Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

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.

Iwas 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.