James Thompson: Helsinki Blood

We have no vehicle, so we just walk, at a snail’s pace because it’s all I can do, in his general direction. His car comes toward us, he recognizes us, and slows from a distance, I suppose, having lost his element of surprise, considering his best course of action. He pulls up beside us. “Meet me in the cathedral,” he says.

Great. The oldest parts of the cathedral-a small church for such a lofty description, it holds about seven hundred and fifty people-dates from the 1300s. It’s been at least partially destroyed several times over, the latest being in 2006, when the roof was burned, an act of arson. Still, most of it as it exists is hundreds of years old, and it’s a beautiful place, a place where one can feel the presence of God, and we’re about to desecrate it.

We see his parked car. He got there well ahead of us. It’s either stake out his car and wait, which isn’t an option, because I have an untended infant at home, or walk in the front doors and see what happens. A church is supposed to be a place of refuge. I hope he chose it for that reason.

We step in and the doors close behind us. The church is empty except for us. I hear clatter clatter clatter, and see Milo fall. I hear the same sound three more times and feel like Mike Tyson hit me with a combo to the chest, but I stay upright. Pitkanen took a place in a pew about thirty paces into the church and on the left for protection, and with a silenced pistol, shot us both as we walked in. If we hadn’t worn bulletproof vests, we’d both be dead now.

“Goddamn it,” I say, “this is the house of God. Can’t we kill each other outside?”

“That,” he says, “is exactly why we’re here.”

I say, “Sorry about a few scars on your face. I sympathize, have some of my own. And it’s always a damned shame when your wife can’t get along with your girlfriend. But this is fucking mental.”

He answers. “I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, he would not have sent a scourge like me upon you.”

I get it. He’s so crazy that he makes Milo seem levelheaded and lucid.

Also, it’s evident that he’s a crack shot. I see his head disappear as he ducks down. I motion for Milo to go to the left, and I walk down the center aisle.

Pitkanen pops his head up, and I fire. The shot goes high and wild and thunks into a pew far beyond him. But it makes him keep his head down, and he’s trapped between Milo and me. I see Milo fire and hear his slide clatter. He stays low and quiet, so I guess he missed but at least kept Pitkanen trapped in place. These silenced weapons make me feel like we’re in a silent movie. I’m Tom Mix, here I come. I get to the row he’s hiding in. He shoots me in the heart twice more. I see the slide of his pistol is all the way back, so the gun is empty. He has to stop to reload. I don’t even try to shoot him. My pistol pointed at him disconcerts him and slows him down. I hop toward him on my good leg and throw myself on top of him instead.

He struggles, but I’m bigger and stronger than he is. I pin him down and reach under his shirt. He’s also wearing a bulletproof vest. I pull it up and jam the muzzle of my Colt up and under it, until I feel the underside of his rib cage. I fire four times through his vital organs. He goes slack. Dead-fish eyes stare at me.

I grab my cane, and use it and the pew to push myself up. I call out. “Milo, you alive?”

I can’t see him. He’s still on the floor. “Yeah, it just hurts like a motherfucker.”

“Well, get up and come over here.”

He does it, weaving and staggering.

“Would you go through his pockets and find his car keys? We’ve got to get him out of here, and I have to go home. Anu is there by herself. Kate will shit a brick if she gets home before me.”

It’s the long way out, but the cathedral has a small and much less noticeable side door. I feel a sense of the ridiculous as the two of us, both handicapped, and having just taken the equivalent of a vicious beating, grunt, groan and swear as we drag him away. There’s no damage to the church, except for some slugs buried in wooden pews and spent brass that will create a legendary mystery, and Pitkanen leaves no blood trail as we drag him away.

We’re lucky. Pitkanen is just an average-sized man. And even luckier because Milo isn’t strong enough to heft him up with one arm and dump him in the trunk of his own car, but I am. So we drive away and park not too far from my house.

I tell Milo he doesn’t have to explain his disappearance to his wife, but I do, so he’s in charge of body disposal. I make it home fifteen minutes before Kate. By that time, I’m so stiff I can barely move. I say I took Anu out to Milo’s boat. We were getting off and he was about to hand her to me, but I fell and hit my chest hard on an upright support beam. She asks to look at it. The left side of my chest is black and blue and swollen. She asks if I need an X-ray. I say no. Finnish style, she blows on it to make it better, instead of kissing it like an American. She’s becoming more of a Finn every day.

Kate and I pass the week in quiet solitude. I don’t want to touch a gun right now. I tell Kate I’m tired of fishing and sleep late with her in the mornings. We read, watch movies, eat well. There is no talk of the past or future. We live squarely in the present.

On Friday, July 22, we watch the evening news. In Norway, a man named Anders Behring Breivik has gone on a politically motivated killing rampage. About three thirty in the afternoon, he detonated a bomb in Oslo, destroying or damaging government buildings. From there, he went to the island of Utoya, where a gathering of the Workers’ Youth League, affiliated with the Labor Party, was taking place. He went on a shooting spree. The body count is uncertain, but he killed between sixty and eighty people, mostly teenagers.

An hour and a half before embarking on mass murder, he released his manifesto via the Internet, well over a thousand pages, to hundreds if not thousands of e-mail addresses, titled A European Declaration of Independence . It explains his political views. Among many other beliefs, he calls for white nationalism and for the deportation or annihilation of Muslims in the Western nations, to preserve European Christendom. He wants to launch a counter-jihad in the spirit of the Knights Templar, and even claims to belong to a neo-Templar organization, Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, an anti-jihad organization sworn to fight Islam.

Most interesting, from the perspective of our agenda, is that he cites the writings of Roope Malinen as having influenced his own writing and thinking.

There’s footage from the destruction of buildings. Several people died in the blast. Some people on Utoya recorded the attack with cell phones and video cameras. Some clips make the news. We watch children being gunned down and dying. It’s heartbreaking. Kate cries. I can barely watch it myself.

Milo calls and asks me to come over to his boat. I tell Kate he needs something done that requires a person with two working hands. I give her a hug and kiss good-bye, and suggest she turn off the television and watch no more of this madness. She doesn’t.

Milo has a bottle of kossu and beers set out for us, in a cabin with a TV. I think the media is playing them over and over, but he’s recorded them. He pours shots. “Tomorrow is Go Day,” he says. “You were right-Malinen posted his itinerary in his blog. He’s going to his summer cottage to write his magnum opus, something to do with a cultural justification of misanthropy.”

“You know,” I say, “once you let that first bullet fly, there’s no calling it back.”

He nods. “I know. Malinen acting tomorrow in sympathy with Breivik will seal the deal. The guns, the video, the manifesto. No one will look further than him. We’ll walk away scot-free.”