Free Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz

I had been close to my parents but much closer to Leo. And he was so young . . . the same age as me.
    In a way, I think I am writing this for Leo. I have decided to keep a record of my life because I suspect my life will be short. I do not particularly want to be remembered. After all, being unknown has been essential to my work. But I sometimes think of him and I would like him to understand what it was that made me what I am. After all, living as a boy of fourteen in a Russian village, it had never been my intention to become a contract killer.
    His death may have been one step on my journey. But—believe me—it was not a major step. It did not change me in any meaningful way. That happened much later.
    I set fire to the hut with Leo still inside it. I remembered the helicopters and knew that the flames might attract their attention, but it was the only way I could think of to prevent the disease from spreading. And if the soldiers were drawn here, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing. They had their gas masks and protective suits. They would know how to decontaminate the area.
    But that didn’t mean I was going to hang around waiting for them to come. With the smoke billowing behind me, carrying Leo out of this world, I hurried away, along the road to Kirsk.

5

    I ENTERED KIRSK ON LEGS that were tired and feet that were sore and remembered that the last time I had been here, it had been on a school trip. Lenin had once been here. That was what we were told. The great Soviet leader had stopped briefly in the town on his way to somewhere more important because there was a problem with his train. He made a brief speech on the station platform, then went to the local café for a cup of tea and, happening to glance in the mirror, decided that his beard and mustache needed a trim. Not surprisingly, the local barber almost had a heart attack when the most powerful man in the Soviet Union walked into his shop. The cup that he drank from and the clippings of black hair were still on display in the History and Folklore Museum of Kirsk. I saw them when I was there on my school trip.
    As I entered the town, on foot, I remembered the museum. It was a large reddish brown building filled with rooms that were filled with objects, and after only an hour my head was already pounding. From the outside, it looked like a railway station. Curiously, Kirsk railway station looked quite like a museum with wide stairs, pillars, and huge bronze doors that should have opened onto something more important than ticket offices, platforms, and waiting rooms. I had seen it the last time I was here, but of course I couldn’t remember where it was. When you’ve been taken to a place in a coach and marched around shoulder to shoulder in a long line with no talking allowed, you don’t really look where you’re going. That hadn’t been my only visit. My father had taken me to the cinema here once—a long, boring film about a girl being bullied at school. And then there had been my visit to the hospital. But all these buildings could have been on different planets. I had no idea where they were in relation to one another.
    After Estrov, the place seemed enormous. I had forgotten how many buildings there were, how many shops, how many cars and buses racing up and down the wide, cobbled streets. Everywhere seemed to have electricity. There were wires zigzagging from pole to pole, crossing each other like a disastrous cat’s cradle. But I’m not suggesting that Kirsk was anything special. I’d spent my whole life in a tiny village, so I was easily impressed. I didn’t notice the crumbling plaster on the buildings, the empty construction sites, the pits in the road, and the dirty water running through the gutters.
    It was late afternoon when I arrived and the light was already fading. My mother had said there were two trains a day to Moscow, and I hoped I was in time to catch the evening one. I had never spent a night in a hotel before, and even