I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple enough!” he said. “Point the gun at the back of your mouth and shoot.”
“But why…?”
“Because you said to me five seconds ago that you would do anything I wanted and now I am asking you to prove it. I need to know that I can rely on you. Either you will pull the trigger or you will not. But let us consider the options, Yassen Gregorovich. If you will not do what I ask, then you have lied to me and I cannot use you after all. In that case, I can assure you that your death is certain. If you do as I have asked, then there are two possibilities that lie ahead of you. It is quite possible that you will kill yourself, that in a few minutes’ time, my cleaners will be wiping your brains off my carpet. That will be annoying. But there is also a very good chance that you will live and from that moment on you will serve me. It is your decision and you must make it now. I don’t have all day.”
He was torturing me after all. He was asking me to play this horrific game to prove beyond any doubt that he had complete power over me. I would never argue with him. I would never refuse an order. If I did this, I would be accepting that my own life no longer belonged to me. That in every respect I was his.
What could I do? What choice did I have?
I picked up the gun. It was much heavier than I had expected but at the same time, I had no strength at all. Nothing below my shoulder seemed to be working properly – not my wrist, not my hand, not my fingers. I could feel my pulse racing and I had to struggle even to breathe. What this man was demanding was horrific … beyond imagination. Six chambers. One containing a bullet. A one in six chance. When I pulled the trigger, nothing might happen. Or I might send a piece of metal travelling at two hundred miles per hour into my own head. If I didn’t do it, he would kill me. That was what it came down to. I felt hot tears brimming over my cheeks. It seemed impossible that my life could have come to this.
“Don’t cry like a baby,” Sharkovsky said. “Get on with it.”
My arm and wrist were aching. I could feel the blood pumping through my veins. Almost involuntarily, my finger had curled around the trigger. The grip was pressed against the palm of my hand. For a crazy moment, I thought of firing at Sharkovsky, of emptying the chamber in his direction. But what good would that do me? He probably had a second gun concealed somewhere and if I didn’t find the bullet at the first attempt he would have plenty of time to shoot me where I sat.
“Please, sir…” I whispered.
“I am not interested in your tears or your pleading,” he snapped. “I am interested only in your obedience.”
“But…”
“Do it now!”
I touched the muzzle of the gun against the side of my head.
“In your mouth!”
I will never forget his insistence, that one obscene detail. I pushed the barrel of the gun between my teeth, feeling the muzzle grazing the roof of my mouth. I could taste the metal, cold and bitter. I was aware of the black hole, the muzzle, pointing at my throat with, perhaps, a bullet resting behind it, waiting to begin its short journey. Sharkovsky was gloating. I don’t think he cared one way or the other what the outcome would be. I couldn’t breathe. The contents of my stomach were rising up. I pressed with my finger but I couldn’t make it work. In my mind I already heard the explosion. I felt the scorching heat and saw the darkness falling like a blade as my life was snatched away.
“Do it!” he snarled.
One chance in six.
I squeezed the trigger.
The hammer drew back. How far would it travel before it fell? I was certain that these were the last seconds of my life. And yet everything was happening horribly slowly. They seemed to stretch on for ever.
I felt the mechanism release itself in my hand. The hammer fell with a heavy, thunderous click.
Nothing.
There had been no explosion. The chamber was empty.
Relief rushed through me but it did not feel good. It was as if I was being emptied, as if my entire life and all the good things I had ever experienced were being taken from me. From this moment on, I belonged to Sharkovksy. That was what he had demonstrated. I dropped the gun. It fell heavily against the surface of the desk and lay there between us. The muzzle was wet with my saliva.
“You can leave now,” he said.
He must have pressed the communication button under his desk because although I hadn’t heard them, the men who had brought me here had returned. Perhaps the twins had been present and had seen what had just happened. I didn’t know.
I stood up. My whole body felt foreign to me. I might not have killed myself but even so, something inside me had died.
“Yassen Gregorovich is working for me now,” Sharvovsky continued. “Take him downstairs and show him.”
The two men led me out of the study and back into the corridor we had come through together. But this time we took a staircase down into a basement area. There was an oversized fridge door that led into a cold storage room and I watched as one twin opened it and the other went inside. He wheeled out a trolley. There was a dead body on it, covered by a sheet. He lifted it up and I saw a naked man. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than me when he died. It had happened very recently. His face was distorted with pain. His hands seemed to be scrabbling at his throat.
I understood without being told. The old food taster.
A position has arisen here. That was what Vladimir Sharkovsky had said to me. Now I knew why.
СЕРЕБРЯНЫЙ БОР
SILVER FOREST
I made my first escape attempt that same day.
I knew I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t going to play any more of Sharkovsky’s sadistic games and I certainly wasn’t going to swallow his food … not when there was a real chance of my ending up on a metal slab. I had been left alone for the rest of the day. Perhaps they thought I needed time to recover from my ordeal and they were certainly right. The moment I got back to my room, I was sick. After that, I slept for about three hours. One of the twins visited me during the afternoon. He brought more clothes with him: overalls, boots, an apron, a suit. Each piece of clothing related to a different task I would be expected to perform. I left them on the floor. I wasn’t going to be part of this. I was out.
As soon as night had come, I left my room and set out to explore the grounds, now empty of gardeners although there were still guards patrolling close to the wall. It was clear to me that the wall completely surrounded the complex and there was no possibility of my climbing it. It was too high, and anyway, the razor wire would cut me to shreds. The simple truth was that the archway was the only way in and out – but at least that meant I could focus my attention on that one avenue. And looking at it, I wasn’t sure that it was as secure as it seemed. Three uniformed guards sat inside the wooden cabin with a glass window that allowed them to look out over the driveway. They had television monitors too. There was a red and white pole, which they had to raise, and they searched every vehicle that came in, one of them looking underneath with a flat mirror on wheels while another checked the driver’s ID. But when there were no cars, they did nothing. One of them read a newspaper. The others simply sat back looking bored. I could just slip out. It wouldn’t be difficult at all.
That was my plan. It was about seven o’clock and I assumed everyone was eating. I’d had no food all day but I was in no mood to eat. Still wearing the black tracksuit – the colour would help to conceal me in the darkness – I slipped outside. When I was sure there was nobody around, I sprinted to the edge of the cabin and then crept round, crouching underneath the window and keeping close to the wall. The road back to Moscow lay in front of me. I couldn’t believe it was this easy.
It wasn’t. I only found out about the infrared sensors when I passed through one of them, immediately setting off a deafening alarm. At once the whole area exploded into brilliant light as arc lamps sliced into me and I found myself trapped between the beams. T
here was no point in running – I would have been shot before I had taken ten steps – and I could only stand there looking foolish as the guards seized hold of me and dragged me back.
Punishment was immediate and hideous. I was given to the twins, who simply beat me up as if I were a punchbag in a gym. It wasn’t just the pain that left its mark on me. It was their complete indifference. I know they were being paid by Sharkovsky. They were following his orders. But what sort of man can do this to a child and live with himself the next day? They were careful not to break any more bones, but by the time they dragged me back to my room, I was barely conscious. They threw me onto my bed and left me. I had passed out before they closed the door.
I made my second escape attempt as soon as I was able to move again, the next day. It was certainly foolish but it seemed to me that it was the last thing they would expect and so they might briefly lower their guard. They thought I was broken, exhausted. Both of these things were true but I was also determined. This time, a delivery truck provided the opportunity. I’d eaten breakfast in my room – one of the twins had brought it on a tray – but after I’d finished I was sent up to the house to help unload about fifty crates of wine and champagne that Sharkovsky had ordered. It didn’t matter that I could feel my shirt sticking to my open wounds and that every movement caused me pain. While the driver waited, I carried the crates in through the back door and down the steps that led to the cold storage room. There was a wine cellar next to it, a cavernous space that housed hundreds of bottles, facing each other in purpose-built racks. It took me about two hours to carry them all down and when I’d finished I noticed that there were a lot of empty boxes in the back of the van. It seemed easy enough to hide myself behind a pile of them. Surely they wouldn’t bother searching the van on the way out?
The driver closed the door. Crouching behind the boxes, I heard him start the engine. We drove back down the drive and slowed down. I waited for the moment of truth, the acceleration that meant we had passed through the barrier and were outside the compound. It never came. The door was thrown open again and a voice called me.
“Get out!”
Again, it was one of the twins. I don’t know how he’d been so certain that I was there. Maybe I’d been caught by one of the CCTV cameras. Maybe he had been expecting it all along. I felt a weakness in my stomach as I stood up and showed myself. I wasn’t sure I could take another beating. But even as I climbed down, I wouldn’t let him see I was scared. I wasn’t going to give in.
“Come with me,” he instructed.
His face gave nothing away. I followed him back to the house but this time he took me round the back. There was a conservatory on the other side, although actually it was more like a pavilion, constructed mainly out of glass with white wooden panels, at least fifty metres long. It had a series of folding doors so that in the full heat of the summer the whole thing could be opened out, but this was late October and they were all closed. The twins opened a single door and led me inside. I found myself in front of an enormous blue-tiled swimming pool, almost Olympic-sized. The water was heated. I could see the steam rising over the surface. Sunloungers had been arranged around the edge and there was a well-stocked bar with a mirrored counter and leather stools.
Sharkovsky was doing lengths. We stood there, watching, while he went from one end to the other and back again, performing a steady, rhythmic butterfly stroke. I counted eighteen lengths and he never stopped once. Nor did he look my way. This was how he liked to keep himself fit, and as he continued I couldn’t help but notice the extraordinarily well-developed muscles in his back and shoulders. I also saw his tattoos. There was a Jewish Star of David in the centre of his back – but it wasn’t a religious symbol. On the contrary, it was on fire with the words DEATH TO ZIONISM engraved below. These were the flames that I had seen reaching up to his neck in his Moscow apartment. When he finally finished swimming and climbed out, I saw a huge eagle with outstretched wings, perched on a Nazi swastika tattooed across his chest. He had a slight paunch, but even this was solid rather than flabby. There was a plaster underneath one of his nipples and I realized that this was where I must have cut him with the knife. He was wearing tiny swimming trunks. His whole appearance was somehow very grotesque.
At last he noticed me. He picked up a towel and walked over. I was trembling. I couldn’t stop myself. I was expecting the worst.
“Yassen Gregorovich,” he said. “I understand that you tried to leave this place last night. You were punished for this but it didn’t prevent you from making a second attempt today. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.” There was no point in denying it.
“It is understandable. It shows spirit. At the same time, it goes against the contract that you and I made between us in my study yesterday. You agreed to work for me. You agreed you were mine. Have you forgotten so soon?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. Then hear this. You cannot escape from here. It is not possible. Should you try again, there will be no further discussion, no punishment. I will simply have you killed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the twins. “Josef, take Yassen away. Give him another beating – this time use a cane – and then lock him up on his own without food. Let me know when he has recovered enough to start work. That’s all.”
But we didn’t leave. The twin wouldn’t let me. And Sharkovsky was waiting for me to say something.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
Sharkovsky smiled. “That’s alright, Yassen. It’s my pleasure.”
I was to spend the next three years with Vladimir Sharkovsky.
I could not risk another escape attempt – not unless I was prepared to commit suicide. It took me a week to recover from the beating I received that day. I will not say that it broke my spirit. But by the end of it I knew that when I had picked up that gun and placed it in my mouth, I had signed a deal with the devil. I was not just his servant. I was his possession. You might even say I was his slave.
The place where I found myself, the huge white house, was his dacha – his second home outside Moscow. It was in Serebryany Bor – Silver Forest – not that many miles from the centre. This was an area well suited to wealthy families. The air was cleaner in the forest. It was quieter and more private. There were lakes and wooded walkways outside the complex where you could exercise the dogs or go hunting and fishing … not that these activities were available to me because, of course, I was never once allowed outside. I was restricted to the same few faces, the same menial tasks. My life was to have no rewards and no prospect of advancement or release. It was a terrible thing to do to anyone – even worse when you consider that I was so young.
And yet slowly, inevitably perhaps, I accepted my destiny. The injury to my face healed and fortunately it left no mark. I began to get used to my new life.
I worked all the time at the dacha … fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. I never had a holiday and, as Sharkovsky had promised, I didn’t receive one kopeck. The fact that I was being allowed to live was payment enough. Christmas, Easter, Victory Day, Spring and Labour Day, my birthdays – all these simply disappeared into each other.
Sharkovsky had told me I would be his food taster but he had also made it clear to me that this was only a part of my work. He was true to his word. I chopped and carried firewood. I cleaned bathrooms and toilets. I helped in the laundry and the kitchen. I washed dishes. I painted walls. I looked after the dog, picking up after it when it fouled. I lifted suitcases. I unblocked drains. I washed cars. I polished shoes. But I never complained. I understood that there was no point in complaining. The work never stopped.
Sharkovsky lived in the big house with his wife, Maya, and his two children, Ivan and Svetlana. Maya had very little to do with me. She spent most of her time reading magazines and paperbacks – she liked romances – or shopping in Moscow. She had once been a model and she was still attractive, but life with Sharkovsky was beginning t
o take its toll and I would sometimes catch her looking anxiously in the mirror, tracking a finger along a wrinkle or a wisp of grey hair. I wondered if she knew about the flat in Gorky Park and the actress who lived there. In a way, she was as much a prisoner as I was and maybe that was why she avoided me. I reminded her of herself.
The family were seldom together. Sharkovsky had business interests all over the world. As well as the helicopter, he kept a private jet at Moscow airport. It was on permanent standby, ready to take him to London, New York, Hong Kong or wherever. I once glimpsed him on television, standing next to the President of the United States. He took his holidays in the Bahamas or the South of France, where he kept a hundred and fifty metre yacht with twenty-one guest cabins, two swimming pools and its own submarine. His son, Ivan, was at Harrow School, in London. If there was one thing that all wealthy Russians wanted, it was an English public school education for their children. Svetlana was only seven when I arrived but she was kept busy too. There were always private tutors coming to the house to teach dance, piano, horse riding, tennis (they had their own tennis court), foreign languages, poetry… When they were small, each child had had two nannies; one for the day, one for the night. Now they had two full-time housekeepers … and me.
Sixteen members of staff lived full-time on the estate. They all slept in wooden cabins, similar to mine, apart from Josef and Karl, who lived in the big house. There were the two housekeepers – bossy women who were always in a hurry, permanently scowling. One of them was called Nina and she had it in for me from the start. She used to carry a wooden spoon in her apron and whenever she got the chance she would clout me over the head with it. She didn’t seem to have noticed that we were both servants, on the same level, but I didn’t dare complain. I have a feeling that she hated working for Sharkovsky as much as I did. The only trouble was, she’d decided to take it out on me.