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can’t be repaired with more talk.’
    ‘How did Marcuse get into this?’ I asked.
    The question was rewarded with a fleeting smile. He tapped the file. ‘I have notes here of some catch-phrases and slogans coined by the terrorist New Left when Marcuse was their guru. Material prosperity, for instance, becomes “consumption terror” when you want to justify the fire-bombing of a department store. And when you can think of no better excuse for an act of violence than your wish to commit it, you simply declare that “talking without action equals silence”. That’s the rubbishy kind of pseudo paradox that Nechayev liked to invent. But we mustn’t dismiss such nonsense toolightly. Half-baked idiocy can be dangerous. That first great terrorist wave which began moving in the eighteen-seventies was carried along by those who thought that they could destroy European society with the weapon of assassination. And at Sarajevo in nineteen-fourteen one tiny group of terrorists almost succeeded. There
are
historians who say that they
did
succeed.’
    ‘They weren’t trying to start World War One, Mr McGuire. They weren’t anarchists. Their cause was the liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.’
    ‘And the cause of the PLO is the liberation of Palestine. Those people could still start World War Three by mistake.’ He rode over my attempts to enter further objections by raising his voice. ‘Yes, I know. The official leadership of the PLO would regard such a mistake as the ultimate catastrophe. But that’s beside the point. The real power lies with those who have the catalytic ability to provoke over-reaction. What we have to face now, as this second great terrorist wave starts to break, is a threat to our civilization of a wholly different kind and on a wholly different scale from anything we have experienced before. And the west will continue to be peculiarly helpless in the face of it. Unless western political institutions are prepared to pay yet again the dreadful price of moving towards fascism and the corporate police state, they will very soon be finding themselves unable to function. They will have been
provoked
into impotence.’ He was, of course, again reading directly from his script, but he had enough of the ham instinct in him to raise a hand aloft and wag a warning finger as he swept on. ‘You think I’m overstating the case or even joking? Listen again then to the founding father of the movement. I quote. “We have”, Nechayev wrote, “a uniquely negative plan that no one can modify – complete destruction.” That’s plain enough, isn’t it? Well, we know what his followers of the first wave did. Can you imagine what may be done in the near future with the technical facilities now available to those fine young lunatics of the second wave?’
    Even a McGuire has to draw breath occasionally and this time I interrupted firmly enough to secure his attention. ‘Mr McGuire,’ I said loudly, and then waited until I had his full attention before continuing. ‘Mr McGuire, I’m sure that both you and your clients feel very strongly on the subject of international terrorism, but I have to tell you that so far you haven’t said a thing that hasn’t been said before a dozen times. There have been a lot of books published about it, many of them just as indignant as your brief seems to be. The Entebbe and Mogadishu shoot-outs even started a movie bandwagon. As a subject for serious study, international terrorism must now be regarded as, at best, suspect. As far as I am concerned, the subject is old hat and rather boring.’
    With a real commissioning editor that would certainly have been the end of the matter. His reply would have been polite but crisp. If terrorism bored me so much that I wasn’t even curious to know how and why a few weeks’ editorial work from me could suddenly be valued at fifty thousand dollars, then he wouldn’t waste any more of my time. It had been good of me to stop by.
    Mr McGuire,