Russian Roulette (24 page)

After twenty minutes, he stepped back and signaled that the fight was over. “All right, Cossack, that will do for now.” He smiled and held out a hand—as if to say “no hard feelings.” I reached out and took it, but this time I was ready. Before he could throw me, which of course was what he intended, I twisted around, using his own weight against him. Hunter disappeared over my shoulder and crashed down onto the mat. He had landed on his back but sprang up at once.

“You’re learning.” He smiled his approval, then walked away, snatching up a bottle of water. I watched him, grateful that in the very last moment of the fight I had at least done something right and hadn’t made a complete fool of myself in front of my teachers. At the same time it crossed my mind that he might actually have allowed me to bring him down, simply to let me save face. I had liked and admired Hunter when I had eaten with him the night before. But now I felt a sort of closeness to him. I was determined not to let him down.

• • •

We spent a lot of time together over the next few weeks—running, swimming, competing on the assault course, facing each other with more hand-to-hand combat in the gym. He was also training the other recruits and I know that they felt exactly the same way about him as I did. He was a natural teacher. Whether it was target practice or nighttime scuba diving, he brought out the best in us. Julia Rothman was also an admirer. The two of them had dinner several times when she returned to Venice, although I was never invited.

I have to say that I was not very comfortable on Malagosto. It was as if I had left school after taking my exams only to find myself inexplicably back again. Everyone knew that I had failed in New York. And time was moving on. My nineteenth birthday had come and gone without anyone noticing it . . . including me. It was time to stand up on my own two feet.

So I was very glad when Desmond Nye called me to his office one last time and told me that I would be leaving in a few days. “We all agree that the last time was too early,” he said. “But on this occasion you will be traveling with John Rider. He is taking care of some business for us and you will be there strictly as his assistant. You will do everything he says. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He had been holding my latest report, all the work of the last five weeks. I watched him as he got up from his desk and slid it into the filing cabinet against the wall. “It is very unusual for anyone to be given a second chance in this organization,” he added. His twisted around and suddenly he was gazing at me, his great white eyes challenging me. “We can put New York behind us. John Rider speaks very highly of you and that’s what matters. It’s good to learn from your mistakes, but I will give you one piece of advice, Yassen. Don’t make any more.”

I could not sleep that night. There was a storm over Venice—no wind or rain but huge sheets of lightning that flared across the sky, turning the domes and the towers of the city into black cutouts. As I lay in bed, the curtains flapping, I could almost feel the air currents spinning around me. I was excited about the mission. I was flying all the way to Peru—and if that went well, I would find myself in Paris. But there was something else. John Rider had told me almost nothing about himself. I was expected to follow him across the world, to obey him without question, and yet the man was a complete mystery to me. Was he a criminal? He might have been in the British army, but why had he left? How had he found his way into Scorpia?

Suddenly I wanted to know more about John Rider. It didn’t seem fair. After all, he’d been given my files. He knew everything about me. How could we travel together when everything was so one-sided? How could I ever face him on even terms?

I slipped out of bed and got dressed. I’d made a decision without even thinking it through. It was stupid and it might be dangerous, but what was my new life about if it wasn’t about taking risks? Nye kept files on everyone in his office. I had seen him lock mine away only a few hours ago. He would also have a file on John Rider. His office was on the other side of the quadrangle, just a few meters from where I was standing now. Breaking in would be easy. After all, I’d been trained.

Everyone was asleep. Nobody saw me as I left the accommodation block and crossed the cloisters of what had once been the monastery. The door to Nye’s office wasn’t even locked. There were some on the island who would have regarded that as an unforgivable breach of security and it puzzled me—but at the same time I suppose he felt he was safe enough. It would have been impossible to reach Malagosto from the mainland without being detected and he knew everything about everyone who was here. Who would even have considered breaking in? The lightning flashed silently and for a brief moment I saw the iron chandelier, the books, the different clocks, the pirate faces—all of them stark white, frozen. It was as if the storm were warning me, urging me to leave while I still could. I felt a pulse of warm air pushing against me. This was madness. I shouldn’t be here.

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 countermove, 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 around. 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 Desmond 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.” He turned and walked away. “And 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 pants, 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.

H
IS 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 named Tracey. Thirty years later, it was rumored that Sweetman was worth twenty-five billion dollars. He was transporting cocaine all over the world, using a fleet of Boeing 727 jet aircraft that 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 had 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 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 gotten the name 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, and once he had arrived he seldom went outside, avoiding restaurants or any other public places. When he did travel it was first by private jet and then in an armor-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 sixty kilometers 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 rain forest . . . 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.

Scorpia had looked into the situation and had decided that he was at his most vulnerable in the rain forest. It is interesting that they had a permanent team of advisers—strategy planners and specialists—who had prepared a consultation document for them. The house in Los Angeles was too close to its neighbors, the one in Miami too well protected. In Mexico City, Sweetman had too many friends. It was another measure of the man that he spent ten million dollars a year on bribes. He had friends in the police, the army, and the government, and if anyone asked questions about him or tried to get too close, he would know about it at once.

In the jungle, he was alone and—like so many successful men—he had a weakness. He was punctual. He ate his breakfast at exactly seven fifteen. He worked with a personal trainer from eight o’clock until nine. He went to bed at eleven. If he said he was going to leave at midday, then that would be when he would go. This is exactly what Hunter had tried to explain to me the night we met in Venice. Sweetman had told us something about himself. He had a habit and we could use it against him.

Hunter and I had flown first from Rome to Lima and from there we had taken a smaller plane to Iquitos, an extraordinary city on the west bank of the Amazon with Spanish cathedrals, French villas, colorful markets, and straw huts built on stilts, all tangled up together along the narrow streets. The whole place seemed to live and breathe for the river. It was hot and humid. You could taste the muddy water in the air.

We stayed two days in a run-down hotel in the downtown area, surrounded by backpackers and tourists and plagued by cockroaches and mosquitoes. Since so many of the travelers were from Britain and America, we communicated only in French. I spoke the language quite badly at this stage and the practice was good for me. Hunter used the time to buy a few more supplies and to book our passage downriver on a cargo boat. We were pretending to be bird-watchers. We were going to camp on the edge of the jungle for two weeks and then return to Iquitos. That was our cover story and while I was in Malagosto I had learned the names of two hundred different species—from the white-fronted Amazon parrot to the scarlet macaw. I believe I could still identify them to this day. Not that anybody asked too many questions. The captain would have been happy to drop us anywhere—provided we were able to pay.

We did not camp. As soon as the boat had dropped us off on a small beach with a few Indian houses scattered in the distance and children playing in the sand, we set off into the undergrowth. We were both equipped with the five items which are the difference between life and death in the rain forest: a machete, a compass, insect nets, water purification tablets, and waterproof shoes. This last may sound unlikely, but the massive rainfall and the dense humidity can rot your flesh in no time at all, and should anyone ever crash-land in the rain forest, I would advise them to keep their feet dry. Hunter had said it would take six days to reach the compound where Sweetman lived. In fact, we made it in five.

I will never forget my journey though that vast, suffocating landscape . . . I do not know whether to call it a heaven or hell. The world cannot live without its so-called green lungs and yet the environment was as hostile as it is possible to imagine, with thousands of unseen dangers every step of the way. I could not gauge our progress. We were two tiny specks in an area that encompassed one billion acres, hacking our way through leaves and branches, always with fresh barriers in our way. We were surrounded by all manner of different life-forms and the noise was endless: the screaming of birds, the croaking of frogs, the murmur of the river, the sudden snapping of branches as some large predator hurried past. We were lucky. We glimpsed a red-and-yellow coral snake . . . much deadlier than its red-and-black cousin. In the night, a jaguar came close and I heard its awful, throaty whisper. But all the things that could have killed us left us alone and neither of us became sick. That is something that has been true of my whole life, by the way. I am never ill. I sometimes wonder if it is a side effect of the injection my mother gave me. It protected me from the anthrax. Perhaps it still protects me from everything else.

We did not speak to each other as we walked. It would have been a waste of energy and all our attention was focused on the way ahead. But even so, I felt a sort of kinship with Hunter. He seemed to find the way almost instinctively. My life depended on him. I also admired his fitness and stamina as well as his general knowledge of survival techniques. He knew exactly which roots and berries to eat, how to follow the birds and insects to water holes or, failing that, how to extract water from vines. He never once lost his temper. The jungle can play with your mind. It is hot and oppressive. It always seems to stand in your way. The insects attack you no matter how much cream you put on. You are dirty and tired. But Hunter remained good-natured throughout. I sensed that he was pleased with our progress and satisfied that I was able to keep up.

We slept for only five hours at night, using the moon to guide us after the sun had set. We slept in hammocks. It was safer to be above the ground. After we’d eaten our jungle rations—what we’d found or what we’d brought with us—we’d climb in, and I always looked forward to the brief conversation, the moment of companionship we would have before we slept.

On the fourth night we set up camp in an area which we called the Log. It was a circular clearing dominated by a fallen tree. When I had sat on it, I had almost fallen right through as it was completely rotten and crawling with termites. “You’ve done very well so far,” Hunter said. “It may not be so easy coming back.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s possible we’ll be pursued. We may have to move more quickly.”

“The red pins . . .”

“That’s right.”

Whenever we came to a particular landmark, a place with a choice of more than one route, I had seen Hunter pressing a red pin close to the base of a tree trunk. He must have positioned more than a hundred of them. Nobody else would notice them, but they would provide us with a series of pointers if we needed to move in a hurry.

“What will we do if he isn’t there?” I asked. “Sweetman may have left.”

“According to our intelligence, he’s not leaving until the end of the week. And never call him by his name, Cossack. It personalizes him. We need to think of him as an object . . . as dead meat. That’s all he is to us.” His voice floated out of the darkness. Overhead, a parrot began to screech. “Call him the Commander. That’s how he likes to see himself.”

“When will we be there?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I want to get there before sunset . . . to give us time to reconnoiter the place. I need to find a position to make the kill.”

“I could shoot him for you.”

“No, Cossack, thanks all the same. This time you’re strictly here for the ride.”

We were up again at first light, the sky silver, the trees and undergrowth dark. We sipped some water and took energy tablets. We folded up our hammocks, packed our rucksacks, and left.

Sure enough, we reached the compound in the late afternoon. As we folded back the vegetation, we were suddenly aware of the sun glinting off a metal fence and crouched down, keeping out of sight. It was always possible that there would be guards patrolling outside the perimeter, although after half an hour we realized that the Commander had failed to take this elementary precaution. Presumably he felt he was safe enough inside.

Moving very carefully, we circled around, always staying in the cover of the jungle some distance from the fence. Hunter was afraid that there would be radar, trip wires, and all sorts of other devices that we might activate if we got too close. Looking through the gaps in the trees, we could see that the fence was electrified and contained a collection of colonial buildings spread out over a pale green lawn. They were similar in style to the ones we had seen in Iquitos. There were a lot of guards in dark green uniforms patrolling the area or standing with binoculars and assault rifles in rusting metal towers. Their long isolation had done them no good. They were shabby and listless. Although Hunter and I were both wearing jungle camouflage with our faces painted in streaks, they barely looked our way, and even if we’d been in bright red, they might not have noticed us.

The compound had begun life twenty years before as a research center for an environmental group studying the damage being done to the rain forest. They had all died from a mysterious sickness and a week later the Commander had moved in. Since then, he had adapted it to his own needs, adding huts for his soldiers and bodyguards, a helicopter landing pad, a private cinema, and all the devices he needed for his security. In some ways it reminded me of the dacha in the Silver Forest, although the two could not have been more different. It was only their purpose that was the same.

The Commander lived in the largest house, which was raised off the ground, with a veranda and electric fans. Presumably there would be a generator somewhere inside the complex. We had been watching through field glasses for more than an hour when suddenly he emerged, oddly dressed in a silk bathrobe and pajamas. It was still early evening. He went over to speak to a second man in faded blue overalls. His pilot? The helicopter was parked nearby, a four-seater Robinson R44. The two of them exchanged a few words. Then the Commander went back into the house.

“It’s a shame we can’t hear them,” I said.

“The Commander is leaving at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” Hunter replied.

I stared at him. “How do you know?”