Russian Roulette by Anthony Horowitz Page A

the person at the other end spoke to him. “We haven’t had a chance to speak yet. I thought I should let you know at once.” He was answering a question I hadn’t heard. “He seems all right. Unharmed, yes. We’ll wait for you here.”
    He put the phone down and it seemed to me that he was suddenly less agitated than he had been when I’d arrived—as if he had done what was expected of him. For some reason I was feeling uneasy. From the look of it, Professor Dementyev wasn’t pleased to see me. I was a danger to him. This was my parents’ closest friend, but I was beginning to wonder how much that friendship was worth.
    “How did you know who I was?” I asked.
    “I’ve been expecting you ever since I heard about what happened. And I recognized you, Yasha. You look very much like your mother. I saw the two of you together a few times when you were very young. You won’t remember me. It was before your parents left Moscow.”
    “Why did they leave? What happened? You worked with them.”
    “I worked with your father. Yes.”
    “Do you know that he’s dead?”
    “I didn’t know for certain. I’m sorry to hear it. He and I were friends.”
    “So tell me . . .”
    “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”
    I had eaten and drunk everything I wanted at Kazanskiy station. Really what I wanted was to be away from here. I have to say that I was disappointed by Misha Dementyev. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but maybe he could have been more affectionate, more like a long-lost uncle or something? He hadn’t even come out from behind his desk.
    “What happened?” I asked again. “Why was my father sent to work in Estrov?”
    “I can’t go through all that now.” He was flustered again. “Later—”
    “Please, Professor Dementyev!”
    “All right. All right.” He looked at me as if he was wondering if he could trust me. Then he began. “Your father was a genius,” he began. “He and I worked here together in this department. We were young students, idealists, excited. We were researching endospores . . . and one in particular. Anthrax. I don’t suppose you know very much about that.”
    “I know about anthrax,” I said.
    “We thought we could change the world . . . your father in particular. He was looking at ways to prevent the infection of sheep and cattle. But there was an accident. Working in the laboratory together, we created a form of anthrax that was much faster and deadlier than anything anyone had ever known. It had no cure. Antibiotics were useless against it.”
    “It was a weapon.”
    “That wasn’t our intention. That wasn’t what we wanted. But—yes. It was the perfect biological weapon. And of course the government found out about it. Everything that happens in this place they know about. It was true then. It’s true now. They heard about our work here and they came to us and ordered us to develop it for military use.” Dementyev took out a handkerchief and used it to polish the lenses of his glasses. He put them back on. “Your father refused. It was the last thing he wanted. So they started to put the pressure on. They threatened him. And that was when he did something incredibly brave . . . or incredibly stupid. He went to a journalist and tried to get the story into the newspapers.
    “Of course, he was arrested at once. I was here, in the laboratory, when they marched him away. They arrested your mother too.”
    “How old was I?” I asked.
    “You were two. And—I’m sorry, Yasha—they used you to get at your parents. That was how they worked. It was very simple. If your parents didn’t do what they were told, they would never see you again. What choice did they have? They were sent to Estrov to work in the factory. They were forced to produce the new anthrax. That was the deal. Stay silent. And live.”
    So everything—my parents’ life or non-life in that remote village, the little house, the boredom, and the poverty—had been