The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

CHAPTER 5

I could tell our dynamic had changed as soon as I got in Simmy’s car. He didn’t smile at me, though that wasn’t unusual. He rarely smiled. I assumed that was a prerequisite to a thriving businessman’s survival in Russia. A man awash in riches shouldn’t appear happy when most of his fellow countrymen barely make a living and are the subjects of a police state. Still, I usually spied mischief in the curl of his lip or a twinkle in his eye. Tonight, he looked straight ahead at the seat rest in front of him as though it contained a television monitor. But it didn’t.

His driver stepped out of the vehicle and joined the other bodyguard outside without any prompting. A moment of dread seized me as I imagined Simmy firing and severing all contact with me. But then I reminded myself that I could be very persuasive and that I had some questions of my own for him.

“How are you?” he said, without looking at me.

“Never better.”

“Did they treat you like professionals?”

“Sure. Just like the FSB.” The FSB was the Russian federal police, the successor to the notorious KGB.

“There are some things you shouldn’t joke about,” he said.

“No. This is Amsterdam. Not Moscow. You can joke about anything you want. That’s the definition of the free world.”

Simmy rolled his eyes and shook his head. “So nice to see you, Nadia.” He paused and delivered each of his next words with calculated precision. “So nice for so many people to see so much of you.”

“You disapprove,” I said. I was now certain he was disgusted with me, which depressed and infuriated me at the same time.

“Of what? You being arrested or posing as a prostitute?”

“You hired me. You were the one that said my performance over the last year had proven that I had investigative capabilities beyond the financial. What was it you said exactly? Oh, yes. That I have complete command of a vast arsenal that would be perfect for this case.”

“And you thought that meant you should become a prostitute?”

“I was acting. I was borrowing from my arsenal, doing whatever was necessary to get the job done.”

Simmy shook his head, looking as though he were lost in space. “There are some things a woman should never do. A Russian woman… a European lady. I can’t imagine any of the fine ladies I know doing such a thing.”

“Can you imagine any of the fine Russian ladies you know solving this murder?”

He glanced at me, then cocked his head at angle and raised his eyebrows, as though admitting I had a point.

“You said it yourself,” I said. “The mystery lover was the only lead I had. There was no other way to find him. A woman in green had to be in that window. Otherwise he would have kept moving. And with all the men walking along the streets of De Wallen, I couldn’t assume I I’d be able to pick him out of the crowd by standing to the side and watching.”

“What did the police charge you with?”

“Nothing. There are no charges. I’m back on the case. In fact, I never left it.”

“Yes, but I watched them shackle your wrists. They put handcuffs on you. I saw you get arrested. They had to charge you with something.”

“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.