29. Adam

29

ADAM

I ’m still trying to sit on the anger when I go to meet Fabian in East One Coffee Roasters partway between his place and my office. It’s four days since Anna gave me my marching orders. He’s looking fidgety and unwashed, and something about it matches my inner turmoil: I can relate to forgetting to shower and exhausting yourself. What does Kate make of it all? She’s this incredible, tolerant woman, and I can tell Fabian’s so much happier now, despite his appearance. He’s lost that gaunt, haunted look he had six or eight months ago. But whenever I see them together it makes my heart ache. Kate’s like me in some ways—solid, calm, sensible—and I always hoped I’d find someone who valued those qualities. Now I think I found someone who took advantage of them and made me feel like a fool for thinking it was more.

“How’s it going?” I say, sliding into the seat across from Fabian.

He looks up from his coffee and brownie, and my own heartache drops away when I see the expression on his face. “What is it?”

“I’ve pulled together some stuff I want to share with you. I don’t think I’ve got it all yet, but …”

Wow, we’re straight into it. No messing around. “Okay.”

“I did some more deep diving into Pietr Petrov. He’s a business associate— and the details are somewhat sketchy—of a man named Konstantin Lebedev, a Russian tennis coach. By all appearances, the Russian tennis coach. Certainly, no one from Russia makes it in tennis in the West if they haven’t been through one of his academies. Although you’ll not find Petrov listed as having any connection with the academies.”

“Anna?”

“Yes, she went through the Alliance Tennis Federation’s coaching, but it’s difficult to tell who her actual trainer was.”

“So, this Pietr guy was involved …Is that how Anna met Pietr?”

“Presumably, although I’m not a hundred percent sure. Lebedev and Petrov have a lot of legitimate business concerns in Russia and elsewhere, but I’ve found some stuff … I think there’s something suspect about the academies. My guess is they’re running pedophile and prostitution rings, handpicking the teenage kids coming through the academies and”—he swallows—“selling them.”

“What do you mean, selling them?”

“Getting businesspeople who have a certain set of, let us say, illegal interests involved, who then ‘sponsor’ a young person of their choosing. On the surface, you could make that seem legitimate, but I think something quite different is going on underneath.”

Oh Christ! Did Anna …? “Like what?”

He purses his lips. “They run a lot of weekend camps attended by sponsors, with young people staying in sponsors’ apartments. Large organized events as well, which on the face of it are competitions.”

“You think it’s not legit?”

“Well, it could be, and perhaps on one level, it is, but all the sponsors attend these events. Religiously. I checked. They have their own place where they hold them, with accommodation, and parents are not allowed. I think they want you to think they’re legitimate. They’re always done within the academy, too; they’re not competing against other academies. It’s not open to anyone from outside.”

“But that doesn’t exactly … ”

“Then I hacked into some tennis chats by masquerading as an up-and-coming hopeful who’d had an offer from a Lebedev school and been given access.”

“How the hell did you pull that off?”

He waves his hand.

“In Russian ?” I add.

He eyes me over his coffee. “You ever heard of Google Translate?” He shakes his head. “In any case, I’ve done a lot of stuff in Russian. A lot of the bad actors in hacking come from there, so you have to understand the language to some degree if you’re a hacker. Anyway, the tennis academies are not all Russian nationals. It’s an honor to be selected from anywhere in the world. People attend from all over.”

“What did you find?”

“Lots of coded conversations.”

“How coded?”

“The way things were written. Comments like ‘He’s my wolf.’ References to being taken away for weekends by their sponsors and responses like ‘Be safe’ and ‘Call me if you need me.’ Sentences like ‘He will give you gifts and you have to accept them.’ Quite a lot of chat about ‘gift giving.’ I didn’t get the impression that gifts were actual presents if you get what I’m saying. There were girls complaining that they didn’t have a sponsor, that they weren’t ‘what a sponsor was looking for.’ There was also talk about ‘demotion,’ which I don’t think had anything to do with an aptitude for tennis; I think it was about keeping the sponsor happy.”

“This … you … you think Anna …”

“I don’t know.”

Bile burns in the back of my throat. “What do you think they’re making them do?”

“You know me, Adam. I saw too many people turning tricks on the street, including Zach. I always think the worst.”

“Fuck. Oh, fuck.” I bury my hands in my hair, sucking in a jittery breath. “Perhaps it wasn’t sexual abuse, maybe it was something else … ”

“Whatever it is, Anna certainly did it.”

I bristle immediately. “Why would you think that?”

“Because she got out of Russia. She made it. It’s rare. That’s what they’re all aiming for. That’s why they want a sponsor. It’s the only way out.”

“Jesus . ”

“My guess is Pietr was her sponsor. He was her way out.”

The coffee shop is full of people chatting at tables, backpacks and shopping bags clustered around their feet. It’s all so Western and normal; we have no idea in this country what goes on elsewhere. How bad it is. How amazing is Anna? How much has she had to fight?

Fabian pops another bit of brownie into his mouth and chews. “The thing is, I think it might involve boys, too.”

“Boys … sponsored by male sponsors?”

“Yes.”

“So, if it is abuse … then boys being abused by men?”

Fabian nods.

“But homosexuality is banned in Russia, yes?”

“Well, technically it’s not illegal, but it’s so heavily disapproved of that that’s an irrelevance. The pedophilia is obviously illegal. I suspect the tennis academy could be making big money on all of it. Blackmail’s a possibility, too.”

Is this true? Or does Fabian see shadowy figures and illegal activities everywhere?

“Do you think Maroz …?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. The interesting thing was, he was a tennis player originally. He didn’t meet Anna at the camps; he was older than her, but he made an abrupt switch to skiing. I mean he was a talented skier, obviously, but he suddenly dropped the tennis. I’ve no idea why. His father is high up in the Russian hierarchy, and it’s possible something happened.”

Wow. If this is true, then … But does any of this digging matter anymore anyway? I haven’t heard from Anna in four days, and having Fabian unearth this information about her feels like a huge intrusion into her fight to the top. She didn’t share any of this with me. Some half comments and hints, su re, but nothing more, and perhaps that says it all.

But Christ, I didn’t tell her anything about my past either. Despite how good it was, maybe neither of us wanted to sully it with the awful things we lived through.

“If Pietr was her sponsor, I’d say it’s slightly odd that she was publicly with him for years and then somehow escaped from him and stopped being his girlfriend,” Fabian muses, frowning.

“She did tell me that he was controlling, that the relationship was abusive.” Hell, the hints were all there, now I come to think of it.

“Yeah, well, it’s not going to be sunshine and roses, is it?” Fabian’s eyes roam over my face and he frowns. “What’s up with you anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t seem like your normal solid self. You’re looking a bit wild-eyed, if I’m being frank.”

I shrug. “I guess none of it matters anymore. She said she didn’t want us to …” I wave an arm around. “… Continue with whatever it was we were doing.”

“What? She split up with you?”

I frown at this. Yes, yes she did, Adam . But God … “We were friends, Fabian.”

“Are you still friends?”

I guess that’s the fifty-million-dollar question. And in all my anger this week, I haven’t really asked myself this question. I’ve been too agitated to think about being friends. But if there was an argument for friends at the beginning, maybe that rationale still exists. The anger is all about me, the pain that constricts my lungs, stopping my breathing. I wonder how Anna feels?

“What were you guys doing, exactly?”

Another excellent question. I still don’t know, despite four days of chewing it all over. Getting over our pasts?

“Friends with benefits,” I say, but the words curl up inside me like burned paper. “God, what is it with me and women? I know how to pick them, that’s for sure.”

“I think they pick you, Adam. Because you’re this amazing, dependable, organized guy. ”

I start to laugh. I don’t think women see me that way, only Fabian with his crazy unbalanced life would see something positive in that. “Yeah, I don’t think those are killer traits with the ladies.”

“I think you’d be surprised. When your life’s a mess, or when you can’t rely on those closest to you to tell the truth, what do you want? Someone calm and capable and honest, that’s what.”

Yeah, his home life was a real car crash before he met Kate. “Like Kate,” I say, smiling.

He grunts. “She’s all that, and about twenty-six other things besides. I’ll never keep up with her.”

Doesn’t he realize he’s like this incredible hacker, at the top of his game, even if no one recognizes it?

Maybe Anna still needs somebody who is calm, capable, and honest. The waves of loneliness that radiated from her when I first met her haven’t gone away, have they? Perhaps she still needs someone who’s on her side. Something wild takes a grip on my chest. It’s hope, and fuck, how could I be hopeful in a situation like this? But something is driving me on, like seeing a mirage in the desert. I’ve had a taste of the life I want, something I never thought I’d find. I was settled in my little underground office, not exactly happy, like a forgotten book that’s unread and covered in dust, and then she came in and flicked through all my pages, stirring it all up. Ten years ago, I lost part of myself. I don’t know what bit it was: trust, belief, an inherent feeling that your life is going to go forward, not backward. It disappeared after Celine, and then Anna opened Pandora’s box.

“She kicked me to the curb,” I say. “How would I get over that?”

“Blackmail.”

“ What? ”

“Blackmail. Make her feel guilty for abandoning you. Lean on her a little.”

“What are you talking about?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You want her?”

“What kind of question is that? She’s Anna Talanova!”

“Well, you need to be devious. ”

“Like slash my arm in the ER, you mean?”

He has the good grace to shift a little in his seat. “I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I did that.”

“No kidding. Jesus Christ. You’re a lunatic. I’m not manipulating Anna into … into … whatever.”

“I’m not saying that. Just manipulate her a little into spending time with you. Be a friend. Someone she can’t do without. I couldn’t do that: No woman has ever viewed me as a reliable friend. I’m not that guy, but you are.”

“Yeah, because that’s so sexy.”

He laughs. “It fucking is! Good friends are like gold dust, and most men can’t do it. You’re incredible at it. You’ve kept the three of us together for years. Talk to her, send her pictures, invite her to things, and offer to help. No one fucking does that. I can’t believe I’m the one talking about shit like this.” He starts laughing.

Maybe he’s on to something.

“You provide her with everything she can’t find anywhere else. She needed you for events, didn’t she? How about offering to be her plus one again?”

I open my mouth and close it. I’m not sure that worked out so well for us. But perhaps I know something she’d like better.