Sohlberg and the White Death

by Jens Amundsen

  “Karl and Bjørn then tell me that they want to be dropped off. I tell them I can’t do that. So they go back out on the deck . . . I see them talking . . . they go down to the staterooms. I hear them pounding on the door and yelling at the Russian perverts to stop. Then those crazy Russians—”

  Vikøren blanched. Rasch and Skrautvol watched as the man turned a nauseous shade of green.

  “Those crazy Russian bastards shoot both brothers. Karl dies immediately from a chest wound . . . Bjørn the younger one gets shot twice in the gut. He’s bleeding all over and screaming in pain. The two Russian animals haul the brothers up to the deck and get ready to throw them overboard. I put my foot down and tell the Boss that if the Ingebrigtsen brothers are dropped in the water then I will not pilot the boat. Period. I tell him, ‘Take it or leave it . . . I don’t care what happens.’

  “I want to stop the boat because it seems that Bjørn might still be alive. I think he might have a chance if we get him to a hospital. The Russian Boss gets his gun out . . . points it at my head . . . and tells me to keep going and not stop. And . . . before I can do anything about it . . . I see and hear the two thugs shoot each of the brothers in the head.

  “We haven’t even left Lyngen Fjord and I have this disaster on my boat. I need to stall for time. So I use my stall line . . . it’s a special line I built . . . it feeds air into the fuel line . . . stalls the engine.

  “I use the stall line for charter clients who abuse their privileges . . . or when I want to go home early. . . . You see . . . some clients want to go on fishing way past the agreed time . . . and without any night-time during the summer they feel entitled to keep fishing twenty or more hours. They think they can bribe me and the crew to continue working by offering us ridiculous tips. If we like them I just start the stall line and tell them we need to go back for repairs or risk getting lost at sea with a dead engine. If we don’t like them we take their tips and then I use the stall line.”

  “Clever. Keep on.”

  “I throw the switch and the engine starts stalling . . . I keep it up until the engine dies. By then we’re out at sea. . . . The waves get rougher. I make sure the boat gets rocked real hard by the waves . . . it never fails . . . everyone gets seasick . . . even the two psychopaths. Their boss is in worse shape.

  “Before the Russian Boss goes down below I tell him that we have to go in for quick repairs and to change a bad fuel filter. The animal has no choice. I warn him that I will sink the ship with him and everyone on board if his two goons throw the Ingebrigtsen brothers into the water.”

  “What was this man’s name?”

  “The two thugs sometimes called him Pyotr . . . sometimes Nicolai. But I doubt if that’s his real name.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Rasch and Skrautvol wanted to look at each other. This could be the break that they’ve been waiting and looking for. Nicolai Dvorkovich was the name on the Russian passport and Interpol badge left under the fish shack.

  “Why do you think Nicolai wasn’t his real name?”

  “Because I had to use the head . . . Cool Hand must have heard me coming down the stairs. He goes into the bathroom right before I get there . . . he leaves me a note in English on the sink . . . I can read a little English . . . he writes that we cannot leave Norway under any circumstances because FSB Colonel Pyotr Zubkov plans on killing me and sinking the boat as soon as we land in Scotland. I already figured as much.”

  “By any chance . . . do you still have the note?”

  “Yes. But I won’t show it to you until I have a written and signed deal with the prosecutor. By the way . . . Cool Hand wrote down that they were on their way to Scotland where a private jet would take them down south to Columbia with stops at the Azores and Barbados.”

  “We will be searching your home in a few hours.”

  “Go ahead. Cool Hand’s note is not here or in the cabin.”

  Rasch showed Vikøren a picture of the dead man who had the name Nicolai Dvorkovich on the Russian passport and Interpol badge.

  “Who’s this man?”

  “That’s Nicolai . . . also known as Pyotr . . . the Russian Boss with stainless steel teeth.”

  “Do you have a name for Cool Hand?”

  “Maybe his name is on the note. Maybe it’s not. But you won’t see the note until I cut a good deal with the prosecutor.”

  “Did Cool Hand tell you anything else?”

  “He wrote down that I had to quickly dock the boat somewhere nearby . . . and that’s when we have to take out the two thugs and their boss.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I tell Stainless Teeth that I have a place where we can land safely before heading back out to sea . . . it’s isolated . . . no one will see us while I repair the boat and we hide the Ingebrigtsen brothers.”

  “Did you head straight out to Per Moen’s fish shack?”

  “Yes. What an awful trip. Horrible. The worst was the silence after the Asian woman stops crying. . . . We get to Moen’s pier . . . I pretend that I own the property.”

  “Why did you pick Moen’s place?”

  “It’s very isolated. And I hate him. Over the years he’s called the police on me for stealing his fish. He’s promised to shoot me if he ever caught me. This was my payback . . . if someone found the bodies in his shack then he’d become a suspect and get blamed. If he found them then he’d have to get rid of them. I never thought he’d call the police.”

  “Go on . . . continue,” said Rasch.

  “We get there and I tell the Russian Boss that the brothers can be buried under the floor of the shack . . . but that I need his two goons to bury them while I’m fixing the engine. I tell Stainless Steel that the little outbuilding on the pier has the filter and other parts that I need to do repairs.

  “The two psychopaths get busy . . . they carry the bodies out of the boat and into the shack . . . that takes them a long time. I go down to the engine and pretend to look around . . . I ask the Russian Boss to come down and give me some help. . . .

  “While I’m waiting for him I make a garrote. . . . I can’t shoot him since he’s got to go quietly . . . without making any noise that the two thugs outside can hear. I grab the strongest fishing line and tie the ends to two small pieces of copper pipe. . . . He walks down the stairs and I’m waiting for him with my harpoon. I ram it deep into his back between the shoulder blades and feel it cracking his spine. . . . He groans loud . . . real loud . . . but doesn’t scream. No one outside the boat can hear him anyway. I bash his head in with a wood club that I use to kill fish. Then I use my fish line garrote to strangle him. I hated that evil bastard . . . I could feel the line going all the way through his neck . . . I was so worked up that I even felt the line slide into the soft disc between the neck bones. I almost cut his head off.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The intensity of Vikøren’s confession quickened the pulse and heartbeats and breathing of everyone in the room.

  “I drop the Russian Boss on the floor and see that Cool Hand is up at the top of the stairs. He’s been watching me . . . he’s also been a lookout protecting me from the two goons outside. I realize that he’s not going to double-cross me because he hasn’t warned them.

  “I get hold of my guns . . . I hid them on board because I had bad vibes about the whole thing from the start. I take my Beretta semiautomatic handgun. . . . I give Cool Hand my sawed-off twelve-gauge Remington shotgun. We also grab a lot of my deep-sea fishing tools . . . gutting knives . . . and gaffs. They’re perfect for hand-to-hand combat.

  “We’ve got guns and knives but I still wonder how we’re going to take out the two goons who have submachine guns and semiautomatic pistols. But it’s got to be done.

  “We step out to the pier and realize that the two Asians and the old man have left the boat in a panic. They’re running down the beach . . . one of the psychopaths is running after them. He shoots them dead . . . he turns and sees us and starts running back to the fish shack.

&n
bsp; “We’re about ten yards from the shack when the other psychopath walks around the corner . . . smoking a cigarette . . . he sees us and starts shouting and shooting. Cool Hand goes down. I empty out my gun on the thug and think I’ve killed him. By this time the other hood has arrived and started shooting at us. I take cover behind a rock and the bastard is walking up to me . . . firing away to kill me when Cool Hand rolls over and shoots him with the shotgun right between the legs. . . . I hear the hood’s submachine gun go off as he goes down . . . Cool Hand dies under the psychopath who traps him down with his deadweight.

  “I grab my gaff and let the dying hood have it. I finish him off with my gutting knife. I go and check on his friend who’s down and bleeding but still breathing. Barely. But still alive. My gaff and gutting knife make sure he breathes his last.”

  “So you’re the only survivor?”

  “That’s how it is. I can’t change that. Sure . . . I wish that Cool Hand and the Asians and the old man had made it. But they didn’t.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Why cut off everyone’s hands?”

  “I panicked. . . . I didn’t want their fingerprints pointing back to me.”

  “Is that why you hacked off the faces of the Ingebrigtsen brothers? . . . So no one would recognize them?”

  “I’m not proud about that. But I was terrified. I was sure that the Russians and the Columbians would send someone out here to finish me off.”

  “Why didn’t you put all the bodies back in the boat . . . then toss them out in open sea . . . or leave them inside the boat when you scuttle it?”

  “Are you hearing what you’re saying? . . . You can’t plan an ending to a thing like that with a clear head. Do you have any idea how much a dead person weighs? . . . I had a hell of a time dragging the Russian Boss out of my boat! . . . It was awful. All that blood all over my beautiful boat from him and the brothers.

  “I thought that I could clean my boat and keep it . . . but I soon realized that I’d have to get rid of it.

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. Luck and adrenaline got me through that nightmare. . . . I was mentally and physically exhausted. I’ve been so damn tired ever since. . . . I’m always thinking about what happened. . . .

  “Blood everywhere. The two Asians . . . they had tears in their faces. The old man peed and pooped in his pants. You think it was all fun and games to bury them all? . . . Take off their clothes? . . . Shove them like garbage under the floor of the shack?”

  “What did you do with their clothes and belongings?”

  “Burned everything in a barrel on the deck before I sank the boat.”

  “Where?” said Rasch.

  “One mile out at sea. You’ll never recover her. She’s too deep.”

  “How did you get back to shore?”

  “The Zodiac . . . the raft they bought me for the ship-to-shore delivery in Scotland.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Alright,” said Chief Inspector Skrautvol. “We have enough for now. It’s time for all of us to go back to headquarters.”

  Vikøren winced. “Am I under arrest?”

  “Do you want to be? . . . It really doesn’t matter . . . does it?”

  “No. But—”

  “You’re only being brought in as a witness for now. You and your lawyer can haggle with the prosecutors over whether you will be charged with human trafficking or smuggling . . . and obstructing justice or destroying evidence.”

  “But—”

  “You’re alive . . . right? . . . You should be grateful for that. You should also be grateful that you won’t be charged with murder since you clearly acted in self-defense . . . if you told us the truth.”

  Kjersti Tellefsen whined in her grating voice: “Do I also have to go in with him?”

  “Yes,” replied Skrautvol. “But not in that skimpy outfit.”

  Vikøren’s woman scoffed at Skrautvol and then said:

  “Don’t you start judging me Missy!”

  ~ ~ ~

  Back at headquarters Skrautvol did not have to think hard or long about whom she would call in British law enforcement to investigate Devin Archer—the “British guy” who hired Ervin Vikøren for the tragic charter. She remembered how quickly Chief Superintendent Job Pinkman of London’s Metropolitan Police had responded when Sohlberg had asked Pinkman to arrest the devious and murdering husband of a Norwegian billionaire heiress whose husband was best known for leaving puréed pieces of her inside the garbage disposal of their mansion’s kitchen.

  Skrautvol called her assistant into her office and handed him a note. “I have a phone number for someone in London’s Met. Could you please call him and set up a phone conference?”

  Jon Kirkvaag smiled. He had C.S. Pinkman on the phone in less than 15 minutes.

  Skrautvol explained the situation to the Scotland Yard detective.

  “Devin Archer? . . . Oh yes. I know him.”

  “What can you tell me?” said Skrautvol while trying not to get her hopes up too high.

  “For starters . . . Devin Archer is not British although he’s adopted the accent to hide his past. Devin Archer is nowadays a citizen of Ireland . . . but he’s really a Yank . . . born in Florida.”

  “Tell me everything you can.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “His father . . . James Bam-Bam Archer was a race car driver in the Sixties and Seventies . . . made a big name for himself in the Daytona Five Hundred race. The son joined the father’s racing team . . . it seems that the business then expanded into drug smuggling for the Columbian cartels in the seventies and eighties. It’s all rumors mind you. Nothing’s ever been proven. . . .

  “Bam-Bam Archer was one of the original Cocaine Cowboys who made Miami the center of cocaine smuggling into the United States. The cowboys used very fast airplanes or boats or both to bring Columbian coke into Florida.

  “Those were the golden days of the Cocaine Cowboys . . . the local economy in Miami grew like crazy . . . banks in Miami got into money laundering the drug profits . . . they helped the cartels ship their profits out of the U.S.A. into cozy tax havens like Cayman Islands and Switzerland.

  “Archer and his three young sons got implicated by an informant . . . Barry Seal. He casually mentioned their names when he first started talking with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Barry Seal said that the Archers were colleagues of his . . . working for the Ochoa Brothers . . . major figures of the Medellín Cartel. At first the D.E.A. paid little attention to Barry or the Archers because the local and regional D.E.A. agents were on the take . . . in the pocket of both the Cali and the Medellín Cartels.

  “According to Barry Seal . . . the father and son team used fast boats to smuggle five tons of cocaine into the U.S.A. every month for the cartel. This interesting little nugget of information got lost priority-wise . . . then some bright bulb at D.E.A. headquarters in Washington D.C. finally woke up and got interested in Barry Seal and his interesting tidbits of information.

  “Barry became a very valuable informant for the Americans because he had direct personal dealings with all the top people in the cartel. But . . . as usual . . . the Medellín and Cali cartels each had their own very high level moles deep inside the D.E.A. and the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. . . . Barry Seal met a timely death from the Columbians’ point of view . . . he was shot to death in his car before he could testify on everything that he knew.”

  Skrautvol chuckled. “How convenient.” She looked out the window and marveled at the power and the dark glory of the Lords of Cocaine.

  ~ ~ ~

  “The Archers,” said CS Pinkman, “must be very smart or very lucky or both.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because there have been zero rumors about them ever since Barry Seal’s demise in eighty-six. Here’s how I see it . . . it’s my opinion mind you . . . the Archers either have friends in very high places in the U.S.A. who are still covering up the Archers’ on-going criminal activities . . . or the Archers completel
y retired from smuggling coke.”

  “What are the chances of one or the other?”

  “Fifty-fifty. It could go either way . . . but I think the Archers are addicted to the money and lifestyle that cocaine smuggling brings them. The father . . . Bam-Bam retired from racing after his oldest son died in a car race. . . . The second son died from a heroin overdose. Bam-Bam took Devin . . . the youngest and smartest son out of university . . . put him under his wings . . . coached him . . . Devin became a top driver at the tender age of twenty. . . .

  “Devin’s a smart one. No doubt about that. He returned to school and graduated while he was racing. He went on to California and got an M.B.A. from Stanford. He’s got brains and business savvy . . . that’s why he became more successful than this father.”

  “How so?” Skrautvol said.

  “Devin left the American NASCAR racing scene . . . he jumped into the big leagues with the international Formula One races . . . which are very profitable. Of course the team owners . . . and the car builders like Bernie Ecclestone . . . became billionaires thanks to the television and marketing rights . . . but the drivers themselves make out very well with endorsements and purse winnings.”

  “Is he a wealthy man?”

  “Has to be. Devin Archer’s substantial wealth made it necessary for him to renounce his American citizenship . . . he became an Irish citizen to avoid paying rather onerous U.S. taxes.”

  “Could it be that he also wanted to avoid questions from the American tax authorities if he and his father are still in business with the Medellín Cartel?”

  “Absolutely. I always suspected him although I have no evidence that he was or is in the trade . . . of course that’s all changed now that you told me that your suspect up in Norway imported a ton of cocaine for Devin. . . . Funny . . . I’ve always thought that he and his father were still in the trade.