Evil Things, page 23
56
She had no more coins left, so the first thing she did when she got back to Unioninkatu was ask Irja to lend her some. Then she telephoned Kyander. Kalle squeezed into the telephone booth with her and Hella, holding the receiver between her ear and shoulder, stroked his reddish-blond mane with her left hand as she dialled with her right.
The man picked up after two rings. She would have bet her red Christmas sweater that he had been sitting at home the whole time, waiting for her call.
“Kyander. Listening.”
“I have proof,” said Hella. “Tangible evidence.”
“Then you’d better hand it over.”
Hella smiled. There was a man standing next to the telephone booth, ostensibly waiting to make a call. He was wearing a cable-knit sweater and fishing waders, but his hands were small, white and delicate and there was a faint dent on the bridge of his nose, most likely left by reading glasses. He must have taken them off right before changing into fisherman’s garb. She had second-rate spies watching over her. Either that, or their standards were slipping.
“Sure,” said Hella. “No problem. As soon as you recognize in writing the SUPO’s role in this affair and provide satisfactory medical assistance to my friend.”
It was Kyander’s turn to laugh, and it was not a friendly sound. “You must be delusional. I’ve heard that lack of sunlight can drive people crazy. You’re a good example of that. Do you think we didn’t have you followed? As we speak, my boys are breaking into locker number 7 at the railway station. I had them on the phone less than a minute ago. They have obtained the authorization of the station’s security service. And let me tell you one more thing, young lady. Our friends – you understand who I’m talking about, don’t you? – our friends are very unhappy with this turn of events, with your obstinacy and your decision not to be reasonable, and they have asked me personally to make sure you behave.”
Hella gasped (rather appropriately, she thought) and hung up. She would call Kyander back in half an hour, once his “boys” had reported to him that locker number 7 was empty.
She pushed past the fake fisherman who was busy playing with his coins and returned to the table where Irja was sitting waiting for her.
“Did he refuse?”
“For now, yes. But he doesn’t have a full grasp of the situation yet.”
She hoped to God – in whom she didn’t believe – that she wasn’t mistaken. What if Esteri hadn’t made it? What if there hadn’t been two square-jawed individuals at the train station but three, and one of them had stayed behind in the locker room and caught Esteri red-handed?
“I expected him to refuse,” said Irja. She smiled, a little smile of triumph that Hella found difficult to comprehend. “I’ve changed my mind. If you’re still up for it, we can go to the Western Alliance.”
Hella stared at her in disbelief. “Are you sure?”
“You were right when you said my baby’s life mattered more than anything. I can feel him kicking, Hella. And I think the Western Alliance is a better choice than the SUPO. They conducted these tests. They’re the ones who are responsible for this. They must have chloroquine.”
Hella nodded, relieved. “Of course it’s a better choice. The Western Alliance are the ones pulling the strings. Kyander is just executing their orders. Let’s hurry before the fisherman over there casts his net.”
They piled into the car, Kalle still clutching his toy bus. As the car pulled away from the kerb, they saw the fisherman run out and stop abruptly by the roadside, unsure of what to do.
Hella waved at him cheerfully and opened the window. “What are you waiting for? If you’re going to follow us, go and get your car.”
The young man blushed and turned away, ignoring them.
“All right,” smiled Hella and sped up. “Time to get going.”
“You didn’t tell me what you did while you were away,” said Irja. “You don’t have your bag with you any more. Did you hide it? How did you manage?”
“I called someone from a café on Elielplatsen. She was rather good at it, given that she’s just an old housewife.”
“A relative?”
“On some days, it really feels like it.”
She wondered if she could tell Irja the truth, but decided against it. It was not her secret to tell, after all. She doubted very much that anyone would ever arrest Esteri for killing her own son, the child-murderer, now that everyone believed that the man had died at the hands of an inexperienced police officer – herself – whose gun had misfired. But it wasn’t worth the risk. Esteri deserved to live out what remained of her life in peace, caring for her only remaining granddaughter, and if it did her good to think of Hella as a sort of guardian angel and lavish her with offerings of gherkins, so be it.
“I have one condition,” said Irja. “I will be the one doing the talking now. I want you to remain silent.”
Here we go, thought Hella. She doesn’t trust me to do the right thing. I’ve failed miserably in my negotiations with Kyander, so now Irja thinks she can do better than me.
“As you wish,” she said gloomily. “But if you intend to appeal to their better nature and talk about truth and justice and a safer world, my advice is to forget it. These people are not philanthropists, and they are certainly no saints. This is a business transaction we are proposing. They provide you with medicine, and they call the SUPO to tell them to drop the charges against your husband —”
“And you,” chimed in Irja.
“And me, yes. And in exchange, we give them what we have.”
“The results of the blood tests,” said Irja. “And the Ysteria vials. Have you got all three in your bag?”
“No,” explained Hella. “I separated them. One vial is in my bag. The other two I hid away before this even started, as insurance for all of us. I wanted to be sure I had some proof to fall back on if everything else was taken from me.”
“So where are they? Didn’t they find them when they searched the car?”
Hella waited while the traffic light changed to orange. There were hordes of people on the street – girls in silk stockings and flowery skirts despite the biting cold, men in double-breasted suits, with black coats thrown casually over their shoulders. Just two years in Ivalo and she was completely out of touch with this other, sophisticated, cosmopolitan reality. And the worst of it was, she didn’t even care any more.
She turned to look at Kalle. “Does your bus have a baggage compartment?” she asked.
“It does, but the door’s stuck.”
Hella smiled. “I’ll fix it as soon as Irja and I are done talking with one very nasty gentleman.”
57
They had come to the right place. The receptionist, a sleek strawberry blonde wearing a demure white blouse and over-bright red lipstick, stared at them with undisguised fascination upon hearing their names. Hella wondered how this woman’s bosses had described them: two weirdos from up north? One pregnant, flushed and panting, one dark and surly and unkempt. And a skinny boy – don’t forget the skinny boy – with his beautiful gleaming toy bus.
“We’ve been expecting you,” murmured the receptionist and pressed a button on her desk. Her nails were painted the same fiery red as her lips.
The Western Alliance outfit was not at all what Hella had imagined. From outside, the place was accessible through swinging doors. It looked like just another office, one selling agricultural machinery, or a law firm, maybe. It just stopped short of screaming look at us, we’re as inoffensive as one can get. We barely exist.
Yet the ginger-haired young man who signalled to them from further down the hall had an unmistakable military bearing and an unfriendly manner. He was dressed in khaki fatigues, but wore no insignia.
“This way, please. I first need to make sure that you have proof of what you’re accusing us of. Do you have anything to give me?” Hella pulled out of her pocket a sheet of paper folded in four and handed it to him. A copy of the blood test she had found among Kalle’s paper planes.
The man nodded and walked away briskly, leaving them standing there.
He wasn’t gone for long. “The Captain will see you now. However, we would prefer that the child waits in the reception area, if you don’t mind.” Then, without waiting for their response: “Greta, find him a comic book or some crayons, will you?”
Once Kalle took his place on the reception room sofa, the two women were marched down a narrow corridor painted institutional yellow, then motioned into a small, sparsely furnished room. There was nothing there but a metal chair and matching desk.
“I need to search you.”
“Suit yourself,” sneered Hella.
His hard, probing fingers ran over her body but found nothing except her car keys.
“Madam?”
Irja was blushing.
“She’s a priest’s wife, for God’s sake,” snapped Hella. “Get a woman to search her, if you really need to. Can’t you see she has no weapons?”
The young man glanced at the door, visibly hesitating. Finally, he ran his fingers over Irja’s arms; even then, he stopped at her elbows.
“All right, we can proceed.”
Back to the corridor, retracing their steps, then up a flight of stairs. They stopped before a big oak-panelled door. The man knocked.
“Captain, your visitors.”
The occupant of the office was sitting at his desk, supposedly reading but most probably just pretending to be busy while he waited for them. The black name sign on his desk gave his name as Captain Y. Hobbs. He was a big man, a well-fed man. He had light-brown hair cropped short over a high forehead, steel-grey eyes and was clean-shaven. Yared? wondered Hella. Yehu? Yorick? Or even Yago? Behind him, the tall windows revealed a panoramic view of the harbour. He rose from his seat, his eyes never leaving Hella’s, and came towards them.
“May I offer you a seat, ladies?”
There were four matching office chairs set around a table by the window. They took their seats, and the ginger-haired assistant retreated after whispering something in the captain’s ear. The man took a chair opposite them, his back to the window and harbour. They’re not afraid, thought Hella. They feel at home here.
“What can I do for you?”
His Finnish had no trace of an accent. Hella opened her mouth to speak, then remembered her promise. She glanced at her friend. Irja was flushed, her hands wrapped tightly around her belly. Would she be able to get her message across? Hella wondered, not for the first time, how they had wound up in this place, and what the future held for them. This was a tipping point, she realized. Their future – Irja’s, hers, Timo’s, even Kalle’s – was at stake in this room.
“I want to ask you a question, Captain Hobbs,” said Irja, and to Hella’s surprise her voice was strong and clear. “This is what I came here for, all the way from Lapland. To get answers. What is the Western Alliance doing in this country?”
The captain laughed, genuinely amused.
“Since when are ladies interested in such matters? Geopolitics! You Finnish women are surprising, surprising indeed. But I’ll answer your question. The Western Alliance opened a representative office here in Helsinki to share our expertise in dealing with the Soviets, with the Finnish people.”
“So it’s purely a consultative role, is it? All perfectly above board? Nothing to hide? You can scream it from the rooftops, even?”
“Of course we can,” smiled Captain Hobbs. “What a question!”
“Good. I’m taking notice. So would you please tell me about Project Ysteria?”
The captain looked down at his hands. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but there was a band of white skin on his left ring finger, which he was now rubbing, as he must have rubbed his wedding ring when he still had a wife.
“I just got off the phone with a man who introduced himself as Colonel Kyander from the SUPO. Must be someone from Headquarters. I don’t know him, have never dealt with him before. Anyway, this man tells me that you’re going around town, screaming about the Western Alliance poisoning civilians. Well, I must tell you this much. You are lucky that you’re living in this country. One hundred and thirty miles to the east, you’d would already have been on your way to the Gulag, assuming they hadn’t just shot you outright. But this is a free country, and its citizens are allowed to express themselves.”
From the way the captain said this, he seemed to bitterly regret their tolerant Finnish ways very much indeed.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” started Hella, but Irja laid a hand on her sleeve, urging her to stop.
“So what is Ysteria, exactly, Captain Hobbs?” asked Irja again. “As you can see for yourself, I’m dying to know. And my child is dying inside me, too.”
The Captain frowned, clearly finding Irja’s words in poor taste. “I saw the blood test results you came with. Are they yours?”
“No, those belonged to Anna Jokinen. She died from complications of malaria. Pulmonary oedema and organ failure. But I’m suffering from the same illness as Anna.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you chloroquine. I’ve already sent for a doctor. We’re not monsters; all we want is for this thing to remain nice and quiet. The SUPO overreacted. I’m sure you wouldn’t have had to come here if they had just arranged treatment for you in the first place. Overzealous bastards, if you’ll pardon the expression. We never asked them to cover for us. They did it of their own accord.”
“Does Ysteria come from Hysteria?” persisted Irja.
Hella frowned. Something was wrong here, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Irja was leaning forward, her eyes gleaming, holding her breath. She was still, yes, she was very still, she was barely moving, not making any sound other than speaking. And was there something on her neck, inside the collar of her shirt? Hella’s heart leapt, but she forced herself to remain calm. No, that just wasn’t possible. She was delusional. A Käärmela housewife would never dream up a thing like that.
“Project Ysteria no longer exists, it might please you to know,” said Captain Hobbs. “It was a promising project, but it never lived up to its promise. Too difficult to put in place. It has been aborted.” He paused, looking at them thoughtfully. “Yes, it does come from Hysteria. Our mad scientists called it Project BW54M, but that didn’t satisfy my artistic tastes, so I renamed it. You see, mass hysteria is the main benefit of bioweapons, much more than direct casualties. The Soviets are testing their own weapons of mass hysteria, and we’re testing ours. It’s the rules of the game.” He looked at them. “We all agree, yes? That this testing was a necessary evil? We can’t all have the luxury of living out our days like Snow White. Some people have to get their hands dirty – for the greater good. Humanity needs to be managed; only here, in the West, we can’t use brute force. That is the prerogative of our Soviet friends.” Hobbs brought his hands together and placed his fingers under his chin. He could have been praying. “We civilized nations have to be cunning. You are educated people” – he glanced doubtfully at Irja – “and you can understand that. But not everybody can. So, once you leave this room, you will never, ever, talk about Ysteria to anyone. We’ll deny it. That man Kyander said you had proof?”
“A vial full of malaria-inducing agents. The word ‘Ysteria’ is printed on the side.”
“I’ll need you to hand it all over to me, along with your notes on the case, after I telephone Kyander to call off the dogs but before I let the doctor in. This is the best I can offer.”
Hella nodded. It was a reasonable offer. It was almost too reasonable. An easy victory, if one could call it that. Truth and justice in exchange for one family’s life and happiness. And what about her? What would become of Sergeant Hella Mauzer after all this? Heaven only knew. Still, it was worth it. And they still had two other vials, so for them the risk was limited. But Irja was not quite done yet. The fever was speaking for her. Fever … or something else?
“Do you know where Käärmela is?” asked Irja, leaning towards the captain.
He looked at her, annoyed. “Of course I know where Käärmela is. For the past four days, I’ve kept hearing this name over and over again. But, my dear lady, you need to realize. Käärmela” – he pointed to the big map of Finland hanging to the right of the window – “this is Käärmela. That tiny dot over there. You can barely see it. And this is only the Finnish map we are talking about. When you get to the scale of the world map … People are dying all the time, all over the world. Think of that train crash in Harrow and Wealdstone in England last week. Do you know how many people died? How many good, ordinary citizens, hurrying to work, travelling to see their families? One hundred and twelve. They died for nothing. When you compare that number to one sickly woman and one unborn child … their deaths were not useless, at least. They died for the greater good.”
He paused, looking at them. He’s not sorry at all, realized Hella. He’s convinced that he’s doing the right thing.
Captain Hobbs’ voice cut across her thoughts.
“Don’t you realize there’s more at stake here than just a few lives? It’s us against them! We’re at war, ladies. A war that doesn’t speak its name, a cold, frozen, dreadful war. There are casualties, yes. Sometimes even our own citizens, or citizens of satellite nations. But we are doing this to protect you. So that you don’t end up like the Baltic states.”
The telephone rang and Captain Hobbs went to answer it, turning his back to them.
“Yes,” he said. “We’re almost done here. Please ask him to wait downstairs.”
He hung up and turned towards them. “All the proof you have gathered, ladies, now. Let’s not keep the doctor waiting.”
