s huge. What I know could turn the whole financial system upside down.’ It was only then that the lawyer became certain that he was an intermediary in
a blackmail of nationwide proportions, involving the country’s whole financial system. He realised, without knowing exactly what they were talking about, that the president of the central
bank wanted that new piece of evidence as proof of the technician’s knowledge of a state secret. ‘More than that’, the client corrected him over the phone. ‘I’ve
discovered something they didn’t know. They should thank me. It’s taken three years of my life to uncover a secret capable of turning the whole financial system upside down. I
don’t mean to use it. I’m not threatening anything. I’m not blackmailing anyone. All I want is to be paid for my discovery. Like any inventor or scientist. I’ll sell my
discovery and the subject will be closed. They buy my discovery and they’ll have my silence as a free gift. They should thank me, but they treat me like a criminal.’ That was when the
lawyer began to glimpse what his wife would express so well in those words, sitting on the sofa, almost three months after the third and last appearance of the client in his office, with a glass of
whisky in her hand, ‘in the American style’: ‘For you, the best thing would be if he didn’t exist, he’s your weak point’. What was she saying? Who was she
talking about? How could she know exactly what had been taking over his mind in the last few months? How had she found out? The only time he’d mentioned the client to her was when he came
back from the first meeting with the board of the central bank in Paris. He was frightened by it all and couldn’t stop himself. It’s human. He briefly commented, or, better, let slip a
few words about the client and the numbers, the sheet covered with numbers, illegible even for someone who, like her, spent all their time doing accounts. But he said nothing more, because he soon
saw the potential of the case and its possible developments, which didn’t exclude the elimination of the computer technician, which would be easy in a way, since no one had ever seen him, but
only if he was silly enough to reappear. Because all he had to do was put his foot in his office for the police to swoop. The ideal thing would be for the lawyer to find out where he was hiding.
But even then he couldn’t eliminate him before he knew his secret. His hands were tied. It would happen to him, with his mental block with numbers. Before he eliminated the client, he needed
his secret to go on with the blackmail. It was an ideal plan. Instead of the honorariums the client had pledged himself to pay in monthly instalments, he would get all the money from the blackmail.
He had understood the huge danger of the situation, but without the least idea of what it was about. He needed to discover the secret so he could go on negotiating as an intermediary, only now for
a dead man, and then pocket all the money, with the advantage, on top of that, of coming out of it clean. He didn’t blink when he got the second sealed envelope, in the mail, a month and a
half after the first, the confirmation of the proof the president demanded and that he had to take personally to Paris. He didn’t think twice before he opened it and came upon another sheet
of paper covered with numbers. It was irritating. Why numbers? And why did it have to be him, who’d had problems with algebra since he was a child? He looked out a mathematician, with no
success. The guy only confirmed the obvious, that there must be some kind of code there, because of the combination, frequency and alternation of the figures, but that you’d have to start
from some kind of basic parameter to decipher it. You’d have to know what each number represented, and the place it occupied in the whole, and know the language it was written in and the
formula, to be able to read it. The lawyer left in a state of irritation. He was so irritated he didn’t even think to put the sheet away when he got home in the middle of the night. He left
it open on the table. What danger was there, if it was illegible? He only picked it up again in the morning. He left for Paris earlier than necessary, to consult other mathematicians before the
second meeting with the bankers the following day. But he got the same reply. The sheet was illegible without the establishment of a set convention on which to base an interpretation, without some
kind of semantics. ‘I could have told you that!’ shouted the lawyer at one of the mathematicians, the third he’d seen on the same afternoon in Paris, a little old man with white
hair and a smock, who immediately threw him out of his room at the university shouting curses in Russian, his first language, which he hadn’t spoken since childhood, though it was still his
favourite. Nobody had the least idea of what was written there, but when, at the meeting, the president of the central bank opened the envelope, before passing it on to the board of directors, he
slumped into his chair with his hands on his head, desperately stammering: ‘This is the proof’. That sent the lawyer madder still. If these bankers could read the combination of
numbers, how was it possible no one else could? He was so upset that, instead of waiting till night to go back home, on the train, he decided to get the first plane back in the early afternoon. He
couldn’t lose any more time. He had to find the client before the police did. He had to eliminate him, not without first convincing him of the impossible, to tell him his secret, he needed to
decipher what those figures said. When they came out of the airport, which was some thirty miles away from the ruins of the libertine baron’s château, and the hill where they lived, the
wife said they needed to pick up a package in the town before they went back home. While she was paying for the package, he went into the chemist’s to buy some tranquillisers which he’d
been increasingly taking in the last few weeks, and, when he came out, he came face to face with a most unexpected scene: the client, without dark glasses, hat or overcoat, talking very animatedly,
on the other side of the street, with his wife, who already had the package in her hand. Everything went dark and he very nearly fell down in the middle of the street. It wasn’t just him. The
client, too, couldn’t have imagined he would come across him there. It’s probable he thought the lawyer was still in Paris, as agreed, and decided to take advantage of the afternoon to
do what he had to do in the town, thinking he was in safe territory. Neither could he have imagined that that was the man’s wife. The lawyer crossed the road and approached his wife. The
client went pale. For a few seconds, the two looked at each other in mystified silence. The lawyer could see for the first time the expression of horror, and not the impassive face the computer
technician had appeared with on the three occasions he’d been to the office. He was dressed in jeans, trainers and a white T-shirt. It’s difficult to imagine which of the two was the
more astonished. But they managed to hide it, because she hardly saw. Luckily, the lawyer had not been followed by the police. The two pretended they didn’t know each other when the woman
introduced them: ‘Monsieur . . . I am sorry! What was your name? This is my husband’. They shook hands. The client, suddenly very nervous, said he needed to leave, he was late, that it
was a pleasure to see her again and meet her husband, and disappeared. As soon as he was gone, the lawyer turned round to his wife and asked, his eyes burning, where she knew that man from. She
asked him if he remembered the day when, months ago, she had completely lost control of the car and crashed into a tree in the middle of a maize-field. ‘Well, that was the man who helped me.
I think he lives somewhere around here.’ The lawyer still tried to follow him. He ran as far as the corner, but there was no sign of the client. He came back, grabbed the woman by the arms
with all his strength and shook her right there in the street, trying to get more information out of her. He insisted on knowing where the accident had taken place. At first, she still laughed,
said he was hurting her, that he was mad, and asked where so much jealousy had come from, so suddenly. But she soon saw that her husband was not in a joking mood; he was beside himself. He dragged
her to the car and asked again where the accident had happened. He asked her a thousand times, yelling at her, while, shaking, she tried to remember where the maize-field was. He carried on
shouting as he drove along the road, asking what else she was hiding, why she’d never said she knew that man. He left her in the house and went out in the car, at a furious speed, following
her instructions. He was determined to discover where the client lived before nightfall. He only came back after dark. That was when she, sitting on the sofa with a glass of whisky in her hand,
greeted him with those fateful words, mocking what seemed to her an unexpected attack of jealousy: ‘For you, the best thing would be if he didn’t exist, he’s your weak
point’. She might have been talking about anyone they’d met in the street, and not specifically about the client, for she didn’t even know who he was. She might have talking about
God. Or about the baron and his philosophy of treachery. But that wasn’t the way he understood it. His weakness was numbers. She must be talking about something else. She must know about
something. But now he finally had a clue as to the whereabouts of the client, who only rang from telephones the police couldn’t track down, from public phone boxes, from a different place
each time, from the most diverse areas of the country, hundreds of miles apart from each other, just like the post offices from which he posted his envelopes, without the least logic to them
— now he finally had a clue he couldn’t miss the opportunity. For months, he’d tried to find the client. He was excited, as if he’d finally uncovered a bit of the secret,
and violated his intimacy. But it was just an illusion. More than ever, he had to be careful he wasn’t being followed, hand the client over to the police and the bankers without meaning to,
so to speak, now he had gone half way. All the way home, he didn’t stop thinking for a moment. He had to get rid of the client before the police or the bankers found him, but he
couldn’t kill him without knowing his secret. He couldn’t open himself to the possibility of the bankers asking for a new piece of proof and having nothing to show them. He needed to
discover the secret at all costs before he killed the client. It was probable that all this had been thought through from the beginning by the computer technician himself, who could trust no one.
He wasn’t going to put his life in the hands of a provincial lawyer without some kind of guarantee. His trump card was his secret. It was the guarantee that the lawyer wouldn’t kill
him. ‘You will be tempted by contradictory desires.’ Nobody could continue the blackmail without him, without knowing the secret. Because the secret was him, in person. Without him, the
secret would disappear. The plan the lawyer drew up, on his way back home, was anything but perfect, but, in the circumstances, it was the best he could have found. He would ask the client for a
new series of proofs, and would make out that it was the bankers’ demand. And, instead of sending them to Paris, he would keep them for any eventuality, after he’d got rid of the
client. He would keep a stock of proofs for when he needed them, even though he hadn’t the least idea of what they meant. The plan was anything but perfect, but there was no other option. Now
he had a clue as to where the client lived (there weren’t many houses in that area, near the maize-field), he had to hurry before he himself disappeared, for he was no fool, and of course he
must be expecting the worst possible outcome after the unexpected encounter in the town. He got home with the whole plan in his head, and was received by his wife sitting on the sofa, with a glass
of whisky in her hand: ‘For you, the best thing would be if he didn’t exist, he’s your weak point’. Who did she mean, he? How could she have come out with that? But he
couldn’t ask. With those words, she signed her own death warrant, as they say in gangster movies. The next week, while he was planning the client’s death, the lawyer planned hers too.
He didn’t know what she was talking about, but he couldn’t risk losing everything because of a simple doubt. He discovered where the client lived and hired his wife’s killers. It
was the time for her to take steps too, while the husband was making his international calls. She got suspicious. She put two and two together. She did her accounts and sketched out her revenge,
while he was agreeing that they would shoot him in the leg. Everything to make it look convincing. It was the price to pay. The lawyer observed the client’s house more than once, from a
distance, without being seen. On the day before the journey, she read to her husband, in bed, a chapter from the collected works of the baron. The part where the author explained vengeance as
pleasure. She read sitting on his belly, leaning against his thighs. It was months since they’d slept together. The fact is that he felt his desire rekindled, excited that he was going to
kill her in two days’ time, that this would be the last time: ‘You will be tempted by contradictory desires’. He was invaded by the morbid thrill of thinking that this body which
was giving in to him would be dead in less than two days. That was why he hardly heard what she was reading aloud: ‘You who are still young and beautiful — and precisely because you are
— have, amongst all of us, the greatest chance of breaking through the bars of the human prison in horror and in revenge. Just because they are young and beautiful, those who could get the
greatest benefit from horror and revenge don’t take advantage of this potential while they still can, they are tricked first by their families and the Church, and then by their marriage, only
to discover when they have been disarmed by years of dedication, reproduction and submission to the same logic which subjects us all, that they have missed the chance to free the human being from
the prison in which he has locked himself, in the dark, unable to see further than his own nose, ignorant of his own condition, uselessly trying to contain his own instincts. I exhort you, my love,
to make of me an instrument of your revenge and horror, my most sincere vocation, which can only be achieved through the hands of a beautiful young girl like you. I exhort you, my deflowered
damsel, to make of your lost maidenhood an implacable arm against the logical illogicality of conventions which prevent us from revealing ourselves in all our natural splendour. Make this world in
which we lived confined, as in a dark cell, as unbearable and incomprehensible for them as it already is for us’. She was reading aloud while he was getting a hard-on and coming, as if he
were deaf, though nowadays he repeats the same passage, by heart, over and over. That baron is a terrible writer. At the time he didn’t see that that book had become her manual, her bible,
that she’d learned the lesson, and was ready to put those teachings into practice. She made no real objections to the journey, after asking with that ‘American style’ smile if it
wasn’t a very dangerous city. And she got the most barefaced guarantee: that nothing can abolish chance, that if it didn’t happen here, it would be in Bangkok or the Yemen or Istanbul
or some other place. And she agreed, not knowing yet that he was talking about her death. She had to disappear, the moment she said those words, her eyes shining and a glass of whisky in her hand.
She preferred not to realise that at bottom he was referring to her death, but subconsciously she already knew or guessed, because she wouldn’t have set up the theatrical reversal of fortunes
if she hadn’t known. Everything was completely synchronised so he would only realise he’d lost at the last minute, when the collapse and the disappointment of the discovery would be too
great for him, making him unable to bear the rest of his life. She calculated her revenge with an inhuman precision. She s