Washington DC does not lack for very good restaurants, but several of the best can claim to be under the control of one man. In the case of ten restaurants in the city, that master restaurateur is New Delhi-born Ashok Bajaj, who might be compared with New York’s Danny Meyer or Chicago’s Rich Melman, operators for whom the word “sufficient” is not to be found in their vocabularies. The Washington Post called him “a major force” on the fine dining scene; The New York Times called him “arguably the most successful restaurateur in Washington;” and GQ magazine named him one of the "50 Most Powerful People in Washington."
        Remarkably, Bajaj has achieved all he has by diverting from his safe zone of Indian cuisine into Italian, American and French, and my recent visit to Washington proved he’s lost none of his knack for quality control. He is known to his patrons and staff as a restaurateur who visits each of his restaurants every day, and one of his staff told me he somehow arrives before and leaves after everyone else.
         As one might expect, Bajaj entered the once staid DC dining scene with an Indian restaurant in 1988, when such restaurants were more like curry houses, admitting that he had a difficult time convincing landlords to give him a space because, they said, “Indian restaurants smell.” Persevering, Bajaj opened Bombay Club, an elegant venue that did indeed smell of the wondrous aromas of high end Indian cuisine. President George H. W. Bush was among his first customers, and the restaurant was immediately hailed as one of the capital’s finest.
 
      Even finer was Rasika (633 D Street NW, with a West End branch at 1190 New NW), of which Washingtonian magazine reported that Angelina Jolie is a regular when she’s in town in her role as an activist, and both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were, too. Rasika’s chef Vikram Sunderam brought modern Indian cuisine into brighter focus, winning both local, national and international accolades. Among them mine, which I have been bestowing on Rasika for decades now. More than once I’ve called it the best Indian restaurant in America, and, thereby, one of the best restaurants of any kind. A recent visit did nothing to change my mind.
      Rasika is very beautiful and looks fresher than ever, with two dining spaces in shadowy lighting and spice-like tones of cinnamon and turmeric. Both rooms are as popular at lunch as at dinner. Whenever I go I simply ask Sunderam to bring out whatever he wishes—which is always too much, but who could refuse food this luscious and just made to take home?
      If you want to choose yourself, it would be difficult to go wrong in any category, from appetizers like taia baingan of purple eggplant and spiced potato with a peanut sauce ($12) to avocado banana chat spiced with cumin, red chili powder, tamarind and date chutney ($10).  A dish called ragda pattice is made of spiced potatoes, chickpeas, tamarind date and mint chutney ($10), and the tandoori-fired lamb chops with mace, cardamon, cashew nuts and ginger ($36) is a signature dish for good reason. Halibut Malai curry ($26) is aromatic with curry leaves, garlic, green chili and lemon cashew rice. Vegetarians have ample choice throughout every section of the menu.
         Bajaj’s Knightsbridge Group had a couple of flops along the way, but over more than thirty years he has not much tacked with the winds of culinary fads and always focused on fine dining, and he’s opened a few casual Indian concepts named Bindaas around town that are very popular. For 27 years his refined Oval Room was one of the true power lunch restaurants in the city, every day full of pols and lobbyists, entertainers and gourmets. Then, during the street riots in DC two years ago, a mob broke in the doors and trashed the place while the capital police stood by and let it go. Bajaj decided to replace the Oval Room with a French restaurant called La Bise (800 Connecticut Avenue NW) in a decidedly different design and slightly more casual style, with two different dining rooms with mirrored walls, striped banquettes and murals of Paris.
          Chef Michael Fusano, out of Southern California, has a facile hand with various techniques, which means his cheese-rich gougères, puffed up, crisp and oozing a Comté espuma ($10), are irresistible. There is also good bread and  rich butter on the table. I began with a Hudson Valley foie gras torchon with summer’s peaches, Sauternes sabayon, and for textural contrast, pistachio-quinoa granola and toasted brioche ($20). Spanish octopus has a delightful addition of charred fennel with Kalamata olives and the hot southern Italian condiment called n’duja ($18).
      Monkfish ($36) is first poached in butter, which sinks below the skin and suffuses the flesh, then is served with merguez sausage and carrots.  Beef cheek bourguignon is a hearty and satisfying dish cooked in red wine (though it needed other vegetal flavors and some more fat), sided with olive oil whipped potatoes (butter would have been better), bacon lardons and mushrooms ($36).
      Blueberry millefeuille and a soufflé (both $14) topped off a finely wrought meal.
    

             The space that used to be Bajaj’s Bibiana is now Modena (1199 H Street NW), and now the focus is on sophisticated but approachable Italian regional cucina driven by seasonality. The first chef, John Melfi, whose food I recently sampled, has just returned to Italy, though I’ve been assured that his current replacement, Ben Lambert, will continue the menu as previously set for the time being.
     Modena has a stylish interior of two rooms, one with tablecloths, one without. The former is separated by a frosted glass wall from the latter, with Prussian blue chairs, fresh flowers and shimmering chandeliers; the other is much the same, decked out with photos of Italian food and car culture.
     Things don’t begin in a moda Italiana: I started with Tsukiji hamachi crudo ($20), touched with trout roe, lipstick radish, red dulce seaweed, sherry miso and a whiskey barrel shoyu soy, all of which contributed subtle elements to the raw fish. Softshell crabs were quickly fried tempura style, with an avocado purée, cucumbers, shaved asparagus and Meyer lemon vinaigrette ($28); Polpette meatballs made from beef, pork and veal came with a lovely Parmesan-enriched polenta and greens ($16).  
     There is a tendency to overembellish dishes here, especially the pastas, which are, for reasons that escape me, made with wholewheat flour. That more or less worked with spaghetti alla chitarra cacio e pepe ($23) but not so much with whole wheat tagliatelle with beef, pork and veal Bolognese ($25). Potato gnocchi were, however, excellent, dressed with water buffalo butter, black trumpet mushrooms and pecorino ($24), and caramelized onion ravioli with morels, spring peas, brown beach mushrooms, huitlacoche mushroom butter and pecorino was elaborate but sumptuous.
      Very good indeed was the pan-roasted branzino, accompanied by clams, yellowfin potatoes, spinach, another touch of trout roe and a tangy lemon grass–ginger espuma ($31). Potato-crusted Hokkaido scallops  were good—but why from Hokkaido, when American scallops are local and superior?—accompanied by a fennel confit, charred morel mushrooms, spring onion and spring garlic vinaigrette ($39).
         Desserts are as lavish and beautifully presented as all else at Modena.

      Sababa (3311 Connecticut Avenue NW), coming from the Arabic word tzababa for excellence and meaning “cool” in Hebrew slang, is a long slip of a room and bar featuring the food of those two side-by-side cultures, while also taking in those of Bulgaria, Romania, North Africa, Yemen, Ethiopia, Georgia, the Balkans, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, and Turkey, whose cuisines share many similarities. In its colors and fixtures Sababa is crafted to evoke the port of Tel Aviv, with Mediterranean tiles on the floor, sails on the ceiling and in the lounge a Bedouin-style tent with community tables.

      Chef Ryan Moore, who has worked at José Andrés’ modernist minibar and The Bazaar by José Andrés in Beverly Hills, honed his skills with Mediterranean food at DC’s Zatinya, and it’s easy enough to taste how much he loves this kind of food and service of small, though generous, plates of zesty mezze and bigger dishes.

      I can hardly distinguish the virtues of so many terrific flavors, beginning with roasted halloumi with chewy dates, honey and charred lemon ($12); charred eggplant with herbs, lovely pomegranate and pistachio ($12); a plate of chickpeas and rice with lentils, pasta, sweet fried onions and a spicy tomato sauce ($12)—all tantalizing in every savory and textural respect. There’s also a wonderful Israeli salad of cucumbers, tomato, onion, strawberries and “drunken goat’s cheese” ($12).

      Of the main courses, the lamb shank was superb, big enough for two at least, with maitake mushrooms, bulgur wheat and baby arugula ($29). I was puzzled as to why the chef would serve salmon on the wood grill with pomegranate marinade ($17), since salmon is not exactly a favorite fish of the Middle East or the Mediterranean.

      Konafi cake is one of those crispy, honeyed shredded filo dough desserts, here with an apricot labne filling ($9), while golden mahalabia   is a delectable turmeric-colored custard with saffron syrup, candied ginger, oranges and pecans ($9).

         There is a slew of excellent Italian restaurants in New York that are jammed every night with regulars and visitors and seem to coast along without benefit of the hyperventilated press in search of the new five-table trattoria in Brooklyn or Queens whose exposure gives it a six-week flourish of interest than fades quickly.
       The Masseria Group of Caprese childhood friends and natives Peppe Iuele and Enzo Ruggiero, along with Barese Executive Chef Pino Coladonato opened their first venture, La Masseria (the farmhouse), in the Theater District in 2004 to overnight success, followed by branches in Providence and Palm Beach, as well as a brand new Parma Nuova on the East Side.
      Masseria dei Vini, with an attached Café, came along in 2014, near Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and it was intended to be a somewhat more casual spot with a focus on wine. Ironically, while the original La Masseria has a very pretty, rustic farmhouse look, Masseria dei Vini is a strikingly modern, shimmering, well-lighted dining room with linen-covered tables with charming lights, a long wine case wall and a fine bar that makes this one of the most beautiful restaurants on the West Side. Because of its proximity to entertainment venues, early arriving clientele dress well, though afterwards you may be sitting next to men in shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, as if this were some beach side snack bar in Amalfi.
       The wine list, as you’d expect, is judiciously packed with the best Italian bottlings as well as the requisite sparkling wines. However, the bartender needs to get more serious about making cocktails: Both a sidecar and a daiquiri were inexpertly rendered.
       The greeting is always warm, the noise level high but not distressingly so, and the experienced waitstaff are efficient, cordial and work in synch, although around nine o’clock they may mysteriously disappear from the dining room for minutes on end.
      

    Antipasti are often ignored by patrons, but Masseria dei Vini’s deserve your attention, not least the superb and colorful salads and the mixed fried foods (left) for the table with calamari, shrimp, artichokes and asparagus ($28.50), all piping hot, crisp and tender. Gorgeously rosy carpaccio of beef comes with arugula and hearts of palm with small pastry puffs ($28.50).
         There is also a selection of pizzas, and while I don’t know if the imported Vesuvian lava rock makes a difference, the crust is perfect, and among the twelve pies offered, I was very impressed by the mozzarella fior de latte, fontina, robiola and parmigiano with a black truffle sauce of exceptional richness ($32.50), which could serve four as an appetizer.
         The menu lists a dozen fresh pastas, and all I’ve tasted have been outstanding, showing careful attention to texture, including the ravioli di Angelina filled with caciotta cheese in a creamy tomato sauce ($29.50). The potato gnocchi (below) really did, for once, taste like potato, dressed with an Italian black truffle sauce ($32.50). There is always a risotto of the day, too.
         For our main courses we let Colodonato choose, which brought us Mediterranean orata (right) roasted with black olives, capers and cherry tomatoes ($38.50), and a classic Milanese costoletta topped with arugula and tomato salad ($56).
        Key to everything is the sparkling freshness and color of the dishes; nothing seems turned out onto the plate with abandon; careful attention to heat means two pastas on one plate will be equally warm, and the filleted seafood hot.
         There is, of course, the usual tiramisù ($14), as good as any, but the vanilla-flavored ricotta cheesecake ($15) was applaudably not too sweet, so the flavor of the ricotta was true. Delizia al limone ($14) was a nice surprise as was a lemon glazed custard sponge cake ($14).
       If prices seem high, though no more so than at similar Italian restaurants around town, always remember that portions are easily shared, including pastas, and, obviously, a full plate of pasta can be a main course.
        Though eight years old now, Masseria dei Vini has the look of something brand new, as modern in its design as in the freshness of its approach and its generosity of spirit. Yet, it lacks any pretension and, whether it’s dinner before a show at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center or at eight ‘o’clock or afterwards—the kitchen stays open till 11 on weekdays and midnight on weekends—the welcome will be warm, honest and relaxing, even if you have to run to catch a curtain. Then again, you might want to think about a long summer’s lunch.

Open from noon through dinner.

      Meanwhile David had been in frequent touch with Gerald Kiley at Interpol, both of them trying to piece together wholly unrelated incidents that happened on three different continents to men who were bound only by their immense wealth and their prospects as auction bidders. The fact that all of them had been on Kiley’s original list of prospects made the idea of a connection to the auction more plausible, if someone or some organization were trying to eliminate competition.
         “If they wanted to scare the others off,” asked David, “why wouldn’t they let their targets know why they were being targeted?”
         “That bothers me, too,” said Kiley. “Unless you literally intend to kill off every one of the targets without telling anyone and thereby eliminating any competition, wouldn’t it be more advisable to just scare the pants off some of them?”
         “Right, and to have the resources to commit that much mayhem sounds more like mob hits, maybe out of Macau. But that would infuriate the Chinese and threaten to shut down the mobs.”
         “Maybe, or else the U.S.-based mobs were hired to do the hits.”
         “That would take a shit load of money, Gerald. We’re not talking about some wiseguy with a stiletto or a piece of piano wire. Plus the fact that the Italians or Russians would never bother with anything so sophisticated as arsenic poisoning in the case of Saito. They don’t like their victims to linger and maybe talk.”
         “Well, you’re the expert on that.”
         “Also, didn’t you say the highest amount paid for a kidnapping was $40 million?”
         Kiley nodded, “Something like that.”     
       “Well, if that’s the case, it seems to me the kidnappers would be idiots to take anything less from some billionaire art collector than they could make from the job itself.”
         “What if Shui or Dorenbosch or any one of the other bidders told the kidnappers to just keep the ransom, as long as they kept Correia out of sight until after the auction?”
         “That’s possible,” said David, “though that’s a long time to hold a guy and keep negotiations going.”
         “And then there’s our Chinese delegate. Was it a hit? Was it an accident he just drove away from, knowing he’d get diplomatic immunity?”
         “Well, if it was a hit, who ordered it up? Whoever it was must have been counting on that immunity to go into effect. But, if the Chinese government believed or found out it was a hit, they’d probably be less likely to try to protect the guy because the word might get out that V.I.P. billionaire Lauden was targeted, which would put them in a terrible light internationally. They might just turn the assassin over to NYPD or the F.B.I.”
         “Maybe,” said Kiley, “but, if the Chinese thought it was an accident, they’d protect their man, even if he was an asshole for doing what he did.   And being a staff member for China’s U.N. delegation sounds like an awful good job I wouldn’t want to jeopardize.  Y’know, this is starting to remind me of what Winston Churchill called Russia: ‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ You could say the same about Communist China.”
         “So, Agent Kiley,” said David rubbing his forehead, “What we’ve got here is the most circumstantial case imaginable.”
         Kiley widened his eyes and said, “What case?”

         As the two of them stared off into space in Gerald Kiley’s office, another agent knocked on the open door and said, “Kiley, you’re gonna want to see this,” and handed him a single sheet of official Interpol paper that had just been torn from a fax machine. Kiley read it, then gasped, “Holy shit, Stepanossky stepped on a land mine in Croatia! Blew his foot off, but he’s alive.”
         He turned to the agent who brought the news and asked, “This is all we know so far?”
         “That’s it.”
         “Okay, let’s gather everything we can as quickly as we can. How the hell does a guy like Stepanossky step on a freaking land mine?”
         David held up his hands to say, “Don’t look at me!”
       There was more news the next day and Kiley faxed David news reports that had been pieced together about the Stepanossky incident.  UPI and Reuters had put short articles out on their wires to be picked up internationally. With most of its bureaus in Europe closed down, The International Herald Tribune, as usual, resorted to the wire stories, and the London papers added a few details the others lacked.  Kiley was waiting for translations from the Russian papers and Novi list, the oldest and most independent newspaper in Croatia.
         All reports said that Stepanossky was in Croatia on an autumn wild boar hunting trip, based out of his dacha in the eastern forests of Zvecevo. While driving back from a day in the wilds, Stepanossky’s Range Rover struck an off-road mine that destroyed the vehicle, killing his companion, who was driving, and blowing off Stepanossky’s left foot.
         The European reports briefly identified Stepanossky in the usual way—billionaire Russian oligarch and former K.G.B. colonel—some intimating he had earned his money through manipulation of the post-Soviet system and political friends. Had Stepanossky died, some of the papers would have run an obituary on him in the days following.
         David brought these reports up to Katie’s apartment and asked Kiley to fax any of the translations there when he had them.
         “This is no coincidence,” said Katie, who’d opened a bottle of chilled white wine.
         “Hard to imagine any other way. But in each case so far, except for the kidnapping of Correia, there is no clear-cut evidence of foul play.  Jesus, if you’re going to be driving around Croatia and you hit a land mine, maybe you shouldn’t have been driving around Croatia.”
         “And Lauden shouldn’t have been standing outside his townhouse at exactly 11 a.m.?”
         “I know, I know. It’s just very tough to zero in on who might have engineered all these accidents and poisonings and kidnappings and now land mines in a convenient place just when Comrade Stepanossky is driving home after a nice day of boar hunting.”
         “Well, are they sure it was a land mine?”
         It was the kind of too obvious question that might have been swept aside as naïve. But then David thought that whatever it was that blew Stepanossky’s foot off might have been timed or set off.  David was quiet for a moment, and when Katie asked “What?” he waved his hand and said, “Hold on, I’m thinking.”
         David rubbed his chin, bit a knuckle, then said, “Y’know, it could have been an IED.”
         “What’s an IED?” asked Katie, after first thinking she’d heard “IUD.”
         “Improvised explosive device, a roadside bomb. A booby trap, basically. There’s plenty of simple ways to make one and you can attach it to an unattached detonating mechanism. They wreaked hell on our troops in Iraq. These days all sides in every war uses them, some very sophisticated, some made out of a kit.”
         “So you think maybe it was not an old land mine that accidentally blew up but an IED that was primed to blow?”
         “They might have rigged an old land mine. That way investigators wouldn’t know if it had been deliberately detonated. All the wires and stuff would have been destroyed. But try and prove it.”
         “This is getting scary,” said Katie. “I thought Kiley said Stepanossky is his number one suspect in all these crimes.”
         “Ex-K.G.B.—which by the way, you never really are ‘ex’—and a guy who made his billions through corruption and manipulation?  He seems the only one with the kind of background and personality that would commit murder and have the connections internationally to pull it off.  Or it could have been one of his Russian rivals.”
         “So, if Stepanossky’s the one getting blown up, you’re saying this could have been an accident?”
         “Yeah, like Saito died of a heart attack, Correia was just picked up by his local kidnappers, and Lauden was sideswiped in an accident on his own street. All perfectly plausible. And no fingerprints anywhere.”
         “You know what this is like?” asked Katie.
         “Corralling cats?”
         “Uh, no, I was thinking more like Alice in Wonderland where Alice is trying to make sense out of many stories that seem to be related but aren’t at all.  Every character gives her clues but they’re all contradictory.”
         “Works for me. You’re the writer. I just don’t know how to find out the truth of what happened in each of these incidents. If we could get that Chinese delegate’s ass out of his embassy, maybe we could get closer to what’s going on.”
         David and Kiley looked at each other as if to say, this is all too pat, too much of a coincidence. But they also knew that during the Serbo-Croatian War, which had only ended two years before via U.N. peace treaty, more than a million land mines had been planted by both sides, and a high percentage of those were still buried.
         “My brain is twirling here,” said David, “These mines go back years now.  It’s not like an assassin saw Stepanossky walking along the road and got him to step on a mine.”
         “I know. First, we’ve got to find out what Stepanossky was doing in Croatia and then all the details of the incident. Maybe he just had a really bad day. Well, maybe we’ll have some more info by tomorrow. It will certainly be covered in the European press and the official Russian newspapers. We monitor all the main ones.”
         “Okay, just let me know what you hear, Gerald.”
         “Hey, David,” said Kiley, “You mind calling me Gerry?”
         David smiled and said, “I was waiting for the opportunity.”
         Immediately after leaving the Interpol offices David called Katie and told her, very briefly, the news, hoping she’d ask, “Can you come up to my apartment and fill me in on everything?”  Instead she told him she was on her way out the door but maybe they could get together when David knew more about Stepanossky.
         “Okay,” he said, “soon as I know, we’ll get together.”
         “Sounds good,” said Katie.
         That’s what she always says, thought David.