968

The duties involved in Allan’s position at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris were not arduous. The new ambassador, Mrs Amanda Einstein, gave him a room of his own and said that Allan was now free to do whatever he wanted.

‘But it would be kind of you if you could help as an interpreter if things should ever get so bad that I need to meet people from other countries.’

Allan responded that he couldn’t exclude that things would get exactly as bad as that, considering the nature of the assignment. The first foreigner in line would surely be waiting the very next day, if Allan had understood correctly.

Amanda swore when she was reminded that she would have to go to the Élysée Palace for accreditation. The ceremony would last no more than two minutes but that was more than enough for someone who had a tendency to say something stupid, a tendency that Amanda thought she had.

Allan agreed that now and then something unsuitable did come out of her mouth, but that it would be fine with President de Gaulle, as long as she made sure that she only spoke Indonesian during her two minutes, and otherwise just smiled and looked friendly.

‘What did you say he was called?’ asked Amanda.

‘Indonesian, speak Indonesian,’ said Allan. ‘Or even better, Balinese.’

Upon which Allan went out for a walk in the French capital. He thought that it wouldn’t do any harm to stretch his legs after fifteen years in a beach chair, and also he had just seen himself in a mirror at the embassy, and was reminded that he hadn’t had a haircut or a shave since some time after the volcanic eruption in 1963.

It turned out, however, that it was impossible to find an open barbershop. Everything was closed, virtually everybody seemed to have gone on strike and now they were occupying buildings and demonstrating and pushing cars onto their sides and shouting and swearing and throwing things at each other. Riot barriers were being put up along and across the streets where Allan was walking along, keeping his head down.

It was all like the Bali he had just left — just a bit cooler. Allan turned around and went back to the embassy.

There he met a furious ambassador. The Élysée Palace had just called to say that the two-minute-long accreditation ceremony had been replaced by a long lunch and that the ambassador was warmly welcome to bring along her husband and of course her own interpreter, and that President de Gaulle for his part intended to invite the Minister of the Interior Fouchet and – not least – that the American President Lyndon B. Johnson would be there too.

Amanda was in despair. She might have managed two minutes in the company of the president without risking immediate deportation, but three hours and with yet another president at the table…

‘What’s happening and what shall we do, Allan?’ asked Amanda.

But the development from a handshake to a long lunch with double presidents was just as incomprehensible to Allan. And trying to understand things that were incomprehensible was not in his nature.

‘What should we do? I think we should find Herbert and have a drink. It is already after noon.’

An accreditation ceremony with President de Gaulle on the one side and an ambassador from a distant and unimportant nation on the other usually lasted at most sixty seconds, but might be allowed to go on twice as long if the diplomat in question was talkative.

In the case of the Indonesian ambassador it had suddenly become completely different for major political reasons, ones that Allan Karlsson would never have been able to work out even if he had cared to try.

As it happened President Lyndon B. Johnson was sitting in the American Embassy in Paris and longing for a political victory. The protests the world over against the war in Vietnam were now raging like a hurricane and the person most associated with the war, President Johnson, was undeniably unpopular everywhere.

Johnson had long since abandoned his plans to run in the November elections, but he wouldn’t mind being remembered by some more attractive epithet than ‘murderer’ and other unpleasant names that were being shouted out all over the place. So first he had ordered a break in the bombing of Hanoi and had actually organized a peace conference. The fact that there then happened to be semi-war raging on the streets in the city where the conference came to be held was something President Johnson found almost comical. There was something for that de Gaulle to get his teeth into.

President Johnson thought that de Gaulle was a jerk. He seemed to have completely ‘forgotten’ who had rolled up his sleeves and saved France from the Germans. But the rules of politics were such that a French and an American president can’t be in the same capital together without at least having lunch.

So a lunch was booked, and would have to be endured. But luckily the French had evidently messed things up (Johnson was not surprised) and had double-booked their president. So now the new Indonesian ambassador – a woman! – was joining them. President Johnson thought that was just fine; he could talk to her instead of that de Gaulle.

But it wasn’t actually a double booking. Instead, President de Gaulle had personally and at the last moment had the brilliant idea of pretending that was the case. In that way, the lunch would be endurable, he could converse with the Indonesian ambassador – a woman! – instead of that Johnson.

President de Gaulle didn’t like Johnson, but it was for historical rather than personal reasons. At the end of the war, the USA had placed France under American military jurisdiction – they had intended to steal his country! How could de Gaulle forgive them that, regardless of whether the sitting president was actually involved? The sitting president, for that matter… Johnson… He was called Johnson. The Americans simply had no style, thought Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle.

Amanda and Herbert soon agreed that it would be best if Herbert stayed at the embassy during the meeting with the presidents in the Élysée Palace. In this way, they both thought, the risk that something would go totally wrong would be almost exactly halved. Didn’t Allan think so too?

Allan was silent for a moment, considering possible answers, before he finally said:

‘Herbert, you should stay at home.’

The luncheon guests were gathered and waiting for their host, who in turn was sitting in his office waiting just for the sake of waiting. And he intended to keep on waiting a few minutes more, in the hope that it would put that man Johnson in a very bad mood.

De Gaulle could hear the noise of the demonstrations from far away, as riots raged in his beloved Paris. The Fifth French Republic had started to wobble, suddenly and from nowhere. First, it was some students who were for free sex and against the Vietnam War. As far as that went, this was OK with the president because students will always find something to complain about.

But the demonstrations became bigger and bigger, and more violent too, and then the trade unions raised their voices and threatened to take ten million workers out on strike. Ten million! The whole country would grind to a halt!

What the workers wanted was to work less for a bigger wage. And that de Gaulle resisted. Three wrong out of three, according to the president who had fought and won much worse battles than that. Leading advisors at the Ministry of the Interior told the president to treat tough protests with equal toughness. This was not about anything big, for example a communist attempt orchestrated by the Soviet Union to try to take over the country. But, of course, over coffee Lyndon Johnson would speculate that this was the case given half a chance. After all, the Americans saw communists hiding in every bush. To be on the safe side, de Gaulle had taken along Interior Minister Fouchet and his especially knowledgeable senior official. These two had been responsible for handling the current chaos in the nation and so they could also be responsible for defending themselves if Johnson started to stick his nose in things.

‘Ugh! Damn and blast! [but in French],’ said President Charles de Gaulle and got up from his chair.

They couldn’t delay the lunch any longer.

The French president’s security staff had been especially careful when it came to checking the Indonesian ambassador’s bearded and long-haired interpreter. But his papers were in order and they had made certain he was not carrying a weapon. Besides, the ambassador – a woman! – vouched for him. Thus, the bearded man was seated at the dining table between a much younger and more smartly dressed American interpreter and, on the other side, a French copy of the same.

The interpreter who was worked hardest was the bearded Indonesian, since Presidents Johnson and de Gaulle directed their questions to Madame Ambassador instead of to each other.

President de Gaulle started by enquiring as to Madame Ambassador’s professional background. Amanda Einstein said that really she was rather a blockhead, that she had bribed her way to the position of governor of Bali and then bribed her way to re-election in two subsequent elections, that she had made pots of money for herself and her extended family for many years until the new President Suharto had, quite out of the blue, phoned and offered her the position of ambassador in Paris.

‘I didn’t even know where Paris was; I thought it was a country, not a city. Have you ever heard anything so crazy,’ said Amanda Einstein and laughed.

She had said all of this in her mother tongue and the long-haired and bearded interpreter translated it into English, taking the opportunity to change almost everything Amanda Einstein had said into something he felt more appropriate.

When the lunch was coming to a close, the two presidents were in agreement over one thing, even though they weren’t aware of the fact. They both thought that Madame Ambassador Einstein was entertaining, enlightened, interesting and wise. She might, of course, have shown better judgment when it came to her choice of interpreter, because he looked like the Wild Man of Borneo.

Interior Minister Fouchet’s especially knowledgeable senior official, Claude Pennant, was born in 1928 in Strasbourg. His parents were convinced and passionate communists, who had gone to Spain to fight against the fascists when war broke out in 1936. With them they had their eight-year-old son, Claude.

The entire family survived the war and by a complicated path fled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, they offered their services to further the interests of international communism. And they presented their son, now eleven years old, and announced that he already spoke three languages: German and French from back home in Strasbourg, and now Spanish too. Could that perhaps, in the long term, serve the revolution?

Yes, it could. The young Claude’s talent for languages was carefully checked and after that his general intelligence in a number of tests. And then he was put in a language-cum-ideology school and before he was fifteen years old he spoke fluent French, German, Russian, Spanish, English and Chinese.

When he was eighteen, just after the end of the Second World War, Claude heard his mother and father express doubts as to the course the revolution was taking under Stalin. Claude reported these views to his superiors and before long Michel and Monique Pennant had been both convicted and executed for non-revolutionary activity. The young Claude thus gained his first award, a gold medal for the best pupil of his year, 1945–46.

After 1946, Claude started to prepare for service abroad. The intention was to place him in the West and let him work his way up in the corridors of power, if necessary as a sleeper agent for dozens of years. Claude was now under the protective hawk-like wings of Marshal Beria and he was carefully kept out of all official engagements where he might possibly end up in a photograph. The only work the young Claude was allowed to do was an occasional bout as interpreter, and then only when the marshal himself was present.

In 1949, at the age of twenty-one, Claude Pennant was sent back to France, but this time to Paris. He was allowed to keep his own name, although his life history had been rewritten. He started up the career ladder at the Sorbonne.

Nineteen years later, in May 1968, he had risen to the immediate vicinity of the French president himself. The last two years he had been Interior Minister Fouchet’s right hand man and as such he now served the international revolution more than ever. His advice to the interior minister – and thus in extension to the president – was to react harshly to the ongoing student and worker uprising. To be on the safe side, he also made sure the French communists sent false signals, implying that they were not behind the demands of the students and workers. The communist revolution in France was at most one month away, and de Gaulle and Fouchet didn’t have a clue.

After lunch, there was an opportunity for everyone to stretch their legs before coffee was served in the drawing room. Now, the two presidents had no choice but to exchange pleasantries with each other. It was while they were doing this, that the long-haired and bearded interpreter came up to them unexpectedly.

‘Excuse me for disturbing both the Mr Presidents, but I have to talk to Mr President de Gaulle and I don’t think it can wait.’

President de Gaulle was just about to call a guard, because a French president most certainly did not mix with just anybody in that manner. But the long-haired and bearded man was perfectly polite, so he was allowed to speak.

‘Very well, but be quick about it. As you can see I’ve got more important things to do than chat with an interpreter.’

Oh indeed, Allan promised not to go on. The simple fact was that Allan thought the president ought to know that Interior Minister Fouchet’s special advisor was a spy.

‘Excuse me, but what the hell are you saying?’ said President de Gaulle loudly, but not so loudly that Fouchet, smoking out on the terrace, and his right hand man, also smoking out on the terrace, could hear.

Allan told him how he had had the dubious pleasure of dining with Misters Stalin and Beria almost exactly twenty years earlier, and that the interior minister’s right hand man was quite definitely on that occasion Stalin’s interpreter.

‘It was of course twenty years ago, but he looks just the same. I, however, looked different. I didn’t have a magpie’s nest on my face in those days, with my hair sticking out in all directions. I recognise the spy but the spy doesn’t recognise me, because I hardly recognised myself when I looked in the mirror yesterday.’

President de Gaulle went bright red in the face, excused himself, and then immediately requested a private conversation with his interior minister (‘No, private conversation, I said, without your special advisor! Now!’).

President Johnson and the Indonesian interpreter were left behind. Johnson looked very pleased. He decided to shake the interpreter’s hand, as thank you for him having made the French president lose his mask of superiority.

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ said President Johnson. ‘What was your name?’

‘I am Allan Karlsson,’ said Allan. ‘I once knew your predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor, President Truman.’

‘Well, what do you know!’ said President Johnson. ‘Harry is on his way to ninety but he is alive and well. We are good friends.’

‘Give him my regards,’ said Allan, and then made his excuses so that he could find Amanda (he wanted to tell her what she had said to the presidents at the table).

The lunch with the two presidents came to a rapid end and everyone went home. But Allan and Amanda had only just reached their embassy when President Johnson himself phoned and invited Allan to dinner at the American Embassy at eight o’clock that same evening.

‘That would be nice,’ said Allan. ‘I had anyway intended having a good square meal this evening, because whatever you say about French food, it soon disappears from your plate without your actually having eaten much.’

That was an observation President Johnson completely agreed with, and he looked forward very much to the evening’s events.

There were at least three good reasons for President Johnson to invite Allan Karlsson to dinner. First, to find out more about the spy and about Karlsson’s meeting with Beria and Stalin. Second, Harry Truman had just told him on the phone what Allan Karlsson had done at Los Alamos in 1945. That alone was of course worth a dinner. And third, President Johnson was personally extremely pleased with what happened at the Élysée Palace. At very close range, he had been able to enjoy seeing de Gaulle look aghast and discomfited, and he had Allan Karlsson to thank for that.

‘Welcome, Mr Karlsson,’ said President Johnson as he greeted Allan with a double handshake. ‘Let me introduce Mr Ryan Hutton, he is… well, he is a bit secret here at the embassy, one could say. Legal advisor, I believe he is called.’

Allan shook hands with the secret advisor and then the trio went to the dining table. President Johnson had ordered beer and vodka to be served with the food, because French wine reminded him of Frenchmen and this was meant to be an enjoyable evening.

While they were eating the first course, Allan related some of his life story, up to the dinner in the Kremlin, the one that went wrong. It was there that Interior Minister Fouchet’s right hand man had fainted instead of translating Allan’s final insult to the already furious Stalin.

President Johnson was no longer so amused by the revelation that Claude Pennant turned out to be a Soviet spy in the vicinity of the French president, because he had just been informed by Ryan Hutton that the specialist Monsieur Pennant had in all secrecy also been an informer for the CIA. In fact, Pennant had up to then been the main CIA source of the information that there was not an imminent communist revolution in France although the country was deeply infiltrated by communists. Now the entire analysis would have to be reconsidered.

‘That, of course, was unofficial and confidential information,’ said President Johnson, ‘but I can count on Mr Karlsson to keep a secret, can’t I?’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Mr President,’ said Allan.

And then Allan told of how during that submarine journey in the Baltic he had been drinking with a really extraordinarily nice man, one of the Soviet Union’s leading nuclear physicists, Yury Borisovich Popov, and that in the rush of things there had been a bit too much talk about nuclear technology.

‘Did you tell Stalin how to build a bomb?’ asked President Johnson. ‘I thought you ended up in a prison camp precisely because you refused.’

‘I refused to tell Stalin. He wouldn’t have understood anyway. But the day before with that nuclear physicist I may have gone into more detail than I ought to have done. That’s what happens when you drink a bit too much vodka, Mr President. And it wasn’t really apparent what a nasty man that Stalin could be, not until the following day.’

President Johnson had his palm on his forehead, and pushing his fingers through his hair he thought that the revelation of how you build atomic bombs wasn’t something that just happened because alcohol was involved. Allan Karlsson was in fact… he was in fact… a traitor. Wasn’t he? But… he was not an American citizen so what did you do then? President Johnson needed time to think.

‘And then what happened?’ he asked, as he had to say something.

Allan thought it best not to miss out too many details now that a president was asking him. So he told him about Vladivostok, about Marshal Meretskov, about Kim Il Sung, about Kim Jong Il, about Stalin’s fortunate death, about Mao Tse-tung, about a pile of dollars that Mao had been so kind as to supply him with, about the calm life on Bali and about the not so calm life on Bali, and finally about his journey to Paris.

‘That’s about all, I think,’ said Allan. ‘But with all this talking I’ve become really parched.’

The president ordered some more beer, but added that a person who spilled atomic secrets in a state of inebriation ought to consider becoming a teetotaller. Then he asked:

‘You had a fifteen-year-long holiday, financed by Mao Tse-tung?’

‘Yes. Sort of. Really it was Chiang Kai-shek’s money, and he had got it from our mutual friend Harry Truman. Now that you mention it, Mr President, perhaps I ought to phone Harry and thank him.’

President Johnson had enormous problems with the knowledge that the bearded and long-haired man opposite him had given Stalin the Bomb. And had lived a life of leisure paid for by American foreign aid. And on top of it all, you could now faintly hear how demonstrators on the street outside the embassy were shouting: ‘USA out of Vietnam! USA out of Vietnam!’ Johnson sat there in silence, his face a picture of misery.

Meanwhile, Allan emptied his glass while he studied the worried face of the American president.

‘Can I be of any help?’ he asked.

‘What did you say?’ President Johnson said, deep in his own thoughts.

‘Can I be of any help?’ Allan repeated. ‘The president looks dreadful. Perhaps he needs some help?’

President Johnson was on the point of asking Allan Karlsson to win the Vietnam War for him, but then he returned to reality and what he saw before him again was the man who gave the Bomb to Stalin.

‘Yes, you can do one thing for me,’ said President Johnson in a tired voice. ‘You can leave.’

Allan said thank you for the dinner, and went on his way, leaving behind President Johnson and the European CIA director, the oh so secret Ryan Hutton.

Lyndon B. Johnson was horrified at the way Allan Karlsson’s visit had developed. First such a nice start but then Karlsson sat there and admitted he had given the Bomb not only to the USA but also to Stalin. Stalin! The communist of communists!

‘Now, Hutton,’ said President Johnson. ‘What should we do? Shall we pick up that damned Karlsson again and boil him in oil?’

‘Yes,’ said secret agent Hutton. ‘Either that or we could make sure to put him to good use.’

Secret agent Hutton was not only secret, he was also well-read on most things of politically strategic interest from the perspective of the CIA. For example, he was very well aware of the existence of the physicist that Allan Karlsson had had such a pleasant drinking session with on the submarine between Sweden and Leningrad. Yury Borisovich Popov had made quite a career from 1949 onwards. And his first big break might very well have been thanks to the information that Allan Karlsson had delivered — in fact it was highly likely that such was the case. Now, Popov was sixty-three years old and technical director of the entire atomic arsenal of the Soviet Union. As such, he had knowledge that was so valuable to the USA that you couldn’t even put a price on it.

If the USA could find out what Popov knew and thereby determine whether the West was in advance of the East when it came to atomic weapons – well, then President Johnson could take the initiative to mutual disarmament. And the path to such knowledge went via – Allan Karlsson.

‘You want to make Karlsson an American agent?’ said President Johnson while he thought about how some serious disarmament could do a great deal of good for how he would be remembered as a president, regardless of that damned war in Vietnam.

‘Yes, exactly,’ said secret agent Hutton.

‘And why would Karlsson go along with that?’

‘Well… because… he seems the type. And just a moment ago he sat there and asked the president if there was anything he could do to help.’

‘Yes,’ said President Johnson. ‘He actually did.’

The president was silent again for a few moments. Then he said:

‘I think I need a strong drink.’

Initially, the French government’s hard-line attitude towards the popular dissatisfaction did indeed lead to the country grinding to a halt. Millions of Frenchmen went on strike. The docks in Marseilles closed down, as did international airports, the railway, and all department stores.

The distribution of gas and oil came to a halt and rubbish collection stopped. From every side there were workers’ demands. For higher wages, of course, and shorter working hours, and better job security, and more influence.

But in addition there were demands for a new system of education. And a new society! The Fifth Republic was threatened.

Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen demonstrated in the streets, and it wasn’t always peaceful either. Cars were set on fire, trees were felled, streets were dug up, barricades were built… There were gendarmes, riot police, teargas and shields…

That was when the French president, the prime minister and his government did a quick about-turn. Interior Minister Fouchet’s special advisor no longer had any influence (he was imprisoned secretly in the premises of the secret police where he had considerable difficulty in explaining why he had a radio transmitter installed in his bathroom scales). The workers on general strike were suddenly offered a big increase in the minimum wage, a general increase of wages of ten per cent, a three-hour reduction of the working week, increased family allowances, more trade union power, negotiations on comprehensive general wage agreements and inflation-adjusted wages. A couple of the government’s ministers had to resign too, among them Interior Minister Fouchet.

With this array of measures, the government and president neutralized the most revolutionary factions. There was no popular support to take things further than they had already gone. Workers went back to work, occupations stopped, shops opened again, the transport sector began to function. May 1968 had now become June 1968. And the Fifth Republic was still there.

President Charles de Gaulle personally phoned the Indonesian Embassy in Paris and asked for Mr Allan Karlsson, in order to award him a medal. But at the embassy they said that Allan Karlsson no longer worked there and nobody, including the ambassador herself, could say where he had gone.