Can I have another mug of tea? I’m thirsty. And some more of those biscuits?

The interview was interrupted. The witness became emotional after the consumption of custard creams and was incoherent. The interview resumed after a break of four hours.

Peter Maxwell:

It was decided at the highest level that I would stay with the project, make sure something happened and that we had a good understanding of who the players were and where they were coming from. At the right moment we would drag the story back into the headlines, get the photo opportunity for the PM, and see where we could take it next.

Nothing much happened for a bit. I asked for a briefing from the head of NCFE, a man called David Sugden. He came and gave me an hour-long PowerPoint presentation during a very busy day, and talked about timelines, and milestones and deliverables, but he didn’t actually seem to know anything about anything. So then I took him out of the loop and put myself in touch with the man who was actually doing the work, a man called Jones.

Interrogator:

Was that the first time you communicated directly with Dr Jones?

Peter Maxwell:

It was the first time we had met. I have to say I wasn’t very excited the first time I met him. He didn’t look like the sort of man who would tell many jokes. But Dr Jones made more sense than his boss. He struck me as a bit of a pedant to start with, and when he came to see me in Downing Street I gave him a hard time, just to let him know who was in charge. But after a while I realised he wasn’t so bad. It was just his manner, mixed with quite a lot of apprehension at finding himself in my office, at the very heart of power in the United Kingdom. He seemed bright enough. I think he was honest too, in a naive sort of way. Politically, he was just an innocent, of course.

After I had listened to him outlining the work NCFE had done on the project, which was mostly conceptual stuff, I interrupted him as he began to talk about dissolved oxygen levels and water stratification, and said, ‘Fred, is this going to work? Are future generations of Yemenis going to catch salmon in the wadis during the summer rains?’

He blinked and looked at me in surprise, then said, ‘I shouldn’t think so, no.’

I asked him, if that was his opinion, why we were doing all this.

He paused and thought for a moment and then he said, as far as I can remember, ‘Mr Maxwell, I’ve often asked myself that question over the last few weeks. I don’t really know the answer. I think there’s more than one answer, anyway.’

‘Try some of them on me,’ I suggested, tilting my chair back and putting my feet on the desk.

Dr Jones told me that, in the first place, while this project probably won’t succeed, it may not entirely fail either. We may achieve something, such as a short run of salmon up the wadi when it is in spate. That in itself would be so extraordinary as to justify all the effort we are putting into it-providing of course we don’t have to defend what we are doing in economic terms. And we don’t. Sheikh Muhammad is being liberal with his money. He questions nothing, he always responds to funding proposals and cost overruns by writing another cheque, and the project is now well outside original estimates.

Secondly, whatever happens, it will have moved forward the boundaries of science. We will understand many things we did not know before we started this project. Not just about fish, but about the adaptability of species to new environments. In that sense, we have already gained something.

Then, too, said Dr Jones, there is something visionary about Sheikh Muhammad. For him, this isn’t just about fishing. Perhaps, at one level, it isn’t about fishing at all, but about faith. ‘You’ve lost me there, Fred,’ I told him.

‘I mean,’ said Dr Jones, taking off his spectacles and in polishing them with a clean white handkerchief, ‘that what the sheikh wants to do is demonstrate that things can change, that there are no absolute impossibilities. In his mind it is a way of demonstrating that God can make anything happen if he wants to. The Yemen salmon project will be presented by the sheikh as a miracle of God, if it succeeds.’

‘And if it fails?’

‘Then it will show the weakness of man, and that the sheikh is a poor sinner not worthy of his God. He has told me that many times.’

There was a silence. I didn’t go for this religious stuff, but the boss might like it, and I scribbled some notes to myself to talk to him later. While I did this there was a silence, and I almost forgot Dr Jones was there. Then he startled me by asking, ‘Have you ever met Sheikh Muhammad, Mr Maxwell?’

I shook my head. ‘No, Fred, I have not. But I’m thinking that maybe I should now. Can you fix it that we go up to his Scottish place together, some time soon?’

‘I might be able to arrange that,’ said Dr Jones. ‘He returns to the UK tonight. I will try and speak to him in the morning, and let you know.’

‘Talk to my secretary on your way out and check my availability,’ I said.

Dr Jones stood up and said mildly, ‘Mr Maxwell, the sheikh is not a UK citizen. He is a very simple man. He will either want to see you or he will not. If he wants to see you, he will send his plane, and if you get on it, he will see you. If you do not, he will not bother any further with the matter.’

As he turned and left I said, ‘Thanks for your input, Fred,’ to his retreating back, but he left without any further words.

Interrogator:

So when did you next meet Dr Jones?

Peter Maxwell:

I’ll come to that. I’ve just remembered something else, something that happened right after Jones left my office.

I still can’t believe that was how it all started. I should never have allowed myself to become involved. As soon as Jones started talking about the sheikh and faith and all of that, I should have terminated the interview, closed the file and told the boss to drop it. After all, what did it amount to at that point? A little story to keep the papers happy, a photo opportunity with a difference? I blame myself, all the way. I should have stuck to our core agenda and not been distracted. Salmon fishing in the Yemen? What does that do for hospital waiting lists or late trains or gridlocked motorways? How many Yemenis are registered to vote in our party key constituencies? Those are the questions I should have been asking myself, if I’d been doing my job. But I didn’t. Instead I sat chewing the end of my biro and I daydreamed. I thought about quiet Dr Jones saying, ‘Perhaps, at one level, it isn’t about fishing at all, but about faith?’ What did he mean by that? What does faith really mean? I keep faith with my party and my boss. How does salmon fishing come into that? It was all rubbish. Faith is for the archbishop of Canterbury and his dwindling congregations. Faith is for the pope. Faith is for Christian Scientists. Faith is for the people stranded in the last century and the centuries before that. It doesn’t belong in the modern world. We are living in a secular age. I live at the heart of the secular world. We put our faith in facts, in numbers, in statistics and in targets. The presentation of these facts and statistics is our labour, and winning votes is our purpose. I am a guardian of our purity of purpose. We are the rational managers of a modern democracy, taking the optimum decisions to safeguard and enhance the lives of busy citizens who haven’t got the time to work things out for themselves.

I remember thinking there was a speech there. I took my biro out of my mouth and started to muse, thinking that later I would jot some notes down to run past the boss. And, as I mused, I had a waking dream.

Interrogator:

You wish to record a dream as part of your evidence?

Peter Maxwell:

I’m trying to tell you what happened. I’m still trying to understand it myself.