23. Fabian

23

FABIAN

K ate has long since disappeared to her medical work at the hospital when my phone vibrates on my desk. I glance down at the screen at a picture I took of Adam at college giving me the finger.

“Hey, Adam, how’s the world at the forefront of celebrity gossip? I hear via the grapevine you and Anna babysat Janus for a few days.”

“Yeah, he was so demanding.”

“How are things with Ms. Talanova?”

“Oh, you know, the usual: being chased around by the media and violent ex-boyfriends.”

Morning sunlight is glancing across the shelves of hardware along one wall of my bedroom, and I tip back in my office chair and examine the stains on the ornate ceiling far above my head. I can’t believe Adam was punched by that jerk, and don’t get me started on a guy coming after a woman like that. “Fights and dodging the press—that doesn’t sound like you at all, buddy.”

He laughs because he knows just how true that is.

“But with Anna? It’s going okay?” I say, stomach bubbling. He’s been so closed off over the last ten years. Hell, I’d love for him to …

“We’ll see. ”

Ugh. So goddamn cautious. “Be careful you don’t lose her.”

Though I’m hardly one to talk. Adam dealt with Janus and my excitability in college, plus all the crap we managed to land ourselves in, with admirable calm. What’s his deal with Anna? He’s always played his cards close to his chest, but if this were Kate, I’d be apoplectic with the idea she’d been out with assholes in the past. I groan. She actually did do that. That guy David … No. Nope. Not thinking about that.

“Why are you and Janus so invested in my love life? You’re like a couple of old busybodies. Just because you guys have settled down, it doesn’t mean I want to.”

Gah, the man doth protest too much, methinks . From what Janus told me when they were staying at his place, they’re both smitten. Out of the three of us in college, Adam was the only one you would have bet money on to settle down, the only one who wanted it. Then he got sideswiped by Celine and has avoided romantic entanglements ever since—until now. I’ve tried to persuade him it was a one-off, a very fucking unusual situation, but every time I say something, he doesn’t talk to me for weeks. He won’t thank me for saying anything now.

“Talking of violent ex-boyfriends,” he carries on, oblivious, “I’m calling because I wondered if you could do me a favor—dig into Anna’s ex, Arty Maroz, for me?”

Oh, interesting. “Yeah sure, why?”

“He came to Electronic Man this morning, and given this is a guy I fought with, I was surprised. He spun some yarn about how everyone who’s left Russia has done some deal they spend their whole life repaying. In fact, he said they could never escape from it. It’s likely all bullshit, but I got curious. Why did he come out to a middle-of-nowhere office in Brooklyn to tell me this face-to-face? Is it true?”

“Is that all he said?”

“He also said Anna had shafted his father on her sponsorship deals. He told me to stay away from her, that she couldn’t be trusted.”

“She doesn’t seem like a devious, double-dealing character to me. ”

“Yeah, me neither, but I’ve been wrong before.”

Jesus. “A long fucking time ago. Why don’t you ask her about it?”

“Because he’s a stirrer and a prick, and I want to find out some stuff about him first. I suggested digging into him a while ago to Anna, and she was reluctant to do anything illegal. I got the impression she thought it might make the situation worse, and I know nothing about the criminal aspects at work in Russia. I’m feeling my way around this. Digging into him could be the worst idea ever.”

“Yeah, you’re right to be concerned. I wasn’t joking when I said I was wanted by the Russians. But it’s only a problem if they find out, and that’s more about what you do with the information than looking for it. They won’t know I’ve been in there; you understand that. Anyway, I’m up for the challenge. You know me, Adam, I love a hacking project, especially when it’s helping a friend. You want me to look into Anna as well?”

“Ugh. Who wants to investigate someone they’re in a relationship with?”

Oh, interesting . He’s admitting to a relationship, at least.

“Have you ever looked into Kate?” he adds.

I laugh. “She’s so straitlaced, it’s never occurred to me. Although I did look into her family once, and what a can of worms that opened up! Let me check out Maroz. Anna will certainly come up, and I’ll see if any surprising connections get thrown up. I’ve broken into plenty of Russian networks for one reason or another. Russia’s a funny place. What he told you doesn’t sound all that odd, to be honest. There’s an obligation-to-the-motherland vibe with a lot of Russians: It’s them against the world because the West has betrayed them. But that could just be the hacking world. The FSB has tentacles everywhere and a real propensity to threaten people and carry it through, too.”

“The FSB?”

“The Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB.”

“Jesus Christ, Fabian, what the hell are you doing digging around in Russia? I don’t want to put either you or Anna in any danger.”

“If she’s on the FSB’s radar, she’s already at risk. You finding out about it just means you’re better informed, and her, too. I’ll be careful.”

“Fuck, that sounds bad.”

“You’ve seen some of those hacking boards, though. They are bad. Full of maniacs and conspiracy theorists. If they knew how disorganized most Western organizations are, they’d realize there’s no way they’d have the wherewithal to organize a conspiracy.”

He laughs. “Too right. And thanks, Fab, I really appreciate it.”

“My pleasure.”

After he hangs up, I start wading through all the online press for Arty Maroz, and there’s a huge raft of stuff about Anna, too. I come across information about her previous boyfriend, Pietr Petrov, going back a number of years. When I find the pictures, my gut drops: He’s decades older than her. Her face is pale, his arm always tight around her waist. What’s the story there? Anna’s split with Pietr hit the news about a year ago, and all the gossip about her has moved on to our friend Arty over the last six months. There’s so little in the press about her breakup with Arty: It all just transitions to stuff about Adam. It looks like Maroz was supposed to go to that event Adam attended with her.

I fire off a text to Adam:

Do you know why Arty Maroz and Anna broke up?

Adam replies immediately:

He cheated. A friend sent her a video of him at a party with another girl.

Interesting. There’s nothing online about that.

The name of the friend might be useful.

Mila, I think she said. No surname. She’s a competitor from the tennis circuit .

Ah yes, Mila Sokolova. I’ve come across her already.

Did Anna say anything to you about her boyfriend before Maroz? Pietr Petrov?

Not much. She talked about a bad relationship. Someone who was very controlling.

I fire off some links to him.

Let me know if you want me to dig into him, too.

I carry on exploring. I go through Maroz’s LinkedIn connections, which throws up a bunch of interesting characters, and I make a list of names. A quick search turns up bank accounts for him in the US. Adam messages me back and gives me the thumbs-up to investigate Petrov, too. I put that on the back burner while I continue diving into Arty. Soon I’ve got addresses for him in three countries: Russia, Italy, and the US. He lives in the Italian Alps in winter and trains in Chile in the off-season. More recently, he’s been spending a lot of time in Manhattan: to be with Anna or for some other reason?

His name comes up as a board member of several companies. Many with Russian links and some with outstanding court cases against him. There’s another legal case concerning Pepper. Then another one related to an investment company. I have backend access to the court’s database, and when I search, I’m stunned at the number of lawsuits he’s involved in. Some are ex-neighbors of his; some involve media sites, a couple of which have paid him off. Two further ones relate to two women, which, when I do a bit more research, turn out to be girlfriends he dated before Anna. Fuck, this guy! He must be lawyered to the hilt. I delve into legal cases in Italy and Russia, and there are more cases with his name on that I translate using an online translator. He appears to be using no-win-no-fee people all over the place. Wow. Who would willingly do that? Those guys are sharks .

All this paints a pretty disturbing picture, but there’s nothing we could use against him yet, and that’s always my favorite thing to find.

There’ll be a ton of dirt on this guy if I could get into his email and his bank account. I spend the rest of the day setting up some spam emails I’ve used before, taking some of the information I’ve managed to dig up from the court cases. If I can encourage him to click on something that appears legit, that’s an easier way to get into his accounts. I set it up to send every few days and notify me if he clicks on anything.

In two days, I’m in. When I start scrolling through his inbox, my jaw drops. All his emails are loud, shouty versions of something someone would say, not write, littered with swear words. In one or two he plays nice, but the remainder are abusive, aggressive, threatening. There are messages from porn sites, too; others he’s sent to women offering to take them to dinner or to parties and on trips, a few in Russia, one particular woman in Italy going back several years. And over the same time period he was seeing Anna! At least half of the other emails are demands for money he owes—bills he hasn’t paid. Many of them are shared with or directed to a [email protected]—who turns out to be his father—asking him to pay for things around skiing. When I look up his dad, he heads up one of Russia’s biggest oil and gas companies. And before you can say Jack Robinson, I’m deep-diving into a sprawling network of business interests in Russia and, surprisingly, Italy. I map it all out on a piece of paper.

I need to fill Adam in on all this. I pick up my phone to find a message from him,

She did say the guys she’d dated were assholes.

Too right.

I hack into Maroz’s US bank account through a file he keeps on his system with all his passwords, and I want to roll my eyes at how easy people make this stuff. But his account is a real eye-opener. He’s half a million dollars in the red and racking up fees like nobody’s business. I thought my finances were in bad shape. When I delve in deeper, there are large payments from his dad and a settlement from a court case. None of this is incriminating, although I guess Anna would find the emails to other women pretty interesting. He’s just a tool. It’s like standing in the wreckage of somebody’s life or having a ringside seat while it implodes.

So why is he so interested in Anna? And why did he go and say everything he did to Adam? I think I’m going to need to get a little more up close and personal with Mr. Maroz … I fire off a text.