Finally, Janson spoke again. “Let me tell you about the man I know. We’re talking about somebody whose mind is a remarkable instrument, capable of extraordinary real-time analysis. He can be a person of immense charm. And even greater cruelty. My former colleagues in intelligence would tell you that men like him can be valuable assets, as long as they are tightly constrained by the situations in which they’re placed. The error of the Mobius planners is that they placed him in a context that didn’t just permit, but actively called upon his skills at fluid and freeform improvisation. A context in which an immensity of wealth and power was placed just out of his grasp. He played the world’s mightiest plutocrat. Only the rules of the game prevented him from truly being that person. So he threw himself into trying to overcome the program’s safeguards. Eventually, he did.”

“It was not predicted.”

“Not by the Mobius planners. Incredible technical prowess combined with extraordinary stupidity about human nature—typical of their breed. No, it was not predicted. But it was predictable.”

“By you.”

“Certainly. But not only by me. I suspect you, too, would have seen the risks.”

Secretary-General Zinsou walked over to his enormous desk and sat down. “This monster, this man who threatens us all—you may know him as well as you think you do. You do not know me. And so I remain puzzled. Forgive me if I say that your confidence in me undermines my confidence in you.”

“That’s not very diplomatic of you, is it? I appreciate your candor, all the same. You may find that I know you a little better than you imagine.”

“Ah, those intelligence dossiers of yours, compiled by agents who think people can be reduced to something like an instruction manual—the same mind-set that gave rise to your Mobius Program.”

Janson shook his head. “I won’t pretend that we were acquainted, you and I, not in the usual sense. But the thrust of world events over the past couple of decades did mean that we ended up patrolling a few of the same rough neighborhoods. I know what really happened in Sierra Leone, that week in December, because I was there—monitoring all communications from the head of U.N. Peacekeeping in the region and the head of the special delegation appointed to coordinate the U.N. response. Not much peacekeeping was happening, needless to say—the bloody civil war was raging out of control. Special Delegate Mathieu Zinsou was asked to relay the commander’s report and intervention request to New York. The designee was a U.N. high commissioner who would then present it to the representatives of the Security Council—who would have refused it, forbidden the intervention.”

The secretary-general looked at him oddly but said nothing.