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

around Leningrad, and after 900 terrifying days the siege was broken. No wonder Meretskov was made a marshal of the Soviet Union, in addition to all his other orders, titles and medals.
    When Hitler had been pushed back once and for all, Meretskov went off to the east instead, 9,600 kilometres by train. He was needed to command the Far Eastern Front, to chase the Japanese out of Manchuria. To nobody’s surprise, he succeeded in that too.
    Then the world war came to an end, and Meretskov himself was tired. Since there was nobody waiting for him back in Moscow, he remained in the east. He ended up behind a military desk in Vladivostok. A nice desk it was too. Genuine teak.
     
    In the winter of 1953, Meretskov was fifty-six years old, and was still sitting behind his desk. From there, he administered the Soviet non-presence in the Korean War. Both Marshal Meretskov and Comrade Stalin considered it to be strategically important that the Soviet Union did not for now engage in direct combat with American soldiers. Both sides had the Bomb, of course, but the Americans were way ahead. There was a time for everything, and this was not the time to be provocative – which naturally didn’t prevent the Soviets from getting involved in Korea: the Korean War could be won, and indeed it ought to be won.
    But now that he was a marshal, Meretskov allowed himself to take things a bit easy occasionally. For example, he had a hunting cottage outside Kraskino, a couple of hours south of Vladivostok. He stayed there as often as he could, preferably in the winter — and if possible on his own. Except for his aide of course, marshals couldn’t drive their own cars. What would people think?
     
    Marshal Meretskov and his aide had almost a whole hour’s drive remaining to Vladivostok when they saw, from the winding coast road, a pillar of black smoke.
    The distance was too great for it to be worth getting the binoculars out of the boot, so Marshal Meretskov ordered full speed ahead, adding that in the next fifteen minutes the aide should find a place to park with a good view of the bay.
     
    Allan and Herbert had walked some way along the main road when a stylish military green Pobeda approached from the south. The escapees hid behind a snowdrift while the car passed. But then, the car slowed down and stopped about fifty metres away. Out stepped an officer with a chest full of medals, accompanied by his aide. The aide took the officer’s binocularsout of the boot and then the officer and his aide left the car to seek out a place with a better view of the bay on the other side of which Vladivostok had recently stood.
    This made it simple for Allan and Herbert to sneak up to the car, seize the officer’s pistol and the aide’s automatic and then make the officer and his aide aware of the fact that they were now in a tricky situation. Or, as Allan said:
    ‘Gentlemen, would you kindly take your clothes off?’
     
    Marshal Meretskov was furious. You did not treat a marshal of the Soviet Union in that way, not even if you were a camp prisoner. Did the two gentlemen mean that he – Marshal K.A. Meretskov – should enter Vladivostok on foot wearing nothing but underpants? Allan answered that it would be difficult to enter Vladivostok at all, as the town was at that moment burning down, but otherwise that was more or less what he and his friend Herbert meant. The gentlemen would of course be given a couple of sets of inferior black-and-white prisoner’s clothes in exchange, and in any case the nearer they got to Vladivostok – or whatever one should call the cloud of smoke and ruins over there – the warmer it would get.
    Upon which Allan and Herbert put on the stolen uniforms and left their old prison clothes in a pile on the ground. Allan thought that it would perhaps be safest if he drove the car himself, so Herbert got to be Marshal Meretskov, and Allan his aide. Allan wished the marshal farewell and said that he needn’t look so angry, because Allan was quite sure that it wouldn’t help at all. Besides it would soon be spring, and spring in Vladivostok was… well, perhaps it wasn’t. Anyway, Allan encouraged the marshal to think positively, but added that it was of course entirely up to the marshal himself. If he really wanted to walk along wearing only his underpants and have negative thoughts about life, then he could do so.
    ‘Farewell, Mr Marshal. And you too, of course,’ Allan added to the aide.
    The marshal didn’t