Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

Kathryn Davis had taken one of the paths that circled the softball fields with a large pond on her left. She knew exactly where she was going, as if she had done this walk often. I was about ten paces behind her, slowly catching up, trying to pretend that I had nothing to do with her. We were already halfway across. I was beginning to hear the traffic noise on the other side. And then, quite suddenly, she turned round and looked at me. I would not say that she was scared but she was aggressive. She was using her body language to assert herself, to tell me that she wasn’t afraid of me. There was an electric lamp nearby and it reflected in her glasses.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you following me?”

The two of us were quite alone. The joggers had gone. There were no other walkers anywhere near. What she had done was really quite stupid. If she had become aware of me, which she clearly had, she would have done better to increase her pace, to reach the safety of the streets. Instead, she had signed her death warrant. I could shoot her here and now. We were less than ten paces apart.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

I was trying to take out the gun. But I couldn’t. It was just like when I had played Russian roulette with Vladimir Sharkovsky. My hand wouldn’t obey me. I felt sick. I had planned everything so carefully, every last detail. In the last four days, I had done nothing else. But all the time, I had ignored my own feelings and it was only now, here, that I realized the truth. I was not, after all, a killer. This woman was about the same age as my own mother. She had two children of her own. If I shot her down, simply for money, what sort of monster would that make me?

If you don’t kill her, Scorpia will kill you , a voice whispered in my ear.

Let them , I replied. It would be better to be dead than to become what they want .

“Who are you?” Kathryn Davis asked.

“I’m no one,” I said. I took my hands out of my coat pockets, showing that they were empty. “I was just walking.”

She relaxed a little. “Well, maybe you should keep your distance.”

“Sure. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Yeah – OK.”

She stood there, watching me, waiting for me to go. I quickly walked past her, then turned off in another direction.

I didn’t look back. Inside, I felt glad. That was the simple truth. I was happy that she was still alive. I was aware of a sense of huge relief, as if I had just fought a battle with myself and won. I saw now that from the moment I had climbed into the helicopter with Rykov – or Mr Grant – I had been sinking into some sort of mental quicksand. Mrs Rothman in Venice. Sefton Nye, Hatsumi Saburo and Oliver d’Arc on Malagosto… they had all been drawing me into it. They were like a disease. And I had come so close to being infected. I had been about to kill somebody! If Kathryn Davis had not turned and spoken to me, I might well have done what I had been told. I might have committed murder.

The sound of the gunshot was not loud but it was close and my first thought was that I had been targeted. But even as I dropped to one knee, drawing out the Smith & Wesson, I knew that the direction was wrong, that the bullet had not come close. At that moment I was helpless. I had lost my focus, the vital self-knowledge – who I am, where I am, what is around me – that Saburo had drummed into me a hundred times. Anyone could have picked me off.

Kathryn Davis was dead. I saw it at once. She had been shot in the back of the head and lay on a circle of dark grass, her arms and legs stretched out in the shape of a star. There was someone walking towards her, wearing a coat and black gloves, a gun in his hand. I recognized the neat beard, the unworried eyes. It was Marcus, the man who had met me at the hotel.

He checked the body, nodded to himself. Then he saw me. He had his gun. I had mine. But I saw instantly that there was no question of our firing at each other. He looked at me almost sadly.

“Make sure you’re on that plane tomorrow,” he said.

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain what had happened, how I felt, but he had already turned his back on me and was walking away into the shadows. In the distance I heard the wail of a police siren. It might have nothing to do with what had happened here. Even if someone had heard the shot, they wouldn’t know where it had come from. But it still warned me that it was time to go.

I walked out of the park and all the way to the Hudson River with the darkened mass of New Jersey in front of me. I took out the gun and weighed it in my hand, feeling nothing but loathing… for it and for myself. At the same time, I was aware of the first stirrings of fear. I would pay for this.

I threw the gun into the river. Then I went back to the hotel.

The following day, I left for Venice.

“I have to say, Yassen, we are extremely disappointed with you.”

Sefton Nye was sitting behind the desk in his darkened office, his hands coming together in a peak in front of his face as if he were at prayer. A single light shone above his head, reflecting in the polished brass buttons on the sleeves of his blazer. His heavy, white eyes were fixed on me. He was surrounded by photographs of leering pirates, trapped in the headlines of the world news. His family. He was as ruthless as they were and I wondered why I was still alive. In Silver Forest, an assassin sent by Scorpia had made a mistake. He had emptied his gun into Vladimir Sharkovsky but had failed to finish him off and for that he had been executed right in front of my eyes. But I was still here. Oliver d’Arc was also in the room, his hands folded in his lap. He had chosen a chair close to the door, as if he wanted to keep as far away from me as possible.

“What do you have to say?” Nye asked.

I had prepared for this scene, on the plane to Rome, the train to Venice, the boat across the lagoon. But now that I was actually sitting here, now that it was happening, it was very hard to keep hold of everything I had rehearsed.

“You knew I wasn’t ready,” I said. I was careful to keep my voice very matter-of-fact. I didn’t want them to think I was accusing them. The important thing was to defend myself without seeming to do so. That was my plan. If I tried to make excuses, it would all be over and Marat or Sam would spend the evening burying me in the woods. I was here for a reason. I still had to prove myself. “Your agent followed me,” I went on. “There was no other reason for him to be in Central Park. And I was never needed. He would have done the job… which is exactly what happened. I think you knew I would fail.”

D’Arc twitched slightly. Nye said nothing. His eyes were still boring into me. “It is true that Dr Steiner was not satisfied with your progress,” he intoned at last. “He warned us there was a seventy per cent probability that you would be unable to fulfil your assignment.”

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dr Steiner had been hired because he knew what he was doing and, despite my attempts to fool him, he had read me like a book. “If I wasn’t ready, why did you let me go?” I asked.

Very slowly, Nye nodded his head. “You have a point, Yassen. Part of the reason we sent you to New York was an experiment. We wanted to see how you would operate under pressure and, in some respects, you handled yourself quite well. You successfully broke into the offices of Clarke Davenport, although it might have been wise to change your appearance… perhaps the colour of your hair. Also, you were seen by a secretary. That was careless. However, we can overlook that. You did well to work out the movements of your target and Central Park was a sensible choice.”