by Joonas Huhta
Antler Plan
A Konrad Loki Thriller
Joonas Huhta
Random Revolver
ANTLER PLAN: A KONRAD LOKI THRILLER
Copyright © 2017 Joonas Huhta
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 13 digit: 978-9-529-392-766
ISBN 10 digit: 952-939-2761
Published by Random Revolver
Edited by Lizzie Harwood, lizzieharwood.com
Cover design by Anna Cowie, The Pixel Pusher
Cover image “Time Traveler” by Alessio Lin, Unsplash
Printed in the United States of America and Europe
www.joonashuhta.com
For my family
Contents
Note to Reader
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Note to Reader
Map of Rovaniemi, Finland, showing how the town was planned in the shape of a reindeer’s antlers… the “Antler Plan.”
1
THE SNOWFALL BURIED Konrad Loki alive.
Raw cold stung his face and made his eyes spider with frost; he felt his blood freeze white. The snow weighed next to nothing, but it made certain his head wouldn’t budge. With each second the thick snow became more packed with fat, lazy flakes, the nagging truth sank deeper into his mind.
His mistress was a suicide bomber.
Accompanied by tinnitus, Konrad reasoned that no algebra of the mind could have predicted her stunt. But failing to assess reality with both hemispheres of the brain was something that happened to other people, not him. Flying saucer zealots, priests, and fairytale men—whoever miracles happened to—would have been watchful for premonitions: whispers in the wind, a deep chill in the bone, or sudden darkness, with grasshoppers going biblical and obscuring the Sun. Unfortunately, reality was under no obligation to conform to human fantasies.
Konrad tried to blink snow out of his eyes. He focused on the hush around him. Dead silent. Finnish Lapland—a place where birds didn’t sing. Where only the snapping fibers of the ice-stiffened branches, exploding into muted gunshots, broke the deafening silence. Where death was most alive.
Could a man cycling to work in the blood-freezing weather be blamed for failing to read the suicidal signs behind a flirting woman’s smile?
His mind-altering stupor made him see his wife Julia’s expressionless face. A sudden swell of relief erupted in his chest. No more unpredictable melancholy streaks, no random cold shoulders, no deep funks with short-fused answers to simple questions. One less mystery in the universe. Besides, if he were going to find a way out of this mess, he would have to come out as clean as Gandhi and as elevated as the Father of the Nation.
If I live through this, I’ll be a better father.
After Konrad had swallowed past the cactus of guilt, something moved. A snow-crackling cacophony underfoot.
“Oh my God.” A woman’s voice trailed off in disbelief. “Is she dead?”
Konrad heard whispers. Hands digging into the snow around him.
“...an explosion...”
“...never seen so much snow falling in my life...”
“...is it safe to be in here?”
Konrad registered being logrolled, this way, then that. The dark-haired woman came into view. Frosty lashes, beautifully curving lips, brutally butchered body. No snow angels tonight. A ghost of a smile seemed to touch upon her face.
Sitting amid the papers flung from his briefcase, exposing his life to the world, was the biggest piece of his exploded helmet. It looked like a cracked egg.
A banshee wail of sirens crept up the valley below him. A flash. Someone took a photo. More smartphones were firing away.
Something stirred the crowd.
A voice yelled in a pursuit, “Stop! Thief! That’s his bike!”
I don’t mind. I stole it in the first place.
A man dashed through the crowd with a hero’s confidence in his voice. “Make space. I know CPR.” Upon placing his big hands on the woman’s chest, his confidence deflated. “She’s... dead.”
A few people’s hands shot to their mouths, the obvious confirmed.
“What’s taking the ambulance so long?” came an old woman’s voice.
The big-handed man shifted over to Konrad. Unable to hide nervousness in his voice, he said, “H-hang in there, buddy! You’ll be just fine.”
I’m already doing mental cartwheels…
Nearby, a car’s ABS clattered, controlling the wheels as they locked up on the slippery surface. With a devil’s whisper, the black ice under the fresh powder snow carried the car much farther than the driver intended.
“Look at this,” a woman’s startled voice said. She picked up a gun.
“Neat-o! A Parabellum!” A hooded teen squeezed through the crowd and shoved, sending a granny to the ground. A prison mug shot waiting to happen—the outcome when parents saddle their child with the lifelong curse of neglect or suicide. Or worse—too much control. He snatched the weapon from the woman’s hand.
Take it, and I will hunt you down.
“Gideon put down the weapon!” A woman’s voice cracked the air like a whip. “Move back! All of you!”
Two black-clad men entered Konrad’s peripheral vision and assumed control with ramrod exactness. A woman dressed in urban camo patterns that screamed ‘military’ came straight to him. She was small, sinewy of
arm and springy of leg, which carried her through leaps on the balls of her feet with ease. A cat-woman oozing sex appeal and sending off not-to-be-messed-with vibes at the same time.
“Blink your eyes if you can hear me,” she said in rasping, sore-throat voice.
Konrad did, gleefully.
“Doing graceless somersaults, Konrad?”
“Who... the hell... are you...?” he managed.
“Amnesia, your old friend.” A wink revealed her inward smile. “It’s me, Ruut Stark. You were my teacher in junior high. You have a severe head injury. Stay completely still. I’ll supervise your care.”
“Captain,” one of the black-clad men said, “you’d better take a look at this.”
Ruut took a paper handed to her and checked it with one cursory glance. She spoke to Konrad with a grave cast to her tone. “Blink to confirm, do you know the woman you collided with?”
Konrad put the pieces together. A suicide note? He kept his stare stable.
She stared back in a freeze frame of confusion.
Allahu akbar! She declared that God is great, and since I didn’t...
“Medical team and police are here, Captain.”
“Assist the police. Then head back to the base and wait for further instructions.”
“Affirmative.”
A medical team closed in with a clanging stretcher.
Ruut kept him company, refreshing his memory. “I’m the girl who always shot her hand up, unasked, salivating with my questions. You must have hated me.”
Konrad’s mind was blank. His world teetered.
Should I remember you?
The metallic rattle stopped next to Konrad. Paramedics prepared him to be lifted. Ruut mentioned to a paramedic something about frostbite, then turned to him. “Something doesn’t add up.”
An oxygen mask appeared on Konrad’s face. With last reserves of strength, he forced his eyes to stay open.
A paramedic screamed, “Pressures dropping, we’re losing him!”
“The woman carried something personal on her,” Ruut said. After stealing a glance at the dead woman for one strangely static second, her gunmetal eyes bored into his. “A will.”
Konrad slipped into oblivion with an echo as his only company.
...it bequeaths everything to you...
2
LIGHT PLAYED BACK and forth across the floor from the cracks around the door. Konrad stepped inside—into brightness.
A slicing pain spread through his head, as if his skull had been torn to shreds, ripped like fabric, then sewn all the wrong way round.
A big man dressed in white pointed at him with a penlight. The doctor’s great, gray side-whiskers framed a face blessed with unnaturally white teeth. He was big-bellied and plump-cheeked, a self-congratulatory smile planted on his face. Like a hundred-meter bronze Buddha statue with the satisfied face of a man post sex.
“Open Sesame, Mr. Loki,” the doctor said. “My name is Doctor Olaf. You are high on pain medication, so go easy. I know that you don’t believe in miracles, but your recovery has been remarkable. You must have a guardian angel. But since keeping up with the world affairs in a coma can be challenging—here’s someone who’ll bring you up to speed.”
Having assessed Konrad’s status, Olaf nodded over the bed at another man in the room who was dressed in black. The man evaluated Konrad from under a pronounced brow with onyx eyes and colorless lips thinned into cynical lines. The nametag on his chest declared authority.
“Excuse us, Doctor,” the man said.
Olaf made his exit.
“My name is Kaspar Nyman. Police. A few routine questions. Your name, age and birthplace?”
For a moment Konrad’s tongue was stuck as if on cold metal. “Konrad Loki, 38. Born in Helsinki.”
“Your occupation?”
“I’m a professor at the University of Lapland. Teacher Education. I bet you have figured that out already.”
Kaspar’s eyes glowed with animal pleasure. “Oona Louhi—does the name ring the bell?”
In a burst of memory, Konrad saw the dark-haired, suicidal woman smiling at him.
“Never heard of her.”
“Did you know she’s dead and buried? That she is being mourned by a husband and two children?”
Konrad remained quiet and fought against the penetrating gaze under which he could feel his defenses melting away.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Kaspar took a magazine under his armpit and threw it on Konrad’s chest. The awkward headline leapt out:
LOVE PROFESSOR’S EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES.
“You’ve been harassing women students at work.”
An invisible fist hit Konrad in the chest. “What? That’s bull—”
“Shit has hit the fan,” Kaspar said, mid-flow. “Deal with it.”
Konrad pursed his lips. Kaspar wouldn’t hear that this misconception could have come from the way he always spoke about sexual education and pedagogical love frankly. In Finland, the majority received a silent sexual and emotional upbringing, as parents were oblivious to how to deal with children’s questions. People didn’t even touch each other. He was never touched, only when someone bumped into him by accident. Or when he found himself cramped in an overpopulated sauna of 100°C, being hit by birch bath whisks with lukewarm beer spilled upon him. Finnish men didn’t talk to strangers but saw no problem in spanking each other. What can you expect when you’ve sauna-ed out emotional problems for centuries?
“Theories about your relationship with Oona keep popping up like mushrooms in the rain,” Kaspar said. “Especially now that everybody knows about the will.”
“Excuse me?”
Kaspar shot a glance at Konrad. “The will found at the crash site by Captain Ruut Stark, who probably saved your life.”
“Has she also accused me of sexual harassment?”
“Does she have a reason to do so?”
“Mother of Thor! I’ve managed to insult everybody. Ruut promised to take care of me, and since she’s not here—”
A monitor beeped.
“You are not supposed to get angry,” Kaspar said, indifference in his voice.
The door opened. Olaf said, “I’m sorry, but Konrad’s blood pressure—”
“We’re fine!” Kaspar boomed with all the grace of a cannon.
Olaf withdrew his head, and the door clicked shut.
Kaspar continued while searching for a cigarette in his pocket, “Anyway, the sexual harassment complaints are the least of your problems…” He lit a Camel.
Breath bottled up in Konrad’s chest.
“Wait a minute. The woman blew herself up, and I’m the suspect?”
Kaspar opened a window. Cold air streamed in. “Tell me about your weapon.”
Konrad recalled the teen. “I had the Parabellum P08 disabled. It can’t be fired. I kept it in my briefcase.”
“Why were you carrying a Nazi weapon with you? We also found an old compass and knife, both with marks like they’d been hit by a bullet.”
“I collect anything authentic that might motivate and intrigue my students. They’re my mementos. Once a Soviet sharpshooter shot at my father in the Winter War when he attended a wounded comrade. The bullet tore through his clothes by his heart but stopped when it hit a metal-framed compass he kept in his breast pocket. Currently, a student of mine is doing a master’s thesis about the upbringing of the Veterans. The Parabellum is purely a source of inspiration.”
“And the knife?”
Konrad looked at the man’s inscrutable face. “It could be a lesson in history, philosophy, or psychology. If the close-hit wasn’t traumatizing enough for my father, another close-call was when another bullet struck his thigh, near the artery. Fortunately, the bullet hit a sheathed knife, penetrating only the deer-leather and the wooden handle, coming to a halt in the thinnest piece of metal of the tool. Fooling death twice, he collapsed. He became unhealthily interested in collecting wrist-watches from dead S
oviets. Looting wasn’t an uncommon practice—everybody is interested in the background of the dead.”
Kaspar blew smoke out one side of his nose. There was a silence loaded with unsaid thoughts. “So, Love Professor. Are you a religious man?”
“Irrelevant question. Religion is just a miserable creation the human species tries to impose on itself so it behaves better.”
Kaspar’s forehead wrinkled. “It strikes me as odd that Oona named you as the receiver…”
“Of?”
“How well do you know the Ten Commandments?”
“I like to break the first four commandments as much as I can.”
“In her will, Oona left you a message,” Kaspar said. “‘Not in the seventh commandment.’”
Konrad recapped, “The seventh commandment says, ‘Thou shall not commit adultery.’ Is she saying that something is missing?”
Kaspar tilted his head. “What does adultery mean to you?”
“Men cheat to get laid, women for another life. But the manifestations are the same: feeling you are sinking to the lowest degree of existence and sorting it all out in a sea of tears and beer. From a historical perspective, adultery has always existed. Some adulterers still get tarred and feathered and driven out of town, others are stoned to death.”
