The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (25 page)
Since Nombeko didn’t meet the girls ever again, she never knew that they decided early on to drive straight through Europe until they got to the country they were looking for. Straight through was the only right way, the girls thought, because there were road signs all over the place that no one could understand. Nombeko also never knew that the Swedish-registered, touristy VW bus was waved through each and every border control along the way, including the one between Austria and Switzerland. And she never knew that the first thing the girls did after that was go into the nearest Chinese restaurant to ask if the owner might know Mr Cheng Tao. The owner didn’t, of course, but he knew someone who might know him, who knew someone who might know him, who knew someone who said he had a brother who might have a tenant by that name. The girls really did find their uncle, in a suburb of Basel. Their reunion was a happy one.
But, of course, Nombeko never knew this.
* * *
All of the remaining tenants at Fredsgatan were still alive. Holger Two and Nombeko clung to one another more and more. The latter noticed that just being near her Holger made her happy, while Holger himself felt immensely proud every time she opened her mouth. She was the smartest person he knew. And the most beautiful.
They still had lofty ambitions among the pillows in the warehouse, in their endeavour to have a child together. Despite the complications that would arise should it really happen, the couple’s frustrations grew when it didn’t. It was as though they had got stuck in life and a little baby was what would unstick them.
Their next step was to blame the bomb. If they could just get rid of it, a baby would probably turn up out of sheer momentum. Intellectually, they knew that there was no direct connection between the bomb and a baby, but it increasingly became a matter of emotion rather than reason. Take, for example, the way they moved their erotic activities to the pottery once a week. New place, new possibilities. Or not.
Nombeko still had twenty-eight rough diamonds in the lining of the jacket she no longer wore. After her first failed attempt a few years earlier, she hadn’t wanted to subject herself and the group to the risk involved in travelling around and selling them. But now she was starting to entertain the idea again. Because if she and Holger had a lot of money, it might be possible to find new ways to reach the troublesome prime minister. It was too bad that Sweden was so hopelessly uncorrupt, otherwise they could have bribed their way to him.
Holger nodded thoughtfully. Maybe that last part wasn’t such a bad idea after all. He decided to try it right away. He found the number to the Moderate Party, called it, introduced himself as Holger, and said he was thinking of donating two million kronor to the party, on the condition that he got to have a one-on-one meeting with the party leader (slash prime minister).
The people at the party headquarters were more than interested. It would surely be possible to arrange a meeting with Carl Bildt if Mr Holger would just state who he was and what his business was, as well as his full name and address.
‘I would prefer to keep that private,’ Holger tried, and was told in reply that he was certainly welcome to do so, but that it was still necessary to maintain a certain degree of security surrounding the party leader, who was moreover the country’s head of government.
Holger thought quickly; he could pretend to be his brother with an address in Blackeberg and a job at Helicopter Taxi Inc. in Bromma.
‘Then will I be guaranteed a meeting with the prime minister?’ he said. The office couldn’t promise anything, but they would do their best. ‘So I’m going to donate two million kronor and then
possibly
get to meet him?’ said Holger.
That was more or less correct. Surely Mr Holger understood.
No, Mr Holger did not. In his frustration over how damn hard they had to make it to talk to a simple prime minister, he told the Moderates that they could look for someone else to cheat out of his money. Then he wished them the very worst of luck in the next election and hung up.
Meanwhile Nombeko had been thinking. It wasn’t as though the prime minister sat around at his government offices all day long until he left office. He did actually go out and meet people. Everyone from other countries’ heads of state to his own colleagues. Beyond that, he was on TV now and again. And he talked to journalists on the left and right. Preferably right.
It was unlikely that Holger or Nombeko could transform him- or herself into a head of state from a foreign country. It sounded easier to get a job in the government offices or somewhere nearby, although that would be quite difficult enough in itself. Two could start by applying to a university; all he had to do was dash off some entrance exams first. Then he could study whatever he wanted in his brother’s name, as long as it would eventually bring him into the vicinity of the prime minister. They wouldn’t need the pillow business any more if they could just sell the fortune in Nombeko’s jacket.
Two absorbed what Nombeko had said. Political scientist? Or economist? It would take several years at a university. And it might not even lead anywhere. But the alternative seemed to be to stay where they were until the end of time, or at least until One realized that he would never learn to fly a helicopter or until the angry young woman grew tired of never being arrested by the police. If the disturbed American hadn’t already messed something up by then.
Furthermore, Two had always loved the idea of higher education. Nombeko gave her Holger a hug to acknowledge that if they didn’t have a child, at least they had a semblance of a plan. It felt good.
They just had to find a safe way to sell the diamonds.
* * *
While Nombeko was still pondering how and where she would approach which diamond merchant, she walked straight into the solution. It happened on the pavement outside the library in Gnesta.
His real name was Antonio Suarez, and he was a Chilean who had fled to Sweden along with his parents because of the
coup d’état
in 1973. But hardly anyone in his circle of acquaintances knew his name. He was simply called ‘the Jeweller’, even though he was anything but. He had, however, once been a shop assistant at the only jeweller’s in Gnesta, where he’d arranged for the entire contents of the shop to be robbed by his own brother.
The robbery went well, but his brother went on a binge all by himself the next day, got in his car while extremely drunk, and was stopped by a police patrol that couldn’t help but notice that he was both speeding and swerving from side to side.
The brother, who was romantically inclined, began by admiring the shape of the female police inspector’s breasts, upon which he received a bop to the nose. This in turn made him fall madly in love: nothing was as irresistible as a woman with guts. He put down the breathalyzer the wronged inspector asked him to blow into, took a diamond ring worth 200,000 kronor from his pocket, and proposed.
Instead of the yes he had expected, he received handcuffs and a free ride to the nearest jail cell. When all was said and done, the speeder’s brother was behind bars, too. Even though he denied everything.
‘I have never seen this man in my entire life,’ he said to the prosecutor in Katrineholm district court.
‘But isn’t that your brother?’ said the prosecutor.
‘Yes, but I’ve never seen him.’
But the prosecutor had a few things up his sleeve. For one, he had photographs of the brothers together, from their childhood on. The fact that they were listed as living at the same address in Gnesta was another matter of aggravation, and then there was the fact that a large part of the spoils from the robbery had been found in the wardrobe they shared. Furthermore, the brothers’ honest parents testified against them.
The man who had since been called the Jeweller got four years in Hall Prison, the same as his brother. After that the brother flew back to Chile while the Jeweller supported himself by selling cheap trinkets imported from Bolivia. The plan was to save all the money in a pile until he had a million kronor, at which point he planned to retire to Thailand. He had met Nombeko at the markets. It wasn’t as if they actually spent time together, but they nodded at each other in passing.
The problem was that the Swedish market crowd never really seemed to understand the magnitude of silver plastic Bolivian hearts. After two years of hard work, the Jeweller was struck by depression; he thought that everything was just shit (which it essentially was). He had made it to 125,000 kronor in pursuit of his million, but he couldn’t take it any more. Instead he went to Solvalla one Saturday afternoon in his depressed condition and used all his money to place what was by far the biggest bet of all on that week’s V75 horse racing, with the intention of losing it all and then going to lie down and die on a park bench in Humlegården.
But then horse after horse performed as it should (but never had before), and when all the races were over, one solitary winner with seven correct picks was able to collect 36.7 million kronor, of which he received 200,000 as cash in hand.
The Jeweller decided to forget about dying on a park bench in Humlegården; instead he went to the Café Opera and drank himself silly.
In this he succeeded beyond expectations. He woke up the next afternoon in a suite at the Hilton at Slussen, naked except for his socks and underwear. His first thought, given the presence of his underwear, was that he might not have had as much fun as last night’s circumstances called for, but he couldn’t say for sure because he didn’t remember.
He ordered breakfast from room service. While eating his scrambled eggs and drinking his champagne, he decided what he wanted to do with his life. He put aside the Thailand idea. Instead he would stay in Sweden and invest in a business of his own for real.
The Jeweller would become . . . a jeweller.
Out of pure malevolence, he set up shop next door to the boutique in Gnesta where he had once been trained and that he later robbed. Because Gnesta is Gnesta, where one jeweller is almost too many, it took the Jeweller less than six months to drive his former boss out of business. Incidentally, this was the same man who had nearly called the police that time Nombeko had paid a visit.
Then one day in May 1994, the Jeweller ran into a black woman outside the library on his way to work. Where had he seen her before?
‘The Jeweller!’ said Nombeko. ‘It’s been a long time. How is life treating you today?’
Oh yes, she was the woman who had gone around with that screwy American and those three Chinese girls who were impossible to get anywhere with.
‘Fine, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve exchanged silver plastic Bolivian hearts for the real thing, you could say. I’m a jeweller here in town these days.’
Nombeko thought this was extraordinary. Suddenly and strangely, she had a contact in Swedish jewellers’ circles. And one who seemed to have flexible morals, or possibly no morals at all.
‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s
Mr
Jeweller from now on. Might you have any interest in making a deal or two? I happen to have some rough diamonds to hand, and I would be happy to exchange them for money.’
The Jeweller thought about how impossible God was to understand. On the one hand, he had always prayed to him; on the other hand, he had seldom received anything in return. And then there was that ill-fated robbery, which ought to work against him when it came to the divine. Instead, the Lord was dropping riches straight into his lap.
‘My interest in rough diamonds is very keen, Miss . . . Nombeko, was it?’
So far, business hadn’t gone at all as the Jeweller had planned. But now he could start planning to rob himself on the side once more.
Three months later, all twenty-eight diamonds had been traded in and sold on. Instead, Nombeko and Holger had a backpack full of money. Nineteen point six million kronor, which was probably 15 per cent less than if the deal hadn’t had to be carried out so discreetly. But, as Holger Two said, ‘Nineteen point six million is still nineteen point six million.’
He had just signed up to take the autumn university entrance exams. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping.
Life need not be easy, provided only that it is not empty.
Lise Meitner
On an unwelcome visitor and a sudden death
In the spring of 1994, South Africa became the first and, up to then, the only country in the world to develop its own nuclear weapons and then relinquish them. It voluntarily allowed its nuclear programme to be dismantled just before the white minority was forced to hand over power to the blacks. The process took several years and was carried out under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, when everything was officially finished, confirmed that South Africa’s six atomic bombs no longer existed.
The seventh, however, the one that had never existed – that one still existed. Furthermore, it would soon be on the move.
It all started when the angry young woman grew tired of never being apprehended by the police. What the hell were they thinking? She drove too fast, she crossed solid lines, she honked at old ladies as they crossed the street. Yet year after year went by in which not a single officer showed any interest in her. There were thousands of police officers in this country, all of whom ought to go to hell, and Celestine hadn’t had a chance to inform a single one of them of this fact.
The thought that she might get to sing ‘
Non, je ne regrette rien
’ was still too pleasing for her to stop doing her job, but something really must happen soon, before she woke up to find herself part of the establishment. Just think of what Holger Two had suggested a few days earlier: that she should get an actual driving licence. That would ruin everything!
In frustration, she went up to see Holger One in Bromma and told him they had to make their mark
now
.
‘Our mark?’ said Holger One.
