Kipper was nodding slowly, feeding himself small chunks of cookie that he broke off the mother lode like a kid trying to make a treat last a little longer. Jed could not be sure he was nodding in agreement with Ms Humboldt; he may simply have been acknowledging her. The President liked people to know he was listening to them. The Chief of Staff, on the other hand, was having trouble constraining himself. He didn’t like where this was going, and he felt himself blind-sided by whatever arrangement Humboldt and Ritchie had come to before the meeting. Jed was going to have to reassess his reading of the National Security Advisor. It appeared that Ritchie was more practised at the dark arts of politics than he had imagined when lobbying Kipper on the admiral’s behalf.

‘ICE sought input from all the major stakeholders on this question . . .’

But not from me, thought Culver.

‘. . . and as you would imagine, their responses varied considerably. Defense and the NIA argued strongly in favour of continued detention. Treasury’ – she spared a glance for McAuley at this point – ‘has been updating its forward estimates for funding a number of scenarios. And we at ICE, of course, are in constant contact with Reconstruction about their needs for various skill sets that remain under-subscribed.’

Barney Tench appeared to be nonplussed by the inclusion of his department in Sarah’s magic circle. But as Jed examined his shorthand notes of what she’d just said, he suppressed a sour grin of admiration. Humboldt had drawn the other players in the room into whatever gambit she was about to make, simply by stating the fucking obvious. Of course Reconstruction and Treasury were in constant contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement about labour shortfalls and funding requirements – that didn’t mean they were on board for every program Humboldt wanted to push. As tempted as he was to interrupt, the Chief of Staff thought it best to let her play her hand.

‘It would be possible,’ she continued, ‘to include most of the problematic cohort, the fighters with family ties to our non-combatant detainees, as part of the general intake into this year’s frontier militia forces.’

At this, Jed had reached the limit of his forbearance.

‘Seriously? You seriously want to integrate these nutjobs into our military forces?’

‘The frontier militias aren’t part of the regular military,’ corrected James Ritchie.

The unexpected intervention drew Culver up short, and he cursed himself for making such an undergraduate mistake. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’re splitting hairs. No, the frontier militias are not part of the armed forces. You know that, I know that, but such fine gradations of meaning are well beyond most people. And it’s most people who’ll go apeshit at the mere suggestion of letting these guys out of their cage, handing them a gun, and sending them off into the wilderness.’

‘He has a point,’ said Kip.