Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

They came in from all sides. Six of the Commander’s men had taken it upon themselves to follow us into the rainforest. Why? Their employer was dead and there was going to be no reward for bringing in his killers. Perhaps they were genuinely angry. We had, after all, removed the source of their livelihood. I saw all of them as they arrived. The moon was so bright that they barely had any need of their torches. They were high on drugs, dirty and dishevelled with hollow faces, bright eyes and straggly beards.

Two of them had cigarettes dangling from their mouths. They were wearing bits and pieces of military uniform with machine guns slung over their shoulders. One of them had a dog, a pit bull terrier, on a chain. The dog had brought them here. It began to bark, straining against the leash, knowing we were close.

But the men saw no one. They had arrived at an empty clearing with a tree lying on its side, nobody in front of it, nobody behind, termites crawling over the bark. Our empty hammocks were in front of them. Perhaps their torches picked up the empty whisky bottle on the ground.

“ ¡Vamos a hacerlo! ” One of them gave the order in Spanish, his voice deep and guttural.

As one, the men opened fire, spraying the clearing with bullets, shooting into the surrounding jungle. After the peace of the night, the noise was deafening. For at least thirty seconds the clearing blazed white and the surrounding leaves and branches were chopped to smithereens. None of the men knew what they were doing. They didn’t care that they had no target.

We waited until their clips had run out and then we stood up, dead wood cascading off our shoulders. We had been right next to the soldiers, lying face down, inside the fallen tree. We were covered with termites, which were crawling over our backs and into our clothes. But termites do not bite you. They do not sting. We had disturbed their habitat and they were all over us but we didn’t care.

We opened fire. The soldiers saw us too late. I was not sure what happened next, whether I actually killed any of them. There was a blaze of gunfire, again incredibly loud, and I saw the ragged figures being blown off their feet. One of them managed to fire again but the bullets went nowhere, into the air. I was firing wildly but Hunter was utterly precise and mechanical, choosing his targets then squeezing the trigger again and again. It was all over very quickly. The six men were dead. There didn’t seem to be any more on the way.

I brushed termites off my shoulders and out of my hair. “Is that all of them?” I whispered.

“I don’t think so,” Hunter said. “But we’d better get moving.”

We collected our things.

“I shot them,” I said. “What you were saying to me… you were wrong. I was with you. I killed some of them.” I wasn’t even sure it was true. Hunter could have taken out all six himself. But we weren’t going to argue about it now.

He shook his head. “ If you killed…” He put the emphasis on the first word. “You did it in the dark, in self-defence. That doesn’t make you a murderer. It’s not the same.”

“Why not?” I couldn’t understand him. What was he trying to achieve?

He turned and suddenly there was a real darkness in his eyes. “You want to know what the difference is, Yassen?” He had used my real name for the first time. “We have another job in Paris, very different to this one. You want to know what it’s really like to kill? You’re about to find out.”

Our target in Paris was a man called Christophe Vosque, a senior officer in the Police nationale . He was, as it happens, totally corrupt. He had received payments from Scorpia, and in return had turned a blind eye to many of their operations in France. But recently he had got greedy. He was demanding more payments and, worse still, he had been in secret talks with the DGSE, the French secret service. He was planning a double-cross and Scorpia had decided to make an example of him by taking him out. This was to be a punishment killing. It had to make headlines.

However, for once Scorpia had got their intelligence wrong. No sooner had we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport than we were informed that Vosque was not in the city after all. He had gone on a five-day training course, meaning that we had the entire week to ourselves. Hunter wasn’t at all put out.

“We need a rest,” he said. “And since Scorpia’s paying, we might as well check ourselves in somewhere decent. I can show you around Paris. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

He booked us into the luxurious Hotel George V, close to the Champs-Elysées. It was far more than decent. In fact, I had never stayed anywhere like this. The hotel was all velvet curtains, chandeliers, thick carpets, tinkling pianos and massive flower displays. My bathroom was marble. The bath had gold taps. Everyone who stayed here was rich and they weren’t afraid to show it. I wondered if Hunter had brought me here for a reason. Normally we would have stayed somewhere more discreet and out-of-the-way but I suspected that he was testing me, throwing me into this gorgeous, alien environment to see how I would cope. He spoke excellent French; mine was rudimentary. He was in his late twenties and already well travelled; I was nineteen. I think it amused him to see me dealing with the receptionists, the managers and the waiters in their stiff collars and black ties, trying to convince them that I had as much right to be there as anyone… trying to convince myself.

It was certainly true that we both deserved a rest. The journey into the rainforest and out again, the death of the Commander, the shoot-out that had followed, our time in Iquitos, even the long flight back to Europe had exhausted us, and we both had to be in first-rate condition when we came up against Vosque. And if that meant eating the best food, and waking up in five-star luxury, I wasn’t going to argue.

We had adjoining rooms on the third floor and both spent the first twenty-four hours asleep. When I woke up, I ordered room service… the biggest breakfast I have ever eaten, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. I had a hot bath with the foam spilling over the edges. I sprawled on the bed and watched TV. They had English and Russian channels but I forced myself to listen in French, trying to attune myself to the language.

The next day, Hunter showed me the city. I had done more travelling in the past few weeks – Venice, New York, Peru – than I had in my entire life, but I loved every minute of my time in Paris. A few of the things we did were obvious. We went up the Eiffel Tower. We visited Notre-Dame. We strolled around the Louvre and stood in front of its most famous works of art. All this could have been boring. I have never been very interested in tourism, staring at things and taking photographs of them simply because they are there. But Hunter made it fun. He had stories and insights that brought everything to life. Standing in front of the Mona Lisa he told me how it had once been stolen – that was back in 1911 – and explained how he would set about stealing it now. He described how Notre-Dame had been constructed, an incredible feat of engineering, more than eight hundred years before. And he took me to many unexpected places: the sewers, the flea markets, Père-Lachaise Cemetery with its bizarre mausoleums and famous residents, the sculpture garden where Rodin had once lived.

But what I enjoyed most was just walking the streets – along the Seine, through the Latin quarter, around the Marais. It was quite cold – spring had still not quite arrived – but the sun was out and there was a sparkle in the air. We drifted in and out of coffee houses. We browsed in antique shops and bought clothes on the Avenue Montaigne. We ate fantastic ice cream at Maison Berthillon on the Île-St-Louis. Curiously, this was where the founder members of Scorpia had first come together – but perhaps wisely there was no blue plaque to commemorate the event.