And what about the MI5 report? The one that I’ve so damningly excerpted in my article that shows that a female intelligence analyst brought the Plague to her superior’s attention back on November 10 only for her to be ignored and dismissed so thoroughly that she quit and, according to my source, is now working as a policeman in rural England. First of all, I would ask how you got your hands on that report and remind your source there is such a thing as the Official Secrets Act. And beyond that, Maria, I’ve got nothing. That analyst—and yes, of course I know who she is—was right. Her report predicts the consequences of the Plague with eerie precision, but I can’t change the past.
Her supervisor was a sexist asshole called David Bird, and if it makes you feel any better he’s dead now, so. There’s that. We discovered her report last week, right around the same time as you did, I imagine, and I’m sure it’s very vindicating for her, but it’s not going to change anything now.
As satisfying as it is fighting with Maria Ferreira in my head, I have actual work to do. While I’m still here, I might as well make myself useful. A briefing paper the size of a waffly PhD thesis is sitting in my inbox. It starts with the death reports. Two more assistants dead, one senior director, six analysts. Of course, we’re assuming they’re dead. They might just have slunk home to await their fate, and I can’t say I blame them. It’s more efficient to assume they’re dead, as statistically they soon will be. The next section is what I like to think of as whack-a-mole. Every day I fight ten fires, and then the next day ten more appear.
Every other country is the same. The international section of the report provides some chilling news about the speed of transmission in France and some typically organized German responses that I’ll keep an eye on to see if they actually help. All of our key allies are fighting to keep their heads above water—to keep unrest at bay, ensure domestic terror threats are managed and ensure that, as far as possible, intelligence and security services keep functioning. On the plus side, it turns out that male terrorists are as petrified as the rest of the population. And happily, terrorists are men most of the time. The surveillance that we’re maintaining at a minimal level is finding that terror cells are breaking up and fleeing. We think a few hundred have left London, and about 110 have disappeared from Birmingham. I can only imagine they’re unlikely to still be alive, which brings me absolutely no sadness whatsoever.
The media reports section is a painful read. The newspapers have had a field day. “The authorities ignored the problem,” they’re saying. But I’m still unsure as to what exactly it is that we could have done. Pushed for research earlier into a vaccine? We’re not scientists. Warned people? Our role is to minimize unrest and panic, not create it. Perhaps we could have quarantined the sick, but women were hosts. I don’t see how we could have kept enough people away from each other in a country with seventy-plus million people, and thousands of people flying in and out every day, to make much of a difference unless it was done in the first, critical few days.
But that’s not a very PR-friendly answer. I’m meant to apologize profusely as though I personally concocted the disease and spread it to the British population myself at night like the BFG. So instead I write a brief press statement that’s as vague as it is unhelpful.
The security services are working tirelessly to minimize unrest and keep the British people safe. We will continue to provide updates as and when we know more.
I’ve always been good at drafting press statements. The carefully constructed neutrality I convey lends itself to press statements that are unobjectionable. Whenever my daughter asks me what my job is like, I say that my job isn’t just boring, my job is to be boring. Or at least it was, until the world imploded. We’re doing what we can, and it’s not enough, of course it’s not, but I can say without any blight on my conscience that we’re doing what could be expected in extraordinary circumstances. This is like a biblical flood or an extinction. This is not normal. Everyone’s going to blame the authorities and we’re going to take it because that’s our jobs. But we are just about managing to survive as a nation, and at the moment, that’s as good as it’s going to get.