The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

by Orest Stelmach

  I thought of my father, brother and deceased husband.

  “I’ve known a few of those,” I said.

  “He was born in Leningrad–now St. Petersburg –after the siege of World War II. The city was in ruins. He grew up in poverty and hopelessness, in the courtyards surrounding the apartment buildings, where drinking, smoking and fistfights were the norm. He was short and skinny but he never backed down in a fight, and even though he was the runt of the litter he was the enforcer among his group of friends. He had a vicious temper but what made him so effective as a leader among children, what made him so dangerous, was that he could control it.

  “He was the type of kid who would see a friend getting abused, walk over, help break it up, and smooth things over. Then, after a few hours passed and all seemed to be forgotten, he’d come back, find the thug that beat his friend, and hurt him. He was calculating that way. He would wait until the field was tilted in his favor before he got his vengeance.

  “When Valery joined the KGB after university it was overstaffed and the Soviet Union was falling apart. He ended up stationed in Berlin cutting newspaper articles and filing useless reports. But he stayed true to himself. He controlled his temper and he didn’t make enemies. And he let his greatest attribute of all get him promoted.”

  “Which was?”

  “He didn’t offend anyone. He didn’t intimidate anyone. He appeared accessible, average, and totally malleable. He was polite. He remembered the birthday of the wives of men senior to him. If a man fell out of favor, and he was a friend, Putler didn’t abandon him. He didn’t shun him like a disease the way most KGB officers did. At least not right away. That’s why his predecessor’s inner circle chose him to be Prime Minister. To people in the field, Putler seemed average, but to the leaders of the country he appeared amazing. He had redeeming qualities they didn’t see in themselves. He even looked different. He was fit and wore stylish European suits. He wasn’t fat and bloated like most Russian politicians.”

  “And now the west considers him the embodiment of evil,” I said.

  “The west sees Valery as the embodiment of evil because that’s exactly how he wants the west to see him.”

  “And he wants to be perceived as the root of all evil in the west because …”

  “Because it makes him the most popular man in Russia. It’s the world against Russia. Russia against the world. Russians crave a return to their former imperialist ways because it gives them a source of joy. It gives them something to believe in. Valery embodies that hope.”

  “But they need something to believe in because he runs a repressive regime,” I said. “There’s no political, economic, or personal freedom.”

  “But in his mind, if it weren’t him, some other man would be doing the exact same thing. He knows no other form of government. And to him and his ilk, America and the west are hypocrisies. You have social problems. Inequality of income, persecuted minorities. Your system of governing creates far from perfect results.”

  “We elect our senators and representatives, our governors and our mayors. Our president doesn’t appoint them to suit his needs. I’ll stick with our system of government, thank you very much. There’s a reason Russian oligarchs park most of their money in London, isn’t there?”

  He shrugged. I detected uncertainty beneath his bravado. It was intangible and might have been invisible to anyone who hadn’t spent a certain amount of time with him. But it was there, in his heart and soul. I could feel it.

  I thought of Romanov and his thesis yet again, and wondered if this insecurity and his quest to find Iskra’s murderer could be related.

  “Simmy,” I said, after we sipped our drinks, “you hired me to look into Iskra’s death because Maria Romanova is a close friend of yours.”

  “Was a close friend. Is an old friend. Semantics, yes?”

  “How did that come about? Did you learn of Iskra’s death and contact Maria, or did she call asking for help?”

  Simmy looked confused.

  “Humor me,” I said. “There’s a reason I’m asking.”

  “I heard about it through normal channels. The expat community is a small one, where my social circle is concerned. Then I called Maria and spoke to her—and George—and offered to help.”

  “Offered?”

  “Yes,” Simmy said. “Good point. George wasn’t too keen on getting any assistance from me but I insisted anyways.”

  “And this is the only reason you hired me?”

  Simmy frowned. “I don’t understand. What other possible reason could there be?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Where is this coming from? Why are you asking me this question?”

  “The odds are high that a Russian national killed Iskra. I’m just trying—”

  “Why do you say this?” Simmy said. “Do you know something? Do you have new information?”

  “Call it instinct,” I said, “based on some new interviews I had today.”

  “With whom did you have these interviews?”

  I motioned with my hands for him to calm down. “Let me do my job. When I have tangible news, you’ll be the first person I call. But it’s important that I know you’re being completely honest with me.”

  Simmy sat back in his chair and reflected on my question for a brief moment.

  “I hired you as a favor for an old friend. Beyond that, if I’m keeping anything secret from you,” he said, his voice back to the soft and supple one with which he’d started the evening, “the matryoshka will inform you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  When I got back to the hotel, I changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and snagged a Diet Coke from the minibar, except they don’t call it Diet Coke in most of Europe. They call it Coca-Coca Light because most Europeans have never heard of a “diet” food. And yet America is the one with the obesity problem. Is there any doubt the two are related?

  After a sip of my artificially flavored soft drink, I put the matryoshka and a box of chocolates on my bed and propped myself up with a pillow. Then I took apart Simmy’s gift and assembled each of the seven nesting dolls individually. Afterwards, I arranged them in a row by size.

  I popped a caramel into my mouth and studied them. Simmy was a thoughtful man who enjoyed musing philosophically, but his observations about the nesting dolls sounded scripted. A wooden object didn’t have a conscience. And once you coupled the proper tops and bottoms and assembled the seven figurines, the dolls held no remaining mysteries. Or did they?

  It was Simmy’s choice of words that made me think there was more to the dolls than met the eye. Why did he tell me to weigh their individual consciences? Was that his way to suggest that the relative weights of the individual dolls offered a clue to the supposed knowledge they contained? Or was I thinking too much?

  I held each pair of dolls of successive heights in my hands. The weights seemed proportionate to the dolls’ sizes. If there were something hidden inside the wood that comprised one of the figurines, surely I would have sensed the extra weight in my hands. Unless the object in question was very light, I thought.

  There was only one way to find out for certain.

  I called room service and ordered some herbal tea. I also asked the staff to send up a food scale. I told them I’d bought some snacks and needed to be precise with my food consumption. I doubt it was the strangest request they’d ever encountered.

  Half an hour later, the food and the scale arrived. I tipped the delivery man ten euro to show my appreciation for the scale and he seemed thrilled. After he left, I put the scale and the nesting dolls on my desk.

  I assigned each doll a number from one to seven, starting with the largest and ending with the smallest. I used the paper-thin measuring tape in my travel-size sewing kit to estimate the length, width and depth of each doll. Then I weighed them individually, and calculated a weight per cubic inch ratio for each one. When I was finished, I had my answer.

  Six
of the dolls produced ratios close to the average. One of them, however, was an outlier. Doll number two, the second largest nesting doll, weighed more for its size than the others. I’d been unable to detect this manually because doll number one was so much larger than number two that the smaller one still felt light in my hands. But my statistical analysis had proven that number two should have weighed even less.

  There were only two possible explanations for this. Either the craftsman had used a different kind of wood for the second doll, or there was a foreign object inside it. I doubted the craftsman had used different wood for one of the dolls. I suspected the raw material was machine-cut from one batch. The craft was in the painting.

  That suggested there really was something else inside doll number two. I picked it up and caressed it the way Simmy had suggested.

  As I studied its construction, I reflected on how much Simmy trusted me. I couldn’t shake the notion that such trust was the manifestation of grand affection. He’d shared information with me about his relationship with Valery Putler. These were the type of intimate details that could get a man in serious trouble. Had a man ever displayed such faith in me and my discretion? Had I ever mattered that much to any person? My parents had given me life and raised me, but I was their child and that was different. Beyond the parental link, my mother and father had remained emotionally detached with me. I’d never felt as though I’d truly known them. I’d known my brother when I was a child and he was my hero, but we’d grown apart as we’d matured. And as for my ex-husband …

  I opened doll number two and ran my fingers along the interior of the top and bottom pieces. The sides appeared too thin to hide any object. The rounded top was equally fine, but the base had a little extra wood to it, probably for ballast. If I were an artist instructed to hide something within the doll, I would focus on its lower half. The bottom was painted pink—the color of borsch preferred by Russians as opposed to Ukrainians, with sour cream added. Meticulous sanding, some fine glue, and the bold-colored paint could hide an opening created to sneak a foreign object inside.

  My next course of action displeased me, for although the doll was an inanimate thing, I didn’t relish the surgery I needed to perform. The matryoshka was a gift from Simmy and I hated the thought of destroying it. But even more than that, Simmy’s comment had imbued the damn thing with a certain mysticism. I hoped I wasn’t provoking some sort of curse by damaging it. Not that I believed in curses per say, but as a policy, I avoided encouraging negative superstitions on the off-chance there was actually some substance to them.

  I picked up the hotel phone again. This time I called housekeeping and requested a small handsaw. Anything that could cut wood with some precision, I said. I told them one of the handles on my luggage had come undone and rather than leave it dangling during my trip I wanted to cut it off. Did they have a Swiss army knife, preferably one of the Huntsman variety, that came with a saw and a knife? My years as Ukrainian girl scout had informed me on the subject.

  This time I suspected my request was a bit more eccentric. Nevertheless, fifteen minutes later a man in plain clothes arrived with a vintage Dutch army knife. It had an olive handle and looked as though it had survived a war. I tipped him ten euro, too, and promised to call housekeeping as soon as I was done.

  Then I sawed through the bottom of doll number two. The tool’s saw was a crude device, built to rip and cut with certainty, not precision. It had some rust but the blade tore through the balsa wood with a modest amount of pressure. Half an inch in, I hit something solid. I pulled the blade out. Whatever I’d hit was black in color and resistant to sawing. I cut around it until the bottom of the doll fell off. Then I plucked the black object from within.

  It was rectangular in shape, one inch by one and half inches in length and width, and no more than a quarter inch in thickness. The saw had left a few scrapes. I suspected it was a box built to protect something but there was no hinge or indication of how one might open it. The box seemed a little heavier than the plastic warranted. I shook it and listened, but didn’t hear anything move inside.

  I reached for my box of caramels. Mouth full of chocolate, I tried to think of other plastic devices. The remote control to some of the latest gizmos came to mind. They were relatively small and simple in design. The backs came off for battery replacement but they weren’t always easy to remove. One had to press down in the appropriate place and then push to slide the cover off …

  I succeeded on my third try.

  One side of the box slid out lengthwise.

  A silver key shimmered inside.

  I pulled it out. It had notches on both sides and looked brand new. There was no lettering on it. No indication whatsoever of what it might open.

  Simmy’s words echoed in my head.

  “To understand the Russian nesting doll is to the key to understanding a Russian man, which is the key to understanding life.”

  I’d laughed when I’d heard it but I wasn’t laughing now. Perhaps what Simmy really meant was that there was a key inside one of the nesting dolls, and only with that key would I, Nadia Tesla, understand him, Simeon Simeonovich. And only if I understood him would I understand my life and the truth about myself.

  I didn’t know how a key could possibly help me understand him, or how understanding him would help me comprehend my own life, but I was certain that I had to find out, no matter what the risk to life and limb, just as surely as I knew that finding Iskra’s killer was the prerequisite to discovering the answer.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next morning I worked out at the hotel gym, showered, and went to the dining room for breakfast. I stuck to my spinach and egg white omelet and tried to avoid the pastry table but it didn’t work. Yesterday’s encounter with the thugs had finally tilted the chemical imbalance in my brain past the point of endurance. I inhaled the first chocolate croissant and savored the sublime chocolate filling. It wasn’t saturated with sugar the way it might have been in many American bakeries. I was reaching for the other one I’d added to my plate when I got the shock of the morning.

  Maria Romanova stood in front of my table, a crimson folio the size of a tablet computer in her hands.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  I stood up as soon as I saw her. It was an act of respect—she was my elder—and gratitude, because I knew right away that she’d come bearing some sort of information. Why else would she be at my hotel? But more telling was her appearance. She looked even more dreadful than when I’d first met her, as though someone or something were literally sucking the life out of her.

  She wanted to tell me something. She needed to tell me something, I thought.

  “You’re still here,” she said.

  I smiled. “Where else would I be?”

  She hesitated. “I thought you might have gone back home.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I didn’t know when you were leaving. I don’t think we ever discussed that, did we?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re right. We didn’t.”

  I asked her to sit down, my heart pounding with the possibility that somehow Maria Romanova knew about my abduction yesterday, and the threat I’d received. And if she was aware of it, she’d still come to visit me just in case I was still here. Perhaps she’d assumed I’d made flight reservations yesterday for an early departure this morning.

  “Coffee or tea?” I said, motioning for a waiter to come over. “And you must eat something. It’s a buffet but they can make you an omelet if you like.”

  She settled for white toast with raspberry jam and some tea. This time she spread the jam on the bread as opposed to adding a dollop to her tea. That was a most promising development, I thought.

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” I said.

  “It is,” she said, before sipping her tea. “And speaking of surprises, I have one for you.”

  She unzipped the folio. Instead of a tablet computer, it held a picture frame. Maria pulled the frame
out, bottom side up, and handed it to me without turning it over.

  “I don’t think you ever saw this picture,” she said. “It’s a recent one. It was in my bedroom. I thought you might like to see it.”

  I held my breath as I flipped the frame to study the picture but what I saw quickly doused my enthusiasm. It was just another photo of the family and their surrogate son, Sasha, posing at an outdoor concert, a throng of people between them and the bandstand in the distance. It was a relatively recent shot, I was sure, because Iskra was smiling. These were among her final days, I thought—the Sarah Dumont days, I’d come to call them, knowing her lover was the source of the joy in her expression. In that regard and all others, the picture was the same as the ones I’d seen in her home. The spectators surrounding the family had their backs to the camera, which had a shallow depth of focus that added to the photo’s appeal. Other than the Romanovs, everyone and everything else was pretty much out of focus.

  “Nice,” I said. “When was this taken?”

  “The weekend before she died. It’s the last picture I have of my girl,” Maria said.

  I continued to study it to no benefit. When I glanced at Maria, she was spooning some jam into her tea. I suspected my hopes and fantasies had gotten the better of me. As the jam slip off her spoon into the steaming tea, any optimism I had that she’d arrived informed about my plight and armed with valuable information disappeared with it.

  I touched the edge of frame with the tips of my fingertips as though it were a priceless object.

  “She was very lovely, Iskra was,” I said, and pushed the picture across the table back to her mother.

  Maria mixed the jam into her tea, stared randomly into space, then turned her attention to me and looked completely lucid. “That she was.”