Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

“Stop,” I said. “I’ve heard the soundtrack to a similar movie before. How do you know she was terrified?”

The Turk bristled. “How did I know? She would walk beside me holding my hand like a scared little kitten. When we got to her apartment, she’d ask me to go in first and check every room to make sure no one was waiting for her.”

I pictured Sasha unleashing his full verbal fury after a decade of unrequited love. Was that enough to propel Iskra into a state of perpetual fear? I didn’t think so. “Sasha is Sasha,” her father had said. That implied there had always been a certain immaturity to him, one that Iskra had undoubtedly seen and managed. Based on the Rosta-Russian man-boy I’d met, I didn’t see him inspiring fear any more than I saw him bringing a stud-finder to a meticulously planned crucifixion of the girl he’d loved his entire life.

“Did she ever ask for your help outside of work?” I said.

The Turk shook his head. “I walked her home after she turned off her lights. That’s it. Nothing else. If she had asked for more help, I would have given it to her. But she never did.”

“When did this all start? When was the first night she asked you to walk her home?”

“Two weeks before she died.”

That jibed with the general time frame of when Sasha had discovered Iskra was moonlighting as a sex worker and seeing a woman.

“Did you know that one of her clients was a woman?”

“Of course I knew. I know everything that happens in the rooms that belong to the women I protect.”

“Did Iskra ever talk about that woman?”

“Never. And I didn’t ask her, either. That would have been against my professional code of conduct. The relationship between a woman and her client is a sacred thing. It’s business .”

On that note, I opened my wallet and gave the Turk a hundred euro. Given we’d talked for less than fifteen minutes, it was an overly generous hourly rate. He didn’t complain or haggle one bit. Instead, he slid the bills gently into his wallet, walked over to the door leading to the streets, and opened it.

“Was I right about why you’re here?” he said.

I looked him in the eye but didn’t say a word.

He nodded with approval.

“One other thing,” I said. “Did she give you a key to her apartment?”

The Turk dismissed the idea with an immediate frown. “Why would she give me a key? We were not friends.”

In fact, it didn’t matter if she’d given him a key or not. The knew each other. Theoretically, he could have entered her apartment by knocking on the door. But I wanted to see the look on his face when I asked the question. He was clearly more intelligent than I’d assumed and he would have surely realized why I was asking. But he didn’t appear concerned that I might consider him a suspect at all.

I walked back to my hotel frustrated yet energized. Sasha had told me that Iskra had said that the Turk was obsessed with her. That was a lie, but I couldn’t be certain if it was Sasha or Iskra had fabricated a story. My money was on Iskra. I suspected that one of her clients really was obsessed with her but that she didn’t want Sasha confronting him. By lying, Iskra was protecting her childhood friend from someone she considered powerful and dangerous.

She had been scared, mortally so. She’d been afraid to return to her home alone at night. Surely the person whom she was afraid of was this person who was obsessed with her, the one who eventually killed her.

I had an eerie feeling that I was close to the killer and that the most significant piece of information was already in my possession. This suspicion was based on an intuition similar to the one I’d experienced during dozens of corporate investigations. I’d seen all the necessary data points. I simply hadn’t visualized them in the proper order yet, which was to say I hadn’t spotted the definitive lie among them.

Food was on my mind when I stepped into the hotel lobby. A woman at the front desk called me by name before I could get by.

“There’s a gentleman waiting to see you,” she said, with a big smile.

Alarm bells sounded in my head. It could only be De Vroom, I thought. He must have found out I hadn’t followed his orders and was still looking into Iskra’s death.

“Where is this gentleman?” I said.

Two other female hotel employees appeared out of nowhere and stood eyeing me and beaming beside her. I felt like the winner of a pageant I’d never entered.

“In the bar,” she said, and motioned toward the glass stairs to my right.

I passed a reading room and entered the restaurant on the left side of a corridor. The bar was positioned on the opposite side of the dining room, behind the kitchen. I took a deep breath and entered the lounge. I expected to see De Vroom sitting on a stool nursing a whiskey, looking like the model in a photo shoot for some beverage aficionado’s magazine.

Instead I found Simmy Simeonovich sitting at a table for two. An outrageous bouquet of tulips rested on one side of the small circular table in front of him. Beside it stood a tantalizing box wrapped in glossy red and white paper with a matching bow. He rose to his feet as soon as he saw me, and the cumulative effect of his appearance and the loot on the table was to render me speechless.

“Good evening, Nadia.”

He delivered his greeting with a gentle enunciation and a slight bow, like the man I thought I’d befriended two years ago, not like the oligarch who’d chastised me when I’d been released from jail.

“What’s in the box?” I said.

“The box?” He glanced at the table. “Oh, that. Forget about that. That’s for later.”

I was intrigued but reluctant to let him know how happy I was to see him, especially bearing gifts. Hence, I ignored the tulips and put my hand on my hip.

“Why are you here, Simmy?”

“To make amends,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“To make amends. To try to explain to you why I am the man I am and…” He pursed his lips as though asking me to save him from the embarrassment of having to display any more humility.

“And?” I said.

Even the Simmy I’d known prior to Amsterdam would have bristled at my refusal to cut him any slack. This, however, was not the Simmy I knew. This was someone entirely different.

He straightened his posture and arched his chin a bit. Cleared his throat like a man intent on making sure his words sounded real, true, and hit their mark.

“And I’m here to apologize for my poor behavior, and to ask you to please forgive me.” He reached down, wrapped his hand around the bouquet and handed it to me.

I took the flowers from him the way a robot would wash a windshield, mechanically, without any awareness of what I was doing. I knew my ears had not deceived me and that I had heard him correctly, but I didn’t believe a word of it. How could I? No man had ever spoken to me in such a heartfelt fashion, let alone one who’d made his vast fortune by eschewing humility and lived in a world where it was considered a weakness.

“Will you have dinner with me?” he said. “Here? Tonight?”

I nodded.

“Excellent,” he said.

“I need to go upstairs and freshen up. Did you… did you want to come up and wait in my room?”

He smiled and bowed again. “Thank you, but no. It would be more appropriate if I wait for you here.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

I turned to leave but decided he deserved a reward for all that he’d said and done so far. I knew how to reward him because I knew it was my irreverent American ways that he enjoyed so much.

“Can I ask you a question before I go?” I said.

“Yes?”

I donned my finest straight-man look and paused a beat for effect. Then I twisted an expression of great curiosity onto my face.