For five years, a scholar and a con man walked shoulder to shoulder, one in darkness, the other in light, evangelists for a lie. It would be wrong to say they had nothing in common. Both were loners from small towns. Both savored risk and resented authority. Both believed in the salvific power of their own intelligence and saw head-to-head conflict as less effective than tactical surprise. But none of these explained it. The key to their improbable union, rather, was an idea on which they’d both found purchase: that truth is in the eye of the beholder. For a confidence man, the idea’s appeal
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