Scene 20

Perhaps the incredibly fatty beef tripe from the previous evening should take responsibility – or perhaps the Malbec wine with which Maille had swilled the grilled chinchulines: in any case he failed to hear the alarm go off the next morning and proceeded to sleep late into the day. When he opened his eyes, it was almost noon – high time he went searching for the point on Lago Argentino that had been marked on the 2-peso note. Maille groggily pulled on his trousers and rushed down to the banks of the water.

As he got there, he saw a man standing at the spot, gazing into the gleaming steel-blue waters. He was about Maille's size and, what's more, he was wearing the same T-shirt and the same baseball cap inscribed with the caption «Port Williams» that Maille had found at the end of the world in that plastic bag that bore his name.

As Maille came closer, the man turned away from him. When the secret agent was almost at the spot at which the man stood, he felt for a split second as though a misty shroud had covered the world, everything seemed to double and yet not to, to vanish and to appear at the same moment. As that picture, as the world turned clear once again, the man had disappeared.

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