Russian Roulette- the Story of an Assassin pdfdrive com

part of his gang. If I could do this quickly enough, he might let me stay
with him, even when I had nothing more to give. That was my hope.
He took me to a place just off Tverskaya Street, one of the main
thoroughfares in Moscow, which leads all the way down to the Kremlin
and Red Square. Today, there is a hotel on that same corner – the nine-

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storey Marriott Grand, where American tourists stay in total luxury. But
when I came there, following Dima and still wondering if I wasn’t
making another bad mistake, it was very different. Moscow has changed
so much, so quickly. It was another world back then.
Dima lived in what had once been a block of flats but which had long
been abandoned and left to rot. All the colour had faded from the
brickwork, which was damp and mouldy, and covered with graffiti – not
artwork but political slogans, swear words, and the names of city
football teams. The windows were so dirty that they looked more like
rusting metal than glass. The building rose up twelve floors, three more
than the hotel that would one day replace it, and whole thing seemed to
be sagging in on itself, hardly bothering to stay upright. It was
surrounded by other blocks that were similar … they looked like old
men standing out in the cold, having a last cigarette together before they
died. The streets here were very narrow; more like alleyways, twisting
together in the darkness, covered with rubbish and mud. The block of
flats had shops on the ground floor – an empty grocery store, a chemist
and a massage parlour – but the further up you went, the more desolate
it became. It had no lifts, of course. Just a concrete staircase that had
been used as a toilet so many times that it stank. By the time you got to
the top, there was no electricity, no proper heating. The only water came
dribbling, cold, out of the taps.
We climbed up together. I noticed that Dima was wheezing when we
got to the top and I wondered if he was ill – although it could just have
been all those cigarettes. On the way, we passed a couple of people, a
man and a woman, lying on top of each other, unconscious. I couldn’t
even be sure they were actually alive. Dima just stepped over them and I
did the same, wondering what I was getting myself into. My village had
been a place of poverty and hardship but it was somehow more shocking
here, in the middle of a city.
Dima’s room was on the eighth floor. Since there was no lighting, he
had taken out a torch and used it to find the way. We went down a
corridor that was missing its carpet with gaping holes showing the
pipework and wiring. There were doors on either side, most of them
locked, one or two reinforced with metal plating. Somewhere, I could
hear a baby crying. A man shouted out a swear word. Another laughed.
The sounds that echoed around me only added to the nightmare, the

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sense that I was being sucked into a dark and alien world.
“This is me,” Dima said.
We’d come to a door marked with a number 83. Somebody had added
DIMA’S PLACE in bright red letters but the paint hadn’t been allowed to
dry and it had trickled down like blood. Perhaps the effect was
deliberate. There was a hole where the lock should have been but Dima
used a padlock and a chain to keep the place secure. At the moment, it
was hanging open. His friends had arrived ahead of us.
“Welcome home!” he said to me. “This is my place. Come in and meet
my mates…”
He pushed the door open. We went in.
The flat was tiny. Most of it was in a single room, which he shared
with the two boys who had robbed me. On the floor were three
mattresses and some filthy pillows on a carpet which was mouldy and
colourless. The place was lit by candles and my first thought was that if
one of them toppled over in the night, we would all burn to death. A
single table and four chairs stood on one side. Otherwise there was no
furniture of any description. A few bits of the kitchen were still in place
but I could tell at a glance that the sink hadn’t been used for years and
without electricity the fridge was no more than an oversized cupboard.
The smell in the room was unpleasant; a mixture of human sweat,
unwashed clothes, dirt and decay.
Dima waved me over to the table. “This is Yasha,” he announced. “He’s
going to be staying with us for a while.” His two friends were already
sitting there playing Snap with a deck that was so worn that the cards
hung limp in their hands. They didn’t look pleased as I joined them.
“He’s going to pay,” Dima added. “Two rubles a week.”
Dima opened the fridge and took out a bottle of vodka and some black
bread. He found some dirty glasses in the sink and poured drinks for us
all. He lit a cigarette for himself, then offered me one, which I accepted
gratefully. It wasn’t just that I wanted to smoke. It was a gesture of
friendship and that was what I most needed.
Dima introduced the two boys. “This is Roman. That’s Grigory.”
Roman was tall and thin. He looked as if he had been deliberately
stretched. Grigory was round-faced, pock-marked with oily, black hair.
All three of them looked not just adult but old, as if they had forgotten
their true age … which was about seventeen. Roman collected the cards

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and put them away. It was obvious who was the leader here. So long as
Dima said I could stay, they weren’t going to argue.
“Tell us about yourself, soldier,” Dima said. “I’d like to know what
brought you to Moscow.” He winked at me. “And I’d particularly like to
know why the police are so interested in you.”
“What?”
So I’d been right. When I’d got back to the station I’d thought the
children had been behaving strangely and now I knew why. The police
had been there, looking for me.
“That’s right. Tell him, Grig.” Grigory said nothing so Dima went on.
“They’re looking for someone new to town. Someone who might have
come into Kazansky Station, dressed up like a Young Pioneer. They’ve
been asking everyone.” He tapped ash. “They’re offering a reward for
information.”
My heart sank. I wondered if I had walked into another trap. Had
Dima invited me here to have me arrested? But there was no sound
coming from outside; no footsteps in the corridor, no sirens in the street.
“Don’t worry, soldier! No one’s going to turn you in. Not even for the
money. They never pay up anyway.
“I hate the p–p–p–police.” Roman had a stutter. I watched his face
contort as he tried to spit out the last word.
“What do they want with you?” Grigory asked. He sounded hostile.
Maybe he was afraid that I was bringing more trouble into his life. He
probably had enough already.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t want to lie but I was afraid of
telling the truth. In the end, I kept it as short as I could. “They killed my
parents,” I said. “My dad knew something he wasn’t meant to know.
They wanted to kill me too. I escaped.”
“What about your friend at the university?” Dima asked.
“He wasn’t my friend.” I was on safer ground here. I told them
everything that had happened in Misha Dementyev’s office. When I
described how I had beaten Dementyev off using the arm of the skeleton,
Dima laughed out loud. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “You certainly
gave him the elbow!”
It was a weak joke but we all laughed. Dima refilled our glasses and
once again we drank the Russian way, throwing the liquid back in a
single gulp. It didn’t take us long to finish the bottle and about an hour

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later we all went to bed … if you can call bed a square of carpet with a
pile of old clothes as a pillow. I was just glad to have a roof over my
head and, helped by the vodka, I was asleep almost at once.
The next morning, Dima took me to the pawnbroker he had
mentioned. It was a tiny shop with a cracked front window and an old,
half-shaven man sitting behind a counter that was stacked with watches
and jewellery. I handed across my mother’s earrings and stood there,
watching him examine them briefly through an eyeglass which he
screwed into his face as if it was part of him. Right then, a little part of
me died. It had been a pawnbroker that the hero had murdered in