What was strange about Malagosto was how close it was to mainland Venice. Here was this city full of rich tourists drifting between jazz bars and restaurants, five-star hotels and gorgeous palazzos – and less than half a mile away, across a strip of dark water, there were activities going on that would have made their hair stand on end. The island had been a plague centre once. There was an old Venetian saying: “Sneeze in Venice and wipe your nose in Malagosto” – the last thing you could afford in a tightly packed medieval city, with its sweating crowds and stinking canals, was an outbreak of the plague. The rich merchants had built a monastery, a hospital, living quarters and a cemetery for the infected. They would house them, look after them, pray for them and bury them. But they would never have them back.
The island was small. I could walk around it in forty minutes. Even in the summer, the sand was a dirty yellow, covered with shingle, and the water was an unappealing grey. All the woodland was tangled together as if it had been hit by a violent storm. There was a clearing in the middle with a few gravestones, the names worn away by time, leaning together as if whispering the secrets of the past. The monastery had a bell tower made out of dark red bricks and it slanted at a strange angle… it looked sure to collapse at any moment. The whole building looked dilapidated, half the windows broken, the courtyards pitted with cracks, weeds everywhere.
But the actual truth was quite surprising. Scorpia hadn’t just watched the place fall into disrepair, they had helped it on its way. They had removed anything that looked too attractive: fountains, statues, frescoes, stained-glass windows, ornamental doors. They had even gone so far as to insert a hydraulic arm into the tower, deliberately tilting it. The whole point was that Malagosto was not meant to be beautiful. It was off-limits anyway, but they didn’t want a single tourist or archaeologist to feel it was worth hiring a boat and risking the crossing. The last time anyone had tried had been six years before, when a group of nuns had taken a ferry from Murano, following in the footsteps of some minor saint. They had still been singing when the ferry had inexplicably blown up. The cause was never found.
Inside, the buildings were much more modern and comfortable than anyone might have guessed. We had two classrooms, warm and soundproof with brand new furniture and banks of audio visual equipment that would have had my old teachers in Rosna staring in envy. All they’d had was chalk and blackboards. There were both indoor and outdoor shooting ranges, a superbly equipped gymnasium with an area devoted exclusively to fighting – judo, karate, kick-boxing and, above all, ninjutsu – and a swimming pool, although most of the time we used the sea. If the temperature was close to freezing, that only made the training more worthwhile. My own rooms, on the second floor of the accommodation block, were very comfortable. I had a bedroom, a living room and even my own bathroom with a huge marble bath that took only seconds to fill, the steaming hot water jetting out of a monster brass tap shaped like a lion’s head. I had my own desk, my own TV, a private fridge that was always kept stocked up with bottled water and soft drinks. All this came at a price. Once I left the facility, I would be tied by a five-year contract working exclusively for Scorpia and the cost of my training would be taken from my salary. This was made clear to me from the start.
After I had met Mrs Rothman and accepted her offer, I was taken straight to the island in the back of a water ambulance. It seemed an odd choice of vessel but of course it would have been completely inconspicuous in the middle of all the other traffic and I did not travel alone. Mr Grant came with me, laid out on a stretcher. I have to say that I felt sorry for him. In his own way he had been kind to me. I turned my thoughts to Vladimir Sharkovsky, probably lying in a Moscow hospital, surrounded by fresh bodyguards watching over him just as the machines would be watching over his heart rate, his blood pressure – all his vital signs. Who would be tasting his food for him now?
It was midday when I arrived.
The water ambulance pulled up to a jetty that was much less dilapidated than it looked and I saw a young woman waiting for me. In fact, from a distance, I had mistaken her for a man. Her dark hair was cut short and she was wearing a loose white shirt, a waistcoat and jeans. But as we drew closer I saw that she was quite attractive, about two or three years older than me, and serious-looking. She wore no make-up. She reached out and gave me a hand off the boat and suddenly we were standing together, weighing each other up.
“I’m Colette,” she said.
“I’m Yassen.”
“Welcome to Malagosto. Do you have any luggage?”
I shook my head. I had brought nothing with me. Apart from what I was wearing, I had no possessions in the world.
“I’ve been asked to show you around. Mr Nye will want to see you later on.”
“Mr Nye?”
“You could say he’s the principal. He runs this place.”
“Are you a teacher?”
She smiled. “No. I’m a student. The same as you. Come on – I’ll start by showing you your rooms.”
I spent the next two hours with Colette. There were only three students there at the time. I would be the fourth. The others were on the mainland, involved in some sort of exercise. As we stood on the beach, looking out across the water, Colette told me a little about them.
“There’s Marat. He’s from Poland. And Sam. He only got here a few weeks ago… from Israel. Neither of them talks very much but Sam came out of the army. He was going to join Mossad – Israeli intelligence – but Scorpia made him a better offer.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Where have you come from?”
“I’m French.”
We had been speaking in English but I had been aware she had a slight accent. I waited for her to tell me more but she was silent. “Is that all?” I asked.
“What else is there?” You and me… we’re here. That’s all that matters.”
“How did you get chosen?”
“I didn’t get chosen. I volunteered.” She thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t ask personal questions, if I were you. People can be a bit touchy around here.”
“I just thought it was strange, that’s all. A woman learning how to kill…”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “You are old-fashioned, aren’t you, Yassen! And here’s another piece of advice. Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself.” She looked at her watch, then drew a thin book out of her back pocket. “Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on your own. I’ve got to finish this.”
I glanced at the cover: MODERN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES BY DR THREE.
“You might get to meet him one day,” Colette said. “And if you do, be careful what you say. You wouldn’t want to end up as a chapter in his book.”
I spent the rest of the day alone in my room, lying on my bed with all sorts of thoughts going through my head. Much later on, at about eight o’clock in the evening, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office and it was there that I met the man who was in charge of all the training on Malagosto.
His name was Sefton Nye and my first thought was that he had the darkest skin I had ever seen. His glistening bald head showed off eyes that were extraordinarily large and animated. And he had brilliant white teeth, which he displayed often in an astonishing smile. He dressed very carefully – he liked well-cut blazers, obviously expensive – and his shoes were polished to perfection. He was originally from Somalia. His family were modern-day pirates, holding up luxury yachts, cruise ships and even, on one occasion, an oil tanker that had strayed too close to the shore. They were utterly ruthless… I saw framed newspaper articles in the office describing their exploits. Nye himself had a very loud voice. Everything about him was larger than life.