“I already told you, boy,” he said. “You inherited your family blood. You’re a killer, you just need the right justifications so you can pretend otherwise. There have been times in my life when I felt nothing. It started during the Winter War. I felt no fear, no joy or misery, no guilt. It went away over time, but sometimes, when I’m under stress, I still go numb inside. Our circumstances are different, your problem is neurological and mine is post-traumatic stress syndrome. I’m just saying I have an idea of what you’re going through. You love your wife. Just because you can’t feel it right now doesn’t mean it isn’t so. And this black-bag operation—you’ve been lying to yourself—people are going to die and you knew it when you took it on. Maybe you’re better off if you don’t feel anything for a while.”
Arvid had become a mentor to me. My first and doubtless last. He’s the only man I ever met that I trusted and respected enough to look to for wisdom. I didn’t say anything, just sat there and tried to process what was doubtless true. He patted my knee and went to the kitchen to do the dishes. Left me to my thoughts.
Milo called. He was building surveillance gear and a new computer, said he didn’t have room to work in his tiny apartment, and asked if he could use one end of my dining room table as a workbench.
He lives in squalor in an apartment barely big enough to turn around in. Our dining room table is huge, and he was doing this for the group. It was hard to say no.
“Are you going to trash my house?”
“No. I just need one end of the table for a couple days.”
He showed up an hour later with boxes of components. Started stacking them in the corner. It was a big pile. He was going to trash my house. Arvid walked into the room. Milo saw him and a look came over his face like he just saw the girl of his dreams. So he had an ulterior motive for asking to work here. He wanted to meet Arvid.
Milo considers himself patriotic above all things and is fascinated by Finland’s role in the Second World War. He reads incessantly about the Winter War of 1939–40, in which Finland slaughtered Russians by the droves. Arvid is one of the great heroes of the Winter War and personally killed hundreds of Russians, as well as taking out six tanks, charging at them with Molotov cocktails.
Milo raced across the room, grabbed Arvid’s hand and started pumping it. “It’s a pleasure, sir. A great honor. As a Finn, let me express my personal gratitude for your bravery and sacrifice.”
Arvid sighed, jerked his hand free. “For God’s sake, stop kissing my ass.”
Milo’s euphoria was short-lived. He hadn’t considered that Arvid might not enjoy the sum of the continual and uncritical admiration of everyone he came into contact with. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that …” he could only stammer.
Arvid spared him further humiliation. “It’s all right, just get over it.”
Wisely, Milo kept his mouth shut and started unpacking his boxes.
Kate walked in. She saw the mess and it pissed her off. “What in the name of God is all this?”
I said, “I told him he could work in here, because his apartment is so small.”
Kate looked put out in the extreme. “What, then, may I ask, are you building?”
He kid-in-candy-store smiled. “Can you please just wait one minute?” He unpacked an oblong box-shaped gizmo with dials and such on it. Plugged it in, made some adjustments. “This is a bug sweeper,” he said. “It detects radio signals and info-burst packets used to monitor mains-powered transmitters, telephone transmitters, video transmitters, cell phones, tracking devices, you name it. It sniffs out mains carrier low-frequency and infrared laser-emitting devices. It also picks up signals from more sophisticated devices that only transmit momentarily and notify you that a signal has been detected: burst transmitters that accumulate information and fire it off in a fraction of a second.”
“You realize,” I said, “that, to the rest of us, your explanation was just a half minute of incomprehensible ratchet noises.”
The black rings around his eyes crinkled with delight. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He walked around the room with something that resembled an oversized mobile phone with an antenna and a plethora of control gizmos. As he neared Kate’s purse, it emitted a beep that pulsed faster and faster the closer he got. He asked her to take her cell phone out of her purse. Steady beep.
The door buzzer rang. It was Sweetness, just checking to see if we need anything.