Catherine said nothing, but an attentive observer might have seen a gleam of admiration in her eyes.
28
THEY WAITED UNTIL the waiter from the Intercontinental Hotel had finished serving them. “Please call if you need anything whatsoever, Monsieur Dunker,” he murmured before withdrawing.
The brown leather padded door to the private room closed silently. Marc Dunker looked around him at the opulent mahogany bookcases filled with books bound in red leather a little too shiny to be old. Lamps with gilt bases and emerald-green opaline shades added to the intimate, rather somber atmosphere of the room.
Dunker had chosen this place on Andrew’s advice. Situated on the Place de l’Opéra, not far from the office, the hotel offered, according to Andrew, a setting that commanded respect and a certain reserve—very English qualities favorable to productive negotiations. It was the third time the trio had met there, and Dunker was still pleased with the choice. He particularly appreciated the large leather armchairs that seemed to swallow up his two principal shareholders, while his height enabled him to enjoy an advantageous position. He was convinced this arrangement had an impact on their relations that was far from negligible.
“We’ve reached agreement,” said the pudgier of the two men meeting with Dunker, casting a glance at his colleague. He smiled as he spoke, from time to time raising his eyebrows, which created waves of creases on his nearly bald head. Short and plump, David Poupon, despite his age, still looked like a big smiling baby, with a friendly manner that Dunker was enormously suspicious of. The CEO preferred the other shareholder, Rosenblack, who was much leaner and less friendly. Never looking up from the papers he was going through, Rosenblack didn’t make the slightest effort to hide the fact that he had no interest whatsoever in Dunker as a person.
Dunker screwed up his eyes, concentrating on Poupon, who was announcing their demands. “We have reached the conclusion that for both the investment fund I run and the pension fund represented by our friend here,” he said, smiling in the direction of Rosenblack, who was still absorbed in his papers, “your company must produce fifteen percent profits in the next quarter, and the market price of the shares must increase by at least eighteen percent annually.”
Dunker remained silent until he was sure Poupon had finished. He then gave himself a few seconds to drink a sip of cognac. He knew the power of silence.
“I can’t promise an eighteen percent increase in the stock price, because I don’t control all the parameters, as you know. And then …”
He took a second sip of his drink, keeping his audience in suspense.
“And then, there’s that stupid bastard of a journalist, Fisherman, who continues to undermine our image by repeating nonsense about us. Unfortunately, his analyses influence the financial markets.”
“We are convinced you are capable of managing this sort of situation,” Poupon said. “It’s for that very reason that at the last annual meeting we chose to keep you as CEO.”
Dunker heard the barely veiled threat loud and clear. “You know as well as I do that journalists can’t be controlled,” he told Poupon. “Try as we might to feed him good news at every opportunity, Fisherman repeats in article after article that our teams are not productive enough, which is quite untrue. I keep them under pressure, and they work hard,” he said, with the pride of a captain defending his troops.
“There’s rarely smoke without fire,” said Rosenblack without looking up.
“I have every confidence in your ability to find a solution,” said Poupon.
After several minutes of silence, Dunker announced, “I’ve got an idea, but I need your agreement beforehand, because it’s not without consequences.”
“Ha! See what you can do when you want to?” Poupon was clearly satisfied to have been right.
Dunker ignored the dig. “My idea is based on an artificial inflating of the turnover.”
Rosenblack at last raised a glum eye in Dunker’s direction, like a sleepy old dog lying by the fireside, who wonders, without really believing it, whether the word walk hasn’t just been slipped into the conversation.
“Until now,” Dunker explained, “we have followed strict procedures to check the solvency of our customers before signing contracts with them. If they show financial difficulties, we demand that they pay the total fee in advance, which of course they rarely accept. If we changed that rule and closed our eyes to the financial health of new clients, we would get an immediate increase in turnover of about twenty percent.”
Poupon, attentive, had a look of complicity. Rosenblack looked skeptical.
“I have calculated,” Dunker went on, “that if we did this, we would risk having thirty percent of payments outstanding, which wouldn’t be too problematic for two reasons. One, the stock exchange only looks at the turnover figures and couldn’t care less about outstanding payments. Two, our consultants get their commissions on the basis of client payments, not on the turnover figures as such. No payment, no commission. So we’ll do all right. Overall, we won’t lose too much, and the share price will go up.”
“Excellent,” said Poupon.
Rosenblack slowly nodded. “And what about the fifteen percent profits?” he asked.
Dunker slowly took another sip of cognac. “You can leave that to me.”
Poupon smiled. “Perfect! But that’s bad news for you. The golden parachute of three million euros that’s provided for you in your contract in case of severance won’t be coming your way this year.”
Even Rosenblack made an effort to laugh, as the three men clinked glasses.
“You find us tough,” Poupon told Dunker, “but that’s how the world goes around: You’re tough with your colleagues, we’re tough with you, and our own clients are tough with us. We’ve always got someone above us, haven’t we?”
29
“I DON’T BELIEVE you. Not for a single second.”
The assertion came like a sentence with no possibility of appeal, followed by a heavy silence, under the depressing light cast by the old neon tube.
“But it’s the truth,” I protested, quite at a loss.
The policeman was walking back and forth behind his desk. I was perched uncomfortably on what looked like a little school chair. The place was really getting me down. I was hungry. Desperately hungry. And I was really pissed off.
“Let’s start again at the beginning.”
“It’s the fourth time …”
I had begun by trying to reply to the policeman’s questions as vaguely as possible, talking about a challenge I was supposed to meet, trying to make him believe, without overtly lying, that I was the victim of a sort of initiation rite. But the guy seemed to be taking the matter very seriously. All this for traveling without a ticket. Didn’t he have anything better to do? Finally, he trapped me by bombarding me with questions, cross-examining me until I had to spill the beans and tell him all about my relations with Dubreuil. Even so, he absolutely refused to believe me. So I tried as energetically as I could to convince him of my good faith, but the more I argued, the more he questioned what I was saying.
“You say you are following the instructions given by a man you don’t know, who is trying to help you but frightens you, who took your ID and dropped you off in his Mercedes at the other end of France to develop your coping skills. Is that right?”
“Yes, in a nutshell.”
“And you think I’m going to swallow something like that? In all the time I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!”
I would never be able to convince him. It would take me all evening, perhaps all night. I had to approach it differently. How could I persuade him I was telling the truth?
If you push, he’ll resist. Reverse the current.
I had an idea.
“There’s something else …” I said in a confessional tone of voice.
He couldn’t hide the hint of a smile, thinking he was about to make me fess up.
“What?”
I waited a few moments. “Oh, no, I can’t tell you.”
He stared at me, a little surprised. “Why not?”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “Because I don’t trust you.”
Imperceptibly, his face went purple. “What do you mean, don’t trust?”
I took my time. “I don’t trust … your ability to listen.”
“What are you talking about?” he stammered, getting redder and redder.
I looked down at the ground and put on a sad face. “It’s a private story, and I don’t want to confide in someone who can’t even be bothered to sit down to listen to me.”
He swallowed hard.
“And in any case,” I went on, “as you won’t believe me, there’s no point in talking to you about it.”
Several seconds went by. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel that he hadn’t taken his eyes off me. I could hear the sound of his breathing.
He sat down.
The silence lasted a long while.
I decided to tell him everything.
“I attempted suicide, a while ago. A man was there by chance. That’s what I thought, at least. He saved my life in exchange for my irrevocable promise to do all he asked. For my own good.”
He listened in silence.
“It’s a sort of pact,” I went on. “I accepted it of my own free will.”
The heat in the office was stifling. I needed air.
“And you’ve really done all he asked?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“You realize that if he made you do illegal things, you’re the one who’s responsible?”
“He hasn’t asked that. Besides, he didn’t explicitly tell me to take the train without a ticket. That’s not the problem.”
“Even so, I don’t understand why you followed his orders like that. You were free to end your agreement, after all. Anyone would have done so in your position.”
“I’ve often asked myself that. I don’t know, I think I attached too much importance to keeping my word.”
“Come on, come on, you’re not one of the Three Musketeers! Loyalty’s a good thing, but here your own interests are at stake.”
“Until recently, what he demanded of me was, I’ll grant you, difficult to do, but at the same time it brought me a lot. I felt as if I was getting somewhere.”
“I really don’t see how it’s brought you anything but trouble,” the policeman said.
“You know, I was very alone when I met him, and it’s very pleasant to have someone take an interest in you, look after you.”
“Wait. To sum up, he extorted your promise at a time when you were weak, desperate. He takes you in hand, you follow him to the letter, and you shut your eyes as to his intentions. Is that right? But that’s the way religious cults operate!”
“No, that’s not what frightens me. Besides, the cults are after your money. He asks nothing. Given his age and his wealth, he can’t be in need of much.”
“Come on. He’s not doing all this just to please you!”
“You’re right. That’s the problem. I don’t know what his motives are. I discovered recently he was having me followed and that he had begun that before the meeting at the Eiffel Tower.”
“So it wasn’t by chance he was there the day of your …”
“Suicide attempt. No, he wasn’t there by chance. But I’d never seen him before, I could swear. I don’t know why he had me followed before that either. I can’t explain it, and it’s driving me crazy.”
The old neon bulb flickered. The policeman looked at me, concerned. Having pushed me hard at the beginning of the interrogation, he now seemed to be expressing a certain empathy. I felt he was sincerely worried about my fate.
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“There’s nothing, absolutely nothing I can do,” he said, shaking his head. “If he hasn’t committed a crime, I can’t even start an investigation.”
“In his house, there’s a notebook filled with notes on me. The notes prove he is having me followed.”
“If the notebook is in his house, I don’t have access to it. We’d need a search warrant, and no judge would give us one, as there isn’t the slightest hint of an offense that’s been committed. In any case, it’s not against the law to follow people.”
“You know, the most complicated thing about this affair is that I have doubts,” I said. “And there’s a part of me that feels guilty at having told you all this.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I can’t be a hundred percent sure that his intentions are bad. I’ll admit I was frightened to discover he’d had me followed before our first meeting. But putting that aside, I can’t blame him for anything. Quite objectively, he’s done nothing harmful to me.”
“Look, you can’t rule out that he’s some old madman who thinks he’s God-knows-who and gets pleasure out of playing the role of a savior and mentor. The simplest thing is to tell him you don’t want to continue, that you’re breaking the pact. You say, ‘Thanks for everything, and good-bye,’ and that’s the end of it.”
“Impossible.”
“What’s to stop you?”
“I didn’t tell you, but … I promised on my life.”
“What do you mean, on your life?”
“I agreed to forfeit my life if I don’t do what he asks.”
He looked at me for a moment, completely dumbstruck.
“Is this a joke?”
“No.”
“You’re as mad as he is! Don’t ask me to help you now!”
“But you can’t leave me in danger, now that you’re aware of the situation!”
I cast a glance at the clock on the wall. “Right. I’ve got to be going, then,” I said, getting up. “I’ve got to be at his house at seven o’clock.”
The policeman looked at me without saying anything. Deep in thought, he suddenly leapt up, bothered.
“Wait. What proof is there that all this isn’t a fairy tale? That you haven’t completely invented this story to get home peacefully?”
He was frowning, his face crimson again.
“If you don’t believe me, come with me to his house.”
He was obviously not expecting this answer. He looked first at me, then at the clock.
“Where is it?”
I searched in my pockets and took out Dubreuil’s calling card, creased and limp as an old piece of material. He grabbed it and read it with a frown.
“In the sixteenth arrondissement?” he asked, recognizing the upscale address.
He hesitated a few seconds and then crossed the room to knock softly on a door.
“Sort it out yourself!” growled a voice on the other side.
The policeman thought for a moment, obviously torn between conflicting desires, and then went and opened a little metal cupboard. He got out a car key.
“Follow me!” he said.
An hour later, the policeman carefully put the key back in the cupboard. Still locked away in his office, his boss apparently hadn’t noticed his absence.
There was no time to lose. The case he had been waiting for for months had just dropped into his lap all on its own, exactly as he had hoped. The young man hadn’t lied. He had indeed gone into a mansion belonging to a certain Dubreuil. What a house! The policeman had never seen one like it. You didn’t find residences like that around the Gare de Lyon, the railroad station, or the other areas he was used to. Who could afford a thing like that? No doubt more dirty money, he said to himself.
He would have to investigate without arousing the suspicions of his boss, who wouldn’t fail to stop him or to take over what, he was sure, was going to allow him to reveal at last his real talents as a policeman.
The Gare de Lyon would soon have to make do without him.
30
THE HOUSE STOOD out against the twilight sky, a dark building full of mysteries and secrets.
I was taken to the library. Crossing the hall, I couldn’t help but glan
ce into the drawing room where I had seen the naked woman on the piano. The piano lay sadly abandoned in the semi-shade of the immense room, without either muse or musician to bring it to life.
I found Dubreuil comfortably settled in one of the library’s deep leather armchairs, smoking. I was sure he hadn’t had me followed from the village of Lacoste. It would have been mission impossible. So he couldn’t know I had confided in the police.
Catherine was sitting opposite me. She greeted me. On the low table in front of them, I recognized my wallet and the rest of my personal effects.
“You see, in the end, money’s useless. We can do without it very well!” Dubreuil said, an enormous Monte Cristo between his teeth.
What was he hiding behind his smile? What did this man want out of me in the end? Suppose the policeman was right? Perhaps he was the guru of some sect, or even a retired former guru, enriched with money extorted from his disciples, tormenting one last stray sheep to pass the time.
“By the way,” he went on, “you didn’t tell me how your interview with your director went.”
So many things had happened to me since then that it seemed a long way away.
“Not bad.”
I had been hungry for a day and a half, but Dubreuil didn’t seem in any hurry to sit down to dinner.
“Did you resist the temptation to justify yourself when he goaded you, and did you ask him embarrassing questions in return?”
“Yes, and it worked really well. On the other hand, I didn’t get much out of him. I wanted to negotiate additional resources for our department. I had to forget about that.”
“Did you try hard enough to enter his universe and share his way of thinking before you tried to convince him?”
“Yes, more or less. Let’s say I tried to demonstrate that my ideas served his requirements of efficiency and profitability. Anyhow, I think our values are so far apart that it would be impossible for me to endorse his vision of things, even to pretend. You know, it’s hard to assume the values of your enemy.”
Dubreuil puffed at his cigar.
The Man Who Risked It All Page 21