Janson shook his head, marveling. “Sir Richard” had to be Richard Whitehead, the director of Britain’s Special Investigations Branch. But what most impressed him was her coolly instructive tone. Whitehead was to call back to let her know not whether the request could be accommodated but when the request would be accommodated. As Novak’s seniormost deputy, she was obviously well known to political elites around the world. He had been preoccupied with the advantages enjoyed by his Anuran adversaries, but Novak’s people were hardly without resources themselves.

Janson also admired Lang’s instinctive respect for operational security. No final destination was divulged; the Liberty Foundation jet at Gatwick would just need to provide a proximate flight plan. Only once it had crossed into international airspace would its pilot need to know the rendezvous point Janson had determined, in the Nicobar archipelago.

Now Janson started to go over a list of military equipment with one of Lang’s associates, a man named Gerald Hochschild, who served as a de facto logistics officer. To each request, Hochschild responded not with a yes or no, but with a time interval: twelve hours, four hours, twenty hours. The amount of time that would be necessary to locate and ship the equipment to the Nicobar rendezvous.

It was almost too easy, Janson mused. Then he realized why. While human rights organizations held conferences to discuss the problem of the small-arms trade in Sierre Leone or the traffic in military helicopters in Kazakhstan, Novak’s foundation had a more direct method for taking the noxious hardware off the market: it simply acquired the stuff. As Hochschild confirmed, as long as the model was discontinued and therefore irreplaceable, the Liberty Foundation would buy it, warehouse it, and eventually recycle it as scrap or, in the case of military transport, have it retooled for civilian purposes.

Thirty minutes later, a green light on the telephone blinked. Márta Lang picked up the handset. “So he’s en route? Condition?” There was a pause, and then she said, “We’ll assume a departure time in less than sixty minutes, in that case.” Her voice softened. “You’ve been a dear. We couldn’t appreciate it more. Really. And you be sure to send my love to Gillian, will you? We all missed you in Davos this year. You can be certain that Peter gave the PM an earful about that! Yes. Yes. We’ll catch up properly—soon.”

A woman of parts, Janson thought admiringly.

“There’s a reasonable chance that your Mr. Hennessy will beat you to the rendezvous,” Márta told him immediately after she hung up.

“My hat’s off,” Janson said simply.