Robert Goddard - Found Wanting

A sound deeper and farther away than the rattling shutter reached his ears. It was a car engine. It stopped and was succeeded by a burble of human voices. There was the creak of a door opening. The light strengthened marginally. Through the grille and the windscreen beyond, he could see shadows moving on a brick wall. A switch was flicked and a fluorescent lamp pulsed into life overhead. A key turned in the rear door of the van. One of them swung open. Then the other.

Eusden blinked as his eyes adjusted to the harshness of the light. A squat, bull-necked, shaven-headed man in jeans and windcheater stared in at him. Then another man appeared at his shoulder: taller and thinner, dressed in a dark overcoat with the collar pulled up. He had a round, soft-featured face, a mop of ginger hair shot with silver and matching stubble round his fleshy jaw. His small blue-green eyes studied Eusden through circular-lensed glasses.

‘You’re Eusden?’ His voice was pure west-coast American.

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s get the party going, then. Come on out.’ His squat companion took something from inside his windcheater and pointed it at Eusden: a gun. ‘We’re not about to take no for an answer.’

The two men stepped back as Eusden stood up slowly, moved to the end of the van and climbed out. They were in some kind of workshop, sealed by a ceiling-high shutter-door and a smaller wicket-door set within it. There were no windows, just three blank walls, along one of which ran a bare bench. A third man was leaning against the bench, staring, like his companions, at Eusden. He was tall and heavily built, with black hair and beard, a hawkish nose and dark, simmering gaze. He wore a long black leather coat and was chewing gum vigorously. Beside him, on the bench, stood Clem’s attaché case.

‘Who are you people?’ Eusden asked, looking straight at the chatty one and trying not to sound as frightened as he really was.

‘I’m Brad. The guy with the gun is Gennady. The guy with the gum – who also has a gun, by the way – is Vladimir. Sorry I couldn’t keep the alliteration going. They speak English when they need to, but they usually communicate in other ways.’

‘What do you want?’

‘You, sport. The guy who offed our very good buddies Ilya and Yuri a few nights back.’

‘That was an accident.’

‘You’re probably right. You don’t look capable of getting the better of them. And Yuri? He was always a hell-rider. But let’s not allow the facts to get in the way of a good grudge. There’s nothing Gennady would like better than putting a bullet in your brain – after kicking the shit out of you. A friend dies. A stranger pays. Old Ukrainian tradition. That’s where they’re from. They always like me to point out that they’re not actually Russian. They just look and sound as if they are. And get tetchy when they haven’t swallowed a gallon of vodka recently. For the record, they’re stone cold sober today. Draw your own conclusions. While you’re at it, tell me what your role is in Mjollnir’s organization.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Why’d you come to Helsinki, then?’

‘They blackmailed me.’

‘Ah, right. So, what did they say they wanted you to do? I’m assuming they didn’t mention they were planning to hand you over to us.’

‘I was to… authenticate the letters.’ Eusden nodded towards the attaché case.

‘Strictly non-essential, sport. We faxed them copies of the whole lot. But I guess it sounded plausible to you. Fact is, though, we stipulated your head on a platter plus the big fat pay-off right from the get-go. And they never batted an eyelid. I got the feeling they didn’t mind us rubbing you out one little bit. Now, why might that be?’

‘They seem to think I know too much.’

‘What about?’

‘Tolmar Aksden.’

‘Ah. The Invisible Man. Well, do you?’

‘I know he has a secret.’

‘Don’t we all?’

‘Mjollnir want his kept quiet at any cost.’

‘Of course they do. That’s why they’re buying it from us at a price that makes it well worth our trouble cutting out the original buyer and compensates us for leaving twenty million kroner blowing in the Copenhagen wind, not to mention Ilya and Yuri splattered across an unlovely stretch of highway. So, working on the basis that it might, just might , persuade us not to kill you, why don’t you tell us what that secret is?’

‘You must know if you have the letters.’

‘Well, there’s the weirdest thing. I never did learn Danish while I was growing up in California. Spanish, right on. French and Italian? I can get by. I’ve even picked up enough Russian to understand Vladimir’s jokes on those rare occasions when he cracks one. But Danish? Somehow I let it slip past me. Careless, I know. But that’s the way it is.’

‘We should have kept Olsen alive,’ Vladimir growled.

Brad grinned. ‘Don’t you just love an after-the-event wise guy? Bet you’re wondering who Olsen was, sport, so I’ll put you out of your misery. He was our original buyer’s very own Danish representative. We were hired for the hands-on side of things. When we decided to sound out Mjollnir as an alternate buyer, Olsen tried to phone his boss. We had to cut him off, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite got round to telling us what the letters were all about when that happened, so we’re… looking to you to fill us in.’

Eusden swallowed hard. Making the little he knew about the contents of the letters sound tantalizing enough to persuade them to let him live was a next to impossible task. But it was his only hope. ‘They chronicle the early life of Tolmar Aksden’s father, Peder, on a farm in Jutland.’

‘A farm in Jutland, huh?’ sneered Brad. ‘Why isn’t my pulse racing at the thought?’

‘I can’t read Danish either. But I know Tolmar’s secret has something to do with… Anastasia.’

‘Really? You’re sure he’s not Elvis Presley in disguise? The age would be about right.’

‘I don’t pretend to understand it. But it’s true.’

‘You’re saying Tolmar Aksden is related somehow to the daughter of the last Tsar?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one some mad old bat made a small fortune out of claiming to be?’

‘Anna Anderson. Yes.’

‘Anna Anderson. That’s right. Didn’t I catch some crappy mini-series about her on cable a few years back? Jane Seymour in the title role, maybe?’

‘Jane Seymour,’ said Gennady, sounding cheered by the mention of the name. ‘Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman. I love her.’

Brad rolled his eyes. ‘You know what? We don’t have time for this, we really don’t. Anastasia doesn’t push any buttons for me, sport. I think we’ll bypass the kicking-the-shit-out-of-you phase and cut straight to the bullet in the brain.’ His affable features suddenly twisted into something tight and vicious. He pulled a gun out of his coat pocket, stepped forward and pointed it at Eusden’s head. ‘Now is the moment to give me one good reason not to pull this trigger. Believe me, there won’t be another.’

‘F-Fingerprints.’ Eusden heard the stammer in his voice from some strange detached place where death was imminent and imaginable and not quite the disabling horror he had always supposed it would seem in such a situation. ‘You should have… found a set amongst the letters.’

Brad shook his head slowly and emphatically. ‘No fingerprints.’

‘They must be there.’

‘But they’re not.’

‘Hidden in the case maybe.’

‘Check it out, Vlad.’ Vladimir opened the case and turned it over. The letters fell out on to the bench and slewed across it. ‘Whose fingerprints are we looking for, sport?’