“I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” I say. “I think it’s safe to say that she does.”
He looks at me, imploring, looking to me for truth, wisdom and certainty. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “Pretty sure. I think you can count on it.”
His laughter diminishes to a chuckle, and Milo pulls out onto the highway again. I get a mental image of tiny Jenna and huge Sweetness. They take off their clothes. He must have a dick that would put Moby Penis to shame. She flees naked into the night, terrified.
The oddity strikes me. My killer, my Luca Brasi, and I have just had our first father-and-son talk.
“May I see your cane?” Moreau asks.
I hand it to him. He turns it over in his hands, examines it, admires it. “It is quite unique. At least, I have never seen such a thing. It must have been made for a very rich man, most likely royalty. The lion’s-head handle must be close to a half pound of gold, plus the jewels are large and high-quality, and it is the work of a master craftsman. How does it function?”
He hands it back to me. I smack the bottom tip of the cane hard against the car floor. The lion’s mouth snaps open to near a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle. Sometimes I carry it with the mouth open because it offers more surface area to hold on to, and also because I like the feel of the razors against the skin of my fingers. Of course, I can’t shift my grip without drawing blood.
“The teeth are daggers and the edges razors on both sides. The two canine fangs aren’t for cutting. They’re spring releases. When pushed backward and depressed, the springs engage and the mouth clamps shut. So when swung like a baseball bat, the canines hit the target and the lion bites.”
“Ingenious,” Moreau says.
I’m curious about him, and suspicious of his motives. He’s a spook for another government. He likely has an agenda that I haven’t even guessed at. “Tell me about Mexico,” I say.
“It is a miserable shithole.”
I feign the practiced smile. “I meant about what you did there.”
“As I said, as with all commodities, narcotics distribution is a global enterprise and delicately balanced. Many nations depend on drugs for the economic stability of their countries. The U.S. and Mexico among them. The balance was disturbed in Mexico and many thousands died in a war for control of the trade between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez gang.
“It reached a crisis level so acute that the U.S. would soon have to invade Mexico, the drug trade truly would be halted, or at least severely damaged, and the economies of the two countries along with it. What made the situation unique is that the vast majority of the drugs pass through a tiny area, the border crossing of the twin cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. Through this funnel—which, ironically, the U.S. supposedly created as part of its War Against Drugs—dope passes into the States. Money and weapons pass into Mexico. To control this crossing is to control the drug trade.
“The answer, of course, was for one side to win the war and halt the killing. Some colleagues and I analyzed the situation and decided Joaquin Guzman Loera’s Sinaloa cartel was the best candidate, having exported more than two hundred tons of cocaine and a vast amount of heroin into the United States over the past decade. Their army was killing many people, but the wrong ones. We assisted them in killing the appropriate rivals, and trained their best soldiers, bringing them up to Special Forces standards. Sinaloa won the war, the death toll dropped significantly, and the economies of both countries remain intact. Mission accomplished.”
“So you were an assassin,” I say.
“In Spanish, an assassin is an
“What’s the difference?”
He scoffed. I was a babe in the woods. “The number of zeros in my monthly pay.”
“As a French advisor, Guzman paid you as well?”
He grimaced, losing patience with me. “Of course I doubledipped. He also gave me the heroin I gave to you. A parting gesture of thanks. He was most grateful. He made last year’s list of the world’s top billionaires.”
We entered Turku. I changed the subject. “Can you acquire false passports for me?”
“Of course, but does ‘false’ mean fake or registered in the country of identity?”
Kate, Anu, myself, Milo, Sweetness, and then I think: Jenna. Sweetness might refuse to leave without her in a romantic hissy fit. “Six, registered, and preferably diplomatic.”
He laughed. “My friend, you may be overestimating my capabilities.”
“I doubt it.”
“That you realize you may need them increases my estimation of you. Let us make an agreement. As regards the passports, when our business is concluded, if I am satisfied, I will see to it that you are also satisfied. They will not be diplomatic, but from a country with a predominantly white population, so that you do not stand out.”
Good enough. The passports will bring us one step closer to safety.
31
We enter Turku. I call Kate. They just arrived in the town square. We park and walk down a long row of stalls, flowers on the right side, fresh vegetables on the left, the cathedral looming in front of us. The temperature is brisk, but the sun warming. All of the big cities in the countries east of Russia in this part of the world seem the same to me. Helsinki, Turku, Tallinn, Stockholm, are almost interchangeable. There’s always an old town, a market square, and malls and shopping centers with exactly the same chain stores in them. Tourists
I take Anu and put her in the carryall in front of me. We get lunch straightaway. More like brunch. It’s not even ten thirty yet. The girls have plenty of time to wander around while we go about our business. From a stall specializing in grease, Mirjami, Jenna, Milo and Sweetness get
_________
IT’S AN HOUR AND HALF to Nauvo. No one speaks. Moreau and I aren’t talkers. Milo and Sweetness, I think, feel in their bones that something will happen. I can, too. Malinen will come on haughty. The lion will bite. Sweetness puts on Miles Davis’s
We park a few minutes’ walk from his cottage and approach from the forest instead of direct on the dirt path. I check my belt and pockets. Knife. Sap. Taser. I screw the silencer onto the threaded barrel of my .45. The silencer is too fat to holster the pistol. I slip it into my jacket pocket. The others do the same. Malinen is out back, behind the cottage, about twenty yards from a little jetty that extends out over the sea.
He has family money, owns this cottage and a big, costly apartment in an upscale building in the district of Toolo, in Helsinki. Topi Ruutio may be the head of the Real Finns party, but Malinen is its unofficial spokesman and minister of propaganda. His blog is the most popular in Finland because he’s gifted in vocalizing hate while masking it as an academic voice of reason. Much like Nazi propaganda from its early years.
He’s a professor of anthropology at the university, and a self-professed genius who claims his unique understanding of our species is too far ahead of its time to be fully comprehended by lesser mortals. He’s a little man with apple red cheeks and thick glasses in black frames that calls to mind Jerry Lewis comic sketches. He squirts lighter fluid on the coals in his grill. He lights them with a long match and I see the flames leap and hear it go WHOOF. A massive dog sits beside him, implacable.
I step out of the tree line. “Hello, Roope,” I say.
My voice startles him. I walk up to within a couple meters of him, the grill between us.
“Have we met?” he asks.
“No.”
