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Arvid could practically fly if he had to. Which smugglers have to do every now and then. And times being what they were, he didn’t mind making a few off-the-record trips for me. I paid him really well, too—like, two years of fishing income for a couple of days of shut-the-fuck-up-and-drive-the-boat.
I prefer to work alone. It’s a whole hell of a lot safer, which counts for a lot. But if I need somebody—like to fly a chopper or whatever—I always pay well. Riley’s Fourteenth Law: If you have to have help, pay them too much and promise them more later.
In the past five or six years, Arvid had made a shitload of money off me, and he figured to make more in the future. And I’m talking early-retirement-in-Tahiti money. I never mind spending too much if it gets the job done right. Arvid did just that. Anytime I needed a boat in that part of the world, he was my go-to guy. He knew what he was doing, which is rare enough. Plus he had always been reliable—and kept his mouth shut—and he always came through for me. So when I got on board his boat and he steered us down the river toward the Baltic, I relaxed.
Stupid. I mean, I know that. But in spite of the fact that I really do know better, I kind of trusted Arvid.
Hindsight is always 20/20. But in retrospect, I should have remembered Riley’s Eleventh Law: Trust is what you’re doing when the knife comes down. Maybe I should have that tattooed on my hand, where I can look at it anytime I’m feeling stupid. In my line of work, stupid is always the lead-in for the fat lady singing. And sure as shit, that’s what happened.
Arvid didn’t use a knife. And he waited for me to pay him, which shows he had a whole lot more sense than I do. He just counted his cash, looked up with this goofy grin, and pointed a pistol at me. Before I could even say, “What the fuck,” he pulled the trigger. I heard a loud PPFFFUTTT! and felt something sharp jab into my chest. I took one step toward Arvid—I was definitely going to heave him over the side and let him swim home—and then . . .
Nothing. No lights or music or dreams—just deep, dark nothing.
3
Until suddenly my eyes opened. My mouth was dry and tasted like ancient sewer. I had a headache, and the bright light coming in through the porthole didn’t help. There was no way to know how long I’d been out. I was still on the boat. I didn’t smell the usual fish and diesel stink of Arvid’s boat, but I could feel the strong and steady thrum thrum thrum of the boat’s engine and the slow pitch and roll as we plowed through some big waves. So we had to be out in the open sea now. The Baltic is mostly smaller, sloppy chop, but it can roll big when it wants to. It wanted to now, and it did. And it was cold, a lot colder than it should have been for July.
I closed my eyes again. On top of the headache, I was feeling like I might vomit. I don’t get seasick, so it had to be because of, of . . . What? I couldn’t remember what had happened, and that worried the shit out of me. I had been on Arvid’s boat, right? And we were headed out to sea and—
And Arvid shot me.
I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see any holes in my shirt. So had I imagined it? I touched my chest and found a tender place. I pulled up my shirt and looked. There was a purple circle on my chest. It had a small red spot in the middle, a puncture, like a bad nurse would leave when she gives you a shot.
So Arvid really did shoot me, but obviously not with a bullet—a dart? Like they use to put animals to sleep? Yeah, had to be. And that explained the headache and nausea, too. Aftereffects of the tranquilizer.
Okay. Arvid knocked me out with a tranquilizer dart. Why?
I frowned. That made my head hurt even more, so I stopped. I mean, I can think without frowning, right? Except at the moment, I couldn’t think at all.
I took a big breath to clear my head. That turned out to be a mistake. I barely managed to turn my head to one side and then I was vomiting violently. That lasted for a minute, but when I was done I felt a little better, and my brain seemed to be working a little. Plus, Arvid was going to have some puke to clean up, and that cheered me up. So I put my brain back to work.
Question One: What the fuck was going on?
It seemed like a safe bet that Arvid had shivved me. Why?
Obvious Answer: Money.
Arvid liked money. I mean, who doesn’t? I always paid him well. It was supposed to keep him tame. Could somebody pay him more to go wild on me? Sure, why not? It would have to be a lot, but it could be done.
But wait—even with a lot of extra money, Arvid would know he had to stay cool with the deal he made with me. Word gets out, and if it got out that he’d betrayed me, he’d be fucked. Plus, he had to know I would match the offer. If not straight out, then with future work.
So there was another reason, something that would overrule all that shit, and that was an easy guess, too.
Fear. Fear of somebody who was scarier than me and had enough money to throw around that it took the sting out of losing his lucrative side job. And somebody who could combine fear and money would be very tough to turn down.
So, okay; who would do that? Well, that was a little tougher to nail down. There was a long list of people who would part with very big dollars to get their hands on me. And a lot of them had the kind of operational profile you don’t put on Facebook.
So now the question was, which one of them? It had to be somebody who had the resources to track me all the way to Russia, find Arvid, and convince him to flip on me. Besides a lot of money, that meant an organization with a lot of high-skill people—and it also meant somebody who could bring a lot of pressure. The kind of pressure that Arvid would believe would change his life—or end it.
Who fit that description? When you make a living like I do, the easy answer would be somebody like Interpol or the FBI. And a very big percentage of my enemies were cops, too. It’s only natural. But they didn’t work this way, not by getting another crim to boink me with a tranquilizer dart. They would bring a team, surround me, holler through a bullhorn to put my hands up, all that by-the-book bullshit you’ve seen on TV a million times. And anyway, all their money was in resources like boats, planes, people. Not cash. They couldn’t outspend me with Arvid. And they wouldn’t trust him to put me out with a dart. No way.
So, not the cops. That still left a pretty healthy number of people who would love to dance at my funeral. But most of them would probably want me killed, not doped. I know it’s all over the movies and TV that the bad guy wants to take the hero alive and make him squeal for a long-ass time, and then kill him. But it doesn’t work that way in real life. Not in the big leagues, where I play. If somebody wants you dead, they do it the quick, no-chances way. That’s what my enemies would do. And the same for my business rivals—they’d all pull the trigger with a big smile on their face—the bigger the bullet, the bigger their smile. But knock me out and take me on a long boat ride? I didn’t think so.
So, okay; not cops, not enemies, not rivals. Probably revenge, then. Who did that leave? It was still a long list, but none of
the names made sense.
I went all over my life for the past fifteen years, and I dug up a lot of names with reasons to pursue an active dislike of me. None of them really made any more sense than the others. Either they were out of commission—prison, graveyard, like that—or they wouldn’t know how to organize something like this.
