Kip bit off a mouthful of cheese cruller, his breakfast of choice when Barb wasn’t around, and washed it down with a slug of hot chocolate, another indulgence. He too had a hangover after slamming a six-pack down with Barney Tench at the end of last night. It wasn’t improving his mood or his judgment this morning.

A small field of documents lay between them, the bare minimum Jed needed to make his case that Blackstone may have been involved, even if unwittingly or at some remove, with Baumer’s New York jihad. Kipper was impressed by Jed’s prosecution of the matter, but he remained entirely sceptical about the Chief of Staff’s preferred option for dealing with it.

‘Agent Monroe may well be the world expert on this guy,’ he conceded, spilling a few cruller flakes onto the blotter. ‘But you know as well as I do that she is a grossly inappropriate choice to take this any further. Put aside the fact that she’s personally compromised because of the attack on her family, she’s Echelon, Jed. She can’t blow her nose within the borders of the US without breaking half-a-dozen laws.’

Culver didn’t think much of that objection, and it showed. His eyes burned with sleeplessness, and fatigue cramped the muscles in the backs of his legs. He could feel his calves jumping and twitching as early morning traffic appeared on the streets outside Kipper’s office window.

‘If you turn this over to the Bureau, sir, they will do their usual thorough job, which will take about eighteen years. During which time Blackstone will get wind of what’s happening, giving him plenty of opportunity to build a large, roaring bonfire of incriminating evidence that could heat this city for Christmas and beyond. Monroe has the skill-set, the background and the motivation to close the file in weeks, if not days.’

Kipper’s hand cut through the air in front of him like a heavy blade. ‘Enough! Agent Monroe, who now works for Echelon UK, as far as I remember, Jed, is not a criminal investigator. She’s an assassin, for God’s sake! I can’t imagine a worse person to send down to Fort Hood under our imprimatur.’

Culver stood up to stretch the painful knots out of his legs, but also because his frustration was mounting to the point where he had to walk it off. He stalked over to the fireplace.

‘She is not just a trigger-puller, Mr President. She’s a lot more than that. Fact is, she had two years’ training at Quantico, pre-Wave. An accelerated investigator’s course. She can play an undercover cop, if it helps to think of her in that fashion.’