Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

She took her time. I felt her examining me and tried not to show how afraid I was. “That’s very generous of you, Mr Grant,” she said, at last. “But what gives you the idea that I can’t deal with this myself?”

I hadn’t seen her lower her hand beneath the surface of the table but when she raised it, she was holding a gun, a silver revolver that had been polished until it shone. She held it almost like a fashion accessory, a perfectly manicured finger curling around the trigger. It was pointing at me and I could see that she was deadly serious. She intended to use it.

I tried to speak. No words came out.

“It’s rather a shame,” Mrs Rothman went on. “I don’t enjoy killing, but you know how it is. Scorpia will not accept a second-rate job.” Her hand hadn’t moved but her eyes slid back to Grant. “Sharkovsky isn’t dead.”

“What?” Grant was shocked.

Mrs Rothman moved her arm so that the gun was facing him. She pulled the trigger. Grant was killed instantly, propelled backwards in his chair, crashing onto the floor.

I stared. The noise of the explosion was ringing in my ears. She swung the gun back to me.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.

“Sharkovsky’s dead!” I gasped. It was all I could think to say. “He was shot three times.”

“That may well be true. Unfortunately, our intelligence is that he survived. He’s in hospital in Moscow. He’s critical. But the doctors say he’ll pull through.”

I didn’t know how to react to this information. It seemed impossible. The shots had been fired at close range. I had seen him thrown off his feet. And yet I had always said he was the devil. Perhaps it would take more than bullets to end his life.

The gun was still pointing at me. I waited for Mrs Rothman to fire again. But suddenly she smiled as if nothing had happened, put the gun down and stood up.

“Would you like a glass of Coke?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Please don’t ask me to repeat myself, Yassen. I find it very boring. We can’t sit and talk here, with a dead body in the room. It isn’t dignified. Let’s go next door.”

She slid out from behind the desk and I followed her through a door that I hadn’t noticed before – it was part of a bookshelf covered with fake books so as not to spoil the pattern. There was a much larger living room behind the door with two plump sofas on either side of a glass table and a massive stone fireplace, though no fire. Fresh flowers had been arranged in a vase and the scent of them hung in the air. Drinks – Coke for me, iced tea for her – had already been served.

We sat down.

“Were you shocked by that, Yassen?” she asked.

I shook my head, not quite daring to speak yet.

“It was very unpleasant but I’m afraid you can’t allow anyone too many chances in our line of work. It sends out the wrong message. This wasn’t the first time Mr Grant had made mistakes. Even bringing you here and not disposing of you when you were in Boltino frankly made me question his judgement. But never mind that now. Here you are and I want to talk about you. I know a little about you but I’d like to hear the rest. Your parents are dead, I understand.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how it happened. Tell me all of it. See if you can keep it brief, though. I’m only interested in the bare essentials. I have a long day…”

So I told her everything. Right then, I couldn’t think of any reason not to. Estrov, the factory, Moscow, Dima, Demetyev, Sharkovsky… even I was surprised how my whole life could boil down to so few words. She listened with what I can only describe as polite interest. You would have thought that some of the things that had happened to me would have caused an expression of concern or sympathy. She really didn’t care.

“It’s an interesting story,” she said, when I had finished. “And you told it very well.” She sipped her tea. I noticed that her lipstick left bright red marks on the glass. “The strange thing is that the late Mr Grant was quite right. You could be very useful to us.”

“Who are you?” I asked. Then I added, “Scorpia…”

“Ah yes. Scorpia. I’m not entirely sure about the name if you want the truth. The letters stand for Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence and Assassination, but that’s only a few of the things we get up to. They could have added kidnapping, blackmail, terrorism, drug trafficking and vice, but that wouldn’t make a word. Anyway, we’ve got to be called something and I suppose Scorpia has a nice ring to it.

“I’m on the executive board. Right now there are twelve of us. Please don’t get the idea that we’re monsters. We’re not even criminals. In fact, quite a few of us used to work in the intelligence services… England, France, Israel, Japan… but it’s a fast-changing world and we realized that we could do much better if we went into business for ourselves. You’d be amazed how many governments need to subcontract their dirty work. Think about it. Why risk your own people, spying on your enemies, when you can simply pay us to do it for you? Why start a war when you can pick up the phone and get someone to kill the head of state? It’s cheaper. Fewer people get hurt. In a way, Scorpia has been quite helpful when it comes to world peace. We still work for virtually all the intelligence services and that must tell you something about us. A lot of the time we’re doing exactly the same jobs that we were doing before. Just at a higher price.”

“You were a spy?” I asked.

“Actually, Yassen, I wasn’t. I’m from Wales. Do you know where that is? Believe it or not, I was brought up in a tiny mining community. My parents used to sing in the local choir. They’re in jail now and I was in an orphanage when I was six years old. My life has been quite similar to yours in some ways. But as you can see, I’ve been rather more successful.”

It was warm in the room. The sun was streaming in through the windows, dazzling me. I waited for her to continue.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” she said. “There’s something quite special about you, Yassen, even if you probably don’t appreciate yourself. Do you see what I’m getting at? You’re a survivor, yes. But you’re more than that. In your own way, you’re unique!

“You see, pretty much everyone in the world is on a databank somewhere. The moment you’re born, your details get put into a computer, and computers are getting more and more powerful by the day. Right now I could pick up the telephone and in half an hour I would know anything and everything about anyone you care to name. And it’s not just names and that sort of thing. You break into a house and leave a fingerprint or one tiny little piece of DNA and the international police will track you down, no matter where in the world you are. A crime committed in Rio de Janeiro can be solved overnight at Scotland Yard – and, believe me, as the technology changes, it’s going to get much, much worse.

“But you’re different. The Russian authorities have done you a great favour. They’ve wiped you out. The village you were brought up in no longer exists. You have no parents. I would imagine that every last piece of information about you and anyone you ever knew in Estrov has been destroyed. And do you know what that’s done? It’s made you a non-person. From this moment on, you can be completely invisible. You can go anywhere and do anything and nobody will be able to find you.”

She reached for her glass, turning it between her finger and her thumb. Her nails were long and sharp. She didn’t drink.

“We are always on the lookout for assassins,” she said. “Contract killers like Mr Grant. As you have seen, the price of failure in our organization is a high one, but so are the rewards of success. It is a very attractive life. You travel the world. You stay in the best hotels, eat in the best restaurants, shop in Paris and New York. You meet interesting people… and some of them you kill.”