U.S. Male (14 page)

At first, the plan had been simple: sleep with him to get his cooperation. Indulging in her attraction was just a side benefit, and the fact that they’d been incredible together in bed had been a rather wonderful present.

Now, though, everything had changed. She’d lost control of the situation. She’d let her feelings get involved. How could she have let herself fall for Bax? Bax, of all people? Bax, the loner. Bax, who made it clear he was only in it for the job.

And yet, he’d seemed to slide easily into the togetherness they’d been forced into recently. Granted, their affair had started out as physical, but for all the moments of flash and fire, there were many more of sheer closeness.

She needed to say something, she thought, glancing over at him where he sat reading a book on Amsterdam. She needed to talk to him, see if there was a chance of continuing their relationship after the case was over. It was a simple enough question. Plenty of people did it. People dated all the time. Okay, they’d be coming at it sort of backward, but what was wrong with that? It wasn’t like there was a rule book or anything. Whatever worked was the right thing to do.

Nervously, she began toying with the coin, rolling it between her fingers. “So, we’ve got the forgery and we’ll be getting the stamp back soon, right?”

Bax looked over and watched her manipulate the coin. “Sure. All we have to do is figure out how to make the switch.”

“What are your plans after that? After we get back to the States?” Don’t be a wuss, she told herself. Tell him. “Because I’d really—”

“Do that again,” he interrupted.

Joss blinked. “What?” She looked down at her hands.

“That’s right,” he muttered to himself. “You know sleight of hand.”

“Yeah, so?”

“We might just have found our way.”

“What do you mean?”

“The switch. You get Silverhielm to give you the stamps to look at and then you switch them for the forgeries.”

“It would be risky.”

“Not really. Besides, you’re a pro.” Energized, he sat bolt upright, the book set aside, forgotten. ‘We can do this,” he promised.

And Joss nodded and watched the moment slip away.

T
HE WIND WHIPPED
through Joss’s hair as the speedboat skimmed over the waves. Out here, on the Stockholm archipelago, the world was sky and water, rock and tree, both pristine and beautiful. Occasionally, they passed another pleasure boat or an inhabited island. Mostly, once they’d gotten out of Stockholm’s inner harbor, they’d had the archipelago to themselves.

Joss adjusted her sunglasses. For more than half an hour, Bax had had the little speedboat going all out, setting it to autopilot while he squinted at charts and checked the landmarks that Oskar had written down for him. Occasionally, he muttered to himself but she couldn’t hear a word of it over the roar of the engine. Since there was nothing she could do, she just leaned back and enjoyed.

The day before their meet with Silverhielm and it was unseasonably hot for Stockholm. Joss had started out wearing her jacket, but by the time they’d reached the dock to pick up the boat, the jacket was off and tied around her waist, leaving her in just a tank top and jeans. Even that had been sticky and uncomfortable.

Now, the wind blew the heat away. She felt the hot press of the sun on her shoulders and cheekbones, but the passage of air made it pleasant instead of oppressive. In the distance, the white shape of a ferry forged its way toward the horizon. Nearby, a gull skimmed low over the water.

Bax reached out to the controls. Abruptly, the boat slowed until it was going just fast enough for him to keep it aimed at the swells.

“Are we there yet?” Her hearing was so numbed by the sound of the engine that her voice sounded strange to her own ears.

“Near enough that we should slow down and make sure we know where we are.” He checked the compass and the GPS unit and pointed to the low-lying islands to either side of them. “That should be Kymmendö and that over there is Mörtö, which puts us right about here.” He pointed to the map. “Silverholmen is about another five or six miles. Call it half an hour.”

“Thirty minutes to go five miles? I thought Oskar said this boat topped out at seventy-five miles an hour.”

“Kilometers,” Bax corrected, “kilometers per hour. That’s about fifty miles an hour flat out. It doesn’t matter, though. I want to go slow enough that we can stop as soon as we’re in sight. This is our chance to get a nice, quiet look without them knowing we’re out here.”

Already, the heat was settling over her as though she were standing in front of an oven. “So what do you want to do besides roast for the next half hour?”

He handed her a bottle of water and picked up his binoculars. “Stay cool.”

“H
ERE ARE YOUR
keys to the room and to the minibar. Please enjoy your stay with us.” Nils Andersson stood behind the polished mahogany counter of the Royal Viking hotel and handed the room folio to the American woman with her tightly permed hair. He liked working at the Royal Viking. It always impressed the women he met, especially when he lied and told them he was a manager.

Anna, the sunny clerk at his side greeted the guest in
front of her with a brilliant smile. Nils wished he could impress the lovely golden Anna with her tilted nose and her midnight-blue eyes, but she knew he was only a junior clerk. Besides, she looked down on him for the rules he broke. Like everyone didn’t break a rule once in a while.

He was aimlessly skimming down the list of registered guests on the computer when a tall blond man caught his eye.

The man jerked his chin in a beckoning gesture. Andersson froze. He leaned to Anna. “Can you cover for me for a moment?”

“Nils, you just had a break. Mr. Hogberg will not like it,” she protested, but he was already disappearing into the offices behind the counter. There were people more important than Mr. Hogberg. A moment later, he came out the side door that led into the lobby.

“Good morning, Nils,” said Markus Holm.

“Are you trying to get me fired?” he snarled, walking toward the door to the luggage room with Markus following. “You have no business here. Go.”

“I have business with you,” Markus countered. “Mr. Silverhielm did you a favor. I would think you would want to return it.”

“A favor?” he whispered. “They break me, these payments you extract.”

“You have not been injured, have you? Your knees work well? Your hands? Your eyes?”

Andersson swallowed. “Yes,” he faltered.

“I thought so. Few in the position you were in can say as much.” Markus stepped closer to him, eyes cold. “You should be grateful.”

“I am grateful,” Andersson said huskily. “What do you want?”

“Please.”

“What?”

“Please tell me what you want.”

Andersson cleared his throat. “Please tell me what you want.”

Markus smiled benevolently. “Only a small favor.”

“What?”

“You have a guest in the hotel, Josie Astin. I need to get into her room and I need to get into the safe.”

“I can’t do that,” he said emphatically. “It is not allowed. I would be found out. I would be fired.”

“It won’t be found out.” Markus’s voice was soft.

“You cannot guarantee it.”

“Ah, but I can guarantee that if you do not assist me, information will be laid in front of your employers that
will
get you fired. I can guarantee that your life will get very uncomfortable, indeed.”

Andersson gave Markus a look brimming with equal parts fear and resentment. “What if the guests walk in on us?”

“The guests just set off from the Nybroviken in a motorboat, headed for the archipelago. They will not return to the hotel for some minutes, probably hours. I only need a small amount of time.”

Andersson stared at him, balancing one fear with another. Markus waited serenely.

“All right,” the clerk said finally, his eyes shifting back and forth. “I’ll do it.”

B
AX PICKED UP
his camera phone and pointed it toward Silverholmen to take a photograph. The boat idled in the swells.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sending this to Oskar to see if we’re in the right spot.” A few minutes went by and the phone rang. He heard Oskar’s voice in his ear.

“Hello, my friend. Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Just doing a little sightseeing. I was wondering if we’ve hit that fishing spot you were talking about.”

“Yes, it looks like you are there. Watch out for the shoals to the north. They’re marked on the chart but you come up on them more quickly than you would think.”

“All right.” Bax picked up his binoculars with one hand and studied the waters ahead.

“Remember, some of the fish are very alert, so you should be cautious to avoid alarming them.”

“I’ll try. I have not seen the barracuda who lives around here.”

“Stay away from the island. I’m told he swims near there.”

“Don’t worry, I have a very strong line,” Bax said.

Oskar laughed. “It sounds as though you are well prepared. Good fishing, my friend.”

“Thanks. I hope to hook him.”

C
HECKING THE HALL
in both directions, Nils used a passkey on the door to the room. “Inside,” he hissed, “quickly.”

The room showed the disorder impossible to avoid with two people living in close proximity. A woman’s jacket and trousers were draped over one of the chairs; books were piled haphazardly on the desk.

Markus looked at Andersson. “And now, I need to get into the safe.”

Andersson slipped the master key from his pocket and handed it to Markus. “You know I will be fired if this is discovered,” he muttered resentfully.

“Worse things can happen.” Markus snapped on latex gloves. “I can demonstrate, if you like.” He opened the armoire that held the safe and adroitly used the master key. With a click the door opened.

Humming, Markus began to poke through the safe, pulling out a woman’s purse, some kroner, a packet of documents. No envelopes, he noticed with disappointment but no surprise. It was impossible to imagine Johan being sloppy enough to leave the Blue Mauritius in a hotel safe. Still, it was always worth checking.

He picked up the kroner and Andersson stepped up behind him. “You can’t steal anything. The safe stores the time it was opened. I will be caught.”

Markus stopped and turned to him. “Nils, it is time for you to go.”

“I will not.” Nils swallowed. “I have to stay here while you are in the room.”

“Then go sit on the chair by the window.” The tone was kind, the look was not. Andersson jumped to obey.

Shaking his head, Markus spilled the contents of the safe on the bed. “And who are you this month, Johan my friend?” He opened up the blue passport to see a photo of Bax. “John Baxter. Very good. And your companion?” Markus reached into the small handbag and pulled out the wallet and passport, appreciating for a moment the faint whiff of Joss’s perfume. The wallet, he noticed, was small, with no credit cards or bank card such as most people usually carried. It did, however, include a driver’s license. He looked at it and stilled. “How very interesting,” he murmured.

“I cannot be gone from the desk for long,” Andersson reminded him. “They will demote me to night shift. Haven’t you found what you came for?”

Markus flipped open Joss’s passport. “Much, much more,” he said to himself. “All right, back to the front desk with you, Nils,” he said briskly, putting the wallet back into Joss’s purse. “I am done for now.”

“Now? Will you be back?”

“Perhaps.” Markus took his time returning the objects
to the safe, adjusting things carefully so that they looked as they had when he’d opened the safe. Johan, he knew, would notice.

“You must go,” Andersson muttered, herding Markus back out into the hall like a nervous sheepdog.

“And so I will, Nils, and so I will.”

S
ILVERHOLMEN WAS
gorgeous, Joss thought, all rounded gray rock and green birches against the sapphire-blue of the sea. Small waves sent up occasional plumes of spume as they hit the shore. A few smaller islands dotted the sea around them, none even remotely large enough to be inhabited. Silverhielm had chosen his island getaway carefully. The nearest people would probably be ten miles away, maybe more. Out here, he’d have his privacy and then some.

Out here, he could do as he chose.

They’d come upon Silverholmen from the northwest and now circumnavigated it slowly. It was shaped a little like a lopsided lima bean, perhaps a mile and a half across at its widest. Birches and pine and heather covered much of it, at least what she could see. The house, Oskar had told them, was on the southern shore.

Slowly, Bax brought the boat around the island to come upon the house from the southeast, from the Baltic side rather than the Stockholm side from which boats normally approached.

Joss pushed her hair back out of her eyes and tried to ignore the heat. “Were Oskar’s directions off or did you overshoot it intentionally?”

“It seemed like the best way to come up on them without being spotted. They may have guards watching the water with binoculars from the house, but they’re not likely to monitor the northern exposure as carefully. And it doesn’t hurt to have a feel for the whole island.”

“In case everything goes south and we need to run that way?”

“If everything goes south and we’re cut off from the boat, it won’t matter whether we get loose on the back side of the island. We can’t walk back to Stockholm. Eventually, they’ll find us.” He lowered his binoculars and looked at her. “Everything won’t go south, though. This is just habit. The more prepared you are, the fewer surprises you have.” The boat chugged along and slowly the trees thinned and the house came into view.

As they’d navigated the archipelago, she’d seen homes of glass and wood that looked to be made of air, homes built in traditional long-house styles that blended by virtue of their humbleness, homes that brought Swedish Modern to the age-old archipelago. In all this variety, though, she’d never seen a house like Silverhielm’s.

It wasn’t an island home, it was a transplanted manor house, suited to one who imagined himself lord and master of his world. Massive and baroque, it made no concession to its environment but dominated. The facade rose straight up, built of gray stone blocks, stolid and imposing. On the western exposure, they could see the ornate portico, designed as though for dukes and duchesses to roll up and alight from their coaches. Even the bottom floor, with all its windows overlooking the sea, was broken up with heavy columns and carvings.

Behind the house lay a stone terrace with steps down to the green lawn that rolled out to the shore. Stone lions sat in frozen vigilance on either side. It was the sort of manor house a member of the nobility might have built back in the eighteenth century. It said, Joss thought, a great deal about its owner.

“So do you think this was really the house he had in mind?” she asked.

“Of course. A man like Silverhielm always gets exactly what he wants.”

“He must have an incredible view,” she murmured.

Bax slowed the boat to an idle and threw an anchor overboard. “Always nice to have good scenery when you’re ordering people kneecapped.”

“Now, there’s a thought I can do without.”

“I’m glad you heard that story. You need to understand that Silverhielm is a genuinely ruthless man. It doesn’t do to underestimate him.”

Joss thought of the singlemindedness and disregard for anything but his own desires that it must have taken Silverhielm to build this sort of house out on a lonely island. Somehow the sight of the mansion, along with Oskar’s story, made Silverhielm’s character all too real. “It’s too bad we couldn’t just sneak on and swap out the forgeries without him knowing. He’d be happy because it’s all about the owning, not the stamps themselves. We’d be happy because we got the stamps back.”

“Why do you care about what he thinks?”

She didn’t answer right away, but picked up the binoculars and scanned the island. “So what do you think he’s going to do when he figures out we’ve scammed him?”

“That’s a good question.” Bax rose to pull one of the fishing rods they were using for cover out of its holder and opened up a container of chum. “I don’t imagine he’ll be happy.”