The Last Nobleman

Acknowledgements

A silent thank you to the faceless Finnish Security Intelligence Service Agent and Finnish Defense Force Agents, who made invaluable contributions via anonymous remailers. Without them the facts stated on this book would be virtually nonexistent and forever lost in time.

Also a debt of gratitude to my fiancé for her support, and to all the military personnel and secret agents who read and contributed to the manuscript along the way.

Without them, this book would not have been written.

Preface

Europol is an European security agency whose main goal is to track down and identify possible terrorist forces planning to act inside the Euro zone. Its investigations pointed out several actions, including the liquid explosives threat to aviation during August 2006.

The department of internal research has recently identified Mosques as high risk locations for the recruitment of new terrorism extremists and advised local authorities to maintain them under constant surveillance.

Latest information states that a presumably extinct group reemerged with the main objective of reeducating Europe religiously by strength through the south of Portugal. Borders between Morocco, Spain and Portugal became Europe's main concern.

An explosion at an Helsinki city mall shocks Europe. The explosion took place after Al-Qaeda statements, threatening Europe as well as the USA. The bomber was identified as a youngster, Finnish chemistry student. Seven people died, including the bomber, and several were injured by the blast that wrecked two floors. Police investigation did not attain any connection between the explosion and any terrorist group.

An explosion at the Helsinki National Museum destroys an entire wing. Again, Police investigations did not manage to link the explosion with any terrorist act.

Chapter 1

There was no sound when the steel needle penetrated the man’s arm. The executioner observed him with a sinister pleasure as if studying his eyes. The thick silence in the bedroom was only deceived by the restless moaning underneath the duck tape over the man’s mouth. The sparse movements inside the closet indicated that the Janitor was still trying to break free from the ropes, so Mansur slipped the lethal venom into the man’s veins quickly.

A female voice came through the closed door, but that didn’t disturb him. He was enjoying his murder.

Almost instantly the tied body began to shake, indicating that the heart was having a seizure. Mansur’s large figure was laying on him, over the bed. Between spasms he could see the blood vessels exploding inside his eyes due to the strong contractions on his chest. In a few seconds it was all over. His victim had a peaceful morbid look.

The female voice kept on talking. ‘We had a small inconvenience. The Janitor brought an electrician with him to check out the fake problems we described over the phone. We only expected to receive one person but two came.’

On the other side of the line no one spoke so she continued.

‘Mansur did not obey my orders to wait. He is executing the stronger subject as we speak under the excuse that we wouldn’t be able to use both of them, since we only need one heart beat.’

Her voice was both subtle and kind despite the situation.

‘It is a shame, but it had to be done. Mansur did the right thing. We’re too close to our objectives now, so we cannot afford to fail under such inconveniences. Two men would definitely be difficult to control under that situation. Retrieve the armament and prepare the remaining subject.’ , the distant voice ended the sentence abruptly.

‘Certainly.’, the woman said disconnecting the call.

She opened the door with an impregnated cloth with ether on her hand and saw the dead body over the bed. Mansur was opening the closet where the Janitor had been placed. She handed him the cloth without saying a word. Mansur held it, but before applying it to the Janitor’s face, he deliberately took him out from the closet for him to see the dead electrician.

The Janitor tried to desperately shake himself free, but Mansur had a strong grip. He placed the cloth covering his mouth and nose and watched him loose his senses.

‘He will sleep for some hours.’, Mansur said with a smile before throwing him back into the closet.

‘We still have one assignment before we can prepare him. We need to pick up some more armament. It will be brought to us at the city centre. I want you to come with me. We will drive their car and leave it in the city’. She was afraid of Mansur since he rarely obeyed her orders. She was scared he would kill the remaining subject as well.

He bowed his head positively. Before leaving the room he looked at the body again and smiled.

Chapter 2

Those moments always comforted him… feeling his own body relaxing after hard work. He arrived home completely exhausted. Took off his brown boots, placed the shopping bags over the white kitchen table and headed to the white sofa. With his eyes closed he could only feel the warmth of the house, raising the body temperature lost outside when walking through the snow.

The house was intentionally empty, minimal. The sound of the goods in the shopping bag, readjusting themselves, took over the silence… The distant tick-tack of the bedroom clock sounded as if it was right next to his ear. Minimalism was the adopted style, although the design sometimes called out the 60’s lines. All the books, whose covers were designed by him, were placed on the floor… Bibles, dictionaries, design books, architectural magazines and atlas. Sometimes he thought the book piles were not pleasant to look at. But that day, as he rested, they looked marvelous, with their outlines of color lost in the white peaceful living room.

Soon his girlfriend would be home from work, so he decided to cook them something to eat.

If there was something he wanted to bring from his warm home land to that cold country was the kitchen flavors passed on by his father. But the sofa was just too relaxing… so he allowed some minutes to pass by.

He remembered exactly how his father cooked and what ingredients to use. Somehow the flavors in every meal embraced him for the last seven months, making it easier to bear the fact that he was a rather lonely emigrant…

During his childhood he spent his late afternoons in the kitchen with his dad. While cooking, his father would tell him the amazing stories about the long family roots, all the adventures away from home, history related themes, all the myths and secrets. Since then a tiny need to travel grew inside. He needed to see the world, visit places, smell the rain in different countries. Some international trips to meet his relatives leaded to some more visits and some more international discoveries… and after his degree, the definite life changing decision to live abroad.

Everyone could travel freely inside the European Union as a tourist, but the fact that he became an illegal emigrant for staying there for more than three months without a job, made everyday life a little bit more stressful.

Henrique de Guerra’s life was not exactly as he expected it to become. He decided to travel to Finland one year before, searching for a better way of life. Chance dictated that he would have a little adventure while living with his girlfriend. He managed to get a job at a fairly interesting design studio during some months, but soon the studio work wasn’t enough to support a foreigner and he was dispensed. Searching for a new job had become harder day by day. Designing book covers and publicity panels was a very specific job anywhere in the world. He felt like his choices were running out.

He looked out the window and saw the three red houses planted on a white snowy field.

When they moved in, he thought of how it was the best house in the neighborhood because of its high placement… but that idea quickly vanished after the first walk up the hill from the bus stop.

A grey car with tinted windows parked slowly next to the closest house. Henrique was becoming more and more Nordic. He watched two shadows entering the red house but paid no attention at all… his mind was blinded by the relaxing sofa moment. He watched the dirty snow falling from its tires.

Henrique got up and started frying steaks and preparing some salad to eat with the rice they had in the fridge.

Anne Aalto arrived moments afterwards. The plates were on the table, two candles were dancing, casting shadows to the abstract paintings on the wall. Everything was ready for a calm night. Henrique approached and kissed her right after she undressed her coat and hat, releasing her pure shiny blond hair. The laptop played the Caetano Veloso version of Garota de Ipanema while they started eating. It was one of Anne’s favorites.

At 7pm the darkness absorbed the sunset completely. Outside only the lights of the neighbor houses could be visible… Anne looked out and could only see some tree shadows and car lights down in the highway, far away. Down in the skyline some twinkling house lights trembled in the darkness. She felt comfortable for living basically alone. No neighbor kids running around the common yards was decisive when choosing their home.

She liked the fact that next door was always empty. She noticed the car when arriving home that night, but she couldn’t see any light across the windows what made her feel even more relaxed.

She felt comfortable with Henrique despite his blurry past. He was the one who complemented her. A Latin man had always been her dream since she was a child, and when she started to work, it seemed like the perfect beginning for her new life.

They cuddled and napped in the Klippan sofa for some hours, on each others arms with the TV on, until Henrique decided to go for a walk to smoke his last cigarette of the day. She was sleeping in the sofa, with her clothes still on. Henrique would wake her up after his smoke. Guerra was quitting without any exterior help, reducing the nicotine in his brain every week, and it seemed to be working for he only needed a couple of cigarettes a day to provide him his daily nicotine needs.

The path outside leaded him through the houses to a bifurcation, where he was able to choose his way: the closest tour around the main gravel street or a walk inside the woods. The Zippo lighted easily in the dreadful cold hill breeze and he inhaled the first smoke. ‘I hate this smell’ he thought to himself while walking on the pathway. Everything was silent and the only light around was from the weak street lights leading the snowy gravel.

Far away in the sky some green shadows moved shyly. He took a moment to look at them trying to listen… but with no success. The sounds were only a myth but just in case he always paid attention to them. The Nordic Lights always fascinated him. ‘One of the prettiest manifestations of Nature’ as he used to name them.

The tree tops were dancing to the wind. Looking at them he wondered if he could use that image in any book. Nothing came to his mind. It would be a good picture to use in religious school books and guides… but it was rather dark and Henrique quickly gave up the idea due to all the digital work necessary to make it work. Besides, he wasn’t working with any publisher.

His passion for books was honest. ‘The true world on my finger tips’ he thought. Not that he read all the books he made a cover for. But he did read some. Some astonishing titles were religiously kept in his mind and when necessary he always knew where to find the information.

Everything was silent… Only the cracks of his boots against the gravel on each footstep were hearable. He took another smoke breath and smiled to himself watching his engraved silver ring shinning almost majesty to the street light. He could never imagine that this same shine would give him strength to reconquer his life in the next morning.

The first house was silent and no lights were visible in the windows as he passed by.

After a few steps an opening sound came from the neighbor’s front door. Henrique took a quick peek over his shoulder while inhaling some smoke. His eyes took a glimpse of what would awake his blind curiosity that night.

Chapter 3

At a small waiting room in Keskustori, right in the center of Tampere city, the young Jonas was waiting for his nightshift to begin. Jonas was only 22, but the time spent in the army made him older. He looked like a typical Arian man. His head was visibly blond, although the shaved hair made him look completely bold at a first quick glance. His face bones were tightly sharp contradicting to his arm curved muscles clearly noticeable under his uniform. A strong lad indeed. In the army, he managed to achieve a truck driver license, so when needed, gambling all his modest savings, he easily took the public transportation license required to become a bus driver.

He was glad, for that was his first night shift. During the day, traffic became silly rather than chaotic. The public respectfulness often originated massive lines of traffic without a single honking horn, which completely ruined bus schedules, despite the apparent calmness.

He arrived almost one hour earlier to study the night path, which was slightly different from his usual one.

Starting at 8pm his shift would last until 4am… with an hour and a half break around mid-night.

Jonas didn’t like to spend so much time without driving in the middle of the night. First, he would need to bear the other fellow drivers and their jokes and pranks to the newcomer, and second of all he could leave one full hour earlier if he was allowed to drive non stop. Even going home at 4am, Jonas would need to wake up at 9am every day, to take his little sister to the kindergarten. Nevertheless, he was pleased to work that night. The streets, despite the snow, were clean and the temperature rose above 0, which made driving safer and, besides, he felt lucky.

Looking at the map, he saw some tight curves between residential buildings. That part of the city wasn’t new for him, although that eastern side wasn’t as appealing as the south and west. A flash of history lessons from the army came into his mind. All cities were more vulnerable from the south, where he happened to live. Basically it was because of the buildings’ necessity to embrace the sunbeams coming from south although it only happened at the northern hemisphere. 'Perhaps that was why Bagdad was attacked from the south.', he thought.

Those concepts were not perfectly visible in Scandinavia due to the enormous green structure around residential areas. But the ideals were still present in the urban planning offices and were always used by architects when designing. ‘Open the houses to the warm south and close them to the cold north.’ Jonas remembered his girlfriend, a Wicca follower, spoke about the concept not long ago… how the south winds are supposed to be hot and bring happiness, ‘the winds of change’.

Looking up from his map route he saw another young driver. He was reading a thick black cover book. His eyes flashed a memory of his grandmother Bible.

Jonas grew up in a humble military family. He never had many books around, and after his mother died he didn’t had much time to study either. After school the house chores took all his time. Life never smiled at him but he kept on working hard, dreaming that one day everything would change… he just wanted to have spiritual peace. His weeks were completely null except for the normal Friday and Saturday night parties with his friends. Nothing else really mattered. He knew that an amazing rich life was too far to reach, so Jonas lived day by day… shift after shift. But the bible image was something that he could not forget. ‘The words of Jesus’ as she used to say. Jonas didn’t believe her much, specially after his family collapsed.

Fast he withdrew the attention from the book reader and kept on studying his route… Just when the man took a glimpse back at him for a brief second before standing up and leaving the room.

Chapter 4

Henrique saw two shadows leaving the house. One of them dropped something. He took only a glimpse. Then, while walking, his senses were still focused in that area behind him. The sound indicated that the shadow didn’t stop to pick it up. Despite he didn’t pay any attention at all while he was resting in the sofa, his memory was more picture related rather than numeric, so he was sure that two different shadows had entered the house earlier that evening. Henrique walked slowly away, with his back to the shadows, trying to pretend not to be interested about the looks of his neighbors. At the same time he was trying to pay as much attention as he could to the sounds between his own footsteps… somehow he had the feeling that he was being watched and he could not hear any movements in the opposite direction towards the street, what could only confirm his fear.

The pathway was silent. Not even the trees moved. No wind. Henrique could only hear himself walking, crunching the pathway rocks under each footstep. After some smoke-breaths he heard the sound of twinkling keys and two car doors closing. The car started driving on the opposite direction. He sighted in relief. Henrique knew nothing could happen to him. That was the safest country in Europe, he was sure. Nevertheless, being alone in the dark, completely cold with an unknown person behind him freaked him out, giving him chills in the back of his neck.

As he walked away he had a weird feeling, as if something was missing in the flash image he had of that neighbor leaving his house. He analyzed again the image in his head and discovered that he had never seen that grey car parked there before. ‘So they are probably moving in… Well, as soon as I finish this cigarette, I can go back and pick up what fell on the ground. It might tell me something about that new family.’ Soon Henrique reached the bifurcation in the pathway… he could only see trees in front of him, showing the two ways he could choose. He stopped, took a small breath looking at the tree tops and turned back slowly while smoking.

Nothing.

No one in sight. His own house had the lights off what made Henrique believe Anne was preparing herself to sleep. She usually needed to wake up earlier than him.

Henrique looked around while taking his last breaths of smoke and saw no one in the fields. The forest was silent.

With a James’s Dean move he tossed the cigarette beat away onto the snow. Orange sparkles blazed when the cigarette crashed onto the cold snow.

He started walking back home.

All the lights were off. The pathway lights were the only ones illuminating the surroundings, reflecting in the houses, and loosing themselves on the first forest trees. He could see his shadow on the ground. ‘I should practice some more’ he said to himself. Not that he was physically lazy but certainly spending most of his day at a computer desk didn’t allow him to show off an athletic body.

His footsteps became softer as he walked on fresh snow heading to the neighbors side entrance door. A piece of paper was lying almost undisclosed on the ground next to the main entrance concrete floor. Henrique bend down and reached it. His fingers felt cold and moist. The sheet was in contact with snow and therefore completely wet. While unfolding it, a bright flash light glowed inside the house for a nanosecond.

He ducked instantly. He didn’t want to be seen so close to the house. It would be shameful to be peeking like that. His heart was beating furiously afraid of the unknown and he tried to control his breathing not to make a sound.

If he walked towards home, someone might see him from inside the house.

With half unfolded paper on his hand he decided to go around the house, through the side entrance leading to the kitchen. The three houses had the same organizing structure. Henrique knew that if he could reach the side kitchen entrance, he could peek into the living room and if no one was there, he can return to his normal pathway pretending that nothing happened because no one would be there to see him.

Crouched he slided along the house wall under the high bedroom window. Peeked around the corner, looked back to the entrance and froze as he saw his own footsteps. ‘Something the wind will take care of.’ He thought. He went around the corner and waited for one minute… One minute that seemed like an eternity.

His hands