by Nick Petrie
As if people only used guns to kill animals, Peter thought.
He locked eyes with Bjarni. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m going to look around.”
Down a short hallway, he found a bathroom and two bedrooms. The big bedroom was Bjarni’s: an unmade bed and dirty laundry. The small bedroom was storage for fishing equipment and car parts. The bathroom was tiled in gray, floor to ceiling, with a glass shower stall and a central floor drain. One kind of shampoo. A single toothbrush at the white sink. Nothing that a kid might use. No sign that Erik and Óskar had ever been in the house.
He heard a noise and pulled a fluffy white bath towel from a heated bar.
He peeked into the hallway and saw Bjarni, grim-faced and coming fast. He’d shed his coat and sling. The heavy white fiberglass cast ran rigid and right-angled from his wrist to his armpit. With his free hand, he swung a short-handled folding shovel, blade-first, directly at Peter’s head.
The static made its rapid calculations. Even sore and half-blind, Peter’s advantages were speed and mobility. Fighting the big Icelander in a corner of the tiny bathroom wasn’t the best choice. The narrow hallway would keep Peter at the point of the shovel, but he’d have more freedom to move.
He ducked out of the bathroom and backpedaled down the hall. With a left-handed grip on one end of the towel, he snapped the other end at the Icelander’s face. Bjarni slammed on the brakes and raised his broken arm to brush the heavy fabric away. The shovel tip carved a crisp curve from the wallboard.
The Icelander recovered quickly and swung the tool back and around, the dark sword tattoo on his forearm flashing as he pivoted his wrist like a samurai to keep the shovel in motion. It looked like the same black NATO-approved entrenching tool Peter had been issued as a Marine, with the same short folding D-handle and strong, sharpened blade.
As a weapon, it was far less effective without two working arms, but neither would matter if the steel bit bone. Trying to get past the sharp end would be asking for a new nickname, like Lefty or Eight-Fingered Pete. A direct hit would split his skull like an uncooked potato.
Either Bjarni had some weapons training or he’d seen a lot of kung fu movies.
Regardless, he came on.
The whirling blade drove Peter shuffling backward down the hall to the bedroom door, which stood open behind him. Still in reverse, he pulled the other end of the towel into his right hand and backed into the bedroom. The furnishings were spare, just a low mattress against one wall and a doorless armoire in the corner. Peter only had one good eye, but now he had space that Bjarni, still in the hall, did not.
He retreated until Bjarni was in the doorway, the shovel restricted in its movement but at the height of its orbit and beginning its descent. He raised the towel taut between both hands and caught the heavy blade on the thick fabric, then brought his hands together, threw a loop of strong cotton around the handle of the stalled shovel, and pulled.
Taken by surprise, Bjarni didn’t have time to correct. Stuck in the doorway with his free hand limited by the immobile cast, he instinctively tried to keep the shovel. It was the right idea, but Peter had two working arms. He yanked Bjarni forward onto his toes, then took two quick steps inside and brought his bony knee up hard into the other man’s groin.
Bjarni folded at the waist with a noise like a lonely kitten. Peter caught the man’s big square head in the crook of his right arm and hit him three times in the stomach with his left fist. Bjarni dropped the shovel, knees buckling. Rather than hold him up, Peter pushed him away. Bjarni fell backward and curled into himself.
Peter scooped up the shovel, then took a long step and booted the fetal Icelander hard in the meat of his ass.
The adrenaline blasted through Peter’s veins like a power surge.
Alive, alive, he was most definitely alive.
Breathing hard, he said, “Tell me we’re not done so I can kick you into next week. Please. Are we done, fuckhead?”
Bjarni’s eyes were wide and panicked, his good hand clutching his crotch, his mouth gulping air like a beached fish.
“Shit,” Peter said. “You’ll be all right. Come on, give me your hand.”
Shaking his head, he helped the Icelander to his feet and down the hall to the couch.
17
While Bjarni sank into the cushions and tried to create a safe space for his aching balls, Peter examined the folding shovel. The blade’s black finish had worn away at the business end, leaving the curved tip shining and polished by use. One edge was serrated, for chopping roots, branches, and, if you ran out of ammunition, the enemy. Peter had one just like it in the back of his pickup.
An excellent tool for backcountry camping and the zombie apocalypse. And maybe for a fucked-up Marine on the loose in Iceland.
“Let’s start with something easy,” Peter said. “Where’s my stuff from last night?”
Still short of breath, the Icelander nodded at a wall unit on the far side of the room, bookshelves over cabinets.
The storage crates from the corner had been spilled onto the floor, where Bjarni had evidently dug for the shovel. Kicking aside a climbing harness and ice axe, Peter found his phone and wallet and car key atop a stack of well-thumbed Yrsa Sigurdardóttir paperbacks. His cash and the black credit card were still in the wallet. His pants, belt, and fleece were folded neatly on a lower shelf.
Peter transferred his things to his pockets, put his clothes by the front door, then turned back to Bjarni. He twirled the shovel in his hand, the weight comfortable and familiar. “Next question. What did you put in my beer last night?”
The Icelander shook his head. His voice was a croak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Peter tested the shovel blade with his thumb. Recently sharpened. There would be a metal file around somewhere. He made a mental note to look for it. Then he kicked away the coffee table and swung the little shovel again, the blade coming closer to Bjarni’s face with each orbit. The Icelander’s eyes got wider. “Bjarni. What did you dose me with?”
Bjarni’s breath came back. “Já, okay, shit. I gave you some Molly.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“MDMA? Vitamin E?”
Peter shook his head.
“Ecstasy,” Bjarni said. “A party drug. Synthetic, very good quality. Medical grade. It made you feel good, I think?” He tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace.
Ecstasy was the classic club drug. It was supposed to lower your inhibitions and increase your feeling of social connection. And Peter had felt pretty fucking good. One with the universe and dancing like a freak until Bjarni and Dónaldur had kicked the shit out of him in that alley. Now the only thing that kept him from jumping out of his skin from the static was the rush of the fight still washing through him. Adrenaline had always been Peter’s drug of choice.
He poked at Bjarni’s chest with the sharp tip of the shovel. Bjarni stiffened on the couch. “Did somebody give you the drugs? Tell you what to do?”
Peter was thinking about the embassy man who’d wanted Peter to go home so badly he’d gotten him kicked out of the country.
Bjarni raised his palm and gently redirected the blade. “Why would anyone do that? Who is there to tell me? I sell Molly at the club.” He gestured at the house. “You think I afford this place as a bartender?”
“Then why dose my beer with that shit?”
“You asked about my cousin.” Bjarni glared at him. “The last time someone asked about Eiríkur, two men broke my jaw and sent me to hospital. I had nothing but beer, skyr, and smoothies for two months.”
Two men? That incident wasn’t in any of the reports Peter had seen. “Where’s the rest of your dope?”
Bjarni opened his mouth, then closed it again with a sigh. “In the freezer, under the cod cheeks.”
Peter took a backward step toward the open kitch
en. “If you move off that couch I’ll break your head. You got me?”
Bjarni raised his hands. “Já, já, I got you.”
With one eye on the Icelander, Peter put the E-tool on the kitchen counter, then dug under plastic bags of frozen vegetables and vacuum-packed chunks of fish parts until he found a yellow DHL mailer filled with thumb-sized clear plastic Ziplocs. Inside each was a small pile of pale powder.
He put the mailer on the counter and opened the fridge. A lonely block of cheese, a moldering cabbage, a half package of hard salami, and a few cans of beer. Also three cardboard cartons of milk, which seemed like a lot.
The first carton was almost empty. The next was unopened. The third, tucked way in the back, was stuffed with money.
He carried the mailer and the milk carton back to the living room with a jumbo bag of frozen peas and a smile. He tossed the peas to Bjarni. “Put those between your legs, it’ll help with the swelling.”
Bjarni arranged the peas carefully in his crotch, then looked sourly at the milk carton and the yellow mailer. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want your cousin Erik. Tell me where he is and I’m gone. I’ll even leave your dope.”
Bjarni shook his head. “Why do you continue to ask about Eiríkur? He is dead.”
“Wait. What?”
“He is dead. Your people killed him. Last winter.”
Peter watched the Icelander’s face, but couldn’t read him. “My people?”
“Who else came looking for him? The men who broke my jaw. Your people.”
Peter hadn’t seen anything about that in the Norwegian’s report, either. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Do the police know about Erik?”
“Please. My family, we do not talk to police. Besides, they would take him away for medical examination. Eiríkur is family. We buried him on the home farm.”
Easy enough to claim, Peter thought, and a convenient explanation of why Erik couldn’t be found. Also unprovable without digging up the body. Maybe Erik was still alive.
“Why would they kill him?”
“Why ask me? I do not know. Ask your people.”
When Peter had met Catherine Price, her emotions had been bare as bedrock scraped clean by a bulldozer. She hadn’t cared about Erik. She wouldn’t have sent a team of killers. She’d sent Peter to save the boy.
“How about Óskar? His mother and father dying must have been pretty traumatic. Is he okay?”
Bjarni glowered at him. “Óskar is also dead. What kind of men kill a child? What kind of man are you?” Bjarni leaned back into the couch and folded his good arm across his broken one. “Some things are sacred. I say nothing more.”
Bjarni’s stone face was pretty good. Peter still didn’t know whether to believe him. If Erik and Óskar were dead, why was someone trying to get Peter sent home? Unless there was another reason Peter didn’t yet know.
Changing tactics, he pointed at the DHL mailer with its cargo of little powder-filled bags. “How many doses in there?”
Bjarni blinked. “About two hundred.”
“How much for one?”
Bjarni just shook his head.
“Come on, I had fun at the club. How much?”
“Forty euros each. Five thousand five hundred krónur.” Then, despite his aches and the bag of frozen peas in his crotch, the big man brightened. “How many do you want? I will give you a good price.”
Peter wasn’t buying, although he admired Bjarni’s commitment to salesmanship. “How many did you give me last night?”
Bjarni looked away. “Four doses. Two in each beer.”
“Seems like a lot for one person.”
Bjarni shrugged. “You looked as though you needed it.”
Peter wasn’t going to have that conversation.
“So you’ve got about eight thousand euros in product.” Peter picked up the milk carton and spilled the contents across the coffee table. Euros and krónur and dollars in neat, rubber-banded folds. “That’s gotta be another ten thousand euros, at least. Maybe fifteen.”
The look on Bjarni’s face told Peter he was underestimating.
“That’s a lot of money,” Peter said. “Tell me where Óskar is and I leave now. Your money and dope stays here.”
“I told you, Óskar is dead.” Bjarni set his feet and leaned forward, shifting his weight. “Money is just money. Family is everything.”
“So you said.” Peter stepped into the kitchen and took the folding shovel off the counter. When he came back, Bjarni was still struggling off the low couch. It was always harder to get vertical after a beatdown. Bjarni looked at the ice axe in the scattered pile of winter climbing gear.
Peter shook his head, the shovel resting on his shoulder. “Stay down, stupid. You’re going to get hurt.”
Bjarni made it to his feet and moved forward, scooping up the ice axe with his free hand. The sword tattoo danced on his forearm, and he held his heavy cast before him like a shield. He’d been kneed in the balls and pounded in the stomach and kicked in the ass, not to mention getting his arm broken, but he was still on the attack.
Stubbornly protecting his family.
Peter almost liked the guy.
Bjarni brandished the axe. It was longer than the shovel but far lighter, so it would be quick and responsive. The serrated steel pick, designed for punching ice, gleamed in the lamplight. A good weapon, and a bloody one, if it made contact.
Peter sighed. Bjarni came at him, axe raised.
Peter snapped the shovel around at the end of one long arm and smacked the Icelander in the side of the head with the back of the blade. But gently, more or less.
Bjarni’s eyes rolled back and he did a few knee-wobble dance steps. Peter stripped the axe from his hand and caught the cast at the crook of the elbow, then eased the other man back to the couch.
“You’re okay.” Peter was fairly sure it was true. He went back to the kitchen and returned with two tall cans of Viking Beer. He popped the tops and held one out. “Are all you Icelanders like this?”
Bjarni grabbed the beer like a lifeline. He drained it without appearing to swallow, then looked at Peter with one bleary eye. “Like what?”
Peter sighed again. “Hard heads.”
“Hells já.” Even beaten down, balls aching, unable to stand, Bjarni jutted his chin at Peter. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me. Family is everything. I give you nothing.”
Peter closed his eyes for a moment.
He didn’t know whether Bjarni was telling the truth, or just telling a story to protect his family. Either way, Peter wasn’t going to get anything more out of him.
Fucking Vikings.
18
TWELVE MONTHS EARLIER
After a bath and a story, Óskar snores in his bed. Erik and Sarah sit again in the dining room, a cheap phone on the table between them. It’s nearly midnight.
Erik hoped Sarah would calm down during her walk. Instead she found a little market on 14th Street NW that sold disposable phones, bought one with cash to keep the phone invisible, then used the mobile browser to research attorneys. She used the same phone to leave a message with the answering service of Ginger Mulanax, a firebrand California whistle-blower specialist.
Sarah is, after all, a cybersecurity expert.
Mulanax calls back an hour later. She is on speaker now, her voice warm and strong, explaining how the federal whistle-blower statute works.
“People become whistle-blowers for many reasons,” she says. “Patriotism is one. So is pride in your work. Sometimes embarrassment or shame. But in essence, you would be informing on your employer, often revealing proprietary information, so there’s a huge amount of personal risk involved. Official whistle-blowers have to go on the record and cooperate with prosecutors, secretly record business conversations, obtain company docu
ments. It’s this cooperation that protects a whistle-blower from being sued by his or her employer.”
Erik looks at Sarah. He wants to make sure she understands the weight of this. It is like going into business with the government. So much is outside your control. The muscle in her cheek is twitching again.
Behind Ginger Mulanax’s voice, they hear the low murmur of voices. The attorney is calling from a dinner party. She doesn’t even know their names. She keeps talking.
“It’s important to note, however, that resolving a case can take years. It can be incredibly stressful for you and your family. Your role will almost certainly be known to the company well before the case is resolved. You’ll be fired. You’ll likely be named in a countersuit. All your relationships at work will be ruined. And it may be very difficult to find another job in your field.”
“That does not sound promising,” Erik says. “We have a young son.”
“You need to know what you’re getting into,” Mulanax says. “It’s not for everyone. But the federal government wants to encourage people to come forward, so the statute sweetens the pot a little. Whistle-blowers have the right to anywhere from fifteen to thirty percent of any fines levied and monies recovered by the government. That can be millions of dollars, or tens of millions. For some people, that money is enough to offset the difficulties. But there’s no guarantee you’ll get a nickel. You’re going to want to think about this, long and hard, before you decide.”
“What if we don’t care about the money,” Sarah says. “Is there a way to lessen the risk and speed up the timetable?”
“You just want the people caught?”
“I want him punished,” Sarah says.
Not them, but him.
If Erik had any doubts before, he has none now.
It’s personal for her.
Of course it is.
“I’m an attorney,” Mulanax says, “so I can’t advise you on a path outside the law. But many jurisdictions have a pipeline for anonymous tips. Any tipster would need to assemble enough documentation to compel the prosecutors to begin their own investigation, and do it in a way that protects the tipster and keeps their role a secret. It’s harder to do than most people think. If the company is big enough, they’ll have information controls in place. Once they know they’re in trouble, they’ll come looking. Without invoking the whistle-blower statute, a tipster won’t be protected from legal reprisals.”
