Russian Roulette (Alex Rider)

by Horowitz, Anthony

  “You talk to me about your grandfather. Forget him. He’s dead and you have nothing more to do with him. If he’s anything to you, he’s your enemy because if the intelligence services can find him, they’ll dig him up and take his DNA and that will lead them to you. Why are you so proud of the fact that he fought against the Nazis? Is it because they’re the bad guys? Forget it! You’re the bad guy now … as bad as any of them. In fact, you’re worse because you have no beliefs. You kill simply because you’re paid. And while you’re at it, you might as well stop talking about Nazis, Communists, Fascists, the Ku Klux Klan… As far as you’re concerned, you have no politics and every political party is the same. You no longer believe in anything, Cossack. You don’t even believe in God. That is the choice you’ve made.”

  He paused.

  “Why did you blush when I asked you about New York?”

  “Because you were right.” What else could I say?

  “You showed your feelings to me here, at this table. You’re embarrassed so you blush. You got angry when I asked you about your laces and you showed that too. Are you going to cry when you meet your next target? Are you going to tremble when you’re interviewed by the police? If you cannot learn to hide your emotions, you might as well give up now. And then there’s your watch…”

  I knew he would come to that. I wished now that I hadn’t mentioned it.

  “You are Cossack, the invisible killer. You’ve been successful in New York, in Paris, in Peru. But the police examine the CCTV footage and what do they see? Somebody was there at all three scenes and – guess what! – they were wearing a Russian watch, a Pobeda. You might as well leave a visiting card next to the body.” He shook his head. “If you want to be in this business, sentimentality is the last thing you can afford. Trust me, it will kill you.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I’m glad. Did you enjoy the meal?”

  I was about to answer. Then I had second thoughts. “Perhaps it’s better if I don’t tell you,” I said.

  Hunter nodded and got to his feet. “Well, you wolfed it down fast enough. Let’s get back to the island. Tomorrow I want to see you fight.”

  He made me fight like no one else.

  The next morning, at nine o’clock, we met in the gymnasium. The room was long and narrow with walls that curved overhead and windows that were too high up to provide a view. When there were monks on the island, this might have been where they took their meals, sitting in silence and contemplation. But since then it had been adapted with arc lights, stadium seating and a fighting area fourteen metres square made up of a tatami mat that offered little comfort when you fell. We were both dressed in karate-gi, the white, loose-fitting tunics and trousers used in karate. Hatsumi Saburo was watching from one of the stands. I could tell that he was not happy. He was sitting with his legs apart, his hands on his knees, almost challenging the new arrival to take him on. Marat and Sam were also there, along with a new student who had just joined us, a young Chinese guy who never spoke a word to me and whose name I never learnt.

  We walked onto the mat together and stood face to face. Hunter was about three inches taller than me and heavier, more muscular. I knew he would have an advantage over me both in his physical reach and in the fact that he was more experienced. He began by bowing towards me, the traditional rei that is the first thing every combatant learns at karate school. I bowed back. And that was my first mistake. I didn’t even see the move. Something slammed into the side of my face and suddenly I was on my back, tasting blood where I had bitten my tongue.

  Hunter leant over me. “What do you think this is?” he demanded. “You think we’re here to play games, to be polite to each other? That’s your first mistake, Cossack. You shouldn’t trust me. Don’t trust anyone.”

  He reached out a hand to help me to my feet. I took it – but instead of getting up I suddenly changed my grip, pulling him towards me and pressing down on his wrist. I’d adapted a ninjutsu move known as Ura Gyaku, or the Inside Twist, and it should have brought him spinning onto the mat. I thought I heard a grunt of satisfaction from HS but it might just as well have been derision because Hunter had been expecting my move and slammed his knee into my upper arm. If I hadn’t let go, he’d have broken it. Instantly, I rolled aside, just missing a foot strike that whistled past my head. A second later, I was on my feet. The two of us squared up again, both of us taking the Number One Posture – arms raised, our bodies turned so as to provide the smallest target possible.

  I learnt more in the next twenty minutes than I had in my entire time on Malagosto. No. That’s not quite true. With HS and Mr Nye I had acquired a thorough grounding in judo, karate and ninjutsu. In an incredibly short amount of time, they had taken me all the way from novice to third or fourth kyu – which is to say, brown or white belt. I would spend the rest of my life building on what they had given me, and they were both far ahead of Hunter when it came to basic martial arts techniques. But he had something they hadn’t. As Oliver d’Arc had told me, Hunter had seen action as a soldier in Africa and Ireland. I would later learn that he had been with the Parachute Regiment, a rapid intervention strike force and one of the toughest outfits in the British Army. He knew how to fight in a way that they didn’t. They taught me the rules but he broke them. In that first fight we had together, he did things that simply shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. Once or twice I glimpsed HS shaking his head in disbelief, watching his own training manual being torn up. I was knocked down countless times and not once did I see the move coming. Nothing I had been taught seemed to work against him.

  After twenty minutes, he stepped back and signalled that the fight was over. “All right, Cossack, that will do for now.” He smiled and held out a hand – as if to say “no hard feelings”. I reached out and took it, but this time I was ready. Before he could throw me, which of course was what he intended, I twisted round, using his own weight against him. Hunter disappeared over my shoulder and crashed down onto the mat. He had landed on his back but sprang up at once.

  “You’re learning.” He smiled his approval, then walked away, snatching up a bottle of water. I watched him, grateful that in the very last moment of the fight I had at least done something right and hadn’t made a complete fool of myself in front of my teachers. At the same time it crossed my mind that he might actually have allowed me to bring him down, simply to let me save face. I had liked and admired Hunter when I had eaten with him the night before. But now I felt a sort of closeness to him. I was determined not to let him down.

  We spent a lot of time together over the next few weeks – running, swimming, competing on the assault course, facing each other with more hand-to-hand combat in the gym. He was also training the other recruits and I know that they felt exactly the same way about him as I did. He was a natural teacher. Whether it was target practice or night-time scuba-diving, he brought out the best in us. Julia Rothman was also an admirer. The two of them had dinner several times when she returned to Venice, although I was never invited.

  I have to say that I was not very comfortable on Malagosto. It was as if I had left school after taking my exams only to find myself inexplicably back again. Everyone knew that I had failed in New York. And time was moving on. My nineteenth birthday had come and gone without anyone noticing it … including me. It was time to move on, to stand on my own two feet.

  So I was very glad when Sefton Nye called me to his office and told me that I would be leaving in a few days. “We all agree that the last time was too early,” he said. “But on this occasion you will be travelling with John Rider. He is taking care of some business for us and you will be there strictly as his assistant. You will do everything he says. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He had been holding my latest report, all the work of the last five weeks. I watched him as he got up from his desk and slid it into the filing cabinet against the wall. “It is very unusual for anyone to be given a second chance in this organizatio
n,” he added. He twisted round and suddenly he was gazing at me, his great, white eyes challenging me. “We can put New York behind us. John Rider speaks very highly of you and that’s what matters. It’s good to learn from your mistakes but I will give you one piece of advice, Yassen. Don’t make any more.”

  I could not sleep that night. There was a storm over Venice – no wind or rain but huge sheets of lightning that flared across the sky, turning the domes and the towers of the city into black cut-outs. Winter was approaching and as I lay in bed, the curtains flapping, I could feel a chill in the air. I was excited about the mission. I was flying all the way to Peru – and if that went well, I would find myself in Paris. But there was something else. John Rider had told me almost nothing about himself. I was expected to follow him across the world, to obey him without question and yet the man was a complete mystery to me. Was he a criminal? He might have been in the British Army but why had he left? How had he found his way into Scorpia?

  Suddenly I wanted to know more about John Rider. It didn’t seem fair. After all, he’d been given my files. He knew everything about me. How could we travel together when everything was so one-sided? How could I ever face him on even terms?

  I slipped out of bed and got dressed. I’d made a decision without even thinking it through. It was stupid and it might be dangerous but what was my new life about if it wasn’t about taking risks? Nye kept files on everyone in his office. I had seen him lock mine away only a few hours ago. He would also have a file on John Rider. His office was on the other side of the quadrangle, just a few metres from where I was standing now. Breaking in would be easy. After all, I’d been trained.

  Everyone was asleep. Nobody saw me as I left the accommodation block and crossed the cloisters of what had once been the monastery. The door to Nye’s office wasn’t even locked. There were some on the island who would have regarded that as an unforgivable breach of security and it puzzled me – but I suppose he felt he was safe enough. It would have been impossible to reach Malagosto from the mainland without being detected and he knew everything about everyone who was here. Who would even have considered breaking in? The lightning flashed silently and for a brief moment I saw the iron chandelier, the books, the different clocks, the pirate faces – all of them stark white, frozen. It was as if the storm was warning me, urging me to leave while I still could. I felt a pulse of warm air, pushing against me. This was madness. I shouldn’t be here.

  But still I was determined. The next day I was leaving with John Rider. We were going to be together for a week or more and I would feel more comfortable – less unequal – if I knew something of his background. I’ll admit that I was curious but it also made sense. I had been encouraged to learn everything I could about my targets. It seemed only right that I should apply the same rule to a man who was taking me into danger and on whom my life might depend.

  I went over to the cabinet – the one where Nye had deposited my personal file. I had brought the tools I would need from my bedroom, although examining the lock, I saw it was much more sophisticated than anything I had opened before. Another dazzling burst of lightning. My own shadow seemed to leap over my shoulder. I focused on the lock, testing it with the first pick.

  And then, with shocking violence, I felt myself seized from behind in a headlock, two fists crossed behind my neck, and although I immediately brought my hands up in a counter-move, reaching out for the wrists, I knew I was too late and that one sudden wrench would snap my spinal cord, killing me instantly. How could it have happened? I was certain nobody had followed me in.

  For perhaps three seconds I stayed where I was, kneeling there, caught in the death grip, waiting for the crack that would be the sound of my own neck breaking. It didn’t come. I felt the hands relax. I twisted round. Hunter was standing over me.

  “Cossack!” he said.

  “Hunter…”

  “What are you doing here?” The lightning flickered but perhaps the worst of the storm had passed. “Let’s go outside,” Hunter said. “You don’t want to be found in here.”

  We went back out and stood beneath the bell tower. I could feel that strange mixture of hot and cold in the air. We were enclosed by the walls of the monastery. We were alone but we spoke in low voices.

  “Tell me what you were doing,” Hunter said. His face was in shadow but I could feel his eyes probing me.

  I had already decided what I was going to say. I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Nye had my file this morning,” I said. “I wanted to read it.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to know I was ready. After what happened in New York, I didn’t want to let you down.”

  “And you thought your report would tell you that?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re an idiot, Cossack.” That was what he said but there was no anger in his voice. If anything, he was amused. “I saw you go in and I followed you,” he explained. “I didn’t know who you were. I could have killed you.”

  “I didn’t hear you,” I said.

  He ignored that. “If I didn’t think you were ready, I wouldn’t be taking you,” he said. He thought for a moment. “I have a feeling it would be better if neither of us said anything about this little incident. If Sefton Nye knew you’d been creeping about in his study, he might get the wrong idea. I suggest you go back to bed. We’ve got an early start. The boat’s coming tomorrow at seven o’clock.”

  “Thanks, Hunter.”

  “Don’t thank me. Just don’t pull a stunt like this again. And…” He turned and walked away. “Get some sleep!”

  I was up before sunrise. My gear was packed. I had my passport and credit cards along with the dollars I’d saved from New York. All my visas had been arranged.

  There was no one around as I walked down to the edge of the lagoon, my feet crunching on the gravel. For a long time I stood there, watching the sun climb over Venice, different shades of pink, orange and finally blue rippling through the sky. I knew that my training was over and that I would not be coming back to Malagosto, at least not as a student.

  I thought about Hunter, all the lessons he had taught me. He would be with me very soon and the two of us were going to travel together. He was going to give me the one thing that I had been unable to find in all my time on the island. I suppose you could call it the killer instinct. It was all I lacked.

  I trusted him completely. There was something I had to do.

  I took off my watch, my old Pobeda. As I weighed it in my hand, I saw my father giving it to me. I heard his voice. I was just nine years old, so young, still in short trousers, living in the house in Estrov.

  My grandfather’s watch.

  I held it one last time, then swung my arm and threw it into the lagoon.

  КОМАНДИP

  THE COMMANDER

  His name was Gabriel Sweetman and he was a drug lord, sometimes known as “the Sugar Man”, more often as “the Commander”.

  He was born in the slums of Mexico City. Nothing is known about his parents but he first came to the attention of the police when he was eight years old, selling missing car parts to motorists. The reason the parts were missing was because he had stolen them, helped by his twelve-year-old sister, Maria. When he was twelve, he sold his sister. By then, it was said that he had killed for the first time. He moved into the drugs business when he was thirteen, first dealing on the street, then working his way up until he became the lieutenant to “Sunny” Gomez, one of the biggest traffickers in Mexico. At the time, it was estimated that Gomez was smuggling three million dollars’ worth of heroin and cocaine into America every day.

  Sweetman murdered Gomez and took over his business. He also married Gomez’s wife, a former Miss Acapulco called Tracey. Thirty years later, it was rumoured that Sweetman was worth twenty-five billion dollars. He was transporting cocaine all over the world, using a fleet of Boeing 727 jet aircraft which he also owned. He had murdered over two thousand people, including fifteen judges and two hundred pol
ice officers. Sweetman would kill anyone who crossed his path and he liked to do it slowly. Some of his enemies he buried alive. It was well known that he was mad, but only his family doctor had been brave enough to say so. He had killed the family doctor.

  I do not know how or why he had come to the attention of Scorpia. It is possible that they been hired to take him out by another drug lord. It might even have been the Mexican or the American government. He certainly was not being executed because he was bad. Scorpia was occasionally involved in drug trafficking itself, although it was a dirty and an unpleasant business. People who spend large amounts of money doing harm to themselves and to their customers are not usually very reliable. Sweetman had to die because someone had paid. That was all it came down to.

  And it was going to be expensive because this was not an easy kill. Sweetman looked after himself. In fact, he made Vladimir Sharkovsky look clumsy and careless by comparison.

  Sweetman kept a permanent retinue around him – not just six bodyguards but an entire platoon. This was how he had got the name of the Commander. He had houses in Los Angeles, Miami and Mexico City, each one as well fortified as an army command post. The houses were kept in twenty-four-hour readiness. He never let anyone know when he was leaving or when he was about to arrive, and when he did travel it was first by private jet and then in an armour-plated, bulletproof limousine with two outriders on motorbikes and more bodyguards in front and behind. He had four food tasters, one in each of his properties.

  The house where he spent most of his time was in the middle of the Amazon jungle, one hundred miles south of Iquitos. This is one of the few cities in the world that cannot be reached by road, and there were no roads going anywhere near the house either. Trying to approach on foot would be to risk attacks from jaguars, vipers, anacondas, black caimans, piranhas, tarantulas or any other of the fifty deadly creatures that inhabited the rainforest … assuming you weren’t bitten to death by mosquitoes first. Sweetman himself came and went by helicopter. He had complete faith in the pilot, largely because the pilot’s elderly parents were his permanent guests and he had given instructions for them to suffer very horribly if anything ever happened to him.