Helsinki Blood - By James Thompson Page 0,25
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