James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

“Those two are like Frick and Frack. Where one turns up, you generally find the other. I warned the chief if he fucked with me anymore, I would kill him.”

“You going to?”

I play with my cane, remember I need to wash the beer fat glop out of its mouth. “I don’t want to, but can’t rule it out. People lose respect for those who don’t live up to their threats. On the other hand, Roope Malinen hates our guts, he could have a part in all this.”

Roope Malinen, Finland’s best hater-he can boast of writing the nation’s most popular blog-was elected to parliament and chairs the committee on immigration affairs. He hates us because we humiliated him and exposed him for the dickless coward he is. He most likely hates me the most, since I was the brains behind the operation that helped ensure Real Finns didn’t take the election. Plus, Malinen had his eyes on a million euros Veikko Saukko promised as a campaign contribution, and our activities made sure he didn’t get it.

Saukko, a billionaire racist, had promised to boot up a million euros to the campaign kitty if a display of serious intent to rid the country of immigrants was exhibited. I’m told that, after neo-Nazis murdered dozens of mostly blacks with strychnine-laced heroin, he was true to his word, but gave it to the National Coalition Party to disseminate.

I haven’t spoken to him since the death of his son. Saukko wanted me to investigate the case, the prime minister, who wanted to give Saukko his way ordered me to take it. Saukko, as well as the interior minister, wanted me to find and capture his son, Antti Saukko, a murderer, but not put him in the docks and make him face a court of justice. Saukko wanted to find his boy and give him his freedom, or a semblance of it, since that freedom would keep him under his father’s thumb, and the threat of a murder charge hanging over his head forever. Saukko likes manipulating his kids. I can’t think of a more effective way.

But Antti wasn’t fond of that plan, and when we found him, he drew down, tried to kill us, and he had to be shot in self-defense. Saukko might have been able to live with that, but since Sweetness put sixteen hollow-point slugs in Antti and left him faceless; and since Kate blew the man he hired to find his daughter’s killer in half with a sawed-off shotgun; and since the ten million in ransom money Antti stole from him disappeared, as I’m sure Saukko correctly assumes, into our offshore bank accounts, I can understand why he might want revenge.

Upon consideration, it could be that all these people with their various axes to grind are plotting against us together.

Sweetness asks, “We have all these powerful people lined up against us. What have we got to work with?”

I lie back on the couch with a couple pillows under my head and work it through. I was duped into a black op under the belief that its primary mandate would be to save women from being forced into prostitution. The op was self-funded, and we robbed the dope dealers of Helsinki blind to acquire those funds.

The true purpose was fundraising for the National Coalition Party, the party of the rich, and for Real Finns, a populist movement with an often incomprehensible agenda that changed almost daily. They did, however, manage to drain supporters from other, more centrist parties, allowing the NCP to win. The Real Finns garnered enough votes to take part in government, but because of their wilder policy positions, such as withdrawal from the European Union and a return to our old currency, the Finnish markka, were dismissed out of hand. They declared themselves an opposition party, and the NCP victory was complete.

However, in the event that the election didn’t work out as planned, I was given the job of collecting dirt on the Real Finns’ hierarchy and that of other parties as well, so they could be destroyed by scandal if necessary. Sweetness did the initial surveillance and proved to have a knack for recording people in the most compromising positions, but I needed him for other things. I decided to cover my ass and didn’t just collect skank on NCP competition. I hired Finland’s premier filth-monger, Jaakko Pahkala, a so-called journalist who freelances for all the skank rags, to surveil the NCP as well. I have something on almost everybody, except those who have nothing to hide, and there are few enough of those about.

And on the interior minister and the national chief of police, I have something special. Sperm samples, currently residing in Milo’s freezer, that connect them to the Filippov murder. They thought, pompous fools that they are, that they were so irresistible that Ivan Filippov’s mistress just couldn’t help herself and had to perform fellatio on them. She was collecting DNA to frame them for murder, though she ended up being the victim herself.

There were four samples, unmarked. Theirs, and those of two other crooked politicians I have yet to identify. Cigarette butts and their attendant DNA, the bane of the criminal. I scooped them up earlier in the summer while we were socializing with the rich and powerful aboard the minister of interior’s yacht. They even had the courtesy to smoke different brands and make it easy for me to identify them later. I knew which samples belonged to who. Offenders really shouldn’t smoke. I sent them off with the sperm samples to a private genetics testing lab.

The chief, Jyri Ivalo, tried to cover up the Filippov murder because he’d had an affair with the victim. In addition to the sperm, I also have a video of the chief engaging in a fetishistic sex act with her. Making the video public would have humiliated him and ended his career. I saw no need for that and suppressed the evidence involving him. Ivalo made me an offer to run a self-funded black-ops unit mandated to use illegal means to fight crime. Ivalo cited human trafficking as their primary target.

It soon became clear though, that Jyri Ivalo was disingenuous concerning the black op. Although I could fight human trafficking if I wished, Ivalo’s main objective was stealing from criminals not only for political fundraising but also personal enrichment. Further, the minister of the interior, who among his many other duties oversees the secret police, SUPO, was in league with him. They insisted that I and my accomplices accept a percentage of the money we stole. They left me no choice. If I wasn’t complicit, I wasn’t trustworthy. Their ax over my head: my wife isn’t a Finnish citizen. They would have her deported. I was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Flying his sex tape on YouTube would not only make him a laughingstock and destroy his career, but force the reopening of the Filippov case and possibly land him in prison. And now, it appears, he’s involved in threatening my family and placing them in danger. His gratitude for suppressing this evidence appears short-lived.

“Skank,” I say.

“Skank?” Sweetness repeats.

“The pix you and Jaakko Pahkala took of politicians taking bribes and having extramarital and/or homosexual liaisons. The material I’ve been paying to collect for months. It’s career-destroying material, and it was collected without regard to political party affiliation. It’s a powerful weapon in our small arsenal.”

“Where is it?”

“In Internet cloud space. Pahkala uploaded it to one account. Milo moved it to another, more secure account and shared the user name and password with me. We memorized it. There’s no written record that it exists.”

The flask reappears. My two underlings: a drunk and a stoner. Who could ask for anything more. “Killing us would eliminate that threat,” Sweetness says.

Yep. I try to think who I could trust to release the skank in the event of our deaths to create a tangible blackmail threat. Only one name comes to mind. Jari, my brother. I’ll write him a letter with the user name and password to get to the skank and elucidate.