At every stage, I did nothing but hand true documents to the people whose job it was to act on them, and step back, and let institutions built for exactly this purpose do exactly what they were built to do.

That was the whole of my father’s genius, distilled: he had understood that you do not need to become an outlaw to destroy one.

You need only understand the law better than he does, and have the patience to wait until he has broken enough of it to hang himself.

I had the patience.

I had always had the patience.

It was the one quality a decade of being underestimated had refined in me to a fine and lethal point.