Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

I leaned into Simmy’s ear. “It’s Sasha—”

A muffled thud interrupted me.

Sasha collapsed to the floor. Blood trickled from a hole in his head and stained the collar of his white shirt.

“Shit,” Simmy and I said, almost simultaneously.

I crept around Simmy, but before I could see Sasha’s face, I spotted the watch around his wrist.

It was the same Panerai he’d been wearing at the museum, the one the real killer had been wearing in the Romanov family photo.

Islipped back beside Simmy.

The bodyguards had to be careful about an offensive because they not only had to protect themselves, they had to be concerned with Sarah Dumont’s whereabouts. This was obvious even to me, the untrained member of our group, and no words needed to be spoken to make it clearer. And yet the clock was ticking, and for all I knew, Sarah Dumont’s throat was being slit even as we stood by absorbing Sasha’s death.

And then we heard it. A distant moan. Someone trying to scream but unable to fully open her mouth. It came from where Sasha had appeared, from a room down the corridor on the first level.

The bodyguards motioned to each other with their hands. One made a knife with his right hand, aimed it toward the corridor, and then made a V of his second and third fingers and brought it to his eyes. His partner nodded.

They glanced at Simmy, who nodded back at them. Then he turned at a slight angle toward me so that only I could hear him.

“We’re going in,” he said.

The bodyguards disappeared down the corridor. Simmy started to follow. It made no sense for him to go until his men had dealt with whatever awaited us. And yet I respected him for his courage, just as surely as I wondered about the motivation behind it, and if he had some connection to Sarah Dumont that had escaped me thus far.

As soon as Simmy negotiated the corner, I followed him. Sometimes it’s better to be imprudent than be labeled a coward, especially by oneself.

The hallways gave access to a series of doors on both sides. I counted five of them. Three on the left, and two on the right.

All the doors were closed.

The bodyguards whipped the first door open. One of them charged inside.

He returned five seconds later.

They flung the second door open. The other one bust into the room.

There was no one inside.

The bodyguards moved on to the third door. And then the fourth. They moved quickly and efficiently and yet the process was interminable.

They got to the last door on the left. Two closets, an office, and a laundry room preceded this room. A bedroom, I thought. Most folks who built a large home these days made sure the ground floor contained a bedroom.

Simmy’s men approached the last door. One of them turned the handle. He rushed inside.

He disappeared from sight but I heard him shout.

“Put the knife down, put the knife down.”

The second bodyguard followed the first one and barked something similar. By then Simmy was in the doorway and I was on his heels.

George Romanov stood dressed in a policeman’s uniform identical to the one Sasha had been wearing. The gun—presumably the one he’d used to shoot Sasha—was stuck in a holster attached to a belt along his waist. He held a knife to Sarah Dumont’s throat. She was naked except for the strip of duct tape around her mouth. Her hands were tied behind her back. Both her eyes appeared swollen and a darker shade of red. I saw a mixture of fear and anger in her eyes but she stood tall with a defiant posture and exuded an astonishing sense of composure. What I did not see was the emotion that would have gripped most people at that moment. I did not see any signs of pure, unadulterated terror.

In fact, the man holding the knife appeared more unsettled. He was the one with sweat on his brow, and I understood why. The men who’d run the former Soviet Union and those who ran Russia now were consumed with one thing—themselves. Romanov was not expecting us even though his wife was the one that had given me the clues about his identity and where to find him. She’d known I’d been kidnapped and threatened because she must have overheard her husband giving the order. Obviously, she knew he’d killed their daughter and she’d been unable to live with herself since then.

“There they are,” Romanov said. “The ego and the imbecile.”

I knew he wasn’t talking about the bodyguards, but I didn’t know which moniker belonged to Simmy and which one was mine.

Romanov looked at me. “Maybe not such an imbecile after all.”

That clarified things.

As Romanov continued talking, I noticed the chalk outline of a body on the bedroom wall. Four narrow holes had been marked neatly, two for the hands and two for the feet. A toolbox rested on the floor beside a stud finer and a drill.

“You seemed so out of your depth at the dead girl’s apartment,” Romanov said to me, “so determined to prove to the world that you’re a strong person, I never thought for a minute you’d be able to see past your own ambitions. But I guess I was wrong.”

“You seemed overwhelmed with grief that day at the crime scene. I never would have guessed you were acting.”

“I wasn’t acting,” Romanov said. “Before she became filth, she was my little girl. And that is who I was remembering.”

“Filth?” Simmy said, his words laced with disgust. “The dead girl? That dead girl was your daughter, George. What in God’s name has happened to you?”

A heavy silence filled the room. It seemed to grow with each passing second, and if someone didn’t speak soon, I was certain we’d all be crushed beneath its weight.

“You murdered your own daughter,” Simmy said.

Romanov shrugged. “That shows how little you understand and how weak you are. My daughter died a month ago, long before I killed the disgusting lesbyanka she’d become. No flesh and blood of mine would ever act in such an immoral way. She’d never engage in that kind of behavior.” He pressed the knife harder against Sarah Dumont’s throat. “She’d never touch something like this the way she did.”

“Speaking of touching,” I said. “Those three men you had attack me yesterday…”

Simmy turned to me. “Who attacked you?”

“Who were they?” I said.

“Men for hire. Our kind of men,” he said, using the literal translation of Nashi . “I told them that you were one of us, to treat you with respect.”

I got the feeling he expected me to be grateful. Given a different trio might have done far worse to me, he would have had a point if he hadn’t been the man who’d ordered my abduction in the first place. Still, strangely, I couldn’t help but appreciate his insistence I not be harmed.

“That’s neither here nor there,” I said. “That’s in the past. Here’s the present situation. If you hurt Sarah, these men are going to kill you. But if you let her go, you might walk out of here alive.”

“I’m going to walk out of here with her,” Romanov said. “You’re going to get me a robe and give me the keys to that black Mercedes parked by the gate. We’re going to drive away and you’re not going to follow us or this thing dies.”

When Simmy answered, his entire demeanor changed. Gone was his scolding tone and any sound of displeasure. In their place was the voice of the corporate negotiator, the one who held the most leverage over the eventual outcome of the matter at hand and was dictating proceedings.

“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen, George. You have two choices. You can be shot where you stand or you can have the keys to the car and leave here unharmed, if you let her go.”