The Man Who Risked It All

by Laurent Gounelle

  “The idea isn’t to endorse to his values. If they’re not yours, it’s impossible. But it’s useful to make a distinction in your mind between the person and his values. Even if his values are despicable, the person can always be salvaged. So what counts is to stop judging those values for an instant and to tell yourself that even if they shock you, the only hope you have of making that person change his vision is to not reject him along with his ideas. Then, entering into his universe means trying to put yourself in his place, as if you were already in his skin, feeling from the inside what it is to believe what he believes, think what he thinks, and feel what he feels, before returning to your position. Only a process like this will allow you to really understand that person without judging him, to understand what motivates him and also what makes him go wrong, if that is the case.”

  “Hmm …”

  “There’s a difference between endorsing and understanding. If you put yourself in your boss’s shoes sufficiently to understand his way of thinking without judging him, you’ll be more tolerant of him, which he’ll feel. And from then on, you’ll be able to entertain the hope that he’ll change.”

  “I’m not sure that he has any idea what others think about him,” I said, “or if it even bothers him! But okay, let’s suppose that I manage to enter sufficiently into his universe for him not to feel judged or rejected. What is there to make him budge from his present position? Don’t I risk reinforcing his position instead?”

  “Remember the other day when we practiced synchronizing ourselves with the other’s gestures? I told you that after a while, if you do it long enough with the genuine intention of joining that person in their universe, then when you change your posture, the other person will start to follow you, even without realizing it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think this happens because a sort of fusion is created at a very deep, unconscious level, even if no words have been exchanged. That quality of relationship is felt in one way or another, and it is so rare that each person wants to preserve it, to make it last.”

  “I see …”

  “So, to reply to your previous question, I would say that if you manage, by entering without judgment into your enemy’s universe—by slipping into his skin, his feelings, and his way of thought—to create this quality of human relationship that is so rare that he has perhaps never experienced it before, deep down he will want to preserve it so much that you’ll only have to become yourself again, to naturally express your own values, for him to want to take an interest in them. You won’t need to ask him to change, or need to give him a lesson in morality. Being yourself will be enough, thanks to the relationship you have created. You will have unconsciously made him want to open himself up to you, to discover your values, and, in the end, to allow himself to be influenced a little by you and thereby to modify his position. To change, in other words.”

  “You mean that having met him on his own ground, I make him want to come and discover mine?”

  “Sort of. By being yourself, you present him with another model of the world, another vision of things, another way of behaving and acting, which he will be interested in without you having to criticize him or make demands.”

  “It reminds me of our conversation about Gandhi …”

  “Yes. We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

  I remained deep in thought. This perspective seemed very beautiful and admirable and, at the same time, difficult to realize. Would I have the desire, the courage, and the patience necessary to create the relationship that Dubreuil presented as an indispensable prerequisite to changing the other?

  “To live for the business seems so pathetic,” I told him. “When I was in the States, I knew a guy, Brian, who used to say: ‘You want to make God crack up? Tell him your plans!’”

  Catherine burst out laughing. I had forgotten she was there. Dubreuil took a sip of bourbon.

  “Perhaps, for your boss, it’s a way of forgetting the tragedy of his existence.”

  “The tragedy of his existence?”

  “Deep in our unconscious,” he went on, “we men are wounded by our inability to bear children and give life. I am utterly convinced that the professional ambition so prevalent in most of us comes from the unresolved need to compensate for this lack, to fill this sort of existential void.”

  I was dumbstruck. I had never imagined anything like that, never made such a connection. To me, the mad race for power was just the result of a mixture of aggressiveness and competitive energy, common masculine traits. It was strange to hear this from Dubreuil’s lips, since I had the definite feeling that he had a certain taste for power. Could he be this insightful about himself?

  After all, the misogyny of some men springs from an inferiority complex.

  “To get back to my situation in the office,” I said. “I don’t know if the managing director is jealous of his wife, but I can’t get anything out of him.”

  Dubreuil looked rather annoyed. Was it because I wasn’t succeeding in applying his teachings, or because he wasn’t able to transmit them as effectively as he would like?

  He tossed his cigar into a large brass ashtray.

  “You have within yourself all the necessary resources to take control of your life without passively accepting what others want to force on you,” he declared.

  He drank the remainder of his bourbon, banged the glass down on the coffee table, and stood up.

  Catherine kept her eyes down on her notes.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” he said with a Machiavellian smile, as he paced up and down in front of the bookcases. “It’s a new task you have to carry out.”

  “Yes?”

  “You think your managing director is mistaken, that his decisions are bad for the company?”

  “That seems obvious.”

  “You feel that the company should be managed differently, incorporating criteria other than purely financial ones?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So take his place.”

  “Very funny.”

  He looked me in the eyes. “I’m not joking, Alan.”

  “Yes, you are!”

  He frowned. “No, I assure you.”

  I suddenly had grave doubts. Was he really serious?

  Seeing my obvious embarrassment, he looked at me in silence for a few seconds.

  “What’s stopping you?” he asked in a honeyed voice.

  I was thrown off balance by the question; it seemed so incongruous. What do you reply to someone who kindly asks you what’s stopping you from becoming a foreign minister or an international star?

  “But that’s obvious,” I said. “Come on, let’s be realistic. There are limits to what we’re capable of doing.”

  “The only limits are the ones we give ourselves.”

  I could feel myself getting angry. I knew him too well to think he would let go now. I was in a mess. Obviously, the guy swung between moments of lucidity, subtle analysis, and wild ravings.

  “You do realize he’s not even my boss? He’s my boss’s boss’s boss! There are three levels in the hierarchy between us!”

  Catherine had looked up and was staring at Dubreuil now.

  “He who wants to climb the mountain mustn’t let its height impress him.”

  “But have you ever set foot inside a company? You can’t jump the rungs like that! There are rules!”

  “The person who obeys rules avoids thinking. If you think inside the box, the only solutions you’ll find are those that everyone else has already thought of. You have to think outside the box.”

  “Fine words, but what exactly would you do in my place?”

  He sat on the arm of his chair and smiled as he looked at me.

  “Find out for yourself, Alan. Dig into your resources.”

  I got up, determined to leave. I wasn’t going to stay and have dinner with a madman.

  “There’s no way I can do that.”

  He spoke slowly, in a deep vo
ice: “It’s your last mission. Carry it out, and I will give you back your freedom.”

  My freedom. I looked up at him. He was smiling.

  “You can’t make my freedom depend on an impossible task. I won’t accept that.”

  “But you’re not in a position to choose, my dear Alan. Do I have to remind you of your promise?”

  “How can I keep my promise if you make it impossible to do so?”

  His eyes bore down on me with a look that was imperious, demanding, pitiless.

  “I order you to become the managing director of Dunker Consulting.”

  I met his gaze.

  “I’m giving you three weeks,” he said.

  “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s an order. Whatever happens, meet me on August 29th. I’ll be waiting for you at eight o’clock at the Jules Verne.”

  My heart skipped a beat. The Jules Verne is the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. As he said it, he lowered his voice, pronouncing the name very slowly, without taking his eyes off me. The threat was clear, awful. I felt my legs go weak. My past hopes were vain. I was definitely in the hands of a madman.

  We remained motionless and silent, face-to-face, then I turned around. Walking to the door, I caught Catherine’s eyes. She looked as appalled as I did.

  31

  “YVES DUBREUIL DOESN’T exist,” the policeman told me over the phone.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard right: Yves Dubreuil doesn’t exist.”

  “I was with him two hours ago.”

  “His real name is Igor Dubrovski.”

  When I heard the name, I immediately felt vaguely uneasy without knowing why.

  “He’s a White Russian,” the policeman went on, “a nobleman. His parents left Russia at the time of the revolution. They took their fortune with them. Apparently, it was one heap of dough. Then Igor was educated in France and the States. He became a psychiatrist.”

  “Psychiatrist?”

  “Yes, a psychiatrist. But he hasn’t practiced much.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t get that info now, on a Sunday. It would appear he was struck off the register of doctors. I was told it’s very rare for that to happen, so he must have done something serious. If I were you, I’d watch out.”

  At that moment I heard someone bellowing in the background. Snatches of conversation: “Who are you talking to? Who is it?” Then muffled sounds. The policeman must be putting his hand over the receiver.

  “Headquarters has phoned,” he told me when he resumed our conversation. “They say you’ve been asking for records. What are you up to? I don’t want any hassle. You follow me? And also …”

  I heard the beeping noise of a broken connection. He must have hung up. I suddenly felt alone, very alone, with a rising wave of anxiety.

  I put down the phone. My apartment seemed very quiet, very empty. I was dumbfounded. The simple fact that Dubreuil had lied to me about his identity made me feel deeply uneasy. The man I had confided in wasn’t who I thought he was.

  Something serious. How serious could it be?

  The physical and nervous fatigue that had built up since my kidnapping 24 hours earlier hit me like a sledgehammer, and I suddenly felt drained. I turned out the lights and curled up in bed, but in spite of my exhaustion, sleep didn’t come.

  Fear slowly took possession of me as the terms of my promise to Dubreuil came to mind: On your life.

  This guy was quite capable of carrying out his threat. I was certain of that now.

  I woke up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat. An answer had come to me in my sleep, at an hour when the unconscious, now the only one in charge, can find a lost memory in the bottomless pit of knowledge, experiences, and information that we’ve long since forgotten. Dubrovski was the name of the man who had written the article on suicide I had read—the one that revealed how to reach the girders of the Eiffel Tower, presented as an ideal place for a spectacular suicide.

  32

  I SPENT THE next day in a strange state. Apart from the insidious fear that accompanied me all the time now, I again felt dreadfully alone. That was even harder to bear than the fear.

  In this hostile universe, only Alice found favor in my eyes. Granted, she was just a colleague, not a friend, but I valued her genuineness, her naturalness. I felt she quite simply liked me, without any ulterior motive. That was already a lot.

  I saw four candidates during the day—strangers, of course, who talked about their lives in a favorable light. I found myself envying them, wishing I was in their place, pursuing a path they hoped would lead to a career, without asking metaphysical questions about the meaning of their lives. I wanted to become their friend, forgetting that their warm expressions were simply aimed at gaining my favor as a recruiter.

  I left the office early. Outside my apartment building, I lingered with Étienne on the old stone stairs. I don’t know why his presence and his serene expression reassured me so much. We talked about anything and everything while eating the still-warm apple turnovers I had bought at the bakery across the street.

  Later, I searched my apartment from top to bottom, going through it with a fine-tooth comb to unearth any hidden microphones. I found nothing.

  Then I went on the Internet. I typed Igor Dubrovski into Google and with a knot in my stomach launched the search. I found 703 results, most in unknown languages, probably Russian. I scrolled through the search results until I found one in French. The entry was a list of names, each one followed by a percentage: Bernard Vialley 13.4%; Jérôme Cordier 8.9%; Igor Dubrovski 76.2% …

  The URL was societe.com, a site containing financial information on companies. The Igor Dubrovski listed there was probably only someone with the same name, but I clicked on the link to be sure. The webpage listed shareholders in a company called Luxares SA. Probably no relation to the Igor Dubrovki I was looking for.

  Back to Google and the list of results. Another in French, with the words “Did Dubrovski kill François Littrec?” I shuddered. The information was published on an online news site, lagazettedetoulouse.com. My heart was beating faster and faster as I clicked on the link. Error message. Page can’t be found. Damn. Why don’t people update their links? Back to Google.

  I scrolled through listings for other news sites, clicking on articles reporting on what was in all likelihood the same incident. “The Dubrovski Affair: When the accused takes control,” read one post. I clicked on it. The text was a commentary on trial proceedings, but instead of revealing the charges in the case, it described the behavior of Dubrovski at the trial. He had constantly corrected his lawyer and, in the end, had spoken in his place. According to the article, the jurors had been visibly unsettled by his contributions.

  The jurors … So it was a Cours d’Assise, an assize court. That’s the court that hears serious criminal cases, like murder.

  I looked at another article, entitled, “Will We Know the Truth One Day?” The journalist explained the reversal of the court’s findings and expressed surprise that a man presented by the police as obviously guilty had managed to sow doubt in the jurors’ minds.

  Several other articles said more or less the same thing. All dated from the 1970s, more than 30 years ago. An article from Le Monde was titled “Freud, Wake Up. They’ve Gone Mad!” I clicked on it. It was bylined Jean Calusacq and dated 1976. A long text, it was, above all, a denunciation of the psychiatrist Igor Dubrovski’s methods, described as dangerous. I shuddered. It was him. The author attacked the psychotherapeutic models, American in origin, that were preached by Dubrovski, virulently denouncing the validity of his work. The article left no doubt as to Dubrovski’s guilt: Evidently he had induced young François Littrec to commit suicide under conditions that were still mysterious. Calusacq wanted his head.

  I was dismayed. I was in the hands of a dangerous psychiatrist, obviously crazier than the people he was supposed to be treating when he had still been practicing. My God.

  I found o
ther articles. The word acquitted suddenly leapt at me. “Dubrovski Acquitted,” said a headline in Le Parisien. “Dubrovski’s acquittal raises issues for the whole profession,” the article suggested. “How can the court have released a man whose guilt was so obvious?”

  Another article wondered if the psychiatrist hadn’t hypnotized the jurors to influence their vote, reporting the disturbing testimony of people who had been present at the hearing. Two others ran headlines about Dubrovski being stripped of his license by the Medical Board, while also denouncing the board for refusing to make public the reasons for the sanctions.

  I had read enough.

  With a knot in my stomach, I switched my computer off. I had to protect myself and get out of this mess. But how? One thing was sure: It wouldn’t be by trying to carry out the mission impossible Dubreuil had given me.

  33

  I HAD BEEN going over all the possibilities in my head for two days without satisfaction. I had to face it: There was nothing I could do as long as the police refused to protect me. Finally I had to admit that my only hope was to convince Dubreuil to retract his demand and give up this final mission. It was the most sensible thing to do. I was going to turn his teaching to good account by using it against him, to make him change his mind.

  I constructed a detailed scenario, preparing a series of attitudes, questions, and arguments, anticipating every possible objection and reaction he might have. I spent several days putting the finishing touches on my approach, until I realized that I had been ready for a long time and that my extensive preparations could be explained only as my desire to put off their implementation. Dubreuil frightened me, and I was afraid to go back into his lair and throw myself deliberately into his clutches.

  I finalized the plan of action. I decided to turn up unannounced one evening after dinner, at a time when his energy would no doubt be at its lowest but before the departure of the servants.

  So I reached the avenue around 9:30 P.M. I got off the bus at the stop before his house, so I could breathe deeply and relax by walking. The lime trees perfumed the air, but the warm air smelled of thunderstorm.