Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

I wondered if he was being serious. Was he playing psychological games with me, like Dr Steiner? “Caviar,” I replied. I had tasted it at dinner parties at the dacha . Vladimir Sharkovsky used to eat mounds of it, washed down with iced vodka.

“Which shoelace do you tie first?”

“Why are you asking me these questions?” I snapped.

“Are you angry?”

I didn’t deny it. “What does it matter which shoelace I tie first?” I said. I glanced briefly at my trainers. “My right foot. OK? I’m right-handed. Now are you going to explain exactly what that tells you about who I am?”

“Relax, Cossack.” He smiled at me and although I was still puzzled, I found it difficult to be annoyed with him for very long. Perhaps he was playing with me but there didn’t seem to be anything malicious about it. I waited to hear what he would ask next. Again, he took me by surprise. “Why do you think you were unable to kill that woman in New York?” he asked.

“You already know,” I said. “You were in the study when I told Sefton Nye.”

“You said it was because she spoke to you. But I don’t think I believe you… not completely. From what I understand, you could have gunned her down at any time. You could have done it when she turned the corner from the museum. You were certainly close enough to her when you were at Cleopatra’s Needle.”

“I couldn’t do it then. There were two people running, joggers…”

“I know. I was one of them.”

“What?” I was startled.

“Don’t worry about it, Cossack. Sefton Nye asked me to take a look at you so I was there. We flew here on the same plane.” He raised his glass as if he was toasting me and drank. “The fact is that you had plenty of opportunities. You know that. You waited until she turned round and talked to you. I think you wanted her to talk to you because it would give you an excuse. I think you’d already made up your mind.”

He wasn’t exactly accusing me. There was nothing in his face that suggested he was doing anything more than stating the obvious. But I found myself reddening. Although I would never have admitted it to Nye or d’Arc, it was possible he was right.

“I won’t fail again,” I said.

“I know,” he replied. “And let’s not talk about it any more. You’re not being punished. I’m here to try and help. So tell me about Venice. I haven’t had a chance to explore it yet. And I’d be interested to hear what you think about Julia Rothman. Quite a woman, wouldn’t you say…?”

The second course arrived, a plate of home-made spaghetti with fresh sardines. In my time on Malagosto, I had come to love Italian food and I said so. Hunter smiled but I got the strange feeling that, once again, I had said the wrong thing.

For the next hour we talked together, avoiding anything to do with Malagosto, my training, Scorpia or anything else. He didn’t tell me very much about himself but he mentioned that he lived in London and I asked him lots of questions about the city, which I had always hoped to visit. The one thing he let slip was that he had been married – although I should have noticed myself. He had a plain gold ring on his fourth finger. He didn’t say anything about his wife and I wondered if he was divorced.

The bill arrived. “It’s time to go back,” Hunter said as he counted out the cash. “But before we go, I think I should tell you something, Cossack. Scorpia have high hopes for you. They think you have the makings of a first-rate assassin. I don’t agree. I would say you have a long way to go before you’re ready. It’s possible you never will be.”

“How can you say that?” I replied. I was completely thrown. I had enjoyed the evening and thought there was some sort of understanding between the two of us. It was as if he had turned round and slapped me in the face. “You hardly know me,” I said.

“You’ve told me enough.” He leant towards me and suddenly he was deadly serious. At that moment, I knew that he was dangerous, that I could never relax completely when I was with him. “You want to be a contract killer?” he asked. “Every answer you gave me was wrong. You tie your shoelaces with your right hand. You are right-handed. A successful assassin will be as comfortable shooting with his right hand as with his left. He has to be invisible. He has no habits. Everything he does in his life, right down to the smallest detail, he does differently every time. The moment his enemies learn something about him, the easier it is to find him, to profile him, to trap him.

“So that means you can’t have preferences. Not French food, not Italian food. If you have a favourite meal, a favourite drink, a favourite anything, that gives your enemy ammunition. Cossack is fond of caviar. Do you know how many shops there are in London that sell caviar, how many restaurants that serve it? Not many. The intelligence services may not know your name. They may not know what you look like. But if they discover your tastes, they’ll be watching and you’ll have made it that much easier for them to find you.

“You talk to me about your grandfather. Forget him. He’s dead and you have nothing more to do with him. If he’s anything to you, he’s your enemy because if the intelligence services can find him, they’ll dig him up and take his DNA and that will lead them to you. Why are you so proud of the fact that he fought against the Nazis? Is it because they’re the bad guys? Forget it! You’re the bad guy now… as bad as any of them. In fact, you’re worse because you have no beliefs. You kill simply because you’re paid. And while you’re at it, you might as well stop talking about Nazis, Communists, Fascists, the Ku Klux Klan… As far as you’re concerned, you have no politics and every political party is the same. You no longer believe in anything, Cossack. You don’t even believe in God. That is the choice you’ve made.”

He paused.

“Why did you blush when I asked you about New York?”

“Because you were right.” What else could I say?

“You showed your feelings to me here, at this table. You’re embarrassed so you blush. You got angry when I asked you about your laces and you showed that too. Are you going to cry when you meet your next target? Are you going to tremble when you’re interviewed by the police? If you cannot learn to hide your emotions, you might as well give up now. And then there’s your watch…”

I knew he would come to that. I wished now that I hadn’t mentioned it.

“You are Cossack, the invisible killer. You’ve been successful in New York, in Paris, in Peru. But the police examine the CCTV footage and what do they see? Somebody was there at all three scenes and – guess what! – they were wearing a Russian watch, a Pobeda. You might as well leave a visiting card next to the body.” He shook his head. “If you want to be in this business, sentimentality is the last thing you can afford. Trust me, it will kill you.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I’m glad. Did you enjoy the meal?”

I was about to answer. Then I had second thoughts. “Perhaps it’s better if I don’t tell you,” I said.

Hunter nodded and got to his feet. “Well, you wolfed it down fast enough. Let’s get back to the island. Tomorrow I want to see you fight.”

He made me fight like no one else.

The next morning, at nine o’clock, we met in the gymnasium. The room was long and narrow with walls that curved overhead and windows that were too high up to provide a view. When there were monks on the island, this might have been where they took their meals, sitting in silence and contemplation. But since then it had been adapted with arc lights, stadium seating and a fighting area fourteen metres square made up of a tatami mat that offered little comfort when you fell. We were both dressed in karate-gi , the white, loose-fitting tunics and trousers used in karate. Hatsumi Saburo was watching from one of the stands. I could tell that he was not happy. He was sitting with his legs apart, his hands on his knees, almost challenging the new arrival to take him on. Marat and Sam were also there, along with a new student who had just joined us, a young Chinese guy who never spoke a word to me and whose name I never learnt.