Russian Roulette: The Story of an Assassin Read online

  What was I expecting the university to be like? In my mind, I had seen a single building like my school, only bigger. But instead, when I came out of the station, I found a city within the city, an entire neighbourhood devoted to learning. It was much more spacious and elegant than anything I had so far seen of Moscow. There were boulevards and parks, special buses to carry the students in and out, lawns and fountains, and not one building but dozens of them, evenly spaced, each one in its own domain. It was all dominated by one of Stalin’s skyscrapers, and as I stood in front of it I saw how it had been designed to make you feel tiny, to remind you of the power and the majesty of the state. Standing in front of the steps that led to the front doors – hidden behind a row of columns – I felt like the world’s worst sinner about to enter a church. But at the same time, the building had a magnetic attraction. I had no idea where the biology department was. But this was the heart of the university. I would find Misha Dementyev here. I climbed the steps and went in.

  The inside of the building didn’t seem to fit what I had seen outside. It was like stepping into a submarine or a ship with no windows, no views. The ceilings were low. It was too warm. Corridors led to more corridors. Doors opened onto other doors. Staircases sprouted in every direction. Students marched past me on all sides, carrying their books and their backpacks, and I forced myself to keep moving, knowing that if I stopped and looked lost it would be a sure way to get noticed. It seemed to me that if there was an administrative area, an office with the names of all the people working at the university, it would be somewhere close to the entrance. Surely the university wouldn’t want casual visitors to plunge too far into the building or to take one of the lifts up to the fortieth or fiftieth floor? I tried a door. It was locked. The next one opened into a toilet. Next to it there was a bare room, occupied by a cleaner with a mop and a cigarette.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “The administration office.”

  She looked at me balefully. “That way. On the left. Room 1117.”

  The corridor went on for about a hundred metres but the door marked 1117 was only halfway down. I knocked and went in.

  There were two more women sitting at desks which were far too small for the typewriters, piles of paper, files and ashtrays that covered them. One of the women was plugged into an old-fashioned telephone system, the sort with wires looping everywhere, but she glanced up as I came in.

  “Yes?” she demanded.

  “Can you help me?” I asked. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “You need the student office. That’s room 1301.”

  “I’m not looking for a student. I need to speak to a professor. His name is Misha Dementyev.”

  “Room 2425 – the twenty-fourth floor. Take the lift at the end of the corridor.”

  I felt a surge of relief. He was here! He was in his office! At that moment, I saw the end of my journey and the start of a new life. This man had known my parents. Now he would help me.

  I took the lift to the twenty-fourth floor, sharing it with different groups of students who all looked purposefully grubby and dishevelled. I had been in a lift before and this old-fashioned steel box, which shuddered and stopped at least a dozen times, had none of the wonders of the escalator on the Metro. Finally I arrived at the floor I wanted. I stepped out and followed a cream-coloured corridor that, like the ground floor, had no windows. At least the offices were clearly labelled and I found the one I wanted right at the corner. The door was open as I approached and I heard a man speaking on the telephone.

  “Yes, of course, Mr Sharkovsky,” he was saying. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  I knocked on the door.

  “Come in!”

  I entered a small, cluttered room with a single, square window looking out over the main avenue and the steps that had first brought me into the building. There must have been five or six hundred books there, not just lined up along the shelves but stacked up on the floor and every available surface. They were fighting for space with a whole range of laboratory equipment, different-sized flasks, two microscopes, scales, Bunsen burners, and boxes that looked like miniature ovens or fridges. Most unnerving of all, a complete human skeleton stood in a frame in one corner as if it were here to guard all this paraphernalia while its owner was away.

  The man was sitting at his desk. He had just put down the phone as I came in. My first impression was that he was about the same age as my father, with thick black hair that only emphasized the round bald patch in the middle of his head. The skin here was stretched tight and polished, reflecting the ceiling light. He had a heavy beard and moustache, and as he examined me from behind a pair of glasses, I saw small, anxious eyes blinking at me as if he had never seen a boy before – or had certainly never allowed one into his office.

  Actually, I was wrong about this. He was nervous because he knew who I was. He spoke my name immediately. “Yasha?”

  “Are you Mr Dementyev?” I asked.

  “Professor Dementyev,” he replied. “Please, come in. Close the door. Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “I asked in the administration room downstairs,” I said.

  “You spoke to Anna?” I had no idea what the woman’s name was. He didn’t let me reply. “That’s a great pity. It would have been much better if you had telephoned me before you came. How did you get here?”

  “I came by train. My parents—”

  “I know what has happened in Estrov.” He was agitated. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on the crown of his head. I could see them glistening. “You cannot stay here, Yasha,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “My parents said you’d look after me!”

  “And I will! Of course I will!” He tried to smile at me but he was full of nervous energy and he was allowing his different thought processes to tumble over each other. “Sit down, Yasha, please!” He pointed to a chair. “I’m sorry but you’ve taken me completely by surprise. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Can I get you something?” Before I could answer, he snatched up the telephone again. “There’s somebody I know,” he explained to me. “He’s a friend. He can help you. I’m going to ask him to come.”

  He dialled a number and as I sat down facing him, uncomfortably close to the skeleton, he spoke quickly into the receiver.

  “It’s Dementyev. The boy is here. Yes … here at the university.” He paused while the person at the other end spoke to him. “We haven’t had a chance to speak yet. I thought I should let you know at once.” He was answering a question I hadn’t heard. “He seems all right. Unharmed, yes. We’ll wait for you here.”

  He put the phone down and it seemed to me that he was suddenly less agitated than he had been when I had arrived – as if he had done what was expected of him. For some reason, I was feeling uneasy. By the look of it, Professor Dementyev wasn’t pleased to see me. I was a danger to him. This was my parents’ closest friend but I was beginning to wonder how much that friendship was worth.

  “How did you know who I was?” I asked.

  “I’ve been expecting you, ever since I heard about what happened. And I recognized you, Yasha. You look very much like your mother. I saw the two of you together a few times when you were very young. You won’t remember me. It was before your parents left Moscow.”

  “Why did they leave? What happened? You worked with them.”

  “I worked with your father. Yes.”

  “Do you know that he’s dead?”

  “I didn’t know for certain. I’m sorry to hear it. He and I were friends.”

  “So tell me—”

  “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  I had eaten and drunk everything I needed at Kazansky Station. What I really wanted was to be away from here. I have to say that I was disappointed by Misha Dementyev. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but maybe he could have been more affectionate, like a long-lost uncle or something? He hadn’t even come ou
t from behind his desk.

  “What happened?” I asked again. “Why was my father sent to work in Estrov?”

  “I can’t go through all that now.” He was flustered again. “Later…”

  “Please, Professor Dementyev!”

  “All right. All right.” He looked at me as if he was wondering if he could trust me. Then he began. “Your father was a genius. He and I worked here together in this department. We were young students; idealists, excited. We were researching endospores … and one in particular. Anthrax. I don’t suppose you know very much about that.”

  “I know about anthrax,” I said.

  “We thought we could change the world … your father especially. He was looking at ways to prevent the infection of sheep and cattle. But there was an accident. Working in the laboratory together, we created a form of anthrax that was much faster and deadlier than anything anyone had ever known. It had no cure. Antibiotics were useless against it.”

  “It was a weapon?”

  “That wasn’t our intention. That wasn’t what we wanted. But – yes. It was the perfect biological weapon. And of course the government found out about it. Everything that happens in this place they know about. It was true then. It’s true now. They heard about our work here and they came to us and ordered us to develop it for military use.” Dementyev took out a handkerchief and used it to polish the lenses of his glasses. He put them back on. “Your father refused. It was the last thing he wanted. So they started to put the pressure on. They threatened him. And that was when he did something incredibly brave … or incredibly stupid. He went to a journalist and tried to get the story into the newspapers.

  “He was arrested at once. I was here, in the laboratory, when they marched him away. They arrested your mother too.”

  “How old was I?” I asked.

  “You were two. And – I’m sorry, Yasha – they used you to get at your parents. That was how they worked. It was very simple. If your parents didn’t do what they were told, they would never see you again. What choice did they have? They were sent to Estrov, to work in the factory. They were forced to produce the new anthrax. That was the deal. Stay silent. And live.”

  So everything – my parents’ life or their non-life as prisoners in a remote village, the little house, the boredom and the poverty – had been for me. I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. Was I to blame for everything that had happened? Was I the one who had destroyed their lives?

  “Yasha…” Dementyev stood up and came over to me. He was much taller than I had expected now that he was on his feet. He loomed over me. “Were you inoculated?” he asked.

  I nodded. “My parents were shot at when they escaped. But they stole a syringe. They injected me.”

  “I knew your father had been working on an antidote. Thank God! But I guessed it the moment I saw you. Otherwise you would have been dead a long time ago.”

  “My best friend died,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry. Anton and Eva – your parents – were my friends too.”

  We fell silent. He was still standing there, one hand on the back of my chair.

  “What will happen to me?” I asked.

  “You don’t need to worry any more, Yasha. You’ll be well looked after.”

  “Who was that you called?”

  “It was a friend. Someone we can trust. He’ll be here very soon.”

  There was something wrong. Things that he’d told me just didn’t add up. I was about to speak when I heard the sound of sirens, police cars approaching, still far away but drawing nearer. And I knew instantly that there was no friend, that Dementyev had called them. It wasn’t detective work. I could have asked him why my parents had been sent to live in Estrov while he had been allowed to stay here. I could have played back the conversation he’d had on the telephone, how he had referred to me simply as “the boy”. Not Yasha. Not Anton’s son. The people at the other end knew who I was because they’d been expecting me to show up, waiting for me. I could have worked it out but I didn’t need to. I saw it all in his eyes.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’m sorry, Yasha,” he said. “But nobody can know. We have to keep it secret.”

  We. The factory managers. The helicopter pilots. The militia. The government. And Dementyev. They were all in it together.

  I scrabbled to my feet – or tried to. But Dementyev was ahead of me. He pounced down, his hands on my shoulders, using his weight to pin me to the seat. For a moment his face was close to mine, the eyes staring at me through the thick lenses.

  “There’s nowhere you can go!” he hissed. “I promise you … they won’t treat you badly.”

  “They’ll kill me!” I shouted back. “They killed everyone!”

  “I’ll talk to them. They’ll take you somewhere safe…”

  Yes. I saw it already. A prison or a mental asylum, somewhere I’d never be seen again.

  I couldn’t move. Dementyev was too strong for me. And the police cars were getting closer. We were twenty-four floors up but I could hear the sirens cutting through the air. And then I had an idea. I forced myself to relax.

  “You can’t do this!” I exclaimed. “My father gave me something for you. He said it was very valuable. He said if I gave it to you, you’d have to help me.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s in a bag. It’s in my pocket!”

  “Show me.”

  He let go of one of my shoulders … but only one of them. I still couldn’t wrench myself free. I was sitting down. He was standing over me and he was twice my size.

  “Take it out,” he said.

  The police must have turned into the main university drive. I heard car doors slam shut.

  Using my one free arm, I drew out the black bag that my mother had given me. At least Dima and his friends hadn’t stolen it when they took my money. I placed it on the desk. And it worked just as I’d hoped. Dementyev still didn’t let go of me but his grip loosened as he reached out and opened the bag. I saw his face change as he tipped out the contents.

  “What…?” he began.

  I jerked myself free, throwing the chair backwards. As it toppled over, I managed to get to my feet. Dementyev swung round but he was too late to stop me lashing out with my fist. I knocked the glasses off his face. He fell back against the desk but then recovered and seized hold of me again. I needed a weapon and there was only one that I could see. I reached out and grabbed the arm of the skeleton, wrenching it free from the shoulder. The hand and the wrist dangled down but I hung onto the upper bone – the humerus – and used it as a club, smashing it against Dementyev’s head again and again until, with a howl, he fell back. I twisted away. Dementyev had crumpled over the desk. There was blood streaming down his face.

  “It’s too late…” he stammered. “You won’t get away.”

  I snatched back the jewellery and tumbled out of the office. There was nobody outside. Surely someone must have heard what had happened? I didn’t want to know. I ran to the lift. It was already on the way up and it took me a few seconds to work out that the police were almost certainly inside, travelling towards me. And I might have been caught standing there, waiting for them! I continued down the corridor and found a fire exit – leading to twenty-four flights of stairs. I didn’t stop until I reached the bottom and it was only then that I realized I was still carrying the skeleton’s arm. I found a dustbin, picked up some loose papers and dropped the arm in.

  As I walked down the steps at the front door, I saw three police cars parked there with their lights flashing. I pretended to be immersed in the papers I had taken. If there were any policemen outside, I would look like one more of the countless students coming in and out.

  But nobody stopped me. I hurried back to the station with just one thought in my head. I was alone in Moscow with no money.

  ТВЕРСКАЯ

  TVERSKAYA

  I went back to Kazansky Station.

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sp; In a way, it was a mad decision. The police knew I was in Moscow and they would certainly be watching all the major stations – just as they had in Rosna and Kirsk. But I wasn’t leaving. The truth was that in the whole of Russia, I had nowhere to go and no one to look after me. I couldn’t go back to Estrov, obviously, and although I remembered my mother once telling me that she had relations in a city called Kazan, I had no idea where it was or how to get there.

  No, it was much better to stay in Moscow, but first of all I would need to change my appearance. That was easy enough. I stripped off my Pioneer uniform and dumped it in a bin. Then I got my hair cut short. Although the bulk of my money had gone, I had managed to find eighteen kopecks scattered through my pockets and I used nine of them at a barber’s shop, a dank little place in a backstreet with old hair strewn over the floor. As I stepped out again, feeling the unfamiliar cool of the breeze on my head and the back of my neck, a police car rushed past – but I wasn’t worried. Even today, I am aware of how little you need to change to lose yourself in a city. A haircut, different clothes, perhaps a pair of sunglasses … it is enough.

  I still had enough kopecks for the return journey and as I sat once again in the Metro, I tried to work out some sort of plan. The most immediate problem was accommodation. Where would I sleep when night came? If I stayed out on the street, I would be at my most vulnerable. And then there was the question of food. Without money, I couldn’t eat. Of course, I could steal but the one thing I most dreaded was falling back into the hands of the police. If they recognized me, I was finished. And even if they didn’t, I had heard enough stories about the prison camps all over Russia, built specially for children. Did I want to end up with the rest of my hair shaved off, stuck behind barbed wire in the middle of nowhere? There were thousands of Russian boys whose lives were exactly that.