We were allowed to make a couple of preliminary visits, escorted by security managers and once by an army officer. We entered a world that was hermetically sealed, air-conditioned, highly stratified and compartmentalized, both between civilian and military and even between Services. Aside from a few men staring at computer screens, its many rooms are empty; it is designed for crisis management and when there is no crisis its long tables and upholstered chairs, broadcasting equipment, computer terminals, beds, bunks and showers and everything else from gas masks to tubes of toothpaste, lie ready and waiting. The atmosphere was stultifying, corporate and faintly menacing, and at the same time touchingly ordinary.

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