The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man. Jonas Jonasson

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       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.