The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 3

I took off my high-heels and sunglasses and tossed them onto the chair. I grabbed the sweatshirt I’d brought, zipped it up to my neck, and slipped into my flat shoes. Then I slammed the door shut and took off after the mystery lover. All I needed was ten seconds of face-time to explain to him that I was his friend, not his enemy. That I wanted to solve the murder of his beloved, not cause him any additional despair.

I had no time to change into pants. I knew I was about to make a spectacle of myself and I didn’t relish the prospect. I cherished stealth and anonymity. I loathed the thought of drawing attention to myself in any way, especially given I was a guest in a foreign country. My suitcase didn’t contain blue jeans when I travelled abroad. Europe was a classier place than America and I packed accordingly. Now, here I was hustling across the Oudekerkplein in a bikini bottom. I didn’t resemble the prototypical American tourist in shorts and tank top. I made that get-up look civilized.

And yet I didn’t hesitate. The pin-prick of embarrassment was just that. I’d snuck my cousin out of Chernobyl and into New York via Siberia. I’d stared down the cops on the Trans Siberian Railway by posing as a journalist, cajoled a cemetery caretaker to unearth a grave in Ukraine, and convinced a billionaire to fly me around the world by pretending to not want his help. A woman’s will could propel her to act outside of social norms to achieve her goals. The prerequisite to harnessing that will was the willingness to risk failure.

My flats had thin soles. As a result, the cobblestones threw off my balance. I had trouble walking a straight line. I suspected I looked drunk. A few jaws dropped. Some pedestrians moved to the side to make way for me. Men loitering near bars craned their necks for a better view. I ignored them.

The secret lover marched purposefully but didn’t run. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself, I thought. Smart boy. All eyes were focused on me instead of him. I was determined to catch-up to him with a walking pace honed on New York City sidewalks. Running would only make me stand out even more. I’d rarely failed to catch up to anyone along Madison Avenue. I didn’t see any reason I wouldn’t do so now.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m a friend. I want to help you. I want to help Iskra.”

Iskra was the name of the deceased girl. I shouted at her mystery lover from behind but he either didn’t hear me or wasn’t interested in what I had to say. He simply kept walking like a robot programmed to stay ahead of me.

I followed him right onto Warmoesstraat, still twenty paces back. I passed a corner store specializing in whips and chains, and an illuminated houseboat on the canal where two couples were enjoying dinner. A bicycle wrapped in white lights sparkled in the picture window of a luxury row house beyond them.

We’d walked a city block and I’d gained no ground at all. The mystery lover had long legs and could move. Damned if he didn’t have longer legs and wasn’t fitter than I was. In half a block he would reach the outer border of De Wallen. There was simply no way I could leave De Wallen in my current state of dress.

I began to jog. My feet stung and I wished I were wearing trainers. I repeated my plea for him to stop and that I was his friend.

He didn’t respond. He reached the border of De Wallen, turned right onto a side street, and disappeared.

I ran.

When I reached the corner I saw him climbing into the back of a small SUV. I didn’t recognize the vehicle. From my viewpoint, I could see a short vertical post in the middle of the road directly in front of the vehicle’s bumper with a vivid red light. I could also see that the mystery lover was seated in the back of the SUV, but only the driver was seated in front. The front passenger seat was empty. The SUV’s break lights shone red. Any second the driver would switch into reverse and come barreling toward me, I thought.

I hugged the buildings along the right sidewalk and raced toward the vehicle. I was ten strides away. Five strides… I read the lettering on the back of the SUV. It was a Porsche Macan Turbo… Three strides away… I caught a glimpse of the license plate—

The brake lights dimmed. The engine whirred. The sound of God’s vacuum cleaner filled the air. The SUV surged forward, turned left, and disappeared.

I took my final three strides and stood over the cap of the small vertical post. It had sunken into the ground. Its light was green now.

My chest heaved as I swore to myself. A light sheen of sweat covered my forehead. I felt completely naked and embarrassed. I turned and began to jog back toward Warmoesstraat. I was technically half a block beyond De Wallen. I hoped one of the residents along the canal or in the houseboat hadn’t seen me and been offended.

A siren wailed. It was a European police siren, a long squeeze of the horn followed by a short one. It was more measured than the frenetic American version. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed the sound and the moment. But these weren’t other circumstances.

A white hatchback with diagonal blue and red stripes across the doorway pulled up to the corner in front of me. I’d never imagined my undoing in Amsterdam would come via a vehicle painted red, white and blue. Two cops dressed in fluorescent yellow vests and white uniforms stepped out of the car. A third cop pulled up on a bicycle. He wore a sidearm like the other two and a puffed-up olive bomber jacket that looked like a Gore-Tex model designed for Arctic discothèques.

They asked me for identification. I told them I didn’t have any. They asked me who I was. I stuck to my two stories, that I was an American woman living out a fantasy and that one of my customers had robbed me. From that point on they regarded me with a mixture of suspicion and compassion. They didn’t laugh at me. They didn’t appear to judge me. I imagined a similar situation in New York City and how some of the cops might have treated me there, and felt a sudden love for the people of the Netherlands and all things Dutch. Even the bicyclists.

The feel-good didn’t last long. They took my description of the phantom blond American who’d robbed me. I swallowed my guilt as I delivered my fictitious story. The cop on the bicycle took notes. Then all three of them drove me back to my office. They let me change into my business suit and told me to gather my things. While one of the cops stayed with me, the other two canvassed the neighborhood. They spoke with seemingly random onlookers. Then the Turk materialized, out of nowhere as usual, and they spoke with him. I assumed he was verifying I had a lease and confirming my story that I’d been robbed and had hit the panic button.

Before they returned to my office, I thought the cops would scold me and let me go. But once they arrived I could see that their interviews had drained them of their compassion for me. One of them pulled out a high-tech-looking, hinged pair of handcuffs. I looked at them with dread.

“You’re arresting me?” I said. Dejection punctuated my voice.

“You were heard shouting at the young man,” the cop said, “trying to solicit him on the street. That’s against the law. Prostitution is legal but only in certain places.”

“I wasn’t trying to solicit him—”

“You were heard shouting at him. That you wanted to ‘help him.’ Why would you want to help him if he robbed you?”

I realized his point.

“And your protection said that one of his colleagues told him that no such man ever entered your room. He said no one entered your room tonight. No one at all. Did you know they watch the doorways through binoculars from across the street?”

My lies had caught up with me.

I searched frantically for solace of some kind, and found it in my memory banks. I’d seen the getaway car and committed the license plate to memory. Still, when the police officer shackled me with his handcuffs I suppressed a tear. I was surprised at the depth of my emotions, but I’d never been arrested before and until it happens to you it’s impossible to understand the loss of self-respect. For the moment, a highly civilized country had decided its society was better off if I was denied freedom to do as I pleased. It was, much to my shock, a remarkably depressing moment.

Yet it was not nearly as devastating as the scene that transpired when I climbed into the back of the police car. I was trying not to look embarrassed but also avoiding the eyes of the bystanders who’d gathered along the street. Curiosity got the better of me, though, and when I glanced at the crowd of thirty or so, I spotted the last person I wanted to see. I averted my eyes from his, an exercise in pathetic wishful thinking, and then looked back. No, I was not seeing a mirage. He was here. My client was here.

Simeon Simeonovich stood twenty yards away looking like a modern-day Cossack without the horse, handsome and stoic in a turtleneck and one of the half-zip Italian sweaters he favored. Brunello Cucinelli, I guessed. I recognized one of his bodyguards beside him, but didn’t see the second one. That was strange because he was always accompanied by a pair.

Our eyes met for a brief moment. I gave Simmy as neutral a stare as I could muster, determined not to reveal anything about my state of mind. More than anything, though, I was secretly praying to see a flicker of compassion in his eyes. But I saw only the steely gaze of a Russian oligarch, the thirty-seventh richest man in the world. And beneath that gaze I spied disappointment and disapproval.

What the hell was he doing here?

When the policeman closed the door beside me, it shut with audible finality. It drowned out all the noise from the street and left me alone, sunken in cheap leather and despair. I was not the most ingenious and resourceful woman in the world. I was the stupid American woman on her way to jail for prostitution in a city where prostitution was legal.

I really had gone too far this time.

The police car pulled away from Oudekerksplein.

Nadia Tesla was closed for business.