Vengeance (19 page)

    
Suhonen was surprised at how much the room resembled the conference room at the Estonian Central Police headquarters.

    
The meeting had been set for ten o’clock. They had driven here directly from Assistant Chief Skoog’s office. Lieutenant Jaakko Nykänen, the head of intelligence for the NBI, had met the men in the lobby and escorted them upstairs. The stout, walrus-whiskered Nykänen was a familiar face. Before transferring to the NBI, he had worked for Takamäki in the Helsinki VCU, though that had been many years ago.

    
“What do you think?” Suhonen asked, sipping his coffee.

    
“Tough to say. It’ll probably depend on their caseload.”

    
Nykänen came back into the room along with another agent. Each was wearing a gray suit, white shirt and blue tie. The second man, Jouko Aalto, stood just under six feet tall, and had a lean face and neatly trimmed hair. Takamäki had on a blazer and polo shirt, and Suhonen, his trademark leather jacket. His black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

    
“Sorry it took a while,” Nykänen rasped. About ten years ago, he had lost part of his voice box after being shot in the throat on a VCU raid.

    
“Is that your uniform here?” Suhonen asked, pointing to the pair’s identical outfits.

    
Nykänen smirked. “Coincidence. Do you know Jouko?”

    
Takamäki nodded. He had met Jouko Aalto previously, but the man was a stranger to Suhonen.

    
Nykänen gestured toward Aalto and explained that he was in charge of coordinating the NBI’s undercover operations, a part of the intelligence group.

    
The NBI men took their seats and poured themselves a cup of coffee.

    
“So, you had a project proposal?” Aalto began in a dry voice. His lips barely moved and his expression was rigid. “Typically, these initiatives would get channeled through the supervisory branches of the police departments to the PCB-committee, where such matters are resolved…”

    
Aalto rattled off a synopsis of multilateral work between Police, Customs and Border officials, collectively known as PCB. Suhonen was sure his eyelids would start to sag if this Aalto droned on with his bureaucrat-speak any longer.

    
“We’re familiar with PCB,” Takamäki interjected.

    
“Oh, good,” the man said, disappointed. “Then I’m sure you know the numbers, too. There are about 1,100 members in 80 different criminal organizations, of which 40 fulfill the organized crime criteria set out by the EU. Annually, about 550 gang members, or half, have a run-in with the police.”

    
“I guess we’ll have to improve that,” Suhonen remarked dryly.

    
Aalto continued, his expression unchanged, “My group has undertaken fifteen new investigations this year. Plus, we still have a good thirty open cases.”

    
“Can we get to the point,” Suhonen cut in. “Numbers are really interesting, but…”

    
Aalto shot Suhonen an icy glare. “I only tell you this so you understand that we never say ‘no’ without a good reason. Most often, we can’t just take on new initiatives. We simply don’t have enough manpower for them all.”

    
“So, about your case,” Nykänen intervened. “Give us the short version.”

    
Takamäki took five minutes to outline the situation once more, but again left out Salmela’s name.

    
Suhonen capped off the summary. “Basically, we have an opportunity to plant an informant close to the Skulls.”

    
“How close?” Aalto asked. “I doubt he’ll have any substantial rank.”

    
“No,” said Suhonen. “He’s not in the inner circle, but close.”

    
“What’s the end game here, best case and worst case?”

    
Suhonen glanced at Takamäki then fielded it himself. “I’m not sure I understand. The end game is to put the bad guys in prison.”

    
“Let me paint you another picture here,” Aalto said gently. “Recall the Turku bank robbery in ’07 and the attempted robbery of an armored truck in Salo. We worked on them for nearly a year and obtained prison sentences of more than 60 years. What are we looking at in this case?”

    
“Hopefully all of them in the penalty box for long enough that they lose their grip on the streets. And nail the money-men behind the scenes.”

    
“And if that doesn’t happen?”

    
“Maybe two or three guys behind bars for a couple years on drug charges.”

    
Aalto nodded. “There’s our best and worst case. Good.”

    
Nykänen spoke up. “This informant. What’s his background and what kind of risks are we talking about? And I should probably clarify that I’m not dumb. The intention here is just to make sure we’re on the same page.”

    
Takamäki bit his tongue, though Nykänen certainly remembered his second most important maxim: There are no dumb questions. The first was: Never assume.

    
“The informant is a career criminal who’s ended up in deep debt,” Takamäki explained. “He participated in a recent drug-trafficking job with the Skulls, but wants out of the game. There’s our opportunity. Of course, for his own safety we’ll have to bust him for the drugs, which will mean a few years in prison.”

    
Takamäki’s eyes wandered from Nykänen to Aalto. He could see the impact of his words as the scope of the opportunity dawned on the agents.

    
Takamäki went on, “If this informant were discovered, it’s almost inevitable he’d be killed.”

    
“So in that instance, our best case can be increased. We’d get at least a couple life sentences,” said Suhonen gravely.

* * *

The silence of the forest was broken only by the sporadic curses of four men, which burst forth every time a bent branch snapped back at the next man’s face. Osku took up the lead. Following him, in order, were Salmela, Niko and Roge.

    
The twenty-five mile car trip northeast from Helsinki to the forest in Nuuksio had been couched in silence. A few hundred yards back, the Chevy sat parked at the dead-end of a dirt road, where a trail cut into the woods. The soft floor of the heath forest was waterlogged and soaked through the trekkers’ shoes.

    
Niko Andersson remembered having gone to the same national park some fifteen years ago. Then in grade school, his mom had made him join the scouts, but it had only lasted one fall before a fight got him kicked out. The “fat kid” had fought with the troop leader after having been ordered to wash the dishes. Even then, Niko was very large for his age, and not inclined to obey orders he deemed frivolous.

    
The trail led them to a rocky expanse, which rose gently up the surrounding hillside. Here, the spruces gave way to pines. In the open, the wind was cutting.

    
The goateed Osku, wearing a wool beanie cap, glanced back.

    
“Another hundred yards,” Niko panted.

    
The foursome dodged the watery furrows carved out by ice age glaciers. The pines began to thin out.

    
The summit of the cliff overlooked a majestic valley, blanketed with spruces, but Salmela’s gaze was directed at the rocky ground. Niko continued to the precipice, where the cliff dropped about 100 feet into a deep gorge.

    
“Beautiful view,” he said quietly, digging a 22-caliber pistol from the side pocket of his cargo pants.

    
The bull-faced Roge smirked, seized Salmela by the back of his jacket and shoved him towards the edge. Holding on tight, he jerked Salmela back. “Whoa! Don’t fall.”

    
Salmela didn’t utter a sound.

    
“Open your mouth,” Niko commanded.

    
His lips remained sealed.

    
“Open your mouth!”

    
Salmela sank to his knees and opened up. Niko shoved the pistol into his mouth. Salmela was trembling, the barrel clattering against his teeth.

    
“You understand, of course, that debts have to be paid,” Niko said.

    
Salmela tried to say something, but the barrel of the gun reduced his words to senseless blubbering, like answering a dentist’s questions with a drill in your mouth. Roge and Osku remained unfazed as they watched the scene unfold.

    
“We can’t afford to let these things slide. What would we do if nobody paid their debts? You understand, of course.”

    
Salmela looked pale, but tried nodding his head carefully.

    
“Understand?” He repeated, thrusting the gun barrel downward toward Salmela’s chin, then back up. Roge and Osku were laughing.

    
Niko wished he could get a snapshot of the occasion. A damn fine picture with a gorgeous backdrop. He in the middle, deciding between life and death like…God.

    
He could go around showing the picture to all the damned clowns who had pushed him down over the years.

    
The taste of blood filled Salmela’s mouth when the gun barrel split his lip.

CHAPTER 13

SATURDAY, 10:05 A.M.

LAUTTASAARI, HELSINKI

Aronen was sitting in the VW Golf in front of Larsson’s apartment building. His boss was late, but he didn’t care. In the army, he had gotten used to waiting, and he wasn’t in a hurry anyway.

    
On the other side of the street, a dad in a green jacket was putting a hockey bag in the trunk for his son, who was only carrying his stick. Aronen recalled how, as a kid, he had always carried his own bag.

    
Suddenly he remembered Gonzales’ comment about a present in the trunk. He stepped out of the car and circled to the rear. The wind had stripped the leaves and dead twigs off the birches in the yard. The ex-soldier scanned his surroundings with a trained eye. A father in a baseball cap and his toddler were busy at a nearby playground. The dad was feverishly building sand castles, and the tot was close behind, smashing them. That kind of life didn’t interest him.

    
A few others were around, but they ignored him. Aronen opened the trunk to see a yellow blanket. Something was clearly wrapped up in it. He started to unravel the blanket, keeping it inside the trunk.

    
Footsteps approached from behind: Aronen turned to see Larsson approaching.

    
“That’s a better ride,” Larsson remarked, his black beanie cap pulled down over his eyebrows.