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‘Fear’, Vice-President Bobby Black said to me, ‘works.’

It was now a week after the Inauguration and a week after the Washington Post had published the story about the row between Davis and Black. We were in the White House, and things were getting worse.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Fear … works,’ he repeated, separating the words in his whispering drawl.

The Vice-President of the United States shrugged and blinked behind his glasses, as if that were explanation enough. I had been invited to the White House–‘summoned’ might be a better word–for a bollocking. I had left early from the Ambassador’s living quarters at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. I’d said goodbye to Fiona, kissed her and told her that I would be late–a long day at the White House followed by planned meetings with the new people in Congress, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Betty Furedi, plus two sessions on Capitol Hill, and then finally, around 6 p.m., a cocktail party to welcome the new Turkish Ambassador.

‘Dinner? Eight?’ I said as I kissed her. ‘That’s what we scheduled?’

‘Yes,’ she said, without enthusiasm. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ears. ‘See you for dinner at eight.’

We entertained most evenings. That night I had planned a small dinner for a visiting delegation of representatives of British airlines to bring them together with two key members of a Congressional committee that was proving difficult about landing rights at JFK and O’Hare Airport in Chicago. There was no direct relationship between the problems we were having and the Manila attack, but Rashid Ali Fuad’s British citizenship was mentioned repeatedly in the committee hearings, and constantly talked about on the US TV news networks.

‘Dinner at eight,’ Fiona repeated. ‘You know, sometimes I feel less like an Ambassador’s wife and more like a flight attendant. All I do is smile at strangers and serve them beverages.’

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ I said.

‘We always talk about it later.’

‘You want out?’ I snapped. ‘This isn’t much fun for me, either, being married to someone who treats me like I’m some kind of kidnapper.’

‘I just want my own life back, that’s all. Not just a part of yours. Is that too much to ask?’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘That’s not too much to ask. We will talk about it, I promise.’

I kissed her on the cheek but did not ask how she was going to spend her day. At that moment, on my way to the White House, I had enough to deal with.

‘Eight o’clock then.’

‘Yes.’

There is a peculiar excitement about going to the White House, no matter how many times it happens. You remember the details. Every sense is on overload. It is like drinking from the Enchanted Fountain of Power. That day it was a small meeting which filled the Vice-President’s tiny office–just Bobby Black, his Chief of Staff, Johnny Lee Ironside, the White House Deputy National Security Adviser, Dr Kristina Taft, plus me, and a note-taker. A vase of lilies left over from the Inauguration celebrations sat on the Vice-President’s desk, heavy with pollen. I still remember how the flowers gave off a pungent smell. Bobby Black had called me in to discuss the publicity given by British newspapers to the behind-the-scenes rows between the two governments, following the exposé in the Washington Post. It had become echo-chamber journalism, nothing more than the hollow sound of our worst prejudices as the British and American media had a go at each other. Johnny Lee Ironside had warned me that the Vice-President would bring up the related case of another British national who had been picked up by US special forces on the Pakistan-Afghan border. He was called Muhammad Asif Khan, and he had been arrested, detained, or kidnapped–you can choose your word–either inside Afghanistan, as the Americans claimed, or inside Pakistan, as his family and the Pakistan Government insisted. The American account said Khan was a British accomplice of the Manila bomber Rashid Ali Fuad, though we had no evidence of this and suspected the Americans didn’t either.

Khan’s family–from Keighley in Yorkshire–said he had disappeared while visiting relatives, and claimed he was being tortured by the CIA, or that he had been handed over to a ‘friendly’ country with a dubious human-rights record so that their intelligence agencies could torture him on behalf of the Americans. A number of British newspapers, politicians and human-rights groups, along with the Pakistan Government, protested that in its first week the Carr-Black administration was ‘already even worse than that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.’ The Guardian newspaper had called the Khan disappearance a ‘blight’ on ‘all the hopes’ for the new presidency. No one would confirm where Khan was being held, though some reports said it was in Egypt. Since the Manila atrocity, reports of this kind of treatment of suspected terrorists had grown. Johnny Lee told me to think of it as ‘outsourcing’.

‘Like putting a call centre in Bangalore,’ he said to me. ‘You employ some real experts, hungry for the work, and you get more bang for your buck.’

‘Is Khan in Egypt, Johnny Lee?’

‘No idea, Alex. God help the sonovabitch if he is. The Egyptians don’t do nice, from what I hear.’

The fact that Khan’s father and uncles were from Keighley, geographically just a short drive from Leeds, the home town of Fuad, the Manila bomber, was asserted in the American media as evidence of a connection. The Khan family angrily denied it. They were politically well connected, friends of a British Muslim Labour MP who made a fuss, organized a series of well-publicized protests and asked awkward questions in Parliament. Fraser Davis was in trouble at Prime Minister’s Questions, embarrassed by the Opposition, and also by some on his own side. Mostly he was embarrassed by being dropped in it by the Americans.

‘Can the Prime Minister confirm under what circumstances he believes it is legal for the CIA or the American Army to kidnap and torture British citizens?’ was just one of the unhelpful questions Fraser Davis faced in the Commons and on television.

‘Can the Prime Minister confirm the whereabouts of Mr Khan?’

‘Can the Prime Minister tell us how dispensing with due process of law and alienating the entire British Muslim community will help the Carr administration win their so-called War on Terror?’

And so on.

British newspapers showed pictures of Khan–clean shaven and smiling–helping a group of handicapped children on an Outward Bound course in the Lake District, a model citizen, apparently. The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek magazine showed a different Khan. This one was an Islamist fanatic, a Taleban supporter and wannabe suicide bomber who had been recruiting young British men of Pakistani origin to kill–Americans and Jews preferably–without compunction. Khan, they claimed, was planning some kind of unspecified attack in the United States or against American targets ‘along the lines of Manila.’

Where the truth lay in all this, I did not know. What I did know was that the row between London and Washington had now entered an even more aggressive phase. All the rest had been just foreplay. At least Johnny Lee Ironside and I had established a good relationship, I would almost say a friendship, in the months or so since the initial disagreement at Chequers. We met frequently and talked on the telephone almost every day.

‘Heads up,’ he said. ‘The Vice-President wants to see you about Khan and other matters, and it isn’t going to be pretty. Be prepared for Incoming.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied. I appreciated the warning.

‘He’s in need of a human sacrifice, Alex, and as the top Brit around here, you have been selected.’

I pretended to laugh.

‘Ritual slaughter is one of the perks of the job. I’m looking forward to it. Obviously.’

That day of my White House visit I heard the morning TV weather reports predicting an ice storm all around the Chesapeake Bay. Flat blue clouds rolled in from the northeast, bringing a chill which drilled the bones. After I kissed Fiona goodbye, I came out of the ambassador’s residence, around half past seven in the morning. I was swathed in a long black coat and I jumped into the embassy’s dark green Rolls-Royce with the heating turned up full blast. I felt bad about Fiona; bad about the way it was going. On the journey down Massachusetts Avenue I tried to see things from her point of view. Yes, I had taken her away from her friends and career in London, but she knew all the drawbacks when she married me. Yes, I had a hectic job, but being the wife of the British Ambassador was not such a bad deal, was it?

And yes, yes, I wanted children. I’m young for an ambassador but when you hit late forties you are getting old for fatherhood. I felt time passing and the ticking of the clock that women are supposed to possess but men are not. Because Fiona is twelve years younger than me, perhaps she did not feel it so intensely, but I was slowly waking up to the idea that I might need a bit of diplomacy in my private life.

I got to the White House shortly before eight o’clock. Dr Kristina Taft met me near the media stakeout position at the West Wing door. That day she was still the Deputy National Security Adviser, though not for long. The newspapers called Kristina a ‘Vulcan’, one of the hyper-rational academics full of brainy ideas and yet apparently devoid of human emotion whom Carr and Black had brought in to run American policy. I could not square the newspaper hype with the smiling face that greeted me, though I admit I was slightly intimidated. Kristina was about the same age as Fiona and we stood shaking hands for the photographers. We exchanged a few words as the Marine Guard saluted and the machine-gun fire of lenses and flashguns went off in our faces.

Nothing happens at the White House by accident. Everything in the Carr presidency is scheduled into fifteen-minute slots, and there are therefore ninety-six of these across the President’s twenty-four-hour day. Even ‘downtime’–relaxation–is scheduled in fifteen-minute bites, though a sensible president will make sure he gets at least thirty-two of these a night. I used to wonder if some presidents–especially Kennedy or Clinton–had a fifteen-or thirty-or forty-five-minute schedule for sex. Anyway, Kristina Taft could have chosen for me to arrive discreetly, away from the cameras. Instead she picked the entrance designed to give the American media a full photo-opportunity of the British Ambassador being called in for his bollocking by Bobby Black. It was to be, as Johnny Lee had told me, an act of ritual humiliation. My humiliation. I shook hands and beamed. The ‘special relationship’ between the United States and the United Kingdom deserves no less than the occasional warm smile of hypocrisy.

‘Welcome, Ambassador.’

‘Dr Taft. Nice to see you. A pleasure.’

‘I think the cameras have had enough,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth as she steered me inside. ‘You know, the Vice-President told me he is looking forward to meeting with you. He insisted we clear serious face-time.’

Serious face-time with Bobby Black? Diplomatic Warning Bell Number One went off in my head.

‘Vice-President Black is a very busy man,’ I replied carefully. In that first week he was more often on the newspaper front pages than the President himself, a pattern which was to continue for the next two years. ‘I am grateful for the meeting. He’s never out of the news.’

Kristina Taft smiled again, but her grey eyes didn’t. She was wearing a sober dark suit, no discernible make-up, no jewellery. This was an attractive woman deliberately making herself look as serious as possible. She led me inside.

‘We’re going to have to wait a few minutes,’ she said. ‘He is in for a one-on-one with the President. Coffee?’

I accepted and we sat in a hallway watched over by two Secret Service agents. Kristina poured the coffee. I had of course done my homework, reading the briefing papers about the new Carr people. Kristina’s said that her academic career had been stellar, and also that her supposed boss at the National Security Council was in trouble, accused of employing illegal aliens at his home in Virginia. It was just the first of the scandals that were to hit the Carr administration.

Kristina was from the start acting up, as National Security Adviser, with all the authority that implies, although in that first week the gossip was that she was too young for the job; someone else would be brought in. She was, however, born to high office, part of a political dynasty. Her father had been Governor of California and the Tafts are Republican royalty, with a former President, William Howard Taft, to their credit in the early twentieth century. His main claim to historical fame is that he was so fat–300 pounds–that he once got stuck in the White House bathtub. I looked over at Kristina and thought of a hummingbird: she was petite, hyperactive, with the figure of someone who exercises regularly. My briefing papers said Washingtonian magazine had voted her America’s ‘most eligible bachelorette’, under a glamorous picture of her in a full-length evening gown. The New York Times reported that, during the transition, before Theo Carr was actually sworn in, Kristina Taft had a row with Bobby Black and had stood up to him. She had suggested, the story claimed, a White House reading list, including novels to help National Security staff understand how Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis, and other Muslims might think.

The New York Times congratulated Kristina on her fortitude in taking on Bobby Black and also on being a ‘civilizing influence’ in the White House. It was a compliment that would not necessarily help her career.

‘So,’ I said, trying to figure Kristina out, ‘what’s this reading list I hear so much about? And can I get a copy? Or are the novels you read Top Secret, US Eyes Only?’

She had the grace to laugh.

‘They are so secret you can get them from any bookstore, if you are open-minded enough to try.’

She explained about the row. During the transition, Theo Carr had held a brainstorming meeting of all his foreign policy advisers and challenged them to name the core failure in American policy in the past fifty years. Kristina stood up and said it was the ‘United States’ inability to understand the psychology of our enemies in the way we understood the psychology of the Russians during the Cold War.’

‘Explain what you mean, Dr Taft,’ Carr had asked, almost like a job interview. Perhaps it was a job interview. Kristina delivered a history lesson. She said that since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, all America’s troubles originated in an ‘Arc of Instability’ stretching from Palestine and Israel through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

‘But we don’t understand what we are doing,’ Kristina insisted. ‘So we blunder about like dinosaurs with powerful bodies and very small brains. If we don’t change, we are going to be extinct.’

Theo Carr was clearly interested; Bobby Black less so.

‘Give us an example of this dinosaur tendency, Dr Taft,’ Black said. ‘I want some facts.’

‘Fact: Under George W. Bush the United States military destroyed Saddam Hussein in Two Thousand and three,’ Kristina replied. ‘Fact: the United States and its allies overthrew the Taleban in Afghanistan in Two Thousand and two.’

She paused.

‘So?’

‘So, what good did it do us? At great cost to ourselves in American lives, we took out Iran’s two most dangerous enemies, and the Iranians still hate us. Fact: Under Bill Clinton in Nineteen Ninety-eight we saved the Muslim people of Kosovo from slaughter and get no credit from Muslims anywhere. So how dumb are we? We think tactics and ignore strategy; we screw up because we don’t think through what the objective really is. No More Manilas means no more being dinosaurs.’

‘The objective …’ Bobby Black started to say something but Theo Carr waved him to be silent.

‘How do we do better, Dr Taft?’ Carr asked.

‘By thinking like the people of the region, sir. By remembering the old Arab cliché, that My Enemy’s Enemy is My Friend. By getting smart. By getting others to do the dirty work for us.’

‘But how?’ Carr insisted.

That’s when the White House reading list was born, despite Bobby Black’s protests.

‘Here’s a start. Arabs and Persians watch our TV, our movies, read our books, listen to our rock music. We should do the same with their literature. They understand us and we do not understand them.’

‘Through storybooks?’ Bobby Black scoffed.

‘One good novel revealing how ordinary Muslim people think,’ Kristina responded, ‘is worth a dozen CIA estimates about the opium crop in Afghanistan or political gossip on instability in Iraq or Pakistan or wherever.’

‘She speaks Arabic, that’s why she thinks this way,’ Bobby Black responded. ‘I speak American and, in plain American, we need to understand these people a whole lot less, and condemn a whole lot more.’

‘I speak Human,’ Kristina contradicted Bobby Black a second time, which is maybe where all the trouble between them started. ‘And it’s the human battle we need to win.’

The President looked at Kristina, then at his Vice-President, and decided the novels should stay on the White House reading list. As Kristina told me the gist of the story that day waiting for Bobby Black, she suggested some bookstore titles for me, beginning with an Egyptian novel called The Yacoubian Building.

‘A young man from a poor background wants to become a police officer,’ she told me, ‘but he’s from the wrong class and can’t afford the bribes. So this decent young guy becomes a terrorist instead. The author says the real disease in the Muslim world is despotism. Terrorism is just one of the symptoms. He’s right.’

I tried to digest this thought.

‘So, has the Vice-President read this insightful book?’ I asked mischievously. Kristina Taft laughed again. I had broken through. I could see her visibly relax in my company, and I sensed an opportunity. Bobby Black was shaping up to be the most powerful Vice-President in US history, even more powerful than Dick Cheney. After Manila, Theo Carr announced that Black would be in charge of anti-terrorism policy. It was difficult for me to see how his approach and Kristina’s ideas could ever work together in the same administration. She would need allies. So would I.

‘More than two hundred American dead,’ Bobby Black had said in speeches in the dying days of the campaign. ‘Two hundred and forty seven of our people; thirty-nine of other nationalities. Two hundred and forty seven of Us. Every American will be avenged. You have my word. No–More–Manilas.’

All through the transition, London had badgered me to find out what this sabre-rattling talk actually meant. The most important question for any British government is always to figure out what the Americans are up to, and I am the person who is supposed to know.

‘The Spartacus Solution,’ I told Andy Carnwath when he contacted me at Fraser Davis’s insistence.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he said. Phone conversations with Andy Carnwath are typically littered with so many expletives that within the Civil Service they are known as ‘The Vagina Monologues’. I explained that the British military attaché had heard whispers in the Pentagon that Bobby Black had been very impressed by a discussion paper written by an obscure US Army General, Conrad Shultz. General Shultz–according to the DoD, the Department of Defence buzz–had written a paper during a year’s sabbatical at West Point calling for ‘The Spartacus Solution’ to terrorism.

I had no idea what the paper was about but I reminded Carnwath that Spartacus led the slave rebellion against the Romans. He and his fellow rebels were crucified on the roads into Rome.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Carnwath said. ‘Slaves? Crucified? You’d better get a copy of this fucking fairytale, Alex. Top priority.’

The urgency of getting a copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ became even more obvious when Theo Carr announced that General Shultz was to become the new Director of Central Intelligence.

‘So, come on, has the Vice-President been reading anything on your booklist, Dr Taft?’ I teased. ‘I mean, anything at all?’

‘Vice?’ Kristina replied mischievously, sipping her black coffee and using a nickname for the Vice-President that was already current in Washington, even though he had been in the White House for such a short time. ‘Vice boasted to me that he hasn’t read a storybook in thirty years and did not need fiction to tell him that, once you’ve got people by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. So I guess I have some work to do.’

She watched for my reaction. I nodded, sympathetically. Diplomatic Warning Bell Number Two went off in my head. Dr Kristina Taft had now clearly signalled to me that there was serious tension in the White House, and the Carr administration was less than ten days old. Perhaps she was also signalling that she herself was out of her depth, but I was less sure of that. It would take me a long time to find out what her depth might be.

We were interrupted by an aide who came through to say that Bobby Black had finished his meeting with President Carr and was now ready to see us. We walked down the corridor. The Vice-President was behind his desk. He did not get up. He did not apologize for keeping me waiting.

‘Ambassador Price.’ We shook hands. His fist was cold and moist, like wet dough. The air smelled strongly of lily pollen.

‘Mr Vice-President.’

‘You know Johnny Lee.’ Johnny Lee Ironside nodded. I was glad to see him. He was to become a guide into the Heart of Darkness that is the OVP, the Office of the Vice-President. I congratulated Bobby Black on the election.

‘I’m very pleased to see you here in the White House, Mr Vice-President,’ I said. ‘The Prime Minister has instructed me to pass on his personal congratulations and his sense of awe’, I continued, ‘at your ability to confound conventional wisdom. Prime Minister Davis would like to learn your election-winning secret.’

Bobby Black smiled the way a car salesman does with an irritating customer.

‘Our secret is that winning the War on Terror isn’t the most important thing,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing. The voters of this country understand that. I’m hoping to get your Prime Minister to understand that too. It’s kind of like missionary activity on our part you might say. Spreading the word.’

The November election had been a split decision. Carr and Black had won the White House but the Democrats scraped through to keep control, narrowly, of Congress. That was one of the reasons I was so keen to meet the new House Speaker, Betty Furedi, later that day, to try to gauge how much she would cooperate with Carr, and how much she might get in the way. Vice-President Black looked across the desk at me and blinked. A slack, lopsided grin appeared across his face.

‘Fear’, he said, by way of further explanation of the election victory, ‘works.’

I took a breath. If Bobby Black thought fear was a useful weapon to use upon the American electorate, then perhaps our discussions about the treatment of British terrorist suspects like Muhammad Asif Khan might not be about to go so well. I looked at Kristina Taft. She pulled out a Montblanc pen and gazed at the yellow legal pad in front of her. She did not catch my eye. The Vice-President launched into a short speech.

‘Newspaper stories in your country about torture’, he began softly, ‘are not helpful: not helpful to President Carr and this administration, not helpful to my people, not helpful to the fight against terror, and not helpful to the close cooperation between our two countries.’ Bobby Black went on to explain that in what he called ‘exceptional circumstances and exceptional times’ the ‘exceptional’ use of torture was justified. ‘You do not need me to remind you that, since Manila, these are exceptional circumstances,’ he emphasized, ‘which is why the President as Commander-in-Chief has authorized enhanced interrogation techniques. Some people choose to equate these with torture. I don’t care what word you use. I care that we get the job done.’

He hit a doughy hand on the table in front of him for emphasis. The Vice-President did not equivocate. Nor did he talk about ‘robust treatment of detainees’, which is the phrase that a beleaguered Prime Minister Davis had used in the Commons. And he did not try to pretend all this was simply some rough stuff that had got out of hand. Bobby Black confirmed to me that one of the first acts of the Carr Administration had been to sign what was known as National Security Directive 1402227. He clasped his hands together in an attitude of prayer and calmly explained that this directive specifically authorized the use of ‘highly coercive methods of interrogation by the United States’, which might be considered to fall within the United Nations definition of torture. This time he did not say ‘fuck the United Nations’, though I suspected he was thinking it.

‘The presidential authorization’, Black said, ‘comes with safeguards.’

‘Safeguards?’ I repeated. ‘What safeguards can you have on highly coercive interrogation, Mr Vice-President?’ He tapped his fingers together. His ruthlessness had an honest face. He never pretended otherwise.

‘All highly coercive procedures must be carried out under the supervision of a designated senior CIA officer. Only the Central Intelligence Agency–not the US military–only the CIA is authorized to carry out these enhanced interrogation procedures.’

I gulped. So, those were the safeguards? In their entirety? There was a pause while I was allowed to digest these statements.

‘Well, in the Khan case—’ I began, but Bobby Black cut me off. He said it was ‘just one of those things’ that the story had got into the British press, and that he did not bear grudges about that.

‘In fact, I’m mighty grateful the British media are reporting we are playing hardball with al Qaeda and their British supporters like Mr Khan,’ he said. ‘Because we are. We are serious. Committed. Determined. We do not do this lightly. It shows the nature of the exceptional threat we face.’

He had the franchise on the word ‘exceptional’.

‘Legally Mr Khan is not—’

‘Legally we have a Golden Shield, Ambassador Price. A Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. The President, under the Constitution of the United States, has absolute authority to manage a military campaign as he sees fit, including whichever enhanced interrogation techniques he chooses to authorize, notwithstanding any definitions of torture used by foreign powers or multinational organizations.’

‘But the United Nations’ definition …’

He grinned. ‘You know what I think of the United Nations.’

I tried to change the subject. ‘Specifically, when it comes to British citizens like Muhammad Asif Khan—’

‘Well, let me tell you about British citizens,’ Bobby Black interrupted again, ‘including the British citizen who was the Manila suicide bomber, your Mr Fuad …’He paused for effect. ‘The fact that British citizens might be subject to coercive interrogation techniques shows that we do not discriminate in favour of our closest friends and allies. Look around this room.’ I did as I was bid. Kristina Taft still did not catch my eye. ‘There’s a new team in Washington, Ambassador. We have a mandate from the American people to go after the Bad Guys, to implement what some of us are calling “The Spartacus Solution”, and I intend to see we do it.’

‘The Spartacus Solution?’ I leaned forward with real interest now. ‘I have heard the term but I …’

‘Yeah,’ Bobby Black said, and nodded to Johnny Lee Ironside. ‘Give the Ambassador a copy, Johnny Lee. With my compliments.’

Johnny Lee handed me a short bound document of maybe fifty pages of A4. I felt thrilled, as if I had just been handed the Holy Grail, but I tried not to look too pleased. The document said on the front: ‘The Spartacus Solution–how the United States will win the War on Terror.’ The Vice-President looked over at Kristina.

‘This is the kind of bedtime reading that might get us somewhere against these SOBs, even more than storybooks, isn’t that right, Dr Taft?’

Kristina looked up and smiled. It did not take much emotional intelligence to understand what she was thinking behind that smile.

‘Thank you, Mr Vice-President,’ I said, to break the awkward silence.

‘You’re most welcome,’ Bobby Black responded. ‘Anything and everything for our British friends. Now, before you go, Ambassador, Johnny Lee tells me you had experience in the British Army in Ireland?’

‘As a very young man in Northern Ireland, yes, Mr Vice-President. I had a short time in Military Intelligence and—’

‘So, if you and your British Military Intelligence buddies could have prevented a terrorist attack, let’s say the bombings on the London Tube, by torturing one or two bad guys, would you have done it?’

‘If,’ I replied, clutching at ‘The Spartacus Solution’ document, as though it might be taken away as punishment for giving the wrong answer. ‘It’s a big “if”,’ Mr Vice-President. When you begin to torture someone, you can never know for certain if—’

‘Of course you damn well would use torture,’ he answered his own question definitively, snapping at me but again never raising his voice. ‘Torture works. Fear works. Read Spartacus and tell me you agree.’

I blanched. It sounded like an order.

‘Mr Vice-President,’ I responded, keeping as calm as possible, ‘I will of course read “Spartacus”, and thank you again for the documents. But I also read American history. De Tocqueville wrote that America is great because America is good. In the worst days of your Civil War in Eighteen Sixty-three, President Lincoln signed into law instructions to the Union Army that torture and cruelty were not to be permitted. With great respect to you, Mr Vice-President, if Lincoln could win a war for the very existence of the United States without using torture, so can we now in the twenty-first century. I prefer Lincoln over Spartacus.’

Everyone in the room was looking at me now, including Kristina. Bobby Black stretched his neck like a turtle emerging from its shell.

‘Well, thank you kindly for the historical lecture, Ambassador,’ he said slowly. ‘But I think you will find that in Lincoln’s day nobody was blowing up airliners with C4 plastic explosives or crashing them into skyscrapers filled with civilians. The Confederates were not suicide bombers. The people we now have to face down–well, they inhabit a different moral universe from the rest of us normal folks, and your Prime Minister needs to get out front and centre of this and get your own citizens into line. The human-rights question people oughtta focus on is the right of normal folks to go about their business without getting blown up by some British fanatic like Rashid Ali Fuad in Manila or your friend, Mr Khan. If you don’t see your problem, well, we do. And if you don’t act, we will.’

Bobby Black gently slapped both wet palms down on the desk. He was white with anger and it was clear that the meeting was over. I said something about democratically elected governments not being able to pick and choose which aspects of human rights to support, which to abandon, depending upon apparent necessity. I said this not because it would change anything, but for the weakest of diplomatic reasons–so that I could report back to Downing Street that I had made a protest on behalf of the UK government. They could spin it to the press and in the Commons. Bobby Black looked at me with pity on his face, as if I had farted, and out of a generous spirit he’d decided to ignore the smell. His eyes were glazing over with indifference.

‘Thank you for your time, Ambassador,’ he said, reaching forward to shake my hand. Wet dough again. ‘Enjoy your bedtime reading.’

Johnny Lee Ironside nodded at me. ‘Good to see you, Alex. Let’s get caught up soon.’

Kristina Taft showed me out.

‘You’re brave,’ she whispered. ‘Not many do that.’

‘Is it always like this?’ I replied, putting the copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ in my attaché case and presuming on a connection with her that I sensed I had now made. Kristina did not reply until we were almost at my car, which–I noticed–was now parked at the more private south entrance, away from the cameras.

‘Pretty much,’ she said. Then she tugged gently at my sleeve. ‘Maybe we should talk,’ she whispered. ‘We seem to be on the same page on all of this.’

I nodded.

‘You were brave too. Over the books.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not brave to do what you think is right.’

I looked straight into her grey eyes and a moment of recognition passed between us. One of the peculiarities about being British Ambassador in Washington is that there are always factions within US administrations, and sometimes they see you as a potential ally, a useful tool or even as an intelligence asset for use against the other factions. It is a difficult and dangerous game to play. It’s also thrilling. Being allowed to play it at all makes the British a little bit special in the diplomatic corps in Washington.

‘Of course, let’s talk,’ I responded. ‘Any time. You say when.’

‘Not in the White House,’ she said. ‘I’ll figure out someplace. I might need more help than you think. Later today they’re announcing that I’m being promoted to National Security Adviser.’

‘Congratulations!’ I was genuinely pleased for her, though I was not sure she would survive. She was too young, too inexperienced, and Bobby Black already had his tanks on her lawn. He was already doing her job.

‘I’ll call you,’ Kristina said.

I understood. Or at least I thought I understood. If the meeting I had just endured was a sign of things to come, then relations between Britain and the United States were about to take a serious turn for the worse, mostly as a result of one man. Kristina would need friends and so would I. I was also flattered and intrigued to be asked to spend time with one of the rising stars of the Carr administration.

I climbed back into my car and told the driver to take me to the rest of that day’s meetings on Capitol Hill–but he informed me of a surprise hitch. While I had been meeting Vice-President Black, Speaker Furedi’s office had called the embassy to cancel. She had to be in the House chamber for an emergency session to discuss the Carr administration’s demands for a huge increase in defence funding. The Carr team wanted to rewrite the entire budget as an emergency antiterrorism measure. Carr and Black were talking about Spartacus and vengeance for Manila, while Betty Furedi and the Democrats in Congress were reluctant to pay for whatever it was they had in mind.

‘We’re sorry, Ambassador,’ Furedi’s Chief of Staff, a soft-voiced Californian called John Crockett said to me when I rang him for details. ‘I hope you understand. We’ll reschedule.’ I always thought Crockett was a decent man.

‘Of course, John. Not a problem. I know how busy Speaker Furedi must be. Call me.’

Suddenly I had a two-hour hole in my day. I felt like a schoolboy who is told that lessons are cancelled. I had nothing planned, nothing to fit in, and I realized that I also had a longing to see Fiona. I would apologize and tell her that I would no longer try to hurry her into motherhood, and that perhaps she should spend more time in England. I sensed that she felt trapped. I would make the peace and buy flowers on the way back to the embassy. I replanned my day very quickly. First, I would call Downing Street and tell them about Bobby Black and the Khan case. Then I would mention–just in passing–that I had obtained from the Vice-President himself a copy of the document that we all were so desperate to see, General Shultz’s report on fighting terrorism, ‘The Spartacus Solution’. Then–after receiving the well-deserved congratulations of a grateful British people from Downing Street–I would give Fiona a big surprise.