Mostly the latter, Gleeb confessed.

Nuri had heard these sorts of stories before, but Gleeb’s had just enough of a self-depreciating spin for Nuri to be interested, or at least not bored by them. Gleeb abruptly brought the subject back to the present as they neared the minister’s residence.

“He will be suspicious, but that’s to be expected. I’ve told him you’re working with the UN. I doubt he actually believes that, but he won’t question it.”

“That’s a convenient attitude.”

“Very. Lay out what you need and ask for his cooperation. Let him think it’s up to him.”

The tone grated again. Gleeb was stating the obvious.

“It is up to him,” said Nuri.

Gleeb gave him the most fleeting of smiles.

Nuri guessed, belatedly, that the minister was on the Agency payroll. It would certainly be a subtle arrangement, money coming from some sort of grant to his department or maybe a pseudojob for a family member, but it would be leverage nonetheless.

The arrangement was a mixed blessing as far as Nuri was concerned. While it undoubtedly would make the minister somewhat more compliant, it also meant that he could be bought. Whether the U.S. was the only buyer was an open question.

The minister’s residence overlooked an old castle about a mile outside the capital limits. The castle looked like something out of Frankenstein, dark and ominous, high on a hill.

“That’s their old family estate,” said Gleeb. “They used to own just about everything you see here.”

“What happened?”

“Communists came in. Not that they would have necessarily kept it anyway. The family fortune was ebbing by the end of the nineteenth century anyway. They went through some harder times, until World War Two. His great-grandfather was a hero of the resistance, and apparently he personally saved some relative of Stalin. Or took the credit for doing so.”

Gleeb made a clicking sound with his mouth; he was wearing dentures, and not particularly well-fitting ones at that.

“That’s the minister’s house on the left,” said the CIA station chief as he took a turn just beyond the castle. “A little different, huh?”

The house was a set of modernistic boxes set into the hillside. Gleeb told him it had been built by a famous European architect for more than three million euros—an enormous sum in Moldova.

No wonder he’s taking money from the CIA, Nuri thought.

A maid met them at the door. A pair of bodyguards stood at the side of the foyer, watching them carefully as they came in. Nuri nodded in their direction without receiving a response.

“The minister is waiting for you in the library,” said the maid in English. “Please.”

The library was a small room to the right of the entry. Two more bodyguards, arms down at their sides, waited near the door. The minister was working at a small desk next to a large bookcase that filled one entire wall of the room. The bookcase, constructed of thick, worn wood, seemed out of place; Nuri wondered if it had been scavenged from the castle.

“Mr. Gleeb, very nice,” said the minister. “I will be with you presently.”

“The minister spent time in London as ambassador for the last government,” Gleeb told Nuri. “He speaks the King’s English. It’s certainly better than mine.”

“Ah, when my guests flatter me, it is time to find them a drink,” said the minister, putting down his pen.

He rose and wagged his finger at the guards, who promptly disappeared.

“Our sherry is passably pleasant,” said the minister, going over to a sideboard. Like the other furniture in the house, it was a sleek, modern affair, made of chrome and lightly colored wood.

“That is to put you off your guard for some of the finest sherry in Europe,” Gleeb told Nuri. “He likes to lower expectations.”

Nuri was not much of a judge of sherry. He raised his own glass as Gleeb and his host saluted each other, then took a small sip.

“So you are Mr. Lupo,” said the minister, turning to him. “An alias, I suppose?”

“Actually, it’s my real name,” said Nuri. “I don’t use an alias.”

The minister smirked, then took another sip of the sherry.

“Good, yes?” he asked.

“Very good,” said Nuri.

“So—you have traced the European drug problem to my country,” said the minister. “And now you are going to solve it on the backs of my police?”

“We actually have considerable resources on our own,” said Nuri. “If you don’t want to, uh—”

He saw Gleeb shake his head slightly and stopped in mid-sentence.

“The UN has many resources,” said the station chief, taking over. “But naturally they don’t have the intimate knowledge of Moldova that your forces do. Your people are highly trained, and any assistance that you can render would certainly be useful.”

“Hmmm,” said the minister. “And when would this assistance be needed?”

“Ideally in the next few days,” said Gleeb.

Nuri didn’t say anything. It would be better to have “permission” first. Then he would spring the date on the minister, hoping it would be too soon for any real involvement.

“You’ve already spoken to some of my underlings, Mr. Gleeb?”

Nuri couldn’t tell whether it was a question or a statement. Gleeb handled it smoothly, saying that he had “investigated the circumstances of the situation” before wasting the minister’s time.

Some cooperation might be arranged within the next month or two, said the minister, providing certain contingencies were met.

“I’m afraid the matter is much more imminent than that,” said Gleeb.

“How imminent?” asked the minister, refilling his wine.

Gleeb looked at Nuri.

“Tomorrow night,” said Nuri.

“Tomorrow?”

“We’ve found that any sort of delay, once we have an operation located, can be very detrimental,” Nuri explained. “So we’d like to move very quickly. We’d have to.”

“That might be a problem,” said the minister.

“We’re prepared to proceed.”

“They would naturally move only with aid from the government,” said Gleeb. “But they would not need a great deal of assistance.”

“I don’t know what sort of aid would be available on such short notice,” said the minister. “And it might entail expense—if we are talking about a large operation.”

“Reasonable expenses would have to be compensated,” agreed Gleeb.

A few minutes of negotiation followed. Neither man named a price; they spoke instead of things like manpower and vehicles.

“We really don’t need a lot of policemen,” said Nuri.

Gleeb shot him a glance, then turned back to negotiating. The old guy was good, gently pushing back without losing his good humor or angering the minister.

Nuri wondered if he could use Gleeb when he bought his next car.

They finally settled on three dozen men and two SWAT teams, with a pair of Hummer-style jeeps outfitted with machine guns. The minister agreed that the men would not be notified of the actual raid until the following evening, as a matter of security.

“And where is this adventure taking place?” he asked, once more refilling his glass.

Gleeb looked at Nuri.

“Outside the capital,” he said.

“Where outside the capital?” the minister asked.

“In the northeast. I mean, northwest.”

It was an honest slip, but it annoyed the minister. Gleeb had to step in and calm things, claiming that Nuri did not yet have the exact location himself. “And being a stranger to Moldova, I’m sure the name would mean nothing to him if he did,” he added.

“It is in the north,” said Nuri. “I just don’t know where exactly. As Mr. Gleeb said—”

“You will call me tomorrow morning.” The minister spoke to Gleeb, not Nuri. “You will have an exact location then. You will call me and we will have some men to work with you. An action like this must have some local involvement. They will not be in too much danger, I hope.”

“I will call you, yes,” said Nuri.