The Blinded Man aka Misterioso

17

Viggo Norlander was sitting in a warehouse in Frihamnen, waiting.

Waiting, he thought. Waiting to wait. Waiting to wait to wait. Waiting to wait to wait to wait.

In other words, he was feeling tired.

He felt even less inclined to put on the kid gloves. He’d already taken out the other kind of gloves.

The boxing gloves. Metaphorically speaking.

Something has to happen now, he thought. He was damned sick and tired of all the desk work and all the phone calls to condescending Interpol officers and recalcitrant former Soviet policemen and burned-out customs agents. He’d been waiting long enough.

He’d forced entry into the small office of the warehouse and was crouched down behind a cabinet. There he’d been sitting for three hours, and it would soon be evening. He was extremely angry.

Soon everything was going to have to proceed at an entirely new pace.

He kept his anger alive by thinking about Arto Söderstedt, that Finnish bastard, who came from somewhere out in the sticks and despised everything that he’d ever believed in. Of course money had to be coming in so that it could be divided up. If Swedish companies made the money, then it would benefit the Swedish people. It was as simple as that.

He fanned his anger by thinking about his own name. Viggo, for God’s sake, the hearty little Viggo, Viggo the fucking Viking. It was his only inheritance from the travel-happy Danish seaman who for some inexplicable reason had become his father. A quick ejaculation into the womb of a starving woman, and then he was on his way again. No responsibility. No responsibility at all. Like Söderstedt, he thought. Exactly the same.

His thoughts weren’t following any particular order.

Once in his youth he’d tried to find out something about this loathsome name of his. Its origin went back to the thirteenth century when the Danes’ great history writer, Saxo Grammaticus, latinized the Danish word vig, meaning “battle,” and gave the name to one of King Rolf Krake’s men.

Viggo, Jan-Olov Krake’s henchman, Norlander thought incoherently as the door opened. A man with a ponytail and wearing a jogging suit came in and sat down at the desk a couple of yards away. Norlander took a few seconds to ascertain that the man was alone.

Then he rushed out and slammed the man’s head against the desk.

Once, twice, three times, then four.

Taking a firm grip on the man’s ponytail, he stuck his service revolver deep into his ear and snarled, “Little Strömstedt, you’ve got three seconds to give me the name of your mafia contact. Otherwise you’re dead, big-time. One. Two.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” cried the man. “Who the hell are you?”

“Three,” said Norlander and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

“There’s a bullet in the next chamber,” said Norlander. “Be damn quick about it now!”

The man was like jelly in his hands, thought Norlander with a rush of adrenaline. He was shaking all the way down to the bottom of his dark soul.

He laid it on thick: “A shipment of 120 proof Estonian vodka from Liviko intended for little Strömstedt was confiscated by customs a couple of months ago. Who sent it to you?”

“I’m just a middleman,” said little Strömstedt, shaking. “Damn it, I’ve told them everything. I don’t know anything!”

“Right now there are other factors in play. Every complaint for police brutality that you submit is going to end up in the wastebasket. You hear me? Top priority. National security. Spit out everything you know. Now. The bullet’s in the chamber.”

“Who the fuck are you? Dirty Harry?”

Norlander took a chance and shot little Strömstedt’s computer to smithereens.

“You fucker!” he bellowed, trying to twist his body around. Norlander, in turn, took an even tighter grip on the man’s ponytail until he felt the roots pull halfway out. Little Strömstedt let out a scream.

“Igor and Igor!” he screamed. “That’s all I know! They do their own pickups!”

“Igor and Igor are your Russian mafia contacts? Is that right?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Damn it, that’s all I know!”

“I know all about you,” said Norlander. “You speak Russian. You know what these guys Igor and Igor said to each other. I need more!”

Norlander lowered his gun and aimed the barrel at the man’s hand lying on the desk.

“A little more, please,” he said, and fired.

The bullet passed between the man’s middle finger and ring finger, singeing the skin. Strömstedt screamed even louder.

“Gotlanders!” he wailed.

“Go on,” said Norlander, moving the gun until it was pointing at the man’s wrist.

“The Gotland blackhead smugglers! They belong to the same gang! That’s all I know, I swear! They talked about Gotland and how clumsy the guys had been down there!”

Viggo Norlander lifted Strömstedt up by his ponytail, yanked on the door handle behind his back, and hurled the man into the nearest closet. Then he barricaded the door and left him there. He could hear a flood of curses coming from inside.

He thought they were Finland-Swedish.

A barrier, thought Norlander as he sped away from Frihamnen. He received the go-ahead from Hultin on his cell to drive straight out to Arlanda Airport.

A barrier had been lifted.

Now he was really going to be fucking dangerous.

Viggo Norlander was forty-eight years old, divorced, with no children. End of story. The bare spot on the top of his head had long ago acquired its final shape; not so his stomach, which slowly continued to grow. He wasn’t fat, just pre-fat.

There wasn’t a single blot on his record. Nor much of anything else. He’d always been an exemplary if not always terribly active officer, whose only guides through the journey of life had been the police handbook and the book of law. He’d always believed in legal methods, in defending established society, and in the slowly grinding wheels of the justice system.

His life had stagnated and, like his bald spot, had long ago achieved its final form. It was a deliberate stagnation. The humdrum was his very essence, the correct, the legal, what could be described in black and white. He’d always believed that people were generally like himself: hardworking, never making up excuses to take sick days, paying their taxes without complaint, and following the universal rules, with no extremes, either highs or lows.

Everything else was shit and had to be removed.

And in his world all law-abiding citizens intuitively wanted the shit removed, and naturally they appreciated his efforts to get it off the streets.

No matter what he happened to encounter in the course of his daily work in the Stockholm criminal division, he still managed to retain these crystal-clear guidelines in his job and in his life. He’d always been quite satisfied both with himself and with the police force in general. In spite of occasional slumps and upticks, everything was moving in the right direction and at the right speed, which meant at a steady pace: growth, progress, development. A stable societal advancement.

He was a tranquil man.

He would never be able to put his finger on where the rupture first appeared, or where the wall had finally burst.

Not even if subjected to torture would he admit to the presence of a rupture, simply because it didn’t exist in his worldview.

But it did exist in his present world of action.

Now as he walked through Visby, on the island of Gotland, moving along the medieval ring wall in the morning mist, his beliefs were still intact. Conditioned by trust. The lingering vestiges of the previous days. What he had done and was about to do were necessary. No more unsolved Palme murders. Legal security, he thought. Trust. Societal responsibility. Daggfeldt, Strand-Julén, Carlberger. That was enough. He would see to that.

He was defending the most important thing of all.

Even though he didn’t really know what it was.

After a long walk through an almost-deserted Visby, encircled by a sort of Mediterranean morning mist as much as by the ring wall, he reached the police station. It was seven-thirty A.M.

He went inside and was directed to the jail. There he found an officer on duty who was about his own age. They immediately recognized the policeman in each other. That was how he looked-Policeman with a capital P. And Swedish.

“Norlander,” said Norlander.

“Jönsson,” said Jönsson, speaking with a distinct accent stemming from both Skåne and Gotland. “Vilhelm Jönsson. We’ve been expecting you. Peshkov is ready whenever you are.”

“I assume that you’re aware of the gravity of this investigation. There is nothing more important in Sweden today.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“So how do we do this? Does he speak English?”

“Fortunately, he does. An old, international seaman. I assume that it would have been inconvenient to have an interpreter present. If I understood you correctly.”

“We certainly do understand each other. Where is he?”

“In a soundproof room, as agreed. Shall we?”

Norlander nodded, and Vilhelm Jönsson led the way along several corridors, recruiting a couple of guards from the break room as they walked past. Then they all went down to the basement. The four men stopped outside a gray-painted steel door with a peephole.

Jönsson cleared his throat. “As you’ve explained,” he said, “because this investigation is classified, and for other reasons as well, we won’t be allowed to participate in the interrogation, but we’ll stand guard outside. Here’s the panic button. Press it and we’ll be inside in a second.”

Norlander accepted the little box with the red button. He put it in his pocket. “Don’t look unless you have to,” he said calmly. “The less you know, the better. That way any eventual complaints will be directed to NCP management. It’s for the best.”

They unlocked the door and let him in. A table, two chairs, padded walls. Nothing more. Except for a small man wearing prison garb sitting on one of the chairs. A sharp face, skinny biceps. The sinewy, ropy muscles of a sailor, thought Norlander, assessing the man’s potential strength to resist-it wouldn’t be in his body, at any rate. The man stood up and greeted Norlander politely, “How do you do, sir?”

“Very brilliant, please,” said Norlander, placing a notebook and pen on the table before sitting down. “Sit down, thank you.”

The conversation proceeded, although not without certain linguistic infelicities. In the same knotty English, Norlander continued, “Let’s get right to the point, Mr. Alexey Peshkov. During a bad winter storm you and your crew ditched a hundred and twelve Iranian, Kurdish, and Indian refugees in two rubber rafts hundreds of yards off the east coast of Gotland, then headed back to Tallinn in your fishing boat. But the Swedish coast guard managed to stop your vessel before it left Swedish waters.”

“Very straight to the point,” said Peshkov.

Since irony wasn’t Norlander’s strong suit, his attempt to imitate Hultin’s icy tone came out a bit abruptly. “I need information,” he went on, “about the serial killings of Swedish businessmen that have occurred in Stockholm over the past few days.”

Alexey Peshkov’s jaw dropped. After he managed to close it again, he blurted out, “You must be joking!”

“I am not joking,” said Norlander and continued in the same calm manner. “If you don’t give me the information I want, I have the authority to kill you right here and now. I’m specially trained for that. Do you understand?”

“I’m not buying this,” said Peshkov, eyeing Norlander’s slightly flabby build. At the same time, Norlander’s utterly composed steadiness of purpose brought a dubious expression to the man’s face. Norlander hammered home the point:

“We know that you’re part of a Russian-Estonian crime group headed by Viktor X, and that a couple of booze smugglers calling themselves Igor and Igor are in the same group. Correct?”

Peshkov didn’t say a word, but now he was on the alert.

“Correct?” Norlander repeated.

Still not a word.

“This is a soundproof room. Nothing that takes place in here will be heard by anyone else. The powers that I’ve been granted have no limit; they come from the highest authority. I want you to understand that and think carefully before you answer. Your personal welfare depends on the next answer you give.”

Peshkov closed his eyes; he seemed to think that he must be dreaming. This was something quite different from the good-natured Swedish police officers he’d met so far. Maybe he saw the glint of something monstrous in Norlander’s eyes. Maybe he’d seen that glint before.

“This is a democracy,” he said cautiously.

“Of course,” said Norlander. “And it’s going to remain so. But occasionally every democracy has to defend itself by using undemocratic means. Any sort of defense is actually by definition undemocratic. This is one instance when that will be made abundantly clear.”

“I’ve been in here for two months. I know absolutely nothing about any serial murders in Stockholm. I swear it.”

“Viktor X? Igor and Igor?” said Norlander, in exactly the same tone. Somehow he realized that it was important not to change it.

Alexey Peshkov calculated the risks.

Norlander clearly saw that the man was contemplating the best way to postpone his own death for as long as possible. He gave him time to think but also slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. The sound of him clicking off the safety on his gun seemed to echo off the walls.

Peshkov sighed deeply. “I was a seaman on international routes during the entire Communist era. I kept out of the clutches of the KGB and GRU by constantly changing my identity. I scraped enough money together to buy my own fishing boat when the regime fell. For about a year I was an ordinary Russian-speaking fisherman from Tallinn, a bit oppressed but free.

“You might say that was our only free year, because then other forces came into play. I was contacted by anonymous protectors. First it was just money they wanted, payment for not setting fire to my boat or blowing it up. The usual protection racket. But soon it began to escalate. I was ordered to take on… transports of this type. This was my third. Tens of thousands of desperate refugees are stuck in the old Soviet Union, just waiting to be fleeced.

“I’ve never been anywhere near the boss; Viktor X is just a name, a myth. My contact was an Estonian by the name of Jüri Maarja. He’s supposedly close to Viktor X. I’ve never heard of any Igor and Igor, but the group has lots of booze smugglers, as well as all sorts of other smugglers in Northern Europe.”

Norlander was surprised by the man’s sudden volubility but didn’t let it show. “Addresses? Contact places?” he said quietly.

Peshkov shook his head. “They keep moving them around.”

Norlander studied Peshkov for a good long time. He couldn’t decide whether the man was a victim or a criminal or both. He slapped his notebook against the table and stuck his pen in his breast pocket. “I’ll be leaving for Tallinn now. If it turns out that a single detail of what you’ve told me is wrong, or if it turns out that you haven’t told me everything, I’ll be back. Do you understand what that means?”

Peshkov stared down at the table without saying a word.

“Last chance to change or add anything,” said Norlander, standing up.

“That’s all I know,” Peshkov said, sounding resigned.

Viggo Norlander suddenly held out his hand toward Alexey Peshkov. The Russian-Estonian fisherman reluctantly got up and shook hands.

“How do you do, sir?” said Norlander.

Peshkov gave him a look that he would never forget.

Tallinn was a crazy city.

That’s what Viggo Norlander thought after being there only fifteen minutes. Later on he would by no means change his opinion.

He had trouble getting a rental car at the airport. Finally he headed out into the chaotic afternoon traffic, struggling to find his way with the help of an English-language tourist map. He ended up in Old Town, on the slopes of Toompea Hill, circling around as if inside a medieval labyrinth. Since he kept coming upon ancient walls with magnificent tall defensive turrets, he almost thought he was still in Visby.

But in reality the city was nameless, a mere backdrop for his single-minded purpose. Street signs, traffic signs, billboards in a foreign language-it was like in a movie. He was a stranger and wanted to stay that way. Everything should remain nameless, no more than a backdrop. Nothing would be allowed to distract his attention. He felt as if new blood were pumping through his body. This was what he was meant for. Enduring all those idle hours in life just so he could arrive at this specific moment.

Finally he located the big, modern police headquarters. He parked illegally and went inside. He entered the reception area, a small room where the old Soviet bureaucratic drabness fought in vain against the modern Western interior design. In the same way, the duty officer was both accommodating and dismissive in a strange mixture that Norlander had never encountered before. Under other circumstances he might have been surprised. Now he was merely stubborn.

“Superintendent Kalju Laikmaa,” he said for the third time in his broken English. “He’s expecting me.”

“I don’t see any Swedish police officer in my authorization documents,” said the young man, managing to sound both stern and apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he added for the third time.

“At least give him a call,” said Norlander with composure, using the icy tone that had proved so successful at the Visby jail. Finally the duty officer did as he asked. He sat for a while with the phone receiver expertly held between his shoulder and chin as he stirred his cup of coffee. When he finally spoke, his words sounded like Finnish with a bunch of misplaced os. Eventually he hung up and said with politely disguised annoyance: “The superintendent will come down and get you, Mr. Norrland.”

“Please,” said Mr. Norrland courteously.

It took only a minute before he heard the elevator in the lobby of police headquarters, and out stepped a fair-haired man wearing a wrinkled corduroy suit and glasses of the type that were handed out free of charge when Norlander was doing his military service in the distant past.

“Norlander, I presume,” said the man, holding out his hand. Norlander shook it. The man had a firm handshake. “I’m Laikmaa.”

They got in the elevator and rode up to the fifth floor.

“You could have told me that you were on your way,” said Laikmaa, speaking with an elegant East Coast American accent. “Then we could have avoided all the trouble.”

“I wanted my arrival to go unnoticed, as much as possible,” said Norlander, resorting to the icy tone that was by now well practiced. “There’s too much at stake.”

“I see,” said Laikmaa drily. “Over here businessmen as well as others are dying in hordes. We’re living in a new climate of violence. Everybody interprets the laws of the market economy any way they like. What was suppressed under the Soviets is now bubbling up with all the force we had expected. Our job was undoubtedly easier when we were the tools of the oppressor, but hardly more pleasant. We now live in a state within a state that has exactly the same ability to infiltrate as the union of states did in the past. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if your arrival is already known within certain circles. We need to be very careful at all times about what we say and reveal. Just like before. There are ears everywhere. Come in.”

They went into a pleasant little office. Dead plants lined the sills of the windows facing Old Town and the castle with its imposing tower, called Pikk Hermann. But for Norlander the view didn’t exist. He sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of Laikmaa’s desk.

“The day starts with an electronic sweep of my office,” said Laikmaa, lighting a cigarette. “To make sure that no listening devices have been planted during the night. But of course that doesn’t prevent long-distance bugging. In my position as head of the nominal fight against the mafia in this country, I’m a popular target. As far as the mafia is-”

“You of all people should know,” said Norlander coolly.

“The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know,” Laikmaa said sagely. “Cases dealing with all forms of organized crime land on my desk, from simple protection and collection rackets to matters that reach all the way up to the highest imaginable levels. The only common denominator is the desire to exploit the new opportunities. Some think we’re looking at the naked face of the market economy; others say it’s the natural continuation of state terrorism. In either case, what’s most apparent is the complete lack of, shall we call it empathy, or perhaps an intrinsic sense for the essence of democracy. As always, people are grabbing as much as possible for themselves, at others’ expense. It makes no difference whether the state is an absolute power or nonexistent.”

Laikmaa rummaged through the multitudes of documents and somehow managed to find the right one.

“All right,” he said. “Regarding your earlier questions on the phone, I don’t exactly have anything new to offer. The Viktor X gang is a constellation of Russians and Estonians operating primarily in Tallinn. They’ve started making forays into Sweden since the Finnish market will soon reach saturation point. We don’t really know how far they’ve gotten-whether a contact network has already been established, or whether a regular smuggling operation is under way-but we do know that there’s no lack of ambition.

“As we’ve said, they execute traitors with a shot to the head; that’s a consistent trademark, and I’ve never seen any deviations. They use ammunition from the weapons factory in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, as we’ve already discussed. There’s no doubt about any of this. But you need to know that most of the groups use the same ammunition and that here in Tallinn the evasive Viktor X’s group is quite a small, marginal enterprise. Seven or eight gangster rings have divided up Tallinn and eastern Estonia into districts, and they avoid crossing each other’s boundaries.

“We know very little about their contacts higher up with the larger intra-Russian mafia. If we disregard Yugoslavia, right now Estonia tops the charts for European murder statistics. We have more than three hundred homicides a year in this country, and Tallinn has one of the highest murder rates in the world. That’s the background that you need to be aware of when you step out onto our streets.”

“Is it your department that’s known as Commando K?” asked Norlander.

“No, we’re the criminal police. Commando K is our antiterror group. They’re our extended arm-and the only actual physical weapon that we have against our gangsters. They do have a tendency to go a little too far, but they remain our only real force. We’re the ordinary criminal police, handling the investigations. Commando K is purely an assault team.”

Laikmaa fell silent, rifling through the papers to pull out another document.

“What we know is that Viktor X is mixed up in the protection operation for a Swedish media firm that’s trying to establish itself in Russia and the Baltics by producing a daily business newspaper, among other things. Internationally, the firm calls itself GrimeBear Publishing, Inc. I don’t know what it’s called in Sweden, but I think they have almost a monopoly on the media in your country. Seems rather strange for a democracy. Or am I mistaken?”

Norlander hadn’t a clue about any of this. He jotted it down in his notebook and then abruptly changed the subject. “I’ve got a new lead. A Jüri Maarja. He’s behind the smuggling of refugees to Gotland.”

“He’s not alone.” Kalju Laikmaa looked pensive.

Norlander saw that he’d mentioned a sensitive topic. Laikmaa was apparently considering how much he could reveal. Norlander decided to help him out. “We’re not interested in the refugee traffic itself. It is what it is. We’re only interested in the connection to the serial killings.”

“And what sort of connection is that?” Laikmaa asked skeptically.

Norlander didn’t reply. He tried to appear inscrutable rather than uncertain.

Only now did it occur to him how vague that connection actually was.

“So,” said Laikmaa when he realized that he wasn’t going to get an answer, “you get to keep your secrets and I have to reveal mine. Is that what our contract looks like?”

“Ich bin sorry,” Norlander managed to say. “This investigation has to do with national security. And as you said yourself, this office may be bugged, long distance.”

“I was being sarcastic,” said Laikmaa, beginning to understand the nature of the man with whom he was talking. “Never mind. Jüri Maarja speaks Swedish, which may be of some interest to you. He lived in Sweden for many years without ending up in any police records. He’s close to Viktor X; that much we know. We also know that he’s one of many who deal in smuggling refugees. We have orders from the highest authority not to be too rigid when it comes to that particular type of smuggling. The Baltic countries are overflowing with refugees who think that Sweden is heaven. Apparently they’re using an old map.”

Norlander gave him a stony look. Laikmaa evidently had more on his mind.

“There’s something more,” said Norlander coldly.

Laikmaa sighed heavily and looked as if he were trying to think about good Baltic-Scandinavian relations, and about their dependence on Swedish aid. He was really thinking about the deportation of Baltic refugees back to the Soviet Union and about Swedish business interests in the Baltics.

The multifaceted meaning contained in that sigh went right over Norlander’s head. He heard only Laikmaa’s response.

“I’ve spent days interrogating one of Maarja’s more prominent drug dealers, one Arvo Hellat. But in vain. We’re going to have to let him go in a couple of hours, for lack of evidence. He speaks Swedish. From Nuckö, if that means anything to you. Would you like to have a try?”

Norlander stood up without a word. He was getting closer.

Laikmaa led the way down corridors, both above- and below-ground, to the prison. Accompanied by a couple of guards, they arrived at a steel door, where they stopped.

“I think it’s best if I’m present,” said Laikmaa. “Don’t worry, I don’t speak a word of Swedish. But it violates the rules to allow a foreign police officer to be alone in an Estonian cell. I’m sure you understand.”

Norlander nodded, hoping that his disappointment wasn’t too obvious.

They went in. The man in the cell had long hair and looked Finnish. Viggo Norlander pictured Arto Söderstedt in his mind and let the image stay there.

Arvo Hellat studied both mafia fighters and said something sarcastic in Estonian. Laikmaa replied tersely and pointed at Norlander, who cleared his throat and began talking. It was liberating to speak Swedish. No more “Ich bin sorry.”

“You’re close to Jüri Maarja, and that means you’re close to Viktor X. What do you know about the murders of three Swedish businessmen during the past week?”

Arvo Hellat looked surprised. He glanced at Laikmaa, who shrugged and said something in Estonian that meant either “answer” or “the man’s insane.” Hellat replied in a strange Estonian-Swedish accent with peculiar diphthongs and ts and gs and ks that came in odd places. Norlander could barely understand him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hellat. “What do those murders have to do with me?”

Norlander was really only there to look. Window-shopping, he told himself. He wasn’t going to let this man out of his grasp.

“The good superintendent doesn’t understand a word we’re saying,” Norlander said in the icy tone that by now almost came naturally to him. “Is Viktor X involved in the murders of the Swedish businessmen? Let me point out that I’m here on a special assignment and have the power to make things very unpleasant for you.”

Arvo Hellat was even more astonished. He stared at Norlander for a good long time, then burst into loud laughter. “You don’t know what you’re playing with!” he blurted out. “By comparison, fire is ice cold!”

Norlander left the cell with the image of Hellat engraved on his mind.

Laikmaa followed, astonished, as they walked down the corridors. “Did you find out anything?” he asked in his American-tinged English.

“Enoff,” said Norlander.

They returned to Laikmaa’s office. The superintendent sat down to continue their discussion.

Norlander remained standing. “I’m going home now,” he said.

Laikmaa frowned. “You’ve only just arrived. We still have a lot to discuss.”

“I’m satisfied. Thanks for all your help.” He headed for the door, then turned around and asked, “Oh, that’s right. Do you know anybody calling themselves Igor and Igor?”

Kalju Laikmaa just stared at him and shook his head.

Norlander closed the door and then he heard Laikmaa pick up the phone.

He went out to his rental car, tossed the parking ticket onto the ground without a second thought, and drove off.

He drove three-quarters of the way around police headquarters and then parked near one of the walls that couldn’t be seen from Laikmaa’s window. It was near the prison entrance; he had carefully taken note of its location.

He sat there for three hours, fully alert. Dusk arrived. He was hungry. He sat there for another hour, feeling drowsier.

Then Arvo Hellat came out the door, tossing back his long hair with a feminine gesture. Norlander hunched down behind the wheel. Hellat went over to an old green Volvo Amazon, a vintage model that Norlander hadn’t seen in God knew how many years. He drove off.

First he stopped at a Greek restaurant in Old Town. He made a phone call, ate a good-size portion of moussaka, and drank a beer. That took almost an hour. Norlander sat outside in his car, freezing and starving. Twilight swept away the last remnants of Tallinn light. The lights came on in Old Town, perched on its hill.

Hellat came out and drove off in his absurd Amazon-hardly a suitable car for someone holding a top position within the mafia. He drove out of Tallinn, heading southwest in the direction of Keila. In that small town he went inside the restaurant at the train station, made another phone call, and had another beer. Norlander watched him the whole time through the window. Then Hellat returned to his car, got back on the highway, and drove toward Tallinn. It was eleven o’clock by the time he re-entered the Estonian capital with Norlander’s rented Skoda in tow. He drove into Old Town again, choosing the sections that were more dimly lit, and stopped outside a decrepit building that looked abandoned and ready for demolition. Not another car was anywhere in sight, not a person on the sleazy streets.

Mafia territory, Norlander thought as Hellat slipped inside the ramshackle building. The big Swede slid his gun back into the shoulder holster, took the little pistol out of his waistband at the small of his back, flicked off the safety, put it back, and checked to make sure that the big hunting knife was still easily accessible, attached to his shin.

Blood was pumping wildly through his veins.

This was Viggo Norlander’s Moment, with a capital M.

Viggo the Viking.

He entered the building with his service revolver raised, the safety off. He heard Arvo Hellat climbing the rotting stairs a couple of floors above. Then Hellat took five steps and went through a door. After that, silence.

Norlander crept soundlessly up the stairs in the murky light. The steps didn’t creak even once.

Two flights up he found three doors: one right next to the staircase, one at the far end of the corridor, and one five steps away. He crept over to the last. It was closed, but he could see that it opened inward.

He took a deep breath, hyperventilated a couple of times, then kicked open the door with all his strength and rushed in, gun raised.

Eight men were standing in the light along the walls, aiming machine guns at him.

“Please drop your weapon,” said an Estonian-Swedish voice from the dark section of the room.

A desk was standing there. Two men were seated behind it. It was impossible to see their faces. But perched on the edge of the desk was Arvo Hellat, smirking. Norlander had him in his sights.

“Drop your weapon or die,” said the voice again. It wasn’t Hellat speaking. Hellat merely smiled. “One second,” said the voice.

Norlander dropped his gun.

He had never felt so disarmed.

Shaking his head, Hellat came over and removed the rest of his arsenal. Then he went back to the desk and sat down, dangling his legs like a child.

“It took some time to assemble a decent force,” the voice went on. Now Norlander could tell that it was coming from one of the men seated behind the desk. “And to find suitable premises. We sent Arvo on a little trip to Keila while we made the necessary arrangements. So what do you think you’re doing? Is this some sort of private vendetta?”

Norlander didn’t move. He was ice cold inside.

“I really must ask you to tell us what you’re up to,” the voice insisted courteously, stepping into the light and becoming a body. A large body, a large face adorned with a mustache and a good-natured smile.

“Jüri Maarja?” Norlander managed to say.

Jüri Maarja came over to him, pressed lightly on Norlander’s stomach, ran his hand over his bald spot, and then gave him a searching look.

“Interesting,” he said. “An interesting person for a vendetta.”

Maarja said something in Russian and received a muttered reply from another man sitting in the dark behind the desk.

“Tell us everything you know and everything you think you know,” said Maarja, still very polite. Norlander recognized the chill in the voice. He couldn’t even bring himself to hate the similarity. “I insist,” Maarja went on.

Viggo Norlander closed his eyes. His last chance to be the hero would be to remain silent in the face of this courteous monster.

But the hero option was no longer on Norlander’s list. It had been crossed off, never to return.

“Right now Swedish businessmen are being murdered one after the other in Stockholm,” he said hoarsely. “They’re being executed with your ammunition and with the method that you use to kill traitors. Viktor X!” he shouted at the shadow behind the desk. Nothing moved.

Jüri Maarja looked genuinely surprised and blurted out a few Russian syllables. He received a few more in return from the desk.

“It’s possible that you’ve just saved your life, Detective Inspector Viggo Norlander.” He read the name aloud from Norlander’s police ID, which he’d plucked from his pocket. “We need to inform Stockholm of our innocence in some way. But of course we can’t simply let you go without some form of punishment. That would go against our policy. Now listen closely, and memorize these words. We’re going to write a note and pin it on you. We’d never do anything so incredibly stupid as to kill Swedish businessmen in Sweden. Is that understood? We have nothing to do with this matter. To the extent that we might have a presence in Stockholm, it’s extremely important for us to stay as low profile as possible.”

Maarja went over to the desk to accept a piece of paper and a pen from the man in the shadows. He shoved Hellat off the desk and proceeded to write for an uncomfortably long time. Then he said, “Now it’s time for us to make our departure. In case the good Laikmaa has seen fit to send a man after you. Although of course he knows better than to get involved. And it takes time to assemble Commando K.”

Then he said something in Estonian, and the men holding the guns flung Norlander to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling as they bound his arms and legs. He couldn’t move.

Then came the first pain. It was almost liberating. He screamed. For all sorts of reasons.

The second pain was annulled by the next two.

He became an illuminated bundle of nerve impulses. He saw himself light up with a final light.

Damn it, he thought in surprise. What a sleazy way to die. Then he felt himself disappear.