“Novak may be the greatest currency speculator in history, but no one has more eloquently denounced the practice. He’s pushed for the very policies of currency unification that would make that sort of speculation impossible—you can’t say he’s been an advocate of his own interests. Quite the opposite. Of course, some would say that merry old England bore the brunt of his speculative savvy, at least at first. You remember what happened back in the eighties. There was that great currency crisis, with everyone wondering which European governments were going to lower their rates. Novak leveraged billions of his own money on his hunch that Britain was going to let sterling plunge. It did, and Novak’s Electra Fund nearly tripled. An incredible coup! Our then prime minister pushed MI6 to poke around. In the end, the head of the investigation told the Daily Telegraph that, and I quote, ‘the only law this fellow has broken is the law of averages.’ Of course, when the Malaysian ringgit plunged and Novak landed himself another windfall, the politicians over there didn’t take it very well. Lots of demagoguery there about the manipulations of the mysterious dark foreigner. So you ask who would like to see him dead, and I must tell you it’s a long list of malefactors. There’s China: the old men of that gerontocracy fear, above all else, the ‘directed democracy’ that Novak’s organization has been dedicated to. They know he considers China the next frontier of democratization, and they are powerful enemies. In Eastern Europe, there’s a whole cabal of moguls—former Communist officials who seized the plunder of ‘privatized’ industries. The anti-corruption campaigns spearheaded by the Liberty Foundation in their own backyards are their most direct threat, and they’ve sworn to take action. As I say, one cannot perform good deeds without a few people feeling threatened by them—especially the ones who prosper from entrenched enmity and systematic corruption. You asked what I meant by ‘they,’ and that’s as good a specification as any.”

Janson could see Fielding struggle to sit up straighter, to rally, to keep a stiff upper lip. “You were part of his brain trust,” said the operative. “How did that work?”