He’s a Russian named Sasha Mikoyan and his passport is diplomatic. So he’s a spy or an attaché or both, and the Harper brothers didn’t lie. People from the Russian embassy are taking part in the slave trade.
The Russian diplomatic mission, given the circumstances of his death, whorehouse, kidnapping et al., will probably exercise their right to keep Finnish law enforcement out of this. I put his passport back in his pocket but take his wallet and iPhone, so I can carry out an investigation of my own. I’ve developed quite a collection of gadgets tonight.
“Let’s go,” I say. I check the time, now three fifty-five.
Loviise has a traveling bag. Sweetness carries it for her as we walk to the car. I want to discuss this situation with Sweetness, but don’t know if our abductee in the back can understand Finnish. I jam cigarette butts deep in his ears, cover them with duct tape, and put shooting-protection earphones on top of that. He couldn’t hear a bomb drop.
We all get in the Wrangler. I sit up front with Sweetness. Saukko’s man hasn’t made a sound. Apparently, he’s smart enough to know it won’t help, and he’s just waiting, pondering how to get through this, preparing himself for the worst. This marks him as a cool professional. Sweetness hits his flask.
“This may rank as one of the longest nights of our lives, but we’re going to have to make this a murder of opportunity,” I say.
He doesn’t catch the double entendre. “What do you mean?”
I’m rattled and overwrought, exhausted and in pain. I haven’t had this much physical activity since I was shot. I rub my knee. “Saukko said he had nothing to do with knocking out my windows and harassing me. I believe him, do you?”
I start chain-smoking, try to clear my mind with nicotine.
“Pomo, that evil fuck is ten times smarter than I am. I don’t know.”
“Pitkänen isn’t doing this alone, that leaves the minister of the interior, the national chief of police, and our new parliamentarian and Finland’s best hater, Roope Malinen. I don’t think Malinen has the stones for it, but the minister and the chief do.”
“What about Adrien Moreau? He was after the ten million and we killed him. Maybe somebody associated with him?”
I shake my head. “He was a self-sufficient loner. I don’t believe he would have involved anyone else.”
“It could be hate groups as well. We really put the fucks to those neo-Nazis for selling strychnine-laced heroin. And all the groups are interconnected.”
Over thirty people died of strychnine poisoning before dealers figured out what they were selling and pulled the bad smack off the streets. “But they don’t have a SUPO agent on their side, or if they do, it’s because the minister ordered him to work with them. I think we need to interrogate the minister and the chief, and that crime scene is the place to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I told the chief if he didn’t fuck off about the money, I’d frame him for a crime and kill him in the process of arresting him. It’s late on a weeknight. They’re probably in their beds. We should abduct them.”
Sweetness chuckles. “Cool. You really gonna kill the chief?”
“No, not cool. Crazy. And I don’t want to hurt anybody. But Saukko and his Shit List and his threats, plus the attacks and other threats against my family, have me scared shitless. I’ll murder whoever I have to and sit my jolt in prison before I’ll let anyone hurt my family. Later, we’ll interrogate the guy in the back, and I hope before we go home we’ll know where the truth lies and who our enemies are and aren’t. We can’t protect ourselves and ours until then. That includes Jenna and even your mother.”
That possibility seems to have not struck him yet, and when it does, as it did for me, it carries fear with it. He nods his head slow, shakes a cigarette out of a pack and lights it. “You’re right,” he says. “We deal with this now.”
I feel sorry for whoever Sweetness decides is to blame. He’ll kill them—after punishing them—and if we can’t discover who is guilty, he’ll take the position of the crusader leader, a bishop who, when asked by his troops how to tell who was Catholic and who wasn’t, answered, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”