“How long do you reckon it’ll take to assemble the forces and what do we need?” asked the Prime Minister.

“It’ll take a good month plus, Prime Minister,” replied Kydd. “And we’re talking about a one-corps, possibly two-corps operation. With three or four divisions on land. Say sixty thousand to eighty thousand personnel, plus a major amphibious effort to put it ashore. I reckon we could pull together a division with the French. The Germans and Poles may be able to combine. If that happened, we’d put it all under the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. And the Americans have also got 82nd Airborne at immediate notice to move, plus a Marine Expeditionary Force already on its way across the Atlantic. So that’s another corps-sized force. We’ll need to regain command of the Baltic, but the Americans have got 6th Fleet inbound as well as a substantial air effort.”

Walker could see that the Prime Minister liked what he heard. Little questioned Kydd further. “It’s really important that we have a substantial British effort. After all, we’ve taken the biggest hit . . . Apart from the Baltics that is—”

“OK, Prime Minister. I get that. But the bottom line is that the Armed Forces are still reeling from the cuts made by the last government.”

“What are you implying?” Everage snarled.

Kydd looked down at him. “Since you ask, you’re more on the hook than anyone,” he said bluntly. Then, eyes boring into the hapless Defense Secretary and entirely forgetting Walker’s plea to moderate his language, he added, “And whichever stupid fucker thought they could cut the regular Army by a third and replace it with reserves needs their fucking head examining.”

The Prime Minister sighed and rolled his eyes. “OK, CDS. I take the hit. But what could we, should we do now?”

Kydd thought. “We’ve still got 20th Armored Brigade stationed in Germany, which makes it a bloody sight easier to move it to Eastern Europe than a brigade stuck on Salisbury Plain and on the wrong side of the Channel. With a massive effort—and I’m talking wholesale cannibalization of the rest of the Army—we could give them the manpower, equipment and logistic support to bring them to war establishment . . . That means proper fighting strength, not some fucking paper strength.

“And be under no illusions, when I say cannibalization, I mean just that. Tank regiments without working tanks, artillery regiments without guns. If anything else blows up in the meantime—like a jihadi attack, Paris-style—we are entirely fucked, because that would mean putting soldiers from tank, gunner, helicopter and logistic regiments, as well as the infantry, outside supermarkets, schools and other potential targets right across the nation . . . as the French army has had to do. So all our military eggs, what few working ones we have left, will all be in this one basket.”