“Good morning, minister,” replied his driver cheerily.

Alf had been Giles’s driver since the day he’d become a minister, and he was often a better source of information about what was happening in the real world than most of his Cabinet colleagues.

“So where are we off to today, sir?”

“East Berlin.”

“Rather you than me.”

“I know how you feel. Now, what have you got for me?”

“The election will be in June, probably the eighteenth.”

“But the press are still predicting May. Where are you getting your information?”

“Clarence, the PM’s driver, told me, didn’t he?”

“Then I’ll need to brief Griff immediately. Anything else?”

“The foreign secretary will announce this morning that he’ll be standing down from the cabinet after the election, whatever the result.”

Giles didn’t respond while he considered Alf’s casually dropped bombshell. If he could hold on to Bristol Docklands, and if Labour were to win the general election, he must be in with a chance of being offered the Foreign Office. Only problem: two ifs. He allowed himself a wry smile.

“Not bad, Alf, not bad at all,” he added as he opened his red box and began to look through his papers.

He always enjoyed catching up with his opposite numbers across Europe, exchanging views in corridors, lifts, and bars where the realpolitik took place, rather than in the endless formal gatherings for which civil servants had already drafted the minutes long before the meeting was called to order.

Alf swept through an unmarked entrance onto runway three at Heathrow and came to a halt at the bottom of the boarding stairs that led up to the aircraft. If Giles didn’t retain his seat in the cabinet after the election, he was going to miss all this. Back to joining baggage queues, check-in counters, passport control, security checks, long walks to the gate, and then an endless wait before you were finally told you could board the plane.

Alf opened the backdoor and Giles climbed the steps to the waiting aircraft. Don’t get used to it, Harold Wilson had once warned him. Only the Queen can afford to do that.

Giles was the last passenger to board and the door was pulled closed as he took his seat in the front row, next to his permanent secretary.

“Good morning, minister,” he said. Not a man who wasted time on small talk. “Although on the face of it, minister,” he continued, “this conference doesn’t look at all promising, there could be several opportunities for us to take advantage of.”

“Such as?”

“The PM needs to know if Ulbricht is about to be replaced as general secretary. If he is, they’ll be sending out smoke signals and we need to find out who’s been chosen to replace him.”