Russian Roulette

EPILOGUE – THE KILL

King’s Cross, London. Three o’clock in the morning.

The station was closed and silent. The streets were almost empty. A few shops were still open – a kebab restaurant and a minicab office, their plastic signs garishly bright. But there were no customers.

Inside his hotel room, Yassen Gregorovich took out the memory stick and turned off the computer. He had read enough. He was still sitting at the desk. The tray with the dirty dishes from his supper was on the carpet beside him. He looked at the blank screen, then yawned. He needed to sleep. He stripped off his clothes and left them, folded, on a chair. Then he showered, dried himself and went to bed. He was asleep almost immediately. He did not dream. Since that final night in the Silver Forest, he never dreamed.

He woke again at exactly seven o’clock. It was a Saturday and the street was quieter than it had been the day before. The sun was shining but he could see from the flag on the building opposite that there was a certain amount of wind. He quickly scanned the pavements looking for anything out of place, anyone who shouldn’t be there. Everything seemed normal. He showered again, then shaved and got dressed. The computer was where he had left it on the table and he powered it up so that he could check for any new messages. He knew that the order he had received the day before would still be active. Scorpia were not in the habit of changing their minds. The screen told him that he had received a single email and he opened it. As usual, it had been encrypted and sent to an account that could not be traced to him. He read it, considering its contents. He planned the day ahead.

He went downstairs and had breakfast – tea, yoghurt, fresh fruit. There was a gym at the hotel but it was too small and ill-equipped to be worth using, and anyway, he wouldn’t have felt safe in the confined space, down in the basement. It was almost as bad as the lift. After breakfast, he returned to his room, checking the door handle one last time, packed the few items he had brought with him and left.

“Goodbye, Mr Reddy. I hope you enjoyed your stay.”

“Thank you.”

The girl at the checkout desk was Romanian, quite attractive. Yassen had no girlfriend, of course. Any such relationship was out of the question but for a brief moment he felt a twinge of regret. He thought of Colette, the girl who had died in Argentina. At once, he was annoyed with himself. He shouldn’t have spent so much time reading the diary.

He paid the bill using a credit card connected to the same gymnasium where he supposedly worked. He took the receipt but later on he would burn it. A receipt was the beginning of a paper trail. It was the last thing he needed.

As he left the hotel, he noticed a man reading a newspaper. The headlines screamed out at him:

SHOOTING AT SCIENCE MUSEUM

PRIME MINISTER INVOLVED

“NO ONE HURT,” SAYS MI6

It was interesting that there was no mention of either Herod Sayle or Alex Rider. Nobody would want to suggest that a billionaire and major benefactor in the UK had been involved in an assassination attempt. As for Alex Rider, the secret service would have kept him well away from the press. They had recruited a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. That was one story that would never see the light of day.

Yassen passed through the revolving doors and walked round to the car park. He had hired a car, a Renault Clio, charging it to the same company as the hotel room. He put his things in the boot, then drove west, all the way across London and over to a street in Chelsea, not far from the river. He parked close to a handsome terraced house with ivy growing up the wall, a small, square garden at the front and a wrought-iron gate.

So this was where Alex Rider lived. Yassen assumed he would be somewhere inside, perhaps still asleep. There would be no school today, of course, but even if there had been it was unlikely that Alex would have attended. Only the day before, he had hijacked a cargo plane in Cornwall and forced the pilot to fly him to London. He had parachuted into the Science Museum in South Kensington and shot Herod Sayle, wounding him seconds before he could press the button that would activate the Stormbreaker computers. There had been a furore. Just as the newspapers had reported, the Prime Minister had been present. The police, the SAS and MI6 had been involved. Yassen tried to imagine the scene. It must have been chaos.

He sat behind the wheel, still watching the house.

Yes. Alex Rider most certainly deserved a few extra hours in bed.

About an hour later, the front door opened and a young woman came out. She was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting jersey with red hair tumbling down to her shoulders. Yassen had never met her but he knew who she was: Jack Starbright, Alex’s housekeeper. It must have been rather odd the two of them living together but there was no one else. John Rider had died a long time ago. There had been an uncle, Ian Rider, who had become Alex’s guardian, but he was dead too. Yassen knew because he had been personally responsible for that killing. How had he become so tangled up with this family? Would they never leave him alone?

Jack Starbright was carrying a straw bag. She was going shopping. While she was away, Yassen could slip into the house and tiptoe upstairs. If Alex Rider was in bed asleep, it would all be over very quickly. It would be easier for him that way. He simply wouldn’t wake up.

But Yassen had already decided against it. There were too many uncertainties. He hadn’t yet checked out the layout of the house. He didn’t know if there were alarms. The housekeeper could return at any moment. At the same time, he thought about the email that he had received. It presented him with a new priority. The Stormbreaker business wasn’t quite over. Dealing with Alex Rider now might compromise what lay ahead. He reached down and turned the engine back on. It was useful to know where Alex lived, to acquaint himself with the territory. He could return at another time.

He drove off.

Yassen spent the rest of the day doing very little. It was one of the stranger aspects of his work. He’d had to learn how to fill long gaps of inactivity, effectively how to kill time. He had often found himself waiting in hotel rooms for days or even weeks. The secret was to put yourself in neutral gear, to keep yourself alert but without wasting physical or mental energy. There were meditation techniques that he had been taught when he was on Malagosto. He used them now.

Later that afternoon, he drove into the Battersea Heliport, situated between Battersea and Wandsworth bridges. It is the only place in London where businessmen can arrive or leave by helicopter. The machine that he had ordered was waiting for him – a red and yellow Colibri EC-120B, which he liked because it was so remarkably silent. He had received his helicopter pilot’s licence five years ago, finally realizing a dream which he had had as a child, although he had never, after all, worked in air-sea rescue. It was just another skill that was useful for his line of work. He kept moving. He kept adapting. That was how he survived.

He had telephoned ahead. The helicopter was fuelled and ready. All the necessary clearances had been arranged. Taking his case with him, Yassen climbed into the cockpit and a few minutes later he was airborne, following the River Thames east towards the City. The email that he had received had specified a time and a place. He saw that place ahead of him, an office building thirty storeys high with a flat roof and a radio mast. There was a cross, painted bright red, signalling where he should land.

Herod Sayle was there, waiting for him.

It was Sayle who had sent him the email that morning and who had arranged all this, paying an extra one million euros into the special account that Yassen had in Geneva. The police were looking for the billionaire all over Britain. The airports and main railway stations were being watched. There were extra policemen all around the coast. Sayle had paid Yassen to fly him out of the country. They would land outside Paris, where a private jet was waiting for him. From there he would be flown to a hideout in South America.

Hovering in the air, still some distance away, Yassen recognized Sayle… even though the man was dressed almost comically in an ill-fitting cardigan and corduroy trousers, very different from the suits he usually favoured, and presumably some sort of disguise. But the dark skin, the bald head and the smallness of his stature were unmistakable. Sayle liked to wear a gold signet ring and there it was, flashing in the afternoon sun. He was holding a gun. And he was not alone. Yassen’s eyes narrowed. There was a boy standing opposite him, close to the edge of the roof. It was Alex Rider! The gun was being aimed at him. Sayle was talking and it was obvious to Yassen that he was about to fire. He had somehow managed to capture the boy and had brought him here – to kill him before he left. Yassen wondered how Alex had allowed himself to fall into Sayle’s hands.

He came to a decision. It wasn’t easy, sliding open the cockpit door, reaching into his case and keeping control of the Colibri, all at same time – but he managed it. He took out the gun he had brought with him. It was a Glock long-range shooting pistol, accurate at up to two hundred metres. In fact, Yassen was much nearer than that, which was just as well. This wasn’t going to be easy.

It was time to make the kill.

He aimed carefully, the gun in one hand, the cyclic rod in the other. The helicopter was steady, hanging in the air. He gently squeezed the trigger and fired twice. Even before the bullets had reached their target, he knew he hadn’t missed.

Herod Sayle twisted and fell. He hit the ground and lay quite still, unaware of the pool of blood spreading around him.

The boy didn’t move. Yassen admired him for that. If Alex had tried to run, he would have received a bullet in the back before he had taken two paces. Much better to talk. The two of them had unfinished business.

Yassen landed the helicopter as quickly as he could, never once taking his eyes off Alex. The gun that had just killed Sayle was still resting in his lap. The landing skid touched the roof of the building and settled. Yassen switched off the engine and got out.

The two of them stood face to face.

It was extraordinary how similar he was to his father. Alex’s hair was longer and it was lighter in colour, reminding Yassen of the woman he had glimpsed with John Rider at Sacré-Cœur. He had the same brown eyes and there was something about the way he stood with exactly the same composure and self-confidence. He had just seen a man die but he wasn’t afraid. It seemed remarkable – and strangely appropriate – that he was only fourteen, the same age that Yassen had been when those other helicopters had come to his village.

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

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

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

“You’re Yassen Gregorovich,” Alex said.

Yassen nodded.

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

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

“What about me?” Alex asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“One day I’ll kill you.”

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

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

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

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

He had given Alex a chance.

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

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

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

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

Alex Rider had gone.