The Bodyguard

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2009 Leena Lehtolainen

Translation copyright © 2014 Jenni Salmi

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Previously published as
Henkivartija
by Tammi Publishers, Helsinki. Translated from Finnish by Jenni Salmi.

Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781477826607

ISBN-10: 1477826602

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910551

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

1

Croatians call lynx
ris
, Norwegians know them as
gaupe
, and Germans use the term
der Luchs
. Finns call them
ilves
. In Finnish folklore there are three different types of lynx: the cat, the fox, and the wolf. I could recognize each of them by their spots and tracks. They were to blame for my unemployment.

I had been working for Anita Nuutinen for a year, and now I was following her as she went to check out ornamental Easter eggs in a jewelry store in one of the fancy new malls in Moscow. In order to enter the building, you had to pass through a metal detector, which of course went off as soon as I walked through it. I was told to leave my 9-millimeter Glock behind.

“I need it to do my job,” I explained to the heavily armed security guards, but it was no use. If I had any intention of following Anita into the mall, I would have to part with my gun.

“We’ll make sure no shady characters enter the building,” one of the guards told me in English. I highly doubted it. Anyone could be bought with enough money. But Anita was ready to take the chance.

“We might as well check it out, since we’re already here. Anyway, I’m the one who would be in danger, not you,” she said with a tight smile. I did not smile back.

Anita bought her Easter egg without incident. It cost three times what she paid me per month. Obviously it wasn’t a genuine Fabergé egg—that would have cost ten times my annual salary. However, the tchotchke wasn’t enough for Anita; she wanted to take a quick look at the furrier next to the jeweler’s, too.

Usually I ask my clients not to wear flashy clothes like expensive fur coats, but Anita had never heeded my advice. Though I didn’t particularly enjoy seeing dead mink and silver foxes draped on her, I generally tolerated them. My tolerance ended, however, with the fur coat made out of lynx.

Lynx is
ris
in Russian, too. I estimated that a dozen lynx had been slaughtered for the ankle-length coat she was admiring. Sensing my own growing agitation, I tried to calm myself down with the breathing techniques I had learned, but none of them worked.

As Anita tried on the lynx coat, both of the sales clerks rushed over to help her fasten the clasps and buttons correctly. They were close enough to Anita to stick a knife in her or inject her with poison. I should have moved in and made sure she was safe, but I didn’t.

“Lynx. Very beautiful,” said Anita to the women in English, and then switched to Finnish to speak to me. “Hilja, how about it? Isn’t it just magnificent? It makes me feel like a real cat.”

Anita didn’t have a clue regarding my feelings toward lynx. I had told her only the basics about my life. She wasn’t interested in knowing more—she was too full of herself to care about anyone else.

“The fur sure looks pretty—on live lynx.” The tone of my voice visibly startled her.

“What did you say?” She wrapped the coat tighter around herself, stroking the soft fur, and then turned back toward the mirror. “Whatever. I don’t care what you think.” Anita switched to English again to tell the ladies she wanted the coat.

She removed it and started rummaging in her purse for a credit card. She had four of them. She had used the AmEx to pay for the Easter egg; now she had her Visa out. The clerk began wrapping the purchase gently in tissue paper. Judging by the dark spots on the fur under her hands, I could tell that this particular coat had been made out of cat lynx.

“If you buy this coat, I’ll resign immediately,” I said.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Anita turned to me, credit card glimmering in her hand.

“You heard me. I don’t work with people whose actions I cannot condone.”

“It’s just a fur coat.”

“A
lynx
fur coat.”

Now it was Anita’s turn to get upset. Anita always expected to get what she wanted. I had seen her attacking incompetent minions and ineffective customer service representatives countless times. Lowly staff members like me should keep our mouths shut. I wouldn’t be resigning, she yelled. Instead, she’d fire me. I yelled back at her that I didn’t care. I knew I was red in the face now, sweating. I was close to kicking the coat racks and shattering the store mirrors, but I controlled myself—barely.

The clerks watched our shouting match in stunned silence while the store’s mustachioed security guard, a real goon, appeared from the back room in a cloud of sauerkraut stench. Neither he nor the women spoke any Finnish, so they couldn’t understand what our fight was about, but they could tell which one of us had money.

“
Idite
,” he suggested, using the polite form to ask us to leave. Polite or not, I knew it basically meant
get lost
.

“Don’t you even dare think of using me as a reference!” Anita screamed. “I’ll make sure you never work again, at least not in Finland!”

“You’re not as important as you think,” I spat back. When the security guard grabbed my arm, I did my best not to shove him into a mirror.

I snatched my gun on the way out of the mall, not sticking around long enough to explain to the security guards why I was leaving alone. I had learned a bit of Russian during our trips, and
durak
—idiot—had become my favorite word
.
I hissed it at one of the guards when he tried to stop me from leaving without Anita. Our driver got out of the car to open the door for me, but I stormed by him without a word. Our hotel was only a half mile away from the mall, and I had no trouble finding my way there. A map of Moscow was imprinted on my brain.

I rode the elevator to the tenth floor. As always, our rooms were next to one another, joined by a door. Anita couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping in the same room as me, but I still had to be within earshot. Most of the time we left a baby monitor on for security.

I realized I had timed my resignation perfectly. It was the first of September, and I had just been paid for August. Anita would be pissed off when she figured out that she couldn’t use me as free labor. Knowing her, she might still find a way to get out of compensating me for the vacation time I had coming.

I went online with the hotel Wi-Fi to see if there was room on any flights that day. Anita and I usually flew business, but there were no seats available in any class; all the flights were completely booked. I called the train station, but the evening train was completely full, as well. Luckily there were still seats for the train the next day. I reserved a seat in an otherwise empty three-person compartment. Once I had called the hotel next door to get a room for the night, I packed my things and took off without even leaving a note. Even just thinking about the lynx coat made me upset, and I didn’t want to hear from my newly former employer ever again. I slammed my keys on the reception desk and ignored the porter’s reprimand.

I refused the doorman’s offer of a cab and walked over to my new lodgings. My room there was tiny and smelled of cigarette smoke, but anything would do for one night. My cell phone started ringing: it was Anita. Silencing it, I walked down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a plate of
blini
, some caviar, pickles, honey, sour cream, and wild mushroom salad. And vodka. Georgian red wine had been crossed out on the menu, a reflection of the ongoing war. In addition to the vodka, I opted for strong Lithuanian beer, and downed it in two long gulps before asking for another.

I had never liked Anita, but that had never really mattered. Seven years earlier I had graduated with honors from a security academy in Queens, New York. There weren’t many female bodyguards in Finland, so I had always been able to have my pick of jobs. Anita Nuutinen paid me double what anyone else had. She traveled between Helsinki, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg at least once a month and needed protection. Apparently her real estate business was bordering on shady, but as long as I didn’t take part in anything illegal, I didn’t have to worry about losing my badge. Not being able to use a client as a reference was a different story. Mike Virtue, the head trainer at the security academy, would have been disappointed. He always stressed that a good reputation was a necessity in the bodyguard business. Sure, mistakes happen sometimes—like when that one bodyguard he told us about hadn’t been able to protect a client from multiple hidden assassins—but a client’s trust had to be maintained at all times. By the time I finished my second beer, Mike was giving me a lecture inside my head.

Of course, Anita would try to convince me to come back. I knew too much about her, including the details of the security systems at the Nuutinen household and her office. This information would be extremely valuable to anyone who might be tempted to threaten Anita’s life.

I had eventually convinced her to tell me who she thought her enemies were; bodyguards need to get into a criminal mind-set to predict criminal moves. Anita’s husband had disappeared from her life years before and moved to somewhere in northern Finland, and Anita’s only daughter lived in Hong Kong. I had always made sure that Anita was never alone, and sometimes slept at her two-thousand-square-foot condo in Lehtisaari. First I revamped the home security system, because the main threat to Anita was her former lover, who had been in the house multiple times. Valentin Feodorovich Paskevich was a real estate kingpin from Moscow, and he did not think kindly of the Finnish woman who had torpedoed his well-established summer cabin business in Finland’s lake region near the Russian border.

My phone rang again. Anita. Let it ring. Was she freaking out, scared of every passing car, startled by oncoming pedestrians? Had she locked herself in her room and bolted the door? Our driver, Sergey Shabalin, had been devoted, but I suppose even he had his price. Anita knew that security was only guaranteed by being the one who could spend the most money. She believed that everyone was like her, only interested in covering their own asses. With Anita, I had adopted a persona: not the brightest bulb, yet strong and alert. She never knew that I had carefully recorded all her movements, for her own protection, of course—but having all this information meant that I could make Anita’s life a living hell if I wanted to.

The vodka and beer went straight to my head, despite the substantial meal I’d had. After paying the check, I went for a stroll. By now it was dusk, and people were swarming the city streets. I went to a kiosk to buy a soda and a bottle of sparkling water. Prime Minister Putin’s eyes met mine from the cover of the latest issue of
Pravda
, in which he commented on the situation in Georgia. Paskevich supported Putin, another reason why Anita was afraid of him.

“Kak diela, devushka?”
asked a male voice next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I checked to make sure he wasn’t one of Paskevich’s hit men.

“I’m not your girl,” I replied in Finnish and walked away while the man kept shouting
devushka
at me. I hoped he didn’t think I was a prostitute; nothing in my appearance would have given him that impression. I was five foot nine, 165 pounds, and my hair was cropped like a young boy’s. I dressed for the job of bodyguard: jeans, a short leather jacket, and the steel-toed combat boots I had changed into before leaving the hotel. Walking through metal detectors while wearing them would have made getting into malls impossible, so they didn’t get much use in Moscow. But it felt good to know that with one swift kick, I could knock a grown man unconscious.

I walked back to the hotel where Anita and I had stayed. I found her window, the location of which I had committed to memory: the light in the window could easily reveal an intruder in her room. And what do you know—Anita did have the light on and the shades up. Stupid cow, doing exactly what I had told her not to do. It would serve her right if she got into trouble.

Despite these thoughts, Mike Virtue’s voice echoed in my head. It was wrong of me to leave a client alone, it said—but Mike wouldn’t have understood why Anita purchasing a lynx fur coat would set me off.

Mike had told us that we all needed to decide who to protect. Some bodyguards were employed by criminals; I had seen Paskevich’s small army of hired muscle when he dated Anita while I was still working at Chez Monique, a restaurant where they used to have dinner. I had managed to protect Anita from a group of grunts like that. I should be proud of myself, not ashamed.

I made sure that the employee at the reception desk of Anita’s hotel wasn’t the same one who had chided me earlier. I marched in and headed to the hallway where I had previously spotted a public phone. I called Anita’s room, but when she answered I hung up. She was fine. Anita would return to Finland on an early flight on Wednesday; she’d manage alone until then, I reasoned. She only had one more meeting with the person who managed her Moscow properties. Anita knew how to get there and Sergey would drive her. I was free to do as I pleased until I left town.

The man at the reception desk was staring at me. Come to think of it, as I’d walked toward the phone, the security guard near the elevators, who checked everyone’s key cards before letting them upstairs, had stared at me, too. I had warned Anita not to trust him too much. Then there were the cleaners. They had access to all the rooms, and we knew nothing about their backgrounds. Suddenly, the entire world was a threat to lonely Anita.

I heard an elevator come down and backed myself into a recess in the wall as soon as I saw the familiar toe of Anita’s patent leather boot emerge. She wore the lynx fur coat, but had left the buttons unfastened. She rushed directly to the main exit, where I saw a familiar cab waiting for her. It was Sergey. This was curious, as she didn’t have any appointments for the evening. We were supposed to be ordering room service and turning in early to catch up on sleep. What made her change her plans?