Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

I got to my feet and moved away from the seats, ignoring the rows of waiting passengers, leaving the luggage behind. I felt light-headed, disconnected, as if I had been torn out of my own body. I turned a corner and saw the cafeteria. There wasn’t a queue at all and Hunter certainly wasn’t there. He’d lied to me. Where was he? I looked around and then I saw him. He was some distance away with his back partly turned to me but I wasn’t mistaken. It was him. He was talking on the telephone… an urgent, serious conversation. I might not be able to read his lips but I could tell that he didn’t want to be overheard.

I went back to my seat, afraid that the luggage would be stolen if I didn’t keep an eye on it – and how would I explain that? I was still holding the battery. I had almost forgotten it was in my hand. I unclicked the terminal and returned it to the holdall, then put the whole thing back on the floor. I didn’t zip it up. Hunter would have spotted a detail like that. But I pressed the canvas with my foot so that the side pocket appeared closed. Then I opened my magazine.

But I didn’t read it.

I knew. Without a shred of doubt. John Rider – Hunter – was a double agent, a spy sent in by MI6. Now that I thought about it, it was obvious and I should have seen it long ago. On that last night in Malagosto, when we had met in Sefton Nye’s office, I had been quite certain he hadn’t followed me in and I had been right. He had arrived before me. He had been there all along. Nye hadn’t left his door open. Hunter must have unlocked it moments before I arrived. He had gone in there for exactly the same reason as me… to get access to Nye’s files. But in his case, he had been searching for information about Scorpia to pass on to his bosses. No wonder he had been so keen to get me out of there. He hadn’t reported me to Nye… not because he was protecting me but because he didn’t want anyone asking questions about him.

Now I understood why he hadn’t killed the young policeman at Vosque’s flat. A real assassin wouldn’t have thought twice about it but a British agent couldn’t possibly behave the same way. He had shot the Commander. There was no doubt about that. But Gabriel Sweetman had been a monster, a major drug trafficker, and the British and American governments would have been delighted to see him executed. What of Vosque himself? He was a senior French officer, no matter what his failings. And it suddenly occurred to me that I only had Hunter’s word for it that he was dead. I hadn’t actually been in the room when the shot was fired. Right now, Vosque could be anywhere. In jail, out of the country… but alive!

At the same time I saw, with icy clarity, that John Rider had been sent to do more than spy on Scorpia. He had also been sent to sabotage them. He had been deceiving me from the very start. On the one hand he had been pretending to teach me. I couldn’t deny that I had learned from him. But all the time he had been undermining my confidence. In the jungle, everything he had told me about himself was untrue. He hadn’t killed a man in a pub. He hadn’t been in jail. He had used the story to gain my sympathy and then he had twisted it against me, telling me that I wasn’t cut out to be like him. It was John Rider who had planted the idea that I should run away.

He had done the same thing in Paris. The way he had suddenly turned on me when we were in Vosque’s flat, asking me to do something that nobody in their right mind would ever do whether they were being paid or not. He had given me that hideous little knife. And he had called Vosque by his real name. Not “the victim”. Not “the Cop”. He had wanted me to think about what I was doing so that I wouldn’t be able to do it. And the result? All the training Scorpia had given me would have been wasted. They would have lost their newest recruit.

Of course Scorpia would track me down. Of course they would have killed me. John Rider had tried to convince me otherwise but he was probably on the phone to them even now, warning them I was about to abscond. Why would he risk leaving me alive? Scorpia would have someone waiting for me at Berlin airport. After all, Berlin had been his idea. A taxi would pull up. I would get in. And I would never be seen again.

I was barely breathing. My hands were gripping the magazine so tightly that I was almost tearing it in half. What hurt most, what filled me with a black, unrelenting hatred, was the knowledge that it had all been fake. It had all been lies. After everything I had been through, the loss of everyone I loved, my daily humiliation at the hands of Vladimir Sharkovsky, the poverty, the hopelessness, I thought I had finally found a friend. I had trusted John Rider and I would have done anything for him. But in a way he was worse than any of them. I was nothing to him. He had secretly been laughing at me – all the time.

I looked up. He was walking towards me.

“Everything OK?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You didn’t get your coffee?”

“The queue was too long. Anyway, they’ve just called my flight.”

I glanced at the screen. That, at least, was true. The flight to Rome was blinking.

“Well, it looks as if it’s goodbye, Yassen. I wish you luck… wherever you decide to go.”

“Thank you, Hunter. I’ll never forget you.”

We shook hands. My face gave nothing away.

He picked up his cases and I watched him join the queue and board the flight. He didn’t turn round again. As soon as he had gone, I took my own case and left the airport. I didn’t fly to Berlin. Any flight with the passengers’ names listed on a computer screen would be too dangerous for me. I took the train back into Paris and joined a group of students and backpackers on a Magic Bus to Hamburg. From there, I caught a train to Hanover with a connection to Moscow. It was a journey that would take me thirty-six hours but that didn’t bother me.

I knew exactly what I had to do.

I had not seen the dacha at Silver Forest for a very long time. I had thought I would never see it again.

It had been strange to find myself back at Kazansky Station in Moscow. I remembered stepping off the train in my Young Pioneers uniform. It seemed like a lifetime ago. There was no sign of Dima, Roman or Grigory, which was probably just as well. I have no idea what I would have said to them if I had seen them. On the one hand, I would have liked them to know that I was safe and well. But perhaps it was best that we did not renew our acquaintance. My world was very different now.

It seemed to me that there were now fewer homeless children than there had been in the square outside the station. Perhaps the new government was finally getting its act together and looking after them. It is possible, I suppose, that they were all in jail. The food stalls had gone too. I thought of the raspberry ice cream I had devoured. Had it really been me that day? Or had it been Yasha Gregorovich, a boy who had disappeared and who would never be spoken about again?

I travelled on the Metro to Shchukinskaya Station and from there I took a trolleybus to the park. After that, I walked. It was strange that I had never actually seen the dacha from outside. I had arrived in the boot of a car. I had left, in the darkness, in a helicopter. But I knew exactly where I was going. All the papers relating to the planning and construction of Sharkovsky’s home, along with the necessary licences and permits, had been lodged, as I suspected, with the Moscow Architecture and City Planning Committee. I had visited their offices in Triumfalnaya Square – curiously they were very close to Dima’s place off Tverskaya Street – very early in the morning. Breaking in had presented no problem. They were not expecting thieves.