Lucifer's Tears

by James Thompson

  22

  I TAKE THE ELEVATOR from the parking garage in Helsinki’s central police station in West Pasila and head up to my office. My head throbs from the migraine again and it makes me stupid. I get off the elevator and walk ten paces before I realize I’m on the fifth floor, home to sex crimes and arson. I walk down the stairs to the fourth floor, which houses our three homicide teams and two robbery units.

  I ask our unit secretary, Tia, to run background checks on the bouncers and securitas from the Silver Dollar through the computer system. I don’t see much of Tia, or the other team members for that matter, because I’m so often on evening and weekend shifts. She and I communicate mostly through notes and e-mails. Tia keeps the murharyhmä ball rolling: takes care of paperwork, requests search warrants, does all the little things that make life easier for us detectives.

  Milo typed up eyewitness statements last night and e-mailed them to me. They’re inconclusive. The bar was dark and noisy. Only a handful of patrons noticed the incident, and of those that did, most were too drunk to make credible witnesses. None state the belief that the bouncers caused intentional harm to Taisto Polvinen. The rent-a-cops’ version of events rings true. Milo also formally interviewed the bouncers and securitas. I read their statements. They stuck to their earlier version of events.

  One by one, I take the bouncers and rent-a-cops from their cells to the interrogation room. They got their stories straight before Milo and I arrived. They keep their narratives vague enough so that it’s hard to punch holes in them. The bouncers portray Taisto as on the edge of a rampage. They’re sorry he’s dead, but they acted in self-defense. The rent-a-cops confirm that Taisto struggled as the bouncers ejected him. No doubt he did. I would have, too.

  When I’m done with them, I go back to Tia’s office. She has their crime sheets waiting. I take them to my office. The bouncers have each had a couple previous complaints filed against them, but no charges brought. Gum-chewing cow has a clean sheet. Skinhead has had two assault charges filed against him, one conviction. But he tried to revive Taisto. I have no reason to suspect him of wrongdoing. Milo and I will pass this on to the prosecutor, but much as I told Taisto’s brother, nothing will come of it. It’s Milo’s case, too, so I’ll ask his opinion first, but we have no reason to hold any of them, will have to release them. It’s dispiriting to me.

  I give the Internet versions of Helsinki’s three major daily newspapers a quick skim. They all contain thin stories about both the Filippov murder and the Silver Dollar death. I brought Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309 to work with me. I flip through it, consider what to do about Arvid, ask myself what I can do to help him. The interior minister wants me to file a report stating that the charges against him are fabrications. I question whether, if I do it, the matter will be dropped.

  Jyri said that Germany recently extradited an accused war criminal from the United States. I Web-search the case. The man’s name is John Demjanjuk. Israel, Germany and the Wiesenthal Center started bulldogging him twenty-four years ago, in 1986. They’ve managed to have him stripped of his U.S. citizenship twice. They’ve charged him with murder under two different identities. They’ll stop at nothing. Arvid’s guilt or innocence may have no bearing on whether he’s forced to stand trial. Filing a false report will accomplish little more than buying Arvid time. At age ninety, with enough delays, he might die before he’s arrested, but he looks too healthy to be that lucky.

  Pasi Tervomaa’s book doesn’t contain enough information about either Arvid or Ukki for me to draw conclusions about their guilt or innocence or the degrees thereof. I need to talk to the author. I Google his name and find contact info for him at the National Archives. I call and identify myself. He’s no longer employed there. He’s working from his home, writing books. They give me his cell phone number.

  I call Tervomaa and explain the situation. “If they extradite a Winter War hero,” he says, “the nation will be up in arms. Finland might declare war on Germany again.”

  His joke is poignant. The consequences would be dire. “Do you know anything about Arvid Lahtinen that’s not in your book? Something that might help me out?”

  “No. Of course I looked into him while doing research, but he wasn’t the focus of my book. He played rather a small part in the events I described.”

  “Why didn’t you call him and ask him for an interview?”

  “I did. Several times. He kept hanging up the phone on me.”

  “What about another Valpo detective at Stalag 309? Toivo Kivipuro.”

  “Why him?”

  “He was my grandpa.”

  “So you have a vested personal interest in your investigation.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know more about Toivo Kivipuro either, but I think what you’re really asking me is if the Finns stationed in Stalag 309 took part in the Holocaust. The answer is yes. In terms of scale, Finland’s participation was minuscule. In my opinion, though, any part in the Holocaust is unacceptable and punishable. Whether the detectives there killed men themselves or not, they colluded in the decision-making process of who would die.”

  Not what I wanted to hear. The truth of it unsettles me. “Where can I research this myself?”

  “Many of the Valpo records are where they’ve always been, in Ratakatu 12. It was then and is now security police headquarters, but historians are allowed to search records up through the year 1948. I’m going there this afternoon to do research for a new book. You’re welcome to join me. Get permission to visit and have them pull the files for you.”

  We agree to meet in an hour.

  “Bring a pen and notepad,” Pasi says. “They don’t allow cameras or photocopying.” He hangs up.

  I call Jyri and tell him to get permission for me. I need to see the Valpo files, but I don’t want to. The Bible tells us that the truth will set us free. I reflect that Jesus must have been unclear about certain of life’s realities.

  23

  I FIND PASI TERVOMAA waiting for me in front of SUPO headquarters. We recognize each other but haven’t met. He’s a regular at Kotiharjun sauna. He’s fortyish, thin and gaunt, but his smile reflects warmth. He waits while I finish a cigarette. The building is fortresslike granite block, gray and yellow, reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of the Lubyanka—KGB headquarters, former Soviet prison and charnel house—only smaller and less ornate. In fact, SUPO, as was Valpo before it, is Finland’s version of the KGB. They deal in counterespionage, counterterrorism, prevention of threats to internal security and related matters.

  “Your inquiry is an interesting confluence,” Pasi says. “I’m also researching a so-called war criminal. Lauri Törni.”

  I know about Törni. He fought for Finland, then for Germany in the Waffen-SS, and finally for the Americans. He changed his name to Larry A. Thorn, joined the Green Berets and died in a helicopter crash in Laos in 1965, while on a covert mission.

  We go inside. A custodian type meets us and checks our IDs. He has the files Pasi requested ready for us and escorts us to a jail cell in the basement. It only contains a wooden table with a reading lamp on it, and a couple of chairs. The custodian sets our files on the table and leaves.

  I think of the Lubyanka again. “Did Valpo torture enemies of the state in this cell?” I ask.

  “No,” Pasi says, “they did that in the interrogation rooms.”

  “I was only half serious. I can’t picture Finnish police torturing anyone.”

  “Don’t be naïve. Of course they did. In general, not as brutally as the Nazis or Soviets, but interrogations sometimes employed physical coercion. Beatings. Hitting the soles of the feet with nightsticks. Things like that.”

  We sit. He hands me files on Arvid and Ukki. “Let’s take a look,” he says.

  The dossiers are thin. I open Arvid’s first. Pasi and I read it together. The photo clipped to it is nearly seventy years old, but it’s Arvid. The top sheet gives vital stats.

  DOB: January 3, 1920. Arvid
enters Valpo service in 1938, at age eighteen, is stationed in Helsinki. I wonder how he got into the security police at such a young age. By 1940, he receives two citations for distinction in service. Reasons not stated.

  He’s fluent in German and Russian. He leaves Valpo service for a time to go to the front during the Winter War. He’s wounded in action. After recovery, he goes back to work for Valpo, this time up north, in the Rovaniemi station. In 1941, he’s attached to Einsatzkommando Finnland. The sheet states only Salla. No mention of a stalag. In January 1943, he’s again stationed in Helsinki. He’s fired by Valpo in June 1945. I ask Pasi why this might have been.

  “Anti-Communist White Valpo was replaced by Red Valpo, Communists and leftist radicals. The new security police were by and large men that the old security police once investigated. Out with the old and in with the new.”

  Arvid’s sheet details his commendations and medals. The Mannerheim Cross—the medal of honor. The Commemorative Medal of the Winter War. The Badge for Wounded Veterans. The Nordfront Crosses—awarded by Germany. The Order of the Cross of Liberty. The Order of the White Rose of Finland. The Order of the Lion of Finland. The list goes on.

  The last page of the dossier is a letter of recommendation dated August 12, 1938. The writer is Bruno Aaltonen, deputy director of Valpo. He requests that Arvid be accepted into Valpo service forthwith.

  “Arvid Lahtinen was connected to people high up in the intelligence community,” Pasi says. “Aaltonen took such matters seriously and wouldn’t have taken Lahtinen into Valpo unless he had the highest confidence that he was detective material.”

  I open Ukki’s dossier. In his photo, he’s nineteen years old. Ukki was a year older, but other than that, their files are nearly identical. Ukki and Arvid entered Valpo service at the same time, worked in the same duty stations during the same time frames, won almost all the same medals. Everything. The last page is a recommendation from Bruno Aaltonen that Toivo Kivipuro be taken into the security police as a detective. The date: August 12, 1938. It’s like reading about twin brothers.

  “Arvid lied,” I say. “He told me he didn’t know my grandpa.”

  “Given that they were so young, and Aaltonen wrote the letters on the same day, there must be a connection between your family and Arvid’s. My guess is that Aaltonen knew their fathers, and together, they asked Aaltonen for their appointments. That also might explain their assignment to Einsatzkommando Finnland.”

  “How so?”

  “Aaltonen was acquainted with the Gestapo hierarchy, all the way up to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Office, who formed Einsatzkommando. Aaltonen was also a friend of Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo. They engaged in extensive correspondence. Dozens of their letters have been preserved. The letters discuss family and work issues as well as politics. These kinds of personal ties became the basis for collaboration between German and Finnish officials. Arvid Lahtinen and Toivo Kivipuro were likely given their positions at Stalag 309 because their families were highly regarded and trusted.”

  I know nothing about my great-grandfather, not even his name. “You’re certain Arvid and my grandpa were at the stalag? Without a doubt?”

  “I’m a historian, an academic. I seldom state that anything is without doubt unless I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and I wasn’t there. But let’s call it a ninety-nine percent certainty that Arvid Lahtinen lied to you.”

  “Can you make a reasonable guess about what Arvid and Grandpa did there?”

  “Well, Einsatzkommando Finnland was mandated to liquidate Jews and Soviet political commissars. These are the people Arvid and Toivo worked with. Let’s just say that I think the verve and enthusiasm of Einsatzkommando might have been infectious. I gather the Finnish detectives and interpreters there often drank heavily. It’s easy to picture them getting drunk and doing things they never would have dreamed themselves capable of.”

  “You’re saying Finns lined people up and shot them.”

  “I can’t say that. I can say that, given the atmosphere, it seems likely.”

  He’s saying in that prevaricating way, typical of academics, that Arvid and Ukki were stone-cold killers. I’ve barely started this investigation, and I’m already discovering things that, four days ago, would have been beyond my comprehension. “How in the hell could this have remained secret for so long?”

  “Einsatzkommando destroyed records. Valpo destroyed records. But mostly, I think, nobody wanted to know about it. Those that did know wanted to forget.”

  “But all those deaths. Where are the bodies? Haven’t families looked for their relatives’ remains?”

  “I assume the bodies are still in mass graves in Salla. I estimate around a thousand of them. The Salla area was close to the western border of the Soviet Union after the war, a border that the Soviets eventually came to seal off with three parallel ditch-andbarbed-wire-fence installations, with checkpoints in between, to prevent their own citizens from escaping abroad, less so to prevent anyone getting in. So, if you were a Soviet citizen, you didn’t even consider digging somewhere close to the border area, no matter how strong a hunch you might have had about your vanished loved ones’ whereabouts. You were wary of even making public inquiries about such matters, because Soviet law forbade surrendering to the enemy, and so by Soviet policy, their prisoners of war were considered traitors. If the USSR had deemed it important to discover the fate of their nonreturning POWs, something probably would have been done. But the Soviet state didn’t, and such initiatives by private citizens weren’t options.”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t make sense. Finns don’t hate Jews enough to round them up and kill them.”

  “Maybe not. At most, something like eighty Jews were murdered in 309, and they were suspected Communists. Think of it this way, Einsatzkommando’s meat and potatoes in 309 were Communists. If they were Jews, too, it was an added bonus.”

  This is more than I can take in. “You’re telling me Arvid and Ukki are war criminals.”

  “I don’t condone their actions, but I understand the mind-set. I told you I’m researching Lauri Törni, one of Finland’s greatest heroes. Do you realize that he was a traitor?”

  “No.”

  “He fought the Soviets as a Finnish soldier, but when Finland signed a peace treaty with Soviet Russia, he was dissatisfied with the terms. Finland declared war on Germany, their former ally, but Törni joined the Waffen-SS in 1945, so that he could continue to fight Communists. He undertook saboteur training in Germany in 1945, so he could organize resistance if Finland were overrun by the Soviet Union. He surrendered to British troops near the end of the war, escaped from a British POW camp and returned to Finland. When he arrived, Red Valpo arrested him. He was sentenced to six years in prison for having joined the German army, with which Finland was at war. An act of treason. President Paasikivi pardoned Törni in December 1948.”

  “I’ve read about Törni, but never thought of him as a traitor.”

  “Few of us have. He was a hero. He went on to fight for the U.S. in Vietnam. He fought under three flags. Can you think why he might have done that?”

  “Because he was a warrior.”

  “Perhaps. But I think also because each conflict he participated in gave him the opportunity to kill Communists. He was a professional Communist hunter. You might consider Arvid Lahtinen, your grandpa and all White Valpo detectives in the same way, as Communist hunters. If you think of them in that light, perhaps you won’t judge them so harshly.”

  My head starts to pound. “I need time to absorb this.”

  “If I can be of more help,” Pasi says, “don’t hesitate to call.”

  I thank him, and leave him to work in his scholar’s jail cell.

  24

  I STEP OUT ONTO RATAKATU. The temperature has dipped to near minus twenty again. A little snow is falling. My phone rings and I answer.

  “It’s John.” His voice quavers.

  “Hi, John. How’s my new best budd
y?”

  “I’m in trouble. Please help me.”

  The disclosure comes as less than a bombshell. “Anything for you. You know that.”

  “I’ve been robbed.”

  This strikes me as suspicious in the extreme. I test him. “I’m near a police station. Get in a taxi, then call me back. I’ll give the driver the address and pay him when you get there.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  I thought not. “And why might that be?”

  “Please come and get me. I’ll explain then. I can’t go far. I’m outside and don’t have any shoes, and my socks are wet. I’m freezing.”

  No shoes? I have him walk to the nearest corner and spell out the names of the cross streets. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I say. JOHN ISN’T FAR FROM JUTTUTUPA. I make the short drive and pull over to the curb. John hops in. He’s the picture of misery, takes off his socks and pulls his legs up so he can warm his bare feet with the car heater. I park the car in a space next to the water. “Let’s have it,” I say.

  “I went for a walk and was headed toward downtown. A guy mugged me. He took my boots.” He sniffs. “I loved those boots.”

  “He didn’t take your wallet?”

  Head shake. “No. But he took the money in it.”

  “The truth, John.”

  He wants to concoct a better lie. He reads my face, knows I won’t buy it. He averts his eyes, stares at the floor of the Saab.

  I roll down the window and light a cigarette. Frigid air turns the car into an icebox, and barefoot John shivers in misery. I don’t care. “You promised me you wouldn’t upset Kate,” I say.

  He sighs. “I wasn’t trying to. It’s a long story.”

  I check my watch, have an hour until I meet Milo. “I’ll make time for it.”

  “I’m not a teacher anymore. I lost my job a few weeks ago.”

  Big shock. “And?”

  “It wasn’t all a lie. I was a Ph.D. candidate with a doctoral fellowship. I was a graduate teaching assistant and a good one, but I showed up drunk to teach a couple times and got warnings. Then I got tanked at a party and let a freshman seduce me. Word got around. I got fired.”