Aino had rented the state-supported handicrafts center through the good offices of her student activist group. The walls of the terrorist hideaway were covered with weird woolly hangings, massive hand-saws, pine-tar soaps and eldritch Finnish glassware.
Aino was fully up-to-speed on improvised demolitions, so she had been appointed a look-out. She sat near a second-floor window overlooking the driveway, with a monster Finnish elk-rifle at hand. The job was tedious. Arno was leafing through a stack of English-language Fluuvin books which Starlitz had picked up at a Helsinki bookstore. Helsinki boasted bookstores half the size of aircraft hangars. The book thing was something to do during those long dark winters.
"How many of these did she write?" Aino said.
"Twenty-five. The hottest sellers are Froofies Go to Sea and Papa Froofy and the Mushroom Tigers."
"They seem even stranger in English. It's strange that she cares so much about her little blue creatures. She worries about them so much, and gets so emotionally touched about them, and they don't even really exist." Aino flipped through the pages. "Look, here the Fluuvins are walking through the fire-mists on big stilts. That's a good picture. And look! There's that cave creature that carries the harmonica and complains all the time."
"That would be Sperry the Nerkulen."
"Speffy the Nerkulen." Aino frowned. "That isn't a proper Finnish name. It isn't Swedish either. Not even Aland Swedish."
Starlitz turned off the shortwave, which was detailing Finnish agricultural production. "She imagined Sperry, that's all. Sperry the Nerkulen just popped out of her little gray head. But Sperry the Nerkulen sure moves major product in Hokkaido."
Aino riffled the pages of the paperback. "I could make a book like this. She wrote this book fifty years ago. She was my age when she wrote and drew this book. I could do this myself."
"Why do you say that?"
She looked up. "Because I could, I know I could. I can draw. I can tell stories. I'm always telling stories to people at the bar. Once I did a band poster."
"That's swell. How'd you like to come along with me and brace up the little old lady? I need a Finnish translator, and a former Froofy fan would be great. Besides, she can give you helpful tips on kid-lit."
Aino looked at him, surprised. Slowly, she frowned. "What are you saying? I'm a revolutionary soldier. You should respect my political commitment. You wouldn't talk to me that way if I was a twenty-year-old boy."
"If you were a twenty-year-old boy, you'd fuckin' spit on Sperry the Nerkulen."
"No I wouldn't."
"Yes you would. Young soldier boys are cheaper than dirt. They're a fuckin' commodity. Who needs 'em? But a young female Froofy fan could be a very useful cut-out in some dicey negotiations."
"You're still lying to me. You should stop. I'm not fooled."
Starlitz sighed. "Look. It's the truth. Try and get it straight. You think the Aland Islands are important, right? Important enough to blow up trains for. Well, Sperry the Nerkulen is the most important thing that ever came out of the Akland Islands. Froofies are the only Alands product that you can't obtain anywhere else. Twenty-five thousand hick fishermen in the Baltic are doing great to produce a major worldwide pop hit like Sperry the Nerkulen. If the Alands were Jamaica, he'd be Bob Marley."
One of Raf's new recruits entered the room. He was bearded and muscular, maybe thirty. He wore a Confederate flag T-shirt and carried a Colt automatic in a belt holster. "Hey," he said. "Y'all speak English?"
"Yo," said Starlitz.
"'Where's the can ?"
Starlitz pointed.
"Hey babe," said the American, pausing. "That's a lady's rifle. You say the word, I'll give you something serious to shoot with."
Aino said nothing. Her grip tightened on the rifle's polished walnut stock.
The American grinned at Starlitz. "She's got no English, huh? She's a Russian, right? I heard there'd be lots of Russian chicks in this operation. Man. What a dollar'll do these days." He rubbed his hands.
"Posse Comitatus?" Starhtz hazarded.
"Aw hell no. We're not militia. Those militia boys, they're all in a sweat over UN black helicopters and the New World Order... . That's bullshit! We know the New World Order. We got contacts. We're gonna be inside the goddamn black helicopters. Shoulder to shoulder with Ivan, this time!"
Finland had the most expensive booze in the world. This was Finnish social democratic policy, part and parcel with the world's lowest infant mortality rate. Nevertheless, Finns were truly fabulous drunks. The little Kasarmikatu bar was jammed with Finns methodically transiting from modest self-effacement to chest-pounding no-brakes bravado. A television barked above the shining racks of vodka and koskenkorva, showing broadcast news from across the Baltic. Another Parliamentary crisis in Moscow. A furious Russian delegate was pounding the podium in a blue vinyl iacket and a Megadeth T-shirt.
The Japanese financier set down his apple juice and adjusted his sunglasses. "His Holiness the Master does not approve of drunkenness. Alcohol clouds the vision and occludes the flow of ki."
"I can't believe we found a Japanese who won't drink after a business deal," Khoklov bitched in Russian. The Japanese money-man didn't speak or understand Russian. The three of them were clustered in the darkest comer of the Helsinki bar.
Starlitz spoke in Russian. "Our star depositor here has got a very severe case of that Pacific Rim New Age thing. These Supreme Truth guys are completely nuts. However, they're richer than God."
Starlitz silently toasted the money-man with a shot of Finnish cranberry vodka. He'd convinced their backer that this pulverizing liquor was cranberry juice. He switched to fluent gutter Japanese. "Khoklov-san tells me that he admires your electric skullcap very much. He wants to try one for himself. He is seeking health benefits and increased peace of mind."
"Saaaaa ... " riposted Mr. Inoue, patting the plasticized top of his shaven head. "The electroneural stabilizers of His Holiness the Master. They will soon be in mass production at our Fuji fortress."
"You got like a kids' version of those, right?" said Starlitz.
"Of course. His Holiness the Master has many children."
"So have you ever considered, like, a pop commercial version of those gizmos? Like with maybe a fully licensed cartoon character?"
Mr Inoue blinked. "I was led to understand that Mister Khoklov's associates could supply us with military helicopters."
"The son of a bitch is on about the helicopters again," Starlitz explained in Russian.
Khoklov grunted. "Tell him we have a special on T-72 main battle tanks. Twenty million yen apiece. Just for him though. No resales."
Starlitz conferred at length with Mr. Inoue. "He's not interested in tanks. He wants at least six Mil- 17 choppers with poison gas dispensers. Also some Spetsnaz Ranger vets to train the cult's judo commando unit on their sacred island of Ishigakijima."
"Spetsnaz veterans? Very well. We've got plenty. Tell him he'll have to find them visas and put up 'earnest money. Those black berets aren't your average goons."
Starlitz conferred again. "He wants to know if you know anything about laser ablation uranium-enrichment techniques."
"Nyet. And I'm getting pretty tired of that question."
"He wants to know if you're interested in learning how they do that sort of thing at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries."
Khoklov groaned. "Tell him I appreciate the lead on industrial atomic espionage, but that crap went out with Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs."
Starlitz sighed. "Let's give lnoue-san a little face here, Pulat Romanevich. His Holiness the Master predicts the world will end in 1997. We play along with the cult's loony apocalypse myths, and we can lock in their deposits all the way through winter '96."