Bruce Wayne had, however, found three potential terrorist factions beneath the Bessarabian label.
“What about the Gagauzi?” Batman asked. “What rights do the Gagauzi have?”
Crestfallen, the youth relaxed his grip on the box. His knuckles turned red as the blood flowed back to them. So did his face. He hadn’t believed in Batman, not really, not the way the swine Moldavians did—thinking he was an incarnation of their national hero, Vlad Drakul. But Batman knew about the Gagauzi. How many Americans knew about the Gagauzi? There were only about a hundred and fifty thousand of them.
“It is”—the youth groped for the word—“like buying and selling, but without money. The Gagauzi have sheep, they have vineyards, they have tobacco. The sheep are . . . not so good. The wine, the tobacco, these are better than money. The Moldos will try to crush the Gagauzi first. Already they say: learn our language, do things our way. The Gagauzi see writing on the wall, yes? They do not like us Russians very much: Moscow said, learn our language, do things our way. But in the beginning, we had the army, and the army came from Moscow to protect them. Now Moscow is . . .” He mimed blowing out a candle. “No army. Just us and the Gagauzi. The Gagauzi and us.
“American patriot, Benjamin Franklin, says: We hang together, or for sure we hang apart.”
The sheepherders Tiger mentioned on the dock. It all fit together. There were moments when Batman regretted the mask because there were moments when he wanted to bury his head in his hands. Instead he said: “So the Gagauzi give you—the Russians in Moldavia—wine and tobacco that you barter with other Russians—in Russia itself—for . . . icons. . . . ? And you sell the icons here, in America, to get money to buy guns for the Gagauzi to fight the Moldovans?”