Almost four years ago, Sjoerd Top, a trim fiftysomething, came to Lisbon to run Europe’s nerve center for drug interdiction, the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre (Narcotics), or MAOC (N). Back in the Netherlands, he was with the Dutch National Police Corps. With good intelligence he could find a car carrying drugs in 5 minutes, maybe 15. Out here on the Atlantic? “Three weeks,” he says, “even with satellites,” which are no help in bad weather.
Top looks out on the Tagus River, choppy and windy today, whitecaps blowing on the water like bumps on snakeskin.
