‘I believe his formal title is “the Emir”,’ deadpanned Barney Tench.

‘Okay, that asshole the Emir . . . Anyway, we have thousands of displaced people, and about three hundred of his former soldiers, or fighters, or whatever you want to call them.’

‘“Assholes” works for me,’ said Tench.

Because of Kipper’s almost pathological informality, anybody in the room could probably get away with talking like that. But only Barney, his oldest living friend, felt comfortable enough to do so. The President answered his interruption with a lopsided grin, before carrying on.

‘Question is, as it’s always been, what are we going to do with them? I don’t want to force repatriations on women and kids, when we’d be sending most of them back to a radiated wasteland. Thank you, Israel. On the other hand, having tried to take something by force, these people shouldn’t be rewarded by being given what they tried to take. In this case, the right to settle. So, suggestions?’

Jed had one, but it involved putting them all on a garbage scow and towing it out into the mid Atlantic at the height of hurricane season. Perhaps if he’d been working for Mad Jack Blackstone he’d have put it forward, but having tried a few times in this forum, he knew it wouldn’t float. So to speak. Instead, he picked a few pieces of lint from the cuffs of his trousers.

The silence in the room ballooned into significance. Sarah Humboldt, as the ICE boss, had responsibility for the matter, but Sarah was a lifelong bureaucrat, more comfortable implementing policy than developing it. Nonetheless, she obviously felt the weight of expectation fall upon her. Clearing her throat, she began to sort through the stack of papers she was carrying. If she was looking for something specific, it remained lost in there and she grew flustered at her inability to find it. Kip interrupted her embarrassment with a gentle question.

‘Sarah, why don’t you just tell me what you think? Don’t give me options. I don’t need to run through every scenario your guys have come up with. You’ve been working this area your whole life, so just tell me what you think.’

Secretary Humboldt looked horrified. But with an observable effort of will, she put aside the briefing notes. ‘Well, sir . . .’

That was as far as she progressed for a few seconds, as she groped wordlessly for the right thing to say.

‘Come on, Sarah,’ urged Kip. ‘You’ve been out to the detention camps. You sat in on a lot of interviews. What’s your gut feeling?’

Humboldt frowned. All of her training, all of her professional experience, had taught her to divorce her feelings from her judgment.