The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (15 page)

It was said of the secret police that no organisation was more controlled from the top. Putting fear in the hearts of the
population
on a more routine basis, or killing communists, socialists
or Islamists, that of course didn’t require the blessing of the boss. But as soon as something happened that was the slightest bit out of the ordinary, then it was he who decided. The shah had given him the title vice prime minister, but in effect he was a murderer, in the Reverend Ferguson’s opinion.

‘And according to the prison guards, you’d better forget the “vice” bit of his title when you address him, if things go so badly that you need to meet him, which they seem to be doing in both your case and mine.’

Perhaps the priest had spent more time with underground communists than he cared to admit, thought Allan, because he went on:

‘Ever since the end of the Second World War, the American CIA has been here and has built up the shah’s secret police.’

‘CIA?’ said Allan.

‘Yes, that’s what they are called now. They were the OSS before, but it’s the same dirty business. They’re the ones who have taught the Iranian police all the tricks and tortures. What can he be like, the man who allows the CIA to destroy the world in this way?’

‘You mean the American president?’

‘Harry S. Truman will burn in hell, believe you me,’ said the Reverend Ferguson.

‘You think so?’ said Allan.

The days passed. Allan had told his own life story to the
Reverend
Ferguson, without leaving anything out at all. And after this, the priest stopped talking to Allan because he realised what sort of relationship his cellmate had to the American president and – even worse – to the bombs over Japan.

Instead, the priest turned to God and prayed for advice. Was it the Lord who had sent Mr Karlsson to help him, or was it the Devil who lay behind it?

But God answered with silence. He did that sometimes, and the Reverend Ferguson always interpreted it to mean that he should think for himself. Admittedly, it didn’t always work out well when the priest thought for himself, but you couldn’t just give up.

After two days and two nights of deliberation, Mr Ferguson came to the conclusion that for the time being he should make his peace with the heathen in the next bed. And he informed Allan that he now intended to speak to him again.

Allan said that although it had been nice and quiet while the priest kept silent, it was probably preferable in the long run that when one man spoke, the other answered.

‘Besides, we’re going to try to get out of here, and it would perhaps be best if we can do so before the murder boss gets back from London. So we can’t just sit, grumpily, in our corners, can we?’

The Reverend Ferguson agreed. When the murder boss came back, they would probably face a short interrogation and then simply disappear. That was what the Reverend Ferguson had heard happened.

The holding cell was not in a real prison, with all the security and locks that went with that. On the contrary, the guards sometimes didn’t even bother to lock the door properly. But there were never fewer than four guards at the building’s entrance and exit, and they were unlikely to just stand and stare if Allan and the priest tried to slip out.

Would it be possible to create some sort of tumult or
distraction
? Allan wondered. And then sneak out in the midst of the general disarray?

Allan wanted peace to work, and he therefore assigned the priest the task of finding out from the guards how long they had. That is, exactly when would the murder boss be back?

The priest promised to ask as soon as he got an opportunity. Perhaps even right away, because there was a rattling sound at the door. The youngest and kindest of the guards stuck his head in and with a sympathetic look said:

‘The prime minister is back from England and it’s time for questioning. Which of you wants to go first?’

The head of the department of domestic intelligence and
security
was in a dreadful mood.

He had just been to London where he had been told off by the British. He, the prime minister (well as good as), head of a government department, one of the most important elements of Iranian society, had been told off by the British!

The shah did nothing but make sure that the arrogant Englishmen were kept happy. The oil was in the hands of the British, and he himself made sure they weeded out everybody and anybody who tried to bring about change in the country. And that was no easy matter, because who was really satisfied with the shah? Not the Islamists, not the communists and definitely not the local oil workers who literally worked
themselves
to death for the equivalent of one British pound a week.

And for this he had now been told off, instead of being praised!

The secret police chief knew he had made a mistake when a while ago he had been a little heavy-handed with a
provocateur
of unknown origin. The provocateur had demanded to be set free because the only thing he was guilty of was insisting that the line in the butcher’s shop should be for everyone, not just employees in the state’s secret police.

When the provocateur had put forward his case, he folded his arms and refused to answer any more questions. The police chief didn’t like the look of the provocateur (it was indeed provocative), so he made use of a couple of the CIA torture
methods (the police chief admired the inventiveness of the Americans). It was only at that point that it transpired that the provocateur was an assistant secretary in the British Embassy and that, of course, was most unfortunate.

The solution was first to tidy up the assistant as best they could, then let him go, but only so that he could immediately be run over by a truck which then disappeared from the scene. That is how you avoid diplomatic crises, the police chief reasoned, pleased with himself.

But the British Embassy picked up what was left of the
assistant
secretary, and sent all the pieces to London where they went through them with a magnifying glass. After which the police chief was summoned and asked to explain how the assistant secretary suddenly turned up on a street outside the head office of the secret police and was immediately so drastically run over that marks of the torture he had previously been subjected to were barely visible.

The police chief had of course firmly denied all knowledge of the affair, that was how the diplomatic game worked, but this assistant secretary happened to be the son of some lord or other who in turn was a good friend of the recent prime minister, Winston Churchill, and now the British were going to take a firm stand.

As a result of all this, the department for domestic
intelligence
and security had now been relieved of responsibility for the visit that same Winston Churchill was to make to Tehran in just a couple of weeks. Instead, the amateurs in the shah’s own bodyguard would take care of the visit, which was of course far beyond their competence. This was a major loss of prestige for the police chief. And it estranged him from the shah in a way that did not feel good.

To dispel his bitter thoughts, the police chief had summoned the first of the two enemies of the state that were said to be
waiting in the holding cell. He anticipated a short interrogation, a quick and discreet execution, and a traditional cremation of the corpse. Then lunch and in the afternoon he would probably have time for the other enemy of the state, too.

Allan Karlsson had volunteered to be first. The police chief met him at the door of his office, shook hands, asked Mr Karlsson to have a seat and offered him a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Though he had never met a murder boss before, Allan had assumed that they would be more unpleasant of manner than this murder boss seemed to be. And then he thanked him for the coffee and asked if it would be OK with Mr Prime Minister if he declined the cigarette.

The police chief always chose to start his interrogations in a civilized manner. Just because you were soon going to kill someone, you didn’t have to behave like a yokel. Besides, it amused the police chief to see how a flutter of hope rose in the eyes of his victim. People in general were so naive.

This particular victim didn’t look so terrified, not yet. And he had addressed the police chief in the manner in which he liked to be addressed—an interesting and positive beginning.

During the interrogation, Allan – lacking a well thought-out survival strategy – provided selected episodes from the later part of his life story: namely that he was an expert on explosives who had been sent by President Harry S. Truman on an impossible mission to China to combat the communists, and he had subsequently started his long walk home to Sweden and that he now regretted that Iran had lain in the way of that walk, and that he had been obliged to enter the country without the requisite visa, but that he now promised to leave the country immediately if Mr Prime Minister would just let him do so.

The police chief asked him a lot of supplementary questions, not least why Allan Karlsson was in the company of Iranian
communists when he was arrested. Allan answered truthfully that he and the communists had met by chance and agreed to help each other across the Himalayas. Allan added that if Mr Prime Minister planned a similar walk, then he shouldn’t be too fussy about whose help he accepted because those mountains were dreadfully high when they were in the mood for it.

The police chief didn’t have any plans to cross the Himalayas on foot, nor did he intend to set Allan free. But perhaps he could make some use of this explosives expert with his international experience before letting him disappear for good? With a voice that perhaps sounded a little too keen, the police chief asked Mr Karlsson what experience he had with secretly killing people who were famous and well-guarded.

Allan had never done that sort of thing, consciously sitting and planning to kill a person as if you were blowing up a bridge. And he had no wish to do so either. But now he had to think ahead. Could this chain-smoking murder boss have something special in mind?

Allan searched his memory and in his haste found nothing better than:

‘Glenn Miller.’

‘Glenn Miller?’ the police chief repeated.

Allan could remember from his time at Los Alamos a couple of years earlier how shocked everyone had been on hearing the news that the young jazz musician Glenn Miller was missing after his US Army Air Forces plane had disappeared off the coast of England.

‘Exactly,’ Allan confirmed in a hush-hush tone. ‘It was
supposed
to look like an accident and I succeeded in that. I made sure both engines burned up, and he crashed somewhere in the middle of the English Channel. Nobody has seen him since. A fitting fate for a defector to the Nazis, if you ask me, Mr Minister.’

‘Was Glenn Miller a Nazi?’ asked the astonished police chief.

Allan nodded in confirmation (and silently apologized to all of Glenn Miller’s surviving family). The police chief, for his part, tried to accustom himself to the news that his great jazz hero had been running errands for Hitler.

Now Allan thought it was perhaps best to take charge of the conversation before the murder boss asked a lot of other
questions
about what happened to Glenn Miller.

‘If Mr Prime Minister so wishes, I am prepared to get rid of anybody, with maximum discretion of course, in exchange for us then parting as friends.’

The chief of police was still shaken after the sad unmasking of the man behind ‘Moonlight Serenade’ but that didn’t mean that he was anyone’s fool. He certainly wasn’t planning to
negotiate
over Allan Karlsson’s future.

‘If I want you to get rid of somebody, you will do as you are told. And it is just
possible
that I will
consider
letting you live,’ said the police chief as he leaned across the table to stub out his cigarette in Allan’s half-f coffee cup.

‘Yes, that is what I meant, of course,’ said Allan, ‘although I expressed myself a little vaguely.’

This particular morning’s interrogation had turned out
differently
from what the police chief was used to. Instead of getting rid of the enemy of the state, he had adjourned the meeting to accustom himself to the new situation in peace and quiet. After lunch, the police chief and Allan Karlsson met again and plans were laid.

The intention was to kill Winston Churchill while he was being protected by the shah’s own bodyguard. But it must happen in such a way that nobody could find any possible link to the department for domestic intelligence and security, let alone to its boss. Since it could safely be assumed that the British would investigate the event with extreme attention to
detail, there must be no slip-ups. If the project succeeded, the consequences in every possible way would be to the police chief’s advantage.

First and foremost it would shut those arrogant British up, the British who had taken away the police chief’s responsibility for the security arrangements during the visit. And furthermore, the police chief would most certainly be entrusted with sorting out the bodyguard, after its failure. And when the smoke had cleared, the police chief’s standing would be greatly
strengthened
, instead of what it was now – weakened.

The police chief and Allan worked out a plan as if they were best friends, although the police chief did stub out his cigarette in Allan’s coffee every time he felt the atmosphere became too intimate.

The police chief told Allan that Iran’s only bulletproof motor car was in the department’s garage in the cellar below them. It was a specially built DeSoto Suburban. It was wine-red and very stylish, the police chief said. There was the greatest
likelihood
that the shah’s bodyguard would soon ask for the car, to transport Churchill from the airport to the shah’s palace.

Allan said that a well-proportioned explosive charge on the car’s chassis might be the solution to the problem. But bearing in mind Mr Prime Minister’s need not to leave any clues that could lead back to him, Allan proposed two special measures.