But the hitman was still coming up with ideas. Wine could be a bit harsh for some people’s taste. He recalled his early teenage years, when he and his best friend (who later drugged himself to death; that was stupid) mixed rot-gut with Coca-Cola so they could get the decoction down themselves. When they learned, later on, to put Alka-Seltzer into the mix, it was even more fun.
“Sounds tasty,” said the priest. “Like I said, we’ll look over the menu in the time to come and I promise we’ll take your views into account. Can we focus on the sermon now?”
The Bible was a cornucopia of homage to wine as a gift from God. The priest jotted down something from memory about wine to make the human heart glad, oil to make the face shine, and bread to give the heart strength (taken from Psalms). And she added another slightly less verbatim quote from Ecclesiastes that said life without a real bender now and then was meaningless, utterly meaningless.
“Does it really say ‘bender’?” Hitman Anders wondered.
“No, but let’s not quibble,” the priest said, as she wrote down the prophecy according to Isaiah that on the Day of Judgment there would be a feast of rich food and strong wine, a feast of rich food filled with marrow and well-aged wines strained clear.
“I’m telling you,” said Hitman Anders. “Rich food. Burgers and fries. We can skip the Coke and Alka-Seltzer.”
“Shall we take a little break?” said the priest.
CHAPTER 51
After the third Saturday it felt like things were starting to settle down a bit. For the second week in a row, the party had brought in a net sum of close to nine hundred thousand to the two needy people. The giant screen wasn’t serving much purpose anymore, but the pews were still just as loaded as the people sitting in them.
Churchwarden Ekman had returned after a few days’ absence, but he mostly seemed to slink around; thus far, he hadn’t asked for another meeting with the priest or the receptionist. He seemed like a ticking time bomb, but at the same time there was so much more to think about. Sitting down to chat with him would, at best, lead to bribing him into membership of the club (that is, peace and quiet); at worst, they would be hastening a problem that seemed to have been put on the shelf.
“I’m far from certain that no news is good news in this case, but I still think we should avoid bothering him for the time being,” said the receptionist. “As long as he’s not bothering us.”
The priest agreed, even if she felt that things were going a little too well on all fronts. After a life in which everything goes wrong, it’s easy to become suspicious when the opposite ensues.
There had, for example, been no incidents in the form of activity from the almost certainly frustrated underworld. Hitman Anders’s threat that the list of contracts taken out would become public upon his demise seemed to have done the trick.
The deliveries of wine and treats each Wednesday at one p.m. were also flowing smoothly. The receptionist realized that this sort of routine was just the type of thing that potential attackers would love, but he trusted Jerry the Knife and his army. One of Jerry’s soldiers, incidentally, had been dismissed when it was discovered that he had neglected his duties. He had been caught red-handed, snoring in the bell tower, hugging an empty box of Moldovan wine.
Since Jerry had acted so quickly, the incident inspired confidence more than anything. At the moment the group was one man short, but Jerry was holding job interviews and expected the team to be at full strength again within a month at most.
Aside from the nearly one million kronor they received each week in cash, the receptionist’s superb handling of social media brought another couple of hundred thousand straight into the congregation’s bank account. That money needed a great deal of attention from a purely administrative standpoint: in Sweden, it is automatically assumed that anyone holding more than ten thousand kronor in hand is either a criminal, a tax dodger, or both. Thus there are rules about how much one may deposit or withdraw from one’s own accounts without first meekly petitioning to do so several days in advance. But in keeping with the theme of “going like clockwork,” it just so happened that the receptionist had met and charmed a woman at the bank who doubled as one of the most devoted and thirstiest of their congregation. So, he was able to visit the woman daily and withdraw a reasonable amount, without risking a call to the financial supervisory authority for suspected money laundering. She knew that the capital was being used in the service of the Lord (plus it bankrolled her weekend ragers). Allowing the money to remain in the account was not an option the receptionist considered even for a second. After all, in case of trouble, they needed to be able to take off within half a minute; withdrawing hundreds of thousands of kronor from a Swedish bank took more like half a year.
“Now that the sun is shining down on us, it’s probably not the time to be too greedy,” he mused. “Should we let the fool loose on another half-million?”
“That might be advisable,” the priest agreed. “But this time we’ll count the money for him.”
* * *
Hitman Anders was overjoyed when he learned that the congregation had brought in 480,000 kronor in just a few weeks and that they would be able to hand out half a million once again, since the priest, in all her generosity, had donated the missing twenty thousand out of her own pocket.
“You will be given a place at the right hand of the Lord in Heaven,” he said to her.
The priest didn’t bother to tell him how unlikely that was. Furthermore, David was already sitting there, according to the Psalms, in Jesus’s lap, one had to presume, since according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus had bagged the same spot.
The pastor began to consider where the money could go. Perhaps some non-profit association. But then he happened to recall something he had overheard once: “All this talk about the rainforest, what’s that all about? It sounds lovely to save a forest and, what’s more, the forests were created by God. Or maybe it would be better to find one where it doesn’t rain so much.”
The priest was no longer startled by anything that came out of the pastor’s mouth, even if Boletus edulis—the porcini mushroom—was still hard to figure out. “I guess I was thinking along the lines of saving a few more sick or starving children,” she said.
Hitman Anders was not a pretentious man. Rainforest or starving children, it didn’t matter: it was the act of giving in Jesus’s name that was important. He did, however, allow himself to reflect that the combination of starving children in a rainforest sounded extra special. But would it be possible to find such a thing in Sweden?
CHAPTER 52
The dejected churchwarden was not at all dejected. He was biding his time, sneaking about in and around the church to gather evidence for his theory that all was not quite as it should be. If even one thing was.
A week passed, then three. Börje Ekman had previously seen with his very own eyes approximately how many thousands of kronor had been in the bucket of puke; all he had to do was multiply that amount by the number of buckets present to estimate the quantities they were dealing with.
At this point, the fake priest and the other fellow ought to have four or even five million kronor hidden somewhere. At least!
* * *
The latest donation had not been given to a forest, with or without rain. Instead, the priest had come up with the idea of traveling to Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital along with two newspapers, a radio station, and a TV channel to let Hitman Anders unexpectedly present a backpack of 500,000 kronor with “Jesus lives” on it to the gravely ill children so that they might, as far as possible, continue to do the same.
The head of the department, also a doctor and pediatric specialist, was not on hand for the occasion but was quick to issue a press release praising the Church of Anders and its head pastor for the “enormous generosity he has shown the children and their parents, who are undergoing the most difficult of times.”
For one second, Börje Ekman wavered in his conviction that the pastor’s generosi
ty was backed merely by greed and cynicism. But when that second was over, he saw the situation with clear, sharp eyes. Perhaps there was nothing wrong with the pastor (other than that he was a murderer and unevenly gifted); the problem was that the priest and the fellow whose name was practically the same forwards and backwards were pulling his strings.
Börje Ekman sat in his studio apartment, thinking that that last half-million would have been most beneficial had he been the one to receive it. The Lord’s foremost servant needed solid financial ground on which to stand if he was going to perform his duties in accordance with the Lord’s will. That was why he had done such things as keeping a tenth of the weekly collection for himself for all those years, without finding it necessary to inform the congregation. It was an agreement between the churchwarden and God, and had nothing to do with anyone else.
CHAPTER 53
The countess had dealt with all the preliminary work, and now it was the count’s turn. He was on the fence about what to do. On the one hand, he might want to outfit himself with enough weapons to be prepared for any contingency; on the other, he might want to avoid being too heavily armed in case he needed to vanish rapidly after fulfilling his duty.
The latter was still the most likely scenario. According to the countess, the double side doors had been opened pretty much precisely at one o’clock on each of the five Wednesdays she’d had the church under surveillance. The last time, the guard stationed outside was replaced by the man who was otherwise never farther than two feet away from Hitman Anders; it seemed they were one man short and, for a limited time each week, the geographical distance between Hitman Anders and his bodyguard increased.
That both simplified and complicated the situation.
On the Wednesdays in question, Hitman Anders had been fully visible just inside the doors, along with Johanna Kjellander and Per Something. One might make the not unreasonable assumption that the same would apply for that day as well, the day of Operation Thank You and Good Night. If that was the case, the plan was to take out Hitman Anders first, with the jacketed bullet, then have the half-jacketed bullet ready in case the bodyguard started towards them. That is to say, from jacketed to half-jacketed, instead of the other way around.
They could not be sure, though, that a single shot would fell the bodyguard. For one thing, there was a chance that he was reasonably professional, and would not remain standing there after report number one, waiting to depart this life. And for another, circumstances were now such that the aim would have to be adjusted more than a fraction of an inch and a few tenths of a second; with the intended victims no longer standing side by side it would take much longer.
Thus they needed a Plan B, and once that was settled, everything seemed relatively obvious. After all, they would be lying hidden in a grove of trees above a man who might potentially be stupid enough to counterattack. If the count were to toss a hand grenade at just the right moment, it would have a one hundred percent chance of causing the enemy to lose his train of thought.
“A hand grenade,” the countess commented, relishing the phrase as well as the thought of the effect it would have on the bodyguard.
The count smiled lovingly. His countess truly was the cream of the crop.
* * *
At ten to one, it was time to prepare to receive the weekly delivery of the blood of Christ, et cetera. The priest and the receptionist went to the sacristy that had become a storeroom, warehouse, office, receiving room, and more . . . only to find the self-appointed churchwarden with his nose deep in the yellow and the red suitcases, full of their millions.
“What the holy hell are you doing here?” said the receptionist, who was as surprised as he was angry.
“Hell indeed,” said the churchwarden, his voice calm but intense. “Because that is where you two are going. Hitmen, fraudsters, embezzlers . . . what else? I’m speechless.”
“But you found our suitcases, you parasite,” said the priest, closing both receptacles. “What right do you have to look through our accounts?”
“Accounts? You should know that I have taken measures. Soon you will no longer be of any account in the eyes of the Lord. Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame, shame, shame!”!”
The priest had time to reflect that they had attracted an unusually uncommunicative parasite, if “shame on you” was his only response to their actions. But before she could counter with anything cleverer, Pastor Anders appeared. “Hi there, Börje, it’s been a while. How are things?” he said, as incapable as ever of reading a situation.
A few minutes earlier, Börje Ekman had been standing, rake in hand, about to finish the gravel path, when it had struck him: the suitcases!
Of course! That was where they kept the profits from the devil’s work they were pursuing. In the red one and the yellow one. All he had to do was gather proof, and then he could call the police, the government offices, the children’s ombudsman . . . anyone who wanted to, ought to, and would listen.
It wasn’t quite clear how the children’s ombudsman would react, but the point was that everyone, absolutely everyone, ought to be made to understand. The newspapers, the National Food Administration, the Reverend Mr. Granlund, the Swedish Football Association . . .
One might, with good reason, suspect that a person who feels he must inform both the children’s ombudsman and the Swedish Football Association about ongoing ecclesiastical crime is no longer thinking clearly. That was the case with Börje Ekman. In his mind, there was just one thing left to do before he made sure that the whole world found out. If he acted quickly enough, he would have time to gather up the tenth of the contents of the two suitcases that rightly belonged to him.
Perhaps it would have been preferable to cherish caution above all else, considering what was about to happen, but both churchwarden and rake soon found themselves in the very sacristy where the suitcases were kept, without giving any consideration to the time or to the present location of all criminal elements.
Thus the current situation. Börje was caught with his hand in the cookie jar as he exposed what was going on, surrounded by a certain percentage of the nearby criminals. They included the man who never strayed from the pastor’s side and whose name so fitted such a blasphemous situation.
Meanwhile, the pastor’s cheerful greeting had caused Börje Ekman to suspect that the hitman was no more than a useful idiot in the ungodly game. “Don’t you realize they’re exploiting you?” he said, as he took four steps toward the pastor, rake still in hand.
“Who? What?” Pastor Anders responded.
At that instant, there were two honks outside the double doors. The weekly delivery of financial stimulants had arrived.
Jerry the Knife made the rapid assessment that the clown beside the pastor was less of a threat than what might await them outside. He went to open the door, saying to the receptionist and the pastor, with a glance at Börje Ekman: “If you keep an eye on the pest with the rake, I’ll deal with whatever’s out there.”
The oh-so-meticulous head of security began by checking the driver, the same man who had appeared the week before and the weeks before that. He checked the contents of the truck, then stood at attention outside the doors, his back to the wall and his eyes sweeping left to right and back again. The priest and the receptionist had to carry the boxes of wine themselves.
The count lay where he was, next to his countess, in the grove about four hundred feet away. With his proficiency and the telescopic sight, it would be a simple matter to take out the pastor’s bodyguard first, according to the original plan. But, given the new circumstances, this would mean he risked allowing the currently fully visible Hitman Anders time to move before shot number two, thus giving him a chance of survival. No matter how much the count would like to waste the bodyguard as a bonus, the main target was still Hitman Anders.
Thus the change in plan. The count placed Jerry the Knife in second place on his kill list and focused directly on the principal victim. (Neither Johanna Kjellander
nor Per Jansson had any future ahead of them, but there were limits to how much one count could accomplish in a single day.)
While the priest and the receptionist finished their carrying, and while the man whose goal was an immediate murder took aim at Hitman Anders, a dispute had arisen between the pastor and Börje Ekman.
“They’re just fooling you! They’re keeping all the money for themselves! Can’t you see that? Or are you blind?”
But Hitman Anders remembered, of course, his very recent success at Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital. “Dear, kind Börje,” he said. “Have you been raking too long in the sun? What is the matter? Didn’t you know that the Church has already given away its first half-million, before we’d even scraped it together? The priest donated the last of her own money so that we could make our first proper donation in the name of Jesus, earlier than our finances actually allowed.”
Börje Ekman tried again. The priest and the receptionist let him get on with it. So far Hitman Anders was doing well enough as their spokesman.
“How stupid can a person be?” said Börje Ekman. “Don’t you have any idea how much money you bring in every Saturday?”
Hitman Anders lost his cool after the bit about how stupid one could be. Partly because he didn’t know the answer, and partly because he sensed an implicit criticism of his own personal intelligence. Thus he rebuffed Börje Ekman: “You take care of your raking, and I’ll take care of bringing in money for those in need.”
At this, Börje Ekman lost his cool. “Fine. If you’re that frightfully naïve [those were the rudest words he knew], you can just stay like that. You can tend the path yourself in your spare time,” he said, shoving the rake into the hand of his pastor. “After all, I’ve taken certain measures,” Börje Ekman concluded. “All I have to say is—Sodom and Gomorrah!”!” And he smiled a superior smile, just before the situation deteriorated for him.