Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

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. “Only 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.

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.