Russian Roulette: The Story of an Assassin Read online

  This time I barely even noticed the stations, no matter how superbly they were decorated. I was utterly miserable. My parents had believed in Misha Dementyev and they had sent me to him, even though it had cost them their lives. But the moment I had walked into his office, he had thought only of saving his own skin. It seemed to me that there was nobody in the world I could trust. Even Dima, the boy I had met when I got off the train, had only been interested in robbing me.

  But perhaps Dima was the answer.

  The more I thought about it, the more I decided he might not be all bad. Certainly, when we had met, he had been pleasant enough, smiling and friendly, even if he was simply setting me up for his friends. But maybe I was partly to blame for what had happened, coming off the train and flashing my money around all the different stalls. Dima was living on the street. He had to survive. I’d made myself an obvious target and he’d done what he had to.

  At the same time, I remembered what he’d said to me. It’s good to have a friend. We all need friends. Could it be possible that he actually meant it? He was, after all, only a few years older than me and we were both in the same situation. Part of me knew that I was fooling myself. Dima was probably miles away by now, laughing at me for being such a fool. But at the end of the day, he was the only person in the city I actually knew. If I could find him again, perhaps I could persuade him to help me.

  And there was something else. I still had my mother’s jewels.

  Half an hour later, I climbed up to street level and found myself back where I had begun. The women were still there at their food stalls but they almost seemed to be taunting me. Before, they had been welcoming. Now, all their pies and ice creams were beyond my reach. I found a bench and sat down, watching the crowds around me. Stations are strange places. When you pass through them, travelling somewhere, you barely notice them. They simply help you on your way. But stand outside with nowhere to go and they make you feel worthless. You should not be here, they shout at you. If you are not a passenger, you do not belong here.

  To start with, I did nothing at all. I just sat there, staring at the traffic, letting people stream past me on all sides. The children I had seen were still dotted around and I wondered what they would do with themselves when night fell. That could only be a few hours away. The light was barely changing, the sun trapped behind unbroken cloud, but there were already commuters arriving at the station, on their way home. There was no sign of Dima. In the end, I went over to a couple of boys, the ten-year-olds that I had seen before.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  Two pairs of very sly and malevolent eyes turned on me. One of the children had snot running out of his nose. Both of them looked worn out, unhealthy.

  “I’m looking for someone I was talking to earlier,” I went on. “He was wearing a black leather jacket. His name is Dima.”

  The boys glanced at each other. “You got any money?” one of them asked.

  “No.”

  “Then get lost!” Those weren’t his actual words. This little boy, whose voice hadn’t even broken, used the filthiest language I’d ever heard. I saw that he had terrible teeth with gaps where half of them had fallen out. His friend hissed at me like an animal and at that moment the two of them weren’t children at all. They were like horrible old men, not even human. I was glad to leave them on their own.

  I tried to ask some of the other street kids the same question but as I approached them, they moved away. It was as if they all knew that I was from out of town, that I wasn’t one of them, and for that reason they would have nothing to do with me. And now the light really was beginning to disappear. I was starting to feel the threat of nightfall and knew that I couldn’t stay here for much longer. I would have to find a doorway – or perhaps I could sleep in one of the subways beneath the streets. I had four kopecks left in my pocket. Barely enough for a cup of hot tea.

  And then, quite unexpectedly, I saw him. Dima – with his oversized leather jacket and his half-handsome, half-ugly face – had turned the corner, smoking a cigarette, flicking away the match. There was another boy with him and I recognized him too. He had been one of the two who had robbed me. Dima said something and they laughed. It looked as if they were heading for the Metro, presumably on their way home.

  I didn’t hesitate. It was now or never. I crossed the concourse in front of the station and stood in their path.

  Dima saw me first and stopped with the cigarette halfway to his lips. I had taken him by surprise and he thought I was going to make trouble. I could see it at once. He was tense, wary. But I was completely relaxed. I’d already worked it out. He’d tricked me. He’d robbed me. But I had to treat him as my friend.

  “Hi, Dima.” I greeted him as if the three of us had arranged to meet here for coffee.

  He smiled a little but he was still suspicious. And there was something else. I wasn’t quite sure what it was but he was looking at me almost as if he had expected me to come back, as if there was something he knew that I didn’t. “Soldier!” he exclaimed. “How are you doing? What happened to your hair?”

  “I got it cut.”

  “Did you meet your friend?”

  “No. He wasn’t there. It seems he’s left Moscow.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I nodded. “In fact, I’ve got a real problem. He was going to put me up but now I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  I was hoping he might offer to help. That was the idea, anyway. Why not? He was seventy rubles richer than me. Thanks to him, I had nothing. He could at least have offered me a bed for the night. But he didn’t speak and I realized I was wasting my time. He was street-hardened, the sort of person who would have never helped anyone in his life. His friend muttered something and pushed past me, disappearing into the Metro, but I stood my ground. “Can you help me?” I said. “I just need somewhere to stay for a few nights.” And then – my last chance. “I can pay you.”

  “You’ve got money?” That surprised him. He thought he’d taken it all already.

  “Not any more,” I said. I shrugged as if to let him know that it didn’t matter, that I’d already forgotten about it. “But I’ve got this.” I went on. I took out the black velvet bag that my mother had given me and that I’d used to trick Dementyev. I opened it and poured the contents – the necklace, the ring and the earrings – into my hand. “There must be a pawnshop somewhere. I’ll sell them and then I can pay you for a room.”

  Dima examined the jewellery, the brightly coloured stones in their silver and gold settings, and I could already see the light stirring in his eyes as he made the calculations. How much were they worth and how was he going to separate them from me? He dropped his cigarette and reached out, picking up one of the earrings. He let it hang from his finger and thumb. “This won’t get you much,” he said. “It’s cheap.”

  Right then, I thought of my mother and I could feel the anger rising in my blood. I wanted to punch him but still I forced myself to stay calm. “I was told they were valuable,” I said. “That’s gold. And those stones are emeralds. Take me to a pawnshop and we can find out.”

  “I don’t know…” He was pretending otherwise but he knew that the jewels were worth more than the money he had already stolen. “Give me the stuff and I’ll take it to a pawnbroker for you. But I don’t think you’ll get more than five rubles.”

  He’d get fifty. I’d get five … if I was lucky. I could see how his mind worked. I held out my hand and, reluctantly, he gave me the earring back. “I can find a pawnbroker on my own,” I said.

  “There’s no need to be like that, soldier! I’m only trying to help.” He gave me a crooked smile, made all the more crooked by his broken nose. “Listen, I’ve got a room and you’re welcome to stay with me. You know … we’re all friends, here in Moscow, right? But you’ll have to pay rent.”

  “How much rent?”

  “Two rubles a week.”

  I pretended to consider. “I’ll have to see it first.”

&n
bsp; “Whatever you say. We can go there now if you like.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  He took me back down into the Metro. He even paid my fare again. I knew I was taking a risk. He could lead me to some faraway corner of the city, take me into an alleyway, put a knife into me and steal the jewels. But I had a feeling that wasn’t the way he worked. Dima was a hustler, a thief – but at the end of the day, he just didn’t have the look of someone who was ready to kill. He would get the jewellery in the end anyway. I would pay it to him as rent or he would steal it from me while I slept. My plan was simply to make myself useful to him, to become part of his gang. If I could do this quickly enough, he might let me stay with him, even when I had nothing more to give. That was my hope.

  He took me to a place just off Tverskaya Street, one of the main thoroughfares in Moscow, which leads all the way down to the Kremlin and Red Square. Today, there is a hotel on that same corner – the nine-storey Marriott Grand, where American tourists stay in total luxury. But when I came there, following Dima and still wondering if I wasn’t making another bad mistake, it was very different. Moscow has changed so much, so quickly. It was another world back then.

  Dima lived in what had once been a block of flats but which had long been abandoned and left to rot. All the colour had faded from the brickwork, which was damp and mouldy, and covered with graffiti – not artwork but political slogans, swear words, and the names of city football teams. The windows were so dirty that they looked more like rusting metal than glass. The building rose up twelve floors, three more than the hotel that would one day replace it, and whole thing seemed to be sagging in on itself, hardly bothering to stay upright. It was surrounded by other blocks that were similar … they looked like old men standing out in the cold, having a last cigarette together before they died. The streets here were very narrow; more like alleyways, twisting together in the darkness, covered with rubbish and mud. The block of flats had shops on the ground floor – an empty grocery store, a chemist and a massage parlour – but the further up you went, the more desolate it became. It had no lifts, of course. Just a concrete staircase that had been used as a toilet so many times that it stank. By the time you got to the top, there was no electricity, no proper heating. The only water came dribbling, cold, out of the taps.

  We climbed up together. I noticed that Dima was wheezing when we got to the top and I wondered if he was ill – although it could just have been all those cigarettes. On the way, we passed a couple of people, a man and a woman, lying on top of each other, unconscious. I couldn’t even be sure they were actually alive. Dima just stepped over them and I did the same, wondering what I was getting myself into. My village had been a place of poverty and hardship but it was somehow more shocking here, in the middle of a city.

  Dima’s room was on the eighth floor. Since there was no lighting, he had taken out a torch and used it to find the way. We went down a corridor that was missing its carpet with gaping holes showing the pipework and wiring. There were doors on either side, most of them locked, one or two reinforced with metal plating. Somewhere, I could hear a baby crying. A man shouted out a swear word. Another laughed. The sounds that echoed around me only added to the nightmare, the sense that I was being sucked into a dark and alien world.

  “This is me,” Dima said.

  We’d come to a door marked with a number 83. Somebody had added DIMA’S PLACE in bright red letters but the paint hadn’t been allowed to dry and it had trickled down like blood. Perhaps the effect was deliberate. There was a hole where the lock should have been but Dima used a padlock and a chain to keep the place secure. At the moment, it was hanging open. His friends had arrived ahead of us.

  “Welcome home!” he said to me. “This is my place. Come in and meet my mates…”

  He pushed the door open. We went in.

  The flat was tiny. Most of it was in a single room, which he shared with the two boys who had robbed me. On the floor were three mattresses and some filthy pillows on a carpet which was mouldy and colourless. The place was lit by candles and my first thought was that if one of them toppled over in the night, we would all burn to death. A single table and four chairs stood on one side. Otherwise there was no furniture of any description. A few bits of the kitchen were still in place but I could tell at a glance that the sink hadn’t been used for years and without electricity the fridge was no more than an oversized cupboard. The smell in the room was unpleasant; a mixture of human sweat, unwashed clothes, dirt and decay.

  Dima waved me over to the table. “This is Yasha,” he announced. “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.” His two friends were already sitting there playing Snap with a deck that was so worn that the cards hung limp in their hands. They didn’t look pleased as I joined them. “He’s going to pay,” Dima added. “Two rubles a week.”

  Dima opened the fridge and took out a bottle of vodka and some black bread. He found some dirty glasses in the sink and poured drinks for us all. He lit a cigarette for himself, then offered me one, which I accepted gratefully. It wasn’t just that I wanted to smoke. It was a gesture of friendship and that was what I most needed.

  Dima introduced the two boys. “This is Roman. That’s Grigory.” Roman was tall and thin. He looked as if he had been deliberately stretched. Grigory was round-faced, pock-marked with oily, black hair. All three of them looked not just adult but old, as if they had forgotten their true age … which was about seventeen. Roman collected the cards and put them away. It was obvious who was the leader here. So long as Dima said I could stay, they weren’t going to argue.

  “Tell us about yourself, soldier,” Dima said. “I’d like to know what brought you to Moscow.” He winked at me. “And I’d particularly like to know why the police are so interested in you.”

  “What?”

  So I’d been right. When I’d got back to the station I’d thought the children had been behaving strangely and now I knew why. The police had been there, looking for me.

  “That’s right. Tell him, Grig.” Grigory said nothing so Dima went on. “They’re looking for someone new to town. Someone who might have come into Kazansky Station, dressed up like a Young Pioneer. They’ve been asking everyone.” He tapped ash. “They’re offering a reward for information.”

  My heart sank. I wondered if I had walked into another trap. Had Dima invited me here to have me arrested? But there was no sound coming from outside; no footsteps in the corridor, no sirens in the street.

  “Don’t worry, soldier! No one’s going to turn you in. Not even for the money. They never pay up anyway.

  “I hate the p–p–p–police.” Roman had a stutter. I watched his face contort as he tried to spit out the last word.

  “What do they want with you?” Grigory asked. He sounded hostile. Maybe he was afraid that I was bringing more trouble into his life. He probably had enough already.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t want to lie but I was afraid of telling the truth. In the end, I kept it as short as I could. “They killed my parents,” I said. “My dad knew something he wasn’t meant to know. They wanted to kill me too. I escaped.”

  “What about your friend at the university?” Dima asked.

  “He wasn’t my friend.” I was on safer ground here. I told them everything that had happened in Misha Dementyev’s office. When I described how I had beaten Dementyev off using the arm of the skeleton, Dima laughed out loud. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “You certainly gave him the elbow!”

  It was a weak joke but we all laughed. Dima refilled our glasses and once again we drank the Russian way, throwing the liquid back in a single gulp. It didn’t take us long to finish the bottle and about an hour later we all went to bed … if you can call bed a square of carpet with a pile of old clothes as a pillow. I was just glad to have a roof over my head and, helped by the vodka, I was asleep almost at once.

  The next morning, Dima took me to the pawnbroker he had mentioned. It was a tiny shop with a cracked f
ront window and an old, half-shaven man sitting behind a counter that was stacked with watches and jewellery. I handed across my mother’s earrings and stood there, watching him examine them briefly through an eyeglass which he screwed into his face as if it was part of him. Right then, a little part of me died. It had been a pawnbroker that the hero had murdered in Crime and Punishment, the book I had been forced to read at school. I could almost have done the same.

  He wanted to give me eight rubles for the earrings but Dima talked him up to twelve. The two of them knew each other well.

  “You’re a crook, Reznik,” Dima scowled.

  “And you’re a thief, Dima,” Reznik replied.

  “One day someone will stick a knife in you.”

  “I don’t mind. So long as they buy it from me first.”

  Dima took the money and we went back out into the sunlight. He gave me three rubles, keeping nine for himself, and when I looked down reproachfully at the crumpled notes he clapped me on the back. “That’s three weeks’ rent, soldier,” he said.

  “What about the other three rubles?”

  “That’s my commission. If you hadn’t had me with you, that old crook would have ripped you off.”

  I’d been ripped off anyway but I didn’t complain. Dima had said I could stay with him for three weeks. It was exactly what I wanted to hear.

  “Let’s get some breakfast!” he said.

  We ate breakfast in the smallest, grimiest restaurant it would be possible to imagine. Somehow, I ended up paying for that too.

  So began my stay in Moscow. I adapted very quickly to the way of life. The truth is that nobody did anything very much. They stole, they ate, they survived. I spent long hours outside the station with Dima, Roman and Grigory. The two boys didn’t warm to me but gradually they began to accept that I was there. At the same time, Dima had made me his special project. I wondered if he might have had a younger brother at some time. He never spoke about his past life but that was how he treated me. When I write about him now, I still see him with the sleeves of his precious leather jacket falling over his hands, his smile, the way he swaggered along the street, and I wonder if he is alive or dead. Dead most probably. Homeless kids in Moscow never survived long.