Slow. Slow down. This is the waiting time, that's all.
Take it easy. Go and see what's happening at No. 10. Then ask Croder what he's got lined up for you, because you've got to go out again some time, you know that.
We swung into Whitehall with the sirens still going, then slowed for the right hand turn into Downing Street, and when I pulled up at the curb I cut the ignition and looked at my spread fingers and saw they were steady, because the waiting was nearly over.
2 SPODE
'I regard this as a deliberate act of war.'
Spode everywhere, on the marble mantlepiece and in glass cabinets in the corners of the room and along the windowsills. Spode, Turners and Chippendale, and an atmosphere of controlled shock.
'Unless the ambassador believes that in fact the submarine was actually within the twelve-mile limit.'
This was Lord Cranley, Foreign Secretary. I'd recognized him when Frome had brought me in, but only from photographs I'd seen of him. I'd never been here before, but I'd seen most of their pictures: the prime minister, US ambassador, foreign secretary, three or four members of the cabinet and the leader of the opposition. The others were aides and assistants. Frome had been here before I'd arrived: the Bureau had obviously sent him ahead on the assumption that they'd somehow get me here. He'd met me at the front door when the constable on guard had knocked, and led me to this room.
'The meeting's already begun, but in any case you won't be introduced. You're just here to listen.'
Frome was in a dark suit, his grey hair smoothed back on his narrow head, his eyes watchful, his skin dead-looking and with a sanatorium pallor; they said he'd got cancer. He hadn't spoken since he'd shown me where I was to sit; no one had spoken to him, nor even looked at him, or me.