The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls Read online

  As were mine. I’d taken a case whose criminal nature was beyond my area of expertise in a foreign country. With each new obstacle to overcome I became increasingly unwilling to quit or fail. I could feel the determination building inside me, like some mass between my heart and soul that could not be obliterated by anything short of a definitive solution to the crime. To arrive at that solution, I was now going to have alter my strategy.

  I wasn’t going to penetrate this woman’s fortress to meet the pretty boy she was protecting.

  I would have to wait for my mark to venture forth and pounce on her in the open.

  CHAPTER 9

  I was careful to resist the temptation of befriending a taxi driver. I’d succumbed to that convenience in Kyiv two years ago and it nearly got me killed. A cabbie earned my trust and sold me out to my enemy. He seduced me with his looks, intellect, and fluency in the language of my forefathers during my first trip to Ukraine. He sang me a love song, too. I romanticized my circumstances, dropped my guard, and was betrayed for my imprudence. The experience had taught me a valuable lesson.

  When on the job or off it, never romanticize your circumstances.

  Still, the next morning I needed a driver I could trust. I called the same cabbie who’d driven me the night before and told him I needed his services again. I figured he was perfectly qualified because he hadn’t sung me any love songs and I hadn’t dreamed about him, either, and those were understatements.

  By six-fifteen we were parked by the side of the road beyond the fork that led to Sarah Dumont’s house. The driver’s beard looked like the a coat of black lacquer paint and the cabin reeked of coffee.

  “Why was it necessary to come here so early?” he said.

  “Because I don’t know when she’s going to leave the house.”

  “You should have asked me.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You should have asked me about the woman’s schedule.”

  “How would you know her schedule?”

  “I don’t know her schedule.”

  “You’re confusing me,” I said.

  “I don’t know her schedule, but I know her routine.”

  “She’s that well-known in town that everyone knows her routine?”

  “I wouldn’t say that everyone knows her routine. I’d say that all sorts of people know bits and pieces about her, and in a town like Bruges, taxi drivers tend to know the sum of what all people know.”

  “Okay, you know more than I do. What’s her routine?”

  “She exercises in town on weekdays in the morning,” the driver said.

  “At what time?”

  “That I cannot tell you.”

  “But you know she’s home now, right?”

  The driver cast a look of irritation in the rearview mirror. “No, I don’t know that. How am I supposed to know where she is?”

  “You said you know her routine.”

  “Yes,” the driver barked. “When she’s in town, at her home, I know her routine. But she travels much. Like I told you, she’s in the theater.”

  We sat in the car quietly. The driver began snoring, a gnarly rasp with an impressive rhythmic consistency, like the metronome from hell. While he slept, I used my phone to search for gyms and physical fitness facilities in Bruges. The particulars of three establishments popped up. The first two had no record of a Sarah Dumont among their clients. I fared better with the third one, a place called the Continental Gym.

  “Good morning,” I said, adding a German inflection to my voice to disguise myself. “My name is Monica Mulder. I’m calling on behalf of Miss Sarah Dumont. I’m her personal assistant. Ms. Dumont recently changed her phone number and I’m calling to verify you have the right one.”

  A more formal enterprise might have had a more experienced person manning the front desk, someone who would have asked me to give her the new number first. But this was a workout facility which meant it was defined by pace, motion, and cheap labor. Music blared in the background. A blender whirred. The girl who answered the phone told me to hang on while she looked up the number on the computer, and then promptly gave it to me.

  I made a note of it, told her it was the right number, and hung up. The driver had continued snoring through my calls. I savored a victorious moment and contemplated my strategy during the next hour. My thoughts must have numbed me to the sounds of my surroundings because I never heard any motor noises until the car appeared in the fork ahead.

  It was the metallic blue Porsche Macan.

  I tapped the driver on the shoulder. He snapped out of his trance, cleared his throat, grasped the steering wheel and took off. I didn’t have to say a single word. His awakening was the insomniac’s equivalent to the way martial artists snapped to their feet without using their hands. I was so pleased with him I leaned forward and patted his shoulder twice.

  “The driver is probably a policeman or ex-military …” I said.

  He grumbled under his breath. “You are not the first passenger to ask me to follow someone.”

  “You are full of pleasant surprises this morning and clearly one of the finest men in Bruges. Onwards, but not too closely.”

  The driver followed the Macan to the Continental Gym outside the city center. Sarah Dumont jumped out of the back of the SUV on her own—she didn’t wait for the driver to step out of the car and open the door for her. I caught a glimpse of her from the side.

  Dark hair gathered in a ponytail beneath a blue baseball cap with red lettering and a Puma insignia. She wore designer sunglasses with oversized brown frames and a windbreaker over tights. She was built like a dancer and strutted along with the confidence that her taut physique inspired.

  The Macan drove away. I assumed Sarah Dumont was going to work out for at least half an hour, and most likely something between forty-five minutes and two hours. Few classes took less than thirty minutes, and most folks supplemented their organized activity with some sort of personal workout, even if it was comprised solely of abdominal work or stretching. Nevertheless, I waited ten minutes before getting out of the car to make sure the Macan wasn’t doubling back.

  I tied a scarf around my head and put on my own sunglasses to disguise my appearance. Strange, I thought. Sarah Dumont was the local resident walking around in a baseball cap, a decidedly American style, and I was the American walking around in what I thought was a more European-looking headgear. Perhaps neither one of us was what she seemed.

  I opened the door and peaked in the lobby. When I didn’t spy her anywhere, I popped inside. A girl behind the front desk was babbling on the phone in Dutch. I grabbed a flier with membership information in English, hid beside a glass fridge filled with energy and protein drinks, and studied the workout facility.

  The open gym area contained cardio equipment on one side and resistance equipment on the other. Twenty or so people were exercising, some being put through their paces by personal trainers. Some of the trainers looked the part, while others didn’t. That baffled me. How could you inspire others to get fit when you couldn’t motivate yourself to do the same?

  Two rooms with glass walls lined the far wall of the gym. The door to one them whipped open and a man drenched in sweat emerged as a heavy bass from a disco beat groaned behind him. At least thirty cyclists spun their legs madly as a woman in pink tights exhorted them to move. I spotted the ponytail, baseball cap and waifish physique on a bike in the back row.

  I ambled back to the front desk, where the girl told me the spin class ended in fifteen minutes. I returned to my taxi, programmed Sarah Dumont’s number into my mobile phone, and waited.

  The Macan arrived at ten minutes before noon, almost two hours after the driver had dropped her off. Sarah Dumont moseyed out of the gym five minutes later sipping from a straw planted in a pint-sized plastic cup filled with a moss-colored liquid. They drove toward the City Centre and parked on the side of the street beneath a sign that forbid parking.

  “Eh?” the taxi driver said. “Onl
y the police or government officials can park there.”

  Either the private security force consisted of former cops, Sarah Dumont was related to a current politician, or she had real influence for other reasons, I thought.

  She got out of the car and headed into town on foot. To my dismay, the driver got out of the Macan and began to follow her.

  “Park around here somewhere,” I said, flinging the door open. “I’ll be back.”

  “Park where?” my driver said. “All the spaces along the street are taken.”

  “Adapt, improvise, overcome. Try to stay within the radius of a block. I’ll find you.”

  I could hear him complaining even after I closed the door but I knew he’d be in the vicinity when I returned, just as surely as the cash I owed him was still in my wallet.

  Sarah Dumont marched down one of the ubiquitous cobblestone streets. Her driver followed and I stayed twenty paces behind him. The side streets in Bruges were more like glorified alleys. The surrounding buildings blocked all sunlight unless it was shining directly overhead and created the illusion of perpetual twilight. The alleys fed the Burg Square, which appeared as a light at the end of the alley. Sarah Dumont turned left at the light and disappeared. Ten seconds later her driver did the same.

  I picked up my pace. As I approached the mouth of the alley, I stopped short of the Burg Square, hugged the left wall, and snuck a peak around the corner.

  The driver stood with his back to me five feet away. He was staring into the entrance of some sort of establishment. I pulled my head back, circled to the opposite wall, and took a sharp right out of the alley and into the Square. I stepped into a crowd gazing at the window of the Duman chocolate shop, and used the beer-loving patriarch of a family of four as cover. I turned.

  Sarah Dumont stood talking to the driver with a white cardboard carton in her hand. The container overflowed with Belgian fries. I glanced at the establishment from which she’d emerged. It was a fast food joint that claimed to sell the best Belgian frites in Bruges. Based on what I’d seen last night, it was not the only one that made such a claim. She appeared to speak with conviction to the driver, who nodded his head several times, as though understanding her orders. Then he turned, marched back into the alley from which we’d come, and disappeared. Sarah Dumont ate five fries, threw the rest in the garbage, and headed toward a medieval church in the corner of the Square.

  I made two immediate observations. First, I could have never stopped myself after only five fries. Second, this was my opportunity.

  I took off after her. My mark walked purposefully into the side entrance to the church as though she had an appointment. I was thirty paces behind her so I picked up my pace and pulled the phone out of the inside pocket of my bag. Nothing could slow a person down or send her scurrying out of a church faster than a phone call.

  I dialed Sarah Dumont’s number. After the first ring, I realized her phone might not be turned on. I immediately discounted that as highly unlikely. She was a successful artist who undoubtedly needed to be plugged into her network at all times. After the second ring, I decided that she might have the phone muted so that she could see if someone familiar was calling her. After the third ring, I entered the church through a narrow door with a curved stone arch.

  The ringing stopped. I heard the sound of labored breathing.

  “Hello?” I said, keeping my voice down as I stepped inside the vestibule of the church.

  I was expecting a woman to answer in kind, with a note of confusion perhaps, given my number would be unknown to her. Instead, a man responded with eerie self-assurance.

  “Hello, Ms. Tesla,” he said.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Who is this?” I said.

  “Turn around.”

  I whipped my head around.

  Sarah Dumont’s driver lifted a mobile phone from his ear and waved hello with it. At close range, I recognized him immediately. He was the man who’d held the Uzi that I’d mistaken for the steering wheel locking device. He was power-walking through the entrance to the church toward me. He was only fifteen paces away …

  I turned back toward the pews.

  The second security guard—the one who’d held the leash on the wolf—was marching straight toward me from the altar. As soon as our eyes met, his hand moved inside his jacket. A smattering of tourists stood admiring the altar, but they were twenty rows in front of the second guard.

  The driver was five paces away. The second guard would arrive five seconds later. I remembered the change in De Vroom’s manner once he ran the license plate and learned the identity of the Macan’s owner. He’d used my Christian name, and warned me with uncharacteristic empathy.

  Had I listened?

  Of course not.

  I could have screamed but for all I knew they had sound suppressed guns tucked in their belts and would kill me anyways. Given my sense of self-preservation, I decided that sticking around to find out was an imprudent choice.

  A set of stairs leading below beckoned to my left.

  I flew down them. The stairs turned twice. I counted twenty-eight of them before I got to the landing.

  Two medieval doors made of petrified wood opened into a church hall. It contained a centuries-old table the length of a yacht and two dozen high chairs with burgundy cushions. I knew from my experience as an altar girl that the priest’s vestibule usually featured stairs that led to the basement to allow him private access to and from the altar. Why would churches have been structured any differently in centuries past?

  I rushed into the hall and spied doors on both sides of the far wall. A wave of optimism hit me. The doors probably led to staircases. I took aim for the stairway on the right.

  An eerie creaking sound behind me was followed by a boom.

  I glanced to my rear.

  The doors had swung shut. Then I heard a rush of footsteps from the direction where I’d been heading.

  I turned again.

  The second security guard burst out of one of the doorways. Just as I suspected, there was a staircase in the back, but I’d never considered a man might be racing down its steps to capture or kill me.

  I was alone in the bowels of a medieval church with an armed man. I understood De Vroom’s warning now. I suspected this was exactly what he feared would happen.

  Except we weren’t alone.

  Sarah Dumont stepped out of the shadows where the doors had stood open. She walked toward me slowly, without saying a word. An unsettling confidence punctuated her movements. She strutted and swung her arms as though she were the big boss in the prison yard. When she got to within three feet of me, she stopped, took off her sunglasses, and then her baseball cap, too.

  I recognized her immediately, even without the blond wig.

  Sarah Dumont wasn’t the mystery lover’s mother, aunt, or guardian.

  She was the mystery lover.

  CHAPTER 10

  She stood like royalty, shockingly assured and inscrutable given her youth. Sarah Dumont had the skin of an angel. I had to take a moment to process this because I’d been expecting a boy’s mother, not someone younger than me. The taxi driver’s story about the home invasion in Amsterdam, her palatial home, and her reported achievements in the theater had reinforced my expectation that she was my elder. But that was clearly not the case.

  She spoke with an enviable French accent, the kind that turned English words into hourglass figurines and bestowed upon her an illusion of superior femininity. But she delivered her words with the affectation of an evil godmother in the fairy tale of her own invention.

  “Who are you?” she said, tilting her head to the side and studying me as though I were a visitor from a land unknown.

  “My name is Nadia Tesla.”

  “I know your name. I know what you do. That’s not what I asked you. I asked you, who are you?”

  “Surely you recognize me,” I said.

  “Really?” She brought her face so close to mine I could smell
the frites on her breath. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen you before in my entire life. But who knows? I may be wrong. Let me see the rest of you.”

  She began to circle around me as though I were a sculpture for sale.

  I guessed it was possible she really didn’t recognize me. She’d only seen me for a second beneath two red light bulbs in the dead of night before running away

  “In the window,” I said. “In De Wallen. On Ouderkerksplein …”

  She disappeared from my line of vision, and the knowledge that she’d slipped behind me unnerved me as much as it scared me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d grabbed my ass or told her security guard to ensure I never followed her again.

  “In De-who,” she said. “On Ouder-what?”

  “The woman in the green bikini. The woman who followed you to the Porsche that whisked you away. That was me.”

  A moment of silence followed, and then I felt her hand brush my shoulder. Her touch imparted a feeling of subordination, reinforced my relative powerlessness, and freaked me out. It also conveyed an unlikely bolt of sexual electricity and turned my attention to the matter that never strayed far from my consciousness. I wondered if this was what my husband had felt when his lover had first laid a hand on him.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sarah Dumont said, as she continued circling and returned to my line of sight.

  “In Amsterdam. Saturday night. At the anointed time. At midnight.”

  “I haven’t been to Amsterdam in eighteen months. It’s not a place I visit anymore.”

  “I’m here for Iskra,” I said. “By now you must have made an inquiry. You must know that she was murdered.”

  Sarah Dumont faced me. She put her hands on her hips and straightened her lips, and if claps of thunder had erupted outside the church I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “You told my security that you wanted to speak to me about my son,” she said. “I have no children, I don’t know any Iskra, and I don’t like strangers coming to my home or following me around town. Now, I have one final question for you. Do you want to leave me alone, or do you want me to show you why you should leave me alone?”