Page 65 of The Game

“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 justmeans you’re better informed, and her, too. I’ll be careful.”

“Fuck, that sounds bad.”

“You’ve seen some of those hacking boards, though. Theyarebad. 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’sdecadesolder 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 asettlement 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.

24

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