“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.”
They were sitting in a café off Fleet Street, she reminded herself. This bizarre conversation was taking place in the real world. This morning she’d had a brusque reminder that her position was subject to the oversight and control of others; reminded, too, that allies were also rivals, and trust in as short a supply as money. But this wasn’t the answer. She repeated this internally, in case she hadn’t heard it the first time: This. Wasn’t. The answer.
She said, “You’re not an elected MP. You’re a former Home Secretary. In the public view, that’s a little below being a former
“The public aren’t involved, except inasmuch as they’d be beneficiaries. We’re talking about a higher good here, Diana.”
“And you’re the one who defines what that higher good is?”
“I’m sure we can find common ground. The higher good’s a plateau, not a peak.”
It was insane. It couldn’t work.
She’d need to hear a lot more detail before she could be persuaded that it was even worth laughing at.
Diana Taverner said, “It’s always interesting chatting with you, Peter. I never know whether to send a thank you note or a SWAT team afterwards.”
“You’ll think about this.”
It wasn’t a question.
She left the café without another word. The pavements were damp, the air swimmy with exhaust. Through a gap in the buildings she could see St. Paul’s, its elegant bulb a reminder that some things endured.
She walked back to Regent’s Park more slowly than usual.
No more snow had fallen. A thin grey rain, instead, swept the city, and the drains swam with excess run-off, and mains burst with dull predictability. One of these was not far from Slough House, and made a lagoon of a junction, in lieu of fixing which a team of council-liveried characters had erected a roadblock of sandbags and bollards, ensuring that traffic was reduced to a single-lane nightmare, before going off on their summer holidays.
