40
Kate and I pass the week in quiet solitude. I don’t want to touch a gun right now. I tell Kate I’m tired of fishing and sleep late with her in the mornings. We read, watch movies, eat well. There is no talk of the past or future. We live squarely in the present.
On Friday, July 22, we watch the evening news. In Norway, a man named Anders Behring Breivik has gone on a politically motivated killing rampage. About three thirty in the afternoon, he detonated a bomb in Oslo, destroying or damaging government buildings. From there, he went to the island of Utoya, where a gathering of the Workers’ Youth League, affiliated with the Labor Party, was taking place. He went on a shooting spree. The body count is uncertain, but he killed between sixty and eighty people, mostly teenagers.
An hour and a half before embarking on mass murder, he released his manifesto via the Internet, well over a thousand pages, to hundreds if not thousands of e-mail addresses, titled A European Declaration of Independence. It explains his political views. Among many other beliefs, he calls for white nationalism and for the deportation or annihilation of Muslims in the Western nations, to preserve European Christendom. He wants to launch a counter-jihad in the spirit of the Knights Templar, and even claims to belong to a neo-Templar organization, Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, an anti-jihad organization sworn to fight Islam.
Most interesting, from the perspective of our agenda, is that he cites the writings of Roope Malinen as having influenced his own writing and thinking.
There’s footage from the destruction of buildings. Several people died in the blast. Some people on Utoya recorded the attack with cell phones and video cameras. Some clips make the news. We watch children being gunned down and dying. It’s heartbreaking. Kate cries. I can barely watch it myself.
Milo calls and asks me to come over to his boat. I tell Kate he needs something done that requires a person with two working hands. I give her a hug and kiss good-bye, and suggest she turn off the television and watch no more of this madness. She doesn’t.
Milo has a bottle of kossu and beers set out for us, in a cabin with a TV. I think the media is playing them over and over, but he’s recorded them. He pours shots. “Tomorrow is Go Day,” he says. “You were right-Malinen posted his itinerary in his blog. He’s going to his summer cottage to write his magnum opus, something to do with a cultural justification of misanthropy.”
“You know,” I say, “once you let that first bullet fly, there’s no calling it back.”
He nods. “I know. Malinen acting tomorrow in sympathy with Breivik will seal the deal. The guns, the video, the manifesto. No one will look further than him. We’ll walk away scot-free.”
I agree. “Let’s drink to your success,” I say. We pour them down our necks and light cigarettes.
“If you hadn’t tackled him, Pitkanen would have killed us both,” he says.
“Yeah, he would have.”
Milo pours us another. “Thanks for that.”
Brothers in blood, brothers in arms. “What did you do with him?” I ask.
“Drove him out to the countryside, packed his mouth with Semtex to get rid of dental records, then duct-taped his hands to his face to blow off his fingers, the point of course being to destroy his prints. And then, well, you can imagine the result. I walked about ten kilometers through woods until I came to a road with a bus stop, so no one would recall me being in the vicinity.”
With practice, we’ve become quite good criminals.
He points at a cardboard box, taped up, addressed and ready for mailing. “You thought releasing the info on prostitution would take attention away from us. It’s too late in the day and a Friday. It has to wait until Monday. I can mail these and plaster all our related documentation on the Internet then. Also, I can fly all the sex- and murder-related recordings of the chief and the minister at the same time.”
“Check with me first. The situation has changed. After today, you don’t need anything to deflect attention from you. And the bad guys don’t have a chance to make any moves before the doors are busted in, and there will be no confusion about who is who. The prostitution ring and murder investigations will drain police manpower and create a media circus. Generate a lot of confusion. Let’s choose our moment carefully.”
“You’d better go,” Milo says. “I have to make some changes to the manifesto. Skim through Breivik’s, then make some changes to mine. Claim that Breivik and Malinen were in contact and belonged to the same neo-Templar organization. Little stuff like that.”
I stand, and we share a brotherly hug. “You’ll make it happen,” I say.
He smiles. “From your mouth to God’s ear.”
41
I wake up, feel immediate fear and trepidation. I force myself to put those things away and ask Kate if she’d like to go out for the day. Maybe antiquing. I don’t want to stay in the house. The temptation to stay glued to the television and watch events unfold will be too great.
She agrees. She loves the Mercedes SL we leased, and she finds any excuse to drive it a good idea. We go to a few places, make frequent stops to rest my leg and fortify myself with beer. People around us talk. We hear snippets of conversation about a bomb and disaster. Then, in early evening, I suggest we dine out. We make it home just before the ten o’clock news, and finally, I give myself permission to learn the aftermath of today.
Everything was recorded on security camera tapes. Veikko Saukko’s head exploded like a melon slammed against an invisible wall. The chief and the minister got out of their golf cart near the green on the ninth hole. They disappeared into molecules. Where once was a golf cart, there was only a smoking pit. Newspeople quote Malinen’s manifesto. Those on the scene at his summer cottage aren’t allowed inside, but say police have informed them that Malinen has committed gun suicide, placed a.50 caliber Barrett rifle under his chin and pulled the trigger with his toe. They don’t say it, but this means his corpse is headless.
There is no talk of conspiracy or frame-up, only conjecture about why a prominent figure, both a member of parliament and unofficial leader of hate groups, would commit such an act. They show clips of him speaking in public in which he appears unbalanced. Psychologist consultants put their two cents in. I don’t have to watch long to know that Milo and Sweetness will walk away from this, that we’re all now free, that we and our families are safe.
I thought I might feel remorse because of this drastic and murderous act, but I feel only relief. I feel a sudden urge to make love to my wife.
• • •
ON TUESDAY, the shit hits the fan once again. Passports of hordes of women forced into the human slave trade are delivered to the police. Addresses in Finland and abroad accompany them. After orders from me, Milo releases videos of the chief and the minister with apparent murder victims on the Internet. Apartments used as houses of prostitution, under the auspices of Russian diplomats, are raided. Dozens of arrests are made. It’s a good day.
I receive a call from the prime minister. “Would it be possible for you to visit me here in my office today?” he asks.
“I’m sorry to decline, but I’m in Porvoo and unable to drive. The bumpy bus ride is hard on my injured knee. I would prefer not to.”
I hear the agitation in his voice. “Then may I visit you in Porvoo?”
No way I can get out of that one. “I would be honored.”
He arrives an hour later, exchanges pleasantries with Kate. I pour us old and rare single-malt scotch from Arvid’s collection, and citing warmth and sunshine, we go out to the backyard for privacy.
“I assume you’re responsible for blackening the reputations of the dead,” he says.
I don’t try to deny it, just say nothing.
“I’ve seen the dirt you collected, via Jaakko Pahkala.”
“The interior minister mandated me with the task of collecting it,” I say. “How was it he put it? He had observed that people adroit at one task usually succeed at others. I succeeded.” I add,
“Beating him was cruel and unnecessary.”
“An interesting complaint, coming from you. Fuck Jaakko Pahkala. Osmo gave you the mandate of collecting dirt on my political rivals, not the hierarchy of the National Coalition Party.”
“I’m compulsively thorough,” I say.
He gets down to business. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Or rather, peace and tranquility. I doubt you or anyone can give me those things. They spring from within.”
“No, but I can see to your professional well-being.”
“I’m thinking of retiring.”
He takes a step back, looking me over. “I admit, you look none too well.”
“I was shot up badly.”
“No more bullshit,” he says. “The videos of the minister of the interior and the head of the national police force, both members of my party-although they won’t be missed-will lead to an investigation of their cronies and allegations of corruption, which are largely true. If you release the rest of your blackmail material involving the National Coalition Party, it will cause me a hell of a lot of hardship spending my time on damage control instead of furthering governmental agendas. Some officials will be tendering their resignations, including the commissioner of the National Bureau of Investigation. Delete your dirt-and I mean give me your word that it is destroyed, no longer exists-I’ll see to it that you get his job.”
This is so silly that I guffaw. “You know that even if I swore that I would destroy it, it would never happen.”
He can’t help himself, gets the giggles and laughs along with me. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll get rid of my dirt on you.”
He sighs relief. “Good enough.”
The irony is great. Jyri Ivalo asked me to head a black-ops unit so he could become the Finnish J. Edgar Hoover. He’s dead, and if I wish, power of that magnitude will fall to me.
I drink off the rest of my scotch and offer the prime minister a smoke. He declines. I light up. “A lot of people are in line for that job ahead of me.”
“That’s my problem, not yours. The public loves you. You’re a romantic figure. You solve major cases, get shot to pieces, march on despite it. From my perspective, dirt or no dirt, you’re the best choice.”
“Were I to take the job, I would take a hands-on approach, investigate cases of my choosing, handpick my staff. I won’t be a paper pusher.”
“I don’t care how you choose to do your job, as long as you get it done. Why should I give a shit if you delegate paper pushing?”
“You asked if I want something. If I take the job, I want punishment of the people trafficking in women, both Finnish citizens and Russian diplomats.”
“There were fourteen Russians implicated. How am I supposed to accomplish that?”
“I’ll accept five convictions, provided the sentences are lengthy, served in Russian prisons. Of those too well-connected to face prosecution, I want five shot and killed. Call Putin. You have that power. The Finns involved all get prosecuted.”
He snorts, exasperated. “It can be done.”
“When do you need an answer?” I ask.
“Now. That’s obvious, or I wouldn’t have come here at your beck and call.”
“By the weekend OK?”
“No. A commission has to be formed to investigate this clusterfuck. You have to oversee it.”
It just gets better and better. Now I’m investigating my own crimes and those of my accomplices. To ensure that the lone-gunman theory is accepted, and that Milo, Sweetness and I walk free, I have to take the job. If not to protect myself, then them. I owe them that.
“I have to leave,” he says. “All this death, mayhem and shit bad publicity is a nightmare for me. What’s it going to be?”
“Deal,” I say. “Want me to stay in touch so you can be with me for the photo ops?”
“Yeah,” he says, “that would be good.”
We shake on it, I see him to his car. I go in the house and sit down to rest my knee. Katt takes his customary place on the back of the chair, paws around my neck in choking position, and I go back to reading Cop Hater.
Epilogue
October 1, 2011
I sit down at the Hotel Kamp bar. “And for the commissioner?” the bartender asks.
I’m now the commissioner of the National Bureau of Investigation. They put my knee back together well enough so that I can drive again. The pain is and likely always will be constant, but it’s bearable, and one learns to live with such things.
“A martini. You know how I like it.”
“The commissioner has made an excellent choice.”
Loviise Tamm brings clean glasses from the back and puts them in their proper places behind the bar. Since the moment Yelena walked in and found her on her knees in front of Sasha Mikoyan, she has never been in any danger. Yelena demanded Loviise be handed over to her, and her husband, as always, acquiesced. Yelena hid her in Hotel Marski, dropped a credit card, told the staff to cater to her every whim, gave her my phone number and ordered her to remain in her room and live on room service until she saw me on TV. Then she was to call me and tell me her whereabouts. Which she did.
Yelena’s faith in me must have been great, to believe I would succeed and be on television because of it. Perhaps, like me, the idea of saving one person caused her to imagine the thundering of hooves and the blaring of trumpets. I hope she heard them as she died. Perhaps she felt her sacrifice would raise her from chattel to savior, a Jeanne d’Arc. If so, in my eyes, she succeeded.
Loviise didn’t get her promised secretarial job, but seems happy busing tables and doing menial kitchen tasks here in Kamp.
When I introduced her to Kate, I heard no trumpets or thundering of hooves, but felt satisfaction nonetheless. Sweetness was right, saving Loviise and those other more than a hundred girls didn’t cause Kate to come running into my arms, proclaiming all was forgiven, but it certainly didn’t hurt my cause either. Slow but sure, our marriage is getting back on track.
It seems we’re all healing an inch at a time. Sweetness is attending the police academy. He likes it, although it put a stop to his morning-to-night boozing. It was harder than he thought. Last week, Milo managed to move the tip of his index finger a fraction. That brings hope that he may regain some use of his right hand.
The Finnish recipe for a martini is three parts gin and one part vermouth. It sucks the mop. The vermouth overpowers the gin. The bartender makes a double with Bombay Sapphire and a hint of vermouth, rubs a lemon peel around the edge of the glass, gives the shaker a couple swirls and pours. In addition to two olives in the drink, she puts a few on top of crushed ice in a second martini glass.
The bartender is Kate. This is her first day back at work after maternity leave. She’s giving the bartender on duty a break.
“Anything else for the commissioner?” she asks.
I take a sip. Perfect. “Such a well-made drink deserves a generous tip.” I slide a gift-wrapped box across the bar to her. She opens it to find diamond earrings and a matching necklace with a diamond pendant.
She gasps. “Kari! Why?” It’s all she can get out of her mouth.
“I just felt like it.” It’s true. I bought them on impulse this afternoon. “Want to stay here after work and have dinner?”
“We need a babysitter for Anu.”
“I already took care of it.”
“Then yes,” she says, “let’s have a date. Maybe catch a movie afterward.”
“Sounds great,” I say, and admire her smile as she serves the next customer.
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Helsinki Blood iv-4 Page 24
