Russian Roulette (Alex Rider)

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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I had a great deal of help with the Russian sections of the 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 buildings 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 from his home in London. Finally, Alex Kteniadakis gave me the
technical information for Yassen’s computer.
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 licence.
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 both Sarah
Handley at Walker Books and Harry F at HMP Ashfield who both suggested the title. I am,
as ever, grateful to Jane Winterbotham, my squeamish but incisive editor at Walker Books.
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.

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