The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

by Orest Stelmach

  “Lying. Solicitation. Fraternizing with Russians on Dutch soil. You know, the usual tourist misunderstandings.”

  “Why did they release you? Did you share something pertaining to our case? Do you know something?”

  I didn’t want Simmy to know I was cooperating with the police because he was obsessed with secrecy. He’d requested I keep all matters pertaining to the case confidential. The deceased girl’s mother was a childhood friend of his.

  “Why are you here in the first place?” I said.

  “I hate it when you answer a question with a question.”

  “Of course you do. You’re used to people giving you the answer you want in hopes being agreeable will somehow make them richer. How did you know I was in the window?”

  Simmy seemed to consider his words carefully. “I didn’t. One of my men has been watching it since the girl’s death.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s where Iskra worked. It seemed the wise thing to do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  Simmy shrugged. “I didn’t see how it would conflict with your efforts.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  This time he glared at me. His frosty stare answered the question. He was used to informing people at his own discretion.

  “That’s not acceptable,” I said. “I can’t run an investigation if you’re running one at the same time. Everything to do with this case must go through me. Now, do you want to continue in that spirit, or do you want to drop me off at the hotel and take over yourself?”

  Always meet strength with strength when you have the advantage. I knew I still had the advantage. He wouldn’t have hired me if he thought he could solve the murder himself. I may have embarrassed or disappointed him with my methods, but he still needed me. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been talking. He would have fired me already.

  “You don’t have to impress me with your chutzpah, Nadia. I know you’re shameless and I know you’re bold. I’m sure that’s part of your allure, although I’m not always sure why. Did it occur to you to ask me for help?”

  “Help? Me?”

  “Yes. Help. You could have borrowed one of my men and had him prepared to track the so-called mystery lover if he ran from your door, as it turned out he did.”

  “Unfortunately, as you know, that’s my tragic flaw.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My arsenal only functions if I’m working alone.”

  “Ah, yes. Nadia, brave and solitary warrior. In the future you may want to remember that your vast arsenal is only valuable if you produce results.”

  “Who said I didn’t get any results tonight?”

  He shot me a glance. “Do you do know something I don’t?”

  I shook my head and sighed for effect. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is just not going to work.”

  “Why won’t this work?” he said.

  “Because you’re lying to me again.”

  He appeared dumbfounded. “I’m lying to you?”

  “You’re withholding information.”

  He turned stoic again, as though he considered withholding information far less egregious a sin than an outright lie. Most businessmen did. So had my deceased ex-husband. He’d been the dreamboat Ukrainian-American catch. We’d been the toast of the community and my mother the source of all its envy, and neither she nor I, his accommodating Catholic victim, wanted to contemplate that he might have been withholding information.

  “Your bodyguard let you know I was in the window,” I said. “The three of you saw me go after the mystery lover. One of your bodyguards must have followed me, but he never got close enough to see the getaway car. Am I right?”

  Simmy shrugged. “So what?”

  “So what? Simmy, we’ve been around the world together on business, yours and mine. We dug up a grave outside of Chornobyl to see if the bones of a young girl were inside. I thought we’d developed a certain level of trust between us. But now you’re being the oligarch all over again, not telling me you’d staked out Iskra’s office, and not telling me that one of your men followed me when I gave chase. Why are you keeping all this stuff from me?”

  He stared at me intently, then closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Ay-yah-yay. You’re right.” He reached over and squeezed my hand.

  I waited for the customary bolt of electricity to run through me but it didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t been myself lately.”

  “The sanctions?” I said.

  The United States and Europe were continuing to ramp up economic penalties against Russian businessmen as punishment for President Valery Putler’s tacit war in Ukraine.

  “Western banks froze the assets of three of the President’s closest allies yesterday. And a friend of mine with a Gulfstream jet was told he would no longer receive parts or service from the company, and that his pilots would not be allowed to use the Gulfstream navigation system.”

  “I’d tell you I’m sorry, except you know that I’m not.”

  I cherished my ancestral Ukrainian heritage. Which made my relationship with a Russian oligarch all the more unlikely and complicated.

  “And that’s not the worst part,” Simmy said. “One of my closest friends—a man of Russian industry—was stupid enough to complain to the press about our President. The reporter must have gotten him at the absolute wrong moment. The easiest way for a successful Russian businessman to cease being successful is to criticize the President. Rule number one for men such as us—stay out of politics. And it does me no good that it’s a friend of mine who’s commenting on exactly that—politics. The company you keep in Russia is almost as important as the palms you grease.”

  I could sense his exasperation and an uncharacteristic helplessness. He couldn’t control what his friend said, or how Putler reacted. Yet based on Simmy’s comments, both could alter his life quickly and profoundly. That was enough to frustrate any human being, but for an oligarch who’d built his empire with his bare hands and was used to controlling his own destiny, it had to be mind-numbing.

  I knew of only one way to give my client some comfort, and that was to keep him informed and get the job done.

  “The getaway car was a Porsche Macan,” I said. “Metallic Blue.” I gave him the license plate number, too.

  He sighed with relief, more than my revelation deserved. Iskra’s mother really was a close friend of his, I thought.

  “I’ll make some inquiries,” he said. “In the meantime, Iskra’s mother told me that her husband has overcome his grief enough to speak with you now.”

  That was good news. The mother, a colonel in the Salvation Army, had been away in Rotterdam on business the day Iskra died. The father had gone over to visit his daughter and found her crucified on a wall in her bedroom.

  “Did you talk to him?” I said.

  “That’s not realistic.”

  “Why?”

  “He doesn’t like me for some reason.”

  “How close were you with Iskra’s mother?”

  “She was a girlfriend of mine in what feels like a prior life. Today, she’s just an old friend. Are you hungry?”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s two-forty-five in the morning. Everything’s closed in Amsterdam.”

  “Not everything. The Burger Bar is open. I can offer you black angus or Wagyu beef.”

  “I had my mind on a nice Riesling, Thai food, and sea salt caramel chocolates.”

  “Then I cannot help you.”

  I snapped my head to the right and stared out the passenger side window so as not to betray the magnitude of my disappointment. In the past he would have never taken no for an answer. He would have had his driver haul ass to the Burger Bar and insisted on putting nutrition inside me. It was the care and attention he lavished on me without ever making an inappropriate remark that had endeared him to me. I was the irreverent American analyst who challenged him and refused to kiss his self-styled ring,
and he seemed to enjoy my company.

  Until tonight. Something had changed Simmy’s attitude toward me. It might have been my bikini-clad walk through De Wallen, fear that the sanctions would hit him next, or something beyond my comprehension. But for now, at least, I was merely a vendor providing a service.

  If I’d been focused, I might have realized the truth then, that solving Iskra’s murder was merely the beginning of my true assignment for Simmy, a prerequisite to achieving his real objective, which was linked to the Russian girl’s murder in the most extraordinary way. If I hadn’t been distracted by my attraction to him I might have deduced that finding Iskra’s killer would only put me and all I held dear in even greater danger. But I was distracted, by money and power and all that one of the richest men in the world could offer, as a client, friend, and in my most private fantasies, an even more intimate companion.

  The bodyguards re-entered the car and the driver took off toward my hotel. I sat quietly beside Simmy. As the minutes passed, I shifted closer to the window away from him. Memo to oligarch: none of the American men I’d known through the years would insult a woman by telling her she was classless to her face. Rather than sulk, however, I reminded myself of a certain philosophy that had served me well since I’d learned it in PLAST, the Ukrainian girl scouts.

  When injured or in pain, don’t whine. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Put one foot forward toward your destination, drag the other one ahead of it and repeat.

  A murderer was walking the streets out there, perhaps still in Amsterdam. Some pretty boy had run away from me and impeded my investigation.

  I was going to find him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Breakfast came with the room at my hotel, and they offered a royal buffet and eggs to order. This morning I ignored the magnetic pull of the chocolate croissant basket, the aged cheeses, and the fresh squeezed juices, and settled for an egg white omelet and four slices of cucumber. I still had my mind set on Thai food and sea salt caramel, and I was determined to wait until at least a partial celebration was in order.

  I left De Vroom three messages before noon for him to call me back. He didn’t. I was sure he’d traced the license plate by now. With each passing hour, I imagined the mystery lover slipping further from my grasp. He was no fool. He’d bolted as soon as he’d seen me in Iskra’s office. He’d kept his cool on the sidewalk and he’d had a car waiting for him at a designated spot. The car was the latest Porsche model, priced at over one hundred thousand euro. The mystery lover was either loaded or had access to the wealth of his family or friends. He’d sat in the back of the Macan even though the front passenger seat had been empty, suggesting he might have had a driver. If he were fearful of being discovered or had another motive to leave town, I suspected he had the means with which to disappear quickly and effectively. My fear was that he was already gone.

  In the absence of progress on that front, I turned my attention to something within my control. Iskra Romanova had lived in an apartment in the sleek and sexy Jordaan area in West Amsterdam. The northern part of Jordaan boasted a quaint row of shops and restaurants along Haarlemmerstraat, less than a mile’s walk from my hotel. I called and asked Iskra’s father, George Romanov, to meet me for lunch. He sounded curt and reluctant on the phone, but he finally agreed.

  The phrase “Stout!” was a Dutch term used in reference to people who were misbehaving or calling attention to themselves. In this case, it was also the name of a cute café in Jordaan favored by thirty-somethings, and one of the few establishments in Jordaan that was open for lunch. I thought the restaurant’s name was perfect for my agenda in a contrarian way, as I was intent on behaving properly and calling no attention to myself. I feared Iskra’s father was more likely to do the restaurant’s name justice, given his unfriendly vibe on the phone. I pictured the prototypical ruddy Russian who drank the savings his wife didn’t spend on clothes she should have never been seen wearing.

  How wrong I was.

  I took a table on the elevated floor in the back of the restaurant. I counted fifteen couples eating lunch, and when Romanov stepped inside, all eyes went to him. He looked like a Russian athlete who’d never stopped training or crying after being left off the Olympic team twenty-five years ago. His face was a slum crammed with lines, pits, and pock marks where shadows grew and tears collected. His green suede jacket gathered at the tiniest waist and looked like a cobra’s hood around his torso. Above the neck, he seemed destined for assisted living. Below the neck, he appeared competition-ready.

  He barely looked at me when he muttered hello, and his expression could have frozen the melted wax beneath the candle at our table. I detected a mixture of grief and anger so palpable I felt at risk of being assaulted if I said the wrong thing.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, in Russian. “I’m only here because my wife insisted. I’m here for my daughter. She said you come highly recommended by that egomaniac-friend of hers. If it weren’t for my Iskra and how desperately I seek justice for her murder, I would never be seen talking with you.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Romanov?” I said.

  “Because you’re an American whore.”

  His charm and subtlety caught me by surprise. I assumed we shared the same objective, which meant our relationship would be civil. Obviously that wasn’t going to be the case. I managed a big smile, in keeping with the theme of maintaining a contrarian disposition while dining in an establishment called Stout!

  “I’m not sure what you mean when you say I’m a whore,” I said.

  He shrugged as though I’d asked him to explain why borsch was red. “You’re the product of a decaying society with no morals. American women are so revolting, they are so willing to spread their legs for anyone with money that their own men come to Russia and Ukraine to look for wives, to find women with virtue and grace. Take you, for example. My wife told me you rented yourself out as a prostitute last night. What self-respecting woman would do such a thing under any circumstances? Only a woman for whom it comes naturally. In other words, only a whore. You, Miss Tesla, are the lowest form of life from the lowest society on this planet. You are an American whore.”

  His words started a fire inside me, and the implication that Simmy had told his wife about my methods in De Wallen only served to stoke them. I let the flames subside for a few seconds. Then I licked my lips and gave him my own shrug.

  “Well, I’m insulted, Mr. Romanov. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I don’t know of any other woman who would have posed as a prostitute in an Amsterdam window to find your daughter’s killer, and I’m certain I was the only American working De Wallen last night. So please don’t insult me by calling me an American whore. I’m not an American whore.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I’m the American whore.”

  Romanov blinked several times as though not believing what he’d heard me say.

  “I’m the American whore. I’m the one. I’m the one that’s going to find the bastard who drove screws through your daughter’s hands and feet. I’m the one that’s going to find out who snuffed out your little girl’s life by letting her bleed to death.” I bared my teeth. “So the next time you decide to call me names, get it right, my self-indulgent Russian friend.”

  Romanov appeared ready to launch himself across the table. “How dare you …”

  A petite waitress with hesitant eyes had walked up to our table without my realizing it. She asked if we wanted something to drink. The question snapped Romanov out of his rage. He settled back in his seat like a coronary patient who realized he shouldn’t let his blood pressure rise. He ordered coffee. I chose still water. When she asked us if we knew what we wanted to eat, Romanov glanced at the menu.

  “Yoghurt, granola, wolfberries,” he said.

  The waitress noted his selection on her pad and turned to me.

  I had no idea what wolfberries were but I liked the sound of them. Plus the insatiable hunger in my stomach had d
ied the moment Romanov had criticized America.

  “Just the wolfberries,” I said.

  The waitress started to write and stopped. She raised her eyebrows. “Just the wolfberries?”

  “That’s right. Just the wolfberries.”

  She jotted my order down, slipped her pencil behind her ear and left.

  Romanov studied me with a condescending smile. “You are such Nazis.”

  That was a new one. “I beg your pardon?”

  “First there was Napoleon, then Hitler, and now there’s America. You want to corrupt the entire world for the sake of your own interests. That’s why you fight the subversive war against Russia, trying to poison our youth with your message of homosexuality and pedophilia.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “And when our president stands up to your imperialist ways—who are you to tell Russians how to manage their region—you punish our country with economic sanctions. The only question is how long it will take for your society to crumble. You have no family values, you have no childbirth, you have no future.”

  It sounded to me as though Romanov’s cable television was set permanently to the Russian channel, except I’d never heard the bit about pedophilia.

  “That’s not the question, Mr. Romanov.” I softened my voice so it was barely audible. “The question is are you going to help your daughter get justice, or am I on my own?” I shifted in my seat and placed my leg in the aisle as though I were preparing to leave.

  Romanov looked away as though contemplating whether he wanted to answer my question or vanish before his yogurt arrived. He looked back and forth into space and at me, and exhaled in one long, massive breath. He didn’t look particularly relieved, just fortified enough to converse with the American whore.

  “Growing up in Russia, she was a perfect child,” he said. “I was an alternate on the Russian national diving team so I had certain privileges. She went to good schools. She painted, studied ballet, and was a member of Nashi.”

  “Nashi?” The word meant “ours.”