Tiger Threat by Sigmund Brouwer Page A

million dollars will do that to a person.
    â€œNo,” I said. “That would be very, very stupid.”
    Not that stupid,” he said. “It’s a lot of money.”
    I looked at Vlad. “Can I tell Abe how the money got there?”
    Vlad nodded.
    Abe frowned. “Vlad understands English?”
    â€œWhen you find out how that money got into the account, and why Vlad had the user name and password hidden in his teeth, you’ll understand why he keeps everything in his life so secret.”
    â€œHidden in his teeth!”
    â€œIn his teeth,” I said. “Are you going to listen? Or make me keep repeating things?”
    â€œListen,” Abe said.
    So I told Abe everything that I’d learned from Vlad.
    He’d grown up in a shipping town called Taganrog, a port on the Black Sea. It had become a hotbed of criminal activity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His father had been part of the Russian mafia there.
    When Vlad was ten, his father had taken him to Moscow to get some dental work done. Shortly after, Vlad’s father had died in a car accident that probably wasn’t a car accident. When some Russian mafia showed up to ask Vlad about missing money and the password and user name for a bank account, Vlad had told the truth. He didn’t know anything about it. It probably helped that he was only ten, and they couldn’t be sure if his father had passed on any secrets. Still, Vlad knew enough about the Russian mafia to know if it involved money stolen from them, they would always be watching him.
    When I was finished, Abe’s eyes were wide. “They’ve been waiting six years.”
    â€œNot waiting,” I said. “Watching. Spying. Just on the chance that Vlad had the information and would someday try to draw the money from the account. I’m guessing they paid someone here to keep spying on him, and that someone must have reported back to Russia about strange capsules in the X-rays. Three days later, a guy in a white rental van shows up. Tells Vlad to give upthe information or guys on the hockey team start dying. That’s when Vlad realized he had the missing information in his teeth.”
    â€œNot a good idea to steal money from them,” Abe said.
    â€œNo. Every day for the rest of your life you would be wondering when they would show up to take it back. And you’d be wondering exactly what they might do to you. Which is why Vlad was so willing to give Big Frank the capsules. Vlad knows he’s got a great shot at pro hockey.”
    Abe shivered. “Make your money in pro hockey and you don’t have to worry about Russian mafia taking revenge for stolen money.”
    I thought of poor Pookie, hanging from a skate lace in the dressing room. I thought of how the guy in the white van had threatened Vlad that he would do worse to the players on the team.
    I smiled at the thought of making this guy pay for it.
    â€œWouldn’t it be great,” I said, “if it looked like someone else had stolen the money?”

chapter twenty - five
    Vlad and I left through the front door of Abe’s house. We were wearing our Medicine Hat Tigers hockey jackets and Medicine Hat Tigers hockey caps again.
    I had the car keys in my pocket. We walked directly to the Jeep. We got in and drove past the man in the white van. Seconds later the headlights of the van came on. The van pulled out and followed us.
    I drove toward the Trans-Canada Highway. Vlad still wasn’t saying much. Maybe he didn’t like my plan. Maybe his mouth was so frozen from the dentist that he couldn’t talk. Maybe he was afraid. I didn’t ask.
    The headlights of the van stayed close behind. The driver obviously didn’t care that we might know we were being followed. And why should he care? He knew that Vlad couldn’t run from him forever.
    But for our plan to work, there were a lot of things I hoped the driver didn’t know. Like that we