The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

papers. On the wall behind it hung a map of Korea, and on the right were two sofas. Prime Minister Kim Il Sung sat on one sofa, talking to a guest on the other. On the other side of the room, two soldiers armed with machine guns stood to attention.
    ‘Good evening, Mr Prime Minister,’ said Allan. ‘I am Marshal Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov of the Soviet Union.’
    ‘You certainly are not,’ said Kim Il Sung calmly. ‘I know Marshal Meretskov very well.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Allan.
    The soldiers immediately stopped standing to attention and instead pointed their weapons at the false marshal and his presumably equally false aide. Kim Il Sung was still calm, but his son broke out into a combination of tears and fury. Perhaps this was the moment when the last fragments of his childhood disappeared. Never trust anybody! And he had sat on the false marshal’s lap! Never trust anybody! He would never, ever, trust a single person again.
    ‘You will die!’ he shouted at Allan amidst the tears. ‘And you too!’ he said to Herbert.
    ‘Yes, you will certainly die,’ said Kim Il Sung in his still calm manner. ‘But first we want to find out who has sent you.’
    This doesn’t look good, Allan thought.
    This looks good, Herbert thought.
     
    The real Marshal Kirill Afanasievich Meretskov and his aide had had no choice but to walk towards what might remain of Vladivostok.
    After several hours, they came to a campsite set up by the Red Army outside the destroyed city. There, the humiliation had been even worse as the marshal had been suspected of being an escaped prisoner who had regretted his escape. But soon enough, he was recognised and treated in the manner that his position demanded.
    Only once in his life had Marshal Meretskov allowed an injustice to pass by, and that was when Stalin’s second-in-command, Beria, had had him arrested and tortured for nothing, and would certainly have let him die if Stalin himself had not come to his rescue. Perhaps Meretskov ought to have done battle with Beria after that, but there was a world war to win and Beria was too strong in any case. So he had been obliged to forget it. But Meretskov had said to himself that he would never again allow himself to be humiliated. So now he had to seek out and destroy the two men who had robbed him of his car and his uniform.
    Meretskov could not start the hunt immediately because he didn’t have his marshal’s uniform. And it was not the easiest matter to find a tailor in one of the tent camps, and then they still had problems finding something as trivial as needle and thread. All of Vladivostok’s sewing workshops – together with the rest of the city – had ceased to exist.
    But after three days the marshal’s uniform was ready. Of course his medals were missing because the false marshal was flaunting them. Nevertheless, Meretskov would not let that stop him.
    Marshal Meretskov managed with some difficulty to arrange a new Pobeda for himself and his aide (most military vehicles had of course been lost in the fire) and set off southwards at dawn, five days after the dreadful business started.
    At the Korean border he had his suspicions confirmed. A marshal, just like the marshal, and in a Pobeda, just like the marshal’s, had crossed the border and continued southwards. The border guards didn’t know any more than that.
    Marshal Meretskov came to the same conclusion that Allan had done five days earlier, namely that it would be suicide to continue towards the front. So he turned off towards Pyongyang, and after a few hours was able to confirm that he had made the right decision. The guards at the outer defence ring told him that a Marshal Meretskov with aide had asked for a meeting with Prime Minister Kim Il Sung, and been given an audience with the prime minister’s second-in-command. Marshal Meretskov and his aide continued on their way towards Pyongyang.
    The real Marshal Meretskov met the second-in-command of the prime minister’s second-in-command after lunch the same day. With all the authority that only a Soviet marshal is able to muster, Marshal Meretskov had soon convinced the second-in-command of the second-in-command that both the prime minister and his son were in imminent danger of losing their lives, and that the second-in-command of the second-in-command must now without delay show them the way to the headquarters of the prime minister. Since no time could be lost, they would use the marshal’s Pobeda, a vehicle