Lucifer's Tears

38

On the way to Porvoo, Snow and fierce winds batter my Saab, make it hard to keep it on the road. My phone rings. It’s Milo. I don’t answer. It rings again. I don’t recognize the number but answer anyway. “Vaara.”

“This is the interior minister.”

I’m feeling a bit flip. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m fucking pissed off is how I’m doing. You were supposed to bury the Arvid Lahtinen matter. I’m told you now claim he’s a war criminal. That wasn’t what you were instructed to do.”

What a fucking asshole. “I only repeated what Arvid told me.”

He screams in my ear. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what that old man says! There are no fucking Finnish war criminals!”

“In fact,” I say, “that’s not true. Several thousand Finns were accused of war crimes-usually killings of or violence toward POWs, according to the standards of the Nuremberg principles-and hundreds were eventually convicted.”

He keeps yelling. Louder now. “Listen, fuckwit, I repeat, there are no Finnish war criminals! Get that through your thick head!” He calms down, lowers his voice. “Write the report the way you were told, or I’ll have you fired. You’ll never work as a cop again. We clear?” He rings off.

I’m not concerned. If he hadn’t hung up on me, I would have told him to fuck himself. His ire doesn’t surprise me. One of the anomalies of Finnish self-understanding, regarding the war, is that these trials have failed to make any impact on the national consciousness whatsoever, and most people would say there are no Finnish war criminals. I suspect most Finns of our generation would be shocked to learn otherwise.

I’m looking forward to lunch with Arvid and Ritva. I haven’t enjoyed the company of others besides Kate so much in a long time. Arvid opens the door before I knock. He’s been waiting for me.

“You’re late,” he says.

Arvid looks tired, seems nervous. Maybe the war-crimes accusations have gotten to him. For the first time since we met, he seems old to me. “I got hung up with a case. Is it a bad time?”

He points at a snow shovel in the corner of the porch. “Ritva isn’t feeling well. I have to tend to her for a little bit. The boy that shovels snow for us didn’t come today. Could you do it for me?”

I suppress a smile. He’s treating me like I’m twelve years old. “Sure, I can do it.”

“Come in and make yourself at home when you’re done.”

He closes the door.

It’s minus eighteen, but shoveling his porch and walk only takes about twenty minutes, and I don’t mind doing it for him.

Afterward, I go inside and take off my boots and coat. He’s got a good blaze going, and I warm up in front of the fireplace. He comes downstairs and sits at the table, tells me to join him. I sit across from him.

“Got any cigarettes?” he asks.

I lay a pack and a lighter on the table in between us. “I didn’t know you smoke.”

“I don’t much, but once in a while, I get the yen.”

He goes to the kitchen, comes back with two cups of coffee and an ashtray. “Son,” he says, “I’m not up to making lunch today. If you’re hungry, I’ll make sandwiches for you.”

“That’s okay, I don’t much feel like eating.”

He gives me his appraising look. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts.”

“They know what’s causing it yet?”

“No. I’ll have some tests run soon. What’s wrong with Ritva?” I ask.

“We suffer from old people’s maladies. She’ll get past it.”

We share an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. I get the idea he has a lot on his mind and would rather be alone to sort it out. We smoke and drink coffee in silence for a while.

“Got any interesting cases?” he asks. “I mean, besides mine.”

I nod. “Some real interesting stuff. I shouldn’t talk about them, though.”

He forces a smile. “You want to hear all my secrets. You’re going to have to tell me yours if you want to get them. Let an old man vicariously relive his detective years through you.”

Much like when Arvid told me to call him Ukki, this raises my suspicions about his motivations, and I wonder if he’s looking for information to augment his blackmail strategy. Then I decide, if he is, why not let him? Let the truth prevail. Besides, I can use him for a sounding board. Sometimes articulating problems helps me solve them. I tell him about the Filippov murder, about its bizarre and aberrant circumstances, how in the end it’s come down to a blackmail scam, and that if I can make it go away, I’ll be put in charge of a special black-ops unit.

He nods approval. “A good story,” he says. “But what happens if you don’t recover and bury the evidence? You’ll have a lot of dirt on important people and have done nothing for them. They won’t like it. They’ll try to burn you somehow.”

I shrug. “What can they do?”

“It depends. What have you fucked up? You were involved in that school shooting and somebody died. Any way they could turn that around on you?”

In fact, they could. The realization startles me. “I beat the shit out of the school shooter just days before the attack. They could say I caused the incident, and they’d probably be right.”

“That’s how they’ll come at you then,” he says. “They’ll call you an abusive rogue cop, discredit you and kick you off the force.”

We light more cigarettes. “Any idea how I can get out of it?” I ask.

“I’ll put my detective cap on and think about it. I have to say, though, boy, that you’re fucking naive. It’s going to cost you one day.”

He’s not the first one to say it. “Your turn,” I say. “Tell me some good stories.”

His grin turns sly. “All right, boy, I’ll tell you how your great-grandpa, my dad and the former president of Finland became executioners and mass murderers together.”

Like Milo, he enjoys astonishing me, and he’s succeeded. He beams pleasure. “And under the auspices of Lord and Savior Marshal Mannerheim.”

He got me again. I’m riveted. “History records Kekkonen only executing one Red,” I say, “and if I remember correctly, he expressed remorse about it.”

“You ever been to the Mannerheim Museum?” he asks.

I’m itching for the story of our families, but he’s going to make me wait. “No.”

“When Mannerheim died, they turned his home into a memorial for the great man. I went there once. They have tiger-skin rugs on the floor, knickknacks and keepsakes he slogged home from all over the world. Like me, Mannerheim loved fine wine and spirits. I told the tour guide I wanted to see the wine cellar. This pretty little girl with big tits and a skinny waist told me it’s offlimits. I decided to fuck with her a little bit. I said, ‘I served under Mannerheim, and I’m a goddamn war hero, and I will look at the marshal’s booze and if I fucking feel like it, I’ll open a bottle and drink to the marshal’s goddamned health.”

It’s easy to picture Ukki doing it, makes me laugh.

“She got nervous and admitted to me in confidence that a few years ago, some workers were instructed to clean out the cellar. Like good Finns, they did what they were told. They pulled up a dumpster and smashed all those fine bottles of wine and cognac in it. Destroyed it all. It would be worth hundreds of thousands or millions today. Mannerheim would come out of his grave in a screaming rage if he knew.”

He’s digressing to increase my anticipation. Like Milo. I wait. He sees I’m only indulging him.

“Okay,” he says, “it went like this. I’ll just tell the story to you as Dad told it to me. President-to-be Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was seventeen when the Civil War broke out in 1918. At the time, he was a schoolboy in the northeast, in Kajaani. He had war in his blood. In the summer and autumn of 1917, he served in the local civil guard. At the end of 1917, he decided to go to Germany to get a military education. His plan was ruined by the German announcement that there would be no more recruiting from Finland. Kekkonen was disappointed, but then the Civil War enabled him to join the military on the side of the Whites. The civil guard in Kajaani was organized into what was known as a flying cavalry unit called the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment.”

Arvid is telling me what I already know. Information readily available in history books. It takes me back to that gray area: can I trust him, or is he manipulating me with half-truths and lies.

“Kekkonen was an ordinary soldier, and his comrades were boys from the same school. These included my dad and your great-grandfather. First, they went to Kuopio, where the situation was already under White control. From there they went to Iisalmi where they imprisoned local Reds. Dad said they executed a Red there. Their first one. The next stop was Varkaus, a Red stronghold deep in White Finland. White troops were concentrated around Varkaus, among them the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment. Near the end of the fighting, the Reds withdrew to a factory and finally surrendered when it caught fire. The prisoners were taken out on the ice of a nearby lake. Locals identified the worst of the Reds, and they were taken out of the line and shot. The Whites executed over a hundred people. They also picked every tenth man from the line and executed them, too.”

I’ve read, in Kekkonen’s memoirs, that he saw the bodies on the ice after the event, but he didn’t admit to taking part in the killings. “There’s no proof that Kekkonen executed anyone at Varkaus,” I say.

Arvid shrugs. “I’m just telling you what Dad told me. You want to hear it or not?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“After Varkaus, the regiment fought on the front in Savo. At the end of April, they were sent to Viipuri. The Battle of Viipuri was the last major fight of the war, and several hundred were killed in action. Some two hundred Russian inhabitants were rounded up, taken to the old city walls and executed. Machine-gunned to death. The shooting went on for almost twenty minutes, and the shooters were none other than the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment.”

Rumors and speculations given the stamp of truth-secondhand-by a Winter War hero. I have no idea if he’s making all this up as he goes along, but he would sure as hell upset a lot of people if he said it publicly. The Civil War remains the most emotionally charged event in the history of this country. After almost a hundred years, we haven’t even agreed on a name for the conflict: the Civil War, the Red Rebellion, the Freedom War, the Class War. The list goes on.

“The war was essentially over,” he says, “but by then Dad and the others had a taste for Red blood. In Hamina, during the second week of May, they executed over sixty prisoners. In the last week of May, they shot another thirty-something prisoners. Kekkonen made the leap from shooter to leader and ordered the execution of another nine Reds in Hamina. In June, Kekkonen, Dad and your great-grandpa were sent to Suomenlinna as prison camp guards. It was essentially a death camp. And the result of all this was that Kekkonen became a celebrated war hero. After the war, Kekkonen spent seven years as an investigator for the state police, during which time he was a Communist hunter. Like me. Like your grandpa.”

Kekkonen was a hero-even a God-like character-to me as a child. I guess to most of us. He was a gifted athlete, a war hero, he protected us from the Soviets. Except for a brief period, he served as prime minister from 1950 to 1956, and as president from 1956 until 1982. He was essentially an absolute ruler. At a certain point, he humiliated his opponents in presidential elections by neglecting to show up for televised debates. He knew he was unbeatable. As a child, I thought “Kekkonen” meant “president.” I remember asking Mom who she thought would be the next Kekkonen.

“During the Civil War and its aftermath,” Arvid says, “the Reds executed about fifteen hundred White prisoners, and the Whites executed upwards of ten thousand Reds. Do you know who ordered the execution of those almost ten thousand people?”

I shake my head, weary from his terrible tales. “Who?”

“Lord and Savior Marshal Mannerheim. That’s who. The great men of our nation saw to the extermination of Communists. I shot a few commissars in a POW camp, less than nothing in comparison. Why bother me about it? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Under the influence of his revisionist version of history, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.

“The great man, Kekkonen,” Arvid says. “Don’t make me laugh. He was a drunken whoremonger. He got more pussy than JFFUCKING-K, and his wife, Sylvi, put up with it. And those fucking propaganda films about him they show every year around Independence Day. More Leni Riefenstahl-type stuff that would have done the Third Reich proud. See the great athlete Kekkonen. See Kekkonen go to sauna. See Kekkonen swim in the lake. See Kekkonen chop wood. See Kekkonen, contemplative man of the people, sit on the edge of a dock and fish.”

“Why such acrimony?” I ask. “Kekkonen did a hell of a lot for this country. He kept good relations with the Soviet Union and maintained our sovereignty through Finlandization.”

“Because I detest hypocrisy, and I’m its victim. I’m just pissed off at the moment. Kekkonen paid a price for his success. He was a Communist-killer, just like I was raised to be. How do you think that must have made him feel, sucking Russian ass to save this nation. Taking orders from people he wanted dead. It must have been a living hell sometimes.”

I get his point. “And so, because of their connections from the Civil War, your dad and my great-grandpa were able to secure positions for you and grandpa in Valpo.”

He nods. “That’s right. Killing Communists. The family business. Mine, and yours, too, by way of inheritance.”

And now Jyri wants me to run a black-ops unit, mandated to fight crime organizations that rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union. Confluence.

Arvid looks across the table at me with sad eyes. We share a quiet moment, but the silence is comfortable this time. Finnish silence. After a while, he says, “Son, you better go soon. I’m tired. All this talk has worn me out, and I have to look after Ritva.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I better get back to work.”

I’m tired, too, and melancholic, worn down by so much ugliness. Compared to relearning the history of my country in this new light, even the Filippov murder seems cheerful.