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

German:
    ‘You will take this money now, peasant!’
    That terrified the farmer to such a degree that he did as Herbert said, without understanding a word of what he had said.
    They waved a friendly goodbye and then the journey continued in a south-westerly direction, without any other traffic on the winding road, but with the threatening roar of bombers overhead.
     
    As the vehicle approached Pyongyang, Allan thought that it might be time to work on a new plan. It was now out of the question to try to reach South Korea.
    The plan instead became to try to arrange a meeting with Prime Minister Kim Il Sung. Herbert was after all a Soviet marshal, and that ought to suffice.
    Herbert apologized for interfering with the planning, but he wondered what the point was of meeting Kim Il Sung.
    Allan answered that he didn’t know yet, but that he promised to think about it. One reason he could already give Herbert was that the closer you got to the top dogs, the better the food tended to be — and the vodka.
    Allan realised it was only a matter of time before he and Herbert were stopped along the road and checked out properly. Not even a marshal would be allowed just to roll into the capital of a country at war without somebody at least asking a question or two. So Allan spent a couple of hours instructing Herbert as to what he should say – just one sentence in Russian, but a very important one: ‘I am Marshal Meretskov from the Soviet Union – take me to your leader!’
    Pyongyang was protected at this time by an outer and an inner military ring. The outer one, twenty kilometres from the city, consisted of anti-aircraft guns and double checkpoints on roads, while the inner ring was virtually a barricade, a front line for defence against land attack. Allan and Herbert got caught in one of the outer checkpoints first and were met by a very drunk North Korean soldier, with a cocked machine gun across his chest. Marshal Herbert had rehearsed his single sentence endlessly, and now he said:
    ‘I am your leader, take me to… the Soviet Union.’
    By good fortune, the soldier didn’t understand Russian, but he did understand Chinese. So the aide (Allan) interpreted for his marshal and then all the words came in the right order.
    But the soldier had an almost impossible amount of alcohol in his blood, and was totally incapable of deciding what to do. He did at least invite Allan and Herbert into the checkpoint’s sentry box and then he phoned his colleague 200 metres away. After which he sat down on a shabby armchair and pulled out a bottle of rice vodka (the third for the day) from his insidepocket. Then he took a gulp and started to hum to himself, while he looked straight through the Soviet guests with an empty glow in his eyes.
    Allan was not satisfied with Herbert’s efforts in front of the guard, and he realised that with Herbert as marshal it wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes with Kim Il Sung before both the marshal and his aide would be well and truly arrested. Through the window, Allan could see the other guard approaching.
    Now they had to be quick.
    ‘Let’s swap clothes, Herbert,’ Allan said.
    ‘But why?’ asked Herbert.
    ‘Do it now,’ said Allan.
    And so, in all haste, the marshal became the aide, and the aide became the marshal. The impossibly drunk soldier with the empty stare rolled his eyes and gurgled something in Korean.
    A few seconds later, soldier number two entered the sentry box and immediately saluted when he saw what a prominent guest he had received. Soldier number two spoke Chinese too, upon which Allan (in the guise of the marshal) once again expressed the desire to meet the prime minister, Kim Il Sung. Before soldier number two had time to answer, number one ceased his gurgling.
    ‘What’s he saying?’ Marshal Allan wondered.
    ‘He says that you just took all your clothes off and then got dressed again,’ answered soldier two truthfully.
    ‘That is quite some vodka!’ said Allan and shook his head.
    Soldier two apologized for his colleague’s behaviour and when number one insisted that Allan and Herbert had undressed and then dressed each other, he was given a punch on the nose and ordered to keep his mouth shut once and for all, unless he wanted to be reported for drunkenness.
    Soldier one decided to keep quiet (and took another gulp) while number two made a couple of phone calls before filling ina pass in Korean, signing and stamping it in two places, and handing