He left me on my own. I stripped off my clothes and went into the bathroom. I used the toilet, then I had a shower. I knew I was in danger. It was quite likely that I would soon be dead. But that shower was still a wonderful experience. The water was hot and there was enough pressure to soak me completely. There was even a bar of soap. It had been three weeks since I had last washed – that had been in the banya, the bathhouse in Moscow – and black dirt seemed to ooze out of my body, disappearing down the plughole. Thinking of the bathhouse reminded me of Dima. What would he be doing now? Had he seen me being bundled into the car by Sharkovsky and, if so, might he come looking for me? At least that was something to give me hope.
My face still hurt though, and when I examined myself in the mirror, it was as bad as I had feared. I barely recognized myself. One eye was half closed. There was a huge bruise all around it. My cheek looked like a rotting fruit with a gash where the man’s fist had caught me. I was lucky I still had all my teeth. Looking at the damage, I was reminded of what lay ahead. I hadn’t been brought here for my own comfort. I was being prepared for something. My punishment was still to come.
I went back into the bedroom. My own clothes had been taken away while I was washing and, with a jolt, I realized that the last of my mother’s jewellery had gone with them. Her ring had been in my back pocket. I knew at once that there would be no point in asking for it back and I had to hold down a great wave of sadness, the sense that I had nothing left. She had worn that ring and touching it, I had felt I was touching her. Now that it had been taken from me, it was as if I had finally been separated from the boy I had once been.
I had been supplied with a black tracksuit, black socks and black slip-on shoes. I dried myself, using a towel that had been hanging in the bathroom, and got dressed. The clothes fitted me very well.
“Are you ready?” The twins were standing outside, calling to me. I left the cabin and joined them. They glanced at me, both of them still showing a complete lack of interest.
“Come with us,” one of them said. They appeared to have a fairly limited vocabulary too.
We walked up the drive all the way to the big house. As we went, we passed another security guard, this one with an Alsatian dog on a leash. A television camera mounted above the front door watched our approach. But we didn’t go in that way. The twins took me in through a side door next to the dustbin area and along a corridor. Here the walls were plain and the floor black and white tiles. The servants’ entrance. We passed a laundry room, a boot room and a pantry next to a kitchen. I glimpsed a woman in a black dress and a white apron, polishing silver. She didn’t notice me or, if she did, she pretended not to. My feet, in the soft shoes, made no sound as we continued through. I was feeling queasy and I knew why. I was afraid.
We passed through a hallway; this was the main entrance to the house. A magnificent staircase swept down to the front door with a marble pillar on each side. The hallway itself was huge. You could have parked a dozen cars there. A bowl of flowers stood on a table – it must have emptied a flower shop. The central light was a chandelier, hundreds of crystals twinkling brilliantly like a firework display. It made the lights I had seen in the Moscow Metro look cheap and gaudy. There were more doors on every side. It was all too much for me to take in. If a spaceship had grabbed me and deposited me on the moon, I would have felt as much at home.
“In here…”
One of the twins knocked on an oak door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it. I went in.
The man from the Moscow apartment was sitting behind an oversized antique desk. There were bookshelves behind him and on one side a globe that looked so old that quite a few of the countries were probably missing… yet to be discovered. He was framed by two windows with red velvet curtains and a view out to the fountain and the drive. The room was very warm. One wall contained a stone fireplace – two crouching imps or demons supporting the mantelpiece on their shoulders – and a Dalmatian, lay stretched out in front of it. The walls were covered with paintings. The largest was a portrait of the man I was facing and I have to say that the painted version was the more welcoming of the two. He had not looked up from his work. He was reading a document, making notes in the margins with a black fountain pen.
There was a gun on the desk in front of him.
As I stood there, waiting to be told what to do, I found myself staring at it. It was a revolver, a very old-fashioned model with a stainless steel barrel, five inches long, and a black, enamel grip. It wasn’t like an automatic or a self-loading pistol where you feed the bullets into a clip. This one had a cylinder and six chambers. A single bullet lay beside it.
“Sit down,” he said, pointing to an empty chair in front of him.
I stepped forward, although it felt more as if I was floating, and sat down. The door clicked shut behind me. Without being instructed, the twins had left.
I waited for the master of the house to speak. He was wearing a suit now and somehow I knew that it was expensive and that it hadn’t been made in Russia. The material was too luxurious and it fitted too well. He had a pale blue shirt and a brown tie. Now that he wasn’t wearing his coat, I could see that he was very muscular. He must have spent hundreds of hours in the gym. He had also removed the hat and I saw that he was completely bald. He had not lost his hair. He had shaved it off, leaving a dark shadow that made him more death-like than ever. I waited in dread for his heavy, ugly eyes to settle on me. My face was hurting badly and I wanted to go to the toilet again. But I didn’t dare say anything. I didn’t move.
At length he stopped and lay the pen down. “What is your name?” he asked.
“Yasha Gregorovich.”
“Yassen?” He had misheard me. The side of my face was so swollen that I had mispronounced my own name. It would be very unusual to be called Yassen. It is Russian for ash tree. But I did not correct him. I had decided it would be better not to speak unless I had to. “How old are you?” he asked.
“I’m fourteen.”
“Where are you from?”
I remembered my mother’s warning. “A town called Kirsk,” I said. “It’s a long way away. You won’t have heard of it.”
The man thought for a moment, then he got up, walked round the desk and stood next to me. He took his time, considering the situation, then suddenly and without warning slapped me across the face. The blow wasn’t a particularly hard one, certainly not as hard as the night before, but nor did it need to be. My cheekbone was already broken and the fresh pain almost knocked me off the chair. Black spots appeared in front of my eyes. I thought I was going to be sick.
By the time I had recovered, the man was back in his chair. “Never make assumptions,” he said. “Never assume anything about me. And when you speak to me, call me ‘sir’. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded. “Do you have parents?”
“No, sir. They’re both dead.”
“And last night, when you broke into my flat, were you alone?”
I had already decided that I wasn’t going to tell him about Dima, Roman and Grigory. If I told him their names, I had no doubt he would send his men round to Tverskaya to kill them. I still thought he was going to kill me. “Yes, sir,” I replied. “I was on my own.”
“How did you come to choose that flat – as opposed to any other?”
“I was walking past. I saw that the window was open and the lights were out. I didn’t even think about it. I just went in.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him. He took out a gold cigarette case. I noticed the initials V.S. on the cover. He removed a cigarette and lit it, then lay the case on the desk, close to the gun. “Vladimir Sharkovsky,” he said. “That is my name.”