“You will have to make do with me. I’m deputy director of the Foundation and have been with him for many years.”

“I don’t question your absolute loyalty to your employer,” Janson said coolly. “Novak’s people are … renowned for it.” Several rows back, her staffers seemed to be huddled over maps and diagrams. What was going on? He felt a growing sense of unease.

“I understand what you are saying, and also what you are too polite to say. People like me are often seen as starry-eyed true believers, I realize. Please accept that we have no illusions, none of us. Peter Novak is only a mortal. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, as you Americans like to say. We know that better than anyone. This isn’t a religion. But it is a calling. Imagine if the richest person you knew was at once the smartest person you knew and the kindest person you knew. If you want to know why he commands loyalty, it’s because he cares—and cares with an intensity that really is almost superhuman. In plain English, he gives a damn. He wants to leave the world a better place than he found it, and you can call that vanity if you like, but if so, it’s the kind of vanity we need more of. And the kind of vision.”

“‘A visionary’ is what the Nobel committee called him.”

“A word I use under protest. It’s a debased coin. Every article of Fortune proclaims some cable titan or soft-drink CEO a ‘visionary.’ But the Liberty Foundation was Novak’s vision, and his alone. He believed in directed democracy when the idea seemed a pipe dream. He believed that civil society could be rebuilt in the parts of the world where totalitarianism and strife had eviscerated it. Fifteen years ago, people laughed when he spoke of his dream. Who is laughing now? Nobody would help him—not the United States, not the U.N.—but it didn’t matter. He changed the world.”

“No argument,” Janson said soberly.

“Your State Department analysts had endless reports about ‘ancient ethnic enmities,’ about conflicts and border disputes that could never be settled, and about how nobody should try. But he tried. And time and again, he succeeded. He’s brought peace to regions that had never experienced a moment of it for as long as anyone could remember.” Márta Lang choked up, and she stopped speaking.

She was obviously unaccustomed to such displays of emotion, and Janson did her the favor of talking while she regained her composure. “I’d be the last person to disagree with anything you’ve said. Your employer is a man who seeks peace for the sake of peace, democracy for the sake of democracy. That’s all true. It’s also true that his personal fortune rivals the GDP of many of the countries he has dealings with.”