Russian Roulette (Alex Rider)

by Horowitz, Anthony

  “I can’t believe what you did,” I said. There was a bandage around my neck, already stained with sweat and blood. It hurt a lot and I knew that I would always have a scar where Hunter’s bullet had cut me, but in a strange way I was glad. I did not want to forget this night. I sipped the whisky. It burnt the back of my throat. “What now?” I asked.

  “A slog back to Iquitos and then Paris. At least it’ll be a little cooler over there. And no damn mosquitoes!” He slapped one on the side of his neck.

  We were both at peace. The Commander was dead, killed in extraordinary circumstances. We had the whisky. The moon was shining. And we were alone in the rainforest. That’s the only way that I can explain the conversation that followed. At least, that was how it seemed at the time.

  “Hunter,” I said. “Why are you with Scorpia?” I would never normally have asked. It was wrong. It was insolent. But out here, it didn’t seem to matter.

  I thought he might snap at me but he reached out for the bottle and answered quietly, “Why does anyone join Scorpia? Why did you?”

  “You know why,” I said. “I didn’t really have any choice.”

  “We all make choices, Cossack. Who we are in this world, what we do in it. Generous or selfish. Happy or sad. Good or evil. It’s all down to choice.”

  “And you chose this?”

  “I’m not sure it was the right choice but I’ve got nobody else to blame, if that’s what you mean.” He paused, holding the bottle in front of him. “I was in a pub,” he said. “It was in the middle of London … in Soho. Me and a couple of friends. We were just having a drink, minding our own business. But there was a man in there, a taxi driver as it turned out … a big fat guy in a sheepskin coat. He overheard us talking and realized we were all army, and he began to make obnoxious remarks. Stupid things. I should have just ignored him or walked out. That was what my friends wanted to do.

  “But I’d been drinking myself and the two of us got into an argument. It was so bloody stupid. The next thing I knew, I’d knocked him to the ground. Even then, there were a dozen ways I could have hit him. But I’d let my training get the better of me. He didn’t get up and suddenly the police were there and I realized what I’d done.” He paused. “I’d killed him.”

  He fell silent. All around us, the insects continued their chatter. There wasn’t a breath of wind.

  “I was dismissed from the army and thrown into jail,” he went on. “As it happened, I wasn’t locked up for very long. My old regiment pulled a few strings and I had a good lawyer. He managed to put in a claim of self-defence and I was let out on appeal. But after that I was finished. No one was going to employ me and even if they did, d’you think I wanted to spend the rest of my life as a security guard or behind a desk? I didn’t know what to do. And then Scorpia came along and offered me this. And I said yes.”

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been married three years and there’s a kid on the way. At least I’m going to have enough money to be able to look after him.” He paused. “If it is a boy. You see what I mean? My choice.”

  The whisky bottle passed between us one last time. It was almost empty.

  “Maybe it’s not too late for you to change your mind,” he said.

  I was startled. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking about New York. I’m thinking about the last few weeks … and today. You seem like a nice kid to me, Cossack. Not one of Scorpia’s usual recruits at all. I wonder if you’ve really got it in you to be like me. Marat and Sam … they don’t give a damn. They’ve got no imagination. But you…?”

  “I can do this,” I said.

  “But do you really want to? I’m not trying to dissuade you. That’s the last thing I want to do. I just want you to be aware that once you start, there’s no going back. After the first kill – that’s it.”

  He hesitated. We both did. I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “If I backed out now, Scorpia would kill me.”

  “I rather doubt it. They’d be annoyed, of course. But I think you’re exaggerating your own importance. They’d very quickly forget you. Anyway, you’ve learnt enough to keep away from them. You could change your identity, your appearance, start somewhere new. The world is a big place – and there are all sorts of different things you could be doing in it.”

  “Is that what you’re advising me?” I asked.

  “I’m not advising you anything. I’m just laying out the options.”

  I’m not sure what I would have said if the conversation had continued but just then we heard something; the croaking of a frog at the edge of the clearing. At least, that was what it would have sounded like to anyone approaching, but it wasn’t a frog that was native to the Amazon rainforest. One of the wires that Hunter had set down had just been tripped and what we were hearing was a recording, a warning. Hunter was on his feet instantly, crouching down, signalling to me with an outstretched hand. I had a gun. It had been supplied to me when we were in Iquitos – a Browning 9mm semi-automatic, popular with the Peruvian Army and unusual in that it held thirteen rounds of ammunition. It was fully loaded.

  I heard another sound. The single crack of a branch breaking, about twenty metres away. A beam of light flickered between the trees, thrown by a powerful torch. There was no time to gather up our things and no point in wondering who they were, how they had followed us here. We had already planned what to do if this happened. We got up and began to move.

  They came in from all sides. Six of the Commander’s men had taken it upon themselves to follow us into the rainforest. Why? Their employer was dead and there was going to be no reward for bringing in his killers. Perhaps they were genuinely angry. We had, after all, removed the source of their livelihood. I saw all of them as they arrived. The moon was so bright that they barely had any need of their torches. They were high on drugs, dirty and dishevelled with hollow faces, bright eyes and straggly beards.

  Two of them had cigarettes dangling from their mouths. They were wearing bits and pieces of military uniform with machine guns slung over their shoulders. One of them had a dog, a pit bull terrier, on a chain. The dog had brought them here. It began to bark, straining against the leash, knowing we were close.

  But the men saw no one. They had arrived at an empty clearing with a tree lying on its side, nobody in front of it, nobody behind, termites crawling over the bark. Our empty hammocks were in front of them. Perhaps their torches picked up the empty whisky bottle on the ground.

  “¡Vamos a hacerlo!” One of them gave the order in Spanish, his voice deep and guttural.

  As one, the men opened fire, spraying the clearing with bullets, shooting into the surrounding jungle. After the peace of the night, the noise was deafening. For at least thirty seconds the clearing blazed white and the surrounding leaves and branches were chopped to smithereens. None of the men knew what they were doing. They didn’t care that they had no target.

  We waited until their clips had run out and then we stood up, dead wood cascading off our shoulders. We had been right next to the soldiers, lying face down, inside the fallen tree. We were covered with termites, which were crawling over our backs and into our clothes. But termites do not bite you. They do not sting. We had disturbed their habitat and they were all over us but we didn’t care.

  We opened fire. The soldiers saw us too late. I was not sure what happened next, whether I actually killed any of them. There was a blaze of gunfire, again incredibly loud, and I saw the ragged figures being blown off their feet. One of them managed to fire again but the bullets went nowhere, into the air. I was firing wildly but Hunter was utterly precise and mechanical, choosing his targets then squeezing the trigger again and again. It was all over very quickly. The six men were dead. There didn’t seem to be any more on the way.

  I brushed termites off my shoulders and out of my hair. “Is that all of them?” I whispered.

  “I don’t think so,” Hunter said. “But we’d better
get moving.”

  We collected our things.

  “I shot them,” I said. “What you were saying to me … you were wrong. I was with you. I killed some of them.” I wasn’t even sure it was true. Hunter could have taken out all six himself. But we weren’t going to argue about it now.

  He shook his head. “If you killed…” He put the emphasis on the first word. “You did it in the dark, in self-defence. That doesn’t make you a murderer. It’s not the same.”

  “Why not?” I couldn’t understand him. What was he trying to achieve?

  He turned and suddenly there was a real darkness in his eyes. “You want to know what the difference is, Yassen?” He had used my real name for the first time. “We have another job in Paris, very different to this one. You want to know what it’s really like to kill? You’re about to find out.”

  ПАРИЖ

  PARIS

  Our target in Paris was a man called Christophe Vosque, a senior officer in the Police nationale. He was, as it happens, totally corrupt. He had received payments from Scorpia, and in return had turned a blind eye to many of their operations in France. But recently he had got greedy. He was demanding more payments and, worse still, he had been in secret talks with the DGSE, the French secret service. He was planning a double-cross and Scorpia had decided to make an example of him by taking him out. This was to be a punishment killing. It had to make headlines.

  However, for once Scorpia had got their intelligence wrong. No sooner had we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport than we were informed that Vosque was not in the city after all. He had gone on a five-day training course, meaning that we had the entire week to ourselves. Hunter wasn’t at all put out.

  “We need a rest,” he said. “And since Scorpia’s paying, we might as well check ourselves in somewhere decent. I can show you around Paris. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

  He booked us into the luxurious Hotel George V, close to the Champs-Elysées. It was far more than decent. In fact, I had never stayed anywhere like this. The hotel was all velvet curtains, chandeliers, thick carpets, tinkling pianos and massive flower displays. My bathroom was marble. The bath had gold taps. Everyone who stayed here was rich and they weren’t afraid to show it. I wondered if Hunter had brought me here for a reason. Normally we would have stayed somewhere more discreet and out-of-the-way but I suspected that he was testing me, throwing me into this gorgeous, alien environment to see how I would cope. He spoke excellent French; mine was rudimentary. He was in his late twenties and already well travelled; I was nineteen. I think it amused him to see me dealing with the receptionists, the managers and the waiters in their stiff collars and black ties, trying to convince them that I had as much right to be there as anyone … trying to convince myself.

  It was certainly true that we both deserved a rest. The journey into the rainforest and out again, the death of the Commander, the shoot-out that had followed, our time in Iquitos, even the long flight back to Europe had exhausted us, and we both had to be in first-rate condition when we came up against Vosque. And if that meant eating the best food, and waking up in five-star luxury, I wasn’t going to argue.

  We had adjoining rooms on the third floor and both spent the first twenty-four hours asleep. When I woke up, I ordered room service … the biggest breakfast I have ever eaten, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. I had a hot bath with the foam spilling over the edges. I sprawled on the bed and watched TV. They had English and Russian channels but I forced myself to listen in French, trying to attune myself to the language.

  The next day, Hunter showed me the city. I had done more travelling in the past few weeks – Venice, New York, Peru – than I had in my entire life, but I loved every minute of my time in Paris. A few of the things we did were obvious. We went up the Eiffel Tower. We visited Notre-Dame. We strolled around the Louvre and stood in front of its most famous works of art. All this could have been boring. I have never been very interested in tourism, staring at things and taking photographs of them simply because they are there. But Hunter made it fun. He had stories and insights that brought everything to life. Standing in front of the Mona Lisa he told me how it had once been stolen – that was back in 1911 – and explained how he would set about stealing it now. He described how Notre-Dame had been constructed, an incredible feat of engineering, more than eight hundred years before. And he took me to many unexpected places: the sewers, the flea markets, Père-Lachaise Cemetery with its bizarre mausoleums and famous residents, the sculpture garden where Rodin had once lived.

  But what I enjoyed most was just walking the streets – along the Seine, through the Latin quarter, around the Marais. It was quite cold – spring had still not quite arrived – but the sun was out and there was a sparkle in the air. We drifted in and out of coffee houses. We browsed in antique shops and bought clothes on the Avenue Montaigne. We ate fantastic ice cream at Maison Berthillon on the Île-St-Louis. Curiously, this was where the founder members of Scorpia had first come together – but perhaps wisely there was no blue plaque to commemorate the event.

  We ate extremely well in restaurants that were empty of tourists. Hunter didn’t like to spend a fortune on food and never ordered alcohol. He preferred grenadine, the red syrup he had introduced me to in Venice. I drink it to this day.

  We never once discussed the business that had brought us here but we were quietly preparing for it. At six o’clock every morning we went on a two-hour run together… It was a spectacular circuit down the Champs-Elysées, through the Jardins des Tuileries and across the Seine. There was a pool and a gym at the hotel and we swam and worked out for two hours or more. I sometimes wondered what people made of us. We could have been friends on holiday or perhaps, given our age difference, an older and a younger brother. That was how it felt sometimes. Hunter never refered back to our conversation in the jungle, although some of the things he had said remained in my mind.

  We had arrived on a Monday. On the Thursday, Hunter received a note from the concierge as we were leaving the hotel and read it quickly without showing it to me. After that, I sensed that something had changed. We took the Metro to Montmartre that day and walked around the narrow streets with all the artists’ studios and drank coffee in one of the squares. It was just warm enough to sit outside. By now we were relaxed in each other’s company but I could tell that Hunter was still agitated. It was only when we reached the great white church of Sacré-Cœur, with its astonishing views of Paris, that he turned to me.

  “I need to have some time on my own,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.” I was surprised that he even needed to ask.

  “There’s someone I have to meet,” he went on. He was more uneasy than I had ever seen him. “But I’m breaking the rules. We’re both under cover. We’re working. Do you understand what I’m saying? If Julia Rothman found out about this, she wouldn’t be pleased.”

  “I won’t tell her anything,” I said. And I meant it. I would never have betrayed Hunter.

  “Thank you,” he said. “We can meet back at the hotel.”

  I walked away but I was still curious. The more I knew about Hunter the more I got the feeling that there were so many things he wasn’t telling me. So when I reached the street corner, I turned back. I wanted to know what he was going to do.

  And that was when I saw her.

  She was standing on the terrace in front of the main entrance of the church. There were quite a few tourists around but she stood out because she was alone and pregnant. She was quite small – the French would say petite – with long fair hair and pale skin, wearing a loose, baggy jacket with her hands tucked into her pockets. She was pretty.

  Hunter was walking towards her. She saw him and I saw her face light up with joy. She hurried over to him. And then the two of them were in each other’s arms. Her head was pressed against his chest. He was stroking her hair. Two lovers on the steps of Sacré-Cœur … what could be more Parisian? I turned the corner and walked away.<
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  The next day, Vosque returned.

  He lived in the fifth arrondissement, in a quiet street of flats and houses not far from the Panthéon, the elaborate church that had been modelled on a similar building in Rome and where many of the great and good of France were buried. Hunter had received a full briefing in an envelope sealed with a scorpion. I guessed it had been delivered to his hotel room by someone like Marcus, who had done the same for me in New York. The two of us went to a café on the Champs-Elysées. It might have seemed odd to discuss this sort of business in a public place but in fact it was safer to choose somewhere completely random. We could make sure we weren’t being followed. And we knew it couldn’t be bugged.

  Vosque provided a very different challenge to the Commander. He might be easier to reach but he probably knew we were coming so there was a good chance he had taken precautions. He would carry a gun. He could expect protection from the French police. As far as they were concerned, he was one of them, a senior officer and a man to be respected. If he was gunned down in the street, there would be an immediate outcry. Ports and airports would be closed. We would find ourselves at the centre of an international manhunt.

  He lived alone. Hunter produced some photographs of his address. They had been provided by Scorpia and showed a ground-floor apartment with glass doors and double-height windows on the far side of a courtyard shared by two more flats. Although one of these was empty, the other was occupied by a young artist, a potential witness. An archway opened onto the street. There was no other way in and an armed policeman – a gendarme – had been stationed in the little room that had once been the porter’s lodge. To reach Vosque, we had to get past him.

  In all our discussions, we called Vosque “the Cop”. As always, it was easier to depersonalize him. On the Saturday, we watched him leave the flat and walk to his local supermarket, two streets away. He was a short, bullish man, in his late forties. As he walked, he swung his fists and you could imagine him lashing out at anyone who got in his way. He was almost bald with a thick moustache that didn’t quite stretch to the end of his lip. He was wearing an old-fashioned suit but no tie. After he had done his shopping, he stopped at a café for a cigar and a demi-pression of beer. Nobody had escorted him and I thought it would be a simple matter to shoot him where he sat. We could do it without being seen.