Russian Roulette (30 page)

“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 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 apartment 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 around 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 around and glanced back one last time. But now the roof was empty apart from the body stretched out beside the red cross.

Alex Rider was gone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
HAD A GREAT DEAL
of help with the Russian sections of this book. Olga Smirnova reluctantly took me through some of her childhood memories and translated the chapter headings. Simon Johnson and Anne Cleminson introduced me to their friends and family, including Olga Cleminson, who cooked me a Russian lunch and helped create the village of Estrov. In Moscow, Konstantin Chernozatonsky showed me the building where Yassen might have lived and first drew my attention to the
fortochniks.
Sian Valvis took me round the city and told me of her experiences working for an oligarch. Ilia Tchelikidi also shared his school memories with me at his home in London.

A great many of the details in this book are therefore based on fact, but it’s fair to say that the overall picture may not be entirely accurate. So much changed between 1995 and 2000—the approximate setting for the story—that I’ve been forced to use a certain amount of dramatic license.

My assistant, Olivia Zampi, organized everything right up to the photocopying and binding. I owe a very special debt of thanks to my son, Cassian, who was the first to read the manuscript and who made some enormously helpful criticisms, and to Sarah Handley at Walker Books, who suggested the title. I am as ever grateful to my generous and talented editors at Philomel Books—Michael Green and Kiffin Steurer. Finally, my wife—Jill Green—lived through the writing of this without hiring a contract killer to have me eliminated. She must have been tempted.