Morning, Columbia University.
The Mathematics Building was an old structure built in the early twentieth century. Its gray stone walls held a steady chill in the March light.
The fourth-floor hallway was long and quiet. Now and then, a student passed by, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet.
Dark wooden doors lined both sides of the hallway, each bearing a brass plaque with a professor's name and title.
The door to Office 412 was shut.
Professor Robert Jero sat behind his desk. An unfinished doctoral dissertation lay open in front of him, but he couldn't take in a single word.
He was waiting for a phone call.
More precisely, he was waiting for a call from the police.
He hadn't forgotten what had happened the night before.
As Robert had left the crime scene the previous night, he'd heard sirens. The police must have gone to the scene.
The house, the four kidnappers, the cameras, the canvas bag containing fifty thousand dollars—none of it was going to disappear on its own.
The police would take statements, check for fingerprints, pull surveillance footage, question the neighbors, find the black car, identify its owner, and follow the trail.
Then they would find Robert Jero.
The kidnappers had been after him. Those four bastards who belonged in hell had come for him.
Robert picked up his cold coffee and took a sip. Its bitter taste spread across his tongue.
He wasn't afraid of the police.
He was a Columbia University professor, an authority in financial mathematics with a reputation in both academia and the industry.
His lawyer was one of the best criminal defense attorneys in New York, and his friends were scattered across the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and major investment banks.
The police couldn't give him a hard time. They could only question him, not arrest him.
The university would protect him, too. Columbia had its own legal team and a department dedicated to handling public relations crises involving faculty and staff.
If things got out of hand, the university would step in, issue a statement, and portray him as "the victim of a violent crime." It would call for better security around campus.
There were procedures for all of this. There were precedents.
So he wasn't afraid.
But he didn't want Lin An getting dragged into it.
The young man had saved him. The beginning and the process hadn't been pleasant, but the fact remained that Lin An had spared him a truly horrible end.
If the police tracked down Lin An, if they found out he'd killed those men, it would all be over. He'd go to prison, perhaps for the rest of his life.
Robert didn't want that.
Besides, it wasn't just that Lin An had saved him. Lin An was a genius.
Over the course of his entire career, Robert had met fewer than ten people like him. Two had won Nobel Prizes, three had become billionaires, and the rest had reached the top of their respective fields.
So Robert didn't think Lin An belonged in prison.
He belonged at the podium of an academic conference, or in the trading room of a hedge fund, or publishing papers in a leading journal.
He shouldn't be locked up for saving Robert.
Robert leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his chest, and stared at the fire sprinkler on the ceiling. What would he say if the police came?
He couldn't claim he didn't know Lin An. That would be too suspicious; sooner or later, the police would find surveillance footage of them leaving the scene together.
But he couldn't say Lin An had killed anyone, either. It was true, but saying it would be a betrayal.
He needed a middle ground.
He could say he'd been blindfolded and taken to the house, so he didn't know its exact location.
Then someone had broken in and gotten into a fight with the kidnappers. In the chaos, he'd escaped.
He didn't know who had broken in and hadn't seen their face clearly. He only remembered someone pulling him off the floor, pushing him out through the back door, and then he'd taken a cab home alone.
There were plenty of holes in the story, but it was better than telling the truth outright.
Robert ran through the story three times in his head. It seemed passable.
Then he started wondering what he'd do if the police asked for details. What if they showed him surveillance footage? What if they found Darnell?
As he worried, his temples began to throb.
He got up, went to the window, and pushed it open. The cold March air poured in, clearing his head a little.
The campus outside was quiet.
A few students sat on the benches in the little plaza in front of the Mathematics Building, basking in the sun. Some were reading, others eating sandwiches or chatting.
Everything seemed normal, as though nothing had happened the night before.
But Robert knew it had happened.
And it wouldn't just end here.
He went back to his desk and checked his cell phone, then the landline. Neither had a message.
It was ten o'clock.
The police should have been at work for a while. Detectives should already be examining the scene from the night before.
According to the New York Police Department's procedures, they should contact the victim that morning, use the license plate to identify the car's owner, use the owner to find the house, check the rental records to identify the kidnappers, and then look through their phone records to find who they'd last contacted.
None of that was difficult.
So Robert waited. Whether it was a phone call or a visit from a university administrator, he waited for things to happen so he could deal with them.
He waited all morning.
By noon, there still hadn't been a call.
The landline rang once. It was the department secretary asking whether the afternoon seminar would go ahead as planned. He said it had been postponed.
His cell phone buzzed twice. One message was spam; the other was from his daughter, asking if he'd be home for dinner over the weekend. He said he would.
No police.
Robert began to feel that something was wrong.
He thought it over, picked up his phone, and dialed a number.
"Columbia University Department of Public Safety. How may I help you?"
"This is Robert Jero, from the Department of Mathematical Finance. I wanted to ask if anything happened near campus last night."
"Please hold while I check."
He heard the sound of typing on the other end. About twenty seconds later, the voice returned.
"Professor Jero, we haven't received any reports of unusual incidents near campus last night. What kind of incident are you asking about?"
"Nothing. Thank you."
Robert hung up.
No reports.
He dialed a second number.
"NYPD 26th Precinct. How may I help you?"
"I'm a professor at Columbia University, Robert Jero. I wanted to ask if there were any murders in Upper Manhattan last night."
"Please hold."
There was the sound of typing again. This time, he waited longer—about forty seconds.
"Professor Jero, I checked the reports from last night through the early hours of this morning. There was only one false fire alarm. I couldn't find any murder reports. Can you give me a more specific location and some details?"
"No need. Thank you."
Robert hung up.
His fingers tapped twice on the desk. Then he picked up his phone and scrolled to the contact information for an old friend with connections at the NYPD. His friend had retired, but still had some contacts.
He hesitated, then decided not to call.
Robert didn't want his name drawing too much attention. What had happened the night before was too humiliating.
He put down his phone, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.
No murder report.
No call from the police.
Four people had definitely died in that house. The smoke would certainly have triggered a fire alarm, and the police must have gone to the scene, but there was no murder report.
How was that possible?
Unless someone had erased all traces of what happened.
Robert remembered what Lin An had said the night before: "I'll take care of things inside first, so we don't get caught up in it when the police arrive."
At the time, he'd thought "take care of things" meant something simple, like wiping away fingerprints. But now it seemed Lin An's meaning might have gone much further than he'd imagined... At the very least, the bodies had definitely disappeared. The police hadn't found them.
How could one person do that?
Robert couldn't figure it out.
Unless Lin An had subordinates who'd moved the four bodies before the police arrived.
That wasn't something one person could do.
Robert slowly straightened up.
He began to reconsider what had happened the night before, and two things Lin An had said came to mind.
[That's right, I'm the messenger God sent to save you.]
[I'd originally planned to kidnap you and have you do me a small favor, but now I've just saved you and kept you from the worst outcome. So you do me a favor, and we'll be even.]
So this crazy genius had people who could help him dispose of bodies, even though he had no memories. Especially that guy, Ni Ge. He'd seemed a little timid, but you could tell from his looks that he wasn't exactly a good person.
Maybe Lin An was the head of a Black gang, or its boss.
Robert rubbed his temples.
Maybe he was reading too much into it.
But one thing was becoming increasingly clear to him: Lin An wasn't an ordinary person. He was a dangerous, capable, crazy genius with people working for him.
Robert glanced at his phone.
Twelve forty-five.
Still no call.
He finally accepted that the police weren't coming.
He leaned back and let out a long breath.
Then he remembered that Lin An had offered to look into the matter for him. At the time, he'd thought it was just something Lin An had asked on a whim. Now he realized Lin An had meant it. He had the ability to investigate.
Exactly three o'clock in the afternoon.
"Knock, knock, knock..."
Robert, who had been buried in paperwork, looked up at the door, then at the clock on the wall. Oh, it was about time.
"Come in."
The door opened.
Lin An walked in wearing the same windbreaker he'd had on the night before. A backpack hung from his shoulders, his expression calm, that familiar smile on his lips.
"Good afternoon, Professor."
Lin An sat down in the guest chair and set his backpack by his feet.
Robert didn't speak right away.
He took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, then put them back on and studied Lin An's face.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, falling across Lin An's profile. Robert noticed that the young man's eyes weren't bloodshot and that there were no traces of last night's exhaustion beneath them... He'd slept well.
A man who'd killed four people the night before had slept soundly. He had nerves of steel.
Robert pushed the thought aside, took a fingerprint card and ink pad from his drawer, and slid them across the desk.
"Fingerprints. All ten fingers, right here."
Lin An didn't ask why or hesitate.
He held out both hands and pressed each of his ten fingers onto the card as the professor instructed, leaving his prints behind.
"I'll send your fingerprints to the database for comparison."
Robert slipped the card into an envelope and sealed it.
"If we find a record of yours, we can identify you. If not..."
"Then I'll be counting on you, Professor. I'm in the middle of replacing my U.S. visa now. Thank you."
Lin An picked up the thread, took out his missing-document report card, and laid it on the desk.
"Right. This is the report card for my lost documents."
Robert glanced at him, then at the card. He took a photo of it with his camera, then pulled the reading list from his drawer and slid it over.
"This is the reading list I give to first-year doctoral students. It has seventeen books. I've added two more for you.
"I expect you to finish them in three months and understand every formula, every proof, and every model."
Lin An picked up the list, spread it out for the Bullet Screen viewers, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
[I've read half of these. This one, this one, and...]
[I've read these ones.]
[I've studied this one.]
[Put them all together, and there isn't a single book I've missed.]
Good. Lin An felt reassured.
"No problem."
The Bullet Screen viewers knew all about them, anyway.
Robert nodded and was about to say something when Lin An's phone buzzed in his pocket.
Lin An took out his phone, glanced at the screen, then answered and tapped the speaker button, setting the phone on the desk.
"Inspector Morales," Lin An said.
"Dr. Lin An."
Morales's voice came through the phone. Someone was speaking in the background, but soon the voice faded away.
"Is now a good time to talk?"
"Conveniently, I'm in my advisor's office."
"Oh, perfect."
The sound of papers being shuffled came from the other end of the phone.
"De Luca has results. Sergei Kuzmin's interrogation is complete, and he confessed to everything. De Luca got an answer to the question you asked me to look into."
Robert's gaze immediately fixed on Lin An's phone.
"Who was it?"
"He was hired by a man named David Goldstein."
Morales said.
"I looked up the name. He's a Jewish immigrant from Britain, but his current address is unknown."
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.
"Dr. Lin An, do you know this David Goldstein?"
Before Lin An could answer, Professor Robert Jero, seated across from him, shot to his feet, his face flushed red... clearly not from embarrassment.
Lin An glanced at him, then spoke into his phone.
"Thank you, Inspector Morales. My advisor is very grateful for your help."
"Don't mention it, Dr. Lin An. If anything comes up, give me a call."
"Goodbye."
Lin An hung up and turned to Robert.
"Professor, you know this man."
"David Goldstein."
Robert paced back and forth around the office, his anger plain to see.
"That bastard!!!"
Lin An's expression didn't change. He simply listened quietly.
"That bastard was one of my former doctoral students."
Robert took a deep breath, reined in his emotions, and continued.
"He enrolled in 2004 and studied for two years. He failed his qualifying exams, and the department advised him to leave. But he kept claiming to be my student, saying he was 'researching quantitative finance under Professor Jero's supervision.'"
He stopped and took a deep breath.
"He started a company on Wall Street called Goldstein Capital Management. He brought in several Eastern European investors, and at one point, the firm managed tens of millions of dollars.
"His fundraising materials said, 'Chief Investment Officer David Goldstein, trained by Professor Robert Jero of Columbia University.'"
As he finished speaking, Robert sat back down in his office chair. He had regained his composure.
"When he started trading on my name, some friends told me about it, but I didn't expose him publicly for making money off my reputation.
"Then, last year, a friend sent me their fundraising materials. Something seemed off. His company didn't look legitimate, and its conduct was practically fraudulent.
"I called the department right away, then sent a formal letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission clarifying that this man had never earned a PhD from Columbia and had never completed any research under my supervision."
He opened his eyes and looked at Lin An.
"His company went bankrupt soon afterward. The investors sued him for fraud, and the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation. He lost all his money and ended up deeply in debt.
"I haven't heard his name since."
Robert pushed his slipping glasses back up and furrowed his brow.
"I thought he'd left the United States and gone back to his old home in Britain. I never expected..."
He trailed off, and Lin An understood.
[That bastard must be trying to get revenge on the old man.]
[Hey, you said you were the old man's student before. Are you there?]
[Here. This didn't happen in my world, but I remember there was a Jewish guy on Wall Street who used the old man's reputation to run a scam. He swindled so much money that investors from Ukraine shot him dead.]
[So the old man saved his life in this world?]
[British Jew. If that's the case, then the video of him getting fucked that they failed to capture last night was his way of getting revenge. This guy wants to ruin the old man's reputation.]
"Professor."
Lin An spoke up.
Robert raised his head.
"It's obvious what happened. This David is taking revenge on you. Would you like me to help you strike back?"
"How much will it cost?"
Robert was very straightforward. He had spent his whole life in academia and was a powerful academic gatekeeper. He might never have done certain things himself, but he'd heard about them. When the time came to act decisively, he wouldn't hesitate.
"You're my advisor, after all."
Lin An smiled.
"It's perfectly normal for a student to help their advisor with a problem."
Robert smiled, too.
"If I hadn't found your identity documents, I'd have told you to get a passport in a little while. Any country's would do. I could make up the paperwork for your enrollment..."
"Here you go, Professor."
Lin An smoothly pulled a dark red passport from his pocket and held it out to Robert between his index and middle fingers, as if performing a magic trick.
The movement was fluid and without the slightest hesitation, as though the passport had been waiting for him to take it out all along.
Robert froze.
He took the passport and opened it. The cover bore a golden national emblem and the words "Passport of the People's Republic of China."
The first page had a photo of Lin An, bareheaded against a white background, his expression serious. He looked much like the man sitting across from Robert, though a few years younger, as if the picture had been taken several years ago.
His name, date of birth, nationality, and other information were printed beside it.
The issue date was September 15, 2008, and it was valid until September 14, 2018.
Robert turned to the visa pages. They were perfectly clean, with no American visa stickers or entry stamps.
He looked up at Lin An.
"Didn't you say you had no identity documents?"
"I don't."
Lin An said, his expression unchanged.
"This is fake."
Robert rubbed his finger over the passport cover, feeling the texture of the paper and examining the clarity of the printing and the quality of the photograph.
He wasn't an expert in document authentication, but after teaching at Columbia for so many years, he'd seen countless international students' passports. He could tell the difference well enough.
This passport looked real.
Robert closed it and handed it back to Lin An.
"Give me your phone number. I'll let you know when I have news... And if you need anything, you can call me, too."
"All right, Professor."
Lin An smiled and stood up.
"Be careful for the next little while, too. I'll resolve this problem soon."
"Mm."
Before you continue