James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

Milo’s complicated plan to perpetrate the mass-murder frame-up of Roope Malinen requires a.50 caliber Barrett, as it’s a sniper rifle he’s familiar with, but he doesn’t want to use his own because of a possible ballistics match. He has cheap automatic pistols we stole from drug dealers and kept to use for frame-ups or as throw-down guns, but he needs a military automatic or semi-automatic rifle for a frame-up video he wants to make. Something that can at least be fired as fast as the trigger can be pulled.

This presents a problem for him because of the severely limited use of the fingers of his right hand. Physical therapy is improving it, but we don’t have six months or a year to wait while he regains sufficient mobility to rapid-fire a weapon. It is, however, he says, sufficient to pull a hair trigger on a sniper rifle. Via his home network connection with the police database, he’s found a person with the firearms he needs to do the job. A retired army major in Helsinki has a Barrett, a pair of Sako military-issue RK-62 assault rifles, and an Israeli Uzi submachine gun. He intends to B amp;E the major and steal his arsenal.

I ask him what kind of plan might require that many weapons. He doesn’t know, but all the bases will be covered. He also intends to visit an underground construction site and use his police card to weasel his way into an explosives cache, claiming a need to inspect them. He’ll take Sweetness, create a diversion, and they’ll steal a small quantity of high-grade explosives. A little, he says, goes a long way. But that’s a project for another day. Today, he’ll get his boat and dock it in Porvoo.

“And how do you intend to kill the minister of the interior and national chief of police?” I ask.

“Don’t know for sure yet, but probably while they’re golfing, which means we have to pick a Saturday for this.”

“We?”

“Aren’t you going to kill Jan Pitkanen?”

I don’t want to think about it. He tried to murder my wife and child and killed an innocent girl instead. I have no way of stopping him from attempting the same again. I have no legal recourse. I can’t see that I have much choice. Still, I’m so conflicted about it that part of me wants to let him live, just put all this behind us, and internally, I keep waffling about it. Not killing him, however, is a threat to us all, and this isn’t all about my wants or feelings. I sigh. “I guess so.”

He senses my reluctance. “Do you want us to do it for you?” Milo asks.

I can’t ask someone to commit a murder on my behalf because I don’t have the will. “No.”

“Then you have to time it with us. He’ll just be another dead guy in a crowd.”

I nod. This is at once all logical, pragmatic and insane. What’s more, I have no doubt that we’ll get away with it, for the simple reason that no one would ever believe it. I picture the headline: HERO COPS ON CRAZED SHOOTING SPREE. That’s never going to happen. As Arvid Lahtinen once told me, “It would be like trying to convince people that Jesus was a pedophile.”

Milo gets in the shower. Anu sleeps in her stroller beside my chair. I warm her formula, put cups of coffee on a tray and, precarious, carry it with one hand and rap on my bedroom door with my cane.

A sleepy voice says, “Come.”

I walk in, sit on the edge of the bed and lay the tray on it. “I thought you might like to have a little family time this morning,” I say.

Kate looks at me, her face blank. “What family?”

I don’t know if she’s being sardonic or genuinely doesn’t know. “Your husband and daughter.”

I see confusion in her eyes. She doesn’t know who I am. Then, maybe because daughter equals Anu, and our baby is a touchstone for her, even when she was in a dissociative stupor, she snaps back into reality and the present. She tries to cover her lapse with cynicism. “Oh, that family. Applied to us, doesn’t that make a mockery of the word?”

She radiates anger, but truly because of frustration caused by her lapse, not by me. “Anu doesn’t need a bottle. I can breast-feed her.”

“I’m sorry, Kate, but you can’t. You’re using medication that prevents it.”

This makes her choke back a sob, but she says nothing.

I don’t know if she remembers this has been discussed. “We’re leaving today,” I say, “to take a little vacation in Porvoo. It’s a charming town, mostly Swedish-speaking. The old town has the kinds of arts-and-crafts stores you enjoy. We’ll stay in the house Arvid left me. It’s a lovely home on the river. I think you’ll be happy there.”

Kate has always been so demonstrative. Now I find her inscrutable. “Who knows,” she says, “maybe I will.”

If I could jump up and down for joy, I would. Kate has uttered something positive to me for the first time in weeks.

I ask Milo if he minds to drive me to Kamp for my meeting with Yelena. He says, “Sure,” and gets dressed.

We take his Crown Victoria. My phone rings as we pull out. Phillip Moore.

“Vaara,” I answer.

“Hello, lad. I’ve called to give you a heads-up. Is your phone secure?”

“The securest.”

“My situation went slightly awry. I decided to decline your generous offer to let me and my family live unless I committed double murder. I intended to take my family and leave the country instead, and so I resigned my position, effective immediately. Saukko took exception to my resignation, never mind that I’ve worked for him for five years and said nothing against him, just said I’d like a change and to move on. He said, ‘Congratulations, you just made my Shit List,’ and had me escorted off the property without even letting me get my kit. I took great umbrage at such treatment.”

“And you’d like me to help you how?”

“It’s me trying to help you, despite the fact that I may kill you one day. I wanted my things and had no intention of being on a death sentence list, neither yours nor his, so I went back and cut the throats of those two Corsican bastards-they were sleeping like babes-took their passports, and appropriated the keys to the safe-deposit box, both Saukko’s and theirs. I did a little passport doctoring and replaced the elder Corsican assassin’s photo with my own, went to the bank, emptied the safe-deposit box and took my retirement fund.”

“A mocked-up passport altered by hand in a hurry got you into that box?”

“It’s July, I took a gamble that the regular admin was on vacation, and it was more than sufficient to get by the zit-faced zombie summer intern from the university.”

“You’ve been a busy man,” I say. “Why are you calling me?”

“To let you know the Corsicans are dead and end our relationship. For now. You know, I never truly feared you. Your torture-session stage props were a bit over-the-top, like a movie cliche, and it wasn’t sodium pentothal and LSD in those syringes, was it?”

“No, it was vodka.”

“The poor man’s truth serum. Injected alcohol works to a certain extent. Good thinking. The reason I’m calling is that I’m no longer in the country, and both keys to the box are at the bottom of the Baltic. Saukko has to find himself more killers, and there aren’t so many proficient ones around. Then he has to have the box drilled, which he will find empty. So he has to fill it back up. Even billionaires don’t generally have a million in cash just lying around the house. It will take him at least a couple weeks to sort it all out, which gives you a window of opportunity.”

“To do what?”

He laughs. “Anything you like, lad. Anything you like.”

“A couple questions,” I say, “just so I can believe you.”

“Fire away.”

“In your iPad calendar, you list ‘driving’ almost daily. What does it mean?”