He kneels beside her. “You need not fear me. You remind me very much of someone so close to me that I would die myself rather than harm you. She is gone, but as long as you exist, in a way she does as well.”
He walks back over to me. “Yes, there was a rumor that whoever killed Lisbet S?derlund would get her job, but it was just that, a rumor, started by Roope Malinen. In truth, my Foreign Legion colleagues murdered her by agreement with Malinen, who promised them a permanent, lucrative, and competition-free concession in the Finnish heroin market. Malinen lied. He had no authority to promise anything in return for the assassination of S?derlund. He hated her and made a false promise concerning a heroin concession in the hopes that he could make good on it later, simply because he wanted her dead. You have gone a long way toward seeing that promise kept. They cut her head off with a meat saw in their food shop. I’m sure, if you live through today, you can find plenty of DNA from the saw and blood-spatter specks around their kitchen to prove it. Saukko demanded a spectacle of dedication to hate, which they gave him. Saukko said quit bullshitting around on the Internet and do something, hinting that it might change his mind about his campaign donation. Word went down the line via Malinen that Saukko wanted a display. Marcel and Thierry did it for political reasons, in the hopes that Saukko would then honor his million-euro campaign commitment. Saukko welshed anyway.
Kate finds her voice. “Why would you let us live? We know who you are.”
“I assure you that you do not. I do indeed work for the French government, but I have a stack of various identifications two inches thick. They will tell you that I work for them one day, then deny it the next.”
“Have you considered that we don’t know where the money is and you’re killing us all for nothing?” she asks.
“I recognize it as a possibility.”
“You’re an ugly human being,” she says.
“As I once told your husband, I am a peacekeeper. Sometimes, keeping the peace requires extreme measures. Giving me the ten million euros will restore harmony to all our lives.”
“For such an altruist, you seem quite concerned with wealth.”
“In fact, I have no interests other than my work, and my tastes are frugal. My wealth is symbolic. In darker moments of doubt, I tally my accounts, and the sum figure serves as proof and reassures me that I have followed the career that was my destiny. There is little more to it than that.”
“But still, you would kill us all to acquire it?”
“Oh yes, with the exception of you.”
He walks over to Milo, flicks open his stiletto, and lops off Milo’s right ear. Blood slops down his neck. “You are the weakest. I believe you will talk first. This is also a matter of time. If you wait too long, it cannot be sewn back on. The next time you get a turn, I’ll sharpen a stick, pop out your eye and perform a makeshift lobotomy on you. Instead of calculating ineffable permutations with your big, big brain, you’ll spend your life being pushed around in a wheelchair with a drool cup strapped to your chin. It’s remarkably easy to do. The man who popularized the procedure sometimes performed hundreds in a single day, divided the brains of whole institutions full of mental patients.”
Milo doesn’t make a sound. Not even the look on his face changes. The ear looks like an odd mushroom lying on a rock in the sun.
Moreau continues his explanation. “Antti kept the children at the summer cottage—which the family had not used in years—while he disappeared during the kidnapping. When he left with the money, he abandoned them. With their father dead, there was little to be done. Marcel and Thierry overdosed them with heroin hot shots in their sleep.”