37. Janus

37

JANUS

I blink up at … nothing. A dark ceiling: The red numbers of the projector clock show 1:12 a.m. My phone is vibrating . The only person who calls me at this time of night is Fabian. I fumble for it on the nightstand and it drops to the floor with a thump. When I rescue it, the screen says Unknown number . Fucking Fabian and his burner phones. I swipe up.

“This better be good, asshole,” I grunt.

Silence. Then a small voice says, “Janus?”

And I wake right the fuck up. “Anna? Is everything okay?”

“I don’t think so. It’s about Adam.” Her words wobble down the line at me. She doesn’t sound like herself at all.

“What? What about him?”

“It’s a long story, but I’m in Russia at the moment, and there’s a few people I know here …” She trails off. “I can’t explain now, but they might have done something to him, Janus. I need you to check on him.”

“Of course, of course,” I say.

“I don’t know what to do, I …” Her voice starts to rise.

“It’s fine. I’ll go and make sure he’s all right.”

Beside me, Jo props herself up on her elbow. “What is it?” she whispers .

“It’s okay, go back to sleep,” I tell her, clearing my throat.

Tucking the phone under my chin, I push out of bed, pull on my boxers from the floor, and grab my clothes off the chair where I threw them last night.

“Where is he? His apartment?” I ask Anna.

“I have no idea.” Her voice breaks.

“What made you think these people had done something to him?” I say, buttoning my fly.

“I’m with them now. They said …” Her voice rises again. “They hoped there was no lasting damage …”

“ No lasting damage? ” Oh fuck. Oh, Jesus Christ . “What the fuck are you doing with them, Anna? You’re in more danger than him. Get the hell out of there.”

“I will. Just …”

“I’ll find him and fix it, Anna. Promise me you’ll leave, right now.”

“I’ll be fine. Just call me when you find out anything.”

Fuck.

“Where are you?”

“St. Petersburg. Please. Just call me when you track him down.”

“Goddammit!”

“Janus?”

She doesn’t need me to lose my shit, does she? “On this number?”

“Yes. It’s just a precaution.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get out of there. Now, Anna. You hear me?”

“I will, okay. Just message me as soon as you know.” She hangs up on me.

I pull my T-shirt over my head as Jo props herself up in bed.

“What the hell …?”

“That was Anna. There’s some problem with Adam. I’m going to go to his apartment to see what I can find out.”

“I’ll come with you,” she says, flinging back the covers.

“No, you stay here. If there’s trouble, having you here with access to a computer system or covering things for us might be helpful. They said something to Anna about ‘no lasting damage,’ as though something had been done to him. Fuck. Do you think it’s worth calling around the hospitals?”

She nods. “I’ll call Kate. If she pulls the doctor card, she can work through the hospital stuff much faster than I can. Who’s they ?”

“Some bastards in Russia that Anna knows.”

“Where is she?”

“In Russia with them.”

“Holy shit! Is she okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just be careful if you’re going into his apartment.”

“Yeah, that’s a good call. Perhaps I need Fabian with me.”

“I’ll tell Kate to send him.”

In minutes, an Uber has accepted my trip on the app and I’m on the street waiting, tapping my phone against my leg. Late at night is so blissfully quiet in New York, and a minute later a gray Hyundai appears and we’re speeding toward the Meatpacking District.

My phone vibrates in my hand. Fabian.

“Hi, Fab.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t go in without me,” he growls. “I mean it, Janus. Who knows what shit they’ll have done if they got to him?”

“Oh, fuck. I should have brought some tools.”

“I’m on it,” he says, and hangs up.

By some miracle, he arrives at Adam’s place not long after me. Kate’s with him, talking to someone on the phone.

Fabian surveys the intercom and presses an apartment button. “Come on, come on,” he says, pushing it several times.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get in.”

“Can’t you pick the lock?”

“This’ll be faster,” he says.

I lean forward to examine the name on the buzzer, and it says JESUS in bright red lettering .

“What the fuck!” A loud voice suddenly reverberates out of the speaker right next to my ear.

Fabian pushes me out of the way. “Jesus, it’s Fabian and Janus. We’re friends of Adam’s. We think someone might have …”

“You pricks!” he shouts. “You can’t leave him alone even in the middle of the night?”

Fuck.

“No man, look at your camera. It’s not the press. It’s Fabian. You remember me, we met about five years ago, shared some K I was experimenting with at the time. We wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t wrong, Jesus. Adam’s in danger. Serious danger. Let us in.”

There’s silence. “What kind of danger?”

“We think some Russians got to him. Let us in, man.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” comes back muttered through the intercom. The door finally clicks as Kate finishes her conversation.

She shakes her head. “No record of an Adam Miller at any of the New York hospitals,” she says as Fabian vaults for the stairs, and Kate and I bound up behind him.

By the time we hit the fifth floor none of us can breathe, but we get to Adam’s studio apartment, and a guy, who I take to be Jesus, mainly because he’s in his pajamas with his hair standing on end and doesn’t look like a member of the FSB, is outside the door with a key in his hand.

“Adam gave me the new key,” he mutters, scowling at us.

Fabian sets down his backpack and pulls a few things out of it, including a gun. Jesus holds up his hands.

“Holy shit, Fab.”

“Just a precaution,” he says, waving at Jesus to put his hands down.

He presses a button on a device and gives it to Kate. “Geiger counter to check for radioactivity. Just to cover ourselves.”

“I’m going to open the door on a surprise, okay? We need to be wary of it triggering something. ”

“You wanna look on the fire escape first? You can see right into his living room,” Jesus says.

Fab meets my eyes. “Go,” he says, and Jesus beckons me into his apartment across the hallway and shows me some rickety ironwork outside his bedroom window. I climb onto his bed and out of the window, testing my foot on the platform that wraps around the corner of the building.

Peering through Adam’s windows, I can’t see much, but then I spot him. I pull out my phone. “He’s on the couch, Fab. Hand dangling down, not moving. I can’t see anything else.”

“Goddamn it.”

A bang ricochets in the distance, and the door bounces open and hits the wall on the far side of the room. Fuck, he’s going in.

“Freeze!” Fabian shouts. “Put down your weapons. We are armed and will shoot to kill.”

A laugh bubbles up inside me. It’s just nerves . And shit, I’m the backup! I push on the window trying to break in, but it doesn’t budge, so I scrabble back along the fire escape and in through Jesus’s window again. When I reach Adam’s apartment, Kate is on her knees next to Adam, talking to him but getting no response, pulling up his eyelids and holding his wrist. Fabian is stomping around at the top of his spiral staircase, presumably checking for intruders.

“Is he alive?” I gasp.

“Yes.” Kate blows out a long breath. “But his pulse is very thready.” She pulls out her phone and dials 911.

I pick up the Geiger counter from where she’s dropped it on the floor. There’s no reading for radiation. I listen as she talks with the emergency responder.

“Shouldn’t we just take him? Wouldn’t it be faster?” Fabian says as he hammers down the stairs from the platform that houses Adam’s bedroom.

“They’ll be here in minutes, Fab, and it’s safer. They have all the right equipment. If he arrests on the way, I might not be able to do anything.”

I can see Fab doesn’t like that answer. He puts his hand on Adam’s hair. “ Come on, buddy, I can’t lose you,” he says.

My whole throat swells up.

“Help me turn him onto his side,” Kate says.

It really is only minutes before the paramedics arrive, and of course they know Kate. We manhandle Adam down the stairs—because the elevator in his building won’t fit a stretcher—and into the waiting ambulance.

“One person,” the paramedic says, and Kate doesn’t hesitate—she jumps right on in.

“We’ll see you there,” Fabian says.

“NYU Langone,” the paramedic adds as the doors slam shut and the ambulance takes off, lights flashing.

I’ve already booked an Uber, which turns the corner minutes later, and Fab and I pile in the back. His leg is bouncing on the seat next to me as the store windows with all their colorful Christmas lights flash past and we speed through the empty streets.

“Those fucking bastards. I’m going to unleash an unholy war on their fucking operations. They won’t know what’s fucking hit them. They think they can mess with Adam Miller? Think again, amigos.”

I reach out and press his shoulder. “Let’s just see Adam through this first, all right?”

“If he’s even okay after this. If he’s not, I …” He leans forward and slams his fist into the seat in front and I grip his arm as the driver glowers in the rearview mirror.

“He’s okay,” I say.

“Don’t thump my motherfucking seats,” the cabbie says.

“I knew. I fucking knew Konstantin Lebedev was dangerous as soon as I found out that information about the camps. I fucking told her not to go out there. Why the hell did she go? Fuckity fuck fuck.”

What? What the hell’s been going on? “You were looking into Anna? And you warned her? Who’s Konstantin Lebedev?”

“He runs all the tennis academies in Russia. He’s a crook, a pedophile. An extremely creepy guy. ”

“God, I hope Anna’s okay,” I start to say, and, oh Christ, I haven’t messaged her!

“Fuck knows what they’ll do to her if they’ve done this to Adam,” Fabian says, slamming his fist into the seat again.

“Don’t hit my fucking seats!” the driver shouts again.

But I’m already fumbling with my phone, and I fire off a message.

We’ve got Adam. Found him unconscious, but alive. Thready pulse. We have no idea what’s wrong with him. Anything you can find out would be a bonus.

Then for good measure, I add:

If you need leverage, threaten them with someone hacking into their systems.

“I don’t know if she’s even with them. They’re eight hours ahead, I guess. She said she was getting a flight back tonight.”

Just as the words leave my mouth, my phone rings in my hand and Fabian’s head snaps around.

“Anna,” I say, and Fabian takes the phone right out of my hand.

“Anna. This is Fabian. Put Konstantin on.”

How does he know she’s with this guy?

He listens for a beat. “I don’t care. Put him on.”

Another pause. “Anna, just put him on.”

There’s a few seconds of silence while he drums his fingers on his thigh.

“Listen up, asshole. You don’t know me and you never will, but I’m someone you don’t want to be on the wrong side of,” he growls. “I can hack into anywhere, find anything, and Adam Miller is a friend of mine. If he doesn’t survive whatever you’ve done to him, you’ll never be able to get any technology to work again without me taking it down. If you touch one hair on Anna Talanova’s head, then your organization will go down … for good.”

He hangs up.

“Didn’t we need to talk to Anna?” I say.

“I don’t give a fuck about that.”

“Are you going to take his systems down?”

“It’s already done.”

“ What? ”

“How did you know she was with him?”

“Probability, man. She’d call you as soon as she found out something was wrong, wouldn’t she?”

The Christmas tree in Madison Square Park appears over his right shoulder outside the car window.

“Why the hell were you looking into this Konstantin guy?”

Fabian takes me through his conversations with Adam, how he came across Konstantin Lebedev and how he became increasingly suspicious of what he was doing. He also tells me he found links to people he’d come across before in Russia, and about an ex of Anna’s called Pietr Petrov. “Anyone who gets to a position of power in Russia … they’re as shady as fuck. I managed to hack into Lebedev’s systems a couple of days ago. I started a virus running before I even stepped out of the house.”

“Christ, didn’t you think that would put Anna in even more danger?”

His hand comes down on his thigh in a sharp slap. “She can’t be in any more danger than she’s already in, Janus! Who knows what those psychopaths might do when she’s sitting in front of them? It’s my bargaining chip to get her safely out of there … These assholes … they think they can achieve anything by being thugs like this?” He shakes his head. “They are going to burn.”

He’s a maniac, Fabian, but one I’d always want on my side.

When we arrive at the hospital, there’s no sign of Kate or Adam. The woman behind the desk says she’ll get word to Kate as soon as she can, but Fabian messages her and she appears almost immediately and nods at the nurse, beckoning us through.

“How is he? ”

“He’s in a coma,” she says.

When I make a horrified face, she shakes her head. “He hasn’t deteriorated since we brought him in.” She glances between Fabian and me. “Has he got any health issues that you’re aware of?”

“No. He’s pretty fit I’d say. What’s wrong with him?”

“We don’t know. There was nothing obvious on his CT scan. His heart rate is down, and his blood pressure is low. We’ve got him on a saline drip, and his blood sugar is very low so we’re giving him dextrose. Given the Russian connection, our poisoning specialist is on his way in. We’ve taken bloods and urine, and we’re doing a tox and infection screen. I’ve been on the phone with the specialist ever since we got here.”

“Oh fuck,” Fabian says, pacing across the floor. “The Russians have a bad history with polonium.”

Kate shakes her head. “There’s no trace of radioactivity. We’ve just got to be optimistic right now. We don’t know precisely what it is as yet, but we’ve probably ruled a few things out given how he’s presented. The profound hypoglycemia is very odd,” she mutters.

“Does your specialist know anything about Russian poisons?”

“Quite a bit. He treated two polonium cases.”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s going to be a while before we nail it down. Toxic substances are wide-ranging and varied, some take a long time to act, and it can depend on the dose.” She pats Fabian’s arm. “He’s in the best place he can be.”