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inform you that my friends and I are developing a new virus, that will mutate in 1 of 4,000,000,000 different ways! It will not contain any constant information. No virus scanner could detect it . . . The virus will have many other new features that will make it completely undetectable and very destructive!' The message brought a flood of replies, from all over Europe. Most of the responses were critical; some were abusive. The Dark Avenger replied testily: 'I've got no friendly replies to my message. That's why I will not reply to all these messages saying "fuck you". That's why I will not say more about my plans.'

At thirty-one, Vesko Bontchev is surprisingly young looking, thin and somewhat frail. He is a serious man who speaks deliberately and intensely about the virus problem in Bulgaria. He lives with his mother in a shabby five-storey 1950s block on a characteristically grim East European housing estate on the outskirts of Sofia. The apartment is large by Bulgarian standards: Vesko has his own room.

Vesko is unassuming, though it is apparent that he is proud of his reputation as the country's foremost virus fighter and of his contacts with other researchers in the West. His position is ensured by his oddly symbiotic relationship with the Dark Avenger, one that almost parallels his earlier relationship with Teodor. Because the Dark Avenger lives in Bulgaria, Vesko's position as a lecturer and researcher is secure. At the same time, Vesko contributes to the Dark Avenger's fame by publicizing his activities abroad. In a curious way the two need each other.

Cynics who have noticed this have argued that if the Dark Avenger hadn't existed, it would have been in Vesko's interest to have invented him. Some have even theorized that the two are one and the same: that the quiet, intense virus researcher has an alter ego - the demonic, heavy-metal fan, the admirer of Princess Diana, the virus writer called the Dark Avenger. The Avenger has himself contributed to the notion: one of his viruses contains Vesko's own copyright notice, and every so often he teases Vesko. Once, the Dark Avenger wrote: 'To learn how to find out a program author by its code, or why virus-writers are not dead yet, contact Mr Vesselin Bontchev. So, never say die! Eddie lives on and on and on . . .'

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