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

his mask of superiority.
    ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ said President Johnson. ‘What was your name?’
    ‘I am Allan Karlsson,’ said Allan. ‘I once knew your predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor, President Truman.’
    ‘Well, what do you know!’ said President Johnson. ‘Harry is on his way to ninety but he is alive and well. We are good friends.’
    ‘Give him my regards,’ said Allan, and then made his excuses so that he could find Amanda (he wanted to tell her what she had said to the presidents at the table).
     
    The lunch with the two presidents came to a rapid end and everyone went home. But Allan and Amanda had only justreached their embassy when President Johnson himself phoned and invited Allan to dinner at the American Embassy at eight o’clock that same evening.
    ‘That would be nice,’ said Allan. ‘I had anyway intended having a good square meal this evening, because whatever you say about French food, it soon disappears from your plate without your actually having eaten much.’
    That was an observation President Johnson completely agreed with, and he looked forward very much to the evening’s events.
    There were at least three good reasons for President Johnson to invite Allan Karlsson to dinner. First, to find out more about the spy and about Karlsson’s meeting with Beria and Stalin. Second, Harry Truman had just told him on the phone what Allan Karlsson had done at Los Alamos in 1945. That alone was of course worth a dinner. And third, President Johnson was personally extremely pleased with what happened at the Élysée Palace. At very close range, he had been able to enjoy seeing de Gaulle look aghast and discomfited, and he had Allan Karlsson to thank for that.
     
    ‘Welcome, Mr Karlsson,’ said President Johnson as he greeted Allan with a double handshake. ‘Let me introduce Mr Ryan Hutton, he is… well, he is a bit secret here at the embassy, one could say. Legal advisor, I believe he is called.’
    Allan shook hands with the secret advisor and then the trio went to the dining table. President Johnson had ordered beer and vodka to be served with the food, because French wine reminded him of Frenchmen and this was meant to be an enjoyable evening.
    While they were eating the first course, Allan related some of his life story, up to the dinner in the Kremlin, the one that went wrong. It was there that Interior Minister Fouchet’s right handman had fainted instead of translating Allan’s final insult to the already furious Stalin.
    President Johnson was no longer so amused by the revelation that Claude Pennant turned out to be a Soviet spy in the vicinity of the French president, because he had just been informed by Ryan Hutton that the specialist Monsieur Pennant had in all secrecy also been an informer for the CIA. In fact, Pennant had up to then been the main CIA source of the information that there was not an imminent communist revolution in France although the country was deeply infiltrated by communists. Now the entire analysis would have to be reconsidered.
    ‘That, of course, was unofficial and confidential information,’ said President Johnson, ‘but I can count on Mr Karlsson to keep a secret, can’t I?’
    ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Mr President,’ said Allan.
    And then Allan told of how during that submarine journey in the Baltic he had been drinking with a really extraordinarily nice man, one of the Soviet Union’s leading nuclear physicists, Yury Borisovich Popov, and that in the rush of things there had been a bit too much talk about nuclear technology.
    ‘Did you tell Stalin how to build a bomb?’ asked President Johnson. ‘I thought you ended up in a prison camp precisely because you refused.’
    ‘I refused to tell Stalin. He wouldn’t have understood anyway. But the day before with that nuclear physicist I may have gone into more detail than I ought to have done. That’s what happens when you drink a bit too much vodka, Mr President. And it wasn’t really apparent what a nasty man that Stalin could be, not until the following day.’
    President Johnson had his palm on his forehead, and pushing his fingers through his hair he thought that the revelation of how you build atomic bombs wasn’t something that just happened because alcohol was involved. Allan Karlsson was infact… he was in fact… a traitor. Wasn’t he? But… he was not an American citizen so what did you do then? President Johnson needed time to