Pi

I don’t like math. As a child, my teacher, Mrs. Loezle, rapped me on the knuckles until the table of 7s “sunk into my skull”, as she put it. And yet, I’ve learned that they can benefit me. In fact, she’d be surprised, if she were still alive, how much I use them. A tragic traffic accident. An unidentified hit-and-run driver cut her off at the start of a bend. The braking marks found at the scene leave no doubt. She skidded off the road and tumbled into the ravine. I suspect the journalist who produced her obituary in the local paper was also one of her former students. He wrote, and I quote: “The numbers don’t lie. Once she lost control of her vehicle, the fall and death became inevitable.” I confess it’s not just a guess. I checked it out. She hammered him on the spelling too.

I often let my mind wander when I’m waiting for things to fall into place. Especially at this late hour. I have a few teams that allow me to see what’s going on without having to leave my home. You could say I’m a homebody. My house is comfortable and properly equipped. Why would I want to leave it? There’s so much hostility, even violence, out there. Drivers are a perfect example of the generalized aggressivity. I can do without. Besides, everything is far from beautiful. On the contrary, my wife has good taste. I don’t deny that there can be some magnificent graffiti, but most of them are little more than paint drips that don’t speak well of their executor.

On the screens in front of me, the images start to come in. I’ve assigned three people to this mission. A sort of hobby. My closest collaborators consider it a waste of time. But I have the means. I count a lot of money every day. So I can afford this small diversion. Mrs. Loezle would have clarified: a simple subtraction.

A, B and C follow a middle-aged woman whom, unfortunately, I cannot name. Let’s call her X in memory of other maths teachers. She’s walking between the cars, towards the entrance to Hard Rock Stadium. The Florida air is still sticky despite the hour. The sun has set, but the asphalt is glowing. X is starting to sweat now that she’s left the air-conditioned comfort of her rental car. Halos are forming under her arms and down her back.

“A, would you please move in front of the target to change the angle of view?”

A doesn’t answer. Still, the image shows that she has just accelerated. It won’t be long before she’s looking over her shoulder so I can see X.

Her curly hairs are beginning to thin. Don’t put words in my mouth. She’s by no means going bald, but the exuberance of her hairs are now just a testament to a glorious past. She wears round glasses with bright red frames, probably the only outward sign of her status as an artist. Otherwise, her outfit is totally banal and my “eyes” have to work hard not to lose her in the crowd. A, B and C are professionals. That’s why I hired them.

They’re all equipped with microcameras connected to their phones, which broadcast live everything they see. One uses a Google glass, the other a camera hidden in a hair clip, and finally one in the button of his polo shirt. Keeping the frame while the latter two can’t make out the image requires real experience, but the resulting risk of being noticed becomes much lower.

The first hurdle is always getting through the security checks, but all three of them managed it without a hitch. After that, it’s just a matter of tailing the target without falling behind. Once the concert starts, it’ll get simpler. There’ll be no reason to move, and it’ll be easy for them to justify staying close to X. Did I mention that X is going to the Taylor Swift concert? For the sake of accuracy, let me add that it’s October 17, 2026.

It’s fascinating to see a crowd drawn to one individual. Of course, there’s a whole team around Taylor. A big team, in fact. But officially, she’s the only artist in the troupe. Still, I have my doubts. How can someone create so many hits? There’s the record company rhetoric about the genius of their colts, and those who denounce the industry, arguing that it’s all premade mush for the masses, that it’s all the result of algorithms that produce what the average person wants to hear. I have to say that I have adhered to this second school for most of the past 20 years. I hired mathematicians. They sweat on this problem for months, but couldn’t find the key. They told me it was just a matter of statistics, and that with enough computing power, they could solve it. I doubt they’ll be able to use this argument as easily in the future. Did I ever tell you that I don’t like mathematics? So I used other methods, the ones I know best in my line of work. You might even say I’m an expert. And that’s why, tonight, I’m watching X go to the concert.

The sound isn’t very good. It’s too loud for the little microphones my “eyes” have. And then they’re subjected to the screams of their neighbors. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t like all that fanfare anyway. At home, the only music allowed is that of nature. I can listen to the sound of the surf for hours. It helps me concentrate. It’s white noise, which means there’s no danger. That’s why babies fall asleep to white noise, even if it’s loud. It’s the suddenness, the difference, that can represent a threat. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to learn this, and some people will listen to music at any time. It’s a constant call for attention. The brain can’t let itself go. It has to work hard to make sure that none of it is dangerous. How can you hope to concentrate on a serious subject when you’re detaching some of your cognitive capacity to useless labor?

The crowd around X sings the lyrics, transformed by the experience. It’s as if there’s any kind of interest in what’s being said, some sort of message. For her part, X refrains, but listens. A has achieved her objective very well. She manages to grant me a good frontal image of her face. Given the angle, I assume it’s “hairpin” and that she’s standing just one row in front of X. C provides me with a side view. I can make out X’s fingers beating out the rhythm.

The song has just ended and another forms. Yet, the crowd hesitates. People wonder, questioning each other with a glance, confirming their ignorance with a shrug. However X is already pausing the tempo with his left hand. His neighbors begin, groping their way through the rhythm too. But this time, they’re not singing along with Taylor. That’s it, it’s the chorus now. They’ve lost track of the music and are standing still. They’ll do better next time, in a few dozen seconds at most. X maintains his tapping. On the second repeat, they start humming, indecisive, but X is still not with them. My heart beats a little faster. She knows this song that the others seem to ignore.

The rest is no longer my concern. I go on to dispense a few directions to my “eyes”, but in reality I don’t care. At the end of the concert, I shot my instructions.

“You can continue to follow me, but you don’t have to give me a retransmission. You’ll give me your report. A, you stay in charge. It’s your responsibility to keep your teams running, but I want a daily report.”

***

The reports spread out in my daily messages, without any interest, but I can’t stop looking at them. They’re so insipid that if they discovered a little anecdote, the slightest hint of novelty, my “eyes” would wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me. I almost expect them to end up giving me the menu of what she eats, or even to calculate the calories absorbed by deducting waste from the quantities purchased.

X returned to Montréal, where she usually nests. My trackers are bored, so the photos they send me have acquired an aesthetic quality. Maybe it’s just the season. The leaves on the trees are turning yellow and red. The park is magnificent, and as she lives in a relatively large house set against the hill, the foliage of the maples becomes easily visible.

Still, I had my doubts this morning, so I checked. Almost four months ago, when the surveillance started, they were providing me more close-ups, where you could just make out the window of the property. Now, they tend to send me photos of X as she enters or leaves her home, encompassing the entire pavilion as well as the surrounding trees. I’m not saying they didn’t before, or that they only take wide shots now. But I’ve done the math. The proportion of the general views has increased by 12% since the start of the Indian summer. I’ve even checked that the difference is statistically significant. Mrs. Loezle would be proud of me, despite the fact that I didn’t learn these tools from her. Still, she would point out that this rigor comes from the first lessons. She’s always made everything about her!

Well, we’ll have to get moving soon. It’s getting expensive, even with minimal supervision, and if the teams get bored, they’ll become lax. Nevertheless, I’m curious. What might this house and its surroundings look like in winter, when the trees are bare and the ground is bleached and softened by snow? Well, that’s it for the photos today, let’s take a glimpse at the report.

Despite their best efforts, they still can’t recover all her communications. She makes very little use of e-mail, and the messaging system is secure. They’ve placed a tracker on her physical line, and at least they manage to find all the websites she visits. But since those secret service jerks got detected, most web pages are encrypted too. I know the site, but not what she’s looking at in detail. You’d have to be really dumb to have let yourself be caught red-handed. Sheep are normally so docile.

Well, sometimes incomplete information is enough. They spotted that she’d been browsing “Expedia” and just after that, the bank’s site was visited, just for a moment. She booked a trip. As she had looked at the Seoul Arena site less than 20 minutes before, and had also logged on to her bank for a few seconds to enter a password, there was no need to guess. She’s off to Seoul for a concert. It remains to be seen when. I’d put my money on mid-November. There’s a Jung Kook show. It’s the best thing ever in the solo career of an ex-member of a K-pop group. He’ll be singing at home. Sure, that’s where she’s going. I’ve got to arrange on-site surveillance. I need to get her flight dates, too.

“Go Italians! We’ll have to work. ”

I know, I’m being cliché. It’s just a habit from my youth. I’ve since learned not to rely on it. The best people are rarely those who come from the inner circle. It’s the ones who have had to prove themselves who should be hired. They have the ruses and the persistence, whereas the “sons of” only have the tricks, which they apply unimaginatively.

***

This morning, my oatmeal has a special flavor. My wife forces me to eat it rather than a buttered baguette. She says it’s good for my blood sugar. That may be true, but with autumn fruit, it’s a bit bland. I won’t admit it to her. However I have to concede it suits me. I don’t get the 10 o’clock craving anymore, and today it’s going to come in handy.

I’m in my office, and I’ve turned on my screens. On the one on the right, I’m maintaining the track of all the operations in progress. It’s something I’m very proud of. My teams keep me informed at all times. Something Dad never understood. He always thought you had to impose yourself by force. “A beating is good for the squad’s morale,” he used to say to anyone who would listen. That’s why he was never able to expand. I hold them by their loyalty. They know I can be tough, but fair. Our line of business is not without risk. I have to accept that there are bound to be hiccups once in a while. Also, they have to trust me to talk about it. We can limit the misses, even allocate some resources to make up for them if possible. But if they keep quiet because they’re afraid to tell me they’ve screwed something up, then I’ll find out too late. It’s not complicated, but he was not able to understand that. What’s the point of giving someone concrete slippers? That would be at least as much my mistake as his. He should never have found himself in a position of responsibility involving sufficient resources to justify the sanction. That’s how I globalized. You have to trust people. In fact, that’s what I’m concentrating on. Checking that I can continue to trust. For the rest, I retain my little special operations that I manage directly. It keeps me in shape.

On the center’s screen, I receive images from the Seoul trackers. X is in the subway. She’s on her way to the Seoul Arena. I was right! It’s already night in Korea, and visibly cold. X is wearing a heavy coat and a beanie, the same ones I’ve seen in photos of her on Mont-Royal lately. She doesn’t spend on her wardrobe. She’s also having her round, red glasses. I like them. They amuse me. My wife would never wear these. Not distinguished enough. She has very strong ideas about what a bourgeoise should dress with.

She’s gone to the equestrian club de la Clairière in Rambouillet. We keep two horses there. I rectify. She has two horses there, although one is theoretically mine. I’m not interested at all, but she tells me it’s essential to maintain our status. Frankly, it’s perfect she rides my chestnut as often as hers; otherwise the poor thing wouldn’t leave her stall much. So she has to walk two horses today unless it’s the other way round. In any case, it’s matching my time. It eliminates the risk of interruption.

X finally got out of the subway. I was right. There’s no doubt about it: she’s going to the Jung Kook concert. His diaphanous white, makeup-covered face is visible at every turn in the corridor leading to the entrance. When I see him, I always think of the nobles of the Regency period and their powdered wigs.

“It’s confirmed for tonight. You’ll be able to broadcast live. My technical team will contact you to finalize the details. I’m counting on you to give us good feedback. There will be many subscribers.”

“Yes, sir. It’s going to be incredible to air a Jung Kook concert live. It’s a first. It’s going to break everything.”

His rattling voice annoys me, but I’ve been told he’s the best. He knows all about this singer. While the cops are after him for “theft of intellectual property”, we’ll have time to clear out our tracks, while making a lot of money. This little operation has to pay off, once in a while.

X came in, and so did my trackers. I assigned in more, because Korean sit at a concert. I only knew the area where X had reserved, but not his exact seat. As a result, I had to cover the entire zone. That’s what gave me the idea for the retransmission. I’m going to have a lot of “eyes” who won’t to be able to observe the target. They might as well be good for something. I don’t like to waste.

She sits down.

“Damned. You’d think she did it on purpose.”

She’s just taken a seat where I have the least supervision. The seats were already booked when we organized the operation. No choice. Anyway, we’re not close to the stage, so it should be easier. People won’t move. They’ll just listen. If I can arrange one or two viewpoints, that should be enough. I look at the floor plan of my “eyes”. I should be fine.

“23 and 42 you maintain contact with the target. The rest of you concentrate on the show.”

Now all we have to do is holding on. I’m going to pour myself a little coffee. It’ll keep me waiting. I love that childlike feeling of excitement at the start of an operation. I finally understand Dad. He never wanted to leave the field. It’s true that nowadays I’m almost just a manager.

The rumble of the machine grinding the grain already soothes me. It’s a bit noisy, but I associate it with the good smell to come, the bitterness I’m about to taste. It’s funny how you can self-condition. I don’t know if Pavlov realized it?

Back at my desk, the scene hasn’t changed much. The room is filling up. Messages scroll across the screen on the right. I glance over.

“What the hell does he want? Hold his hand? This is his last operation. He doesn’t have what it takes.”

A quick email to the head of the sector and it’ll be settled tomorrow.

Well, that’s it. The lamps are fading. Excellent definition despite the lack of light. Those Koreans are good at tech.

I mute the music. I truly don’t like all this noise. I follow distractedly on a separate window the feedback from the technicians who are broadcasting the concert live. For the first half-hour, nothing much happened, but now they’re fighting. The record company has spotted us and is trying to interrupt the transmission. I saw two or three security people obviously attempting to locate the source of the images. However with so many different points of view, and the stage manager changing shots frequently, they get lost. What really amuses me is the excitement in the technicians’ voices. It’s a hunt. I don’t understand the details of what they’re saying to each other, but I’ve witnessed a hunt often enough, both as a predator and prey, to know what it’s all about. They try to hide under their noses, lure them into dead ends, make themselves completely inconspicuous from time to time, or simply run faster than the pursuers can. Watching/listening to them get so excited, I almost forget about Jung Kook. This is what we draw breath for. The hunter’s adrenaline.

Comments on the live broadcast of the concert are very positive on social networks. Or so the machine translation systems tell us. It’s often difficult with very short sentences to distinguish between a sincere and an ironic statement.

As for X, she doesn’t move much. As always, she’s focused on the tune. She doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the show itself. Only the music attracts her. One wonders why she comes to the concert if actually it’s only the final result that interests her and not the artistic performance. Jung Kook can’t be blamed. The lighting gleam and twinkle magnificently, and the hall reacted with exclamations a few minutes ago when the laser beams appeared to transport the singer above the crowd. But even then, X didn’t deign to deviate from the finger-tapping that always accompanies the music. And yet, I almost lost the image, the spectators in their seats stood so ecstatically.

I’d love another coffee, but I don’t dare move from my chair. I can feel it coming. Well, it’s not really a hunch. It’s more that I’ve listened carefully to what my advisors have told me. They’ve interviewed many music critics. The source ought to be reliable. Frankly, it wouldn’t make much difference if I watched the whole thing an hour later. I could speed up the video to avoid the wait. However I also realize that I wouldn’t be able to do anything else while X is hard at work. After all, that’s how I interpret it, but I could stand wrong.

The tempo in the room has just changed. X perseveres with her tapping. I check the live stream of the musicale and the expert’s comments. I have my confirmation. It’s an unreleased song. Nobody knows it. No one? Well, no one, not exactly. X continues to beat out the rhythm. There’s no doubt about it. She always attends the concert when a new piece is presented to the public during a show. It can’t be luck. I’ve calculated the probabilities, and like all numbers, they don’t lie. X knows, in advance, when an artist is going to shower her fans with a new song. And she is informed, sometimes several months up front, usually many weeks. At least long enough to organize her trip.

I’m too agitated to sit still. Finally, I’ve earned a coffee. I get out of my office and hop over to the machine. My teams would awe in surprised, to say the least, to discover me like this. They think I’m perpetually cold and contained. That’s one of the other advantages of working from home. I can let myself go. I only really have to keep the control when I meet my lieutenants. I move forward, like a boxer, punching the air, always at a slight angle. Maybe I’ll even make it to the gym. Months of waiting on this project, and it’s all coming together. Within a week, this little personal whim should become lucrative. Once again, I’ll be ahead of everyone and they won’t have a clue on my move. It’s amazing how short-sighted my competitors are. They never take a step back. They focus on the obvious. They stick to the trivial, my latest math teacher would have said. There are so many more interesting things! Well, that’s not all, I’ve got to get organized.

I return to my office where the concert carries on. The technicians persevere in their frantic flight over the networks. They explain to me that the tricky part is to simultaneously achieve adequate volatility so that the authorities can’t cut off the source, while maintaining sufficient stability so that viewers continue to receive the video with only a few seconds of latency. But I’m not interested in all that anymore. I make these windows disappear.

“You complete the surveillance until the target leaves the place. Then, minimum operation until she boards the flight in Incheon in two days’ time. I just want to make sure she’s on the plane.”

“Yes, boss. I’ll give you a daily report in the interval, and a confirmation of when she is boarding.”

That’s all I need, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he managed to get me the photo of the moment she enters the Airbus. I closed the connection and called Rémi. You can’t fool me. It’s not his real name. A reference to “without family” to discourage you from looking.

“It’s for this week.”

I didn’t have anything else to add. We know each other well, and we talked about it a few days ago, when I was hoping, but the odds were still not enough for my liking. We’re lucky in that X has a childhood friend, a confidant from high school, with whom she’s kept in touch. They call each other almost every week. X spends an hour telling lies and her friend an hour complaining about her husband. X says she works in a law firm. I checked. She didn’t even try to make herself credible by creating a fake profile on Linked In. That’s clearly not professional! At the same time, she didn’t state her real job either. I recon that’s a tough call. How should she named it? For tax purposes, she’s a salesperson.

Anyway, she doesn’t fly straight back to Montréal from Seoul. She stops off in Paris for a few days to see her friend. And that gives us wonderful opportunities. We’re lucky. Paris is really the easiest for me.

“Thanks, Dad.”

It’s where he started the family business, it’s still where I have the most experienced teams and where my facilities are the best. Did I tell you that I own the equestrian club of Clairière, where my wife keeps horses? Well, not under my name, but I possess it nonetheless.

So the plan is this: X visits her mate for a few days, and we kidnap her on her way to the airport. We’ll send a message that all is fine and the trip went well, and enjoy a week before the friend makes any serious attempt to reach her. But even when she becomes alarmed at the lack of response to her calls, and communicate with the authorities, with the distance involved, nothing will bulge! Even if someone in Canada finally takes notice of her absence and goes to the police, it will still remain a concerning disappearance. However there’s not much they can do. By the time they think to contact the airports and receive some answers, we’ll be in the dead of winter, if not already in the debacle, when the St. Laurent is at its best.

So we’ll have a good, quiet moment to get what we want and make the tracks evaporate.

***

For some operations, the “eyes” can get in the way. Kidnapping is one of them. So I only have Rémi’s report for X’s. He’s a professional. He did it right.

X left her friend’s home with plenty of time to catch her plane. She’d booked an Uber based on her phone’s communications. Fortunately, the Montréal team had managed to install a tracking device a few weeks earlier. Otherwise it would have been much more complicated.

These applications are designed to run without human intervention. It was much simpler when you called a company verbally to order a taxi. On the one hand, you could infiltrate the reservation center to obtain the necessary details. In fact, I always kept one or two informants there. But more importantly, all we had to do was block the arriving cabs on the street and replace them with ours. It was a simple trick, and the confident customer would climb into our car, straight to his personalized jail.

Here, we received the vehicle’s registration number and, fortunately, a location tracker. Within seconds, Rémi had set up a carjacking operation. We intercepted the sedan before it reached its destination. In the end, it’s quite practical, but it requires the involvement of an innocent driver whom we have to immobilize for at least an hour. Eventually, he’ll go to the police to lodge a complaint, the vehicle will be searched for… All complications that were unnecessary in the days of cabs.

Anyway, X climbed into the car we hijacked and set off for the airport. We simulated a breakdown and our chauffeur indicated that he would immediately call a colleague so that X wouldn’t arrive late for her flight. As soon as X was seated in the new vehicle, we were able to put her to sleep and drove her to her destination.

Rémi’s team made the switch. The mule took X’s place and the Uber headed back to the airport. A good choice. With her wig and makeup, she really looked like X. She had cleaned up the mascara that had run this morning and her eyes were no longer red from crying.

I always find it hard to understand these last-minute hesitations. She was the one who’d agreed to become the mule. But a few hours earlier, when it came to ingesting the powder pellets, she had panicked. She could already imagine one of the bags bursting open, its contents spilling into her belly, and killing her with an overdose in an instant.

If only she’d known she was carrying flour! Well, the white powder is just flour. Hidden inside are diamonds large enough to have real value, but unfortunately becoming recognizable on the market. However also small enough not to appear in global databases. This way, changing continents means I don’t depreciate them too much for resale. Of course, I couldn’t tell her that. It’s much safer she assumes she’s carrying drugs.

Our driver took him to terminal 2E for check-in. He validated the end of the journey with Uber. The unfortunate Uber partner will still be paid for the trip. It’s only fair as he has remained in the car the whole time. Invisible in the trunk, present all the same. Besides, all work deserves a wage, whether it’s active or passive. They left the airport and headed north, following the normal route for stolen vehicles. At a rest area of a highway, my driver abandoned our guest in a dark but secure corner for him to finish disposing of the drugs quietly. He would lie safe until he wakes up.

Why bring in a mule to replace X, you may ask? A passenger who doesn’t show up for a flight has never triggered an alert. It would have been much simpler than our entire mission. And yet it presents several advantages. The key one was that the mule embarked as X and will enter Canada under another identity. X would have then disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic, which should greatly complicate any attempt at a search, as international cooperation remains rare and particularly slow. So, this method became preferable and I needed someone to take on this role. As it happens, I’m thrifty. Why two people when one is enough? It’s even ecological. One flight, one seat. Much less CO2 in the atmosphere.

***

X is now in a secret cellar in the equestrian club of la Clairière. Did I mention that I’m the indirect owner?

The renovation work on the stalls proved very worthwhile. The manager expressed his satisfaction, as he considered the investment necessary to attract a more affluent clientele. However he couldn’t afford it. I have no particular inclination towards animal cruelty, but, as my wife’s ears are not within range, I can say what I really think about it. Any shed would be good enough for nags. And yet, the owners have some pretty crazy expectations of their horses. When, let’s face it, most of them are like me. They don’t care. It’s more symbolic than anything else. Perhaps this explains the extravagant demands? When there’s no real purpose other than to show off your wealth, why not become ostentatious? I couldn’t have gone into the legal business. I don’t understand my contemporaries well enough. Sometimes I have a flash, an insight, but I’m never sure of my facts. Maybe I’m deluding myself. In the end, the advantage of my line of work is that we’re still dealing with the fundamentals of humanity, which everyone has long since identified, even if some remains reluctant to admit it.

On my screens, X jiggles on the bed base that simultaneously serves as her bunk and her restraint. I’m averse to physical violence, but I’m also perfectly aware of its usefulness. X won’t talk just yet. She intends to keep her secret, or perhaps she simply refuses to be intimidated. She’s an independent woman and aspires to stay that way. I could hold her prisoner for as long as it takes for her to cooperate. However it seems to me far more humane to apply physical violence to speed up the process than to accept the cowardice of resorting only to psychic torture. Because, let’s face it, a kidnapping, even a brutality-free one, stays psychological cruelty.

I occasionally employ an expert on the subject. His mental health sometimes worries me, but my contracts don’t include medical insurance, at least not for this type of injury. Don’t take me for an unscrupulous boss. Of course I’d help Rémi if he were shot, and he knows it.

A long time ago, he would have been called an executioner, or an inquisitor if you go back even further. I prefer the latter term because of the idea of investigation it conveys, which is lacking in the former. My inquisitor seeks information. His sole purpose is only rarely to punish. In X’s case, it’s his ability to get her to talk that interests me. From the height of his expertise, he told me this morning that, given X’s overnight stay, it would take three days of preparation for her to become fully cooperative. So I’ll be there on Thursday. I’d like to collect X’s secrets myself.

These three days of waiting constitutes gruesome time for me. I can’t concentrate when there’s an important interrogation going on. I’ve planned a relaxation program. Fortunately, current operations linger calmly. The mule has been released, the Uber driver has filed a complaint, but he has nothing to say to the police. GHB is a magnificent chemical. And my lieutenants are handling all the other routine activities. Even Rémi will be taking a few days off, after this successful kidnapping.

This afternoon, I’m going for a walk in the city and do some shopping. I hear my wife has run out of clothes. I don’t believe it, but I like to please her. I’ve booked good seats for a play this evening. A comedy. It’s a tradition between us when we decide to treat ourselves. Tomorrow, we’re going for a hike in the woods. I’ve convinced her to walk, rather than on horseback. It would be too difficult to be at the equestrian club now. And on Thursday morning, I’m bringing in the masseur. It always helps me calm down. I’ll need it for the afternoon.

***

The masseur worked wonders. I was agitated all night, but after an hour and a half in his hands I feel completely relaxed. He has an extraordinary sense of balance between softness and firmness. That’s exactly what I’m going to need this afternoon. X is ready, I’ll need softness and firmness too. The violence phase is normally over. We’ll let her rest a little so she can come up with some complex explanations. I have no doubt that her organization is. I wouldn’t want her to make mistakes or remain imprecise just because she’s exhausted.

***

Novels are always about the smell of fear. This is intellectual laziness. It doesn’t exist, or more precisely, humans are no longer capable of perceiving it. I’ve been in quite a few interrogation rooms over the last 30 years. You can immediately detect the sourness of sweat, the acidity of urine and, more often than not, the putrid breath of excrement. With experience, you can commonly grasp the characteristic metallic emanation of blood, even if the inmate has been cleaned. However that could as well be a busy boxing club. All these emanations roam here, but I can also discern the more vegetal smell of horse dung. The jail lies beneath the stalls, and despite its sparkling cleanliness, the environment makes its way in. X could use that information. Although, with all the fumes from detergents, it takes a particularly trained sense of smell to recognize it. Should I thank my wife and the wine courses she’s forced upon me, or simply the fact that I know where we are? I’d like to think I’ve developed an above-average ability, but I have to fight every day not to delude myself. Confirmation bias is so hard to avoid.

X stares at me. She reviews me as if I were the one tied to that chair. She observes my physiognomy, my clothes, my gait as I move towards her. What a sharp gaze! I’ve never recognized it on the videos I’ve been studying for months. She noted my soft leather shoes, the black belt on my cotton pants, the polo shirt that stretches a little over my belly. I think she’s even noticed my manicured hands.

She knows I’m not standing here to hit her, but to question her. Yet she seems out of place. She’s not part of my world. I don’t know how she manages to get all these hits, to provide custom-made hits for all the world’s pop stars. However all of a sudden I get the feeling that this isn’t a mafia affair. If she were the head of a network, she’d be aware of the conclusion. That doesn’t seem to be the case.

Nor does it show the appearance of the financial underworld. These money grubbers believe that because they never resort to physical violence, they are above my line of work. I’ve already told you. I don’t enjoy brutality, but sometimes it’s less barbarous than mental torture. X doesn’t belong to this world either. She might not realize the obvious conclusion, but she would actively assess the costs and her assets. Whereas she just seems to wonder, not understanding why she’s here.

I sit down on the chair not far from her. Let’s try to stay civil. There’s no reason to bother her by circling her. It’s a habit I leave to my teams. I prefer to appear gentle in these circumstances. That’s why I like to see that the preparatory work has been well done.

“Hello. I take it your stay with us has not been a pleasant one, and I regret it. Nevertheless, I need some answers that you would have been reluctant to give me.”

X widened his eyes, but didn’t react otherwise.

“It’s actually quite simple. I want to know how you manage to supply hits to all the singers. Don’t tell me you write them, there’s no artist with that success rate.”

“I’m just in touch with the record companies. ”

“Yes, that’s your vehicle for dispensing your services. It doesn’t explain how you do provide it. ”

X wonders. She doesn’t reply right away, but her mouth nearly drops open several times. She can’t decide where to start. I knew that. She’s not a banker, she’d have talked about money by now.

“I’m going to need an answer. ”

“What will become of me, she asks? ”

“That’s not my question, but I understand your concern. I’m being magnanimous and agreeing to tell you a little more before you’ve even answered me. Actually, there are several possibilities. The shortest is that you refuse to answer, I leave the room, and one of your recent acquaintances replaces me. Neither you nor I want that. ”

She flinched at the mere mention of the threat. I can confirm it. The preparation job has been well done.

“As for the rest, assuming you’ll answer me, it all depends on your cooperation. I have no particular interest in you. I’m only interested in your method. We might even be able to work together in the future. Who knows? I seem to have a knack for surrounding myself with special talents. Perhaps you’re one of them. My collaborators have always found me to be fair. So we could come to an agreement. But for that, I need to know. ”

I always speak slowly. It’s not an affectation of language like the politicians. It’s because I lean on observing my interlocutors carefully to understand how they feel about my words. From this little tirade, I detected the acceptance of submission. It’s going to be simple.

“You’ll let me m…”

“I’d talked about an option or you’d answer me. My question is still waiting. ”

X stammered for a moment, hesitant, but surprisingly, she seems determined to speak. She is no longer cowering in on herself to refrain from revealing everything. No, she just appears not to know how to explain herself. I hope she’s not too mentally weakened. One has to keep the right balance.

She finally pulled herself together.

“That’s thanks to pi. ”

I must say she surprised me. She stopped there as if the clarification was enough.

“You'll have to elaborate. Who is pi? ”

“It’s not someone. ”

She even smiled, as if what I’d said was slightly ridiculous.

“I’m talking about the number pi. It’s the number that contains the musics. All I have to do is find them inside. ”

I had to fight for a moment not to show my surprise.

“Explain this to me, because so far you haven’t really answered my question. I still don’t know how you get these tunes. ”

She took a deep breath and launched herself.

“𝜋 is an infinite number that never repeats. So it contains an infinite sequence of numbers, and these numbers can represent musical notes. I only provide the music, never the lyrics. Not all number sequences produce good music, but some do. This is the case for most of those that follow a prime number. Do you know what a prime number is? ”

“Yes, an integer divisible only by one and itself. ”

“Yes, it is. ”

Her face became animated. I think at that moment she was just relieved to be able to share this crushing secret she’d been carrying for so many years.

“Let’s take the decimals of 𝜋. 3.14159265358979 … the first digits, 3 is first and it’s followed by 14 and 14 is a number that resonates with every music lover’s ears. ”

“How’s that? ”

“BACH. It’s his fetish number. In the alphabet, B is the 2nd letter, A the 1st, C the 3rd and H the 8th. 2-1-3-8. And if you add them up, that’s 2 + 1 + 3 + 8 = 14, and he played them in his greatest pieces. Prelude and fugue no. 1 from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The subject of the fugue is composed of 14 notes. And at bar 14, the same subject has 14 entries! ”

“Are you telling me that this is a numerology story? ”

“No, not really. It took a genius like Bach to write pieces calling out this series, but that’s what made me look further. The first number after 3 is 5, but the 92,653,589 series has never sounded right. Still, I kept up this little game, enjoying listening to music that nobody had composed. And one day, beyond the ten-thousandth decimal place, just after a prime number, a music came out, soft, limpid. Curious, I played it in public in a Montréal bar, in the summer when they open the terraces. It was my only musical success. Before that, I could only captivate my audience with covers. That was the turning point. I had a source of perfect melodies. I never wanted to be famous, so I decided to sell ‘my’ songs and keep a low profile. Since then, I’ve been looking for the prime numbers in the decimals of 𝜋, and listening to the music that follows them. All I have to do is select the best ones. But to tell the truth, I wonder if it’s even necessary.”

X fell silent. Her hands trembled. Her body sagged, like a deflated balloon. I tried to get her to talk more. I demanded details about her methods for finding prime numbers and decimals of 𝜋. But all she did was stammer some meaningless words. There was nothing left in her. In the end, I think she’ll be relieved by her death. Her discovery seemed to have consumed her from the inside.

***

Once again, the numbers flew by like sheep.

Three. One. Four. One. Five. Nine. Two.

However they didn’t bring me to sleep. I still don’t like math, but I can’t stop studying it. How can one number contain all the music in the world? I’ve resumed the activities of X, and the headphones of commuters on their way to work are already playing three of my tracks.

Three is a prime number. Is there a message? Will I reach 5? I have to get to 5, to 7, to 11, to … 13. I can’t stop when there’s still so much to discover.