an intriguing proposition
‘The thing would be simple enough’ said Mark Francois, unfurling a map and sliding it in my direction. We sat huddled in a quiet corner of the Red Lion, a premier Westminster sot-house for the discerning scrutineer. Having detected my Hibernian brogue at a Spectator Food Guide luncheon earlier in the week, he had scribbled on my cuff that he had a working solution to the ‘border issue’, and a proclivity to share it, should I stand him some porter come Friday.
‘You understand’ he explained, with a furtive gravitas known to even the most hardened Territorials, ‘I was last in this establishment on army manoeuvres, and it would be imprudent for me to be recognised at the bar.’ I had heard of his impressive service – three decades hence – and one glance toward the environ of such a serious customer sufficed to bear those tales out. He jostled with the cuffs of his trench coat and shifted in his seat, withdrawing only momentarily the newspaper he held before his face, which had been ingeniously customised with two eyeholes, fashioned so as to allow my cautious friend to converse without detection.
caution costs nothing
When I returned from the bar, his newspaper had been stowed but his vigilance remained undimmed, and I found the steadfast military man addressing me now beneath a broad-brimmed hat and that unstinting friend of discretion, a pair of oversized spectacles.
‘The man may leave the wariness of the brotherhood’ he continued, upending his stout. ‘But it never quite leaves him’. He tapped the document in front of me, where some high ranking army brass had clearly written in biro super top secret. It showed a topographical map of Ireland with a series of concentric circles galloping around its northernmost perimeters.
‘Do I see before me a technical solution?’ I asked, admiringly, as he tore into a second stout, still not having troubled the stitching on his wallet on the evening.
‘You do’
‘gps?’
‘Not that’
‘Robot dogs?’
‘Never in life!’
‘Smart sensors?’
‘Hoho, you’re far off yet’
mobilising the troops
‘This is fancy talk’ said I, ‘but would you be mortally wounded if I asked you to extend upon this matter a more detailed explanation?’
‘Well’ he ventured, shaking his fist and laughing in an easy-going kind of way, ‘The border of course is only a border in the sense that it stops, whereas were one to ditch its line…’
