Made Men (19 page)

A
lvar heard the rumble
fade as the devil’s car splashed down the muddy road.

Akka
clung to his elbow, urgently pushing the phone into his hand, but the blind old
man didn’t notice or could not yet attend to the idea of calling Henna. He was
focused on the sound of the car.

“Call
Henna, Alvar—do it quickly.”

He
began to shake.

The demon had come there—for HER.

An
adult now, Henna, a toxicologist and prodigy specializing in
little-known
venoms and poisons, had taken on her enemies. She’d won. Not a drawn out legal
battle, she used force and intellect—a rare combination—to ambush
them. She had barricaded them in their lair and slain them with mustard gas
after she’d realized that the police were somehow involved and had turned their
own collective blind eye.

Like
all wars, however, the gears continued to gnash along behind the scenes.

Her
vendetta over, she’d fled, taking Stephan with her. Her friend had been beaten
nearly to death; Stephan was the reason Henna had retaliated.

She’d
killed someone with money. Henna had never told Alvar the details, but her
grandfather didn’t need to know them. She was who she was, and she’d done what
was right, and Alvar was proud. For a short time, the world was just.

But that was the way of the world
:
justice didn’t last
.
It had to be maintained.

A telephone?

It
was in his hand. He’d just noticed.

Someone
his granddaughter had killed left behind either friends or family with the
reach to conjure up evil.

The unannounced visitor had reeked of
evil.

H
enna had arrived on
his mountain in Ruka a ponytailed spark plug of energy.
A
tiny thing, smart as a whip.
Alvar had held that if he prepared her to
fight the battles she would face in her life, Henna would end up better than he
had.

A sightless hermit
.

Never
had Alvar thought he would have to fight physically. Kill again. His battles
had been the wartime adventures of a young, resourceful man, and they were
battles he had barely survived. Finland, his country, had lost.

If it had been Henna in his place,
Finland may have won
.

“I
had no way to kill him,” Alvar said to his wife. “I wasn’t ready for him. What
have I done? He’s after her.”

Akka
urged. “We didn’t know. How could we?” His knees shook, and the dear woman
pulled a chair behind him to sit.

He couldn’t.

“All
the time I spent teaching her—to be vigilant, careful and calculating …”
Nervously, he reached for the pipe that hadn’t been in his pocket for years.

“And
the way to help Henna now,” Akka said, sensibly, “is to call her and tell her
what’s happened.” He shook his head.

“Henna
can take care of herself,” she added, glancing at the road past the garden,
less sure.

Not yet.

Still,
he didn’t call. Tottering out to the porch, angry but terrified, his ancient
knees aching, to listen hard for the sounds of the beast’s car. A curly-faced
dog whined at his foot, nosing open his free hand, touching a concerned paw
lightly to his hip. Akka led him back inside. She pulled a second chair from
the table and
plunked
him into it.
Sliding the other chair close, he felt her, facing him. Alvar’s nerves were
raw.

He felt frail.

Blind
since the Winter War, tortured, he swiveled his neck, aiming his glass eyes and
mind toward the shelf where Henna’s tapes sat just minutes ago.

He took them
.

The
small cassettes he and Henna had traded while she was away at school. Akka
didn’t tell him so—he knew it.

He’d heard the thief take them.
He had to think.

Slowly,
his anger won. “Look for anything that shouldn’t be here, Akka.” He swept his
arm in an arc. “Look wherever he was.” His mind sharpened. “Start at the shelf,
please, dear. Look for wires or devices or just anything. If you see something
unusual, don’t touch it. Just describe it. Be my eyes. I need you, Akka, to do
this immediately.”

H
ips creaking, Akka
ambled to the shelf. It was an odd assignment so early in the morning.

To look for something that shouldn’t be
there
.

“Who
could know,” she said to herself. “A strange man on our old road—”

In a place like Ruka,
Finland.

She
held her hands aloft, reviewing her assignment.

Don’t touch anything.

She
didn’t touch the shelf, using her fingers, just to frame her focus as though
preparing to clap a mosquito buzzing close, yet just out of reach. It seemed to
Akka that things were certainly missing but nothing had been left behind.

“Hairbrush,”
she mumbled.

Henna’s when she was a girl.

The
small tapes: Henna’s from her school years were gone. As was her book of
drawings.

Of flowers, a lion-headed dog, a
slightly younger version of her husband.

“I’m
not a very good spy,” she announced, louder.

“Please
keep looking,” Alvar pleaded. “He put something here. I know it.”

She was a gardener.

“Oh
dear.”

She baked pies!

Now
everything looked different and suspicious.

She wasn’t an investigator.

If
there was something left, she couldn’t see it.
“I
don’t see anything … only what he took, honey.”

She
turned. “What are you DOING?”

Alvar
bristled. He’d started at the door, crawling back and forth. Systematically,
brushing the ground with his hands, he felt for anything out of the ordinary.
Something rolled beneath his nonagenarian fingers.

“Here!”
he held something up for her to inspect. “Is this a bean?”

“Yes.”
Akka sat, frustrated. “Just a bean.”

“Please,
Akka.” He held it out. “Throw it in the fireplace right now.”

“Why
honey? You are scaring me! It’s a dried bean!”
Akka
tossed the bean into the embers beneath the stewpot anyway. Her husband
continued to tickle his way, crawling, across the floor.

His
arms sweeping, lips thin, “When have we cooked beans?
Dried
beans, Akka—”

“We
never do,” she admitted, pausing to think. “It must have just been here.”

Alvar
rose to his knees. “I don’t eat them. I haven’t cooked a dried bean in this
house for thirty years. You’ve been here for the last three of those. How many
times have you swept and found a bean?”

“My
God, Alvar.” Suddenly, it felt that her housekeeping habits were on trial.
“What is going on?”

“Bear
with me.” The old man straightened, standing. He brushed his hands together,
then wrung them, gnarled and work-callused. He sniffed, his senses straining to
identify anything else that didn’t belong in the room.

He’s rarely wrong.

Akka
had never seen this side of him.

Maybe there was something here.

She
should have kept the bean.

Cut it open. Crushed it. Made sure.

“Akka,
please? The phone.”

Again,
she pressed his cellphone into his cupped, shivering hands. Now he seemed eager
to dial it. Akka sat on the edge of the hearth, clasping together her own
arthritic fingers. She held them to her mouth, pressing her thin bones against
her lips, exhaling the heat from her lungs into her palms, cupped as though in
a bird call.

She didn’t understand
.

“Yes,
Henna dear, listen,” Alvar said into the telephone, “a man was just here. Yes.
He asked for you. He—yes. He took things. He—yes, dear. Your tapes,
your …” He nodded, lips thin. “Your hairbrush and sketchbook—”

Henna must be confused too.

How
could that be? She was the smartest person Akka had ever known.

“About
ten minutes—no—”

“Thirty,”
Akka said, glancing at the clock.

“Half
an hour ago, maybe more,” he corrected. “He—I have a feeling, Henna,
about this. This is bad. I—”

Akka’s
nerves were so frayed. Speaking with Henna had always been a joyful occasion and
now it was obvious that the brilliant girl was disturbed too.

“Yes?”
Alvar had stood, pacing. He leaned into the phone, squinting, as though to hear
better
.

“OK.
Yes. Hello, Ryker. You said Ryker? I thought so. Hello.” Straightening his
noble back, Alvar now tilted his face to the sky, his face screwed tightly
shut—an expression Akka hadn’t ever observed.

He appeared to be praying
.

“I’m
on a speaker?” he asked.

It
occurred to Akka that, though blind, Alvar blinked a lot when under stress.
He’d never seemed religious, and she had kept her own faith quiet and steady.

Help us, Lord. Please.

“OK.
Thank you for letting me
know
that.” Alvar shot his
lower jaw out, nipping at his upper lip for a moment. “OK … hold on. I haven’t
done that before.” Alvar held out the phone.

“I
need your help, Akka. A German man wants our speaker on so we can both hear
him.”

Fumbling,
she hung it up accidentally and heard the hum. “Lord, please!” she said aloud,
then dropped it.

Damn.

Alvar
patted her hand and looked taller than she ever remembered.

“It’s
OK, dear.”

And calm again.
So
calm.

“Hand
it to me. I’ll just call them back.”

Akka,
rattled, stooped to retrieve the phone.

“Here
you go.”

He
took it.

“There.”

He
squeezed her arm a little, a reassuring gesture, as he clung to the device.

Somehow,
he’d become smooth. He prepared to dial, but when the thing rang, her husband’s
thumb jabbed the correct button in a fluid motion, and he pressed it to his
ear. Akka felt proud of him. She’d watched him for years: long before he’d
shown an interest in more than her baking.

“Ryker?
OK.” He nodded to her, solid as their little stone house. “We are trying
again.”

The German.

She
could hear an accent, but no specific words. “Take your time, sweetheart. We
need it on speaker.”

Akka
grasped the phone and raised it to her cheek. The German gave her some
instructions.

Henna had mentioned them—the odd
Germans—in passing during her last visit.

“Yes.
OK. OK. That’s—
good
. I will.” Akka studied the
buttons at arms’ length.

Why did I say that’s good? This is bad.
There. There it is.

She
pressed one.

Things seemed so crucial.

She
felt simple and slow.

“Can
you both hear me?”

It worked!

“Yes,
go ahead,”
Alvar
said.

“Describe
the person. The visitor. Everything you can. As quickly as possible.”

Akka
felt tears well up. She’d been hoping for reassurance, but this man, too, was
worried.

She could hear it
.

Wiping
at her nose, she stared at the ceiling, as though her audience hovered there.
“He was handsome and elegant. He sort of—glided around. He had a bag, and
took things, and asked questions.”

He had taken things, hadn’t he? What
were they? She couldn’t recall.

“What
do you mean by handsome?” Ryker asked.

What mother would name their child Ryker?

“What
did his face look like?” he pressed. Alvar squeezed her hand, nodding, urging
her on.

“Handsome
like—”

Like what?

“Like
a Swiss model, but quite a lot BIGGER.”

He had been magnificent.

“Inflated,
almost, like someone from a fashion magazine.
Short,
light-colored hair.
Ice-blue eyes.” Akka shivered.

His eyes had been peculiar
.

“With
even features.” Her hands shook. She placed the phone on the table, safely away
from her clumsy antics. “He was tall…” Akka rested her fingertips on her cheeks
“…and had those lines people get from the cheekbones down that square off a
person’s mouth.” She shook her head, held up an index finger, and added, “Not
the ones from the corners of your nose. The ones that lead to a square chin, a
STRONG
chin
.”