Russian Roulette (novel)

Russian Roulette

First edition hardback cover
Author	Anthony Horowitz
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Alex Rider series
Genre	Adventure, Spy novel
Publisher	The Penguin Group
Publication date	12 September 2013 (UK)[1]
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	405
ISBN	978-1-4063-1050-4
Preceded by	Scorpia Rising

Russian Roulette is the tenth novel in the Alex Rider series written by British author Anthony Horowitz. It was first published in 2013. The novel serves as a prequel to the Alex Rider series but mainly focuses on the childhood of the assassin who appears in many of the books, Yassen Gregorovich.

Plot

Shortly after the Science Museum scene in Stormbreaker, Yassen Gregorovich, who was staying at a hotel named "The Traveller", receives an order to kill Alex Rider. The connection the two of them share prompts Yassen to recall his past, by inserting a memory stick which contains his diary in digital format into his Apple Mac laptop.

Yassen reveals that he was named "Yasha" originally and that it evolved into "Yassen" quite accidentally. He was born in a small Russian village named Estrov, in quite a rural area. It did not have a railway station and it consisted only of a few houses and a church. Yassen's parents worked at a factory nearby, which apparently produced fertilisers (but in fact also secretly developed chemical weapons for the Russian government). Yassen attended a school in a nearby town, Rosna, and befriended a boy named Leo Tretyakov. Yassen and Leo had a great bond of friendship between them and they had smoked cigarettes together, despite being 14 at the time. A passion for helicopters is also revealed in Yassen's character and he has read a lot of magazines regarding helicopters and seems to have had an extensive knowledge concerning them, despite his rural background. It is mentioned on many occasions how Yassen used to look enviously at planes that would fly over his village. However, Yassen had a far-reaching bond with his place of birth, which is revealed in the story.

14-year-old Yassen is forced to flee his home after an accident at the factory contaminates the whole village with a deadly strain of anthrax, which had been genetically modified to spread much more faster than it would in normal conditions. No one in the village had been aware of the catastrophe, though they could sense that something was amiss. Yassen, however, was made aware of the situation by his parents, who had immediately broken out of the facility once the accident took place, with the intention of saving Yassen, disobeying direct orders and protocol in the process. (The factory workers had been ordered not to leave the premises, in order to quarantine those who were already contaminated.) It had been a pretty useless precaution for the bacterium had already been released into the atmosphere. In the process of breaking out of the factory Yassen's father had been shot and had suffered severe injuries. A bewildered Yassen is brought up to speed and his parents vaguely reveal that they had not been working in the factory out of their own free will. They also openly confess that they had been ashamed of being involved in the whole affair. They advise Yassen to immediately flee from the village and go to Moscow and seek Misha Dementyev, who had been a friend of Yassen's father. The parents recommend a route through the forest, adjoining Estrov and through Kirsk. Though the entire village is contaminated, Yassen survives, having been given the only sample of antidote which had been devised by Yassen's father, who had been one of the scientists who were responsible for the anthrax in the first place. The Russian authorities proceed to send attack helicopters to destroy the village, in order to contain the outbreak and cover up the development of the chemical weaponry. Yassen escapes with his best friend Leo, but they are pursued by a band of soldiers who had been ordered hunt down all the survivors of the Estrov disaster, so as to contain the anthrax from spreading. After evading the soldiers, Leo later dies from the effects of the outbreak.

Yassen makes his way to Moscow, having tricked and evaded a few policemen on the way who had been on the lookout for him. He meets Misha Dementyev. Far from helping Yassen (as his parents claimed), Dementyev calls the police, knowing that Yassen is a loose end regarding the chemical weapons development. Yassen evades arrest and joins a gang of petty thieves who had pickpocketed him earlier. After a few days, the group decides to burgle a house. Yassen convinces them to rob a flat owned by Vladimir Sharkovsky, a wealthy businessman whom he overheard Dementyev talking to on the phone. As the smallest of the gang Yassen is chosen to crawl through a fortochka and let the other members into the house.

Sharkovsky unexpectedly returns to the flat and captures Yassen, but decides to let him live due to the recent death of his food taster. He forces Yassen to play a game of Russian Roulette with a single bullet, which he survives. After making two unsuccessful attempts to escape, Yassen spends the next four years at Sharkovsky's estate, serving as his food taster as well as a general labourer. One night, he learns that Sharkovsky had been responsible for the deaths of his parents and subsequent destruction of his village, having cut corners regarding safety at the factory in order to increase profit, and vows to kill him.

Yassen's imprisonment ends when a Scorpia assassin by the name of Grant infiltrates the compound and shoots Sharkovsky, then assumes that Sharkovsky is dead. Yassen asks Grant to let him escape with him. Grant takes him to The Widow's Palace, where Yassen is introduced to Julia Rothman, one of the leaders of Scorpia. It is revealed that Sharkovsky in fact survived the attempt on his life, and Grant is subsequently killed by Rothman for his failure. Rothman offers to let Yassen join Scorpia, since because of his past, no records of him exist anywhere in the world, making it near impossible for authorities to track him down. Yassen agrees, his only other option being to return to Russia, where Sharkovsky's people will no doubt be looking for him.

Yassen spends the next four months at Scorpia's training facility on the island of Malagosto before being given his first contract. When the time comes, Yassen is unable to take the target's life, and she is subsequently killed by another Scorpia agent. Though disappointed with him, Scorpia decide to give Yassen a second chance, and pair him up with John Rider, Alex Rider's father.

John and Yassen work on two contracts together. During the first contract, John saves Yassen's life, expresses doubt that Yassen has it in him to be a killer, and suggests that he give up if he does not want to be one. The second contract takes place in Paris, where Yassen is again unable to kill the target, and admits to John that he does not want to be an assassin. As John and Yassen wait in an airport – Yassen planning to take a plane to Berlin and disappear – Yassen discovers a gadget from MI6 in John's luggage, and realises from this, as well as a number of details he noticed during the time spent with him, that John is an MI6 double agent working against Scorpia.

Feeling betrayed from this revelation, and guessing that John has warned Scorpia about his defection in an attempt to weaken them further, Yassen abandons his original plans and returns to Sharkovsky's estate, using the skills he learned from Scorpia to infiltrate the place and confront Sharkovsky. He reveals his true identity, as well as Sharkovsky's role in influencing his life. Again, Yassen plays Russian Roulette in front of Sharkovsky, but this time with five bullets in the revolver, seeing it as his last chance to leave the path of a killer. Yassen once again survives, and kills Sharkovsky as well as his son.

The final chapter strongly resembles the epilogue of Stormbreaker, except it is seen through Yassen's perspective, and gives the true reasons for his decisions. It reveals that Yassen became a professional killer largely to prove John's beliefs about him wrong. He kills Herod Sayle, not because of orders from Scorpia (though he believes they will eventually want Sayle killed), but so he could talk with Alex. He chooses to disregard Scorpia's order to kill the boy, feeling that he still owes John his life, and tells him not to become a spy, since he still feels that Alex has a chance at a normal life. Considered one of the greatest assassins in the world, Yassen is shot by Damian Cray in Eagle Strike.

Release

The book was released on 12 September 2012 (UK) and 9 December 2013 (US).^[2]

References