The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls Read online

  Simmy, however, seemed to understand exactly what I meant.

  “In business I must eliminate my competition sometimes,” he said. “There is simply no other way. I mean that in a corporate sense, of course. But that doesn’t excuse my behavior in my personal life. I’ve been avoiding my ex-wife, treating her rudely. That is unacceptable because we share custody of two children. I’m not spending enough time with them, either. That’s what money does to a man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It makes him want more money. Soon nothing else matters. He begins to forgive himself for his transgressions too easily.” Simmy leaned in toward me. His words sounded urgent, his voice almost pleading for me to listen carefully. “What you must understand, Nadia, is that men have no role models in Russia.”

  Simmy’s assertion resonated with me. My deceased husband’s parents and my own mother and father had been World War II refugees. They’d trusted no one and seemed incapable of unconditional love. Were their children any better? One Friday morning I took the train from New York City to New Haven and surprised my husband at Yale. When I saw his petite graduate assistant exiting his apartment as I arrived, I confronted him. He backhanded me across the face, insisted he’d never touched another woman, and told me never to question his fidelity again. I took it and did nothing, that time and many times later, as my mother had done before me. I’d always held my husband and myself—not our parents—accountable for our own behavior, but there was truth in what Simmy was saying.

  “Russian men don’t know how to be husbands or fathers,” Simmy said. “Who was there to teach us? The Soviet Union destroyed the Russian family. There was no freedom of speech, religion, or mobility. A man couldn’t leave town to see his relatives without permission. The KGB were everywhere. It was an empire built on fear, where men were rewarded for persecuting their neighbors. Ambition served only those connected with the central government. For all others, there was no hope for anything other than to survive. During the twentieth century, the soul of all Russian men was systematically destroyed to preserve the powers of the central government and to let the ruling elite have their way. What kind of husbands and fathers do you think this bred?”

  I thought of the Western stereotype of a Russian man, lawless and drunk. “The kind who suffered and medicated his pain any way he could.”

  “Why does the West think Russian men have a problem with alcoholism? Why do so many Russian marriages end in divorce? Our parents, and their parents, and their parents before them . . . none of them were role models, and none of them are to blame. The life expectancy of a Russian man in 2000 was fifty-eight years. When you go to Russia, you’re expected to drink in excess in all social situations. If you don’t, Russians view you as a weak person. Why is that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because it means you give a shit about your future. Because it means you’re actually arrogant enough to think there’s hope for you, that you’re different than the masses, that you’re better than them, that you’ll live longer. And so the moment you refuse to drink with your host, your client, your potential business partner, he views you suspiciously. He believes you are someone he cannot trust. And he sure as hell resents you.”

  I’d only seen Simmy look anxious on one other occasion, when our lives were at risk in a Siberian castle that had belonged to the FBI’s most wanted man, Russia’s most notorious organized crime leader. But here he was, flashing creases in his temple in the comfort of an Amsterdam restaurant and under the protection of his bodyguards. My observations unnerved me a bit, as to be in Simmy’s presence was to feel, above all else, temporarily invulnerable.

  “Last time I saw you,” I said, “you talked about the European and American sanctions against Russia … did something else happen?”

  Simmy looked around before speaking yet again, and then lowered his voice so low that I had to lean forward and strain to hear him. “Remember my friend—now my former friend—the one who complained about the President to the press? The one that said Valery was to blame for the sanctions and the miserable state of Russian society? He had his wings clipped yesterday.”

  “A Russian oligarch had his wings clipped? What does that mean?”

  “He was the largest printer and distributor of textbooks to primary schools in Russia. Actually, he pretty much had a monopoly. Now, as of yesterday, all schools have stopped ordering books from his company.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because his texts have been declared outdated by the central government. As of the next school year, new texts will be distributed by someone else, a company that specializes in appliance repair manuals. And my friend’s company is under investigation for illegal business practices.”

  “What kind of illegal business practices?”

  “Bribing government officials,” Simmy said.

  “Of course. I should have guessed. Did your friend make it out of the country?”

  “No. They arrested him four hours ago. The press were there when they took him away—they were stalking him since he complained about Valery so of course they were—and he did something … he said something …” Simmy shook his head gravely.

  “What?” I said. “What did he say?”

  “He said the country needed a change in leadership. He said it was time for a man of integrity to take over the country. A man like Simeon Simeonovich.”

  I remembered what Simmy had told me about oligarchs getting involved in politics in Russia—it was suicidal.

  “You have no interest in politics,” I said. “And your friend knew the mere suggestion that you’re interested could cast a shadow over you or worse—but he said it anyways … which is why you just referred to him as your ‘former friend.’ And his motive for doing this to you was?”

  “He asked me to intercede with Valery on his behalf, to apologize and tell him his emotions got the better of him. He thinks Valery and I are such close friends, like father and son, as the press likes to say. But the truth is, we don’t have those kind of friendships in Russia. And if I had stepped up for him …”

  “Putler would have become suspicious that you share your friends convictions …”

  “Which he almost certainly thinks now,” Simmy said.

  I wanted to do something to cheer Simmy up or at least distract him, so I segued into the case and told him about everything that had transpired since I’d last seen him. He was, after all, my client, and I needed him to arrange a meeting with Iskra’s mother. She and I had spoken only briefly when I’d first arrived in Amsterdam because she’d been out of town the night Iskra was killed. But I considered her an invaluable source of background information regarding Iskra, her friends, and her lovers.

  Simmy called her from the table and arranged for us to meet at breakfast. Then we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner. We talked about his soccer team, his gigayacht, and my business. The one thing we didn’t discuss was the deliciously wrapped box. The longer the evening went, the more its contents intrigued me.

  After he paid the bill, we walked to the hotel entrance. One of his bodyguards went ahead to retrieve his car, while the other one remained ten paces behind us. Simmy thanked me for my company, and I told him it had been a lovely evening. Then he handed me the box.

  “This is for you,” he said, “to help you understand the mind of a Russian man.”

  I took the box in my hands. It felt surprisingly light, no heavier than a roll of paper towels.

  He bowed and started toward the circular door.

  “This is very mischievous, Simmy. That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  He glanced back at me. “All will be clear when you open the package.”

  Simmy left. I took the elevator to the second floor and walked into my room. I wanted to take a shower, and the thought of delaying the opening of Simmy’s present carried great appeal. I could lie on the bed in a crisp terry robe with the TV on and order a cup of tea from room service. Some gratification, however,
simply could not be delayed.

  I tore off the wrapping paper to expose a brown cardboard box. Inside the box was a wooden figurine in the shape of an enormous salt shaker. A girl’s face was painted on one side. She had a golden bun for hair, pink balloons for cheeks, triangular blue eyes with black lashes, and silly pink lips the size of a child’s kiss. Beneath the face was a colorful bouquet, an impressionist’s rendering of pink, burgundy, green and yellow flowers. The figurine’s dome was painted steel-blue, the bottom crimson.

  I’d grown up with Ukrainian objects of beauty in the house. The matryoshka, the nesting doll, was a distinctly Russian creation. I’d heard of them and seen pictures, but I’d never actually held one or played with it. In this instance, I was less interested in the doll, and more curious to see if Simmy had inserted something inside.

  The doll came apart in the middle. A twist of the wrist removed the top half and revealed a similar doll inside. My hands trembled as I continued to pull one doll out of another. The sixth doll was half the size of my thumb. I picked it up in my hand and shook it. Something bounced around its interior walls. I pictured Simmy substituting bauble in place of the final doll. Not that gifts or material things mattered much to me. No, they didn’t, I reminded myself. Not at all.

  I held my breath, removed the cover from the sixth doll, and pulled out the contents from within.

  It was a seventh doll. This one, however, was painted yellow, and its face didn’t belong to the girl depicted on the other dolls. This face belonged to a little boy.

  A pang of disappointment hit me, though I never would have admitted it to anyone. I studied all the dolls again. They had no false bottoms or tops, they contained nothing else inside, and the last doll didn’t open at all. All the dolls seemed to weigh proportionately less than the one that had contained it. The smallest doll, the yellow one, didn’t unscrew. It felt as though it was made out of air.

  It was certainly an object of beauty and a lovely gift. The largest doll’s bottom contained a signature and a date. No doubt it was a collectible. But that wasn’t why Simmy had given it to me. He’d told me that the doll contained knowledge that would help me understand the mind of a Russian man.

  The obvious implication was that a Russian man was a complex amalgamation of multiple personas, at the core of which was a child. If I wanted to understand him, I had to understand each one of his personas. Perhaps one doll reflected how he acted in matters of business, another how he behaved with his children, a third how he made love to a woman. Such a conclusion seemed simple enough.

  Simmy was obviously playing a game with me. He’d just challenged me to discover something about him by studying a doll, and that was fine with me.

  I was always up for a new challenge.

  CHAPTER 15

  Iskra’s mother looked more like someone in need of salvation and less like a colonel in the army. Granted, just because the Salvation Army used a military hierarchy didn’t mean its officers were supposed to look like George Patton or Joan of Arc. Still, I was stunned when Maria Romanova opened the door to greet me at her palatial home by the ubiquitous Amsterdam canal. She welcomed me with a smile but her eyes looked vacant, like the view of a long stretch of desert through a pair of binoculars. Her sweater hung so loosely on her frame I feared she’d misplaced her shoulders. Iskra had been murdered less than two weeks ago, but her mother looked as though she’d been struggling with life for far longer.

  I wondered why.

  The Romanovs’ home was decorated in an opulent French style. The living room reminded me of the most beautiful salons in New York City hotels where I’d attended more than one corporate presentation through the years. Elegant gilding surrounded pistachio-colored boisere. Antique furnishings enhanced the sensation that one had just entered a wealthy Parisian home. Some people might have scoffed at the extravagance of it all, but there was no doubt that the room had been meticulously appointed with impeccable taste.

  It was a room built for splendor and joy but even the paneled walls were crying. The musical selection didn’t help, some sort of Russian opera with constant wailing from a heavyweight soprano bent on global depression. It was the sort of selection my Ukrainian mother would have made. There was something genetic in Eastern European blood that made its people wallow in mourning. Why limit your sadness to that which came naturally when you could make yourself truly miserable and reduce your own life expectancy?

  Perhaps that was an unfair assessment and Maria Romanova’s selection of music was a virtue. If mourning was the prerequisite to emotional healing, perhaps the pursuit of maximum distress was a shortcut to a return to normalcy. Whatever the truth, there was no doubt that Iskra’s mother had loved her daughter. The same could be said for her father, George, I thought, remembering his despair at the murder scene. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the musical selection was a mutual one.

  Maria served us tea and croissants. I poured some milk into my tea and added a packet of natural sugar substitute. When I lifted my cup, a plume of steam twisted into the air. As I gazed at my host through the cloud of moisture, she looked like a ghost who’d been summoned at a séance.

  “Is George at home?” I said.

  I used his first name on purpose to suggest we’d become friends. That wasn’t too much of an exaggeration. In her husband’s mind, the Russian whore from the decrepit States was his mate for life.

  Maria ignored my question as though I hadn’t said a word. Instead, she lifted a croissant from the basket with a pair of tongs and dropped it onto her plate. The odd thing was that she dropped it from a foot above its target, and smiled like a child when it landed unscathed.

  “George?” Maria said, without looking at me. “He has his morning routine. The gymnasium and then the sauna. Always the sauna. He’s one of those Russians that still thinks dehydrating yourself will make you live longer.”

  “If that’s the only way he’s dehydrating himself, then it’s not the worst thing.”

  She looked at me as though I’d spoken Japanese. All traces of emotion vanished from her face. It was as though she’d pushed her own personal panic button and her brain had erased her short-term memory. The vacuous look returned to her eyes.

  “Who are you again, dear?” she said.

  Her question rattled me. I’d just arrived ten minutes ago. She’d been prepared for my arrival and had recognized my name right away.

  “I’m Simeon Simeonovich’s friend,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “I’m Simmy’s friend. I’m the investigator he hired.” I stopped short of saying what I was investigating, for fear she might have forgotten her daughter had been murdered.

  A spark ignited in her eyes. “Simmy,” she said. A thin smile crossed her narrow lips. It was such a weak attempt, she had such difficulty sustaining an expression of joy, I wondered when she’d last smiled even before Iskra’s murder. She gazed past me toward a random place in space. “There was a time when he thought I was quite special. To think, I could have been Mrs. Simeon Simeonovich.”

  I seized the opportunity for conversation. “Where did the two of you meet?”

  “At university. I was getting my master’s degree in physics. Simmy was a doctoral candidate which basically made him an assistant professor. None of the tenured professors wanted to deal with graduate students after class. They delegated it to their favorite doctoral students. We hit it off right away.”

  I couldn’t help but think of my deceased husband. He’d delegated all his grunt work to his favorite doctoral students, too. A grungy-looking boy and the stunning female protégé with the auburn hair. My sole encounter with her would persecute me until the day I died.

  “Why do you think you hit it off?” I said, my curiosity getting the better of me. Maria frowned, and I immediately hit an apologetic note. “If you don’t mind my asking. He’s so mysterious, you know?”

  “Really?” Maria looked me over the way a woman did when she imagined her former love
r with another now. “How interesting, because I didn’t think he was much of a mystery when I knew him. He was ambitious and he was capable of being ruthless, but he was a little boy at heart.”

  “How so?”

  “His mother died when he was young. He was the kind of man who needed a strong woman in his life. The kind of man who was always looking for the approval of a strong woman. Has he changed much, or is he still the way I describe?”

  “I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that.”

  “But you would like to become qualified, wouldn’t you, Nadia?”

  I felt myself blushing and came within a split second of blurting out that what I really wanted to do was solve her daughter’s murder.

  “I understand you work with the Salvation Army?” I said.

  “Since back in Russia. We were the primary care system for the homeless and the people infected with HIV. They’re treated like a leper class in Russia.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Working with the homeless and the HIV-infected?”

  “No. Russia.”

  Maria considered the question for a moment, looking every bit lucid and present. “Do I miss the Russian people? Absolutely. They are no different than the Dutch or the Americans, or anyone else. People are people. They want love, security and freedom. Their government lies to them—Putler took control of all three federal televisions stations less than a year after he took power—so they don’t understand the world they live in. The Chekhists—the men and women who believe a secret police force should have unlimited powers—they control the entire country. And the people yield to them, out of loyalty and fear. It’s a vicious cycle and they cannot break it, but the average Russian person is passionate, loyal and good.”

  “I believe that,” I said, sincerely. “Speaking of Russian people … what can you tell me about Nashi?”

  “Thugs,” Maria said, with extreme prejudice.

  “Why do you say that? I thought they were like a youth group with patriotic overtones.”