Is David Trimble for turning? Might the Ulster Unionist leader be minded to shift his position on IRA decommissioning? If so, could he bring his party with him? Those were the questions tantalising ministers and officials in both capitals as they prepared for last Friday's round-table summit in 10 Downing Street.
After a 10-hour negotiation, the two governments, Sinn Fein and the SDLP thought they had the answers to questions one and two. By noon next day they sure-as-hell had the answer to number three.
One week on the picture remains incomplete, with people who were inside the building on the night still revising and updating their assessment of what they think took place. But whatever the subsequent disputes about that, what was not in dispute last night was that a week which began disastrously had gone spectacularly downhill thereafter. And whatever about who was to blame, the net results of the week's diplomacy were all too plain: a serious question mark raised over Trimble's leadership and, courtesy of Tony Blair's "absolute" deadline, the most explicit threat yet to the Belfast Agreement itself.
As deadlines approached last Friday night, the smell of a deal in the making wafted across Downing Street. The Ulster Unionists had signalled that nothing much was likely to happen in the process until after the European elections on June 10th. Yet here they were (minus Mr John Taylor, who had apparently slipped out the back door) locked in negotiation - driven, we were assured, by the Prime Minister's determination that the Euro contest could not be an instrument of delay. Mr Blair was insistent that the decommissioning nut must be cracked, and the power-sharing executive established before the advent of the marching season and all it might bring in its wake.
One Trimble ally would later put this down to "Kosovoitis" - with Tony Blair engaged in another "act of will". The second bit at least was consistent with the British briefings. And as we sheltered from the steady rain, the consensus among the press pack was that Tony Blair in "can do" mode almost certainly equalled David Trimble under pressure.
Yet he gave no appearance of it when he emerged with his three officials at about 9.45 p.m., to say only that a number of ideas were on the table, needed to be worked through, and that he would be in touch with the other parties over the next few days, before skipping off to refresh himself at a pizza joint near his London home.
Bertie Ahern and Seamus Mallon, on the other hand, looked as miserable as sin. The Deputy First Minister later said that nothing should be read into his appearance. But it would subsequently become clear that not all appearances that night were so misleading. For in the ensuing days The Irish Times established that even as they departed on Friday night, two senior figures on the British side (one political, one official) and at least a similar number in the Irish delegation seriously doubted if David Trimble could sell the deal just done to his party.
Their doubts would be brutally confirmed within a matter of hours. But by then the damage had been done - to Mr Trimble, and to the prospects for an eventual resolution of the decommissioning log-jam.
Mr Ahern travelled home to Dublin, scheduled to return next day to address the Federation of Irish Societies' annual dinner in Leicester. Mr Trimble enjoyed even less sleep, rising early to catch the first flight to Belfast and keep his high noon engagement with his Assembly party at Stormont.
The fact that he had made no arrangements to consult his party officers, parliamentary colleagues or the policy-making Executive Committee, suggested that Mr Trimble was not expecting to deliver a definitive response that day. Certainly some of those who would have expected to be consulted expressed confidence that either no deal had been done, or that it entailed no change in the party's position. They would shortly revise that charitable view as it became clear that Mr Blair was most decidedly expecting a same-day reply and that - even as Mr Trimble travelled to Stormont - Downing Street had briefed the Sunday lobby on the detail, and alerted the media to expect a 5 p.m. statement announcing breakthrough.
. . . And so, long before Mr Trimble would suggest that the Friday night text had been "incomplete", it seemed, not least to many in his own party, that his cover had been blown.
Incredibly, the document Mr Trimble carried back to Belfast contained no reference to decommissioning as an "obligation" - much less anything resembling a commitment by the IRA either to start the process, or to have it completed by May 2000. There was no mention either of any penalties or sanctions to be applied against Sinn Fein should the IRA fail to deliver. After their apparent isolation at Hillsborough, this looked like game set and match for the republicans.
Some of Mr Trimble's friends have no doubt this was, and is, wholly wrong. The UUP leader clearly believed he and Mr Blair shared a common understanding that "progress" to be reported by Gen de Chastelain would equal "actual" decommissioning. And he retained "a very clear view" that the "theology" attendant on the Hillsborough Declaration remained in play. In simple terms, this meant that, just as Hillsborough required weapons being put "beyond use" before devolution of power to the executive, so "progress" under the new scenario would require some actual event, or else the deal was off, and by common consent rather than the result of a unilateral decision by any one party.
His problems in selling this line were manifold. Sinn Fein and the SDLP clearly regarded the Friday text as finished product. They would be supported by still amazed Irish sources who said, yes, it had been "concluded", and by senior British sources who said they knew nothing of any further detail to come. Indeed, even before the Trimble line went public, one British source was pointing to the briefing of the Sunday lobby, that planned 5 p.m. statement, and the fact that Mr Trimble had taken it to his party, as evidence of Mr Blair's "expectation". All that in answer to the question: "Did Mr Trimble definitely agree the Friday text?"
Those problems would be compounded later in the week: when the general obviously felt unable to oblige him by confirming their mutual understanding that "progress" must mean "actual" decommissioning - and by the farce of the Wednesday night/Thursday morning talks, which saw Gerry Adams taking the air in the Prime Minister's garden, with Mr Trimble choosing to be anywhere but at the seat of British government. "New Unionism" it seemed was no longer marching hand-in-hand with New Labour - as leading nationalists described the UUP absence as "mind-boggling", and cheerfully suggested reports that Mr Blair was "seething" were something of "an understatement".
This theatre, of course, was a predictable consequence of the Saturday debacle, at which point Mr Trimble's biggest problem was that some of his colleagues had simply stopped believing him.
NOR, as some might imagine, were the "backwoodsmen" taken unawares. That benign British-Irish hope that Mr Trimble would be willing to give ground was rooted in an assessment of him formed in the final stages of the negotiations of the Belfast Agreement, and in the belief that, unlike his party, he had "internalised the logic" of the peace process. And there was an obvious inevitability that, having pushed the republicans without success, the pressure would again turn on Mr Trimble to accept the "logic" of the position and take another "risk" for peace.
If senior Irish sources could subsequently admit to that inevitability, unionist politicians too were well able to spot it. However it is symptomatic of Mr Trimble's management of his party that neither he nor his advisers appeared to have realised that - in advance of the Friday negotiations - key Assembly members were anticipating a U-turn, and warning against it.
"No guns, no government" declared one Assemblyman contacted by The Irish Times four days before the event. Barely five days after, Mr Trimble would be heard uttering the same mantra as he set about a "clarification" process intended, effectively, to negate the Friday text.
That Assemblyman was mildly amused to find himself providing his leader's latest soundbite. But he was distinctly unamused by Mr Trimble's performance last Saturday, disbelieving that he could have thought to try to sell the document to the Assembly party and that Mr Blair or Mr Ahern could ever have imagined him likely to succeed.
Moreover any inclination he felt to give Mr Trimble the benefit of the doubt was removed when Downing Street delivered the coup de grace - that 5 p.m. statement announcing that Mr Blair had set June 30th as the "absolute" deadline for devolution.
If Number 10 thought to have unionist Assembly members scurrying to protect their salaries and expenses, this ultimatum had the opposite effect. According to one insider the situation grew steadily worse through Sunday: "There really was blood in the water . . . the sharks were circling." By Tuesday an unnamed UUP officer was telling the Irish News "the dice" were "stacked against David Trimble . . . "
Knowing Sinn Fein's antipathy to Stormont, unionists readily interpreted the apparent threat to the Assembly as an implicit adjudication on the decommissioning issue - for Sinn Fein, and against Mr Trimble. And there, for Mr Blair and Mr Ahern, is the real damage: the now widely established unionist perception that they have not only dished the notion of "prior" or "simultaneous" decommissioning, but that they would have Mr Trimble enter government with Sinn Fein with words offering no certainty of achievement, even by May 2000.
It never seemed credible that Mr Trimble would effect a significant change in his position this side of the European election. He will feel very bitter that Mr Blair and Mr Ahern pressed him to. As of now, he cannot know how the events of the past week will impact on his party's performance on June 10th. But the Taoiseach and Prime Minister must know that, not least because of their own actions, effecting that change will now be infinitely more difficult in its aftermath.
