Raid and the Blackest Sheep

1.

Raid drove while Nygren slept in the back seat.

    
Nygren had folded up his wool overcoat beneath his head and curled up his thin legs. His hands were tucked against his chest. One knee was thrust against the back of the driver’s seat and Raid could feel it pressing against the small of his back. Nygren’s dark-blue, nearly black sport coat was unbuttoned, and a burgundy tie with white polka dots spilled over the edge of the seat.

    
Nygren was approaching sixty. His face was lean and furrowed with an inch-long scar at the left corner of his mouth. With his blond hair combed straight back to the nape of his neck, Nygren almost looked boyish. The expensive watch on his wrist topped off his stylish attire.

    
Nygren wore a tranquil expression, like that of a man who does only what he believes in.

    
Raid enjoyed driving, especially Nygren’s car—a classic V8 Mercedes. It had been meticulously cared for, and probably kept under a sheet in a heated garage for the last two decades. Despite being thirty years old, it looked almost pristine. The odometer read just under 60,000 miles and the black leather upholstery showed little sign of wear. The chrome knobs on the radio begged to be turned.

    
Half way between Helsinki and Turku, it began to rain. Nygren opened his eyes. They were alert—not at all bleary. Still, Raid was sure that only a moment before, Nygren had been fast asleep.

    
“The sound of rain…something about it.”

    
Nygren cranked down the rear window a bit and took a deep breath. A cold wind swept inside, tossed his hair and sprinkled his face with rain.

    
“Something about it… Where are we?”

    
“Just past the half-way mark.”

    
“Let’s take the scenic route the rest of the way.”

    
Nygren sat up enough to dig a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his coat.

    
“I’m paying you well enough that I’m sure you won’t mind.”

    
He lit his cigarette with a vintage Zippo lighter. Raid could smell the fumes from the lighter fluid.

    
Nygren held up the lighter.

    
“My entire inheritance from my father… It was in his breast pocket when he took some shrapnel from a Russian grenade.”

    
He pointed to a dent in the case.

    
“That’s where this came from—saved his life. An object has no value without a story, and there’s a good one behind this lighter. It gives it a reason for being.”

    
Nygren patted the back seat.

    
“This car too has a story. And this coat…and this watch.”

    
He slid a pair of sunglasses out of the pocket of his overcoat and put them on.

    
“Ray-Ban. I’ll tell you the story about these sometime. We’ll have some good times together.”

    
“I’m sure,” said Raid.

    
“For now, I’m paying you to listen. But sooner or later you’ll be paying me to talk.”

    
A few drags later, the cigarette was half gone. Nygren cranked the window all the way down and flicked out the butt. He put his head out of the car and savored the wind. Raid caught a glimpse of the man’s solemn face in the driver’s-side mirror and fought back the urge to smile.

    
Nygren pulled his head back inside and fixed his tousled hair with a few quick strokes of his fingers.

    
“I’ve had my hair cut the same way for thirty years. During that time, it’s been in style three different times. What does that tell you?”

    
“What?”

    
“That once you’ve found your style, you should stick with it. But I don’t suppose you worry too much about fashion.”

    
“Don’t suppose I do,” said Raid.

    
“And you’re no chatterbox either. A word here, a word there. Hardly verbal fireworks. You know I’m a social man and I enjoy listening. I trust that you have plenty of stories to tell—true stories, no less.”

    
“I promised to listen, not talk. Besides, you’ve been sleeping the whole trip.”

    
“When you get to be my age, you need a nap every so often.”

    
Nygren pulled himself into a sitting position. He leaned forward and studied Raid in the rear-view mirror.

    
“Are you sure you’re with me the whole way… To the end?”

    
“That’s what I promised.”

    
“Promises have been broken.”

    
“Not by me.”

    
Nygren’s expression softened. He seemed relieved.

* * *

The Elia Church was situated in an old movie theater in Turku, on the west coast of Finland. With its grungy 1950s style building, it was far removed from some of the grand medieval structures in the city.

    
The sound of music and singing carried all the way outside. Not your typical downcast, guilt-ridden Finnish hymn, but a Finnish version of a cotton fields gospel song. Nygren stopped outside the door to listen. He nodded his head to the rhythm, and soon his arms joined in too. His clapping hands were one with the tempo. He even ventured a few little dance steps.

    
“Hallelujah, shall we get started?”

    
Raid opened the door and Nygren stepped inside.

    
They passed through a long hallway and came to a row of coat hooks on the right and a pair of birch-veneered doors on the left. At the end of the hallway was a rear entrance that had been used when the movie theater was still in operation. A green exit sign still hung over the door.

    
Nygren swung open both birch doors and stepped into the auditorium. He stood at the end of a corridor that divided the room in two. In his long black open coat, he looked like a gunman preparing for a showdown. Raid fell in behind him on the right.

    
“Jesus paid dearly with his own blood for your sake. Do not let worldly glory throw you off the path of righteousness, nor tempt you away from your heavenly home…”

    
The pastor was slightly younger than Nygren and was dressed in a stylish, light-gray suit. A thick gold bracelet and a stout gold ring rounded off his expensive getup. His hair, already graying slightly, was neatly trimmed and carefully combed. His face was tanned and smooth, but something about his outward
appearance
seemed contrived.

    
The pastor’s persona was like a caricature of some Texas governor obsessed with appearing to voters as though he was able to do anything a man ought to: dance briskly, ride a horse, hit a golf ball three hundred yards and, as a bonus, savor the fruits of the best whorehouses in the state.

    
The pastor took a glass of water from the lectern in front of him and took a couple of swallows. Refreshed, he surveyed his lambs with a charismatic expression.

    
“For Jesus tells us, ‘Ask and it shall be given you.’ For everything you have given, you will receive many times over—twice, three times, even five times as much.”

    
“Hallelujah! Thank you Jesus,” said a woman in the front row, her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her chest. Her words infected the others and a wave of hallelujahs moved through the crowd.

    
“You are the body of the kingdom of heaven and I am the soul. The soul must guide the body, and the body must feed the soul. There are millions upon millions who thirst for the word of God, and we have been chosen to spread that word to the corners of the earth. We have been entrusted with a fund-raising goal…and we will fulfill it.”

    
The pastor looked expectantly at the congregation.

    
“We will fulfill it,” the congregation repeated.

    
“Our goal is to collect one hundred and fifty thousand euros amongst ourselves so that we can print Bibles for pagan countries, countries where cows are gods or where people bow down to trees and graven images. This evening, the collection…”

    
A young woman was sitting behind the piano wearing a chaste baby-blue frock and an even more chaste ribbon of the same color in her blond hair. She was the first to notice the outsiders as she raised her timid, curious gaze from the keys. Soon after, another turned to look and then a third.

    
“…will go, in its entirety, toward our fund-raising goal. So open your hearts generously and set aside some treasure for your heavenly home…”

    
Nygren took a few steps forward and Raid followed.

    
“Hallelujah, brother Koistinen,” said Nygren in an outwardly confrontational tone.

    
The pastor raised his eyes as the rest of the congregation turned to look at their visitors. A brief shock ran across the pastor’s face before he gathered his composure.

    
“Hallelujah, dear brother…and who might you be? The Lord’s blessings to you both, and welcome. Please join us—we always keep an open door for visitors.”

    
“We’re in a hurry, sadly. So many sick, and the healers so few. I only came to collect my debt—then my friend and I will be on our way.”

    
The congregation turned inquiringly back to their shepherd.

    
“There must be some misunderstanding. If you’d be so kind as to leave—you’re interrupting our services here.”

    
The pastor motioned discreetly with his hand, and a man sitting in the back row stood up. Undoubtedly the bouncer, he walked in a slight forward hunch, like an old wrestler. Accustomed as he was to people crumbling at his feet, he couldn’t imagine anything else happening.

    
In a single motion, Raid whirled, pulled a gun from somewhere beneath his coat, and leveled it at the man’s forehead. The bouncer managed one more step before he got the message. He froze in his tracks and glanced helplessly at Pastor Koistinen.

    
Nygren dug a paper out of his coat pocket, unfolded it and waved it in the air.

    
“I have a document here that says you owe me fifteen thousand euros. Don’t you remember? I lent it to you six years ago in Stockholm, when you started up that casino. Plenty of girls there too, though not as pretty as these.”

    
Nygren smiled at the pianist and she instinctively smoothed her hair.

    
“How many years have I been after you, and here I find my lost black sheep in beautiful Turku, in such pleasant company. Last time I was here was ten years ago when I did two years in that nice house on the hill, where the blinds are made of iron, as the old song goes.”

    
“I don’t even know you…”

    
Nygren rifled through his pocket again and pulled out a photograph. “You deny me as Peter denied Christ. ‘Before the cock crows, thou shalt deny me thrice.’”

    
“It’s a lie… This… It’s all lies…”

    
“Is it?”

    
Nygren tapped on the photograph with his finger.

    
“Here we are, sitting like best pals over good Bavarian beers. You remember when we stopped at that nice whorehouse in Hamburg? This naked girl here…name was Hanne as I remember…or something like that…”

    
Nygren handed the photo to a woman sitting nearby.

    
“Pass it around.”

    
The woman gaped at the picture before passing it to the man sitting next to her.

    
“This good shepherd of yours has always been interested in the ladies. He once lived with a Brazilian stripper for six months. Uh, you know…the kind that dances around naked? Now, where might that girl be right now? Maybe she went back to the Amazon delta or died of an overdose in some Stockholm alleyway.”

    
Koistinen’s poise began to fail and he leaned against the lectern.

    
Nygren continued to turn the screw.

    
“Let’s just settle our little money issue so you can go about business as usual. Business is really all this is about…”

    
Nygren let his gaze wander over the congregation.

    
“Were I a sheep, I’d be one of the blackest, but the only thing I take from anybody is money. You take their souls. These people put their faith in you, put themselves and their lives in your hands, and you betray them. That’s the kind of thing you burn in hell for, you know. You’re one evil shepherd, Koistinen.”