and chain-smokes. We supplicants pull up chairs near to him. We accept coffee and pulla. I notice the coffee is some expensive special blend.
“Everything has been done as per your requests,” he says to me, “and since those methods failed, we’ve gone a step further.
“Cars were tailed to all seventeen houses of prostitution,” he says. “All license numbers were taken from the cars, but I realized that the plates could be switched at will, so all the cars were keyed.”
I don’t know the term. “Keyed?”
“A key was raked just over the gas tank of each car, an inch or two of paint scraped off, to make the vehicles easily identifiable. In addition, although each supposed diplomat was photographed, he was also mugged.” He hands me a big pile of wallets and passports. “To make the people you seek even more recognizable, each was assaulted and damage done to his face.”
“You’re quite thorough,” I say.
“The amount you paid us buys thoroughness. Lastly, each and every house of prostitution was searched. The girl you’re looking for isn’t in any of them. I’m sorry to have failed you. No effort was spared.”
I believe him. “You did a good job,” I say. “I may call upon you again. Or, if you want or need something, feel free to call me.”
“Our business is concluded,” he says, and stands, signaling that we’re dismissed.
• • •
IT SEEMS like a long time since Milo and I pulled a B&E together, although it was really only two or three months ago. We haven’t lost the knack. We’re in the Russian trade delegation office by six thirty a.m. and out by seven. All my hopes are fulfilled. A cardboard box in the supply room is full of passports in no order, just tossed into it helter-skelter as girls were taken in. We’ll take them with us when we leave.
They bother to neither shut down nor password-protect the one computer in the office, I assume because the protection of diplomatic immunity has made the Russians involved lax and careless. It contains names, addresses and phone numbers. I thought a hundred seventy-nine women and only seventeen apartments didn’t match up. The records in Sasha’s iPad were incomplete because he was only privy to information about their prostitutes in Helsinki, whereas this is a regional office. The network extends to Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and other cities as well.
The names of which people are responsible for which women are in a list, by country. The Finns who work for the organized-crime group in the Russian diplomatic corps are also listed, along with bookkeeping records of their pay. I ask Milo to do a search and look for any information about Loviise. I hope that they have a record of her, including her current location. If so, we could go and get her right now. There’s nothing, my hopes are dashed. Milo just boots it down and takes it with us, power cord and all. The ring can be rolled up at any time now. I’m just waiting on Milo’s assassination Go Day to release the info.
The discord between Milo and me is gone, or at least gone to the wayside for the time being. The productive morning pleased him as much as it did me. I spend most of the day reading Ed McBain. Kate bought an e-reader so she can download books. Rather than wait weeks and pay exorbitant shipping rates from the U.S. or UK to Finland, she can have them within minutes at a lower cost. She spends most of the day on the davenport, reading a book about post-traumatic stress disorder. She tells me she doesn’t want me to accompany her to therapy today. She feels good, confident enough to travel alone.
This trip really has become a summer vacation, and when I put the coming massacre out of my mind, I feel relaxed and peaceful. It’s not hard to do. I can’t bring myself to care about the coming demise of the bastards who set out to hurt my family. My main role, it’s becoming clear, is that of chief cook and bottle washer. I look at cookbooks, plan a braised rabbit for the evening meal. That night, Kate and I make tentative, rather bungling love, like a couple of shy and inexperienced teenagers.
Quiet living, sans a houseful of cops and talk of crime, death and mayhem, brings us together. We quickly develop a pleasant daily routine. I’m wealthy. I start to consider retiring, think about spending my life raising