The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 22

The next morning I worked out at the hotel gym, showered, and went to the dining room for breakfast. I stuck to my spinach and egg white omelet and tried to avoid the pastry table but it didn’t work. Yesterday’s encounter with the thugs had finally tilted the chemical imbalance in my brain past the point of endurance. I inhaled the first chocolate croissant and savored the sublime chocolate filling. It wasn’t saturated with sugar the way it might have been in many American bakeries. I was reaching for the other one I’d added to my plate when I got the shock of the morning.

Maria Romanova stood in front of my table, a crimson folio the size of a tablet computer in her hands.

“Good morning,” I said.

I stood up as soon as I saw her. It was an act of respect—she was my elder—and gratitude, because I knew right away that she’d come bearing some sort of information. Why else would she be at my hotel? But more telling was her appearance. She looked even more dreadful than when I’d first met her, as though someone or something were literally sucking the life out of her.

She wanted to tell me something. She needed to tell me something, I thought.

“You’re still here,” she said.

I smiled. “Where else would I be?”

She hesitated. “I thought you might have gone back home.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I didn’t know when you were leaving. I don’t think we ever discussed that, did we?”

“No,” I said. “You’re right. We didn’t.”

I asked her to sit down, my heart pounding with the possibility that somehow Maria Romanova knew about my abduction yesterday, and the threat I’d received. And if she was aware of it, she’d still come to visit me just in case I was still here. Perhaps she’d assumed I’d made flight reservations yesterday for an early departure this morning.

“Coffee or tea?” I said, motioning for a waiter to come over. “And you must eat something. It’s a buffet but they can make you an omelet if you like.”

She settled for white toast with raspberry jam and some tea. This time she spread the jam on the bread as opposed to adding a dollop to her tea. That was a most promising development, I thought.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” I said.

“It is,” she said, before sipping her tea. “And speaking of surprises, I have one for you.”

She unzipped the folio. Instead of a tablet computer, it held a picture frame. Maria pulled the frame out, bottom side up, and handed it to me without turning it over.

“I don’t think you ever saw this picture,” she said. “It’s a recent one. It was in my bedroom. I thought you might like to see it.”

I held my breath as I flipped the frame to study the picture but what I saw quickly doused my enthusiasm. It was just another photo of the family and their surrogate son, Sasha, posing at an outdoor concert, a throng of people between them and the bandstand in the distance. It was a relatively recent shot, I was sure, because Iskra was smiling. These were among her final days, I thought—the Sarah Dumont days, I’d come to call them, knowing her lover was the source of the joy in her expression. In that regard and all others, the picture was the same as the ones I’d seen in her home. The spectators surrounding the family had their backs to the camera, which had a shallow depth of focus that added to the photo’s appeal. Other than the Romanovs, everyone and everything else was pretty much out of focus.

“Nice,” I said. “When was this taken?”

“The weekend before she died. It’s the last picture I have of my girl,” Maria said.

I continued to study it to no benefit. When I glanced at Maria, she was spooning some jam into her tea. I suspected my hopes and fantasies had gotten the better of me. As the jam slip off her spoon into the steaming tea, any optimism I had that she’d arrived informed about my plight and armed with valuable information disappeared with it.

I touched the edge of frame with the tips of my fingertips as though it were a priceless object.

“She was very lovely, Iskra was,” I said, and pushed the picture across the table back to her mother.

Maria mixed the jam into her tea, stared randomly into space, then turned her attention to me and looked completely lucid. “That she was.”

“Is there anything you remember about her final days that you didn’t have a chance to tell me about when we first me? Anything that struck you as noteworthy upon further reflection?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head and resumed drinking her tea.

The visit was the exact opposite of what I though it would be when she’d arrived. I sympathized with her and considered it a matter of honor to provide her with some comfort, especially given she’d come to see me of her own volition. But Simmy wasn’t paying me to be thoughtful with the victim’s mother.

The thought of Simmy brought to mind a second line of questioning, one that was of personal interest to me.

“Maria, may I ask you a question about Simmy?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Simmy?”

“Were you surprised when he called you to offer to help with the case?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because he has a big heart. And it’s just like him to do something like this for an old… an old friend, like me.”

“That means you stayed in touch all these years, right? I mean, if it wasn’t a surprise, you had to have some contact with him. It’s not as though he called you after twenty years and offered his services, is it?”

Maria considered the question, then began counting on her fingers. She seemed to lose track, gave me an apologetic look and repeated the process.

“Twenty-four,” she said.

“Twenty-four years?”

She smiled and nodded. “What a guy, huh?”

“So you didn’t stay in touch all these years?”

“Of course not. We went our separate ways. He got married, I got married. Once there are spouses, it’s very hard to maintain a friendship with someone that you were emotionally intimate with.”

“And yet you say weren’t surprised when he called? Twenty-four years later?”

Maria considered my question. “I guess you’re right, when I think about it from that perspective. But this wasn’t a Christmas holiday or a birthday, it was quite the opposite so I thought it was very sweet of him. George didn’t care for it, of course—Russian men are very possessive, even of their old wives. And as I said, it was just like Simmy to reach out to someone after all these years.”

“I understand,” I said. “Was there any other reason he might have reached out? To your knowledge?”

“Another reason?” She appeared baffled by the question. Then she brightened. “Oh, you mean do I think he missed me after all these years?”

“Well…”

“I’d love to say that I think that’s the case, but I’m not that delusional. Not anymore. Twenty years ago? Yes. Ten years ago? Maybe. It takes time to accept the ravages of age, vodka, and a slowing metabolism. Today? No. Give me self-awareness over delusion any day.”

I was left speechless, once again uncertain about Maria’s state of mind now that she sounded more in control of her faculties than most people I knew. I thought of myself yesterday, trying to remain in control of my thoughts while my assailants stripped my clothes from my body.

My eyes drifted to the picture she’d brought. I studied it again.

“Have you seen Sasha recently?” I said.

“He calls all the time to see how I am.”

“That’s nice.”

“As a matter-of-fact he called yesterday,” Maria said. “Said he was going away for a couple of nights to take his mind off things. Who can blame him? The poor boy, he loved Iskra so much. He called because he wanted to know if there was anything he could do for me. He’s hopeless, that Sasha, but he’s a good soul.”

She took a quick sip of tea.

“I’ve taken enough of your time. I should be going,” she said, and reached into her bag for her wallet

“No, no,” I said. “Please. It’s my pleasure.”

Maria thanked me and stood up. “I just wanted you to see this picture.” She took her folio but instead of putting the frame back inside, she slid it toward me. “You should keep it. I think it’s important… it’s important that you keep it.”

She spoke slowly, emphatically but most noteworthy was the magnitude of pain in her expression. I slid the picture toward myself, inspired by the resurrection of the possibility that it held a clue regarding Iskra’s murder, as did the inconsolable look in Maria’s face. She really had needed to tell me something, I realized, and she was doing so now.

My eyes fell on the young man in the photo once again.

“Where did you say Sasha was going?” I said.

Her eyes widened for no more than a split second, but it was enough to let me know that I was asking the right question.

“Bruges,” she said.

When the word escaped her lips, she closed her eyes and took a barely audible breath, the kind that sounded like relief.

She turned and left, but by then my mind was focused on Sasha’s choice of vacation destinations and his image in the picture. I studied him repeatedly. Then I looked at the Romanov family individually, and returned my attention to Sasha.

Then the truth hit me. The clue was right there in front of me all along from the moment Maria Romanova had handed me the picture, but I’d been preoccupied by the faces to see what really mattered.

I whipped out my cell phone and found Simmy’s private number. My means of stabilizing my mobile communications device echoed my discovery in the photograph.

It was all in the wrist.