Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

I spent the next two hours with Colette. There were only three students there at the time. I would be the fourth. The others were on the mainland, involved in some sort of exercise. As we stood on the beach, looking out across the water, Colette told me a little about them.

“There’s Marat. He’s from Poland. And Sam. He only got here a few weeks ago… from Israel. Neither of them talks very much but Sam came out of the army. He was going to join Mossad – Israeli intelligence – but Scorpia made him a better offer.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Where have you come from?”

“I’m French.”

We had been speaking in English but I had been aware she had a slight accent. I waited for her to tell me more but she was silent. “Is that all?” I asked.

“What else is there?” You and me… we’re here. That’s all that matters.”

“How did you get chosen?”

“I didn’t get chosen. I volunteered.” She thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t ask personal questions, if I were you. People can be a bit touchy around here.”

“I just thought it was strange, that’s all. A woman learning how to kill…”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “You are old-fashioned, aren’t you, Yassen! And here’s another piece of advice. Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself.” She looked at her watch, then drew a thin book out of her back pocket. “Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on your own. I’ve got to finish this.”

I glanced at the cover: MODERN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES BY DR THREE.

“You might get to meet him one day,” Colette said. “And if you do, be careful what you say. You wouldn’t want to end up as a chapter in his book.”

I spent the rest of the day alone in my room, lying on my bed with all sorts of thoughts going through my head. Much later on, at about eight o’clock in the evening, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office and it was there that I met the man who was in charge of all the training on Malagosto.

His name was Sefton Nye and my first thought was that he had the darkest skin I had ever seen. His glistening bald head showed off eyes that were extraordinarily large and animated. And he had brilliant white teeth, which he displayed often in an astonishing smile. He dressed very carefully – he liked well-cut blazers, obviously expensive – and his shoes were polished to perfection. He was originally from Somalia. His family were modern-day pirates, holding up luxury yachts, cruise ships and even, on one occasion, an oil tanker that had strayed too close to the shore. They were utterly ruthless… I saw framed newspaper articles in the office describing their exploits. Nye himself had a very loud voice. Everything about him was larger than life.

“Yassen Gregorovich!” he exclaimed, pointing me to a chair in the office, which was almost circular with an iron chandelier in the middle. There were floor to ceiling bookshelves, two windows looking out over woodland, and half a dozen clocks, each one showing a different time. A pair of solid iron filing cabinets stood against one wall. Mr Nye wore the key that opened them around his neck. “Welcome to Malagosto,” he went on. “Welcome indeed. I always take the greatest pleasure in meeting the new recruits because, you see, when you leave here you will not be the same. We are going to turn you into something very special and when I meet you after that, it may well be that I do not want to. You will be dangerous. I will be afraid of you. Everyone who meets you, even without knowing why, will be afraid of you. I hope that thought does not distress you, Yassen, because if it does you should not be here. You are going to become a contract killer and although you will be rich and you will be comfortable, I am telling you now, it is a very lonely path.”

There was a knock at the door and a second man appeared, barely half the height of the headmaster, dressed in a linen suit and brown shoes, with a round face and a small beard. He seemed quite nervous of Mr Nye, his eyes blinking behind his tortoise-shell glasses. “You wanted to see me, headmaster?” he enquired. He had a French accent, much more distinct than Colette’s.

“Ah yes, Oliver!” He gestured in my direction. “This is our newest recruit. His name is Yassen Gregorovich. Mrs Rothman sent him over from the Widow’s Palace.”

“Delighted.” The little man nodded at me.

“This is Oliver d’Arc. He will be your personal tutor and he will also be taking many of your classes. If you’re unhappy, if you have any problems, you go to him.”

“Thank you,” I said, but I had already decided that if I had any problems I would most certainly keep them to myself. This was the sort of place where any weakness would only be used against you.

“I am here for you any time you need me,” d’Arc assured me.

I would spend a lot of time with Oliver d’Arc while I was on Malagosto but I never completely trusted him. I don’t think I ever knew him. Everything about him – his appearance, the way he spoke, probably even his name – was an act put on for the students’ benefit. Later on, after Nye was killed by one of his own students, d’Arc became the headmaster and, by all accounts, he was very good at the job.

“Do you have any questions, Yassen?” Mr Nye asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“That’s good. But before you turn in for the night, there’s something I want you to do for me, I hope you don’t mind. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

That was when I noticed that Oliver d’Arc was holding a spade.

My first job on Malagosto was to bury Mr Grant in the little cemetery in the woods. It was a final resting place that he would share with plague victims who had died four hundred years before him, although I had no doubt that there were other more recent arrivals too, men and women who had failed Scorpia just like him. It was an unpleasant, grisly task, digging on my own in the darkness. Even Sharkovsky had never asked me to do such a thing – but it’s possible that it was meant to be a warning to me. Mrs Rothman had let me live. She had even recruited me. But this is what I could look forward to if I let her down.

As I dragged Mr Grant off the stretcher and tipped him into the hole which I had dug, I couldn’t help but wonder if someone would do the same for me one day. For what it’s worth, it is the only time I have ever had such thoughts. When your business is death, the only death you should never consider is your own. It had begun to rain slightly, a thin drizzle that only made my task more unpleasant. I filled in the grave, flattened it with the spade, then carried the stretcher back to the main complex. Oliver d’Arc was waiting for me with a brandy and a hot chocolate. He escorted me to my room and even insisted on running a bath for me, adding a good measure of “Floris of London” bath oil to the foaming water. I was glad when he finally left. I was afraid he was going to offer to scrub my back.

Five months…

No two days were ever exactly the same, although we were always woken at half past five in the morning for a one-hour run around the island followed by a forty-minute swim – out to a stump of rock and back again. Breakfast was at half past seven, served in a beautiful dining room with a sixteenth-century mosaic on the floor, wooden angels carved around the windows and a faded view of heaven painted on the domed ceiling above our heads. The food was always excellent. All four students ate together and I usually found myself sitting next to Colette. As she had warned me, Marat and Sam weren’t exactly unfriendly but they hardly ever spoke to me. Sam was dark and very intense. Marat seemed more laid-back, sitting in class with his legs crossed and his hands behind his back. After they had graduated, they decided to work together as a team and were extremely successful but I never saw them again.