Page 108 of The Game

“About Konstantin Lebedev,” he adds.

Ugh. I don’t want Fabian or Janus doing any more crazy shit.

Fabian stretches out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“What? Why?”

“Tracking software. I don’t know if Mila told you but there was some on her phone.”

“So,” Fabian says later, shoveling a sandwich in his mouth and talking around it. “Konstantin Lebedev. Tell me everything, Anna.”

I eye him and Janus balefully. “He’s already done this.” I gesture at Adam on the bed. “I don’t want you guys any more involved.”

“I think you’re forgetting I’ve just taken his systems down,” Fabian says, chewing. “I think we’re way beyond that. He knows you called Janus. He’s spoken to me.”

Jo arrived about an hour ago, and her eyebrows rise from where she’s sitting next to Janus.

I blow out a long breath and chew my cheek.

“Tell us about Konstantin, Anna,” Fabian repeats.

So, I fill him in on everything I told Adam. Unease prickles over the back of my neck. My original idea was just to tell Adam, to help him understand, but we’re way past that now—the horse has well and truly bolted. And as Fabian peppers me with questions, I give more and more specific answers about the conversations I can remember and how the camps worked. “I’d probably recognize some of the sponsors,” I eventually say.

“When I first looked into it, my interest was piqued because it all seemed off,” Fabian says. “But I have to say that Mr. Lebedev is very careful. It’s never discussed directly. Although I did find some slipups in what the sponsors said.”

He produces a file from his bag and places it in front of me. “What’s this?” I say, and he smiles.

“All the information I’ve gathered on his operations.”

“Paper?” I ask.

“Bizarrely, it can be more secure than a laptop nowadays.”

I flip open the first page, and Janus leans in to peer over my shoulder. There’s a photograph and detailed notes of business interests for a series of men, quite a few of whom I recognize as people I saw or who talked to me at what they called social events. The next page is covered by a hand-drawn giant spider’s web in neat sloping script.

“These are the interconnections between all the sponsors I could findinvolved with the Alliance Tennis Federation’s academy. It will take me some time to piece together the money flows, but on here you’ve got company shareholders and directors,” he says, tapping the pages with the pictures on. “Plus players they’ve ‘sponsored,’ who I’ve made some assumptions about given photographs I found and other cross-referenced information.”

I stare at it in wonder, my hand shaking around the map he’s drawn. “How did you put all this together?” I whisper.

“I’ve been working on it full-time since I came across his name, along with a couple of people from Janus’s business. They’ve been tracking what’s happened to all the young people.” He makes a face. “We’ve discovered three so far who have died—by suicide or murder, it’s hard to know—though whether we’d ever be able to prove that anyone else was responsible or get any real justice is another matter.”

I close my eyes. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah, we need to do something,” Jo growls.

“Are you saying it’s difficult to go after Konstantin Lebedev, but we can go after these so-called sponsors?” Janus says.

“Yes. It depends on Anna really. As I’m uncovering more and more people who are connected to this in Russia, the more I think we should give it to a newspaper.”

“Like you did with the Newssource papers?” Janus says.

I glance up from the file where I’m studying a picture of a man I recognize. “You were involved in the Newssource papers?” There was a huge fallout from that in Russia.

Fabian doesn’t meet my eyes. “A bit,” he huffs, and Janus looks up at the ceiling.

“This is extraordinary,” I say. “But, Christ, releasing it, even Konstantin being aware that I’ve got something like this, would put a huge target on my back.” Unease seethes under my skin.

“Yeah, I don’t like that,” Janus says.

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