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

1970s.
    Next to the Foreign Legion’s base, the United States had now negotiated the right to establish its own base at a convenient distance from the Gulf and Afghanistan, and indeed from a whole row of Central African tragedies just around the corner.
    Good idea, thought the Americans, while nearly all the Djiboutians couldn’t care less. They were fully occupied with trying to survive yet another day.
    But one of them had evidently had time to reflect upon the American presence. Or perhaps he was simply a bit too religious for his own, worldly good.
    Whatever the reason, he was now wandering about in the centre of the capital city on the look-out for a group of American soldiers on leave. During his walk he nervously fiddled with the string he was to pull – at the right time – so that the Americans would be blown to hell while he himself would sail off in the opposite direction.
    But, as we have already heard, it was hot (as it tends to be in Djibouti). The bomb itself was taped onto his stomach and back and covered by a double layer of garments. The suicide bomber must have been boiling in the sun, and the combination of heat and nerves led him to fiddle a little too much with his string.
    In so doing, he transformed himself and the unfortunate people who happened to be standing near him into mincemeat. A further two Djiboutians died from their wounds and ten or so were badly injured.
    None of the victims was American. But the man standing closest to the suicide bomber seemed to have been a European. The police found his wallet in sensationally good condition next to the remains of its owner. Besides eight hundred Swedish crowns in banknotes, the wallet contained a passport and a driver’s licence.
     
    The following day, the Swedish honorary consul in Djibouti was informed by the city’s mayor that all the evidence suggested that Swedish citizen Erik Bengt Bylund had fallen victim to the mad bomb attack in the city’s fish market.
    Regrettably the city was unable to hand over the remains of the said Bylund because the body was too badly damaged. The pieces had, however, immediately been cremated, under respectful circumstances.
    The honorary consul did receive Bylund’s wallet, which contained his passport and driver’s licence (the money had disappeared en route). The mayor expressed his regrets that the city had not been able to protect the Swedish citizen, but he did feel obliged to point out something, if the honorary consul would permit an observation.
    Bylund had been in Djibouti without a valid visa. The mayor didn’t know how many times he had raised the problem with the Frenchmen and for that matter with President Guelleh. If the French wanted to fly in legionnaires directly to their base, that was their business. But the very same moment a legionnaire left the base to go into the city of Djibouti (‘my city’ as the mayor put it) as a civilian, he must have valid documentation. The mayor did not for a second doubt that Bylund was a foreign legionnaire. He knew the pattern all too well. The Americans followed the rules, but the French behaved as if they were still in Somaliland.
    The honorary consul thanked the mayor for his condolences,and lied and promised on a suitable occasion to discuss the matter of visas with the French representatives.
     
    It was a horrendous experience for Arnis Ikstens, the unfortunate man in charge of the car crushing machine at the scrap yard in the southern suburbs of Riga, the capital of Latvia. When the last car in the row was squashed completely flat he suddenly noticed a human arm sticking out of the cubic metal package that until recently had been a car.
    Arnis immediately phoned the police, and then went home, even though it was the middle of the day. The image of the dead arm would haunt him for a long time to come. He prayed to God that the person was already dead before he squashed the car in his crushing machine.
     
    The Chief of Police in Riga personally informed the ambassador at the Swedish Embassy that their citizen Henrik Mikael Hultén had been found dead in a Ford Mustang at the car scrap yard in the southern suburbs of Riga.
    That is, they had as yet been unable to confirm that it was him, but the contents of the wallet the dead man carried on him would suggest that such was his identity.
     
    At 11.15 in the morning on 26th May, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm received a fax from the honorary consul in Djibouti,