“You’ve told me enough.” He leant towards me and suddenly he was deadly serious. At that moment, I knew that he was dangerous, that I could never relax completely when I was with him. “You want to be a contract killer?” he asked. “Every answer you gave me was wrong. You tie your shoelaces with your right hand. You are right-handed. A successful assassin will be as comfortable shooting with his right hand as with his left. He has to be invisible. He has no habits. Everything he does in his life, right down to the smallest detail, he does differently every time. The moment his enemies learn something about him, the easier it is to find him, to profile him, to trap him.
“So that means you can’t have preferences. Not French food, not Italian food. If you have a favourite meal, a favourite drink, a favourite anything, that gives your enemy ammunition. Cossack is fond of caviar. Do you know how many shops there are in London that sell caviar, how many restaurants that serve it? Not many. The intelligence services may not know your name. They may not know what you look like. But if they discover your tastes, they’ll be watching and you’ll have made it that much easier for them to find you.
“You talk to me about your grandfather. Forget him. He’s dead and you have nothing more to do with him. If he’s anything to you, he’s your enemy because if the intelligence services can find him, they’ll dig him up and take his DNA and that will lead them to you. Why are you so proud of the fact that he fought against the Nazis? Is it because they’re the bad guys? Forget it! You’re the bad guy now… as bad as any of them. In fact, you’re worse because you have no beliefs. You kill simply because you’re paid. And while you’re at it, you might as well stop talking about Nazis, Communists, Fascists, the Ku Klux Klan… As far as you’re concerned, you have no politics and every political party is the same. You no longer believe in anything, Cossack. You don’t even believe in God. That is the choice you’ve made.”
He paused.
“Why did you blush when I asked you about New York?”
“Because you were right.” What else could I say?
“You showed your feelings to me here, at this table. You’re embarrassed so you blush. You got angry when I asked you about your laces and you showed that too. Are you going to cry when you meet your next target? Are you going to tremble when you’re interviewed by the police? If you cannot learn to hide your emotions, you might as well give up now. And then there’s your watch…”
I knew he would come to that. I wished now that I hadn’t mentioned it.
“You are Cossack, the invisible killer. You’ve been successful in New York, in Paris, in Peru. But the police examine the CCTV footage and what do they see? Somebody was there at all three scenes and – guess what! – they were wearing a Russian watch, a Pobeda. You might as well leave a visiting card next to the body.” He shook his head. “If you want to be in this business, sentimentality is the last thing you can afford. Trust me, it will kill you.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I’m glad. Did you enjoy the meal?”
I was about to answer. Then I had second thoughts. “Perhaps it’s better if I don’t tell you,” I said.
Hunter nodded and got to his feet. “Well, you wolfed it down fast enough. Let’s get back to the island. Tomorrow I want to see you fight.”
He made me fight like no one else.
The next morning, at nine o’clock, we met in the gymnasium. The room was long and narrow with walls that curved overhead and windows that were too high up to provide a view. When there were monks on the island, this might have been where they took their meals, sitting in silence and contemplation. But since then it had been adapted with arc lights, stadium seating and a fighting area fourteen metres square made up of a tatami mat that offered little comfort when you fell. We were both dressed in karate-gi, the white, loose-fitting tunics and trousers used in karate. Hatsumi Saburo was watching from one of the stands. I could tell that he was not happy. He was sitting with his legs apart, his hands on his knees, almost challenging the new arrival to take him on. Marat and Sam were also there, along with a new student who had just joined us, a young Chinese guy who never spoke a word to me and whose name I never learnt.
We walked onto the mat together and stood face to face. Hunter was about three inches taller than me and heavier, more muscular. I knew he would have an advantage over me both in his physical reach and in the fact that he was more experienced. He began by bowing towards me, the traditional rei that is the first thing every combatant learns at karate school. I bowed back. And that was my first mistake. I didn’t even see the move. Something slammed into the side of my face and suddenly I was on my back, tasting blood where I had bitten my tongue.
Hunter leant over me. “What do you think this is?” he demanded. “You think we’re here to play games, to be polite to each other? That’s your first mistake, Cossack. You shouldn’t trust me. Don’t trust anyone.”
He reached out a hand to help me to my feet. I took it – but instead of getting up I suddenly changed my grip, pulling him towards me and pressing down on his wrist. I’d adapted a ninjutsu move known as Ura Gyaku, or the Inside Twist, and it should have brought him spinning onto the mat. I thought I heard a grunt of satisfaction from HS but it might just as well have been derision because Hunter had been expecting my move and slammed his knee into my upper arm. If I hadn’t let go, he’d have broken it. Instantly, I rolled aside, just missing a foot strike that whistled past my head. A second later, I was on my feet. The two of us squared up again, both of us taking the Number One Posture – arms raised, our bodies turned so as to provide the smallest target possible.
I learnt more in the next twenty minutes than I had in my entire time on Malagosto. No. That’s not quite true. With HS and Mr Nye I had acquired a thorough grounding in judo, karate and ninjutsu. In an incredibly short amount of time, they had taken me all the way from novice to third or fourth kyu – which is to say, brown or white belt. I would spend the rest of my life building on what they had given me, and they were both far ahead of Hunter when it came to basic martial arts techniques. But he had something they hadn’t. As Oliver d’Arc had told me, Hunter had seen action as a soldier in Africa and Ireland. I would later learn that he had been with the Parachute Regiment, a rapid intervention strike force and one of the toughest outfits in the British Army. He knew how to fight in a way that they didn’t. They taught me the rules but he broke them. In that first fight we had together, he did things that simply shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. Once or twice I glimpsed HS shaking his head in disbelief, watching his own training manual being torn up. I was knocked down countless times and not once did I see the move coming. Nothing I had been taught seemed to work against him.
After twenty minutes, he stepped back and signalled that the fight was over. “All right, Cossack, that will do for now.” He smiled and held out a hand – as if to say “no hard feelings”. I reached out and took it, but this time I was ready. Before he could throw me, which of course was what he intended, I twisted round, using his own weight against him. Hunter disappeared over my shoulder and crashed down onto the mat. He had landed on his back but sprang up at once.
“You’re learning.” He smiled his approval, then walked away, snatching up a bottle of water. I watched him, grateful that in the very last moment of the fight I had at least done something right and hadn’t made a complete fool of myself in front of my teachers. At the same time it crossed my mind that he might actually have allowed me to bring him down, simply to let me save face. I had liked and admired Hunter when I had eaten with him the night before. But now I felt a sort of closeness to him. I was determined not to let him down.