ‘There’s been far too little of that sort of thing recently.’

Ingmar’s idea for continued survival involved modifying the statue of Lenin. The fact was, he had recently realized that this particular Lenin and the King of Sweden had a considerable number of common features. All they had to do was hack the moustache and beard off the old man, tap a little here and there at his nose, and turn his cap into wavy hair – and presto! Vladimir Ilyich would be the spitting image of His Majesty!

‘You’re planning on selling an eight-foot-tall statue of the king?’ Holger Two said to his father. ‘Have you no principles?’

‘Now, don’t be cheeky, my dear renegade of a son. Necessity knows no law. I learned that back when I was young and strong and had no choice but to commandeer a Salvationist’s new bicycle. Incidentally, his name was Holger, too.’

And then he went on, saying that the Holgers had no idea how many wealthy royalists there were in this country. A statue of the king could go for twenty or thirty thousand. Maybe forty. And then all they had to do was sell the truck.

Ingmar got to it. He hacked and filed and polished for an entire week. And he succeeded beyond all expectations. When Holger Two saw the result, he thought that one could say a lot of things about his father, but irresolute he was not. Neither did he lack a gift for artistry.

The sale itself remained. Ingmar’s idea was to winch the statue into the back of the truck and then drive around to all the counts and barons in all the manors around Stockholm until one of them realized that he could not live without a Swedish-Karelian granite king in his very own garden.

But the winching was a delicate operation; after all, the king mustn’t fall on his arse. Holger One was eager to help, if his father would just tell him what to do. Two stood with his hands in his pockets and didn’t say anything.

Ingmar looked at his boys and decided that, this time, he couldn’t afford for one of them to bungle things. Dad would take care of it himself.

‘Just take a few steps back and don’t pester me,’ he said, fastening cables here and there in his advanced pulley system.

And then he started winching. And he actually managed to lift the statue of the king all the way up to the edge of the truck bed, all on his own.

‘All that’s left is the rest,’ said the pleased king-hater, a split second before one of the cables snapped.

Then and there, Ingmar Qvist’s lifelong struggle came to an end.

For the king bowed humbly towards him, met his gaze for the first time, and fell slowly but inevitably right on top of his creator.

Ingmar died instantly under the weight of the king, while the king himself broke into four pieces.

Holger One was completely stricken with grief. Two stood next to him, ashamed that he couldn’t seem to feel anything at all. He looked at his dead father, and next to him, the pieces of the king.

The match seemed to have ended in a draw.

A few days later, one could read in
Länstidningen Södertälje
:

M
Y BELOVED FATHER

I
NGMAR
Q
VIST

HAS LEFT ME

IN ENDLESS SORROW AND LOSS

S
ÖDERTÄLJE, 4
J
UNE 1987

HOLGER

–

Vive la République

* * *

Holgers One and Two were identical copies of one another. And they were each other’s opposites.

One had never questioned his father’s calling for a second. Two’s doubt had manifested itself when he was only seven, and it continued to grow. By the time Two was twelve, he knew that things just weren’t right in his father’s head. Beginning with his mother’s death, he questioned Ingmar’s ideas more and more often.

But he never left. As the years went on, he felt an ever-greater sense of responsibility towards his father and brother. And then there was the fact that One and Two were twins. That was a bond that was not easy to break.

It was hard to say why the brothers had turned out so differently. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Holger Two – the one who didn’t really exist – was generally gifted in a way that the first brother was not.

So it was natural that Two was the one who took care of essays and exams during their school years, and that it was Two who passed his brother’s driving test and taught him the art of driving. And what’s more, it was a truck-driving licence. Their grandfather’s Volvo F406 was the brothers’ only possession worth mentioning. That is to say, it was Holger One who owned it. Because to own something, one must exist.