Russian Roulette (16 page)

• • •

Four years . . .

I grew taller and stronger. I learned to speak different languages. But otherwise I might have been dead. I saw nothing of the world except what was shown on the television news. The horror of my situation was not the drudgery of my work nor the daily humiliations I received. It was in the dawning realization that I might be here for the rest of my life, that even as an old man I might be cleaning toilets and corridors and, worse still, that I might be grateful. Already, I could feel part of myself accepting what I had become. I no longer thought about escaping. I didn’t even think about what might exist on the other side of the wall. Once, I found myself looking in the mirror because there was a stain on my shirt. There was to be a dinner that night and I was genuinely embarrassed, afraid I would let my master down. At that moment I was disgusted with myself. I saw, quite clearly, what I was becoming . . . perhaps what I had already become.

I never thought of Estrov. It was as if my parents had not existed. Even my time in Moscow seemed far behind me. It was obvious that Dima would never find me, and even if he did, I would be out of his reach. All I could think of was the work I would do the next day. This was Sharkovsky’s revenge. He had allowed me to keep my life but he had taken away my humanity.

And so it might have continued.

But things changed quite suddenly in the early summer of my fourth year of captivity. Ivan had just finished his last year at Harrow and was due back any time. Svetlana was staying with friends at the Black Sea. Sharkovsky was having another dinner party and I had been told to report to the dining room to help with the preparations.

For some reason, I arrived early. As I walked up to the house, a car passed me and stopped at the front door. A man got out, rang the bell, and hurried inside. I had seen him before. His name was Brodsky and he was one of Sharkovsky’s business associates from Moscow. The two of them owned several companies together and they were connected in other ways it was probably best not to know. I went into the kitchen, and a few moments later, the telephone rang. Mr. Brodsky wanted tea. Pavel was busy preparing the dinner—a broiled Atlantic salmon that he was decorating with red and black caviar. The housekeepers were laying the table. I was there and in my suit, so I made the tea and carried it up.

I crossed the hallway, which was now so familiar to me that I could have made my way blindfolded. The sweeping staircase, the marble pillars, the huge vases of flowers, and the chandeliers no longer meant anything to me. I had seen them too often. The door to the study was half open as I approached, and normally I would have knocked and entered, set the tray down on a table, and left as quickly as I could. But this time, just as I drew close, I heard a single word that stopped me in my tracks and rooted me to the floor.

“Estrov . . . they’re asking questions about it again. We’re going to have to do something before the situation gets out of hand.”

Estrov.

My village.

It had been Brodsky who had spoken. Estrov. What could he possibly know about Estrov? Hardly daring to breathe, I waited for Sharkovsky to reply.

“You can deal with it, Mikhail.”

“It’s not as easy as that, Vladimir. These are Western journalists, working in London. If they connect you to what happened . . .”

“Why should they?”

“They’re not stupid. They’ve already discovered you were a shareholder.”

“So what?” Sharkovsky didn’t sound concerned. “There were lots of shareholders. What exactly am I supposed to have done?”

“You wanted them to raise productivity. You wanted more profit. You ordered them to change the safety procedures.”

“Are you accusing me, Mikhail?”

“No. Of course not. I’m your closest adviser and your friend, and why should I care if a few peasants got killed? But these people smell a story. And it would be seriously damaging to us if the name of Estrov were to be mentioned in the British press or anywhere else.”

“It was all taken care of at the time,” Sharkovsky replied. “There was no evidence left. Our friends in the ministry made sure of that. It never happened! Let these stupid journalists sniff around and ask questions. They won’t find anything. And if I do come to believe that they are dangerous to me or to my business, then I’ll deal with them. Even in London there are car accidents. Now stop worrying and have a drink.”

“I ordered tea.”

“It should be here. I’ll call down.”

It was a miracle I hadn’t been caught listening outside. If Karl or Josef had come down the stairs and seen me, I would have been beaten. But I couldn’t go in quite yet. I had to wait for the echoes of the conversation to die away. I counted to ten, then knocked on the door and entered. I kept my face blank. It was vital that they should not know that I had heard them talking. But as I crossed the carpet to where the visitor was sitting, the cup and the saucer rattled on the silver tray, and I’m sure there can’t have been any color in my face.

Sharkovsky barely glanced at me. “What took you so long, Yassen?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I had to wait for the kettle to boil.”

“Very well. Get out.”

I bowed and left as quickly as I could.

I was shaking by the time I returned to the hall. It was as if all the pain and misery I had suffered in the last four years had been bundled together and then been slammed into me, delivering one final, knockout blow. It wasn’t enough that Vladimir Sharkovsky had been endlessly cruel to me. It wasn’t enough that he had reduced me to the role of his mindless slave. He was also directly implicated in the deaths of my mother and father, of Leo and everyone else in the village.

Was it really such a surprise? When I had first heard his name, it had been at the university in Moscow. He had been talking to Misha Dementyev on the telephone, and Dementyev had been directly implicated in what had happened. Nigel Brown had warned me too. He had told me that Sharkovsky invested in chemicals. I should have made the connection. And yet how could I have? It was almost beyond belief.

That night, as I stood at the table watching him tear apart the salmon that I had just tasted in front of all the other guests, I swore that I would kill him. It was surely the reason why fate had brought me here, and it no longer mattered if I lived or died.

I would kill him. I swore it to myself.

I would kill him.

I would kill.

I
BARELY SLEPT THAT NIGHT
. Every time I closed my eyes, my thoughts turned to guns, to kitchen knives, to the forks and shovels that I used in the garden, to hammers and fire axes. The truth was that I was surrounded by weapons. Sharkovsky was used to having me around. I could reach him and have my revenge for Estrov before anyone knew what had happened.

But what good would it do? Josef and Karl—of course I knew which was which by now—were always nearby, and even assuming I could reach Sharkovsky before they stopped me, they would deal with me immediately afterward. Lying in my simple wooden bed, in my empty room, looking at the cold light of another day, I saw that any action on my part would only lead to my own death. There had to be another way.

I felt sick and unhappy. I remembered Fagin with his leather notebook, reading out the different names and addresses in Moscow. What was it that had made me make this choice? How could I have been so foolish?

Once again, and for the first time in a very long time, my thoughts turned to escape. I knew what the stakes were. If I tried and failed, I would die. But it no longer mattered. One way or another, this had to end.

I had just one advantage. By now I knew everything about the dacha, and that included all the security arrangements. I took out one of the exercise books that Nigel Brown had given me—it was full of English vocabulary—and turned to an empty page at the back. Then, using a pencil, I drew a sketch of the compound and, resting it on my knees, I began to consider the best way out.

There wasn’t one.

Security cameras covered every inch of the gardens. Climbing the wall was impossible. Quite apart from the razor wire, there were sensors buried under the lawn and they would register my footfall before I got close. Could I approach one of the guards? No. They were all far too afraid of Sharkovsky. What about his wife, Maya? Could I somehow persuade her to take me on one of her shopping trips to Moscow? It was a ridiculous idea. She had no reason to help me.

Even if I did miraculously make it to the other side, what was I to do next? I was surrounded by countryside—the Silver Forest—with no idea how near I was to the nearest bus stop or station. If I made it to Moscow, I could go back to Tverskaya. I had no doubt that Dima would hide me . . . assuming he was still there. But Sharkovsky would use all his police and underworld contacts to hunt me down. It wouldn’t bother him that he had been keeping me a prisoner for more than four years and he had treated me in a way that was certainly illegal. It was just that we had made a deal and he would make sure I kept it. I worked for him or I was dead.

For the next few weeks, everything went on as before. I cleaned, I washed, I bowed, I scraped. But for me, nothing was the same. I could hardly bear to be in the same room as Sharkovsky. Tasting his food made me physically sick. This was the man responsible for what had happened to Estrov, the unnamed investor my parents had been complaining about the night before they died. If I couldn’t escape from him, I would go mad. I would kill him or I would kill myself. I simply couldn’t stay here anymore.

I had hidden the exercise book under my mattress and every night I took it out and jotted down my thoughts. Slowly, I realized that I had been right from the very start. There was only one way out of this place—and that was the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. I turned to a new page and wrote down the name of the pilot, Arkady Zelin, then underlined it twice. What did I know about him? How could I persuade him to take me out of here? Did he have any weaknesses, anything I could exploit?

We had known each other for four years but I wouldn’t say we were friends. Zelin was a very solitary person, often preferring to eat alone. Even so, it was impossible to live in such close confinement without giving things away, and the fact was that we did talk to each other, particularly when we were playing cards. Zelin liked that I was interested in helicopters. He’d even let me examine the workings of the engine once or twice, when he was stripping it down for general maintenance, although he had drawn the line at allowing me to sit in the cockpit. The security guards wouldn’t have been happy about that. And then there was Nigel Brown. He knew a bit about Zelin too, and when he’d had a few drinks, he would share it with me.

Arkady Zelin

Russian Air Force. Gambling?

Saratov.

Wife? Son.

Skiing . . . France/Switzerland. Retire?

This was about the total knowledge that I had of the man who might fly me out of the dacha. I wrote it down in my exercise book and stared at the useless words, sitting there on the empty page.

What did they add up to?

Zelin had been in the Russian Air Force, but he’d been caught stealing money from a friend. There had been a court-martial and he had been forced to leave. He was still bitter about the whole thing and claimed that he was innocent, that he had been set up, but the truth was he was always broke. It was possible that he was addicted to gambling. I often saw him looking at the racing pages in the newspapers, and once or twice I heard him making bets over the phone.

He owned a crummy apartment in the city of Saratov, on the Volga River, but he hardly ever went there. He had three weeks’ vacation a year—he often complained it wasn’t enough—and he liked to travel abroad, to Switzerland or France in the winter. He loved skiing. He’d once told me that he would like to work in a ski resort. He’d talked briefly about heli-skiing, flying rich people to the top of glaciers and watching them ski down. He had been married and he carried a photograph in his wallet . . . a boy who was about eleven or twelve years old, presumably his son. I remembered the day when I had come into the rec room once with a huge bruise on my face. I had done a bad job polishing the silver and Josef had lost control and almost knocked me out. Zelin had seen me, and although he had said nothing, I could tell he was shocked. Perhaps I could appeal to him as a father? On the other hand, he never spoke about his son . . . or his wife, for that matter. He never saw either of them . . . perhaps they had cut him out of their life. He was quite lonely. He was the sort of person who looks after number one simply because there is nobody else.

I could scribble until I had filled the entire exercise book, but it wasn’t going to help very much. Sharkovsky had a number of trips abroad that summer, and each time he left in the helicopter, I would stop whatever I was doing and watch the machine rise from the launch pad and hover over the trees before disappearing into the sky. I had nothing I could offer—no money, no bribe. I knew that there was no way Zelin was going to fall out with his employer. In the end I forgot about him and began to think of other plans.

We came to the end of another summer, and I swore to myself that it would be my last at the dacha, that by Christmas I would be gone. And yet August bled into September and nothing changed. I was feeling sick and angry with myself. Not only had I not escaped, I hadn’t even tried. Worse still, Ivan Sharkovsky had returned. He had left Harrow by now and was on his way to Oxford University. Presumably his father had offered to pay for a new library or a swimming pool because I’m not sure there was any other way he’d have gotten in.

I was in the garden pushing a wheelbarrow full of leaves, taking it down to the compost heap, when I first saw him. Suddenly he was standing there in front of me, blocking my path. Age had not improved him. He was still overweight. We were both about the same height but he was much heavier than me. I stopped at once and bowed my head.

“Yassen!” he said, spitting out the two syllables in a singsong voice. “Are you glad to see me?”

“Yes, sir,” I lied.

“Still slaving for my dad?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smirked at me. Then he reached down and picked up a handful of filthy leaves from the wheelbarrow. I was wearing a tracksuit, and very deliberately, he shoved the leaves down the front of my chest. Then he laughed and walked away.

From that moment on, there was a new, very disturbing edge to his behavior. His attacks on me became more physical. If he was angry with me, he would slap me or punch me, which was something he had never done before. Once, at the dinner table, I spilled some of his wine and he picked up a fork and jabbed it into my thigh. His father saw this but said nothing. In a way, the two of them were equally mad. I was afraid that Ivan wouldn’t be satisfied until I was dead.

That was the month that Nigel Brown was fired. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He was no longer tutoring Ivan, and his sister, Svetlana, had been accepted into Cheltenham Ladies’ College in England, so there was nothing left for him to do. Mr. Brown was sixty by now and his teaching days were over. He talked about going back to Norfolk but he didn’t seem to have any fondness for the place. It’s often interested me how some people can follow a single path through life that takes them to somewhere they don’t want to be. It was hard to believe that this crumpled old man with his vodka and his tweed jacket had once been a child, full of hopes and dreams. Was this what he had been born to be?

I was having dinner with him one evening, shortly before he went. Arkady Zelin had joined us. He had returned from Moscow that morning with Sharkovsky, who had flown in from the United States. Mr. Brown hadn’t begun drinking yet. At least, he’d only had a couple of glasses—and he was in a reflective mood.

“You’re going to have to keep up your languages, Yassen, once I’m gone,” he was saying. “Maybe they’ll let me send you books. There are very good tapes these days.”

He was being kind, but I knew he didn’t really mean what he was saying. Once he was gone, I would never hear from him again.

“What about you, Arkady?” he went on. “Are you going to stay working here?”

“I have no reason to leave,” Zelin said.

“No. I can see you’re doing well for yourself. Nice new watch!”

It was typical of my teacher to notice a detail like that. When we were doing exercises together, he could instantly spot a single misspelled word in the middle of a whole page. I glanced at Zelin’s wrist just in time to see him draw it away, covering it with his sleeve.

“It was given to me,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

“A Rolex?”

“Why do you interest yourself in things that don’t concern you? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

For the rest of the meal, Zelin barely spoke—and when he had finished eating, he left the room even though we’d agreed to play cards. I did an hour’s German with Mr. Brown, but my mind wasn’t into it and in the end he gave up, dragged the bottle off the table, and went and plumped himself into an armchair in the corner. I was left on my own, thinking. It was a small detail. A new Rolex. But it was strange the way Zelin had tried to conceal it, and why had it made him so angry?

I might have forgotten all about it, but the next day something else happened that brought it back to my mind. Sharkovsky was leaving for Leningrad at the end of the week. It was an important visit and he much preferred to fly than to take the roads. During the course of the morning, I saw Zelin working on the helicopter, carrying out a routine inspection. There was nothing unusual about that. But just before lunch, he presented himself at the house. I happened to be close by, cleaning the ground-floor windows, and I heard every word that was said.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said. “We can’t use the helicopter.”

Sharkovsky had come to the front door, dressed in riding gear. He had taken up riding the year before and had bought two horses—one for himself, one for his wife. He’d also built a stable close to the tennis court and employed one of the gardeners as a groom. Zelin was standing in his overalls, wiping his hands on a white handkerchief that was smeared with oil.

“What’s wrong with it?” Sharkovsky snapped. He had been very short-tempered recently. There was a rumor that things hadn’t been going too well with his business. Maybe that was why he had been traveling so much.

“There’s been a servo actuator malfunction, sir,” Zelin said. “One of the piston rods shows signs of cracking. It’s going to have to be replaced.”

“Can you do it?”

“No, sir. Not really. Anyway, we have to order the part . . .”

Sharkovsky was in a hurry. “Well, why don’t you call in the mechanic . . . what’s his name . . . Borodin?”

“I called his office just now. It’s annoying, but he’s ill.” He paused. “They can send someone else.”

“Reliable?”

“Yes, sir. His name is Rykov. I’ve worked with him.”

“All right. See to it.”

Maya was waiting for him. He stormed off without saying another word.

I didn’t know for certain that Zelin was lying, but I had a feeling that something was wrong. Every day at the dacha was the same. When I say that life went like clockwork, I mean it had that same dull, mechanical quality. But now there were three coincidences and they had all happened at the same time. The helicopter had been fine the day before, but suddenly it was broken. The usual mechanic—a brisk, talkative man who turned up every couple of months—was mysteriously ill. And then there was that new watch and the strange way that Zelin had behaved.