Russian Roulette- the Story of an Assassin pdfdrive com

shashlyk
– skewers
of meat – cooking on charcoal fires and it made my mouth water. I was
desperate to buy something but that was when I realized I had a
problem. Although I had a lot of money in my pocket, it was all in large
notes. I had no coins. If I were to hand over a ten-ruble note for a snack

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that would cost no more than a few kopecks, I would only draw
attention to myself. The stallholder would assume I was a thief. Better to
wait until I’d bought my train ticket. At least then I would have change.
With these thoughts in my mind, I walked towards the main entrance
of the station. I was so relieved to have got here and so anxious to be on
my way that I was careless. I was keeping my head down, trying not to
catch anyone’s eye. I should have been looking all around me. In fact, if
I had been sensible, I would have tried to enter the station from a
completely different direction … around the side or the back. As it was, I
hadn’t taken more than five or six steps before I found that my way was
blocked. I glanced up and saw two policemen standing in front of me,
dressed in long grey coats with insignia around their collars and military
caps. They were both young, in their twenties. They had revolvers
hanging from their belts.
“Where are you going?” one of them asked. He had bad skin, very raw,
as if he had only started shaving recently and had used a blunt razor.
“To the station.” I pointed, trying to sound casual.
“Why?”
“I work there. After school. I help clean the platforms.” I was making
things up as I went along.
“Where have you come from?”
“Over there…” I pointed to one of the apartment blocks I had passed
on my way into the town.
“Your name?”
“Leo Tretyakov.” My poor dead friend. Why had I chosen him?
The two policemen hesitated and for a moment I thought they were
going to let me pass. Surely there was no reason to stop me. I was just a
boy, doing odd jobs after school. But then the second policeman spoke.
“Your identity papers,” he demanded. His eyes were cold.
I had used a false name because I was afraid the authorities would
know who I was. After all, it had been my parents, Anton and Eva
Gregorovich, who had escaped from the factory. But now I was trapped.
The moment they looked at my passport, they would know I had lied to
them. I should have been watching out for them from the start. Now that
I looked around me, I realized that the station was crawling with
policemen. Obviously. The police would know what had happened at
Estrov. They would have been told that two boys had escaped. They had

---

been warned to keep an eye out for us at every station in the area … and
I had simply walked into their arms.
“I don’t have them,” I stammered. I put a stupid look on my face, as if I
didn’t realize how serious it was to be out without ID. “They’re at
home.”
It might have worked. I was only fourteen and looked young for my
age. But maybe the policemen had been given my description. Maybe
one of the helicopter pilots had managed to take my photograph as he
flew overhead. Either way, they knew. I could see it in their eyes, the
way they glanced at each other. They were only at the start of their
careers, and this was a huge moment for them. It could lead to
promotion, a pay rise, their names in the newspaper. They had just
scored big time. They had me.
“You will come with us,” the first policeman said.
“But I’ve done nothing wrong. My mother will be worried.” Why was I
even bothering? Neither of them believed me.
“No arguments,” the second man snapped.
I had no choice. If I argued, if I tried to run, they would grab me and
call for backup. I would be bundled into a police van before I could
blink. It was better, for the moment, to stick with them. If they were
determined to bring me into the police station themselves, there might
still be an opportunity for me to get away. The building could be on the
other side of town. By going with them, I would at least buy myself a
little time to plan a way out of this.
We walked slowly and all the time I was thinking, my eyes darting
about, adding up the possibilities. There were plenty of people around.
The working day was coming to an end and they were on their way
home. But they wouldn’t help me. They wouldn’t want to get involved. I
glanced back at the two policemen who were walking about two steps
behind me. What was it that I had noticed about them? They had clearly
been pleased they had caught me, no question of that – but at the same
time they were nervous. Well, that was understandable. This was a big
deal for them.
But there was something else. They were nervous for another reason. I
saw it now. They were walking very carefully, close enough to grab me
if I tried to escape but not so close that they could actually touch me.
Why the distance between me and them? Why hadn’t they put handcuffs

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on me? Why were they giving me even the smallest chance to run away?
It made no sense.
Unless they knew.
That was it. It had to be.
I had supposedly been infected with a virus so deadly that it had
forced the authorities to wipe out my village. It had killed Leo in less
than twenty-four hours. The soldiers in the forest had all been dressed in
biochemical protective gear. The police in Kirsk – and in Rosna, for that
matter – must have been told that I was dangerous, infected. None of
them could have guessed that my parents had risked everything to
inoculate me. They probably didn’t know that an antidote existed at all.
There was nothing to protect the young officers who had arrested me. As
far as they were concerned, I was a walking time bomb. They wanted to
bring me in. But they weren’t going to come too close.
We continued walking, away from the station. A few people passed us
but said nothing and looked the other way. The policemen were still
hanging back and now I knew why. Although it didn’t look like it, I had
the upper hand. They were afraid of me! And I could use that.
Casually, I slipped my hand into my pocket. Because the two men were
behind me, they didn’t see the movement. I took it out and wiped my
mouth. I sensed that we were drawing close to the police station from
the police cars parked ahead.
“Down there…!” one of the policemen snapped. We were going to
enter the police station the back way, down a wide alleyway and across
a deserted car park with overflowing dustbins lined up along a rusting
fence. We turned off and suddenly we were on our own. It was exactly
what I wanted.
I stumbled slightly and let out a groan, clutching hold of my stomach.
Neither of the policemen spoke. I stopped. One of them prodded me in
the back. Just one finger. No contact with my skin.
“Keep moving,” he commanded.
“I can’t,” I said, putting as much pain as I could manage into my voice.
I twisted round. At the same time, I began to cough, making horrible
retching noises as if my lungs were tearing themselves apart. I sucked in,
gasping for air, still holding my stomach. The policemen stared at me in
horror. There was bright blood all around my lips, trickling down my
chin. I coughed again and drops of blood splattered in their direction. I

---

watched them fall back as if they had come face to face with a poisonous
snake. And as far as they knew, my blood 
was
poison. If any of it
touched them, they would end up like me.
But it wasn’t blood.
Just a minute ago, I had slipped some of the lingonberries from the
forest into my mouth and chewed them up. What I was spitting was red
berry juice mixed with my own saliva.
“Please help me,” I said. “I’m not well.”
The two policemen had come to a dead halt, caught between two
conflicting desires: one to hold onto me, the other to be as far away from
me as possible. I was overacting like crazy, grimacing and staggering
about like a drunk, but it didn’t matter. Just as I’d suspected, they’d been
told how dangerous I was. They knew the stakes. Their imagination was
doing half the work for me.
“Everyone died,” I went on. “They all died. Please … I don’t want to be
like them.” I reached out imploringly. My hand was stained red. The two
men stepped back. They weren’t coming anywhere near. “So much
pain!” I sobbed. I fell to my knees. The juice dripped onto my jacket.
The policemen made their decision. If they stayed where they were, if
they tried to force me to my feet, it would kill them … quickly and
unpleasantly. Yes, they wanted their promotion. But their lives mattered
more. Maybe it occurred to them that the very fact that they had come
close to me meant they themselves would have to be eliminated. As far
as they could see, I was dying anyway. I was lying on my side now,
writhing on the ground, sobbing. My whole face was covered in blood.
One of them spoke briefly to the other. I didn’t hear what he said but his
colleague must have agreed because a moment later they had gone,
hurrying back the way they had come. I watched them turn a corner. I
very much doubted that they would report what had just happened.
After all, dereliction of duty would not be something they would wish to
advertise. They would probably spend the rest of the day at the
bathhouse, hoping that the steam and hot water would wash away the
disease.
I waited until I was sure they had gone, then got to my feet and wiped
my face with my sleeve. At least the encounter had given me an advance
warning. There was no way I was going to walk into the railway station
at Kirsk. The moment I tried to buy a train ticket, there would be

---

someone there to arrest me and I very much doubted the same trick
would work a second time. If I was going to get onto a train to Moscow,
I was going to have to think of something else.
And I already had an idea.
There had been quite a few passengers arriving in taxis and coming off
buses just before I had been arrested and that suggested that the evening
train might be coming soon. At the same time, I’d seen a number of
porters running forward to help them with their luggage. Some of them
had been boys, dressed in loose-fitting grey jackets with red piping down
the sleeves. I don’t think they were employed officially. They were just
trying to make a few kopecks on the side.
I made my way back towards the station – only this time I stayed
behind the trees, close to the buildings, keeping an eye out for any
policemen, mingling with the crowd. I soon found what I was looking
for. One of the porters was sitting outside a café, smoking a cigarette. He
was about my age, even if he was trying to disguise it with a beard and a
moustache. They were both made of that horrible wispy hair that doesn’t
really belong on a face. His jacket was hanging open. His cap sat
crookedly on his head.
I sidled up next to him and sat down. After a while, he noticed me and
nodded in my direction without smiling. It was enough.
“When’s the next train to Moscow?” I asked.
He glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
I pretended to consider this piece of information. “How would you like
to make five rubles?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. Five rubles was probably as much as he earned in a
week.
“I’ll be honest with you, friend,” I said. “I’m in trouble with the police.
I was almost arrested just now. I need to get on that train and if you’ll
sell me your jacket and your cap, I’ll give you the cash.”
It was not such a big gamble. Somehow, I knew that this boy would be
greedy. And anyway, most people in Russia would help you if you were
trying to get away from the authorities. That was how we were.
“Why do the police want you?” he asked.
“I’m a thief.”
He sucked lazily on his cigarette. “I will give you my jacket and cap,”
he said. “But it will cost you ten rubles.”

---

“Agreed.”
I took out the money, taking care not to show him how much I had,
and handed over a single note. Tonight, this porter would drink himself
into a stupor. He might invite his friends to join him. He handed me his
coat and his cap – but I did not go straight to the station. I stopped at
one of the stalls and used another four rubles to buy a pair of second-
hand suitcases from an old man who had a whole pile of them. Quickly,
I took off my outer clothes and slipped them into one of the cases. I put
on the jacket and cap. Then, carrying the suitcases, I made my way to
the station.
It seemed now that the police were everywhere. Was it possible that
the ones who had arrested me had talked after all? They had thrown a
ring around the entire building. They were in front of the ticket office,
on the platform. But not one of them noticed me. I waited until a smart-
looking couple – some sort of local government official and his wife –
got out of a taxi and I followed them into the station. They did not look
round. But to the police and to anyone else who glanced our way, it
simply looked as if they had hired a porter and that the two almost
empty cases I was carrying were theirs.
I had timed it perfectly. We had no sooner arrived at the platform than
a train drew in. The evening train to Moscow. I followed my clients to
their carriage and climbed in behind them. They were completely
unaware of my presence and although I was out there, in plain sight,
nobody challenged me.
This is something that has not changed to this day. People look at the
clothes you are wearing without ever thinking about the person who is
inside. A man with a back-to-front collar is a vicar. A woman in a white
coat with a stethoscope around her neck is a doctor. It is as simple as
that. You do not ask them for ID.
I stayed on the train and a few minutes later it left, very quickly
picking up speed, carrying me into the darkness. I knew I would never
return.

---

МОСКВА

---

MOSCOW
Kazansky Station. Moscow.
It is hard to remember my feelings as the train drew near to its final
destination. On the one hand, I was elated. I had made it. I had travelled
six hundred miles, leaving the police and all my other problems behind
me. But what of this new world in which I was about to find myself? The
train would stop. The doors would open. And what then?
Through the windows I had already seen apartment blocks, one after
another, that must have been home to tens of thousands of people. How
could they live like that, so many of them, piled up on top of each other?
Then there were the churches and their golden domes, ten times the size
of poor St Nicholas. The factories billowing smoke into a sky that was
cloudless, sunless, a single sheet of grey. But all of these were dwarfed
by the skyscrapers with their spires and glittering needles, thousands of
windows, millions of bricks, rising up as if from some crazy dream. Of
course I had been shown pictures of them at school. I knew they had
been built by Stalin back in the 1940s and 1950s. But seeing them for
myself was different. Somehow I was shocked that they did actually exist
and that they really were here, scattered around the city, watching over
it.
I had been fortunate on the train. There was an empty compartment
right at the back with a bunk bed that folded down. That was where I
slept – not on the bunk but underneath it on the floor, out of sight of the
ticket collectors. The strange thing was that I managed to sleep at all,
but then I suppose I was exhausted. I woke up once or twice in the night
and listened to the train rumbling through the darkness and I could
almost feel the memories slipping away … Estrov, Leo, my parents, my
school. I knew that by the time I arrived in Moscow, I would be little
more than an empty shell, a fourteen-year-old boy with no past and
perhaps no future. There was even a small part of me that wished I
hadn’t escaped from the police. At least, that way, I wouldn’t have to
make any decisions. I wouldn’t be on my own.

---

One name stayed with me, turning over and over in my head. Misha
Dementyev. He worked in the biology department of Moscow State
University and my mother had insisted that he would look after me.
Surely it wouldn’t be so hard to find him. The worst of my troubles
might already be over. That was what I tried to tell myself.
The station was jammed. I had never seen so many people in one
place. As I stepped down from the train, I found myself on a platform
that seemed to stretch on for ever, with passengers milling about
everywhere, carrying suitcases, packages, bundles of clothes, some of
them chewing on sandwiches, others emptying their hip-flasks. Everyone
was tired and grimy. There were policemen too but I didn’t think they
were looking for me. I had taken off the porter’s cap and jacket and
abandoned the suitcases. Once again I was wearing my Young Pioneers
outfit, although I thought of getting rid of that too. It was quite warm in
Moscow. The air felt heavy and smelt of oil and smoke.
I allowed myself to be swept along, following the crowd through a vast
ticket hall, larger than any room I had ever seen, and out into the street.
I found myself standing on the edge of a square. Again, it was the size
that struck me first. To my eyes, this one single space was as big as the
whole of Kirsk. It had lanes of traffic and cars, buses, trams roaring past
in every direction. Traffic – the very notion of a traffic jam – was a new
experience for me and I was overwhelmed by the noise and the stench of
the exhaust fumes. Even today it sometimes surprises me that people are
willing to put up with it. The cars were every colour imaginable. I had
seen official Chaikas and Ladas but it was as if these vehicles had driven
here from every country in the world. Grey taxis with chessboard
patterns on their hoods dodged in and out of the different lines. Subways
had been built for pedestrians, which was just as well. Trying to cross on
the surface would have been suicide.
There were three separate railway stations in the square, each one
trying to outdo the other with soaring pillars, archways and towers.
Travellers were arriving from different parts of Russia and as soon as
they emerged they were greeted by all sorts of food stalls, mainly run by
wrinkled old women in white aprons and hats. In fact people were
selling everything … meat, vegetables, Chinese jeans and padded
jackets, electrical goods, their own furniture. Some of them must have
come off the train for no other reason. Nobody had any money. This was

---

where you had to start.
My own needs were simple and immediate. I was dizzy with hunger. I
headed to the nearest food stall and started with a small pie filled with
cabbage and meat. I followed it with a currant bun – we called them