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

the Pacific Ocean – the vessel simply didn’t have enough hiding places. So he made up his mind not even to try, and he accepted a permanent seat at the captain’s table at dinner every evening. The advantage was the good food, the disadvantage was that Allan and the captain were not alone but had the company of Soong May-ling, who seemed to be incapable of talking about anything but politics.
    And to be honest, there was yet another disadvantage, because instead of vodka they were served a green, banana liquor. Allan accepted what he was served but he reflected that it was the first time he had drunk something that was essentially undrinkable. Drinks with an alcoholic content ought to go down your throat and into your belly as quickly as possible, not stick to your palate.
    But Soong May-ling liked the taste of the liquor and the more glasses she put away during an evening, the more personal was the tone of her everlasting political ramblings.
    What Allan quite effortlessly learned during the dinners on the Pacific Ocean was, for example, that the clown Mao Tse-tung and his communists could very well win the civil war and that such an outcome would essentially have been caused by Chiang Kai-shek. Soong May-ling’s husband was incompetent as commander-in-chief. At this very moment he was partaking in peace negotiations with Mao Tse-tung in the south Chinese city of Chongqing. Had Mr Karlsson and the captain heard anything so stupid? Negotiating with a communist? Where would that lead, other than nowhere!
    Soong May-ling was certain that the negotiations would break down. Her intelligence reports also revealed that a considerable part of the communist army was waiting for its leader Mao in the desolate mountains in Sichuan province not far from there. Soong May-ling’s hand-picked agents, like Soong May-ling herself, believed that the clown and his forces would next move to the north-east, towards Shaanxi and Henan, in their disgusting propaganda procession through the nation.
    Allan made sure to keep quiet so that the evening’s political lecture would be no longer than necessary, but the hopelessly polite captain asked question after question while he repeatedly filled her glass with the sweet green banana goo.
    The captain wondered, for instance, in what way Mao Tse-tung actually posed any sort of threat. The Kuomintang did, after all, have the USA behind it and was, as the captain understood it, militarily completely superior.
    That question extended the evening’s misery by almost an hour. Soong May-ling explained that her pathetic husband was just about as intelligent and charismatic as a cow and possessed the same leadership qualities. Chiang Kai-shek had completely embraced the erroneous belief that it was all about who controlled the cities.
    It was not Soong May-ling’s intention to confront Mao in battle. How could she do that with the little project she had cooked up with Allan, and a handful of her bodyguard? Twenty poorly-armed men, twenty-one with Mr Karlsson, against a whole army of very able opponents in the mountains of Sichuan… That would be ugly.
    Instead, the first stage in the plan was to limit the clown’s mobility, to make it more difficult for the communist army to move around. The next stage was to get her miserable husband to realise that he must now seize the opportunity to lead his forces out into the rural areas and show the Chinese people thatthe Kuomintang would protect them from communism, and not vice versa. Soong May-ling had understood, just like the clown, what Chiang Kai-shek so far had not – namely, that it was easier to be the leader of a nation if you had the nation behind you.
    Sometimes, of course, even a blind chicken will find a grain of corn on the ground, and it was good that Chiang Kai-shek had invited his opponents to the peace negotiations in Chongqing. Because with a little luck, the clown and his soldiers would still be there south of the Yangtze, after the negotiations had broken down, when her troop of bodyguards and Karlsson arrived on the scene. Then Karlsson could blow up bridges with maximum effect! And for a long time to come, the clown would be confined to the mountains halfway to Tibet.
    ‘But if he should happen to be on the wrong side of the river, then we simply regroup. There are five thousand rivers in China, so wherever the parasite goes there will be a river in his path.’
    A clown and a parasite, Allan thought, doing battle with a