There is a preacher of some renown, founder of a flock that fills stadiums, who now finds himself in a rather more earthly bind. A foreign government wants him extradited on charges that would make even his most devoted followers wince.

The local justice men say they are still evaluating the paperwork, in no hurry, no deadline, thorough enough to survive a judge’s scrutiny, that is the official line, and there is no reason yet to doubt it.

But sources close to the matter whisper to Nosy Tarsee of a different kind of evaluation happening in parallel, one that has nothing to do with courtrooms.

The preacher, we are told, has been made to understand that his predicament could soften considerably, or could not, depending on how helpful he proves himself to certain people currently sitting rather comfortably in power.

Helpful how? Helpful in turning that famous pulpit, and the loyal millions who still hang on his every televised word, toward discrediting the very officials who have lately made themselves inconvenient to the administration.

A senator here. A commissioner there. Anyone whose subpoenas or investigations have grown uncomfortable for the palace and its friends.

It is an old game dressed in new robes. Extradition requests take months, sometimes years, to mature into an actual petition.

In that gray, unhurried interval, a man facing decades in a foreign prison has ample incentive to make new friends, or rather, to make his enemies’ enemies his friends.

The preacher’s network is not small. It has money, media reach of its own, and a congregation trained to see persecution everywhere except where it might actually be, which is useful to anyone looking to muddy an inconvenient narrative or two.

Nobody has produced a memo, a recording or a signed agreement — nothing so clumsy. The signs so far are softer: sudden statements of gratitude toward unnamed benefactors, sermons that have taken a curiously political turn against people who, a year ago, the preacher had no quarrel with. Coincidence, perhaps. Miracles happen.

Still, one wonders what a man does when the alternative is extradition and the courts of a foreign land. He does what he must to survive, and if survival requires borrowing the pulpit for someone else’s war, the flock rarely asks questions. They just sing along.