“The second time he was supposed to meet me he left me waiting. The third time I said, ‘Go fuck yourself, I’m not interested.’ ” The Israeli acquaintance begged Donovan to try again. He agreed to one more meeting.

On the appointed day, the Israeli acquaintance called to back out. “I was already set to go, so I said, okay, I’ll go,” Donovan said. “I took out my .45, loaded it, and I stuck it right here in my waistband.” By now Le Roux was occupying a penthouse condo in one of Manila’s most exclusive buildings. “I was escorted in the building up to his door, and these two big guys were beside me,” Donovan said. “But they were standing back from me, and when they are doing that, warnings are going off everywhere. I open the door, there was nothing in there. No furniture, nothing. So now I’m kind of moving back so I can keep in line with them, I could see what they are doing. The next door they opened, there was plastic all over the fucking floor. Plastic, and a step ladder, like somebody was going to paint.” Donovan put a hand on his gun.

“Then they pushed open the third door, it was a tiny little room, and there was Le Roux, sitting behind a little desk. Wall-to-wall servers. I was like, what the fuck?”

“Now he’s sitting there, belly like this, he’s got bleach-blond hair. He looked like a pikey. You know what a pikey is? You know, people who live in caravans, Irish guys. That’s what he looked like.”

In Donovan’s telling, the conversation was a short one.

“Can you tell them to fuck off?” Donovan said, gesturing to the bodyguards. “I don’t like people standing behind me.”

“Wait outside,” Le Roux said to the guards. He gestured to a chair in front of the desk. “Sit down.”

“No, I don’t want to sit down. What do you want?”

“I know you’ve got connections,” Le Roux said. “I know that you can tell generals what to do and they’ll do it.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I have a business that I need protected, and I’m willing to pay