New Zealanders

"He has what New Zealanders call mana, a short word long on meaning: the clout, charisma and credibility of the chief. It can’t be faked."

"Gibbs found himself defending their fee at a negotiating session at the Halekulani Hotel in Hawaii. At times the process was seriously unpleasant. Once again, it was three or four New Zealanders across the table from a lineup of dozens of Americans. Working on the principle, however, that ‘the art of a good deal is to make the other guy feel he’s won’, Gibbs concentrated on yielding, after much anguish, concessions that made his partners feel like they had made substantial gains, while at the same time proposing seemingly innocuous gestures in return that actually more than balanced in value everything that he had conceded."

"Gibbs returned to Russia in 1997, and then ventured southwest into Ukraine, which was only six years into nominal independence from Moscow. The Ukrainian economy wasn’t strong and Gibbs had learnt through someone he’d talked to that it was possible to rent part of the Ukrainian army ‘for a few drums of diesel’. He took a couple of his nephews and spent the best part of a week at a camp having fun as these bored and often drunk soldiers fired up all their machines and let the New Zealanders drive them around. There were bridge-laying contraptions, large diggers, old helicopters, amphibians of various sorts and hundreds of tanks. As Gibbs surveyed the dead flat countryside from the driver’s seat of one of these beasts, he understood the region’s recent history with new clarity. There was nothing to stop his advance east or west for thousands of miles."