Russian Roulette- the Story of an Assassin pdfdrive com

I buy, you bought. I see, you
saw. I speak, you spoke…
”
Sharkovsky must have had plenty of enemies. We lived our life under
siege at the 
dacha
, and as I had discovered, painfully, there was no way
in or out. There were X-ray machines and metal detectors at the main
gates – just like at a modern airport – and nobody was allowed in or out
without being searched. The gardeners arrived empty-handed and were
expected to leave their tools behind when they finished work. The
tutors, the drivers, the housekeepers … each person’s background had
been checked except for mine, but then my background didn’t matter.
Josef and Karl always stayed close to their boss. The CCTV cameras were
on at all times. Everyone watched everyone else. Other businessmen in
Russia were careful but none of them went to these extremes.
Sharkovsky was paranoid but, as I had seen for myself in that basement
refrigerator, he had good reason to be.
He was extremely careful about what he ate and drank. For example,
he only accepted mineral water from bottles that he had opened himself
after checking that the seal had not been broken. The bottles always had
to be glass. His enemies might be able to contaminate a plastic one using
a hypodermic syringe. He sometimes ate food straight from the packet or
the tin, pronging it into his mouth with no sign of pleasure, but if
it arrived on a plate, I would have to taste it first.
Most times, I would report to the kitchen before the meals were sent
out and I would eat straight out of the pans, with Josef or Karl watching

---

over me and Pavel standing nervously to one side. It’s hard to describe
how I felt about this. On one level, I have to admit that there was a part
of me that enjoyed it. As I have said, the food was superb. But at the
same time, it was still an unpleasant experience. First of all, one
mouthful was all I was allowed and I was always aware that one
mouthful might be enough to kill me. In a way, every tasting session was
the same as the Russian roulette I had been forced to play on my first
night. I learned to attune my senses to look out for the acrid taste of
poison or simply the suspicion that something might not be right. The
trouble was, by the time I detected it, it might well have killed me.
After a while, I put the whole thing out of my mind. I simply did what
I was told, robotically, without complaining. You might say that I had a
very strange relationship with death. The two of us were constantly
together, side by side. And yet we ignored each other. In this way, we
were able to get by.
What I most dreaded were the formal dinners that I was forced to
attend in the huge dining room with its brilliant chandeliers, gold and
white curtains, antique French table and chairs, and countless flickering
candles. Sharkovsky often invited business associates and friends …
people he knew well. To begin with, I was worried that Misha
Dementyev, the professor from Moscow State University, might show up.
He knew Sharkovsky. Indeed he – along with my own stupidity – was
the reason I was here. What would happen if he recognized me? Would
it make my situation worse? But he never did appear and it occurred to
me that he was probably a minor employee in Sharkovsky’s empire and
that it was very unlikely that he would receive an invitation. Nearly all
the guests arrived in expensive cars. Some even came in their own
helicopters. They were as rich and as vicious as Sharkovsky himself.
I had been given a grey suit with a white shirt and a black tie for these
events – the same uniform as his bodyguards – and I would stand behind
him as I had been instructed, looking down at the floor with my hands
held behind my back. I was not allowed to speak. As each course was
served, I would step forward and, using my own cutlery, would take a
sample directly from his plate, eat it, nod and step back again. There was
no doubt that Sharkovsky was afraid for his life but at the same time he
was enjoying himself. He loved playing the Roman emperor, showing me
off to his other guests, deliberately humiliating me in front of them.

---

But if the father was bad, his son was much, much worse. Ivan
Sharkovsky first became aware of me at one of those dinners and
although I wasn’t supposed to look at the guests, I noticed him
examining me out of the corner of my eye. Ivan, a year older than me,
resembled his father in many ways. He had the same dark qualities but
they had been distributed differently – in his curly black hair, his heavy
jowls, his down-turned mouth. He seemed to be constantly brooding
about something. His father was solid and muscular. He was fat with
puffy cheeks, thick lips and eyelids that were slightly too large for his
eyes. Sitting hunched over the table, spooning food into his mouth, he
had something brutish about him.
“Papa?” he asked. “Where did you get him from?”
“Who?” Sharkovsky was at the head of the table with Maya sitting next
to him. She was wearing a huge diamond necklace that sparkled in the
light. Whenever there were guests, he insisted that she smothered herself
in jewellery.
“The food taster!”
“From Moscow.” Sharkovsky dismissed the question as if he had
simply picked me up in a shop.
“Can he taste my food?”
Shakovsky leant forward and jabbed a fork in the direction of his son.
He had been drinking heavily – champagne and vodka – and although he
wasn’t drunk, there was a looseness about the way he spoke. “You don’t
need a food taster. You’re not important. Nobody would want to kill
you.”
The other guests all took this as a joke and laughed uproariously, but
Ivan scowled and I knew that I would be hearing from him soon.
And the very next day, he came outside and found me. It was a cold
afternoon. I was washing one of his father’s cars, spraying it with a hose.
As soon as I saw him coming, I stopped my work and looked down. This
was what I had been taught. We had to treat the whole family as if they
were royalty. Part of me hoped he would simply walk on, but I could see
it wasn’t going to happen. I knew straight away that I was in trouble.
“What is your name?” he asked, although of course he knew.
“Yassen Gregorovich,” I answered. That was the name I always used
now.
“I’m Ivan.”

---

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
He looked at me questioningly and I could feel the sense of menace
hanging in the air. “But you don’t call me that, do you?”
“No … sir.” It made me sick having to say the words but I knew that
was what he wanted.
He glanced at the car. “How long has it taken you to clean that? he
asked.
“An hour,” I said. It was true. The car was the Bentley and it had been
filthy. When I had finished with it, it would have to look as if it had just
come out of the showroom.
“Let me help you.”
He gestured for the hose, which was still spouting water onto the
ground, and, dreading what was to come, I handed it to him. First he
pointed it at the car. He placed his thumb over the end so that the water
rushed out in a jet. It poured over the windscreen and down over the
doors. Then he turned it on me … my head, my chest, my arms, my legs.
I could only stand there uselessly as he soaked me. Had this happened in
my village, I would have knocked him to the ground. Right then I had to
use all my self-restraint to stop myself punching him in the face. But that
was exactly what he was showing me. He had complete power over me.
He could do anything to me that he wanted.
When he had finished, he smirked and handed the hose back to me.
Finally, he noticed the bucket of muddy water beside the car. He kicked
out, sending the contents spraying over the bodywork.
“Bad luck, Yassen,” he said. “You’re going to have to start again.”
I stood there, dripping wet, as he turned and walked away.
After that, he tormented me all the time. His father must have known
what was happening – Ivan would have never acted in this way without
his authority – but he allowed it to carry on. And so I would get an
order, usually transmitted by Josef, Karl or one of the housekeepers. It
didn’t matter if it was morning or the middle of the night. I would go up
to the big house and there he would be with football boots that needed
cleaning, suitcases that needed carrying or even crumpled clothes that
needed ironing. He liked me to see his room, spacious and comfortable,
filled with so many nice things, because he knew I lived in a small
wooden cabin with nothing. And despite what Sharkovsky had said, he
sometimes got me to taste his food for him, watching with delight as I

---

leant over his plate. Often, he would play tricks with me. I would
discover that he had deliberately filled the food with salt or chilli
powder so that it would make me sick. I used to long for the day he
would return to his school in England and I would finally be left alone.
Three years…
I grew taller and stronger. I learned to speak different languages. But
otherwise I might as well 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 and 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