Russian Roulette (Alex Rider)

nationale. He was, as it happens, totally corrupt. He had received payments from Scorpia,
and in return had turned a blind eye to many of their operations in France. But recently he
had got greedy. He was demanding more payments and, worse still, he had been in secret
talks with the DGSE, the French secret service. He was planning a double-cross and Scorpia
had decided to make an example of him by taking him out. This was to be a punishment
killing. It had to make headlines.
However, for once Scorpia had got their intelligence wrong. No sooner had we arrived at
Charles de Gaulle Airport than we were informed that Vosque was not in the city after all.
He had gone on a five-day training course, meaning that we had the entire week to
ourselves. Hunter wasn’t at all put out.
“We need a rest,” he said. “And since Scorpia’s paying, we might as well check ourselves
in somewhere decent. I can show you around Paris. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
He booked us into the luxurious Hotel George V, close to the Champs-Elysées. It was far
more than decent. In fact, I had never stayed anywhere like this. The hotel was all velvet
curtains, chandeliers, thick carpets, tinkling pianos and massive flower displays. My
bathroom was marble. The bath had gold taps. Everyone who stayed here was rich and they
weren’t afraid to show it. I wondered if Hunter had brought me here for a reason. Normally
we would have stayed somewhere more discreet and out-of-the-way but I suspected that he
was testing me, throwing me into this gorgeous, alien environment to see how I would
cope. He spoke excellent French; mine was rudimentary. He was in his late twenties and
already well travelled; I was nineteen. I think it amused him to see me dealing with the
receptionists, the managers and the waiters in their stiff collars and black ties, trying to
convince them that I had as much right to be there as anyone … trying to convince myself.
It was certainly true that we both deserved a rest. The journey into the rainforest and out
again, the death of the Commander, the shoot-out that had followed, our time in Iquitos,
even the long flight back to Europe had exhausted us, and we both had to be in first-rate
condition when we came up against Vosque. And if that meant eating the best food, and
waking up in five-star luxury, I wasn’t going to argue.
We had adjoining rooms on the third floor and both spent the first twenty-four hours
asleep. When I woke up, I ordered room service … the biggest breakfast I have ever eaten,
even though it was the middle of the afternoon. I had a hot bath with the foam spilling over
the edges. I sprawled on the bed and watched TV. They had English and Russian channels
but I forced myself to listen in French, trying to attune myself to the language.
The next day, Hunter showed me the city. I had done more travelling in the past few
weeks – Venice, New York, Peru – than I had in my entire life, but I loved every minute of
my time in Paris. A few of the things we did were obvious. We went up the Eiffel Tower. We
visited Notre-Dame. We strolled around the Louvre and stood in front of its most famous
works of art. All this could have been boring. I have never been very interested in tourism,

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staring at things and taking photographs of them simply because they are there. But Hunter
made it fun. He had stories and insights that brought everything to life. Standing in front of
the Mona Lisa he told me how it had once been stolen – that was back in 1911 – and
explained how he would set about stealing it now. He described how Notre-Dame had been
constructed, an incredible feat of engineering, more than eight hundred years before. And
he took me to many unexpected places: the sewers, the flea markets, Père-Lachaise
Cemetery with its bizarre mausoleums and famous residents, the sculpture garden where
Rodin had once lived.
But what I enjoyed most was just walking the streets – along the Seine, through the Latin
quarter, around the Marais. It was quite cold – spring had still not quite arrived – but the
sun was out and there was a sparkle in the air. We drifted in and out of coffee houses. We
browsed in antique shops and bought clothes on the Avenue Montaigne. We ate fantastic ice
cream at Maison Berthillon on the Île-St-Louis. Curiously, this was where the founder
members of Scorpia had first come together – but perhaps wisely there was no blue plaque
to commemorate the event.
We ate extremely well in restaurants that were empty of tourists. Hunter didn’t like to
spend a fortune on food and never ordered alcohol. He preferred grenadine, the red syrup
he had introduced me to in Venice. I drink it to this day.
We never once discussed the business that had brought us here but we were quietly
preparing for it. At six o’clock every morning we went on a two-hour run together… It was
a spectacular circuit down the Champs-Elysées, through the Jardins des Tuileries and across
the Seine. There was a pool and a gym at the hotel and we swam and worked out for two
hours or more. I sometimes wondered what people made of us. We could have been friends
on holiday or perhaps, given our age difference, an older and a younger brother. That was
how it felt sometimes. Hunter never refered back to our conversation in the jungle, although
some of the things he had said remained in my mind.
We had arrived on a Monday. On the Thursday, Hunter received a note from the
concierge as we were leaving the hotel and read it quickly without showing it to me. After
that, I sensed that something had changed. We took the Metro to Montmartre that day and
walked around the narrow streets with all the artists’ studios and drank coffee in one of the
squares. It was just warm enough to sit outside. By now we were relaxed in each other’s
company but I could tell that Hunter was still agitated. It was only when we reached the
great white church of Sacré-Cœur, with its astonishing views of Paris, that he turned to me.
“I need to have some time on my own,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not.” I was surprised that he even needed to ask.
“There’s someone I have to meet,” he went on. He was more uneasy than I had ever seen
him. “But I’m breaking the rules. We’re both under cover. We’re working. Do you
understand what I’m saying? If Julia Rothman found out about this, she wouldn’t be
pleased.”
“I won’t tell her anything,” I said. And I meant it. I would never have betrayed Hunter.
“Thank you,” he said. “We can meet back at the hotel.”
I walked away but I was still curious. The more I knew about Hunter the more I got the
feeling that there were so many things he wasn’t telling me. So when I reached the street
corner, I turned back. I wanted to know what he was going to do.

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And that was when I saw her.
She was standing on the terrace in front of the main entrance of the church. There were
quite a few tourists around but she stood out because she was alone and pregnant. She was
quite small – the French would say petite – with long fair hair and pale skin, wearing a
loose, baggy jacket with her hands tucked into her pockets. She was pretty.
Hunter was walking towards her. She saw him and I saw her face light up with joy. She
hurried over to him. And then the two of them were in each other’s arms. Her head was
pressed against his chest. He was stroking her hair. Two lovers on the steps of Sacré-Cœur
… what could be more Parisian? I turned the corner and walked away.
The next day, Vosque returned.
He lived in the fifth arrondissement, in a quiet street of flats and houses not far from the
Panthéon, the elaborate church that had been modelled on a similar building in Rome and
where many of the great and good of France were buried. Hunter had received a full
briefing in an envelope sealed with a scorpion. I guessed it had been delivered to his hotel
room by someone like Marcus, who had done the same for me in New York. The two of us
went to a café on the Champs-Elysées. It might have seemed odd to discuss this sort of
business in a public place but in fact it was safer to choose somewhere completely random.
We could make sure we weren’t being followed. And we knew it couldn’t be bugged.
Vosque provided a very different challenge to the Commander. He might be easier to
reach but he probably knew we were coming so there was a good chance he had taken
precautions. He would carry a gun. He could expect protection from the French police. As
far as they were concerned, he was one of them, a senior officer and a man to be respected.
If he was gunned down in the street, there would be an immediate outcry. Ports and
airports would be closed. We would find ourselves at the centre of an international
manhunt.
He lived alone. Hunter produced some photographs of his address. They had been
provided by Scorpia and showed a ground-floor apartment with glass doors and double-
height windows on the far side of a courtyard shared by two more flats. Although one of
these was empty, the other was occupied by a young artist, a potential witness. An archway
opened onto the street. There was no other way in and an armed policeman – a gendarme –
had been stationed in the little room that had once been the porter’s lodge. To reach
Vosque, we had to get past him.
In all our discussions, we called Vosque “the Cop”. As always, it was easier to
depersonalize him. On the Saturday, we watched him leave the flat and walk to his local
supermarket, two streets away. He was a short, bullish man, in his late forties. As he
walked, he swung his fists and you could imagine him lashing out at anyone who got in his
way. He was almost bald with a thick moustache that didn’t quite stretch to the end of his
lip. He was wearing an old-fashioned suit but no tie. After he had done his shopping, he
stopped at a café for a cigar and a demi-pression of beer. Nobody had escorted him and I
thought it would be a simple matter to shoot him where he sat. We could do it without being
seen.
But Hunter wasn’t having any of it. “That’s not what Scorpia wants,” he said. “He has to
be killed in his home.”
“Why?”

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“You’ll see.”
I didn’t like the sound of that but I knew better than to ask anything more.
Our Paris holiday was over. Even the weather had changed. On Sunday morning it rained
and the whole city seemed to be sulking, the water spitting off the pavements and forming
puddles in the roads. This was the day when Vosque was going to die. If we wanted to find
him alone in his flat, it made sense. Monday to Friday he would be in his office, which was
situated inside the Interior Ministry. According to his file, most evenings he went out
drinking or ate with friends in cheap restaurants around the Gare St-Lazare. Sunday for him
was dead time – in more than one sense.
That morning, Annabelle Finnan, the artist who lived next door to Vosque, received a
telephone call from the town of Orléans, telling her that her elderly mother had been run
over by a van and was unlikely to survive. This was untrue but Annabelle left at once. We
were waiting in the street and saw her flag down a taxi. Then we moved forward.
We were both wearing cheap suits, white shirts and black ties. We were carrying bibles.
The disguise had been Hunter’s idea and it was a brilliant one. We had come as Jehovah’s
Witnesses. There had been real ones, apparently, working in the area and nobody would
have noticed two more, following in their wake. The gendarme in the porter’s lodge saw us
and dismissed us in the same instant. We were the last thing he needed on a wet Sunday
morning, two Bible-bashers come to preach to him about the end of the world.
“Not here!” the gendarme grunted. “Thank you very much, my friends. We’re not
interested.”
“But, monsieur…” Hunter began.
“Just move along…”
Hunter was holding his bible at a strange angle and I saw his hand press down on the
spine. There was a soft hissing sound and the gendarme jerked backwards and collapsed.
The bible must have been supplied by Gordon Ross, all the way from Malagosto. It had fired
a knock-out dart. I could see the little tuft sticking out of the man’s neck.
“And on the seventh day, he rested,” Hunter muttered and I recognized the quotation from
the second chapter of Genesis.
The two of us moved into the office. Hunter had brought rope and tape with him. “Tie him
up,” he said. “We’ll be gone long before he wakes up but it’s best not to take chances.”
I did as I was told, securely fastening his wrists and ankles, and using the tape and a
balled-up handkerchief to gag his mouth. After everything Hunter had told me, I was a little
surprised that he hadn’t simply shot the policeman. Wouldn’t that have been easier? But
perhaps, at the end of the day and despite everything he had said, he preferred not to take
a life unless it was really necessary.
With the gendarme hidden away, we walked across the courtyard, our bibles in our hands.
I thought we would go straight to Vosque’s door but instead Hunter steered us over to the
artist’s flat and rang the bell there. It was a nice touch. She wasn’t in, of course, but if
Vosque happened to be watching out of his window, the fact that we were patiently waiting
there would make us look completely innocent. We stood outside for a minute or two,
ignoring the thin drizzle that was slanting down onto the cobblestones. Hunter pretended to
slip a note through the letterbox. Then we went over to Vosque’s place and rang the bell.
He must have seen us coming and he didn’t suspect a thing. He was already in a bad mood

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as he opened the door, wearing a vest and pants with a striped dressing gown falling off his
shoulders. He hadn’t shaved yet.
“Get the hell out of here,” he snarled. “I haven’t—”
That was as far as he got. Hunter didn’t use another anaesthetic dart. He hit him, very
hard, under the chin. It wasn’t a killer blow, although it could have been. He caught the Cop
as he fell and dragged him into the apartment. I closed the door behind us. We were in.
The flat was almost bare. The floor was uncarpeted, the furniture minimal. There were no
pictures on the walls. It was private. Net curtains hung over the windows and although
there was a glass door leading into a tiny back garden – unusual for a Paris property –
nobody could see in. A bedroom led off to one side. There was an open-plan kitchen, where,
from the looks of it, Vosque hardly ever cooked anything much more than a boiled egg.
Hunter had manhandled the Cop across the floor and onto a wooden chair. “Find
something to tie him up with,” he said. “He should have some ties in the bedroom. If you
can’t find any, use a sheet off the bed. Tear it into strips.”
I was mystified. What were we doing? Our orders were to kill the man, not threaten or
interrogate him. Why wasn’t he already dead? But once again I didn’t argue. Vosque had
quite a collection of ties. I took five of them from his wardrobe and used them to bind his
arms and legs, keeping the last one to gag his mouth. Hunter said nothing while I worked. I
had already seen that intense concentration of his when we were in the jungle but this time
there was something else. I was aware that he had something in his mind and for some
reason it made me afraid.
He checked that the Cop was secure, then went over to the sink, filled a glass of water and
threw it in his face. The cop’s eyes flickered open. I saw the jolt as he returned to
consciousness and the fear as he took in his predicament. He began to struggle violently,
rocking back and forth, as if there was any chance of him breaking free. Hunter signalled at
him to stop. The Cop swore and shouted at him but the words were muffled,
incomprehensible beneath the gag. Eventually, he stopped fighting. He could see it would
do no good.
I didn’t dare speak. I wasn’t even sure what language I would be expected to use.
Hunter turned to me.
“You want to be an assassin,” he said, speaking in Russian now. “When you were in the
jungle, you told me you killed some of the men who came after us. I’m not so sure about
that. It was dark and I have a feeling I was the one who knocked all of them off. But that
doesn’t matter. You said you were ready to kill. I didn’t believe you. Well, now’s your
chance to prove it. I want you to kill Vosque.”
I looked at him. Then I turned to the Cop. I’m not sure that the Frenchman had understood
what we were saying. He was silent, gazing straight ahead as if he was outraged, as if we
had no right to be here.
“You want me to kill him,” I said in Russian.
“Yes. With this.”
He held out a knife. He had brought it with him and I stared at it with complete horror. I
couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The knife was razor-sharp. There could be no doubt of
that. I had never seen anything quite so evil. But it was tiny. The blade was more like an
old-fashioned safety razor. It couldn’t have been more than four or five centimetres long.

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“That’s crazy,” I said. I was clinging to the thought that perhaps this was some sort of
joke, although there was no chance of that. Hunter was deadly serious. “Give me a gun. I’ll
shoot him.”
“That’s not what I’m asking, Yassen. This is meant to be a punishment killing. I want you
to use the knife.”
He had named me in front of the victim. Even though he was speaking in Russian, there
was no going back.
“Why?”
“Why are you arguing? You know how we work. Do as you’re told.”
He pressed the knife into my hand. It was terribly light, barely more than a sliver of
sharpened metal in a plastic handle. And at that moment I understood the point of all this.
If I killed Vosque with this weapon, it would be slow and it would be painful. I would feel
every cut that I made. And it might take several cuts. This wasn’t going to be just a quick
stab to the heart. However I did it, I would end up drenched in the man’s blood.
A punishment killing. For both of us.
Something deep inside me rose to the surface. I was shocked, disgusted that he could
behave this way. We’d just had five amazing days in Paris. In a way, they’d wiped out
everything bad that had happened to me before. He’d been almost like a brother to me.
Certainly, he had been my friend. And now, suddenly, he was utterly cold. From the way he
was standing there, I could see that I meant nothing to him. And he was asking me to do
something unspeakable.
Butchery.
And yet he was right. At the end of the day, it was a lesson I had to learn … if I was going
to do this work. Not every assassination would take place from the top of a building or the
other side of a perimeter fence. I had to get my hands dirty.
I examined the Cop. He was struggling again, his stomach heaving underneath his vest,
jerking the chair from side to side, whimpering. His whole face had gone red. He had seen
the knife. I balanced it in my hand, once again feeling the flimsy weight. Where was I to
start? I supposed the only answer was to cut his throat. Gordon Ross had even given us a
demonstration once, but he had used a plastic dummy.
“You need to get on with it, Yassen,” Hunter said. “We haven’t got all day.”
“I can’t.”
I had spoken the words without realizing it. They had simply slipped out of my mouth.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because…”
I didn’t want to answer. I couldn’t explain. Vosque might not be a good man. He was
corrupt. He took bribes. But he was a man nonetheless. Not a paper target. He was right
here, in front of me, terrified. I could see the sweat on his forehead and I could smell him. I
just didn’t have it in me to take his life … and certainly not with this hideous, pathetic
knife.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“All right. Go outside. Wait for me there.”
This time I did what I was told without questioning. If I had stayed there a minute longer,

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I’d have been sick. As I opened the front door I heard the soft thud of a bullet fired from a
silenced pistol and knew that Hunter had taken care of matters himself. I was still holding
the knife. I couldn’t leave it behind. It was covered in forensic evidence that might lead the
police to me. I carefully slid it into the top pocket of my jacket where it nestled, the blade
over my heart.
Hunter came out. “Let’s go,” he said. He didn’t seem angry. He showed no emotion at all.
Walking back across the city, I told him my decision.
“I’m taking your advice,” I said. “I don’t want to be an assassin. I’m leaving Paris. I’m not
coming back to Rome. I’m going to disappear.”
“I didn’t give you that advice,” Hunter said. “But I think it’s a good idea.”
“Scorpia will find me.”
“Go back to Russia, Yassen. It’s a huge country. Russian is your first language and now
you have skills. Find somewhere to hide. Start again.”
“Yes.” I felt a sense of sadness and had to express it. “I let you down,” I said.
“No, you didn’t. I’m glad it worked out this way. The moment I first saw you, I had a
feeling that you weren’t suited to this sort of work and I’m pleased you’ve proved me right.
Don’t be like me, Yassen. Have a life. Start a family. Keep away from the shadows. Forget
all this ever happened.”
We came to a bridge. I took out the knife and dropped it into the Seine. Then we walked
on together, making our way back to the hotel.

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