“I sense that I don’t have your full attention.”
She blinked. “Peter. I’ve had a busy morning. I’ve a busy afternoon ahead. Followed by a busy evening. I’m glad to hear we’ve had a promise from a psychotic weapons merchant that they’re no longer intent on sending armed talent to murder a British citizen, but that having been settled, was there anything else?”
“I rather wanted to discuss the state of the world.”
“. . . Seriously?”
“And how it affects your current role.”
It occurred to her that the café offered no table service. There were no young things in skirts to flirt with, no opportunity to dispense leering largesse. It was no more PJ’s natural habitat than a Time’s Up march. Perhaps he was serious after all.
He said, “I was listening to the wireless the other evening.”
“It’s just the two of us. You can say podcast.”
“One of those discussion programmes the BBC likes to think of as balanced, in that it had a left-leaning liberal debating current affairs with a right-leaning liberal. Long story short, can you guess what they concluded?”
“That things will turn out all right in the end?”
“A predictably smug affair. People have lost faith in government, we were told. Here, in Europe, in the States. But this is simply a correction, the same way the market regulates itself. Democracy hiccupped, that’s all. Next time round we’ll do better, and our common future will no longer be in the small, incapable hands it currently rests in. I’m quoting, obviously. It was tedious, dinner-party stuff.”
“But thanks for sharing.”
“And yet it touched on the issue I wanted to raise. This being, the current rift between the White House and the federal agencies.”
“Fascinating.” She looked at her watch. “And yet of no remote relevance.”
“Which mirrors the growing divide between our own government and your Service.”
She sighed. “If all you’re doing is polishing your next blog, you’ll be sorry you wasted my time.”
“The PM turned down your request for a root-and-branch overhaul of operational practices.” He raised a hand to forestall her response. “Don’t bother denying it. We both know the PM’s a tormented creature. Like one of those soft toys lorry drivers fix to their radiator grilles. That expression she wears, it’s terror at all the oncoming vehicles.”
“Picturesque, I’m sure.”
“And once she’s gone, who knows, maybe the next PM will be more amenable to your requests. But what about the one after that? And the one after that?”
“Running out of patience.”
“Whoever’s in government, whichever party it happens to be, and however lacking in leadership skills and a basic grasp of reality, they’re the ones pulling your Service’s strings. This despite the fact that no government we’ve seen over the past ten years has been capable of making the decisions necessary to protect our nation. Take Salisbury. A clear-cut case, evidence stacked a mile high, the guilty party visible for all to see. And yet nothing happens.”
“It’s how democracy works.”
“And it’s window dressing. The Cabinet can spend its days talking about high speed trains or garden bridges and that’s fine. But it’s not equipped to determine the best way of safeguarding national security because those particular parameters change at dizzying speed. It’s an area best left to the professionals. To those who’ve been engaged with the task on a daily basis their whole careers.”
She said, “In principle, I wouldn’t disagree. But you mentioned a basic grasp on reality, and you’ve clearly lost your own. Even if the government were to grant the Service autonomy—which it wouldn’t do in a thousand years—that would demand a far greater injection of funds than my own rather more modest proposal required. And that, as you pointed out, was rejected on grounds of cost.”
Peter Judd said, “And yet—leaving that issue aside for the moment—suppose the Service were able to achieve, let’s call it a self-sufficient status. Wouldn’t that be preferable to the present situation?”
“Effectively, you’re talking about a coup.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A coup would be the seizing of power. What I’m talking about is the preservation of the power structure as it is. Democratically elected governments, the rule of law, all the rest of it. Except . . .”
“Except with an independent secret service.”
“Acting in the interests of the nation. The best interests, because it alone has a full understanding of where the current sources of danger lie, and the best way of dealing with them. And is thus able to make decisions that the government of the day is not equipped to make, and almost certainly doesn’t want to have to. Either because of weak leadership or the keen desire to avoid taking morally questionable positions. Which, as we both know, are frequently the positions one needs to take to prevent harm befalling the innocent.”
“No government would accept that.”
“The government,” said Peter Judd, “wouldn’t have to know.”
“This is insane.”
“Let’s step back a little. Full autonomy, yes, is out of the question. But what if you had the resources to operate as required, in situations of critical need, without requiring government approval? Which, as we’ve established, means government funding? In other words, what if your Service’s necessary activities weren’t constantly hampered by the need for political acquiescence?”
Put another way, she thought, what if the Fugue Protocol was on the table any time she wanted?
She said, “Even supposing this daydream were a good idea, where do you imagine the funding would come from. Private enterprise?”
He said nothing.
“Oh, you must be joking!”
“Why?”
“Where would you like me to start?”
“You have to think about the bigger picture. This would be a logical development. Look at the private contractors you already use. Look at the security firms mopping up after foreign adventures. Halliburton. Blackwater. What I’m suggesting is simply the next step on a course that’s already plotted.”
“There’s a leap between that and privatising the intelligence services!”
“We’re not talking about privatisation. Simply an injection of necessary funding from sources with a huge vested interest in national security. They don’t want to be hacked, they don’t want to be bombed, and they don’t want those things to happen anywhere in the cities in which they operate. Now, they have the resources to safeguard their own operations, up to a point, but you have the infrastructure, the legislative authority, the national scope, to tackle those threats at the point of origin. What you don’t have is the investment you need, or, with the way things are looking in Europe, support from reliable allies. I’m offering a credible alternative to what we both know is a potentially dire situation. One, I might add, which any sensible government would be looking to implement of its own accord.”
“Even if—Peter. What you’re suggesting, it couldn’t be made to work.”
“Of course it could. As a staged process. We prove this can be effective in specific, singular instances, and then present it to government as a working model. And trust me, government will listen. The partners I have in mind have their own spheres of influence, and I’m including the political in that. They’d be bringing that to the table too. Not to mention myself, obviously.”
“Because you’d be a part of this.”
“Nothing’s set in stone. But you’d require a broker to liaise between the Service and its backers. A conduit, if you will.”