‘Time was you could dismiss Peter Novak,’ says Walter Horowitz, the former United States Ambassador to Russia. ‘Now he’s become a player and a major one. He’s very much his own man. He gets in there and does it, and he has very little patience with government. He’s the only private citizen who has his own foreign policy—and who can implement it.’ Horowitz voices a perspective that seems increasingly common in the foreign-policy establishment: that governments no longer have the resources or the will to execute certain kinds of initiatives, and that this vacuum is being filled by private-sector potentates like Peter Novak.

The U.N. Under Secretary-General for Political and Security Council Affairs, Jaako Torvalds, says, ‘It’s like working with a friendly, peaceable, independent entity, if not a government. At the U.N., we try to coordinate our approach to troubled regions with Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia—and with Peter Novak.’

In Newsweek, similar tributes echoed:

What sets the Magyar mogul apart? Start with his immense sense of assurance, an absolute certainty that you see in both his bearing and his speech. “I don’t deal with affairs of state for the thrill of it,” says Novak, whose exquisitely tailored wardrobe doesn’t distract from his physical vigor. Yet by now he has matched himself against the world markets and won so frequently that the game must not feel like much of a challenge. Helping rebuild civil society in unstable regions such as Bosnia or the Central Asian republics, however, provides as much challenge as any man could hope for, even Peter Novak.

Hours later, he heard quiet footsteps, bare feet on terra-cotta tile. The woman, wearing a terry-cotton robe, had finally emerged from the bedroom. Janson stood up, his head still a blur of names and dates, a fog of facts as yet undistilled into the urgent truths he sought.

“Pretty swank place,” she said.

Janson was grateful for the interruption. “Three centuries ago, there was a mountainside monastery here. Almost all of it was destroyed, then overgrown by the forest. My friend bought the property and sank a lot of money into turning the remnants into a cottage.”

For Janson, what appealed wasn’t so much the house as the location, rustic and isolated. Through the front windows, a craggy mountain peak was visible, rising from the nearby forest. Streaks of gray, naked stone interrupted its green textures—the distance made the trees look like clinging moss—and the whole was outlined against the azure sky, where small black birds wheeled and circled and plunged, their movements coordinated but seemingly aimless. An iron pergola, draped in vines, stood in the back not far from a centuries-old campanile, one of the few vestiges of the old monastery.

“Where I come from,” she said, “this isn’t a cottage.”