Redback. Lindy Cameron
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of Britain's new Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee had been caught by the promo for an impending live update.
Drake turned to his companions in the Club's Tudor Room. 'A multi-national force with international jurisdiction could deal with specific terrorist threats like that one, wherever they occur.'
'You mean like NATO?' Ministerial Advisor Peter Ebrey said.
'No. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is not really much use in the South Pacific, Peter.'
'He said like NATO, Teddy, and you know bloody well what he means,' said Richard Thorpe.
As head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, Thorpe was technically Edward Drake's subordinate, but there no disrespect in his tone. The two men had been friends for 30 years - in as much as spies from rival departments could ever make that claim. Besides, here in the exclusive Kingston Club, position held no sway, especially a position that was only a week old. And while both Thorpe and Drake had been contenders, the latter's confirmation as JIC Chairman had been a forgone conclusion. He'd been 'acting' in the top job since his predecessor's strange and untimely death.
'But who would actually sign up for this international force?'
'Any country, you know, that we approve. Oh, now here's an idea,' Drake said. 'This force could be open for direct recruitment.'
'Isn't that how the French Foreign Legion works?' said Adam Lyall, the only American in the group. 'Great idea, Teddy, let's train jilted criminals to fight terrorists.'
Drake smiled and shook his head at the visiting US Deputy Secretary of State. 'I meant direct recruitment from other armed forces, not straight off the street, Adam.'
'So, back to Peter's question,' Lyall said. 'Who would agree to have their own jurisdiction trampled by an armed force that could arbitrarily cross borders on the pretext of routing out a few terrorists?'
'You Americans do that kind of trampling all the time,' Thorpe said and allowed himself a brief laugh.
'Well yeah,' Lyall agreed, 'but, just like you guys, we cross those borders in secret, at night. And we try to do it without noticeably compromising anyone's sovereignty or hurting anyone's damn feelings.'
'What about the United Nations?' It was Ebrey again.
Lyall and Thorpe exchanged amused glances. 'He is young,' Thorpe observed.
Ebrey ignored the dig, 'I just don't get why you're trying to reinvent the wheel.'
'You are aware that we're just shooting the breeze here, Peter?' Thorpe said.
'Speak for yourself, Richard. I'm serious about this,' Drake stated. 'Ever since those Titan Guards luckily, but accidentally, saved the Australian, Indian and Canadian Prime Ministers from being snipered at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting last year, I've been mulling over the creation of an international kind of SAS troop or police force.'
'But why create a new army,' Ebrey said. 'Isn't that what the UN peacekeeping forces already do?'
'Only in their wet dreams,' Drake said. 'Sending little packs of soldiers to stand around in foreign trouble spots and not engage the enemy, unless it lobs a grenade at their feet, is not what I'm talking about. Peacekeepers are only useful after the fact. What's more, as you well know, UN forces only get convened from whichever country wants to volunteer a couple of soldiers for duty in that place, at that time, for that mission.'
A derisive snort accompanied Lyall's cigar smoke. 'That's assuming the UN can make up its collective mind to do anything at all.'
'Forget the UN,' Drake insisted. 'I'm not talking about keeping the peace. I mean, how can you keep something that simply doesn't exist in a war zone? And, as we all know, terrorists do not confine their acts to war zones. What I'm talking about here is instant action, perhaps even pre-emptive ball-busting.'
Drake's companions laughed; partly because his fighting words matched neither his placid tone nor his chubby school-boy appearance, but mostly because they were at odds with his usual position.
'Since when are you in favour of the guns-blazing form of diplomacy?' Thorpe asked.
'Despite malicious rumours to the contrary,' Drake said, acknowledging their reaction with good humour, 'every now and then I do get the urge to take the fight to their front door.'
'You Teddy?' Thorpe mocked. 'You've always been fervidly opposed to any overseas commitment.'
'And I will forever argue against wasting our troops, en masse, overseas if it compromises our domestic safety,' Drake said. 'But imagine having a small, specifically-trained force that could be aimed at the heart of the problem, one that could be dispatched to cut off the head of that damn regenerating serpent whenever, or wherever, it emerges from its bolt hole.'
'Now who's dreaming,' Thorpe remarked. 'You'd never get that level of international cooperation.'
'Isn't it time we worked to change that, instead of assuming it's impossible?' Drake said. 'I tell you, my friends, our own bureaucracy is the greatest unintentional ally these terrorists have. While we sit twiddling our proverbials, they're out there ready to blow theirs clean off just to get the job done. We don't have a chance against them until we can find a way to play their game. Isn't that so Adam?'
As much as Lyall agreed with the idea, it was too soon to go too public against his own Commander in Chief's sorry alternative. So, resisting the urge to concur with Drake's apparently-sudden innovative solution to fighting terrorism, he trotted out his usual, 'I've been saying for years we need a dedicated force to deal with those bastards.'
'But that is not what your boss is advocating, is it?' Thorpe baited the lanky Virginian. 'Tell us again what the POTUS will be putting to the PM tomorrow?'
'Dick,' Lyall said, 'you know perfectly well that Garner is still flogging that dead-horse of his. He's got a new name for it, but it's the same massive and unwieldy concept of a full-time but high-rotation Coalition army - to be headed by us, naturally.'
'Which is why it won't happen,' Ebrey said. 'We're over agreeing to everything your big guy wants.'
Lyall nodded. 'Problem is, my guy doesn't seem to get it that no one - especially in the already-free world - likes being told what to do by someone who just thinks he knows best.'
'On top of which,' Thorpe said, 'having thousands of troops holed- up in permanent forts located only in the world's so-called hot spots is akin to offering them up for terrorist target practice. Meanwhile, in the real world, the bastards will simply attack everywhere there are no troops.'
'Hey, why not start with those Titan Guards,' Lyall suggested. 'A British-American company employing the best ex-enlisted from Australia, Canada and South Africa, means they're already multi- national. They proved their, I suppose you'd call it honour, by acting decisively and beyond the call of money when they saved those Prime Ministers in Delhi last June, which I gather they did, just because they could. That in itself was amazing for a bunch of mercenaries. Let's turn them into your army.'
'Now you are being ridiculous,' Thorpe said, nodding thanks to the waiter who'd arrived with fresh drinks. 'Those ex-soldiers - ex being the operative word - are no different to the countless other security firms that have been operating in Iraq over the last too-many years. Granted many of those private armies, personal protection firms, special-forces units and spies for hire - like Acorn, Carrington, Black- water, Aegis, Greystone, HarkerFleet and the Titan Guards - have been doing the work no one else can, or wants to do. But so many others like them, or unlike them, have been working under the radar in Iraq, and in Afghanistan and the Gulf States, running drugs, selling arms, and getting very rich.'
'Yes, yes; they've been doing the same in Morocco, Somalia, Central America, Colombia, you name it,' Drake said, distracted by a new image on the BBC World channel. 'That's why we'd need to start our Inter-Force from scratch.'
'Inter-Force, Teddy? You've even named it,' Ebrey noted.
'Can we have the sound up on the tele please, Robert?' Drake asked the