James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

“Agreed.”

“Yer in luck. Once a month, the real toffs have a poker game, which is tonight. They meet, play, and make deals for women, gambling rights, guns, dope. Even gas and oil. The whole shebang on a global level. Need a tactical nuke to build yer own dirty bomb, that’s the place to go. Different men are invited, dependin’ on the business at hand, and fly in from around the world to play. I’m told the Russian ambassador was invited tonight. You find him, and he can find yer girl.”

“Where?”

“King’s Royale. The game starts at midnight.”

King’s Royale. Helsinki’s other major whore bar. Owned unofficially by a Finnish billionaire-actually now a citizen of Monaco-Pasi Palo, who reputedly uses King’s Royale to launder money in Finland. Officially, it’s owned by a holding company owned by a holding company owned by a holding company registered in Singapore, and there the trail goes cold.

I know this because so many police want to see him jailed for trafficking in arms, women and dope, but especially arms. His business partners are reputed to be Russian mafiosi, including generals in the Russian army and the FSB, the new, democratic Russia’s KGB. His best clients are said to include Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and Than Shwe of Burma. Some of the world’s most vicious dictators.

“You ever been to a game?” I ask.

“We went once, cuz they wanted to talk to us about girls,” the Raper says, “but it costs a hundred thousand euros to get in. Too rich for our blood.”

“How tight was security?”

“Not like you might think. It’s in Punavuori, and you can’t exactly line up fifty men with Uzis in that trendy little part of town, can you, mate? Just a few men. Two at the door that leads from the nightclub upstairs, but they can’t hear nor see nothin’ downstairs. Two outside the delivery entrance to usher the players in-they come and go that way-one bloke stays at the door and the other escorts the players in when they arrive. A couple are posted outside the door of the room they play in, and more bodyguards are inside the room itself.”

It’s odd to hear that area, the district of Punavuori, called “trendy.” It used to be considered a dangerous place inhabited by lowlifes. Gentrification. “How can they run a high-security game with a nightclub in full swing?”

“For you, mate, that’s the beauty of it. Ya got one club upstairs, and another one downstairs, as they spin different kinds of music, so each one’s soundproofed. An’ behind the downstairs club is a private room, very posh, and also soundproofed. You could set a bomb off in there and nobody would know. A word to the wise. If ya go there, yer a dead man.”

“Do they always use the same security people?”

“Palo’s boys.”

“And do you know them?”

“Yeh, since he owns thet club we cross paths once in a while, us bein’ in the same trade and all.”

I snap open the lion’s mouth on the handle of my cane, run my fingers along the razor teeth, feel the sting and think. I turn to Sweetness and switch to Finnish. “Do you want to do this? We might get killed.”

He puts his knife back in his pocket. “I don’t think we have any choice. We probably won’t get another chance, and you promised her mom.”

At the moment, I’m so depressed about Kate, her problems and our marriage that I don’t care if I live or die. “ I promised her. Not you. Aside from creating an international incident that may land us in prison, it has all the hallmarks of a kamikaze mission that only an addled mental defective would consider.”

Sweetness chuckles. “I figured that out on my own. But a promise is a promise, and if you go, I go. I just don’t know how you can do it with your knee as fucked up as it is. And if I said no, I have a feeling you’d try to go by yourself.”

“Yeah, I would.”

“How?”

My pain level has gone down considerably since getting the cortisone shots. “Slowly and carefully. And that’s why I brought the sawed-off room sweeper.”

“Then let’s go.”

I check the time on my cell phone, wish I hadn’t destroyed my watch. It’s a few minutes after midnight.

I switch back to English and say to the whore-mongering brothers, “Put your thinking caps on and figure out how to get in and out alive, because you two are coming with us.”

“Why us?” the Raper says. “We gave ya what ya wanted!”

“Because,” I say, “the two of you are such harmless, pathetic, brainless morons that no one would suspect you of doing anything that requires balls.”

Pissed off and afraid, the Ripper says, “Ya told us you’d leave us be if we told yer what ya wanted.”

“No, I promised you no rat jacket. And you may not pimp the girls in your club, but you make deals with their pimps-don’t tell me you don’t take kickbacks-and in my eyes, that makes you scum.”

“They’ll fuckin’ kill us. We’ll have to leave the fuckin’ country.”

I draw my silenced.45. “It’s me now or them later. You boys are good at plying your trade. I’m sure you’ll start over somewhere else and prosper.”

In fact, I wouldn’t kill them or have Sweetness cut off their fingers, but I’ve done a good job of convincing them otherwise.

“Ya can’t just murder us. You’ve been seen. You’ll end up in the nick same as any other murderer, copper or not.”

I show him the taped-up.357 Magnum. “You pulled this. It was self-defense. We had no choice.”

Fear: the great motivator. He doesn’t hesitate, makes a call. The table is full. He says they’re happy to sit in when other players want breaks, and really, they want to come to talk business more than play. He gets the invite. My guess is they’re bush-league players and the others just think of them as easy money. Two idiots to fleece and send packing.

“You’re going to need the cash as a stage prop,” I say, “to convince them you’re there to play. Find it.”

“You expect us to have two hundred thousand euros just layin’ around to no purpose?”

“I hope you do,” I say, “for your sake.”

He turns even paler, scowls, furious at having his life turned upside down, calls me a “filthy fucking rat bastard prick,” and says, “I guess we gotta take it with us to flee the fuckin’ country anyway, cuz of you.”

“It would likely be in your best interest,” I say.

He pulls a cheap reproduction of a Pre-Raphaelite painting off the wall to reveal a safe behind it. It’s stuffed with cash. He jams it all into a gym bag. “I guess you win, mate,” he says, “but goddamn you to hell fer it.”

“We’re not fucking friends,” I say, “so if either of you calls me fucking ‘mate’ one more time, I’ll shoot you on general principles. So fuck you and let’s go.”

We go out to the Wrangler. The Ripper sits in front beside Sweetness. I sit in the back beside the Raper, my silenced Colt pressed against his side. They might try to bolt and run while we’re at a traffic light. This gives them incentive to stay in the vehicle and behave. We park down the street from King’s Royale. To reach the back of the club and the delivery entrance, a vehicle has to pass through an alley. The buildings on both sides of it make the alley a perfect shooting gallery, while hiding and protecting the guards at the club door around the corner at the back of it. I have no visibility for the first leg of this operation.

How to do this? The Harper brothers could just forewarn the guards that police are coming, walk in, the door locked behind them, and earn some points from Pasi Palo for the tip-off. No doubt they’ve both already considered this.

“You two remember who you’re dealing with,” I say. “Two cops from the National Bureau of Investigation.” They don’t know Sweetness is officially employed as a linguistic specialist. “If you screw us, we’ll kill you tonight if we can. If not, we’ll ruin your business, charge you with all sorts of shit, have your books examined and nail you for tax fraud. I’ll make it my personal business to see you get max prison sentences. The list of our ways to fuck up your lives is long, and if you fuck us over, it’ll be your own asses you’re peddling, as if anyone would want them, instead of spending your evenings drinking cognac with spies and getting your dicks sucked.”