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

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 bewaiting 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 Iraniancommunists 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