Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz

looking for a student. I need to speak to a professor. His name is Misha Dementyev.”
    “Room 2425—the twenty-fourth floor. Take the elevator at the end of the corridor.”
    I felt a surge of relief. He was here! He was in his office! At that moment, I saw the end of my journey and the start of a new life. This man had known my parents. Now he would help me.
    I took the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor, sharing it with different groups of students who all looked purposefully grubby and disheveled. I had actually been in an elevator before and this old-fashioned steel box, which shuddered and stopped at least a dozen times, had none of the wonders of the escalator on the metro. Finally I found myself on the floor I wanted. I stepped out and followed a cream-colored corridor that, like the ground floor, had no windows. At least the offices were clearly labeled and I found the one I was looking for right at the corner. The door was open as I approached and I heard a man speaking on the telephone.
    “Yes, of course, Mr. Sharkovsky,” he was saying. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
    I knocked on the door.
    “Come in!”
    I entered a small, cluttered room with a single square window looking out over the main avenue and the steps that had first brought me into the building. There must have been five or six hundred books there, not just lined up along the shelves but stacked on the floor and every available surface. They were fighting for space with a whole range of laboratory equipment, different sized flasks, two microscopes, scales, Bunsen burners, and boxes that looked like miniature ovens or fridges. Most unnerving of all, a complete human skeleton stood in a frame in one corner as if it were here to guard all this paraphernalia while its owner was away.
    There was a man sitting at his desk. He had just put down the phone as I came in. My first impression was that he was about the same age as my father, with thick black hair that only emphasized the round bald patch in the middle of his head. The skin there was stretched tight and polished, reflecting the ceiling light. He had a heavy beard and mustache, and as he examined me from behind a pair of glasses, I saw small, nervous eyes blinking at me as if he had never seen a boy before—or had certainly never allowed one into his office.
    Actually, I was wrong about this. He was nervous because he knew who I was. He spoke my name immediately. “Yasha?”
    “Are you Mr. Dementyev?” I asked.
    “Professor Dementyev,” he replied. “Please, come in. Close the door. Does anyone know you’re here?”
    “I asked in the administration room downstairs,” I said.
    “You spoke to Anna?” I had no idea what the woman had been named. He didn’t let me reply. “That’s a great pity. It would have been much better if you had telephoned me before you came here. How
did
you get here?”
    “I came by train. My parents . . .”
    “I know what has happened in Estrov.” He was agitated. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on the crown of his head. I could see them glistening. “You cannot stay here, Yasha,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “My parents said you’d look after me!”
    “And I will! Of course I will!” He tried to smile at me, but he was full of nervous energy and he was allowing his different thought processes to tumble over each other. “Sit down, Yasha, please.” He pointed to a chair. “I’m sorry, but you’ve taken me completely by surprise. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Can I get you something?” Before I could answer, he snatched up the telephone again. “There’s somebody I know,” he explained to me. “He’s a friend. He can help you. I’m going to ask him to come.”
    He dialed a number, and as I sat down facing him, uncomfortably close to the skeleton, he spoke quickly into the receiver.
    “It’s Dementyev. The boy is here. Yes . . . here at the university.” He paused while