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

fitting fate for a defector to the Nazis, if you ask me, Mr Minister.’
    ‘Was Glenn Miller a Nazi?’ asked the astonished police chief.
    Allan nodded in confirmation (and silently apologized to all of Glenn Miller’s surviving family). The police chief, for his part, tried to accustom himself to the news that his great jazz hero had been running errands for Hitler.
    Now Allan thought it was perhaps best to take charge of the conversation before the murder boss asked a lot of other questions about what happened to Glenn Miller.
    ‘If Mr Prime Minister so wishes, I am prepared to get rid of anybody, with maximum discretion of course, in exchange for us then parting as friends.’
    The chief of police was still shaken after the sad unmasking of the man behind ‘Moonlight Serenade’ but that didn’t mean that he was anyone’s fool. He certainly wasn’t planning to negotiate over Allan Karlsson’s future.
    ‘If I want you to get rid of somebody, you will do as you are told. And it is just possible that I will consider letting you live,’ said the police chief as he leaned across the table to stub out his cigarette in Allan’s half-full coffee cup.
    ‘Yes, that is what I meant, of course,’ said Allan, ‘although I expressed myself a little vaguely.’
     
    This particular morning’s interrogation had turned out differently from what the police chief was used to. Instead of getting rid of the enemy of the state, he had adjourned the meeting to accustom himself to the new situation in peace and quiet. After lunch, the police chief and Allan Karlsson met again and plans were laid.
    The intention was to kill Winston Churchill while he was being protected by the shah’s own bodyguard. But it must happen in such a way that nobody could find any possible link to the department for domestic intelligence and security, let alone to its boss. Since it could safely be assumed that the British would investigate the event with extreme attention todetail, there must be no slip-ups. If the project succeeded, the consequences in every possible way would be to the police chief’s advantage.
    First and foremost it would shut those arrogant British up, the British who had taken away the police chief’s responsibility for the security arrangements during the visit. And furthermore, the police chief would most certainly be entrusted with sorting out the bodyguard, after its failure. And when the smoke had cleared, the police chief’s standing would be greatly strengthened, instead of what it was now – weakened.
    The police chief and Allan worked out a plan as if they were best friends, although the police chief did stub out his cigarette in Allan’s coffee every time he felt the atmosphere became too intimate.
    The police chief told Allan that Iran’s only bulletproof motor car was in the department’s garage in the cellar below them. It was a specially built DeSoto Suburban. It was wine-red and very stylish, the police chief said. There was the greatest likelihood that the shah’s bodyguard would soon ask for the car, to transport Churchill from the airport to the shah’s palace.
    Allan said that a well-proportioned explosive charge on the car’s chassis might be the solution to the problem. But bearing in mind Mr Prime Minister’s need not to leave any clues that could lead back to him, Allan proposed two special measures.
    One was that the explosive charge should consist of exactly the same ingredients that Mao Tse-tung’s communists used in China. This was something Allan knew a lot about, and he was certain that he could make it all look like a communist attack.
    The other measure was that the charge in question should be hidden in the front part of the DeSoto’s chassis, but that it should not detonate immediately but be designed to drop from the car and explode a few tenths of a second later when it hit the ground.
    During that time the car would have travelled a short distance so that the position where Winston Churchill would be sitting and smoking his cigar would now be directly above the explosion, which would rip a hole in the floor of the car and send Churchill to eternity. It would also leave a large crater in the ground.
    ‘In that way we’ll get people to think that the explosive charge was buried in the street instead of somebody having hidden it in the car. That little deception would surely suit Mr Prime Minister perfectly?’
    The police chief giggled with joy and anticipation, and