The Man Who Risked It All Page 12

  He concluded from this that consultants knew nothing about their work and were easy to deceive. One day, Marc’s employer revealed the amount of the fee he had paid to recruit him. To Marc, it was an astronomical sum for a job that seemed to be very close to his father’s. He decided it was easier to convince a company of the supposed qualities of a candidate than to sell a farmer on the physical attributes of a cow—assets the farmer could easily check for himself.

  Six months later, Marc went into business for himself. After completing a crash course in recruitment methods, he rented a one-room office in the center of Lyon and put up a sign: Marc Dunker, Recruitment Consultant. What he took away from the course was that his flair was worth more than any of their techniques for selecting a candidate. And the fact is, he seldom failed. He was a natural. He had an intuitive sense of people and companies, and which candidates were going to fit a post.

  The first clients were the hardest to find. Without references, he wasn’t credible. When people pointed that out to him, he became strangely aggressive. He started lying, inventing prestigious clients for himself, tossing around the names of companies whose business he had supposedly turned down on the grounds that they were too small to be worthy of his services. This attitude paid off, and he got his first contracts, quickly followed by others.

  Marc Dunker’s new trade fitted him like a glove. The middle-class people who had looked down on his family in the past now depended on him for jobs. He felt feared and respected. People were eating out of his hand. He would have liked to control the whole recruitment market in Lyon, just to increase their dependence on him.

  All his success, however, was not enough to repair his wounded ego. Something inside him was always pushing him to do more to develop his business and to gain more power and authority in his field. Always a hard worker, he redoubled his efforts to establish his company.

  By the end of the first year, Dunker already employed three consultants. But instead of being satisfied, he was driven to go even further. Six months later, Dunker opened an office in Paris and immediately moved to the capital. At that point, he renamed the company Dunker Consulting. After that, he opened a new office in a provincial town every three months on average.

  Dunker measured his success by the number of his employees, his obsession being to increase his staff. He derived great satisfaction from “multiplying the flock,” as he liked to put it, not realizing that the colloquialisms he used revealed the provincial origins he otherwise carefully hid. His personal value seemed to be intimately linked to the number of people he had under his command, his power measured by the extent of his troops.

  The meteoric rise of his company allowed Dunker to establish himself abroad, and when he opened his first office in another European capital, he felt he was conquering the world.

  Two years later, in the supreme consecration, he decided to go public.

  13

  EVERY DAY FOR a week, I had arrived at the office with my copy of Closer under my arm. The sidelong glances of my colleagues, obvious to begin with, had given way to complete indifference. I had to admit that my relations with those around me hadn’t changed at all. Nonetheless, I still felt a certain embarrassment, even if it was diminishing. It would take me some time to be really free, according to Dubreuil’s definition.

  In the apartment, I was making fewer efforts to be quiet than before. I had accepted that it was okay to make a normal amount of noise, which nonetheless didn’t fail to provoke almost daily visits from Madame Blanchard. I no longer sought to avoid her visits, but they still managed to annoy me prodigiously. It seemed as if nothing could stop her from harassing me. Having been very patient, I now openly expressed my exasperation, opening the door just a crack to show her that she was disturbing me. But she would come right up to the opening as if to force her way in. Frowning, with an accusatory expression on her face, she would harangue me in her shrill, moralizing voice.

  The day after my most recent visit to Dubreuil I had just entered my office building and was waiting for the elevator with two colleagues from another department when I received a text message from Dubreuil: “Have a cigarette right away.”

  What was that about? He wanted me to have a cigarette?

  The elevator doors opened. My colleagues dived in.

  “Don’t wait for me,” I said.

  Why was Dubreuil asking me to smoke when my goal was to stop? I went back out to the street and lit up. Was he going soft in the head? As I smoked, I was gazing at the passersby hurrying to work, when I saw a man who looked like Vladi standing motionless in the crowd. I leaned forward to try and get a better look, and he immediately turned around.

  “Vladi! Vladi!” I called.

  The man disappeared from sight.

  I felt a certain unease. I was almost certain it was Vladi. Was he following me? But why? Surely Dubreuil wasn’t asking him to make sure I was keeping my promise? That would be insane. What did he care, after all. Or should I be seriously worried and try to find out why he was taking an interest in me?

  I went back into the lobby, a knot in my stomach.

  In the corridor on my floor, I passed Luc Fausteri’s office. He was already at work, which meant that he must have shortened his morning run. Most unusually, his door was open. Generally, he preferred to shut himself in, to isolate himself as far as possible from the members of his team.

  This open door was an opportunity not to be missed. I had a mission to carry out. Be brave, I told myself. It would be all the harder to get Luc to say marionette because there was nobody in the world less chatty than him.

  I said hello as I went in. He waited until I was less than a yard from him before looking up. We shook hands, but that didn’t elicit even the slightest smile.

  I tried to strike up a conversation, reminding myself of Dubreuil’s famous secret. God, how hard it is to embrace a world you don’t like. “The share’s at one hundred and twenty-eight, this morning,” I said with false cheer. “It has gone up point two percent in just one day’s trading, and nearly one percent this week.”

  “Yes.”

  He was obviously in brilliant form. I must fuel the conversation, talk with enthusiasm, and show my keen interest in the subject. If he felt a meeting of minds, he would open up to me.

  “What’s surprising is that it’s gone up fourteen percent since the beginning of the year, whereas our half-yearly results are up twenty-three percent. It’s not very logical.”

  “No.”

  “The stock is obviously underpriced …”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, it’s not representative of the real value of the company.”

  “No.”

  This was uphill work. But I had to carry on, come what may. I couldn’t allow a break in the conversation.

  “It’s a real shame. It would be better if the stock price followed our results since they’re good.”

  Fausteri didn’t even take the trouble to reply but merely looked at me as if he didn’t understand how someone could spout such drivel.

  I felt a hint of shame. Just a hint. After all, he already thought I was a faithful reader of Closer. There was no risk of disappointing him. On we go.

  “It’s a good share. It ought to do brilliantly.”

  He frowned. I went on, doubling my enthusiasm. “If I were a trader, I’d put everything on it.”

  He began to look sorry, even distressed, shutting himself in behind his silence.

  Right. Let’s change tactics. Ask questions, I thought. “How do you explain this gap between our results and the share price?”

  A few seconds of silence, during which Fausteri remained perfectly motionless. He was probably gathering his strength and courage to communicate with the village idiot.

  “There are several reasons,” he finally said. “First of all, the financial markets are less concerned with past results than with future prospects.”

  “But our future prospects are good. Larcher tells us so every M
onday morning!”

  “Then, too, the stock exchange is affected by psychological factors,” he said with slight contempt.

  “Psychological factors?”

  He cast around for inspiration. He obviously derived no pleasure from being a teacher.

  “Fears, rumors. And then there’s Fisherman.”

  “Fisherman?”

  “He’s the business columnist on Les Echos”—I knew enough to know that was a business daily, France’s answer to The Wall Street Journal—“who doesn’t believe in our development and says so day in, day out in his paper. That no doubt has an effect on our investors, because his opinions are influential. It makes you wonder why.”

  “Suppose someone is pulling his strings? Suppose Fisherman is his … what’s the word?”

  “I can’t see in whose interest that would be.”

  For goodness’ sake, why couldn’t he just answer questions?

  “But Fisherman has no personal interest in putting the brakes on the rise in our share price,” I suggested. “And if that’s not the case, there must be people pushing him to pan us in his paper. Fisherman is just their …”

  I pretended to fish for the right word, accompanying my efforts with gestures to indicate my memory lapse.

  “I’m no great fan of conspiracy theories,” Fausteri muttered.

  “Oh! It’s so annoying,” I continued. “I hate not being able to find a word! What do you call someone who is manipulated by someone else? He’s his …”

  “Look, Alan, I’ve got work to do.”

  “Just answer this question! My day will be ruined if I can’t find the word.”

  “Concentrate on your work, and everything will be fine.”

  “The word’s on the tip of my tongue,” I insisted.

  “All right, spit it out, but not in my office.”

  On the one occasion he was trying to be funny, I didn’t feel like laughing. Quick, I had to make him reply.

  “Give me the word, and I promise I’ll disappear at once.”

  “Puppet.”

  I looked at him, speechless.

  “No, that’s not it … another word.”

  “This is beginning to be annoying.”

  “Give me a synonym,” I pleaded.

  “Pawn. He’s his pawn. Is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it either.”

  “Anyhow, it will have to do.”

  “Give me another synonym.”

  “I’m busy, Alan.”

  “Please.”

  “Good-bye, Alan.”

  His tone was final, and he plunged back into his file without looking up again.

  I walked out of Fausteri’s office slightly frustrated. Okay, I had put up a good fight. That was something. In fact, my mistake had probably been my enthusiasm. To embrace his world, as Dubreuil had said, it wasn’t enough to bring up a subject that interested him; perhaps I should have adopted his style of communication: serious, rational, concise. Better still, if I had enjoyed our interaction. But would that have made him talk more? Not certain. At any rate, I had come close to succeeding all the same.

  I had scarcely sat down in my office when Alice came in to talk about negotiations she was carrying out with a client. We had been together about ten minutes when I recognized Fausteri’s footsteps in the corridor. He walked past my office, then took a step back and stuck his head in my door, his face as impassive as ever.

  “Marionette!” he said, and then walked on.

  Alice turned toward me, outraged that my boss had insulted me like that.

  I was radiant.

  14

  WOULD MY TASK be harder with Grégoire Larcher, Fausteri’s boss? I wasn’t sure. If Fausteri didn’t like conversations devoid of intellectual interest, Larcher couldn’t bear any that distracted him from his objectives. Each second of his time must be invested in building his success.

  Nonetheless, this left an opening. As a skillful manipulator, he would occasionally agree to exchange twaddle if he felt that it would help his colleague. A fulfilled employee is a productive employee, Larcher figured, and in the end, there was a lot to be gained that way.

  So I didn’t have too much difficulty getting him to talk about his children. This brought us to weekends and excursions with the children, and marionettes cropped up in the conversation as naturally as could be.

  Manipulating a manipulator was rather pleasurable, actually.

  I got five text messages from Dubreuil during the day, each time making me go down to the street to smoke a cigarette. I still didn’t understand the real reason for it.

  My day finished in Alice’s office, where she again confided in me her worry about the dysfunction of the company. Thomas came to say good-bye as he left, waving under our noses the latest BlackBerry he had just acquired. An irresistible urge suddenly came over me.

  “I met an impressive candidate today,” I said. “A great guy.”

  Every time anyone said anything good about someone in front of Thomas, his smile froze, as if his value was suddenly placed in peril by the other person’s achievements.

  “He’s an ex-finance director,” I continued. “Very clever and incredibly classy. A real class act!”

  Alice looked at me, a little surprised by my choice of words.

  I kept on. “He got out a pen to take notes. Guess what it was?”

  “A Mont Blanc?” Thomas said, thinking of the pen he was always waving around in front of people.

  “Bad luck. Try again.”

  “Go on, what was it?” he said with a forced smile.

  “A Dupont. With a gold nib! Can you believe it? A Dupont!”

  I opened my eyes wide to underline my words. Thomas’s smile looked strained. I saw from Alice’s expression that she understood my little game.

  “A real Dupont?” she asked, pretending to be incredulous.

  “Really.”

  “Wow! What a guy!” Alice said, continuing to play along.

  “One thing’s for sure. You don’t see one of those every day,” I added.

  Now Alice was unstoppable. “It really gives off the image of a winner,” she enthused. “In my opinion, he’s not going to have any problems finding a great job.”

  I wondered how far we could go before Thomas would start getting suspicious.

  “I’m sure all the girls fancy him,” Alice said.

  “You bet!” I agreed.

  Now we were going too far, I figured. But Thomas just continued to look annoyed. He was so convinced that people valued him because of the objects he displayed that he was unable to see the absurdity of what we were saying. It was too close to his vision of the world.

  Finally he wished us good night and left. We waited for him to be out of earshot, then burst out laughing.

  It was nearly 8 P.M., and I soon left the office myself. When I got to the sidewalk, I couldn’t help glancing around. Nobody seemed to be looking for me. I went down into the Métro but had to turn around and come right out again: Dubreuil was texting me to have another cigarette. The coincidence in the timing was disturbing. I looked carefully around again. There were fewer pedestrians passing by at this late hour, but I spotted nothing out of the ordinary.

  Three minutes later, I was again in the Métro. I decided to have a go at gestural synchronization, which I had neglected until now. I had preferred to approach the universe of the other by trying to take on his way of thinking, his worries, and his values.

  A train came into the station with a screeching of wheels as shrill as the sound of chalk on a blackboard. A homeless guy slouched on a bench grunted something incomprehensible, spreading a strong smell of alcohol all around him. The train came to an abrupt halt in front of me, and I got on. Dubreuil had promised that his method would allow me to create a relationship with people of very different cultures and attitudes than mine. I glanced at the few passengers in the car, spotting a tall African dressed in a tracksuit and black leather jacket. The jacket was open, revealing a fishnet T-
shirt through which I could see his powerful chest muscles. I sat down opposite him, and then slouched down to adopt the same posture as his. I tried to meet his gaze, but he seemed lost in space. I tried to feel what he might be feeling, the better to enter into his world. Not easy. I was, it’s true, feeling a little buttoned-up in my suit. I loosened my tie and imagined I was dressed like him, with the same heavy gold chain around my neck. It was a strange sensation. He soon changed position, and I immediately did the same. I had to keep contact.

  I didn’t take my eyes off him. A few seconds later, he crossed his arms. I crossed mine. I wondered how long it usually took to really create a link, so that he would start mirroring my movements. I really wanted to experience that. The man stretched out his legs. I waited a moment then stretched out mine. I wasn’t used to sitting slouched like this in the Métro, though I found it quite fun. Besides, I had never tried to put myself in the shoes of someone very different from myself, to behave like them and see what happened. The man put his hands on his thighs; I imitated him. He was staring straight in front of himself, but I don’t think he was really seeing me. He had a fixed expression on his face, which I tried to replicate. We stayed like that for a few moments, still perfectly in synch. His gaze remained inscrutable, but it seemed to me that something was bringing us closer. I was certain he must be feeling that we were on the same wavelength. He sat up straight in the seat, and I did the same. Then he looked me right in the eye, and I could tell he was going to say something. I was ecstatic. I had managed to create a bond with a stranger and force him to open himself to me. I marveled at the power of gesture over the unconscious, the superiority of the body over the word.

  The man leaned forward, his expression serious, and with a heavy African accent said, “Ya finished taking da piss, mon?”

  15

  THE NEXT MORNING, I arrived at the weekly meeting feeling quite carefree, never suspecting that I was going to live through one of the worst moments of my life, a moment that would also be the start of the most beneficial change possible.