TUNA LIFE (37 page)

“Upload completed. We are LIVE,” Frank said.

Andrew stared, open-mouthed, at the computer screen. Frank had uploaded a video to the Tuna Life app, a two-minute long video montage which now would be the first thing Tuna Life’s more than sixty million users would see when turning on the app. The video montage didn’t only show Roman in embarrassing situations, as when he was masturbating in bed or sat on the toilet, it also showcased an overview of what Frank had uncovered the last four years. How Roman was involved in everything from distribution of narcotics to sex trafficking, how he had swindled local businesspeople for millions and taken over their companies, and last but not least; why he should be the prime suspect in the case of the ten missing Gold Coast girls. “Why don’t the police arrest him?” the video asked. “Is it because he is too powerful? Is it because the police have been bought?”

Andrew was still gaping when the video ended. It was better than he could have ever hoped for.

Roman Bezhrev and Tuna Life were finished.

Finished.

78

“Roman, we need to leave,” the big Russian without a neck, Andrej, said.

Roman Bezhrev stared longingly at his new yacht. It had arrived just two days ago. He had hardly been aboard, hadn’t even tested it in the water. He had lied when he had told Richard that he wasn’t that excited for it to arrive. It was his pride. Maybe it wasn’t as big as Roman Abramovich’s and the other oligarchs’ yachts. But here on Sovereign Island, here on the Gold Coast, there was no one with a bigger boat. Even Clive Palmer’s yacht looked like a little dinghy in comparison. The guys from the Turkish wharf had told Roman the yacht was too big for his pontoon. And as his new house wasn’t completed yet, he had faced a slight problem – where to store the damn thing. He had solved it by mooring it to both his own and the neighbouring house’s pontoons.

He turned around and walked up to the entrance door where the big Russian, Andrej, was waiting. The police were probably not far away. Andrej had erased all hard drives and destroyed any documents that could put Roman in a bad spot. But it didn’t really matter. Roman had seen the video on the Tuna Life app. Whoever was behind this had accessed all his secret files. Every shady deal he had ever done would be exposed. How was it possible? Who could have done this? Roman’s first thought had been Richard Smith, his trusted Australian right-hand man. But it wasn’t him. It was clear that Richard was telling the truth when he swore he had no idea what had happened. Richard would never dare lie to Roman. He had spent too much time with Roman, seen what he was capable of. And he would never risk the lives of his precious wife and daughters. Because that was what he would be doing if he ever crossed Roman. No, Roman didn’t need to worry about Richard. Richard would gladly take his years in prison, if that was what it came to, fully understanding that there would be no family to return to if he ever talked.

“
Govno
,” Roman swore. It could only be one person, one person with sufficient knowledge and intelligence to hack past Roman’s elaborate defence system and firewalls.

Frank fucking Geitner.

Frank Geitner, Roman had known the man would be trouble the day he invested in Tuna Life. The guy was just too intelligent. It had been easier with Andrew Engels, a gullible accountant who had never seen big money before. Roman had controlled him from the first moment they met. Ken Speis too. Frank Geitner, however, he was a weirdo. He had seemed uninterested in money. Roman had given him an envelope containing ten thousand dollars, a sort of personal thank-you for developing a good product. It had of course been a test, but Frank hadn’t known that. Instead Frank had declined to accept the money. That’s when Roman made the decision: Frank had to go. A person who couldn’t be bought by money, a person who had other motivations, motivations Roman didn’t understand – such a person could be dangerous, very dangerous.

The problem was that Frank had disappeared the day he got demoted. Roman’s old friends from the former Soviet Union’s intelligence service had struggled to track him down, and Richard had also come up empty-handed. It had turned out Frank Geitner didn’t exist. It was a fake identity.

Who was Frank Geitner and what did he want, Roman had wondered. Well, today he had finally received part of the answer. Frank Geitner wanted to destroy Roman’s life. Who he really was didn’t really matter anymore. He had revealed his true intentions. He was an enemy. And he would soon learn how Roman treated enemies.

Frank Geitner was a dead man.

He just didn’t know it himself yet.

“We need to leave now, Roman,” the Russian bodyguard, Andrej, pressed.

Roman knew he was right. There was only one way to and from Sovereign Island, a narrow bridge one had to cross. It had been ideal when Roman decided to settle there. It was easier to oversee security when you lived on an island. But now, now when the police could come at any time, it wasn’t that ideal anymore.

Roman moved his stocky legs, attempting to jump two steps of the stairs in one. He was only halfway successful. When he reached Andrej’s side he was puffing and covered in sweat. He was really out of shape. True, the house was big – but not that big.

He nodded to Andrej.

It was time to leave the island.

It was time to leave Australia.

79

Chaos raged throughout the fancy office premises of Tuna Life. Ken Speis had never really understood what they meant, these visitors who claimed that the premises reminded them of a play centre for kids. True, they had installed a slippery slide down to the canteen, and one of the chill-out rooms was stocked with Xbox consoles, pinball machines and a foosball game. But those things had nothing to do with a play centre. That’s how all the cool technology companies decked out their offices. That’s how you retained talent these days. Now, wandering around, he understood the comparison all those visitors had made. Tuna Life’s premises didn’t just remind him of a play centre for kids, they reminded him of a play centre where a birthday party had totally derailed. The ceiling was covered with colourful paper decorations made during the last hacking-night. Several of the employees were crying openly. They were shocked to learn that they had been working for a criminal, a murderer. Others just seemed apathetic. It didn’t seem like anyone was trying to stop the attack Tuna Life was experiencing. No one attempted to figure out how somebody had been able to hack through their firewalls, and take over the software that was installed on more than sixty million mobile devices around the world. They almost seemed curious.

Curious about what would happen next.

Ken glanced at his watch. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Twelve hours ago he had been worth seventy-five million, now it was most likely all gone, or soon to be gone. Tuna Life had miraculously survived the last scandal when the app took unauthorised photos of its users, and was now back in growth mode. But it wouldn’t survive this. Blackberry would be popular again before that happened. Tuna Life was a dead duck.

One of the engineers poked Ken’s shoulder. “You should have a look at this, boss,” he said.

Ken wandered over to the engineer’s laptop, and uninterestedly he took a look at the screen. The engineer had a program called
the download counter
open. It was a program Frank had developed early on. It gave the number of IOS and Android downloads in real-time. They had used to put it up on the big screen every time they were nearing a milestone. The last time had been when they passed sixty million downloads, and that had only been a week ago. Ken looked over at the engineer. “Can this be right?”

The engineer nodded. “I’ve triple-checked it. The program is working fine.”

Ken looked back at the screen. 67,126,795. And the number continued to increase. “What’s happening?” he asked.

“It looks like people are downloading the app to watch the video,” the engineer said.

Ken forced a smile. “I guess this proves that all publicity is good publicity,” he said. But he knew it wasn’t so. It was never the number of downloads that was important. Tuna Life didn’t get paid for downloads. The app was free. What was important was how people engaged with the app, and he assumed that they would soon see the number of uninstalls starting to climb. Tuna Life could very well experience a small jump in downloads due to the scandal, but their reputation was tarnished, ruined. Who would trust them now? The CEO had left only a short time ago, and it had been revealed that almost everything he had claimed about his background was a lie. And now it turned out the majority owner was a serial killer. What a public relations fuck-up. They were going to use Tuna Life in textbooks: How Not to Do Things, Ken thought as he left the engineer’s desk in silence. He walked straight into his office. The office that had used to belong to his best friend Andrew. The goldfish bowl that stood there in the middle of the play centre premises he had designed. Ken pressed a switch on the wall. An electric current was sent into the glass and suddenly it wasn’t possible to look in or out of the glass anymore. It looked like it was frozen.

He should probably be angry. He stood to lose a lot of money due to what was happening outside the frosted glass bowl. Quite possibly his shares in Tuna Life would be worthless come the end of the week. But he couldn’t help smiling. Someone had thought the same as he. Someone had beat him to it. Beat him to ruining Roman.

And he thought he knew who it would have to be.

Frank Geitner.

Crazy old Frank.

80

“So, what do we do now?” Andrew Engels asked.

He had been following the news on various technology sites - TechCrunch, Business Insider, CNET, Wired, the list was long – while Frank worked his magic. Every single news site had caught onto the news that the Tuna Life app was spreading a smear campaign about the majority owner Roman Bezhrev, and they had all made it their main story for the day.

Most news websites agreed that the material was damning and eventually would result in the demise of Tuna Life as the king of apps. But they weren’t so sure that everything that was being claimed was true. First of all, whoever had put together the video collage had failed to back up some of his claims with hard evidence. And the short video clips, and pictures of Roman, in very private and intimate situations, were just disgusting. A line had been crossed. Those kinds of private pictures didn’t belong on the internet; they were an invasion of Roman’s privacy, irrespective of what he was claimed to have done. Whoever had stolen and published the pictures had crossed the line. It was a new low in internet-trolling. Roman Bezhrev was a victim, a victim of internet bullying.

As more and more video clips and pictures were published, however, the public view changed. Even the most steadfast defenders of Roman Bezhrev were forced to change sides. Roman Bezhrev was a deviant, a criminal, a monster.

The only question that remained was if everything that was being claimed in the videos was true. The discussions were rampant on various internet forums. Some speculated that a disgruntled employee or an envious competitor had released the videos, and that most likely nothing was true. Others thought the sheer volume of evidence and arguments seemed convincing; Roman Bezhrev was a serial killer, he was the person responsible for all the missing girls from the coast over the last five years, and someone had to stop him. Nobody seemed to even question whether there really was a serial killer on the Gold Coast. During all the commotion,
that
had just become an established fact.

Local reporters from the Gold Coast Times and Channel 9 were already in place outside Roman Bezhrev’s Sovereign Island mansion, which looked abandoned. Pictures of the massive mansion, and the even more massive yacht, that occupied two whole pontoons, were broadcast around the world. When it was discovered that Roman owned most of the houses in the short strip of street he lived in, the media went wild. He had to be hiding something, this Russian, this Russian who had no respect for Australian laws.

The police arrived an hour later than the press. They had evidently managed to obtain a warrant, and quickly entered the house. As the alarms howled, heavily armed police stormed the house.

When detectives, clad from top to toe in coveralls, arrived half an hour later, the rumours started spreading; they had discovered human remains inside Roman’s house. Roman Bezhrev was a monster who had raped and killed innocent women. The press had already named the big white mansion ‘the house of horror’ and Roman the ‘Russian monster’.

“We wait, Frank said.

81

The temperature was heating up as the various workmen at Sanctuary Cove Yacht Club readied for the day. Roman was sitting in the front cabin of a seventy-foot mono hull sailboat. He was glad he always took plenty of precautions. He always had at least three different escape routes from whatever country he found himself in. One never knew when the past would catch up. Several of his good friends from Moscow had become too arrogant and reckless over time. They had thought they were above the Law, that Russian president Vladimir Putin couldn’t touch them abroad. Well, he had proven that he could. Now, to some degree, Roman had also thought he was above the Law, but that had mainly been because he had been entitled to be. Roman had people from the Law on the payroll, and that had certain benefits. One of those benefits had been an early notification that the Australian Federal Police had been seeking approval to get a warrant for a search of his house.

And Roman wasn’t stupid. He knew there were no safe places. He had tried to minimise the risk. Kept to the shadows. Not interfered with politics or sought out media attention. He had kept a low profile.

But keeping a low profile was boring. He had wanted to become like the big oligarchs, one of the really rich ones, one of those who everyone knew the name of, one of those who people not only feared, but respected. One who left a mark on the world, not just existed. He had known it would be risky, to start investing in these internet companies. Nobody was interested when he owned waste management and construction companies. It was something different when he started to own some of the most sexy assets in the world. The press had quickly come around, knocking on his door. But even though he had declined to be interviewed, and had attempted to keep a low profile, the attention hadn’t disappeared. First the tax authorities had put him under the microscope. They had initiated audits of several of his companies. And then they had started looking into his background. Who he was and what he had done before moving to Australia. He should have known. He had too many secrets. He should have stayed in the shadows, not decided to play with the fire.