The Bodyguard (18 page)

When we got off on the fourth floor, David had still not made a move to touch me. I was standing next to a completely different person than the one who’d written to me from Kotka and had called to arrange a meeting. My excitement turned into disappointment, but I was still nervous. Maybe my coming here was a big mistake. David led me to the end of the hallway, to room 411. The room was dark; all the blinds were drawn and only one small lamp was on. As soon as he closed the door he pulled off the wig and once again looked like the man I had made love to a month earlier.

“This is so hot. It’s like wearing a coonskin cap! Have you ever worn a wig?” David didn’t wait for my reply—he shut me up with his mouth. I heard him lock the door behind him. I responded to his kiss, stroking his damp bald head. There were no mixed messages about why I was in the room. David was already tearing his clothes off and helped me remove mine, shoved away the pillows, and tossed me on the bed, biting my breasts and pushing himself into me, and all I could think about at that moment was my pleasure, David’s smile, David’s mouth on mine. I let him take me, I followed, responded to him, it was enough.

Later we lay side by side, so close that all I could see of his face were details: a couple of pockmarks, eyebrows that were almost joined together, black eyelashes that matched his now darker eyes and the wig. Had he dyed them?

“Why the wig and the contacts?” I asked, but David didn’t reply. Instead, he pulled the contacts out.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said and threw the contacts carelessly onto the bedside table. Disposables. His eyes were familiar again, but they avoided my gaze.

“Oh, right, my gift.” David got up and I saw how my nails had dug into his back. I picked up a pillow and propped up my head while David was going through his closet. He returned with a flat package that looked like a book.

“I saw this in a bookstore and I thought of you. Or,” he looked slightly guilty, “I didn’t just happen to see it. I specifically went to a certain section to see if there were any books on this topic. Come on, open it already!”

The wrapping paper was thick. I tore it off and uncovered a thin, brownish paperback. The cover depicted a lynx with mournful eyes.

“El lince ibérico
.
Una batalla por la supervivencia,”
I read out loud. “A book about Iberian lyn
x . . .
hang o
n . . .
‘the fight for survival.’ Thank you!”

“You know Spanish?”

“A little.” I had learned the basics at the Queens academy from our teacher Fernando, but I’d already forgotten almost all of it. I flipped through the book, which was printed in Spanish and had barely any white space. There were footnotes everywhere, so this was a serious scientific document. The book also contained maps for lynx habitats, and I shook my head at the information in front of my eyes: the Iberian lynx had only been seen in two small mountain regions in southern Spain, whereas a hundred years earlier, the animal had roamed all over Iberia, except on the plains. There were also pictures of lynx at a wildlife refuge—resting and playing, as well as hunting rabbits, their main source of food. Cubs with tufted ears peeked out from a tree trunk. Frida’s favorite place to hide had been a pine trunk Uncle Jari had hollowed out for her. She would hide there and play-attack us if we’d pass by. Frida had been angry when she wasn’t able to crawl into the trunk after she grew to her full size.

“Thank you! I do understand enough Spanish to know that this was written by people who are working to protect the lynx. There aren’t more than a couple hundred of them left anymore. It’s not easy to see one in the wild. Why were you in Madrid?”

“I spent a couple of days there, but I stayed mainly in Málaga. The economic crisis depressed the prices for oceanfront property there, so now’s the time to buy if my employers have the money for it. I was in negotiations with this one Russian in Madrid—he’s planning on investing in Spain.”

“A Russian? What was his name?”

“Why do you want to know? Well, if you’re so interested, his name is Vasiliev.”

Not Paskevich, then. That would’ve been too much of a coincidence. I got off the bed and walked across the thick carpeting to the bathroom. I saw a claw-foot tub and four towels. Would Helena still need me in the evening? I could just spend the night; the bed was big enough to hold two couples.

I washed my hands with lingonberry shower gel but let David’s scent linger elsewhere on my body. The following week I would no longer be under contract, and I could follow anyone anywhere. I could even go to Spain to save all the Iberian lynx, or I could join Europol. When I came back into the room, David was sitting naked on the couch, with two bathrobes next to him.

“These robes are on the house. What’s your schedule like?”

“My boss is busy until eight.”

“Oh yes, Helena Lehmusvuo. I found your name on the Finnish cabinet website. Who on earth are you, Hilja Kanerva Ilveskero?”

I wasn’t able to interpret the look in his eyes. Was he sad, or amused, or just curious?

“I’ve told you. I’m the daughter of a murderer, at your service if you pay me enough. This gig is just temporary. And come to think of it, I don’t really know who you are. But does it matter? We’re here now.” I sat on his lap facing him, brushing my lips along his shoulders. I still hadn’t had enough of him.

David’s phone rang. I hoped he wouldn’t pick it up, but he stood up, holding me tight so that I wouldn’t fall. The phone screen displayed a number, no name, and in the split second I saw it. I didn’t recognize the country code.

“Stahl. In Helsinki.” This time the call was in English and it had to do with cars. Sounded like David was buying a Jaguar. Or it was some Europol code he was using. I imagined David as James Bond, although I knew what a boring job being an agent actually was, even if they were sometimes in danger. He even had a blond in his bedroom, just like Bond. All David needed was a dry martini, shaken, not stirred. While the call went on, I got up and peeked into the minibar, but they didn’t have any gin, let alone vermouth. I opened a bottle of mineral water and drank straight out of the bottle while I peeked between the curtains. I could see the traffic on Kaleva Street below.

“Thirsty?” David had finally hung up. “It was a broker from Amsterdam.”

“A car?”

David nodded.

“Jaguar?”

“Yes.”

“Red?” Then I realized David probably wasn’t familiar with Finnish popular culture, much less the Jerry Cotton stories and the song about him that begins with
Who’s the man driving a red Jaguar
?

“Black, actually.” David wrapped his arms around me from behind; I felt him harden against my back. I only cared about this touch right now. He could be anyone and lie as much he wanted to. The outside world did not exist. I kept on repeating the mistakes Mike Virtue had warned me against.

Of course, I didn’t call Helena to ask for a night off or to rearrange my schedule. I left David before eight. I would rather be the one leaving than the one being left behind, surrounded by the scents of a lover, seeing lipstick on drinking glasses, hoping there was someone else to share the large bed with. I caved in and gave David my phone number before I left. He’d have to return to Spain early in the morning, but he’d be back soon. It would serve the unemployment office reps right if I just took off to Málaga with him. If David could afford a Jaguar, he certainly could support a lover for a day or two.

Toward the end of the week, the elections ramped up and I was getting sick of the whole thing. On top of that, I had to attend a book fair with Helena because she’d agreed to be on a panel there. In New York I’d learned how to deal with screeching subway trains and streets roiling with people, but the book fair was packed to the gills and the cacophony was overwhelming. I had to muscle my way through the crowd to create a path for Helena to reach the panel table, where people listened to her as if she were their guru. She knew how to talk to a large group. Afterward Helena was stuck at the fair for hours, signing autographs and smiling for photos. I wanted to warn her about letting people get too close—nobody checked purses or bags at the entrance, and anyone posing with her could have had a knife. I wasn’t authorized to search anyone.

The night before the elections, Helena slept at her apartment in Helsinki. Her roommates were there, too, so I left her with a can of pepper spray and took the tram home to Käpylä. I was happy to shed my high heels and switch back into my camo pants that I hadn’t been able to wear for weeks. My roommates weren’t in. Loneliness felt sweet for a change. I sent David a dirty text message and then began to investigate the map I had copied at Helena’s office several days before.

I looked for the coordinates on Google Earth and, yup, I was right. This was the same area Anita had been fighting over with Paskevich. Goddamned Helena! She knew more about Anita’s business than she let on. Why didn’t she trust me?

There was a code at the bottom of the map, consisting of eight numbers. 1 3 91 11 77 6 3 46. It wasn’t a filing number for the map, nor was it a phone number. I’d spend quite a lot of time with combinations recently while trying to figure out how to open Anita’s safe. There was no way this could be the combination—was there?

I tried to not get too excited. The safe was in the same closet where I kept my gun and ammo. I opened the gun locker and pulled out the safe and, for a few minutes, I tried to stop my hands from shaking. I began to enter the combination.

When I rolled the last number into place, I couldn’t believe my eyes: the lock snapped sharply. Anita’s safe was open.

18

I was amazed. I hadn’t expected this insane attempt to actually work. My heart beat hard as I shoved my hand into the safe to pull out its contents. There wasn’t much; just a couple of envelopes sealed shut. One of them read, “Anita Nuutinen. My last will and testament.” I opened it. No surprises; Cecilia inherited everything. Anita had also made large donations to the Finnish Red Cross, the Women’s Bank, and Monika’s charity in Mozambique. The will was dated from March of last year, when I was still working for Anita.

The other envelope felt like it contained a stack of papers. It was sealed, with no writing on it. But Anita had given me the safe to ensure I’d take action even if she wasn’t around anymore. Because Cecilia or her representatives hadn’t demanded that I hand over the safe, I assumed I was the only person who knew about it.

I slit open the envelope. It contained about ten sheets of paper, the topmost depicting the all-too-familiar map of Hiidenniemi in Kotka. There were also articles in Russian, printouts from the Internet, and a couple of letters. One was signed by Anita; the other by someone named Boris Vasilievich Vasiliev.

I spent the rest of the evening and well into the night translating the materials. I used Babelfish’s translating website to help, but this made the letters even more confusing, and I realized I would need to take the letters to someone who was fluent in Russian. The police had an interpreter, and I could probably find one at the cabinet, too, unless I wanted to hand these papers over to Helena.

I did find out that this Vasiliev had approached Anita and asked her to act as a middleman for the Hiidenniemi deal—she could buy the place in her name, when in reality Vasiliev would be the owner. Anita had declined the offer. Her letter to Vasiliev was blunt, without any of the usual Russian niceties. The clippings and printouts were from tabloids that focused on celebrities. In one of them, a man who could have been Boris Vasiliev was shown walking into a nightclub and leaving later with two strikingly beautiful women. There was a printout from the blog edited by Marina Andreyevna Mihailova, Helena’s friend, which claimed that Vasiliev had connections with Chechen rebels and terrorists. The second printout contained an image of Vasiliev posing with a rifle on his shoulder and a dead bear at his feet; next to him was a man anyone would recognize, the former Russian president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The third page contained a grainy picture showing Vasiliev in partial profile, and I recognized the man staring right into the camera. It was Usko Syrjänen.

Vasiliev was a common name, but it still bothered me that David had mentioned that his business partner in Spain had the same surname. Of course, it could be a coincidence. But why on earth had Anita kept all these papers locked up? Had this Vasiliev fellow been threatening her, too? Why had Anita told me about Paskevich and his hit men, and said nothing about this guy? Were Paskevich and Vasiliev in cahoots with each other? As far as I knew, the Kremlin had always protected Paskevich, and Anita had never mentioned any rebel connections. And this Usko Syrjänen could very well pay off the politicians to help his building project run smoother, but I doubted that any Finnish businessman would be financing Russian terrorists. That would be commercial suicide; as soon as word of this got out, all those malls and amusement parks Syrjänen had built would become ghost towns when Finns stopped spending their money there.

Was this a message from Anita, telling me to stop worrying about Paskevich and turn my attention to Boris Vasiliev, whoever that was? Or was I supposed to deliver these Hiidenniemi papers to Vasiliev? The idea of running into Paskevich’s goons had seemed dangerous enough, but if I was really going up against a terrorist boss here, I was in deep shit. I wasn’t well-versed enough in politics to know who were the real terrorists and who were just accused of being such. It seemed to depend on who was in charge. Although Marina Andreyevna was Helena’s friend, her blog post could have been inaccurate.

I had my phone on silent, and now I saw the light was blinking. It was David.

“Hi, Hilja. You’re still awake, although it’s almost two over there! In Spain people stay up late, especially on a Saturday evening.” David sounded like he’d had more than a few.

“Yes, it’s Saturday night and I’m alone in my apartment, working. Does the name Boris Vasiliev mean anything to you?”

The barely audible intake of breath on the other end of the line told me that my question had been a surprise. But I had to take this chance. I needed to know whether Vasiliev was big enough to have attracted Europol’s attention, or whether he was only a tough guy inside Russian borders.

“Where did you run into him?” David wasn’t even trying to hide that he knew about Vasiliev.

“In some papers Anita Nuutinen left behind. Vasiliev had asked her to be his middleman.”

“In general, or just for some specific deal?”

“Honestly, I don’t understand these papers. But you do know who he is, then.”

“I know Boris Vasiliev, but who he actually is is a completely different issue. He appeared out of thin air a few years ago.”

“So you’ve met him through your business?”

David was quiet for a moment. I could hear voices in the background, but I couldn’t tell what language they were speaking.

“Oh, Hilja, Vasiliev is a boring subject.”

“All right. How’s the weather over there?”

“A bit cooler today, only about sixty degrees, and it’s stormy. I couldn’t eat dinner outside. Do you like seafood? They have the most delicious lobster here.”

Our conversation turned to chitchat about food and scenery, and it was obvious that was David’s intention. I wanted him badly. He’d be back in Finland earlier than expected, on Tuesday. Only three nights from now. I purred into the phone like a lynx and when we finally hung up, his voice still played in my ears. How could I have fallen in love with a man who constantly lied to me? Was I following in my mother’s footsteps by choosing an unpredictable man, a decision that could cost me my life?

Uncle Jari had refused to discuss Keijo Suurluoto with me, but it was evident how much he hated him, a sentiment he had passed on to me. Only our neighbor Seppo Holopainen, who had gone to school with my mother and uncle, had even hinted at how my mother may have been somewhat flirty and given Father reasons to be jealous. I don’t remember where my mother and I were coming from on the evening when he killed her. All I had been told was that Mother had decided to leave Suurluoto and take me with her, and that’s why he’d killed her. Because of me.

I checked Helena’s tracking device to make sure that she hadn’t gone anywhere. She was still sleeping in her apartment. I got up to find Jenni’s hot chocolate and made myself a cup. I’d get her more when I had a chance. At that point, Jenni got home, slightly tipsy, and told me a long-winded tale about some boring guy named Tero who’d tried to hit on her.

It was four a.m. before I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up until noon. I checked the tracker again—Helena was now at the Green League cabin for last-minute election planning. The city was overwhelmed by a rainstorm, so I skipped my morning run and opted for a quick series of exercises on my floor: a hundred and fifty pushups, a hundred lunges, and another hundred sit-ups. I’d promised Helena I’d go to the Greens’ election party. I had seen it on TV before, and it always seemed crazy, which is why I wanted to experience it firsthand this time. I felt obliged by my temporary gig to vote, so I did. I took my time deciding between Donald Duck and Modesty Blaise, but finally decided to go with the candidate who had treated me like a peer all the time I had been working at the cabinet. Mrs. Voutilainen was casting her ballot at the same time, so we walked together back to her place through the storm. She’d made coffee and strawberry cake to celebrate the election.

In the evening I sat at the computer, Googling Boris Vasiliev. There wasn’t much information considering how well known he was, at least according to David. This guy obviously wanted to stay under the radar. Helena called, asking if it was all right for her to go to Kirkkonummi for a change of clothes. We’d meet at Tavastia, the nightclub where the Green League was waiting for the election results.

I had no idea how to dress for such an occasion, so I just wore my usual jeans, combat boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with an image of a lynx head on the front. I had found it in some boutique in Greenwich Village and paid a fortune for it. I wanted it to last forever, so I rarely wore it.

I associated Tavastia with shatteringly loud rock music, drunken people stumbling over their own feet, a floor sticky with beer, and cigarette smoke. The club had since banned smoking, and instead of watching a band perform tonight, people were staring at a TV screen, enamored by real-time voting results. To me it was as exciting as watching paint dry. Helena wasn’t around yet. I wasn’t officially working, so I ordered a gin and grapefruit juice with some ice, and chatted with a couple of assistants for a while. I didn’t belong in this crowd, but being able to observe people in novel situations makes for a better bodyguard. It’s amazing how people don’t think about their safety when they are staring at a screen. Although the bouncers at Tavastia made sure that everyone left their jackets in the coat room, any woman could have smuggled in a handgun in her purse, along with a couple of rounds of ammo. If someone wanted to get rid of the majority of the Green League in one pop, this would be their chance—and it would be easy. People really believed in the good of others, and then were shocked when they read about school shootings and parents killing their entire family. They should have realized that anyone was capable of anything.

In Finland even the president walked around town without a care in the world—I had spotted her once in the bathroom of the Tennispalatsi movie theater sporting a tracksuit and a baseball cap. It was just the two of us at the sinks, and I could have done anything to her. But I pretended that I didn’t recognize her. I could just imagine how Mike Virtue would have freaked out if I’d told him about that. He didn’t even take off his Kevlar vest when he went swimming—rumor had it he wore it to bed, too. Because Mike wasn’t the type to sleep with students, we were never able to prove the latter, but there were pictures of him on Long Island and at Brighton Beach, swimming in his vest.

I’d worn my vest a couple of times in Russia. Anita had refused to wear one because she thought it was uncomfortable and made her look fat. I hadn’t worn a riot helmet since my training days at the academy, though—we’d fought imaginary enemies, stormed buildings, and prevented rioters from entering.

News of the projected winners was appearing on the screen, and the crowd murmured, saying that it would look better once the votes from Helsinki were counted. I asked a girl in a woolen sweater to keep an eye on my drink while I went to the restroom, where I tried calling Helena, but she didn’t answer. She might have been on the train and the connection wasn’t that great in the tunnels. If I knew which train she was on I could go meet her, although the idea of standing in the driving rain didn’t seem all that fun. The general mood at the party was upbeat, despite the poor showing for the Greens.

When I still hadn’t heard from Helena by nine and she hadn’t picked up her phone, I started to worry. I went back to the restroom, locked myself in the stall, and fished out my tracker. It immediately found Helena: she was between Karjaa and Tammisaari. The green dot on the screen was moving slowly eastward on Hangontie. I tried calling her again, but the automated message told me that the number I had dialed could not be reached right now.

I looked up Tiku Aaltonen’s number and called him.

“What? I’m not interested.” He sounded stuffy, like he had the flu. There were no car sounds in the background.

I lowered my voice to a tenor. “Hello, this is Reiska Räsänen. Did you already forget our little conversation?”

“Who?”

“We met recently in Kirkkonummi, at Helena’s house. Didn’t you learn your lesson?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where are you, Tiku? When can I see you?” I heard someone walk into the restroom. Damn, I couldn’t change my voice back now.

“I’m at home, in Matinkylä. Watching
Finnish Idol
. Did something happen to Helena? Dude, did you do something to her? Or are you just fishing? Today is election day, so Helena is probably over there at their party. She didn’t want you there, is that it?”

I hung up. I could check whether Tiku was telling the truth by heading over to his place, but Helena’s tracker wasn’t anywhere near Matinkylä—it had reached Tammisaari. I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that the device was still on Helena, but I had no choice but to assume it was. Yet another fucking mistake I’d made, letting Helena go to Kirkkonummi alone. Why would she leave with anyone? To watch the election coverage with someone in Tammisaari, really?

“Anybody here from Tammisaari?” I asked the assistant I’d been chatting with when I got back to the bar.

“I think they had their own party. Why do you ask? Look, look! There we go, the numbers are going up! Haven’t we been saying this would happen?”

I wasn’t interested in voting trends, but I also didn’t want to make a scene about Helena’s disappearance on national television and under the watchful eyes of the journalists who were in the room, waiting with baited breath for any reaction from the politicians. When the party leader took a break from interviews, I pushed my way through the crowd to tell him that Helena had gotten a stomach bug of some kind and was stuck at home.