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at the embassy, but she needed more time with the remarkable man beside her. ‘Then let’s start with how it happens that a Swede pretending to be Swiss finds himself in Pyongyang on business, with a purpose diametrically opposed to the one I am here to represent.’

      ‘Good question,’ said Allan. ‘And well formulated. I don’t think I’ll start from the beginning, because we would never finish. That’s how old I am. Let me instead begin with my hundred-and-first birthday on a beautiful white-sand beach on Bali in Indonesia.’

      And then came the story of the hot-air balloon. The crash into the sea. The rescue. The white lie about hetisostat pressure to survive at least in the short term, and the arrival in Pyongyang as recently as a few hours before her own. How he had become Swiss, he didn’t know. As far as he could remember, he had never been to Switzerland. ‘But I hear it’s lovely. And the Swiss are said to be orderly to a fault.’

      ‘Yes,’ said the minister. ‘But the question is, how happy will they be now that they’ve got a presumed traitor on their hands?’

      ‘They have?’

      ‘You, Mr Karlsson.’

      ‘Oh, that’s what you meant.’

      * * *

      Ryugyong Hotel was an impressive creation, 330 metres and 105 storeys tall. The North Koreans had been building it since 1987 without ever finishing it. It was slow going, since the state coffers were substantially used up by the production of nuclear weapons and military parades. After three decades, they hadn’t yet built more than the lobby and the first floor. At this rate, it would take another fifteen hundred years for the whole building to be finished.

      Yet the ground floor was stylish. It consisted of a golden reception desk to the right, offering space for up to twelve simultaneous check-ins or check-outs, and a tastefully decorated piano bar to the left, with three pianists engaged to cover the better part of each day. Thus far the budget had not allowed for the acquisition of a piano, but it was a priority.

      Julius was sitting on the edge of the bed in room 104, waiting for Allan to return from the alphabet soup KCNA. Since it was impossible to imagine what that place might be, he was succeeding, for the moment, in repressing the situation they had found themselves in. Instead he was thinking about his asparagus partner down in Bali. To be sure, that wasn’t much fun either. Now Gustav had to handle the operation all on his own. What would come of it?

      There was a telephone on the nightstand. Could it possibly be functional, in contrast to the hotel’s eight lifts? It was worth a try.

      He called his business partner, the Indian Gustav Svensson. The call went through, but instead of a ringtone followed by Gustav, voicemail took over.

      Julius recorded a few irritated sentences. In his haste, he forgot to mention that he was still alive, but perhaps his partner would work that out for himself.

      Then he took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. He yawned and closed his eyes, trying to aim his thoughts in a direction other than that of asparagus and alphabet soup.

      It didn’t work.

       South Korea

      How’s the asparagus?

      Three deliveries this month too?

      Any return shipments?

      Will we make it to five hundred million before the year is half out?

      On the top floor of a fourteen-storey building in the city of Goyang, north-west of the South Korean capital, a man and a woman wearing headphones sat in front of quadruple computer screens and various instruments. Both were civil servants. Nothing remarkable so far, except possibly the location: a simple two-bedroom apartment. And the fact that the state served by the civil servants was not the Republic of Korea but Germany.

      The woman was a low-ranking diplomat; the man was the same, only a little lower. Officially they were involved in a number of German-Korean housing projects, but they were seldom seen in such contexts. Instead they sat where they sat on order of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND. They were distant colleagues to an arrogant site director and his meek colleague in Dar es Salaam.

      The two fake diplomats’ primary task, in the apartment in Goyang, was to make recordings of the Americans’ wiretaps in North Korea. By doing so they avoided having to do the job themselves, and also got a dash of pleasure out of it. Winding up American intelligence services was one of life’s little joys.

      One of their easier targets was the permanently unfinished showpiece Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. Seldom, bordering on never, did anything of interest come from there.

      Today was an exception.

      From room 104, a guest unknown to the BND had left a message on a powered-down cell phone in Indonesia that belonged to an equally unknown recipient. The message was in English, in code, and consisted of four questions.

      How’s the asparagus?

      Three deliveries this month too?

      Any return shipments?

      Will we make it to five hundred million before the year is half out?

      What asparagus was code for, the fake diplomats couldn’t say. But the sum – five hundred million! – suggested narcotics or worse. The Germans knew that a small load of enriched uranium had just reached Pyongyang. It could hardly have cost half a billion. But what if this was a case of several ongoing deliveries? Such as three? Per month?

      What was Kim Jong-un up to? Was he planning to start a war with the whole world? And where was he getting the money? Five hundred fucking million dollars! And 104 unfinished floors in the country’s only luxury hotel.

      More questions without answers. A return shipment? What, in that case, was supposed to be transported out of North Korea? And how? And where was it going? Indonesia? Well, shit.

       North Korea

      Julius was involuntarily imprisoned in the capital of North Korea, and he longed for the peace and petty thievery he had known back on Bali. His goal of five hundred million rupiah – almost forty thousand dollars – had been realistic once, but perhaps not now that he wasn’t there to keep an eye on things.

      On the other hand, his and Allan’s debts to the hotel and the boat-renter were much greater than that. In this sense it was economically advantageous to keep their distance, although visiting North Korea was certainly overdoing it.

      When this mess was all over, perhaps they could move the asparagus operation to an area where they didn’t owe anyone any money.

      ‘Thailand?’ Julius said aloud, just as the door opened.

      Allan held it open and allowed Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström to enter first. ‘Allow me to introduce my friend Julius Jonsson,’ said Allan. ‘He’s single, if the minister feels so inclined.’

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