The Lion of Justice (16 page)

“So you live with Syrjänen. It’s interesting how close you two are. You’re not his secretary or a bodyguard. You’re just his architect,” I told Trankov.

“It’s just temporary. Usko needs to travel a lot, so he needs a house sitter. When he goes to Russia, I’m his interpreter. His language skills aren’t that great—he can barely speak English. I suppose that’s why he and Vasiliev had some . . . misunderstandings.”

“How did you end up working for Syrjänen?”

“The pieces just fell into place. Besides, I liked staying in Finland. It’s so much safer here than Russia. You don’t get thrown in jail or shot at your front door because you’ve criticized some politician.”

“You just have your ankles smashed with an iron bar.”

Trankov blushed. “Siiskonen was paid well for his services, and he got a one-way ticket to Florida to enjoy the sunshine. Should we eat? I’m hungry, too. It’s easy to forget everything when you paint.”

The table was already set in the kitchen: bowls, spoons, and a basket of bread covered with linen. The soup waited on the pristine ceramic stove top, and Trankov turned on the burner.

“Who’s been cooking?” I asked.

“I have . . . or well, not really. I bought this soup from a restaurant in Helsinki.”

I barely held back a sudden attack of the giggles. Trankov was multitalented, that was for sure; besides being a master painter, he was a great actor, too. But I still hadn’t found out the plot for this vaudeville act. I’d be fine with that as long as it didn’t turn out to be a tragedy.

Trankov stirred the soup. Then he asked me what I’d like to drink. I would’ve been fine with just tap water again, but he insisted I drink at least sparkling water.

“We have wine, too, you know,” he said, but I refused. I kept a close eye on him. The pockets in his smock looked empty, but I wouldn’t be sure unless I actually felt them. And he better taste the soup first. I peeked into the bread basket. The Russian black bread was already sliced, and I switched some slices around, just in case. If Trankov noticed what I was doing, he didn’t comment on it. He brought the soup and a tray of butter to the table. By now my stomach was really grumbling. I stirred the soup in the pot and ladled some onto my plate. Then I opened my bottle of sparkling water. It made a safe hissing noise. I reached over to pour some for Trankov, who was serving soup for himself. The table was really narrow and bare, except for the place mats.

“Enjoy,” Trankov said in Finnish. I raised my spoon, but I didn’t taste the soup despite the combination of the creamy fish broth and pickled cucumber making my mouth salivate. Trankov’s eyes were laughing at me.

“You really don’t trust me, do you?” He spooned some soup into his mouth, smacked his lips, and swallowed. “This soup is excellent. Vasili is a great chef. You know, there are other great cooks in town, besides your staff.”

Trankov ate another spoonful. I hadn’t come up with a way he could’ve slipped tranquilizers into my bowl, so I started eating. The soup was spiced well and very buttery. I pulled a piece of bread out of the basket. Uncle Jari had called it Russki bread, but he hadn’t meant it to be derogatory.

Once my energy was restored, I asked Trankov whether Syrjänen had plans to find a replacement for his holiday resort now that the Hiidenniemi plan had gone haywire.

Trankov gave me a sideways glance. “Still interested in Syrjänen? ‘Easy does it,’ Syrjänen says. He learned a lot from Hiidenniemi. You have to be patient and proceed based on possibilities. Syrjänen wants to see who gets a seat in the next election, then he’ll know whom to contact for negotiations. All your journalists talk about is election funding. Isn’t it obvious those on your side will be supported?”

I had had this conversation with Helena before, and I completely agreed with him, so I just nodded and poured some more soup.

“This has been my favorite dish since I was a child. I used to fish, although old ladies next door warned me that the fish in the river all had three eyes because of the pollution. But life is full of risks, right, Hilja?” The frenzy brought on by painting was now gone, and Trankov seemed relaxed. I couldn’t allow myself to let my attention slip, although the warm soup had definitely calmed me.

“Stahl should be happy he’s not behind bars,” Trankov said, surprising me again so much that I almost choked on a piece of bread.

“What do you mean?” I asked between coughs. Even a sip of water didn’t help. Trankov got up quickly and began to beat my back, slightly harder than necessary, but I could feel the piece of bread move. Trankov remained standing behind me. I could see his reflection in the window. I was half expecting his hands to slowly rise to my neck, and I was ready to bite and kick.

“He was a middleman. He didn’t follow Europol orders. There was a warrant out on him, and he was finally located. Someone always leaks information when enough money is offered. He’d apparently had a long list of excuses, and some dumb people believed them.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’m still in touch with the source I used to find out about Stahl for Paskevich. Then it looked like Stahl was a double agent. Now he seems more like a triple or quadruple agent. Or maybe he’s in it for himself. He’s aware of the risks.” Trankov’s shrug was duplicated in the window. It was almost pitch-black now, and all I could see outside were the yard lights that had turned on automatically.

“Do you know where Stahl is?” I asked.

“How much are you willing to pay to know?” He placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Nothing. I’m not interested anymore.”

“And why not?” Trankov asked while he slowly moved his hand along my shoulder to my neck, stroking my hair. I got up and pushed him away.

“I think it’s time you take me to Helsinki—or at least to Kirkkonummi.”

“Why such a hurry? Let the food settle, and let’s relax on the couch. Then we can continue painting.”

I had to admit that Trankov was a handsome young man whose smile was absolutely charming when he wanted it to be. I had no complaints about his slim body, either. I could just imagine the toned abs the smock and T-shirt were hiding. I stepped toward Trankov, and before I knew it my arms were around him. I pushed my cheek against his; he felt smooth and warm. How lonely I had been since April, with no one to touch me. Trankov was no David—nobody else would ever be—but why should he be replaced? Couldn’t I just start over? I let Trankov kiss me, first cautiously and exploring, as if he thought I’d bite him if he got too rough. I smelled him, tasted him, and wondered whether it was right to feel this way. My eyes closed, as if they were protecting me from seeing who I was really kissing, who I was letting touch my butt, who I allowed to slide his lips along my neck and down to my collarbone. The man was Yuri Trankov. The man Laitio had warned me about numerous times.

16

The thought of Laitio brought me back to reality. I pushed away from Trankov and asked if he would take me somewhere or if I should call a cab. I was slightly surprised that he didn’t try to convince me to stay; instead, he said he’d give me a ride all the way to Helsinki. I repeated that Kirkkonummi would be fine—there were plenty of buses and trains I could catch.

Trankov was awfully quiet in the car. Only after we’d gotten to Hirsala Road did he suddenly ask how “that politician” was doing.

“You mean Helena Lehmusvuo? How would I know? I’m sure she’s busy with the election.”

“She looked so startled when she saw me at the opening,” Trankov said.

“For good reason! You drugged and kidnapped her. Or did that somehow slip your mind?”

“It wasn’t personal,” Trankov said. “We just wanted to find out how much she knew. If you see her, tell her I’m sorry. If you hadn’t interfered we would have taken her back home safely.”

Interesting. So if Trankov decided to, say, drug me or smack me in the head with an iron bar, I shouldn’t take it personally—he had to do it, and I shouldn’t be offended. Mike Virtue had lectured us about the ethics of various mafias, but it sounded like Trankov had his own Vorkuta-Moscow definition of what means were necessary.

“When can you come model for me again?” he asked. “I can always work on the background whenever, but I need you for another session.”

“I don’t remember when I have a day off, but I’ll call you when I know.”

“And don’t forget. Otherwise, I’ll come get you.” Trankov took his hand off the steering wheel and stroked my thigh. I grabbed his hand and reminded him that he was under the watchful eyes of the Finnish police, so he better concentrate on driving. He just laughed.

He left me at the Kirkkonummi station. The next express train from Turku would stop in five minutes. Trankov made sure I got on the train and kissed me on both cheeks. I took the first available seat next to a window and saw Trankov still at the station, waiting. When the train began to move he blew me kisses.

Once I got home I locked my gun in its case and wondered how quickly I would lose my license now that my job didn’t require a gun, and I didn’t exactly use it for sport, either. I needed to get back to the shooting range.

Monika was still closing at Sans Nom. So far there had been no incidents: no annoying customers, no angry phone calls, and no anonymous threats. No one had appeared asking for protection money or to claim her food had gone bad. I knew I would soon be itching to get out of this boring job. The only exciting thing in my life right now was Yuri Trankov, and he wasn’t enough.

I went back to Kari Suurluoto’s story about my father having escaped twice from prison. Why had nobody told me? Sure, my father had lost custody as soon as he was behind bars, and his rights to me ended when I turned eighteen. I was a complete stranger to him.

Yrjö Street had a luxury bathtub, so I took a long, hot soak. Monika’s environmentally conscious cousin apparently never used it, but I didn’t give a thought to dying polar bear cubs when I let the hot water flow. I thought about how dirty I would have felt if I’d let myself have sex with Trankov just because of a childish desire for revenge against David. I’d never held myself back sexually, nor did I ever swear loyalty to another person—I had never promised David anything, and he hadn’t asked me to. But Trankov certainly wasn’t the solution for my emotional emptiness.

I thought of everything I knew about David. He hadn’t been working for Europol that long and specialized in energy issues. He’d never been one to follow the rules. It had taken him three months to contact me after he blew up the boat. He’d claimed he spent the time healing and had gotten nasty frostbite from swimming in the sea. I wasn’t supposed to ask him anything else—this was his way of keeping me safe.

I couldn’t come up with anything that would have proved Trankov’s claims about David to be false. I could see David Stahl suddenly changing teams and working for the criminals, especially if his former bosses were threatening him with jail time. David had never been good with authority.

“Often a clear chain of command makes our jobs easier. Do not rebel against your foremen just to prove a point. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and give in. You need to learn how to tell what is appropriate in each moment.” Mike Virtue’s soft, low voice was inside my head as I added more hot water to the tub. Oh, Mike. I don’t think you would have allowed David Stahl to attend the security academy. Money didn’t buy placement in the academy; we all had to go through tests to see if we were a fit for the profession. I’d taken the cheapest possible flight with two layovers, in Stockholm and Amsterdam. Once I arrived in New York, I stayed three nights at a one-star hostel in the sketchiest-looking corner of Queens. The interview seemed more like an interrogation and had focused on my background, and I was sure my father’s crime would prevent me from moving forward. Mike Virtue had given individual feedback about the test to every applicant. I remembered vividly how my pulse was beating in my wrists as I waited for my turn in the hallway. I didn’t know how many had applied, but I knew they took only twenty. The African American man who had gone in before me came out looking pissed off and kicked the wall. Clearly he wasn’t a fit for bodyguard work. Mike waited for me behind his desk with a pile of papers stacked in front of him. Our tests. He’d devised the questions.

“Sit down please,” he told me, a phrase I was familiar with from classroom English, but his accent was different than my teacher’s back in Outokumpu. I wanted to remain standing; I could then make a quick getaway before Mike saw how disappointed I was in the results.

“I’ve never had a student from Finland. We had a Dane a few years back, but I don’t think you guys are culturally similar. Are you Finns more like Russians?”

I felt like passing or failing hung on this question.

“We aren’t like anybody else. We’re used to being in between others. Our national poet, Runeberg, said we’re not Swedes, we won’t become Russians, so let us be Finns.”

“That’s interesting,” Mike said. “You’re the first Finn to be accepted to the academy. Welcome.” He got up and extended his hand.

I shook it with a broad smile on my face. Only later did I thank
my lucky stars for Mike not knowing much about Finnish history—
the quote I’d given him was actually from A. I. Arwidsson, a man who promoted Finnish cultural identity.

Even the bath wasn’t calming. I thought about biking to meet Monika on her way home from work but decided to use my computer instead. I used Laitio’s login information to access the Bureau’s website. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there, so I typed in David Stahl’s name. There was no information about him, nor about Daniel Lanotte. I wished I could get my hands on Rytkönen’s computer; he must have had access to all sorts of information. Next I typed in Carlo Dolfini’s name. The shoeless man was bothering me six months after the incident.

Bingo! There was an entire report. “Dolfini, Carlo Pietro Giovanni. Born April 4, 1969, in Rome. Moved to Abruzzo County in Lago di Scanno in 2005. Profession: baker. He has run bakeries in Trastevere and Scanno. Family includes wife Rosa, no children. (Not at least with Rosa; no information on possible children outside of this marriage.) Has connections to the mafia in Rome, moved to Lago di Scanno to hide from them? (Not confirmed.) Wife alleges he traveled to the United States last spring, and according to the neighbors the wife followed him later. There is no immigration information for either of them ever arriving in the country.”

The sentences that followed made my heart stop.

“A partially decomposed body was found during an effort to dry out a marsh in Maremma on October 18, and the body was identified as Carlo Dolfini. He was shot in the back of the head. Mrs. Dolfini has not been found. Relatives have no information. The local police are investigating (or claiming to investigate!!!) Dolfini’s death. Most likely they aren’t.”

Based on these last sentences, the writer had been Laitio. Had he just gotten the information from Caruso in Italy? Why else wouldn’t he have told me about Dolfini? I knew the reason. Laitio wanted to protect me. He wanted me to forget about Stahl. Whoever had left Dolfini’s body in Montemassi must have found out that someone stayed there with Stahl. I was allowed to come back to Finland without incident and was left alone because either I hadn’t seen anything the murderer would have considered worrisome for his or her security or the killer was David. That didn’t explain why his cell phone was in Dolfini’s pocket, though.

None of this speculation was helping.
Just accept it and move on. You’ll never find out
, my logical side tried to tell me. Too bad that voice had never been particularly strong.

Monika had come back and was rummaging around in the kitchen, so I turned the computer off. She asked how my day was, and I gave her a vague answer about walking in the woods, although my ears were burning with this lie. I went to bed and closed my eyes, but the image of bare feet sticking out of a swamp kept me awake. I heard a female voice in my ears, “Where are you, Carlo? With some woman?” How soon after the call had Rosa Dolfini “traveled to the US”? I didn’t know these people, and if Carlo Dolfini had really worked for the mob, he would have known the risks he was taking.

I loathed myself, lying there under my blanket and wondering if David was alive to see the nearly full moon whose bright light was forcing its way into my room. I had to get up to close the curtains. I saw a man making his way down the street. He was small and wide, and once he reached my window, he turned so I could see his face. It was Martti Rytkönen.

I woke up calm even though I’d seen Rytkönen the previous night. Why wouldn’t a man stroll over to the intersection of Yrjö and Eerikki in the middle of the night? Why did I assume it had to be about me? Still, I had a hard time concentrating at work. While I drove to Veikkola for a load of organic root veggies, I kept thinking about David’s family and whether they knew anything. David had told me about them often: his father, who was half-Russian and half-Estonian, and his mother, who was from Finland’s Tammisaari and had gone to study Russian in Tartu, Estonia. He’d told me about his sisters who were about ten years older than him. One of them was married, the other wasn’t, but all of them still lived in Tartu. Surely David would have told them he was still alive? I thought about getting in touch with them and claiming to be a close friend who was worried about David’s disappearance. I remembered his parents’ names: Anton and Eva. The sisters were Sofia and Johanna. I didn’t know whether Sofia had taken her husband’s last name. Johanna was single.

My other option was Brother Gianni. He might know something. The monastery must have had a phone, if not Internet, and I knew Brother Gianni would keep his mouth shut. Whatever I decided to do, I had to do it quickly—I felt like David was more in my life than ever before, urging me to find him.

Damned Stahl and this goddamned obsession! I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice the Mercedes-Benz that had ignored the yield sign on a side road. I slammed on the brakes and drove off the road. I managed to stop the car before it went into the ditch, and the Mercedes kept on its merry way. It took me a bit of revving to get the van out of the mud and back on the road.

When I got back to the restaurant, I spotted Veikko sitting on the back patio with his buddies, having coffee and leftover Karelian pasties from the day before.

“What’s up, girl?” they hollered when I hopped out of the van to unload the vegetables.

“Rutabaga, turnips, carrots, and beets—that’s what’s up,” I told them.

“You’re planning on making a
rosolli
salad?” asked Veikko.

“It’s not the season for Christmas foods yet, right?” Veikko’s friend asked me. When I nodded he said, “So you’re kind of the security woman of this restaurant?”

“Well, sort of, if there’s even a need for one,” I told him.

“Seems like there is a need. Last night some strange guy was creeping around. I didn’t want to tell the girl who served us our coffee in the morning—she’s so fragile she would’ve gotten scared.”

“I don’t get spooked easily. Tell me more about the guy.”

Veikko’s friend finished his pasty. The mixture of smashed boiled eggs and butter fell off the pasty onto his shirt, and the man wiped it off with a handkerchief. “I had to get up in the night when—”

“Don’t use foul language! A woman’s present!” Veikko interrupted and shoved his cup toward the man, showering coffee onto the street.

“Take it easy. I had to take care of business. I saw a man circling the patio and taking pictures of the building. It looked like he was avoiding the security cameras.”

“What did he look like?”

“I only saw him from behind. He was pretty short but wide. He wore a dark coat, no hat. His shoes looked expensive.”

This sounded familiar. A gentleman fitting this description had been lurking below my window the night before, too. I just had to confirm my suspicions from the security cameras.

“Do you think he was going to break into the restaurant?”

“Not sure, but he definitely knew about the security cameras.”

“Thanks.” I dug for a twenty in my wallet and gave it to Veikko’s friend.

As soon as I was done unloading the van, I walked into the office to check out the CCTV monitors. I made sure all files from the previous evening were saved and brought the cameras back online. Then I viewed the files.