Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

But still I was determined. The next day I was leaving with John Rider. We were going to be together for a week or more and I would feel more comfortable – less unequal – if I knew something of his background. I’ll admit that I was curious but it also made sense. I had been encouraged to learn everything I could about my targets. It seemed only right that I should apply the same rule to a man who was taking me into danger and on whom my life might depend.

I went over to the cabinet – the one where Nye had deposited my personal file. I had brought the tools I would need from my bedroom, although examining the lock, I saw it was much more sophisticated than anything I had opened before. Another dazzling burst of lightning. My own shadow seemed to leap over my shoulder. I focused on the lock, testing it with the first pick.

And then, with shocking violence, I felt myself seized from behind in a headlock, two fists crossed behind my neck, and although I immediately brought my hands up in a counter-move, reaching out for the wrists, I knew I was too late and that one sudden wrench would snap my spinal cord, killing me instantly. How could it have happened? I was certain nobody had followed me in.

For perhaps three seconds I stayed where I was, kneeling there, caught in the death grip, waiting for the crack that would be the sound of my own neck breaking. It didn’t come. I felt the hands relax. I twisted round. Hunter was standing over me.

“Cossack!” he said.

“Hunter…”

“What are you doing here?” The lightning flickered but perhaps the worst of the storm had passed. “Let’s go outside,” Hunter said. “You don’t want to be found in here.”

We went back out and stood beneath the bell tower. I could feel that strange mixture of hot and cold in the air. We were enclosed by the walls of the monastery. We were alone but we spoke in low voices.

“Tell me what you were doing,” Hunter said. His face was in shadow but I could feel his eyes probing me.

I had already decided what I was going to say. I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Nye had my file this morning,” I said. “I wanted to read it.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to know I was ready. After what happened in New York, I didn’t want to let you down.”

“And you thought your report would tell you that?”

I nodded.

“You’re an idiot, Cossack.” That was what he said but there was no anger in his voice. If anything, he was amused. “I saw you go in and I followed you,” he explained. “I didn’t know who you were. I could have killed you.”

“I didn’t hear you,” I said.

He ignored that. “If I didn’t think you were ready, I wouldn’t be taking you,” he said. He thought for a moment. “I have a feeling it would be better if neither of us said anything about this little incident. If Sefton Nye knew you’d been creeping about in his study, he might get the wrong idea. I suggest you go back to bed. We’ve got an early start. The boat’s coming tomorrow at seven o’clock.”

“Thanks, Hunter.”

“Don’t thank me. Just don’t pull a stunt like this again. And…” He turned and walked away. “Get some sleep!”

I was up before sunrise. My gear was packed. I had my passport and credit cards along with the dollars I’d saved from New York. All my visas had been arranged.

There was no one around as I walked down to the edge of the lagoon, my feet crunching on the gravel. For a long time I stood there, watching the sun climb over Venice, different shades of pink, orange and finally blue rippling through the sky. I knew that my training was over and that I would not be coming back to Malagosto, at least not as a student.

I thought about Hunter, all the lessons he had taught me. He would be with me very soon and the two of us were going to travel together. He was going to give me the one thing that I had been unable to find in all my time on the island. I suppose you could call it the killer instinct. It was all I lacked.

I trusted him completely. There was something I had to do.

I took off my watch, my old Pobeda. As I weighed it in my hand, I saw my father giving it to me. I heard his voice. I was just nine years old, so young, still in short trousers, living in the house in Estrov.

My grandfather’s watch.

I held it one last time, then swung my arm and threw it into the lagoon.

His name was Gabriel Sweetman and he was a drug lord, sometimes known as “the Sugar Man”, more often as “the Commander”.

He was born in the slums of Mexico City. Nothing is known about his parents but he first came to the attention of the police when he was eight years old, selling missing car parts to motorists. The reason the parts were missing was because he had stolen them, helped by his twelve-year-old sister, Maria. When he was twelve, he sold his sister. By then, it was said that he had killed for the first time. He moved into the drugs business when he was thirteen, first dealing on the street, then working his way up until he became the lieutenant to “Sunny” Gomez, one of the biggest traffickers in Mexico. At the time, it was estimated that Gomez was smuggling three million dollars’ worth of heroin and cocaine into America every day.

Sweetman murdered Gomez and took over his business. He also married Gomez’s wife, a former Miss Acapulco called Tracey. Thirty years later, it was rumoured that Sweetman was worth twenty-five billion dollars. He was transporting cocaine all over the world, using a fleet of Boeing 727 jet aircraft which he also owned. He had murdered over two thousand people, including fifteen judges and two hundred police officers. Sweetman would kill anyone who crossed his path and he liked to do it slowly. Some of his enemies he buried alive. It was well known that he was mad, but only his family doctor had been brave enough to say so. He had killed the family doctor.

I do not know how or why he had come to the attention of Scorpia. It is possible that they been hired to take him out by another drug lord. It might even have been the Mexican or the American government. He certainly was not being executed because he was bad. Scorpia was occasionally involved in drug trafficking itself, although it was a dirty and an unpleasant business. People who spend large amounts of money doing harm to themselves and to their customers are not usually very reliable. Sweetman had to die because someone had paid. That was all it came down to.

And it was going to be expensive because this was not an easy kill. Sweetman looked after himself. In fact, he made Vladimir Sharkovsky look clumsy and careless by comparison.

Sweetman kept a permanent retinue around him – not just six bodyguards but an entire platoon. This was how he had got the name of the Commander. He had houses in Los Angeles, Miami and Mexico City, each one as well fortified as an army command post. The houses were kept in twenty-four-hour readiness. He never let anyone know when he was leaving or when he was about to arrive, and when he did travel it was first by private jet and then in an armour-plated, bulletproof limousine with two outriders on motorbikes and more bodyguards in front and behind. He had four food tasters, one in each of his properties.

The house where he spent most of his time was in the middle of the Amazon jungle, one hundred miles south of Iquitos. This is one of the few cities in the world that cannot be reached by road, and there were no roads going anywhere near the house either. Trying to approach on foot would be to risk attacks from jaguars, vipers, anacondas, black caimans, piranhas, tarantulas or any other of the fifty deadly creatures that inhabited the rainforest… assuming you weren’t bitten to death by mosquitoes first. Sweetman himself came and went by helicopter. He had complete faith in the pilot, largely because the pilot’s elderly parents were his permanent guests and he had given instructions for them to suffer very horribly if anything ever happened to him.