Russian Roulette

ОСТРОВ – THE ISLAND

They taught me how to kill.

In fact, during the time that I spent on the island of Malagosto, they taught me a great deal more than that. There was no school in the world that was anything like the Training and Assessment Centre that Scorpia had created. How do I begin to describe all the differences? It was, of course, highly secret. Nobody chose to go there… they chose you. It was surely the only school in the world where there were more teachers than students. There were no holidays, no sports days, no uniforms, no punishments, no visitors, no prizes and no exams. And yet it was, in its own way, a school. You could call it the Eton of murder.

What was strange about Malagosto was how close it was to mainland Venice. Here was this city full of rich tourists drifting between jazz bars and restaurants, five-star hotels and gorgeous palazzos – and less than half a mile away, across a strip of dark water, there were activities going on that would have made their hair stand on end. The island had been a plague centre once. There was an old Venetian saying: “Sneeze in Venice and wipe your nose in Malagosto” – the last thing you could afford in a tightly packed medieval city, with its sweating crowds and stinking canals, was an outbreak of the plague. The rich merchants had built a monastery, a hospital, living quarters and a cemetery for the infected. They would house them, look after them, pray for them and bury them. But they would never have them back.

The island was small. I could walk around it in forty minutes. Even in the summer, the sand was a dirty yellow, covered with shingle, and the water was an unappealing grey. All the woodland was tangled together as if it had been hit by a violent storm. There was a clearing in the middle with a few gravestones, the names worn away by time, leaning together as if whispering the secrets of the past. The monastery had a bell tower made out of dark red bricks and it slanted at a strange angle… it looked sure to collapse at any moment. The whole building looked dilapidated, half the windows broken, the courtyards pitted with cracks, weeds everywhere.

But the actual truth was quite surprising. Scorpia hadn’t just watched the place fall into disrepair, they had helped it on its way. They had removed anything that looked too attractive: fountains, statues, frescoes, stained-glass windows, ornamental doors. They had even gone so far as to insert a hydraulic arm into the tower, deliberately tilting it. The whole point was that Malagosto was not meant to be beautiful. It was off-limits anyway, but they didn’t want a single tourist or archaeologist to feel it was worth hiring a boat and risking the crossing. The last time anyone had tried had been six years before, when a group of nuns had taken a ferry from Murano, following in the footsteps of some minor saint. They had still been singing when the ferry had inexplicably blown up. The cause was never found.

Inside, the buildings were much more modern and comfortable than anyone might have guessed. We had two classrooms, warm and soundproof with brand new furniture and banks of audio visual equipment that would have had my old teachers in Rosna staring in envy. All they’d had was chalk and blackboards. There were both indoor and outdoor shooting ranges, a superbly equipped gymnasium with an area devoted exclusively to fighting – judo, karate, kick-boxing and, above all, ninjutsu – and a swimming pool, although most of the time we used the sea. If the temperature was close to freezing, that only made the training more worthwhile. My own rooms, on the second floor of the accommodation block, were very comfortable. I had a bedroom, a living room and even my own bathroom with a huge marble bath that took only seconds to fill, the steaming hot water jetting out of a monster brass tap shaped like a lion’s head. I had my own desk, my own TV, a private fridge that was always kept stocked up with bottled water and soft drinks. All this came at a price. Once I left the facility, I would be tied by a five-year contract working exclusively for Scorpia and the cost of my training would be taken from my salary. This was made clear to me from the start.

After I had met Mrs Rothman and accepted her offer, I was taken straight to the island in the back of a water ambulance. It seemed an odd choice of vessel but of course it would have been completely inconspicuous in the middle of all the other traffic and I did not travel alone. Mr Grant came with me, laid out on a stretcher. I have to say that I felt sorry for him. In his own way he had been kind to me. I turned my thoughts to Vladimir Sharkovsky, probably lying in a Moscow hospital, surrounded by fresh bodyguards watching over him just as the machines would be watching over his heart rate, his blood pressure – all his vital signs. Who would be tasting his food for him now?

It was midday when I arrived.

The water ambulance pulled up to a jetty that was much less dilapidated than it looked and I saw a young woman waiting for me. In fact, from a distance, I had mistaken her for a man. Her dark hair was cut short and she was wearing a loose white shirt, a waistcoat and jeans. But as we drew closer I saw that she was quite attractive, about two or three years older than me, and serious-looking. She wore no make-up. She reached out and gave me a hand off the boat and suddenly we were standing together, weighing each other up.

“I’m Colette,” she said.

“I’m Yassen.”

“Welcome to Malagosto. Do you have any luggage?”

I shook my head. I had brought nothing with me. Apart from what I was wearing, I had no possessions in the world.

“I’ve been asked to show you around. Mr Nye will want to see you later on.”

“Mr Nye?”

“You could say he’s the principal. He runs this place.”

“Are you a teacher?”

She smiled. “No. I’m a student. The same as you. Come on – I’ll start by showing you your rooms.”

I spent the next two hours with Colette. There were only three students there at the time. I would be the fourth. The others were on the mainland, involved in some sort of exercise. As we stood on the beach, looking out across the water, Colette told me a little about them.

“There’s Marat. He’s from Poland. And Sam. He only got here a few weeks ago… from Israel. Neither of them talks very much but Sam came out of the army. He was going to join Mossad – Israeli intelligence – but Scorpia made him a better offer.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Where have you come from?”

“I’m French.”

We had been speaking in English but I had been aware she had a slight accent. I waited for her to tell me more but she was silent. “Is that all?” I asked.

“What else is there?” You and me… we’re here. That’s all that matters.”

“How did you get chosen?”

“I didn’t get chosen. I volunteered.” She thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t ask personal questions, if I were you. People can be a bit touchy around here.”

“I just thought it was strange, that’s all. A woman learning how to kill…”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “You are old-fashioned, aren’t you, Yassen! And here’s another piece of advice. Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself.” She looked at her watch, then drew a thin book out of her back pocket. “Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on your own. I’ve got to finish this.”

I glanced at the cover: MODERN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES BY DR THREE.

“You might get to meet him one day,” Colette said. “And if you do, be careful what you say. You wouldn’t want to end up as a chapter in his book.”

I spent the rest of the day alone in my room, lying on my bed with all sorts of thoughts going through my head. Much later on, at about eight o’clock in the evening, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office and it was there that I met the man who was in charge of all the training on Malagosto.

His name was Sefton Nye and my first thought was that he had the darkest skin I had ever seen. His glistening bald head showed off eyes that were extraordinarily large and animated. And he had brilliant white teeth, which he displayed often in an astonishing smile. He dressed very carefully – he liked well-cut blazers, obviously expensive – and his shoes were polished to perfection. He was originally from Somalia. His family were modern-day pirates, holding up luxury yachts, cruise ships and even, on one occasion, an oil tanker that had strayed too close to the shore. They were utterly ruthless… I saw framed newspaper articles in the office describing their exploits. Nye himself had a very loud voice. Everything about him was larger than life.

“Yassen Gregorovich!” he exclaimed, pointing me to a chair in the office, which was almost circular with an iron chandelier in the middle. There were floor to ceiling bookshelves, two windows looking out over woodland, and half a dozen clocks, each one showing a different time. A pair of solid iron filing cabinets stood against one wall. Mr Nye wore the key that opened them around his neck. “Welcome to Malagosto,” he went on. “Welcome indeed. I always take the greatest pleasure in meeting the new recruits because, you see, when you leave here you will not be the same. We are going to turn you into something very special and when I meet you after that, it may well be that I do not want to. You will be dangerous. I will be afraid of you. Everyone who meets you, even without knowing why, will be afraid of you. I hope that thought does not distress you, Yassen, because if it does you should not be here. You are going to become a contract killer and although you will be rich and you will be comfortable, I am telling you now, it is a very lonely path.”

There was a knock at the door and a second man appeared, barely half the height of the headmaster, dressed in a linen suit and brown shoes, with a round face and a small beard. He seemed quite nervous of Mr Nye, his eyes blinking behind his tortoise-shell glasses. “You wanted to see me, headmaster?” he enquired. He had a French accent, much more distinct than Colette’s.

“Ah yes, Oliver!” He gestured in my direction. “This is our newest recruit. His name is Yassen Gregorovich. Mrs Rothman sent him over from the Widow’s Palace.”

“Delighted.” The little man nodded at me.

“This is Oliver d’Arc. He will be your personal tutor and he will also be taking many of your classes. If you’re unhappy, if you have any problems, you go to him.”

“Thank you,” I said, but I had already decided that if I had any problems I would most certainly keep them to myself. This was the sort of place where any weakness would only be used against you.

“I am here for you any time you need me,” d’Arc assured me.

I would spend a lot of time with Oliver d’Arc while I was on Malagosto but I never completely trusted him. I don’t think I ever knew him. Everything about him – his appearance, the way he spoke, probably even his name – was an act put on for the students’ benefit. Later on, after Nye was killed by one of his own students, d’Arc became the headmaster and, by all accounts, he was very good at the job.

“Do you have any questions, Yassen?” Mr Nye asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“That’s good. But before you turn in for the night, there’s something I want you to do for me, I hope you don’t mind. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

That was when I noticed that Oliver d’Arc was holding a spade.

My first job on Malagosto was to bury Mr Grant in the little cemetery in the woods. It was a final resting place that he would share with plague victims who had died four hundred years before him, although I had no doubt that there were other more recent arrivals too, men and women who had failed Scorpia just like him. It was an unpleasant, grisly task, digging on my own in the darkness. Even Sharkovsky had never asked me to do such a thing – but it’s possible that it was meant to be a warning to me. Mrs Rothman had let me live. She had even recruited me. But this is what I could look forward to if I let her down.

As I dragged Mr Grant off the stretcher and tipped him into the hole which I had dug, I couldn’t help but wonder if someone would do the same for me one day. For what it’s worth, it is the only time I have ever had such thoughts. When your business is death, the only death you should never consider is your own. It had begun to rain slightly, a thin drizzle that only made my task more unpleasant. I filled in the grave, flattened it with the spade, then carried the stretcher back to the main complex. Oliver d’Arc was waiting for me with a brandy and a hot chocolate. He escorted me to my room and even insisted on running a bath for me, adding a good measure of “Floris of London” bath oil to the foaming water. I was glad when he finally left. I was afraid he was going to offer to scrub my back.

Five months…

No two days were ever exactly the same, although we were always woken at half past five in the morning for a one-hour run around the island followed by a forty-minute swim – out to a stump of rock and back again. Breakfast was at half past seven, served in a beautiful dining room with a sixteenth-century mosaic on the floor, wooden angels carved around the windows and a faded view of heaven painted on the domed ceiling above our heads. The food was always excellent. All four students ate together and I usually found myself sitting next to Colette. As she had warned me, Marat and Sam weren’t exactly unfriendly but they hardly ever spoke to me. Sam was dark and very intense. Marat seemed more laid-back, sitting in class with his legs crossed and his hands behind his back. After they had graduated, they decided to work together as a team and were extremely successful but I never saw them again.

Morning lessons took place in the classrooms. We learned about guns and knives, how to create a booby trap, and how to make a bomb using seven different ingredients that you could find in any supermarket. There was one teacher – he was red-headed, scrawny and had tattoos all over his upper body – who brought in a different weapon for us to practice with every day: not just guns but knives, swords, throwing spikes, ninja fighting fans and even a medieval crossbow… he actually insisted on firing an apple off Marat’s head. His name was Gordon Ross and he came from a city called Glasgow, in Scotland. He had briefly been assistant to the Chief Armourer at MI6 until Scorpia had tempted him away at five times his original salary.

The first time we met, I impressed him by stripping down an AK-47 machine gun in eighteen seconds. My old friend Leo, of course, would have done it faster. Ross was actually a knife man. His two great heroes were William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, who together had created the ultimate fighting knife for British commandos during the Second World War. Ross was an expert with throwing knives and he’d had a set specially designed and weighted for his hand. Put him twenty metres from a target and there wasn’t a student on the island who could beat him for speed or accuracy, even when he was competing against guns.

Ross also had a fascination with gadgets. He didn’t manufacture any himself but he had made a study of the secret weaponry provided by all the different intelligence services and he had managed to steal several items, which he brought in for us to examine. There was a credit card developed by the CIA. One edge was razor-sharp. The French had come up with a string of onions… several of them were grenades. His own employers, MI6, had provided an antiseptic cream that could eat through metals, a fountain pen that fired a poisoned nib, and a Power Plus battery that concealed a radio transmitter. You simply gave the whole thing a half-twist and it would set off a beacon to summon immediate help. All these devices amused him but at the end of the day he dismissed them as toys. He preferred his knives.

Weapons and self-defence were only part of my training. I was surprised to find myself going back to school in the old-fashioned sense; I learned maths, English, Arabic, science – even classical music, art and cookery. Oliver d’Arc took some of these classes. However, I will not forget the day I was introduced to the unsmiling Italian woman who never told anyone her name but called herself the Countess. It may well be that she was a true aristocrat. She certainly behaved like one, insisting that we stand when she entered and always address her as “ma’am”. She was about fifty, exquisitely dressed, with expensive jewellery and perfect manners. When she stood up, she expected us to do so too. The Countess took us shopping and to art galleries in Venice. She made us read newspapers and celebrity magazines and often talked about the people in the photographs. At first, I had absolutely no idea what she was doing on the island.

It was only later that I understood. A killer is not just someone who lies on a roof with a 12.7mm sniper rifle, waiting for his prey to walk out of a restaurant. Sometimes it is necessary to be inside that restaurant. To pin down your target, you have to get close to him. You have to wear the right clothes, walk in the right way, demand a good table in a restaurant, understand the food and the wine. How could a boy from a poor Russian village have been able to do any of these things if he had not been taught? I have been to art auctions, to operas, to fashion shows and to horse races. I have sipped champagne with bankers, professors, designers and multimillionaires. I have always felt comfortable and nobody has ever thought I was out of place. For this, I have the Countess to thank.

The toughest part of the day came after lunch. The afternoons were devoted to hand-to-hand combat and three-hour classes were taken either by the headmaster, Mr Nye, or a Japanese instructor, Hatsumi Saburo. We all called him HS and he was an extraordinary man. He must have been seventy years old but he moved faster than a teenager, certainly faster than me. If you weren’t concentrating, he would knock you down so hard and so fast that you simply wouldn’t be aware of what had happened until you were on the floor, and he would be standing above you, gazing at the ceiling, as if it had been nothing to do with him. Sefton Nye taught judo and karate but it was Hatsumi Saburo who introduced me to a third martial art, ninjutsu, and it is this that has always stayed with me.

Ninjutsu was the fighting method developed by the ninjas, the spies and the assassins who roamed across Japan in the fifteenth century. It was taught to them by the priests and the warriors who were in hiding in the mountains. What I learned from HS over the next five months was what I can only describe as a total fighting system that encompassed every part of my body including my feet, my knees, my elbows, my fists, my head, even my teeth. And it was more than that. He used to talk about nagare, the flow of technique… knowing when to move from one form of attack to the next. Ultimately, everything came down to mental attitude. “You cannot win if you do not believe you will win,” he once said to me. He had a very heavy Japanese accent and barked like a dog. “You must control your emotions. You must control your feelings. If there is any fear or insecurity, you must destroy it before it destroys you. It is not the size or the strength of your opponent that matters. These can be measured. It is what cannot be measured… courage, determination… that count.”

I felt great reverence for Hatsumi Saburo but I did not like him. Sometimes we would fight each other with wooden swords that were known as bokken. He never held back. When I went to bed, my whole body would be black and blue, while I would never so much as touch him. “You have too many emotions, Yas-sen!” he would crow, as he stood over me. “All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away how can you hope to see?”

Was I sad about what had happened to me? Was I angry? I suppose Scorpia would know better than me because, just as Mrs Rothman had promised, I was given regular psychological examinations by a doctor called Karl Steiner who came from South Africa. I disliked him from the start; the way he looked at me, his eyes always boring into mine as if he suspected that everything I said was a lie. I don’t think I ever heard Dr Steiner say anything that wasn’t a question. He was a very neat man, always dressed in a suit with a carnation in his lapel. He would sit there with one leg crossed over the other, occasionally glancing at a gold pocket watch to check the time. His office was completely bare… just a white space with two armchairs. It had a window that looked out over the firing range and I would sometimes hear the crack of the rifles outside as he fired his own questions my way.

I regretted now that I had told Mrs Rothman so much about myself. She had passed all the information to him and he wanted me to talk about my parents, my grandmother, my childhood in Estrov. The more we talked, the less I wanted to say. I felt empty, as if the life I was describing was something that no longer belonged to me. And the strange thing is, I think that was exactly what he wanted. In his own way he was just like Hatsumi Saburo. My old life was smoke. It had to be blown away.

We were given a couple of hours of rest before dinner but we were always expected to use the time productively. My tutor, Oliver d’Arc, insisted that I read books… and in English, not Russian. Some evenings we had political discussions. I learned more about my own country while I was on the island than I had the whole time I was living there.

We also had guest lecturers. They were brought to Malagosto in blindfolds and many of them had been in prison but they were all experts in their own field. One was a pickpocket… he shook hands with each one of us before he began and then started his lecture by returning our watches. Another showed us how to pick locks. There was one really brilliant lecture by an elderly Hungarian man with terrible scars down the side of his face. He had lost his sight in a car accident. He talked to us for two hours about disguise and false identities, and then revealed that he was actually a thirty-two-year-old Belgian woman and that she could see as well as any of us.

You never knew what was going to happen. The school loved to throw surprises our way. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, a whistle would blow and we would find ourselves called out to the assault course, crawling through the rain and the mud, climbing nets and swinging on ropes while Mr Ross fired live ammunition at our heels. Once, we were told to swim to the mainland, to steal clothes and money when we got there and then to make our own way back.

But Scorpia did not want us to become too cut off, too removed from the real world. As well as the expeditions with the Countess, they often gave us half a day off to visit Venice. Marat and Sam kept themselves to themselves so I usually found myself with Colette. We would go to the markets together and walk the streets. She was always stopping to take photographs. She loved little details… an iron door handle, a gargoyle, a cat asleep on a windowsill. I had never been out with a girl before – I had never really had the chance – and I found myself being drawn to her in a way I could not completely understand. All the time, I was being taught to hide my feelings. When I was with her, I wanted to do the opposite.

She never told me much more about herself than she had that first time we had met and I was sensible enough not to ask. She let slip that she had once lived in Paris, that her father was something to do with the French government and that she hadn’t spoken to him for years. She had left home when she was very young and had somehow survived on her own since then. She never explained how she had found out about Scorpia. But I did learn that her training would be over very soon. Like all recruits, she was going to be sent on her first solo kill – a real job with a real target.

“Do you ever think about it?” I asked her.

We were sitting outside a café on the Riva degli Schiavoni with a great expanse of water in front of us and hundreds of tourists streaming past. They gave us privacy.

“What?” she asked.

I lowered my voice. “Killing. Taking another person’s life.”

She looked at me over the top of her coffee. She was wearing sunglasses which hid her eyes but I could tell she was annoyed. “You should ask Dr Steiner about that.”

I held her gaze. “I’m asking you.”

“Why do you even want to know?” she snapped. She stirred the coffee. It was very black, served in a tiny cup. “It’s a job. There are all sorts of people who don’t deserve to live. Rich people. Powerful people. Take one of them out, maybe you’re doing the world a favour.”

“What if they’re married?”

“Who cares?”

“What if they have children?”

“If you think like that, you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t even be talking like this. If you were to say any of this to Marat or Sam, they’d go straight to Mr Nye.”

“I wouldn’t talk to them,” I said. “They’re not my friends.”

“And you think I am?”

I still remember that moment. Colette was leaning towards me and she was wearing a jacket with a very soft, close-fitting jersey beneath. She took off her sunglasses and looked at me with brown eyes that, I’m sure, had more warmth in them than she intended. Right then, I wished that we could be just like all the other people strolling by us; a Russian boy and a French girl who had just happened to bump into each other in one of the most romantic places on the earth. But of course it couldn’t be. It would never be.

“I’m not your friend,” she said. “We’ll never have friends, Yassen. Either of us.”

She finished her coffee, stood up and walked away.

Colette left a few weeks later and after that there were just the three of us continuing with the training, day and night.

None of the instructors ever said as much but I knew I was doing well. I was the fastest across the assault course. On the shooting range, my targets always came whirring back with the bullets grouped neatly inside the head. I had mastered all sixteen body strikes – the so-called “secret fists” – that are essential to ninjutsu and during one memorable training session I even managed to land a blow on HS. I could see the old man was pleased… although he flattened me half a second later. After hours in the gym, I was in peak physical condition. I could run six times around the island and I wouldn’t be out of breath.

And yet I couldn’t forget what I had talked about with Colette. When I fired at a target, I would always imagine a real human being and not the cut-out soldier with his fixed, snarling face in front of me. Instead of the quick snap, the little round hole that appeared in the paper as the bullet passed through, there would be the explosion of bone fragmenting, blood splashing out. The paper soldier’s eyes ignored me. He felt nothing. But what would a man be thinking as he died? He would never see his family again. He would never feel the warmth of the sun. Everything that he had and everything he was would have been stolen away by me. Could I really do that to someone and not hate myself for ever?

I had not chosen this. There was a time when I’d thought I was going to work in a factory making pesticides. I was going to live in a village that nobody had ever heard of, dreaming of being a helicopter pilot, pinning pictures to the wall. Looking back, it felt as if some evil force had been manipulating me every inch of the way to bring me here. From the moment my parents had been killed, my own life had no longer been mine to control. And yet, it occurred to me, it was still not too late. Scorpia had taught me how to fight, how to change my identity, how to hide and how to survive. Once I left Malagosto, I could use these skills to escape from them. I could steal money and go anywhere in the world that I wanted, change my name, begin a new life. Lying in bed at night, I would think about this but at the same time I knew, with a sense of despair, that I was wrong. Scorpia was too powerful. No matter how far I ran, eventually they would find me and there was no escaping what the result would be. I would die young. But wasn’t that better than becoming what they wanted? At least I would have stayed true to myself.

I was terrified of giving any of this away while with Dr Steiner. I always thought before I answered any of his questions and tried to tell him what he wanted to hear, not what I really thought. I was afraid that if he caught sight of my weakness, my training would be cancelled and the next recruit would end up burying me in the woods. The secret was to be completely emotionless. Sometimes he showed me horrible pictures – scenes of war and violence. I tried not to look at the dead and mutilated bodies, but then he would ask me questions about them and I would find myself having to describe everything in detail, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice. And yet I thought I was getting away with it. At the end of each session, he would take my hand – cupping it in both of his own – and purr at me, “Well done, Yassen. That was very, very good.” As far as I could tell, he had no idea at all what was really going on in my head.

And then, at last, the day came when Oliver d’Arc called me to his study. As I entered, he was tuning the cello, which was an instrument he played occasionally. The room was a mess, with books everywhere and papers spilling out of drawers. It smelled of tobacco, although I never saw him smoke.

“Ah, Yassen!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid you’re going to miss evening training. Mrs Rothman is back in Venice. You’re to have dinner with her. Make sure you wear your best clothes. A launch will pick you up at seven o’clock.”

When I had first come to the island, I might have asked why she wanted to see me but by now I knew that I would always be given all the information I needed, and to ask for more was only to show weakness.

“It looks like you’re going to be leaving us,” he went on.

“My training is finished?”

“Yes.”

He plucked one of the strings. “You’ve done very well, my dear boy,” he said. “And I must say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed tutoring you. And now your moment has come. Good luck!”

From this, I understood that my final test had arrived… the solo kill. My training was over. My life as an assassin was about to begin.

And that night, I met Mrs Rothman for the second time. She had sent her personal launch to collect me, a beautiful vessel that was all teak and chrome with a silver scorpion moulded into the bow. It carried me beneath the famous Bridge of Sighs – I hoped that was not an omen – and on to the Widow’s Palace where we had first met. She was dressed, once again, in black; this time a very low-cut dress with a zip down one side, which I recognized at once as the work of the designer, Gianni Versace. We ate in her private dining room at a long table lit by candles and surrounded by paintings – Picasso, Cézanne, Van Gogh – all of them worth millions. We began with soup, then lobster, and finally a creamy custard mixed with wine that the Italians call zabaglione. The food was delicious but as I ate I was aware of her examining me, watching every mouthful, and I knew that I was still being tested.

“I’m very pleased with you, Yassen,” she said as the coffee was poured. The whole meal had been served by two men in white jackets and black trousers, her personal waiters. “Do you think you’re ready?”

“Yes, Mrs Rothman,” I replied.

“You can stop calling me that now.” She smiled at me and I was once again struck by her film-star looks. “I prefer Julia.”

There was a file on the table beside her. It hadn’t been there when we started. One of the waiters had brought it in with the coffee. She opened it. First she took out a printed report.

“You’re naturally gifted… an excellent marksman. Hatsumi Saburo speaks very highly of your abilities. I see also that you have learned from the Countess. Your manners are faultless. Six months ago you wouldn’t have been able to sit at a table like this without giving yourself away, but you are very different from the street urchin I met back then.”

I nodded but said nothing. Another lesson. Never show gratitude unless you hope to gain something from it.

“But now we must see if you can actually put into practice everything that we have taught you in theory.” She took out a passport and slid it across the table. “This is yours,” she said. “We have kept your family name. There was no reason not to, particularly as your first name had changed anyway. Yassen Gregorovich is what you are now and will always be… unless of course we feel the need for you to travel under cover.” An envelope followed. “You’ll find the details of your bank account inside,” she said. “You are a client of the European Finance Group. It’s a private bank based in Geneva. There are fifty thousand American dollars, fifty thousand euros and fifty thousand pounds in the account, and no matter how much you spend, these figures will always remain the same. Of course, we will be watching your expenses.”

She was enjoying this, sending me out for the first time, almost challenging me to show reluctance or any sign of fear. She took out a second envelope, thicker than the first. This one was sealed with a strip of black tape. There was a scorpion symbol stamped in the middle.

“This envelope contains a return air ticket to New York, which is where your first assignment will take place. There is another thousand dollars in here too… petty cash to get you started. You are flying economy.”

That didn’t surprise me. I was young and I was entering the United States on my own. Travelling business or first class might draw attention to myself.

“You will be met at the airport and taken to your hotel. You will report back to me here in Venice in one week’s time. Do you want to know who you are going to kill?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you want to,” I said.

“That’s right.” She smiled. “You’ll get all the information that you need once you arrive. A weapon will also be delivered to you. Is that all understood?”

“Yes,” I said. Of course I had questions. Above all I wanted a name and a face somewhere; on the other side of the world, a man was going about his business with no knowledge that I was on my way. What had he done to anger Scorpia? Why did he have to lose his life? But I stayed silent. I was being very careful not to show any sign of weakness.

“Then I think our evening is almost over,” Mrs Rothman said. She reached out and, just for a moment, her fingers brushed against the back of my hand. “You know, Yassen,” she said, “you are incredibly good-looking. I thought that the moment I saw you and your five months on Malagosto have done nothing but improve you.” She sighed and drew her hand away. “Russian boys aren’t quite my thing,” she continued. “Or else who knows what we might get up to? But it will certainly help you in your work. Death should always come smartly dressed.”

She got up, as if about to leave. But then she had second thoughts and turned back to me. “You were fond of that girl, Colette, weren’t you?”

“We spent a bit of time together,” I said. “We came into Venice once or twice.” Julia Rothman would know that, anyway.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I had a feeling the two of you would hit it off.”

She was daring me to ask. So I did.

“How is she?”

“She’s dead.” Mrs Rothman brushed some imaginary dust from the sleeve of her dress. “Her first assignment went very wrong. It wasn’t entirely her fault. She took out the target but she was shot by the Argentinian police.”

And that was when I knew what she had done to me. That was when I knew exactly what Scorpia had made me.

I felt nothing. I said nothing. If I was sad, I didn’t show it. I simply watched impassively as she left the room.