The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (35 page)

This is indeed what happened, and it went off without a hitch. Holger One and Celestine were able to work undisturbed. Swedish museums are far from crowded.

Their next stop was Stockholm University, a stone’s throw away. Celestine tackled the Ladies and left the Gents to Holger. It happened as One stepped through the first door and met a certain someone.

‘Oh, are you here already after all?’ said Professor Berner.

Then he dragged the surprised Holger One down the hall and into Room 4 while Celestine was still busy doing her thing in the Ladies.

Without understanding what was going on, One found himself standing at a lectern in front of an audience of at least fifty people.

Professor Berner made some preliminary remarks in English, and he made use of words both plentiful and complicated; Holger had a hard time following. Apparently he was expected to say something about the benefits of detonating a nuclear weapon. Why? one might wonder.

But he was happy to do it, even if his English wasn’t so great. And anyway, wasn’t the most important thing not what one
said
, but what one
meant
?

He had had quite a bit of time to daydream as he picked potatoes, and he had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to transport the Swedish royal family to the wilderness of Lapland and set the bomb off there, if they wouldn’t all abdicate voluntarily. Hardly any innocent people would bite the dust in such a manoeuvre, and in general the damage would be minimal. Furthermore, any increase in temperature that might result from the detonation would be beneficial, since it was terribly cold up there in the north.

It was perhaps bad enough to have these sorts of thoughts in the first place. But now Holger One was expressing them from his lectern.

His first opponent was a Professor Lindkvist from Linnaeus University in Växjö. He began paging through his notes in time with Holger’s speech. Lindkvist, too, chose to speak in English and he began by asking if what he had just heard was some sort of introduction to what would come next.

An introduction? Yes, one might call it that. A republic would be born and grow out of the demise of the royal family. Was that what the gentleman meant?

What Professor Lindkvist meant was that he didn’t understand what was going on, but what he said was that it struck him as immoral to take the lives of an entire royal family. Not to mention the method Mr Qvist had just described.

But now Holger felt insulted. Why, he was no murderer! His basic argument was that the king and his lot should resign. Nuclear-weapons-related consequences ought to come into play only if they refused, and in that case as a direct result of the royal family’s own choice, and no one else’s.

When One was subsequently met by silence from Professor Lindkvist (the cause being tongue-tiedness), he decided to add another dimension to his argument: an alternative to no king at all might be that anyone who wanted to be king could do so.

‘This isn’t something I would argue for personally, but it’s an interesting thought nonetheless,’ said Holger One.

It was possible that Professor Lindkvist didn’t agree, because he shot a beseeching look at his colleague Berner, who in turn tried to remember if he had ever felt as unhappy as at this moment. This defence was meant to be a showpiece for the benefit of the audience’s two guests of honour, namely the Swedish minister for higher education and research, Lars Leijonborg, and his newly appointed French counterpart Valérie Pécresse. The two of them had long been working to establish a joint educational programme, with the possibility in the future of bi-national diplomas. Leijonborg had personally contacted Professor Berner to ask for suggestions for a good defence that he and his minister colleague might attend. The professor had immediately thought of model student Holger Qvist.

And now this.

Berner decided to interrupt the spectacle. It was clear that he had misjudged the candidate, and it was best that said candidate leave the podium now. And after that, the room. And the university, as such. Preferably also the country.

But because he said what he did in English, One didn’t quite catch it.

‘Shall I start my argument again from the beginning?’

‘No, you shall not,’ said Professor Berner. ‘I have aged ten years in the past twenty minutes, and I was quite old to begin with, so that will do. Please just leave.’

And One did. On the way out, it occurred to him that he had just spoken in public, and that was something he’d promised his brother he wouldn’t do. Would Two be angry with him now? Maybe he didn’t need to know.

One caught sight of Celestine in the hall. He put his arm around her and said it was best that they work somewhere else. He promised to try to explain on the way.

Five minutes later, Holger Two came running through the doors of the same university. Professor Berner had just had to apologize to the Swedish minister for higher education, who in turn did the same before his French counterpart, who replied that, based upon what she’d just seen, she thought it would be better for Sweden to turn to Burkina Faso in its search for a partner of equal standing in educational matters.

And then the professor caught sight of that bastard Holger Qvist in the hall. Did Qvist think all he had to do was change from jeans to a suit and everything would be forgotten?

‘I truly must apologize—’ began the well-dressed and out-of-breath Holger Two.

Professor Berner interrupted him and said that it wasn’t a matter of apologizing but of going away. As permanently as possible.

‘The defence is over, Qvist. Go home. And sit down and think about the economic risks of your own existence.’

* * *

Holger Two did not pass the defence. But it took him an entire day to work out what had happened, and another day to understand the extent of his misfortune. He couldn’t call the professor to tell him the truth: that for all these years he had been studying in someone else’s name and that this other person had happened to take over on the very day of his defence. This would lead to nothing but even greater misery.

What Two wanted most of all was to strangle his brother. But this didn’t come to pass, because One was at the Anarchists’ Union’s Saturday meeting when Two had his lightbulb moment. And by the time One and Celestine were back that afternoon, Two’s condition had already turned into depression.

CHAPTER 18

On a temporarily successful newspaper and a prime minister who suddenly wanted a meeting

No matter how wretched everything was, Holger Two realized after a week that he couldn’t just keep lying there in bed. Nombeko and Gertrud needed help with the harvest. One and Celestine also helped with that to a certain extent, so from a purely economic perspective there was no reason to strangle both of them.

Life at Sjölida went back to normal, including the dinners together several nights a week. But the atmosphere around the table was tense, even if Nombeko did her best to create distractions. She continued her reports on what had happened and was still happening in the world. Among other things, she informed them one evening that Prince Harry of Great Britain had gone to a party dressed in a Nazi uniform (which was nearly as big a scandal as the one that would happen a few years later when he partied wearing nothing at all).

‘But can’t you all see how embarrassing the monarchy is?’ Holger One said, apropos the uniform.

‘Well, yes,’ said Nombeko. ‘At least the democratically elected Nazis in South Africa left their uniforms at home.’

Holger Two didn’t say anything. He didn’t even tell his brother to go to Hell.

Nombeko realized that something had to change. What they needed more than anything was a new idea. What they got, for starters, was a potential buyer for the potato business.

The fact was, Countess Virtanen Inc. now consisted of two hundred hectares of potato fields; it had modern machinery, good sales, nice profits and almost no debt. This had all come to the attention of the biggest producer in central Sweden, who added it all up and put in an offer of sixty million kronor for the whole lot.

Nombeko suspected that the Swedish potato boom was nearing its end. The celebrity who had gone on the potato diet had got fat again, and according to the news bureau ITAR-TASS, the Russian potato harvests were about to go right instead of wrong for once.

So, even aside from the fact that Gertrud’s potato farm was probably not the meaning of life, it might be time to make a deal.

Nombeko brought up the matter with Countess Virtanen Inc.’s formal owner, who said that she would be happy to change profession. She was starting to get fed up with potatoes.

‘Isn’t there something called “spaghetti” nowadays?’ she mused.

Nombeko nodded: yes. Spaghetti had been around for a while. Since about the twelfth century. But it wasn’t so easy to grow. Nombeko thought they should do something else with their money.

And she suddenly realized what.

‘What would you say if we started a magazine, Gertrud?’

‘A magazine? Super! What things will it say?’

* * *

Holger Qvist’s reputation was ruined: he had been more or less kicked out of Stockholm University. But he did possess extensive knowledge of both economics and political science. And Nombeko wasn’t exactly a dimwit herself. So the two of them could work behind the scenes.

Nombeko explained her reasoning to Two, and so far he was with her. But what scenes was Nombeko thinking they would be behind? And what would be the point of all of this?

‘The point, my dear Holger, is that we are going to get rid of the bomb.’

The journal
Swedish Politics
put out its first issue in April 2007. The lavish monthly magazine was distributed free to fifteen thousand of the country’s most powerful people. It had sixty-four crammed pages and not a single advertisement. It would be difficult to get a return on this investment, but then again, that wasn’t the point.

The venture received attention in both
Svenska Dagbladet
and
Dagens Nyheter
. Apparently the person behind the magazine was an eccentric former potato farmer, the eighty-year-old Gertrud Virtanen. Virtanen refused to grant interviews, but she had her own column on page two, where she explained the merits of the fact that, on principle, all articles and analyses in the magazine were unsigned. Each text should be judged on its content and nothing else.

Besides the part about Mrs Virtanen, the most interesting thing about the magazine was that it was so . . . interesting. The first issue received praise in the editorials of a number of Swedish newspapers. Among the lead articles was an in-depth analysis of the Sweden Democrats, who in the 2006 election had gone from 1.5 per cent of the votes to double that. The analysis was written from an international perspective and it was very well informed, making connections as far as to historical currents of Nazism in Africa. Perhaps the conclusion was a bit dramatic: it was hard to believe that a party whose supporters performed Hitler salutes at their party leader could make it all the way to Parliament, but still.

Another article described the human, political and financial consequences of a Swedish nuclear accident in great detail. At the very least, the calculations in the article would give any reader the chills. Thirty-two thousand job opportunities would be created in a period of twenty-five years, should the reactor in Oskarshamn need to be rebuilt thirty-eight miles north of where it had once been.

In addition to the articles, which practically wrote themselves, Nombeko and Two included a few items that were intended to put the new conservative prime minister in a good mood. One example was a historical retrospective of the European Union on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which the prime minister in question happened to attend. And there was an in-depth analysis of social democracy in crisis. The party had just had its worst election results since 1914, and now it had a new party leader in Mona Sahlin. The conclusion of the article was that Sahlin could either stand alone, along with the Environmental Party, distancing herself from the Left . . . and lose the next election. Or she could include the Left – the former Communists – and build a three-party alliance . . . and lose it anyway (in fact, she tried both things – whereupon she lost her job to boot).

The magazine’s headquarters were in a building in Kista outside Stockholm. At Two’s request, Holger One and Celestine were forbidden to have any editorial involvement whatsoever. In addition, Two had drawn a chalk circle with a six-foot radius on the floor around his desk and ordered One never to step inside it, the only exception being when it was time to empty the waste-paper basket.

He really would have preferred not to have his brother in the building at all, but for one thing Gertrud refused to be involved with the project if her beloved Celestine wasn’t allowed to help, and for another, the two walking disasters needed new distractions now that there weren’t any potatoes to pick.

Incidentally, Gertrud, who was the formal financier behind all of this, had her own editorial office where she sat and enjoyed the sign on the door that said
PUBLISHER
. That was pretty much all she did.

After the first issue, Nombeko and Two had planned another for May 2007 and a third for right after the summer holiday months. After that – they thought – the prime minister would be receptive.
Swedish Politics
would ask for an interview. And he would say yes. If not sooner, then later, if only they kept taking the correct steps.

But for once, things went better, instead of worse, than Holger and Nombeko expected. Because the prime minister was asked a question about the new magazine
Swedish Politics
during a press conference that was actually about his upcoming visit to Washington and the White House. And he replied that he had read the paper with interest, that he essentially agreed with its analysis of Europe, and that he was looking forward to the next issue.