An Obscured Quest

By Dale Helm

About the Book
Following two heartbreaking losses, Wayne Chapulis decides to leave the US and take on a business opportunity in Finland, where his mother and brother reside. Soon after his arrival, he receives an old photograph of his dad shaking hands with an unknown man.
An Obscured Quest is launched as Wayne tries to determine the man’s identity. During his search, he is brought back to his childhood’s settings and also gets re-introduced to his former best friend’s kid sister, who has grown into a beautiful young woman. Despite that bright spot, Wayne soon finds himself being followed, assaulted in his home, and comes upon the stranger he seeks—murdered. Finnish cops and US Embassy personnel take up an investigation, but the harassment doesn’t stop. Little by little he comes up with new clues to his dad’s decades-old doings that take him on a hunt to Sweden, Holland, and finally back to New England before the secrets his dad left behind are uncovered.
About the Author
Dale Helm is an ex-military man who, after completion of a university degree, chose a career in international tech business. He has lived in Finland, the Netherlands, and the USA. Currently, Helm lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and works remotely as a manager for a high-tech company. He has always been an active sportsman with backgrounds in skiing, soccer, hockey, and most other games you need a racket for. Helm served in the military branch that required extreme outdoors skills, so he is rather proficient in orienteering and surviving in harsh arctic conditions year-round. He has logged nearly a thousand skydive jumps and used to be a jumpmaster. Helm has two grown boys who live on their own and two grandkids. He is married but lives most of the time with his Siberian Husky with whom he hikes and skis on a daily basis. Helm still chases puck weekly, but he guesses these days it can only be called a poor imitation of hockey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891270381

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Dale Helm

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Prelude

I closed the door to my apartment in the Kulosaari neighborhood in Helsinki, Finland, ran two stories’ worth of stairs down to the street level, and stepped outside into a typical fall day in southern Scandinavia; rain showers had left pools of water on the asphalt, clouds were hanging low, and the sun was desperately trying to peek down between them. I pulled the sweater hood over my head and stuck my hands into jacket pockets and walked at a good pace towards the subway, called Metro here, station. The incoming train’s squeaky brakes started ringing when I was roughly a hundred yards off the platform; I took a sprint to make it in time. I did and sat down on an empty two-seater. Downtown Helsinki was twenty minutes away.

My name is Wayne Chapulis. I was born twenty-seven years ago to a Finnish mother and an American father. Mom was a punk rocker, peace activist, student to become a teacher who hated all authority, especially one represented by her dad—a forestry professional from northern Finland whose values were very typical for his generation. Dad, on the other hand, was an ex-military security officer at the US Embassy in Helsinki. They must have made an odd couple back in the eighties when they started dating; nevertheless, there must have been something special between the two as they got married a couple of years later. I was born another couple of years from the wedding, followed by my kid brother, Walt, three years behind me.

What brought me onboard the train in Helsinki that fall day? Here’s my life story fast forward.

•••

I was born in Helsinki and so was Walt, but he barely made it there; Dad had already been given an opportunity to be the chief of security at the embassy in Den Haag, the Netherlands, which is where we moved to when Walt was just months old. The family thrived there; Dad excelled in his job and Mom found company of her liking. She became a member of Greenpeace; the European Peace Marchers, and God knows what others. We lived in a town called Wassenaar, which was filled with high salary expatriates and was also the home for the American School of Den Haag. It was quite typical for the foreigners to stick together, but thanks to Mom’s explorations, we also got involved with the local communities and made Dutch friends whom I keep up with even today.

After a pair of years later, Dad was offered a job in the private sector by a security technology company. He took the job; in the beginning it didn’t change our lives much. We still hung around with the embassy people and the international community a lot. Maybe two years later, Dad’s employer put another offer on the table. This time the address was his native home in Boston, Massachusetts. Again, our family packed the household into a large sea container and moved overseas.

If the Netherlands was a good match for Mom’s lifestyle, Newton within the Greater Boston area was not. She hated being an upper mid-class soccer mom. The other mothers who spent their time on the sidelines of the sport fields did not share her enthusiasm concerning world peace or environmental issues. Mom’s unhappiness started pulling dark clouds over the whole family; her constant complaining spoiled everyone’s joys. Dad was busy with work as the company he worked for grew at a high speed and required plenty of traveling from him; he certainly didn’t appreciate mom’s sour moods when he was at home with us but largely let Mom do her whining without a word.

Finally, Mom threw in an ultimatum about what needed to change to maintain the marriage alive; I guess Dad’s counter-proposal was not very considerate as Mom started immediately packing with a plan to fill three quarters of a sea container and ship it to Finland together with Walt and me. I blamed Mom for the whole show and resisted the idea of moving to Finland; Mom chose not to hear me but was going to force me to follow her with a court order. I was typically an obedient child, but this time I raised hell of biblical proportions, which shocked Mom to such a degree that she agreed to have me stay with Dad in the US. The deal they brokered also stated that Walt and I needed to spend time with the faraway parent; this had me spending significant parts of summers in Finland and Walt vice versa in the US. It worked fine for a couple of years but soon the overseas trips started getting shorter and fewer as the time went by.

Dad and I went on to live in the house my parents had purchased when we moved to the US. Dad continued to travel extensively, but I had a safety network provided by my grandma and grandpa, Uncle Mick and his family, Uncle Paddy and his wife, Rosa, who all lived in the same township of Newton, which was less than half an hour from downtown Boston. My cousins Audrey and John and I became a very close-knit pack with my almost weekly overnight stays at their home.

I got into ice hockey and came out pretty good; actually, so good that I made it to the University of New Hampshire team called the Wildcats. In my sophomore year, I played in the World Junior Championship tournament for Team USA; we won the tournament, and I was second in personal scoring stats both with assists and goals. I became a small celebrity in Finland with my dual citizenship status; I had to answer the question why I chose to play for the Americans instead of Team Finland so many times to Finnish media that I almost denounced my citizenship.

My success in the World Championship might have suggested that I had been on the same level as the other star players, but I knew I wasn’t, so it was with the NHL team managers as well who signed me only on the fourth round of the draft pick. I participated in the Dallas Stars new talent camp twice before graduating from the UNH; I was not even close to signing a contract. My agent tried to push me to teams in Europe, especially in Finland, and I’m sure he leaked stories to local papers as I appeared in their sport sections somewhat regularly for a couple years with rumored contract negotiations with multiple teams, but I can tell you they were totally without any merit. I never had plans to pursue hockey as a professional career.

I stayed with an ex-Dallas Stars player who had his roots in Massachusetts while I was in Dallas during the hockey tryouts. He had managed a decent playing career even not making it to the absolute top and had decided to stay in the Dallas area when the game was over for him. He had started his own business organizing small-scale sports events but later expanded to serve business gatherings, concerts, and you name it. He offered me a job and the next five years I spent in north Texas learning my trade. I enjoyed the easy living of the area with beer league hockey, year-round golf, affordable pro sports, and an endless stream of good music. I even learned to cheer for the Stars and the Cowboys when they didn’t compete against the Bruins or the Patriots.

In January this year I was hit by a tragedy. My grandparents lost their lives in a remote cabin in northern Maine where they were enjoying snow fun in the wilderness. The cabin’s heating system malfunctioned and let carbon monoxide inside; Grandma and Grandpa passed on during their sleep. The bereavement hit me in full force at the memorial service with all the family being present; we all felt such closeness with the remaining of us that only a severe loss can produce. I was overwhelmed by grief and a sense of lonesomeness when I returned to Dallas, only to find my girlfriend gone in the wind during my absence. I started seriously considering moving back east.

I didn’t quite get to realize my plans concerning the change of the venue before I was struck by another devastating accident. Dad, who had recently semi-retired and was living in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, fell to his death while hiking on Mount Washington. Within three months I had lost three of my most loved individuals. I had a hard time keeping myself together. This time a lot of help came from an unexpected source, my kid brother Walt. He had been a lifetime joker who seemed to worry very little about anything; having the ocean between had separated us both physically and mentally in the couple past years. But he had manned up a lot and his late-blooming maturity brought me some consolation.

Grace Episcopalian Church in Newton was filled with Dad’s family members, friends, colleagues and business associates on the beautiful early summer day of his memorial service. I was too distraught to speak and to be honest I wouldn’t have been able to name even the subjects of the numerous speeches that I heard. Walt sat by me; he was atypically quiet to himself. After the service and blessings, I shook countless hands; many I knew well but there were also those I didn’t recognize at all. Aunt Judi and Uncle Mick had organized snacks and drinks on the church’s premises, many small groups formed, and the chatting became less formal. A step back to normalcy after the depressive formalities was welcome.

I was teamed with Walt for pretty much the whole duration of the gathering. Many talked to us only briefly, but some closer ones didn’t hesitate to discuss about the practical matters after Dad’s passing; his fixed belongings and what we were going to do with them, our plans… it was actually a relief for us; forced us out of mourning and prepared the living without Dad’s presence, same time giving a promise we had their support with us. One of the persons who approached me was Jan-Peter Höglund, one of the few remaining Finnish friends in Boston who had originally been introduced to our family by Mom during her brief stay in the area. He was a little younger than Dad; a somewhat successful businessman but I wouldn’t have called him hardboiled. For example, we became adoptive owners for his pet husky Flamma, whom he bought for his insisting daughter after she had seen a Disney film about similar dogs against all warnings concerning the challenges their upkeeping would bring along. He was too weak to stand his ground in front of the family; how he managed to do so with his business was a mystery to me. He approached me with the normal condolences but hit the true subject in the following sentence.

You are heading to Finland soon, I heard from your brother, he started, and when I nodded, he continued, I’ve got business over there, you know that?

I guess I could have just nodded again as I had always assumed he represented something from the old country in the US but in all honesty I had really no idea what it was or where he was heading to with the subject, so I decided to shake my head instead this time.

Well, I do still own a consultancy agency in Helsinki. It brought me over here about twenty-five years ago and it became pretty successful. The guy who ran it over there for me got fat and lazy over the years and I had to let him go recently. I have a part-time student keeping it from falling apart now. She thinks there still is a lot of potential, had we the right guy in charge. Go look at it, will you? I think you’d be a perfect candidate to revitalize the business. What do you say?

Moving over Finland hadn’t crossed my mind at all, but I still found myself saying, Why not, maybe just to get him off my back.

I won’t bother you with more details on a day like this, but I’ll call you before you go over, he said and moved over to other small gatherings.

I had already forgotten the whole deal with him as Walt and I were kept busy with sorting out Dad’s estate. Höglund called me while we were having a break from business and were boating on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire where Uncle Mick’s family now owned a summer house which had originally been our grandparents’. He asked me if I was still interested in his proposal; again, I said I was. Even the option of relocating to Helsinki was nowhere near on the top of my to-do list. He said he’d text me the contact info, which he did, and Walt and I continued to enjoy a beautiful summer day in one of my most loved spots in the world.

Walt and I flew over to Finland in mid-June. My trip was to be ten days and filled with visiting Mom and my maternal grandparents, Grandma Mummi and Grandpa Ukki, not to mention staying with Walt in his apartment in Oulu, a city of some 200,000 habitants up in the north, not far from the Arctic Circle. By that time of the year the sun never sets, and it was as light when we went into bars as it was when we got out of them hours later; only difference was that our shape had taken a twist to worse during the visits at the fine establishments of northern Finland’s best entertainment. Walt seemed to know pretty much everyone out there and he found fun company in each place we went to, but after a couple of nights or early mornings on his couch made me yearn for the good old US of A.

One morning I woke up on his living room couch with a cat shit taste in my mouth as my phone rang. After a good search I found it in the middle of the pile of my last night’s bar crawling outfit, touched the green dial and mumbled hello after I had succeeded separating my tongue from the roof of the mouth. Voice that I assumed belonged to a young woman asked me to confirm if I was who she thought she had called; when I gave my confirmation she shot, Are you coming or not?

Where am I supposed to be coming to? I asked, trying desperately to figure out if the voice belonged to one of the many girls Walt had introduced me to.

Well, here we go, she said with a prominent irritation in her voice. I’m talking about Höglund Consulting’s main office in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, in case you have forgotten.

Oh yeah, gotcha now. Sure, when should I be there? I managed to articulate.

That depends totally on your highness’s agenda, she said with no effort to hide her annoyance.

I agreed to meet her on Thursday; it meant I had to leave Oulu a day before my planned departure, but I was happy to do so, and I believed so was my tortured liver; it appreciated some healthy distance between us and Walt and his buddies.

This was my first encounter with Sofia.

Walt insisted on going with me and checking Höglund’s babe in his office. I refused his offer politely but when he asked me to take a picture of her and send it to him for his assessment, I couldn’t help straightening him up—Jesus, Walt, have you ever heard of the ‘Me-too campaign’?—with friendly advice to get him on the current decade. He smirked back and said something undoubtedly smart, but I had already decided not to hear him.

Two days later I was standing by the door of Höglund Consulting’s door in Kamppi district of Helsinki’s downtown. It obviously had been a street level apartment turned into an office. I rang the doorbell, and the door was opened seconds later by a stunningly beautiful young blonde woman. I had no regrets denying Walt the picture he had so demanded from me. I shook hands with Sofia, and she hushed me inside of the office and had me seated by a conference table in a room that must have served as a living room back in the day when the apartment had been in its intended use. She asked me if I wanted some coffee; when I replied yes, she disappeared briefly in a small kitchenette next to the conference room and reappeared with too coffee mugs in her hands, set one of them in front of me, pushed creamer and sugar bags towards me, and sat down on the opposite side of me.

You sound a bit better than you did the other day when I called you, Sofia said.

I admitted I had gone out the previous night.

Don’t bullshit the shitter, Wayne, she said back to me. Your voice was two and a half octaves lower than it is now; I’ve got some musical training in my background, so you don’t fool me. Let me guess; it was at the end of a three-night bender; every night until the bars close, am I right?

I had to humbly admit it was an accurate assessment. Boy, it turned out to be an interesting chat about a job I had no intentions to take. More was to come.

So, prey tell me, party boy, how are you going to get this office making profit again? Sofia asked me.

I had no idea where to start. I tried to say something smart, but she stopped me before I had the first full sentence out of my mouth.

So, you haven’t got jack shit, buddy, she said, and I nodded feeling like I was ten years old. I will tell you something now, and you’d better listen carefully, okay? This office was once thriving, and it still could be if you did what it really takes. If you were half-cocked, forget it. I didn’t, neither this business here, need the lazy fuck who used to be here, and the same applies to you if you’re not ready to roll up your sleeves and donate your sweat. Are we in terms?

At this point I couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

What do you find so funny? Sofia asked and gave me a very suspicious look.

I thought Höglund offered me a job. I come here and find myself in the middle of a job interview from hell, I replied. That’s what I find pretty damn funny.

Sofia softened and broke into a heartbreaking smile.

I’m just being honest with you, she said. This business here has tons of potential, but it has been so badly mismanaged over too many years that it is basically tits-up by now. But, if I had a partner who knows jack shit and is willing to put his ass in the line of fire, this could be turned back into a success story. Now, do I have your attention?

I nodded and she started her presentation. She had prepared a slide pack describing how the office had been on a growth path once, what kinds of deals it had managed to pull through, how the decline had started, how lucrative contracts had been lost, who had hijacked the business from Höglund Consulting and how—the full package well analyzed and described in detail. I was impressed.

What do you think? Sofia asked me.

You’ve done a very thorough job, I said. I agree with you there is a lot to recapture of the past’s glory but how easily that can be done is another subject.

That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear from you, Sofia said. Obviously the reindeer took your attention up in Oulu. Now that you’re back on Earth, why don’t you take this package with you, study it in your home-sweet-home for the night, and we’ll meet for dinner tonight and continue there.

A dinner? Where? I was stunned; I didn’t know if I had been expected to invite Sofia for dinner or for a date or whatever it was, but she relieved me with a grin.

Don’t worry, pure business on Höglund Consulting’s tab. Jan-Peter promised to take the check, she said, smiling. We’ll go to Walhalla, Suomenlinna at seven. You’ve got to take a ferry there from Kauppatori, the Market Square in front of the president’s castle an hour earlier. I’ll meet you at the ferry by six.

•••

 The previous time I had visited Suomenlinna, or Sveaborg in Swedish, was probably when I was four years old. It is a beautiful fortress island about half an hour ferry ride outside of Helsinki. You step there and you are immediately more than a hundred years in the past. Taking a foreigner out there in the middle of the summer is cheating; the promise of an everlasting sweet season is given without the sense of the lurking miserable damp darkness that hits you latest in October and will hold a grip on you for the following half a year.

Our dinner was pleasant; I had honestly gotten intrigued by Sofia’s account on Höglund Consulting’s situation. I saw a lot of the same potential Sofia did and by the end of the evening I told Sofia I was ready to give it a good try. She accepted it with a statement that she expected my effort to be more than just a try. We took the ferry back to the Market Square, shook hands and went our own ways from there with a promise to meet again in a couple of weeks’ time after I had taken care of my business back in the US.

I called Höglund before I hit the bed and said I’d take the job.

You take the job because of the job or because of her? he asked bluntly.

Because of the job, I said, irritated.

Just don’t kid yourself, Wayne, Höglund continued. She can make guys climb up trees ass first, if you know the expression.

I knew the expression as well as I understood exactly what he meant by it.

You have the job, bubba, he said. But remember my advice: keep the business as business and don’t let your dick replace your brain. Welcome on board, Wayne.

This is how I became a try-out—partner with Höglund Consulting. I got rid of my stuff in Dallas, finished the loose ends of my business there, and returned to Helsinki by mid-July. A new clean sheet was opened in front of me.

•••

I jumped off the Metro at Kamppi stations, took the stairs up and crossed the plaza to our office. Sofia was already in; she kept odd hours for a student. I knew the Finnish university system gave you more liberties and leeway than UNH, University of New Hampshire, had given for me, even though my schedule had been made flexible to allow the hockey practices and games, but even so Sofia seemed to come and go as she pleased. We said good morning and she continued to work on the computer. In the two and half months we had shared the office, I had learned not to ask questions concerning her work in process; she wanted to get it on a certain level before she was ready to share her doings with me. I grabbed a cup of coffee from the kitchenette and went to my room, which had been designed to be the bedroom of the apartment it had been intended to be used for.

I sat down by my desk. There was a rare brown envelope on it; typically, paper mail deliveries were basically nonexistent as we had agreed all the billing to be online, and the paper fliers were denied with a sign on the door. I opened the envelope. It had two pictures that had Dad on both; the other one quite old by the looks and the other one seemed more recent. The cover had no indication of the sender; my name was printed on it and the post office stamp stated Helsinki from the previous day.

Did you put the envelope on my desk? I hollered at Sofia.

Yeah, I did. It was carried by the mail man. We hardly ever get anything; what is it? Sofia asked and appeared in the doorway to witness the historical moment of the return of paper mail.

Two pictures of my dad in them but no info where they are from or who sent them, I said.

Weird.

Indeed.

Sofia came into the room and looked at them. Clean shots, nothing bad in those, she said. Wonder who sent them.

I had no answer for that. Sofia went back to her desk, and I took a more accurate look at the photos. The older one showed Dad shaking hands with a man in his mid-thirties in front of a large white concrete building that was surrounded by tall pine trees. The landscape looked like Finland; timing was summer because Dad was wearing shorts and sneakers. I couldn’t recognize the other man. The building seemed vaguely familiar. I got it soon; there was a part of an old-style light sign in the upper corner of the picture with a red fox on it. The building was Hotel Tulikettu, Firefox in English, in Sotkamo, Mom’s hometown.

I turned my attention to the other photo, which looked rather recent. It was taken in a sports bar by the pictures on the wall; the style was original American but today it could have been anywhere in the world. Dad sat on the opposite side of a much younger short-haired brunette woman. Dad was wearing a wrist cast; I remembered he had twisted it badly just weeks before his fatal fall at Huntingdon Ravine on Mount Washington. The picture might have been taken just days before he was dead. Then it hit me, and it did so hard: I recognized the woman. She was Marie-Claire but in a very different form compared to how I had learned to know her with long blonde hair.

•••

I met Marie-Claire for the first time about a year earlier at Farmer Branch ice rink, some half an hour north of Dallas. I had finished my game and showered, ready to head to the upstairs bar for a few pitchers of beer we shared after games between the teammates. It was literally a beer league. She stood by the stairs and asked me something; I cannot recall what it was, but I ended up talking to her and ignoring my buddies who didn’t let it go silently. Marie-Claire said she got to the rink by accident; she had thought it had been something other than a hockey rink. She appeared a fun person and before we split, we had agreed to a dinner date for a day later.

We started seeing each other many times a week and spent nights either at her place in Las Colinas or at mine in Flower Mound. I enjoyed her company but couldn’t help thinking she held me at some distance; she wouldn’t share much about her family other than that it had been dysfunctional. She would have liked to meet mine, but when I flew back home to Newton to spend Christmas with my grandparents and Dad, I didn’t want her to join me; in my world the introduction of a girlfriend to the family was equal to a promise to marry. She was upset about that, and started showing moods that made me rethink our relationship and its chances to succeed.

Then my grandparents lost their lives, and I went again to the East Coast for their funerals; I got back, and she was gone in the wind. I would have accepted her leaving me but not the way she did it and what I learned afterwards. She had used the wrong name for the rental contract for her apartment and had not worked a day at Lewisville Medical Center’s office she had claimed as her employer. Her reappearance in the same photo with Dad between leaving me and Dad’s death was more than disturbing. Time to find out something.

•••

I called Walt and asked if he wanted to join me the following day to go visit Mummi and Ukki in Sotkamo. Walt said it was fine with him; he’d sacrifice important lectures critical for his future on any given day to spend time with his adorable big brother. I told him I’d fly in the morning; then I called Ukki and he was happy to hear about his favorite and only grandchildren visiting him in Hicksville called Sotkamo. Finally, I called Mom and asked her if it was okay to sleep over Sunday night in her spare bedroom in Oulu before my flight was due back to Helsinki came