Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

Alex’s parents were dead, just like his. They had been killed by a bomb, planted in an aeroplane on the orders of Scorpia. Yassen was glad that he’d had nothing to do with it. He had never told Julia Rothman what he knew about John Rider. By the time he returned to Venice, Hunter had already left, travelling with one of the other recruits. What was the point of sentencing him to death? Yassen had already decided. Whoever he might be and whatever he might have done, there could be no denying that Hunter had saved his life in the Peruvian rainforest and that had created a debt of honour. Yassen would simply blot out the knowledge in his mind. He would pretend he hadn’t seen the Power Plus battery, that it had never happened. And what if Rider caused more damage to Scorpia? It didn’t matter. Yassen owed no loyalty to them or to anyone else. In this new life of his, he would owe loyalty to no one.

He would still have his revenge. John Rider had betrayed him and in return, Yassen would become the most efficient, the most cold-blooded assassin in the world. Vladimir and Ivan Sharkovsky had been just the start. Since then, there had been… how many of them? A hundred? Almost certainly more. And every time Yassen had walked away from another victim, he had proved that John Rider was wrong. He had become exactly what he was meant to be.

And here was John Rider’s son. It was somehow inevitable that the two of them should finally meet. How much did Alex know about the past, Yassen wondered. Did he have any idea what his father had been?

“You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

Yassen nodded.

“Why did you kill him?” Alex glanced at the body of Herod Sayle.

“Those were my instructions,” Yassen replied, but in fact he was lying. Scorpia had not ordered him to kill Sayle. He had made an instant decision, acting on his own initiative. He knew, however, that they would be pleased. Sayle had become an embarrassment. He had failed. It was better that he was dealt with once and for all.

“What about me?” Alex asked.

Yassen paused before replying. “I have no instructions concerning you.”

It was another lie. The message on his computer could not have been clearer. But Yassen knew that he could not kill Alex Rider. The bond of honour that had once existed with the father extended to the son. Very briefly, he thought back to Paris. It was hard to explain but there was a sort of parallel. He saw it now and it was why, at the last minute, he had diverted his aim. How he had been to John Rider when the two of them were together, in some way Alex Rider was to him now. There would be no more killing today.

“You killed Ian Rider,” Alex said. “He was my uncle.”

Ian Rider. John Rider’s younger brother. It was true – Yassen had shot him as he had tried to escape from Herod Sayle’s compound in Cornwall. That was how this had all begun. It was the reason Alex Rider was here.

Yassen shrugged. “I kill a lot of people.”

“One day I’ll kill you.”

“A lot of people have tried,” Yassen said. “Believe me, it would be better if we didn’t meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you’re still a child.”

It was the same advice that Alex’s father had once given him. But Yassen was offering it for a very different reason.

The two of them had come from different worlds but they had so much in common. At the same age, they had lost everything that mattered to them. They had found themselves alone. And they had both been chosen. In Alex’s case it had been the British secret service, MI6 Special Operations, who had come calling. For Yassen it had been Scorpia. Had either of them ever had any choice?

It might still not be too late. Yassen thought about his life, the diary he had read the night before. If only someone could have reached out and taken hold of him… before he got on the train to Moscow, before he broke into the flat near Gorky Park, before he reached Malagosto. For him, there had been nobody. But for Alex Rider, it didn’t need to be the same.

He had given Alex a chance.

It was enough. There was nothing more to say. Yassen turned round and walked back to the helicopter. Alex didn’t move. Yassen flicked on the engine, waited until the blades had reached full velocity and took off a second time. At the last moment, he raised a hand in a gesture of farewell. Alex did the same.

The two of them looked at each other, both of them trapped in different ways, on opposite sides of the glass.

Finally Yassen pulled at the controls and the helicopter lifted off the ground. He would have to report to Scorpia, explain to them why he had done what he had done. Would they kill him because of it? Yassen didn’t think so. He was too valuable to them. They would already have another name in another envelope waiting for him. Someone whose turn had come to die.

He couldn’t stop himself. High above the Thames with the sun setting over the water, he spun the cockpit round and glanced back one last time. But now the roof was empty apart from the body stretched out beside the red cross.

Alex Rider had gone.

I had a great deal of help with the Russian sections of the book. Olga Smirnova reluctantly took me through some of her childhood memories and translated the chapter headings. Simon Johnson and Anne Cleminson introduced me to their friends and family, including Olga Cleminson, who cooked me a Russian lunch and helped create the village of Estrov. In Moscow, Konstantin Chernozatonsky showed me the buildings where Yassen might have lived and first drew my attention to the fortochniks . Sian Valvis took me round the city and told me of her experiences working for an oligarch. Ilia Tchelikidi also shared his school memories with me from his home in London. Finally, Alex Kteniadakis gave me the technical information for Yassen’s computer.

A great many of the details in this book are therefore based on fact but it’s fair to say that the overall picture may not be entirely accurate. So much changed between 1995 and 2000 – the approximate setting for the story – that I’ve been forced to use a certain amount of dramatic licence.

My assistant Olivia Zampi organized everything right up to the photocopying and binding. I owe a very special debt of thanks to my son Cassian, who was the first to read the manuscript and who made some enormously helpful criticisms, and to both Sarah Handley at Walker Books and Harry F at HMP Ashfield who both suggested the title. I am, as ever, grateful to Jane Winterbotham, my squeamish but incisive editor at Walker Books. Finally, my wife – Jill Green – lived through the writing of this without hiring a contract killer to have me eliminated. She must have been tempted.

Anthony Horowitz was born in North London in 1955. He was sent to boarding school in Harrow and went on to university in York.

He decided he wanted to be a writer at the age of eight and had his first book, Enter Frederick K Bower, when he was 23.

He has written lots and lots of television programmes, mostly about murder! He created the detective dramas Midsomer Murders and Murder in Mi