Page 74 of The Game

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,theRussian 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,sellingthem?”

“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, itcouldbe, and perhaps on one level, it is, butallthe 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.

“InRussian?” 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?”

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