Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

I presumed the man was Vladimir Sharkovsky. Fagin had warned me that he was dangerous but that was only half the story. I had seen enough of him in the flat to know that he was a psychopath. No ordinary person had eyes like that. He had been utterly cold when I had attacked him but when his temper flared up it had been like a demon leaping out of the craters of hell. He hadn’t called the police . That was the worst of it. He was taking me somewhere and when he got there he could do whatever he wanted to me. I dreaded to think what that might be. Was he planning to torture me as a punishment for what I had done? I had heard that many hundreds of children went missing from the streets of Moscow every year. It might well be my fate to become one of them.

I cannot say how long the journey took. I couldn’t see my watch with my hands tied behind me and after a while, I dozed off. I didn’t sleep exactly. I simply drifted out of consciousness. It would have been nice to have dreamt of my parents and of my life in Estrov, to have spent my last hours on this planet reliving happier times, but I was in too much pain. Every few minutes, my eyes would blink open and I would once again find myself struggling for breath in that almost airtight compartment, desperately wanting to straighten up, to go to the toilet, to be anywhere but there. The car just rumbled on.

Eventually, we arrived. I felt us slowing down. Then we stopped and I heard a man’s voice, a command being given, followed by what sounded like the click of a metal gate. When we set off again, there was a different surface – gravel – beneath the tyres. The car stopped and the engine was turned off. The driver’s door opened and shut and I heard footsteps on the gravel. I tensed myself, waiting for the car boot to be released, but it didn’t happen. The footsteps disappeared into the distance and when, a long time later, they hadn’t come back, I began to think that I was going to be left here all night, like a piece of baggage nobody needed.

And so it was. I was left in the dark, in silence, with no idea how long it was going to last or what would happen when I was released. It was being done on purpose, of course, to break my spirit, to make me suffer. I was the victim of my own worst imaginings. I had nothing to do except to count every single painful minute. Unable to move, to stretch myself, my whole body was in torment. My only option was to try to sleep, fighting back all the dread that came from being tied up and left in this small space. It was a long, hideous night. By the time the boot was opened, I was no longer afraid of death. I think I would have welcomed it. A short tunnel of horrors followed by release. It would be worth the journey.

There was a man leaning over me; not the one from the Moscow flat. He was quite simply massive – with oversized shoulders and a thick neck – and dressed in a cheap grey suit, a white shirt and a black tie. His hair was blond and thickly oiled so that it stood up in spikes. He was wearing dark glasses and there was a radio transmitter behind his ear that had a wire curling down to a throat mike. His skin was utterly white and it occurred to me that he might have been in a prison or some other institution all his life. He didn’t look as if he had ever spent any time in the sun.

He reached down and with a single movement dragged me out of the boot, then stood me up so that I was balanced against the back of the car. I would have fallen otherwise. There was no strength in my legs. He looked at me with hardly any expression apart from disgust and I couldn’t blame him for that. I stank. My clothes were crumpled. My face was caked with blood. He reached into his jacket pocket and I winced as he produced a knife. I was quite ready for him to plunge it into my chest but he just leant over me and cut the cords of my wrists. My hands fell free. They looked horrible. The flesh of my wrists was blue, covered in welts. I couldn’t move my fingers but I felt the pins and needles as the blood supply was restored.

“You are to come with us,” he said. He had a deep, gravelly voice. He spoke without emotion, as if he didn’t actually enjoy speaking.

Us? I glanced round and saw a second man standing at the side of the car. For a moment, I thought my brain was playing tricks on me after my long captivity. This second man was identical to the first – the same height, the same looks, the same clothes. They were twins… just like the two girls I had once known in Estrov. But it was almost as if these two had trained themselves to be indistinguishable. They had the same haircut, the same sunglasses. They even moved at exactly the same time, like mirror images.

The first twin hadn’t bothered to find out my name. He didn’t want to know anything about me.

“Where are we?” I asked. The words came out clumsily because of the damage to my face.

“No questions. Do as you are told.”

He gestured. I began to walk and for the first time I was able to take in my surroundings. I was in what looked like a large and very beautiful park with pathways, neatly cut grass and trees. The park was surrounded by a brick wall, several metres high with razor wire around the top, and I could make out the tips of more trees on the other side. The car that I had been in was a black Lexus. It had been parked quite close to an arched gateway with a barrier that rose and fell, the only way out, I suspected. A guardhouse stood next to it. This was a wooden construction with a large glass window and I could see a man in uniform, watching us as we walked together. My first thought was that I had been brought to some sort of prison. There were arc lamps and CCTV cameras set at intervals along the wall.

We were heading towards a cluster of eight wooden houses that had been tucked out of sight behind some fir trees, about fifty metres from the gates. They were new-looking, completely featureless and almost identical. In the West, they would be called portakabins, although they were a little larger and they’d been built two high with external staircases connecting them. I noticed that there were no bars on any of the windows. These weren’t cells. I guessed they provided accommodation for the people who worked here. A larger, brick building stood nearby perhaps with a dining room attached.

I glanced behind me. And although I hadn’t been given permission, I came to a stumbling halt. Where the hell was I? I had never seen anything like this.

A gravel drive with lamps and flower beds on each side led from the entrance through the parkland and up to a monumental white house. Not a house. A palace… and not one that had come out of any fairy tale. It was a modern building, newly built, pure white, with two wings stretching out from a central block which alone must have contained about fifty rooms. There were terraces with white balustrades, white columns with triple-height doorways opening behind, walkways and balconies, and above it all a white dome like that of a planetarium or perhaps a cathedral. Half a dozen satellite dishes had been mounted on the roof along with television aerials and a radio tower. A man stood there, watching me through binoculars. He was wearing the same uniform as the man at the gate – but with a difference. Even at this distance I could see that he had a machine gun strapped to his shoulder.

Closer to the house, the gardens became more ornamental with statues on plinths, marble benches, beautifully tended walkways and arbours, bushes cut into fantastic shapes, more flower beds laid out in intricate patterns. An army of gardeners would have to work the whole year round to keep it all looking like this and even as I stood there I saw some of them pushing wheelbarrows or on their knees weeding. The drive broke into two as it reached the front door, sweeping round a white marble fountain that had gods and mermaids all tangled together and water splashing down. I saw two Rolls Royces, a Bentley and a Ferrari parked outside. But the owner didn’t just have cars. His private helicopter was parked on a concrete square, discreetly located next to a summer house. It was under canvas with the blades tied down.