The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 16

The sauna occupied a nook in the middle of a commercial street no more than ten blocks from De Wallen. The proprietor obviously suffered from severe homesickness and a lack of originality because he’d named it Red Square. The entrance was sandwiched between a juice place and a travel agency, which suggested the establishment could appeal to a criminal on the lam—he could relax in the sauna, rehydrate with a smoothie, and then make arrangements to get the hell out of town.

A dilapidated sign hung over a door with peeling red paint. A doorbell no larger than a thimble protruded from the wall to the right—the bulb that was supposed to illuminate the button had either died or had been detached. The frontage was so narrow and unremarkable that one would never notice it unless she was absolutely looking for it. Given the sauna was frequented by a Russian minority that was less than cherished by the indigenous folk, I doubted its lack of visibility was accidental.

I’d called George Romanov as soon as I’d left his wife’s house and told him I needed to speak with him. I wanted to debrief him about his visit with the Turk, and ask him why he hadn’t told me about his meeting with him in the first place. I didn’t mention my motives when I called, however, so that I could study his face later when I confronted him with what I knew. Instead I told him that I’d visited with Maria, which he knew to be the truth because he’d set up the meeting, and that I wanted to confirm some facts with him. He, in turn, acted as though he really were my best friend and made himself immediately available to me. I told him I had no interest in a sauna, but he informed me that I had no choice. He was leaving Amsterdam on business, he said, and this would be my last chance to see him for several days.

You will love it. If Americans frequented the banya, he said, they would shed their aggressions more readily and there would be less war in the world. I countered by telling him that I doubted his thesis was confined to my nation. He seemed to like that, because he chuckled and told me he’d be waiting for me in the lounge in his robe. That did not make me happy, because the thought of being near George Romanov with only one article of clothing on his body made my stomach turn. I could so easily picture him finding a reason to take it off in my presence.

But I had a job to do so what choice did I have? Besides, I was the rich man’s friend and employee and Romanov knew that, right?

That’s what I told myself as I marched along a dark and narrow corridor to the barebones front desk. A simultaneously fat and skinny attendant grabbed a white terry robe and an equally worn towel from a shelf behind him.

“The woman’s dressing room is to the left,” he said in Russian, and thrust the goodies in my direction.

I snorted a laugh before I could stop myself, so humorous did I find his assumption that I was going to remove one article of clothing from my body.

He was speaking Russian even though we were in Amsterdam and I hadn’t spoken a word to him. This told me something.

“You know who I am,” I said.

He grinned as though this confirmed his membership in Mensa, continuing to offer me the robe and towel as though he knew that it was just a matter of time before I accepted them. The arrogance of these Russians in Amsterdam, I thought. And the self-delusion, too.

“Mr. Romanov described you to me,” he said.

“Oh, really? What did he say about me?”

“He said that I’d know who you were within a minute.”

“How so?” I said.

“Two reasons. When we get new guests, they’re mostly men visiting from Russia. Not too many women besides the locals.”

I knew Romanov had to have given him a more personal description of me, most likely something I’d find brutally offensive. This in, in turn, would make me loathe him even more, a prospect which brought me a certain measure of glee.

“And what was the second reason?” I said.

“He said you would ask me how I knew who you were right away.”

The attendant broadened his grin.

Son-of-a-bitch, I thought. That was a pretty good line by Romanov, which I didn’t appreciate. The last thing I wanted was to start liking him for any reason whatsoever.

I glanced at the robe and towel in the attendant’s hands and shook my head.

“No sauna for me,” I said. “George said he’d meet me in the lounge.”

“No one’s allowed in the lounge in street clothes.”

“Really?” I said. “What are you going to do, call the police to have me arrested for wearing street clothes?”

The attendant shook his head, looking completely serious. “You and I,” he said. We’re Russian. The police won’t help us so there’s no sense in calling them. Mr. Romanov said that if he sees you in street clothes, he’s going to walk out. Said he won’t talk to you at all.”

“Why?”

“Because no one is allowed in street clothes in the lounge. Club policy. You can see why, can’t you? Street clothes… it looks like business. People come in here, they want to leave business behind. They only want to be with other people who are leaving business behind.”

I rolled my eyes.

The attendant extended his arms fully, practically placing the robe and towel in my arms. His grin broadened into a full fledged smile.

I took the robe and towel and headed into to the women’s dressing room. Score one for the arrogant and self-deluded, I thought, before deciding that such a description was equally applicable to me, at least in this case.

The dressing room needed minor renovations, the way a salvage yards needs a facelift. Old carpet smell was winning the war against the room deodorizer and winning ugly. The vanity and toilets were technically clean but the fixtures were so old and rusty that the areas looked dirty anyways. A poorly aging matron gave me a disproving onceover as she gathered wet towels from a basket and stuffed them into her bin for washing. After her eyes met mine she glanced at the tip jar beside the hair drier. I ignored her and the tip jar without suffering any guilt because she hadn’t done anything special for me, and because I was from New York. The minute you crossed into one of the City’s five boroughs, someone had his hand in your pocket—picking one’s spots to express gratitude was a constant exercise in financial self-preservation.

I changed into the robe, whose threads had seen their better days. There was just enough terry cloth to cover my ass when I sat down on the bench in the dressing room. After a brief moment of fury, I marched back into the lobby and asked the attendant for a longer robe. He chuckled, obliged and my spirits brightened a bit.

I walked out to the lounge with a towel slung over my shoulders just in case I needed to cover a seat. I expected to see a bunch of rich old Russian men and the prototypical collection of shapely swizzle sticks that stirred their drinks when they were apart from their wives. Instead I found Romanov sitting alone in a recliner beside a huge Jacuzzi, three retirees reading papers in a seating area against a wall, and two handsome young men playing cards at a bar. The latter were dressed head to toe in white, like male nurses.

Romanov stood up to greet me. He looked affable, not angry and not trying too hard to be polite, either. In fact, he looked genuinely pleased to see me.

“Do you want a massage?” he said.

I hesitated because I feared he might be making a pass at me. But I was wrong. Romanov maintained an earnest if not genuinely gracious expression as he pointed with open palm toward the two studs in white uniform.

“If you’re suffering from stress,” Romanov said, “the boys will work wonders on you. They are licensed and serious. This is no cheap provocation, I can assure you.”

“I didn’t think it was,” I said, which of course, was untrue. I had no idea what to think. “I’m good, thank you.”

I covered the bottom of a rattan chair with my towel. The chair shared a side table with Romanov’s recliner. We took our seats, facing each other at an angle, not entirely head-on, which presented a problem. I wouldn’t be able to see his entire facial expression as I questioned him. So I quickly shifted my chair so that I could see him better.

“What are you doing?” he said, rushing over to help me.

“Just rearranging our seats a bit so we can see each other better,” I said. “Unless, of course, the sight of my American legs offends you.”

He stole an approving glance at my calves, still tanned from my undercover exploits in De Wallen. “Well, now that you put it that way… Let me get you a glass of lemon water. Very good for the immune system.”

The intensity of his reaction to the simple act of moving a chair suggested that he wasn’t merely concerned that I was a performing a task that a gentleman should perform for a lady, but that I’d upset the lounge’s feng shui. But the lounge was unlikely to be featured in Architectural Digest, with its cracked tile floor and used beach furniture. I recalled Romanov’s fastidious appearance at Stout! and how properly his clothes fit his remarkably well-toned physique. There was no doubt that he had a strong sense of the proper order of things and he liked them arranged accordingly.

“Was my wife helpful?” he said, after he returned.

“She was,” I said. “Thank you so much for setting that up.”

“Don’t mention it. Emotions run high but all three of us want the same thing here, don’t we?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t want to appear rude of indelicate but she seemed…”

“Disoriented?” Romanov said.

“Forgive me. I know this is a very difficult time. I mention it only because it would have been inconsiderate of me not to mention it.”

“Say no more. I know you mean well. Maria has had a trying life. Her sister and her husband were found guilty of embezzlement at a Russian bank last year and have been sentenced to jail for six years. She thinks they’re being held accountable for our move to Holland by Russian authorities who wish we’d kept all our assets in Russia as opposed to London, and were paying taxes there as opposed to avoiding them here. But that is a figment of her imagination. Those same authorities are the ones who’ve siphoned the most capital out of Russia and into places like London. And besides, President Putler and I are good friends.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

“Why is that interesting?”

“Because Simmy’s a good friend of President Putler’s, too.”

“Of course he is. The President made him, gave him his start.”

“That’s not what I heard,” I said, telegraphing the disappointment in my voice. It was one thing to offend me, but an entirely different one when you offended my friend. “I was told he bought his first plant fare and square.”

“Yes,” Romanov said. “At auction.”

“Exactly.”

“At an auction of one.”

“Oh, come now,” I said. “That can’t possibly be, even in Russia.”

“Fine. I’m sure there was more than one bidder. And I’m sure none of them were deemed to have the necessary financial resources to help the asset grow the Russian economy. Only the PhD student without a ruble to his name could do that.”

I took of sip of lemon water to boost my immune system and divert my mind from the nonsense spewing from Romanov’s mouth.

“I’ll have to ask him about this some day,” I said. “Don’t worry, I won’t quote you.”

Romanov shrugged. “Feel free to tell him I told you this. It will be the equivalent of telling him that I told you that the lemon water is good for your constitution. It’s not an original thought. It’s common knowledge.”

Romanov spoke so calmly and with such conviction that I found myself hoping lemon was detrimental to my constitution.

“You’re upset,” he said.

“Of course I am.”

“Because Simeonovich is your client and your friend.”

“No. I have no friends. I’m upset because I revealed my emotions to you. And as an investigator and a woman who prides herself on being inscrutable, that’s unacceptable. You see?”

Romanov burst out laughing and slapped his knee. “That’s fantastic. The second you said you were Ukrainian, I knew we’d be friends for life. I knew it.”

I grinned and nodded in agreement, visions of Ukrainian troops absorbing mortar shells from Russian soldiers posing as some sort of bullshit separatists dancing in my imagination. Oh, yes. We were friends for life.

And now it was time for my best friend to tell me exactly what I wanted to know, so I turned solemn as a prelude to my segue. It took no effort because I had nothing against his wife.

“I’m just relieved to hear you know about Maria and it wasn’t something that I did.”

“No, no,” he said. “Don’t you dare blame yourself, not for a moment. I’m her husband, how could I not know? And don’t worry. It’s not the onset of any form of dementia, even though it may seem that way. She’s under a doctor’s care. A Dutchman. Tops in his field. Transient global amnesia, he says, brought on by stress, anxiety and confusion.”

The last word surprised me because I expected to hear “depression” instead. But then, it made sense that Maria Romanova might be confused. After all, she was the mother of a college girl turned sex worker suddenly involved in a same-sex romance with no previous signs of such inclinations. All of that was accurate except the tense of the verb, I thought. Her daughter had been all those things before she’d been butchered to death.

Those images inspired by the crime scene—they never strayed far from consciousness.

“Maria told me you met Iskra’s bodyguard,” I said. “The Greek fellow.”

Romanov appeared confused.

“The one that calls himself the Turk.”

Confused turned to surprise. “Is he really Greek?”

I shrugged. “So he told me.”

Romanov mused out loud. “You wonder why a man would do that to himself.”

“Do what?”

“Put himself in a position where he’s his own mortal enemy. How can a Greek who calls himself the Turk ever be happy?”

“But he was happy,” I said. “At least for a while, wasn’t he?”

Romanov didn’t blink or blanch. “If you mean while he was working for Iskra and getting paid in a manner that would shame any father, I’m sure he was.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about him when we had lunch?”

Romanov seemed genuinely perplexed. “For what reason? He liked my daughter. I met the man. I spoke with him. He was employed by the people who run the room she rented. As disgusting as it all was, he was a professional.”

“That you went back to see privately and had words with—”

“You can’t possibly be thinking he’s a suspect.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s a good man.”

Romanov’s words caught me by surprise.

“The Turk is a good man?” I said.

“Absolutely. I went to his work place, which is to say I went to Iskra’s old office and had a discussion with him.”

“A discussion?”

Romanov nodded. “A father to friend-of-his-daughter type of discussion.”

“After which you paid him to go away.”

Romanov shook his head. “On the contrary. That’s what I told Maria to simplify matters for her and to get her to stop worrying about him.”

“You mean you didn’t have a confrontation? You didn’t pay him to go away?”

“Why would I pay him to go away when he was protecting her? My impression is, he takes his job seriously. You’ve met him. What do you think?”

“That it’s a shame he wasn’t with her twenty-four seven or she might still be alive.”

“Then we’re agreed on that.”

“You did a great job. Maria was so convinced you paid someone off to stay away.”

“I didn’t pay anyone, but I had a discussion with someone. It just wasn’t the Turk.”

I leaned forward. “Who was it then?”

“The cop that was totally obsessed with her.”

“A cop?”

“The one that was paying for her services and stalking her at all hours.”

“A cop was doing that?” I said. “That’s incredible. What’s his name?”

“He’s the detective. The one investigating the case.” Romanov’s face contorted into a mask of pure hate. “You met him at Iskra’s apartment. Goes by the name of De Vroom.”