945–47

If it is possible to become stone cold sober instantly after having just downed a whole bottle of tequila, then that was what Vice President Harry S. Truman did.

The news of President Roosevelt’s sudden demise meant that the vice president had to conclude the pleasant dinner with Allan and fly immediately to Washington. Allan was left behind in the restaurant to argue with the head waiter about the bill. In the end, the head waiter accepted Allan’s argument that the future President of the United States was probably reasonably creditworthy and that, in any case, the head waiter now knew his address.

Allan took a refreshing walk back to the lab and resumed his duties as coffeemaker and assistant to America’s foremost physicists, mathematicians and chemists, even though they now felt somewhat embarrassed in Allan’s company. The atmosphere was uncomfortable and after a few weeks Allan was considering whether to move on. A telephone call from Washington settled the matter:

‘Hi, Allan, it’s Harry.’

‘Which Harry?’

‘Truman, Allan. Harry S. Truman, the president, damn it!’

‘How nice! That was a good meal we had, Mr President, thank you. I hope you weren’t required to fly the plane home?’

No, the president had not. Despite the gravity of the situation, he had instead passed out on a sofa in Air Force Two and had not woken up again until it was time to land five hours later.

But now, Harry Truman had some things to deal with that he had inherited from his predecessor, and for one of these the president might need Allan’s help, if Allan thought that possible?

Allan certainly did, and the next morning he checked out from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for good.

The Oval Office was just about as oval as Allan had imagined. And there he was, sitting across from his Los Alamos drinking partner.

It turned out that the president was having some trouble with a woman whom he – for political reasons – couldn’t ignore. Her name was Soong May-ling. Perhaps Allan had heard of her? No?

Well, she was the wife of the anti-communist Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek in China. She was also extremely beautiful, educated here in America, and a best friend of Mrs Roosevelt. She drew an audience of thousands wherever she turned up, and had even given a speech to Congress. And now she was hounding President Truman almost to death to ensure that he would make good on all the promises that she claimed President Roosevelt had made with regard to the struggle against communism.

‘I should have guessed that this was about politics,’ said Allan.

‘It’s pretty hard to avoid that if you are president,’ said Harry Truman.

Just for the moment there was a brief period of calm in the struggle between the Kuomintang and the communists, for they were more or less fighting for a common cause in Manchuria. But soon the Japanese would surrender, and then the Chinese would certainly start to fight among themselves again.

‘How do you know that the Japanese are going to surrender?’ asked Allan.

‘You, of all people, ought to be able to work that out,’ answered Truman and immediately changed the subject.

The president proceeded with what for Allan was a boring overview of developments in China. Intelligence reports said that the communists had the advantage in the civil war, and at the Office of Strategic Services there were questions about Chiang Kai-shek’s military strategy. He was concentrating on the towns, leaving the rural areas open for communist propaganda. The leader of the communists, Mao Tse-tung, would of course soon be eliminated by the Americans, but there was an obvious risk that his ideas might gain a foothold among the population. Even Chiang Kai-shek’s own wife, the decidedly irritating Soong May-ling, acknowledged that something had to be done. So she simply followed her own military course.

The president continued to describe military strategy, but Allan had stopped listening. He looked absentmindedly around the Oval Office, wondering whether the windowpanes were bulletproof and where the door to the left might lead. He thought it must be difficult to drag the gigantic carpet out for cleaning… In the end, he felt he had to interrupt the president in case he started asking questions to make sure that Allan had understood.

‘Excuse me, Harry, but what do you want me to do?’

‘Well, as I said, it’s about stopping the communists’ freedom of movement in the rural areas…’

‘What do you actually want me to do?’

‘Soong May-ling is pushing for increased American weapons support, and now she wants even more equipment than what they’ve already been offered.’

‘And what specifically do you want me to do?’

When Allan had asked the question for the third time, the president fell silent. Then he said:

‘I want you to go to China and blow up bridges.’

‘Why didn’t you say that right away?’ said Allan, his face brightening.

‘As many bridges as possible, so that you cut off as many of the communist roads as you can…’

‘It’ll be nice to see a new country,’ said Allan.

‘I want you to train Soong May-ling’s men in the art of blowing up bridges and that…’

‘When do I leave?’

Although Allan was an explosives expert, and had rapidly and drunkenly become good friends with the future American president, he was still Swedish. If Allan had been the slightest bit interested in politics, he might have asked the president why he was the one to have been chosen for this mission. Had the president been asked he would have answered truthfully that the United States couldn’t be seen to support two parallel and potentially contradictory military projects in China. Officially they supported Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang party. Now they were adding to that support on the sly with a whole shipload of equipment for blowing up bridges on a major scale, ordered and pushed through by Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, the beautiful, serpent-like (in the president’s view) and half-Americanised Soong May-ling. Worst of all, Truman couldn’t rule out that everything had actually been settled over a cup of tea between Soong May-ling and Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt. What a mess! But now all that remained was for the president to introduce Allan Karlsson and Soong May-ling to each other. Then as far as the president was concerned the matter was over and done with.

The next item on his agenda was more of a formality, because he had already made his decision. There was no need for him physically to push the button, so to speak. On an island east of the Philippines the crew of a B52 bomber was waiting for the go-ahead from the president. All the tests had been carried out. Nothing could go wrong.

The next day was 6th August 1945.

Allan Karlsson’s delight that something new was going to happen in his life soon faded when he met Soong May-ling for the first time. Allan had instructions to call on her at a hotel suite in Washington. After managing to negotiate his way through a couple of rows of bodyguards, he stood in front of the lady herself and holding out his hand said:

‘How do you do, Madame, I’m Allan Karlsson.’

Soong May-ling did not shake his hand. Instead, she pointed to an armchair close by.

‘Sit!’ she said.

Over the years, Allan had been accused of being everything from crazy to fascist, but never a dog. He considered pointing out the unsuitability of the lady’s tone, but refrained from doing so, since he was curious to see what would come next. Besides, the armchair looked comfortable.

When Allan sat down, Soong May-ling embarked upon something that Allan felt a particular aversion to, namely a political explanation. Oddly, she referred to President Roosevelt as the man behind the entire plan, and Allan found that strange. Surely you couldn’t lead military operations from beyond the grave?

Soong May-ling described the importance of putting a stop to the communists, of preventing that clown Mao Tse-tung from spreading his political poison from province to province, and – rather strangely, thought Allan – of her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, not understanding anything about this business.

‘How are things really between you two on the romantic side?’ said Allan.

Soong May-ling informed Allan that such a matter was of no concern to an insignificant person like him. Karlsson was appointed by President Roosevelt to be directly under her command in this operation, and from now on he should only answer when spoken to, and otherwise be silent.

Allan didn’t get angry – the word didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary – but he took advantage of the fact that he had been spoken to, to answer.

‘The last thing I heard about Roosevelt was that he was dead, and if anything has changed about that it would have been in the papers. I am doing this because President Truman asked me to. But if your madameship is going to keep on being angry then I don’t think I’ll bother. I can always visit China another time, and I’ve already blown up more than enough bridges.’

No one had confronted Soong May-ling like this since her mother had tried to stop her daughter’s marriage to a Buddhist, and that was many years ago. Besides, her mother had later had to apologize because the marriage had led her daughter all the way to the top.

Now Soong May-ling had to stop and think. She had evidently misjudged the situation. Up to now, all Americans had started to tremble when she described President Roosevelt and the First Lady as personal friends. How should she deal with this person who didn’t react in the same way as everybody else? Who on earth had that incompetent Truman sent her?

Soong May-ling was not a person who would fraternize with just anybody, but her goal was more important than her principles. So she changed tactics:

‘I think we forgot to introduce ourselves properly,’ she said, and held out her hand in the western manner. But better late than never.

Allan was not one to harbour a grudge. He took her hand and smiled indulgently. But he didn’t agree in general that things were better late than never. His father, for example, became a faithful supporter of Tsar Nicholas the day before the Russian Revolution.

Two days later Allan was on his way to Los Angeles, with Soong May-ling and twenty men from her personal bodyguard. There awaited the ship that would take them and their cargo of dynamite to Shanghai.

Allan knew that it would be impossible for him to keep out of the way of Soong May-ling for the whole of the long voyage across 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 that the 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 cowardly, incompetent figure who to cap it all had the intelligence of a cow, and between them, a serpent drunk on green, banana liquor.

‘It’ll definitely be interesting to see how it all turns out,’ Allan said sincerely. ‘Incidentally and apropos nothing at all, Captain, do you by any chance have a few drops of vodka somewhere, to wash down this green liquor?’

No, unfortunately the captain didn’t. But there were a lot of other flavours if Mr Karlsson wanted some variety for his palate: lemon liquor, cream liquor, mint liquor…

‘Apropos nothing at all again,’ said Allan, ‘when do you think we will reach Shanghai?’

Allan Karlsson and a force of twenty men from Soong May-ling’s bodyguard travelled on the Yangtze by riverboat in the direction of Sichuan, as part of their plan to make life more difficult for the communist upstart Mao Tse-tung. They departed on 12th October 1945, two days after the peace negotiations had, as predicted, broken down.

They proceeded at a leisurely pace since the bodyguards wanted to have fun in every harbour. And there were lots of harbours. First Nanjing, then Wuhu, Anqing, Jiujiang, Wuhan, Yueyang, Yidu, Fengjie, Wanxian, Chongqing and Luzhou. And every stop featured drunkenness, prostitution and a general lack of morals.

Since such a lifestyle uses up funds very quickly, the twenty bodyguards devised a new tax. The peasants who wanted to unload their products onto the ship in the harbour could not do so unless they paid a fee of five yuan. And anyone who complained was shot.

This new tax revenue was immediately spent in the darkest quarters of the city in question, and those quarters were nearly always close to the harbour. Allan thought that if Soong May-ling believed it was important to have the people on her side, she might have conveyed that message to her subordinates. But that, thank God, was her problem not Allan’s.

It took two months for Allan and the twenty soldiers to reach Sichuan province, and by then Mao Tse-tung’s forces had long since left for the north. And they didn’t sneak off through the mountains, but went down into the valley and did battle with the Kuomintang regiment that had been left to defend the city of Yibin.

Yibin was soon on the verge of falling into communist hands. Three and a half thousand Kuomintang soldiers were killed in the battle, at least 2,500 of them because they were too drunk to fight. In comparison, three hundred communists died, presumably sober.

The battle for Yibin had nevertheless been a success for the Kuomintang, because among the fifty captured communists there was one jewel. Forty-nine of the prisoners could simply be shot and pushed into a hole in the ground, but the fiftieth! Mmmm! The fiftieth was none other than the beautiful Jiang Qing, the actress who became a Marxist-Leninist and – far more important – Mao Tse-tung’s third wife.

A palaver immediately started up between, on the one side, the Kuomintang’s company command in Yibin and, on the other, Soong May-ling’s bodyguards. The argument was about who would have the responsibility for the star prisoner, Jiang Qing. So far, the company commander had just kept her locked up, waiting for the boat with Soong May-ling’s men to arrive. He hadn’t dared to do otherwise because Soong May-ling could be on board. And you didn’t argue with her.

But it turned out that Soong May-ling was in Taipei, which simplified things considerably as far as the Kuomintang company commander was concerned. Jiang Qing would first be raped in the most brutal manner and then, if she was still alive, she would be shot.

Soong May-ling’s bodyguards did not object to the rape bit. They could even see themselves joining in, but Jiang Qing must definitely not be allowed to die. Instead she should be taken to Soong May-ling or Chiang Kai-shek for them to decide her fate. This was big time politics, the internationally experienced soldiers explained in a superior tone to the provincially schooled company commander in Yibin.

The company commander grudgingly promised that he would hand over his jewel the same afternoon. The meeting broke up and the soldiers decided to celebrate their victory with a drinking spree. They were going to have a lot of fun with the jewel later on the trip home!

The final negotiations had been carried out on the deck of the riverboat that had brought Allan and the soldiers all the way from the sea. Allan was astounded by the fact that he understood most of what was said. While the soldiers had been amusing themselves in various cities, Allan had been sitting on the stern deck together with the good-natured mess boy Ah Ming, who turned out to have considerable pedagogical talent. In two months, Ah Ming had helped Allan make himself understood pretty well in Chinese (with a special proficiency in expletives and profanity).

As a child, Allan had been taught to be suspicious of people who didn’t have a drink when the opportunity arose. He was no more than six years old when his father laid a hand on his little shoulder and said:

‘You should beware of priests, my son. And people who don’t drink vodka. Worst of all are priests who don’t drink vodka.’

Acting on his own counsel, Allan’s father had certainly not been completely sober when one day he punched an innocent traveller in the face, upon which he was immediately fired from the National Railways. This in turn had caused Allan’s mother to give some words of wisdom of her own to her son:

‘Beware of drunks, Allan. That’s what I should have done.’

The little boy grew up and added his own opinions to those he had acquired from his parents. Priests and politicians were equally bad, Allan thought, and it didn’t make the slightest difference if they were communists, fascists, capitalists or any other political persuasion. But he did agree with his father that reliable people didn’t drink fruit juice. And he agreed with his mother that you had to make sure you behaved, even if you had drunk a bit more than was wise.

In practical terms, that meant that during the course of the river journey Allan had lost interest in helping Soong May-ling and her twenty drunken soldiers (in fact there were only nineteen left since one had fallen overboard and drowned). Nor did he want to be around when the soldiers raped the prisoner who was now locked up below deck, regardless of whether she was a communist or not, and of who her husband was.

So Allan decided to abandon ship and take the prisoner with him. He told his friend, the mess boy, of his decision and humbly asked that Ah Ming provide the future escapees with some food for their journey. Ah Ming promised to do that, but on one condition – that he could come along.

Eighteen of the nineteen soldiers from Soong May-ling’s bodyguard, together with the boat’s cook and the captain, were out enjoying themselves in the pleasure district in Yibin. The nineteenth soldier, the one who had drawn the shortest straw, sat grumpily outside the door to the stairs that led down to Jiang Qing’s prison cell below deck.

Allan sat down with the guard and suggested that they should have a drink together. The guard said that he had been entrusted with responsibility for possibly the most important prisoner in the nation so it would not be right to indulge in rice vodka.

‘I entirely agree,’ said Allan. ‘But one glass can’t hurt can it?’

‘No,’ said the guard, upon reflection. ‘One glass certainly can’t hurt.’

Two hours later, Allan and the guard had each emptied a bottle, while the mess boy Ah Ming had scuttled back and forth and served goodies from the pantry. Allan had become a bit tipsy while on the job, but the guard had fallen asleep right on the open deck.

Allan looked down at the unconscious Chinese soldier at his feet.

‘Never try to out-drink a Swede, unless you happen to be a Finn or at least a Russian.’

The bomb expert, Allan Karlsson, the mess boy, Ah Ming, and the eternally grateful communist leader’s wife, Jiang Qing, slipped away from the riverboat under cover of darkness and were soon in the mountains where Jiang Qing had already spent much time together with her husband’s troops. The Tibetan nomads in the area knew her and the fugitives had no problem in eating their fill even after the supplies carried by Ah Ming had run out. The Tibetans had good reason, or so they thought, for being on friendly terms with the People’s Liberation Army. It was generally assumed that if the communists won the struggle for China, Tibet would immediately gain its independence.

Jiang Qing suggested that she, Allan and Ah Ming should hurry northwards, in a wide circle round Kuomintang-controlled territory. After months of walking in the mountains, they would eventually reach Xi’an in the province of Shaanxi – and Jiang Qing knew that her husband would be there, provided they didn’t take too long.

The mess boy, Ah Ming, was delighted by Jiang Qing’s promise that he would be able to serve Mao himself. The boy had secretly become a communist when he saw how the soldiers behaved, so he was fine with changing sides and advancing his career at the same time.

Allan, however, said that he was certain the communist struggle would manage just fine without him. So he assumed it would be okay if he went home. Did Jiang Qing agree?

Yes, she did. But ‘home’ was surely Sweden and that was terribly far away. How was Mr Karlsson going to manage?

Allan replied that boat or aeroplane would have been the most practical method but poor placement of the world’s oceans had ruled out catching a boat from the middle of China, and he hadn’t seen any airports up there in the mountains. And anyway he didn’t have any money to speak of.

‘So I’ll have to walk,’ said Allan.

The head of the village that had so generously received the three fugitives had a brother who had travelled more than anybody else. The brother had been as far afield as Ulan Bator in the north and Kabul in the west. Besides which, he had dipped his toes into the Bay of Bengal on a journey to the East Indies, but now he was home in the village again and the headman sent for him and asked him to draw a map of the world for Mr Karlsson so that he could find his way back to Sweden. The brother promised to do that and he had completed the task by the next day.

Even if you’re well bundled up, it is bold to cross the Himalayas with only the help of a homemade map of the world and a compass. In fact, Allan could have walked north of the mountain chain and the Aral and Caspian Seas, but reality and the homemade map didn’t exactly match up. So Allan said goodbye to Jiang Qing and Ah Ming and started upon his perambulation, which was to go through Tibet, over the Himalayas, through British India, Afghanistan, into Iran, on to Turkey and then up through Europe.

After two months on foot, Allan discovered that he must have chosen the wrong side of a mountain range and the best way to deal with that was to turn back and start over. Another four months later (on the right side of the mountain range) Allan realised he was making rather slow progress. At a market in a mountain village he haggled as best he could about the price of a camel, with the help of sign language and the Chinese he knew. Allan and the camel seller finally came to an agreement, but not until the seller had been forced to accept that Allan was not going to take in his daughter as part of the purchase.

Allan did consider the part about the daughter. Not for purely physical reasons, because he no longer had any such urges. They had been left behind in a bucket in Professor Lundborg’s operating theatre. It was rather her companionship that attracted him. Life on the Tibetan highland plateau could sometimes be lonely.

But since the daughter spoke nothing but a monotonous-sounding Tibeto-Burmese dialect that Allan didn’t understand, he thought that where intellectual stimulation was concerned he could just as well talk to the camel. Besides, one couldn’t rule out that the daughter might have certain sexual expectations as to the arrangement. Something in the way she looked at him led Allan to believe that to be the case.

So another two months of loneliness ensued, with Allan wobbling across the roof of the world on the back of a camel, before he came across three strangers, also on camels. Allan greeted them in the languages he knew: Chinese, Spanish, English and Swedish. Luckily, English worked.

Allan told his new acquaintances that he was on his way home to Sweden. The men looked at him wide-eyed. Was he going to ride a camel all the way to northern Europe?

‘With a little break for the ship across Öresund,’ said Allan.

The three men didn’t know what Öresund was so Allan told them that it was where the Baltic Sea met the Atlantic Ocean. After they had ascertained that Allan was not a supporter of the British-American lackey, the Shah of Iran, they invited him to accompany them.

The men told him that they had met at university in Tehran where they had studied English. After their studies, they had spent two years in China, breathing the same air as their communist hero, Mao Tse-tung, and they were now on their way back home to Iran.

‘We are Marxists,’ one of the men said. ‘We are pursuing our struggle in the name of the international worker; in his name we will carry out a revolution in Iran and the whole world; we will build a society based upon the economic and social equality of all people: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’

‘I see, comrade,’ said Allan. ‘Do you happen to have any spare vodka?’

The men did. The bottle went from camel-back to camel-back and Allan began to feel that the journey was working out nicely.

Eleven months later, the four men had managed to save each other’s lives at least three times. They had survived avalanches, pirates, extreme cold and repeated periods of hunger. Two of the camels had died, a third had had to be slaughtered and eaten, and the fourth had been given to an Afghan customs officer so that they would be allowed to enter the country instead of being arrested.

Allan had never imagined it would be easy to cross the Himalayas. But later he had realised just how lucky he had been to bump into those kind Iranian communists. It would not have been pleasant to wrestle alone with the valley sandstorms and the flooding rivers, and the -40°C in the mountains – even if he could have managed the bitter cold on his own, with his long experience of the Swedish winters. The group had set up camp at an altitude of 2,000 metres to wait for the 1946–47 winter to end.

The three communists tried to get Allan to join their struggle, especially after they discovered his talent for working with dynamite. Allan wished them the best of luck, but said that he had to go home to Sweden to look after his house in Yxhult. (Allan momentarily forgot that he had blown the house to bits eighteen years earlier.)

In the end, the men gave up their attempts to persuade Allan of the rightness of their cause, and settled for his being a good comrade, and someone who didn’t complain about a bit of snow. Allan’s standing improved further when, while the group was waiting for better weather, he figured out how to make alcohol from goats’ milk. The communists couldn’t fathom how he managed, but the end result was definitely potent and made everything a bit warmer and less boring.

In the spring of 1947 they finally made it over to the southern side of the world’s highest mountain chain. The closer they came to the Iranian border, the more eager the communists were to talk about the future of Iran. Now was the time to chase the foreigners out of the country once and for all. The Brits had supported the corrupt shah for years and years, and that was bad enough. But when the shah finally tired of being their lapdog and started to protest, then the Brits simply lifted him off his throne and put his son there instead. Allan was reminded of Soong May-ling’s relationship to Chiang Kai-shek; he reflected that family relations could be weird out in the big wide world.

The shah’s son was evidently easier to bribe than the father, and now the British and Americans controlled the Iranian oil. Inspired by Mao Tse-tung, these Iranian communists were determined to put a stop to that. The problem was that some other Iranian communists leaned more towards the brand of communism practised in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and there were other irritating revolutionary elements who mixed religion into it all.

‘Interesting,’ said Allan, and meant the opposite.

They replied with a long Marxist declaration on the theme that the situation was more than interesting. The trio would, in short, be victorious or die!

The very next day, the latter turned out to be the case, because as soon as the four friends set foot on Iranian soil they were arrested by a border patrol. The three communists unfortunately each had a copy of the Communist Manifesto (in Farsi), and that got them shot on the spot. Allan survived because he had no literature with him. Besides, he looked foreign and required further investigation.

With the barrel of a rifle in his back, Allan took his cap off and thanked the three dead communists for their company across the Himalayas. He couldn’t really get used to the way people he befriended went and died right in front of his eyes.

Allan didn’t have time for a longer period of mourning. His hands were tied behind his back and he was thrown into the rear of a truck. With his nose buried in a blanket he asked in English to be taken to the Swedish Embassy in Tehran, or to the American one if Sweden didn’t have any representation in the city.

‘Khafe sho!’ was the answer, in a threatening tone.

Allan didn’t understand the words, but he understood the sentiment. It probably wouldn’t hurt to keep his mouth shut for a while.

On the other side of the globe, in Washington DC, President Harry Truman had problems of his own. Election time was coming up, and it was important for him to make his policies clear. And that meant deciding what they were. The biggest strategic question was how much he would be prepared to support the blacks in the south. You had to maintain a fine balance between seeming modern and not seeming too soft. That was how you maintained your support in the opinion polls.

And in the world arena, he had Stalin to deal with. There, however, he was not prepared to compromise. Stalin had managed to charm quite a few people, but not Harry S. Truman.

In light of everything else, China was now history. Stalin had backed Mao Tse-tung, and Truman couldn’t refrain from doing the same to that amateur Chiang Kai-shek. Soong May-ling had so far got what she wanted, but now that would have to end too. He wondered what had happened to Allan Karlsson. A very nice guy.

Chiang Kai-shek suffered more and more military defeats. And Soong May-ling’s project failed because the explosives expert assigned to it disappeared, taking the clown’s wife with him.

Soong May-ling asked time and time again for a meeting with President Truman, hoping to be able to strangle him with her bare hands for having sent her Allan Karlsson, but Truman never had time to receive her. Instead, the United States turned its back on the Kuomintang; in China, the corruption, hyperinflation and famine all played into the hands of Mao Tse-tung. In the end, Chiang Kai-shek, Soong May-ling and their subordinates had to flee to Taiwan. Mainland China became communist China.