The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 10

She stood like royalty, shockingly assured and inscrutable given her youth. Sarah Dumont had the skin of an angel. I had to take a moment to process this because I’d been expecting a boy’s mother, not someone younger than me. The taxi driver’s story about the home invasion in Amsterdam, her palatial home, and her reported achievements in the theater had reinforced my expectation that she was my elder. But that was clearly not the case.

She spoke with an enviable French accent, the kind that turned English words into hourglass figurines and bestowed upon her an illusion of superior femininity. But she delivered her words with the affectation of an evil godmother in the fairy tale of her own invention.

“Who are you?” she said, tilting her head to the side and studying me as though I were a visitor from a land unknown.

“My name is Nadia Tesla.”

“I know your name. I know what you do. That’s not what I asked you. I asked you, who are you?”

“Surely you recognize me,” I said.

“Really?” She brought her face so close to mine I could smell the frites on her breath. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen you before in my entire life. But who knows? I may be wrong. Let me see the rest of you.”

She began to circle around me as though I were a sculpture for sale.

I guessed it was possible she really didn’t recognize me. She’d only seen me for a second beneath two red light bulbs in the dead of night before running away

“In the window,” I said. “In De Wallen. On Ouderkerksplein…”

She disappeared from my line of vision, and the knowledge that she’d slipped behind me unnerved me as much as it scared me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d grabbed my ass or told her security guard to ensure I never followed her again.

“In De-who,” she said. “On Ouder-what?”

“The woman in the green bikini. The woman who followed you to the Porsche that whisked you away. That was me.”

A moment of silence followed, and then I felt her hand brush my shoulder. Her touch imparted a feeling of subordination, reinforced my relative powerlessness, and freaked me out. It also conveyed an unlikely bolt of sexual electricity and turned my attention to the matter that never strayed far from my consciousness. I wondered if this was what my husband had felt when his lover had first laid a hand on him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sarah Dumont said, as she continued circling and returned to my line of sight.

“In Amsterdam. Saturday night. At the anointed time. At midnight.”

“I haven’t been to Amsterdam in eighteen months. It’s not a place I visit anymore.”

“I’m here for Iskra,” I said. “By now you must have made an inquiry. You must know that she was murdered.”

Sarah Dumont faced me. She put her hands on her hips and straightened her lips, and if claps of thunder had erupted outside the church I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“You told my security that you wanted to speak to me about my son,” she said. “I have no children, I don’t know any Iskra, and I don’t like strangers coming to my home or following me around town. Now, I have one final question for you. Do you want to leave me alone, or do you want me to show you why you should leave me alone?”

I didn’t understand the origins of Sarah Dumont’s gall, but it couldn’t have been strictly a function of her personality. Someone of power was standing behind her lending credence to her threats, of that I was certain. I was also sure that the most prudent course of action for me was to tell her I was going to leave her alone and get out of town.

“He removed her reproductive organs, you know,” I said. “And cut her breasts off. This was after he crucified her to a wall in her apartment.”

Sarah Dumont stared at me. As the seconds passed, her expression gradually turned to one of resentment, as though I’d wronged her by sharing the details of Iskra’s plight. She looked away and back at me, each time with more anger. Finally, she exhaled and shrugged.

“The girl was just sex to me but if that’s what happened to her, that’s just wrong. Come, I’ll buy you lunch. You get an hour to ask whatever questions you want but after that, I’m done. And if you ever come snooping around my house again I’ll have you killed.”