Alessi took me down the hall to my room. It was decorated in the same lavish, modern style as Bézy’s suite. Pastel walls; heavy curtains in rich French prints; fine hardwood furniture; armchairs covered in raw silk; a minibar stocked with goodies, a view of the garden behind the hotel. It was the sort of deluxe room I would never have stayed in as a reporter for the Mirror. That was part of Bézy’s challenge: a proffer of my future life. But for now, a guard stood watch in the hall outside, halfway between Bézy’s suite and my room.

40

40

I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Of all the revelations of that long day, the most upsetting had been Bézy’s threat to the Mirror. A newspaper is like a church: it is built by ordinary sinners, people who in their individual lives are often petty and corrupt, but who collectively create an institution that transcends themselves. A newspaper in that way achieves a kind of divinity. It embodies the quest of its reporters and editors for an absolute—the truth. What is holy about a newspaper is the struggle of these imperfect human beings to connect with something perfect. I could not bear the thought that I would defile my church any more than I already had.

I’ve often thought that people who go into ordinary professions like business or law lack sufficient ambition. Even the most successful of my Stanford classmates have made this mistake. One man is now an investment banker in New York—already, at thirty-seven, the man to see about mergers and acquisitions in the movie business. I’m told he made close to $5 million last year. But he lacks ambition. He wants to be rich and powerful, to live well, to take care of his children. I decided to become a journalist because I wanted more than that.

What would my future be if I said yes to Bézy? Money, power, protection from scandal—bought at the price of absolute dependence on my protectors. It would be my role to maintain the public appearance of respectability, even as Bézy moved privately to subvert it. If I rebelled at any moment at this corrupt bargain—sought to exert even the slightest independence—I would be caught in an even more devastating web of scandal and blackmail. Beyond humiliation, I would face the prospect of legal prosecution. The deal Bézy was offering was the essential Faustian bargain: prompt relief and pleasure in the short run, in exchange for a very long run of misery. What he was proposing, it occurred to me, was that I join the Secret Power.

And what was my future if I said no to Bézy? Acute danger in the short run; the likelihood that my “career” as a journalist would be ruined; beyond that, stretching to infinity, the opportunity to strive for things of ultimate value.