‘Operation Jedward’ a perfect plot to make us forget the doom and gloom

HE wasn’t in good humour.

The other participants in the weekly conference could tell, by the way D was impatiently tapping his teaspoon against the china cup, that he was out of sorts.

It was unusual. Normally, it was impossible to tell what sort of humour D was in. He prided himself on his inscrutability. And of course, that was one of the qualities you’d expect in the head of the Irish Secret Service.

There were only two occasions on which his colleagues could remember him expressing annoyance. The first was when his counterpart in MI5 — M, as he was known — received a knighthood. “I’m not even allowed to put my name in the phone book,” D was heard to mutter. And the second was when a new M was appointed and it turned out to be a woman. “Mother of sweet divine,” D exploded, “a woman. Thank God that could never happen here.”

Anyway, they could tell that D wasn’t having a good day. Nobody was sure in the service where the title D had come from. Some of the older field operatives used to say that it was Michael Collins’s little joke, when he set up the Service, to call its head after De Valera. Dev might think he was the ultimate boss, but he’d get damn all information from the Long Fellow’s spies.

The odd thing was that of all weeks, you’d think D would be in good humour at this meeting. They had just had a memo from the Department of Finance authorising a spending increase of €200,000. That shouldn’t be a source of annoyance, D’s colleagues thought. Mind you, the memo had been leaked to a national newspaper, and anything that raised questions about their work was always troubling. But they had been able to bat away the paper’s questions, and the story hadn’t appeared anywhere else. You’d think D would be pleased with the extra cash, but clearly he wasn’t.

“It’s for a diversion,” he said. “Our lords and masters have decided that the people need a distraction from all the stuff that’s going on, and it’s our job to create one. And it’s a kidnapping again, I’m afraid.”

Now his colleagues knew why he was grumpy. When times were really tough, governments down through the ages had called in the Secret Service to work its magic. D’s second in command — D Minus he was called in the Service — had been involved in some of these before. There was never anything in it for the Service — no glory, no reward.

“Do we have to?” he asked. “Somebody nearly always gets hurt when we start one of those diversionary ops. Especially the kidnappings.”

He was thinking of the time they kidnapped Ben Dunne back in 1981, to take people’s minds off the oil crisis. That was a really messy operation — they’d nearly had to shoot him to get him to shut up. And as for Shergar — my God, D Minus thought, what a nightmare that had been. It hadn’t been difficult removing him from that stud farm, but when the bloody horse had a heart attack two days later they had to pretend to be looking for a ransom. It’s not easy to be demanding a ransom when you’re called in to advise the owners that on no account should they agree to pay one, D Minus had often thought.

Some of their government-ordered diversions had worked, mind you. Ballinspittle, back in 1985 — that had gone like a dream. A couple of thousand pounds worth of special effects, and they had the whole country believing in moving statues. Thousands of people turning up every night, the roads of Co Cork jammed, and page after page of media coverage. And no one had ever suspected a thing.

“Why don’t we do another Ballinspittle instead?” D Minus asked. “Those kidnappings are always dangerous, loads of potential to go wrong.”

D Minus One answered him. “My division is running a little operation up in Knock the last few weeks. But it’s too closely watched — we’ve been able to set up the crowds all right, but we need better cover to get a half-decent apparition organised. That’s going to run out of steam pretty quickly.”

“That’s why the kidnap route has been decided on,” said D. “And it’s orders from on high, I’m afraid. We have to kidnap someone called Simon Cowell.”

“Who?” they chorused (a deep appreciation of popular culture had never been a requirement in the higher echelons of the Secret Service).

D handed out a manila folder to each man at the table, and they scanned the contents quickly. Simon Cowell, age 50, multi-millionaire, English. Made his money by owning and producing pop bands, but was now better known as the producer of television shows with strange names like Britain’s Got Talent, Pop Idol, and the X Factor. According to the file he was extremely rich. There was some additional sketchy information to help decision-making. On the one hand, apparently, Cowell was always surrounded by security, but on the other, he was deeply unpopular with a wide variety of people.

“What in the name of goodness is this about?” D Minus asked. “Why on earth would we want to kidnap someone like this?”

“It’s one of his shows,” D said. “Something called the X Factor.”

“I think I’ve seen that,” D Minus said, before hastily correcting himself (it would be crazy in this company to admit to ever watching something popular on television), “or rather, I’ve read something about it. There’s two young Irish chaps on that, isn’t there?” “Exactly,” said D. “And those who must be obeyed have decided that they have to win. But there’s a problem. They’re dire, and Cowell hates them.”

D gestured to the PA, who pressed a button on the console beside the table, and suddenly, on the laser screen on the end wall, they were watching two garishly dressed young men, leaping around a stage among half-naked dancers, and shrieking the words of some pop tune none of those present had ever heard. “Perhaps we should kidnap them instead,” D Minus said, “in the national interest”.

“Our political masters have decided that they have to be kept in this godawful competition until the end,” D said. “The embassy in London has already spent their entire budget setting up a bank of phones to vote for them — that’s why they can’t organise a limo anymore when I fly into Heathrow. From now on, their fate is in this man Cowell’s hands. We have to make sure he doesn’t vote them out. That’s what the extra €200,000 is for.”

“But be careful,” D said. “My orders are that these chaps — John and Edward they’re called, apparently — are to win this competition. I don’t want anyone hurt in the process. No licence to kill is being issued for this operation. But above all, I never want to turn up at the National Concert Hall and see these young lads on the stage there. Once they’ve won this thing, I’ll get you another budget and you can help them conquer the rest of the world instead.”