The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

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The best way to find someone who doesn’t want to be found is to make him search for you.

For an American woman in a foreign country, that can be problematic. Fortunately, I was in Amsterdam. Most people come to Amsterdam in search of something. You can find anything you want and all of it is legal. All I had to do to find the murder victim’s secret lover was to become what he wanted.

It took me four days to make the necessary arrangements. The biggest impediment to my mission was my American passport. The landlords who rented the type of office I needed leased space only to tenants with EU passports. I finally found one who was willing to make an exception in the spirit of international cooperation. My offer to pay a fifty percent premium in rent may have played a small role, too.

The landlady’s office was located on a canal with Venetian views and a pair of majestic white swans near a bar called the Black Tiger in the city’s oldest section. The landlady greeted me at the door with a chilling once-over that left me fearing I’d gone too far this time. She looked like a sewer-dwelling cannibal who’d snuck above ground to lure her next meal to her nest, latex skin stretched taut over a bare skeleton disguised by a designer suit. If her profit were threatened, I could picture her crossing the threshold from stark to stark raving mad and consuming my body. God only knew what she’d suffered to become the woman she appeared to be today.

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