The BBC's broadcast followed by a brief comment from the Diplomatic Correspondent to the effect that if an abrupt change of political direction had indeed taken place in the island, the economic, political, and strategic consequences for the Free World could be profound.
Jones sorting through the massive typescript in the majlis, heard none of this.
When his servant failed to make his customary appearance at 9 a.m., he was not surprised. Aziz was sickly and often too sorry for himself to fulfil his tasks. In any case, Jones had no wish to be disturbed. He boiled himself a cup of coffee and worked all through the morning getting into the correct page order the many interpolations he had made to his original draft. It was still something of a mess - the gaps unexplained, the parallel versions likewise. But it had a rough coherence now, and when he had decided he had done enough he was profoundly relieved, for his health was not good today. It seemed that every movement he made was ill-judged as if he had wrenched his whole body unawares.
It was already midday before he flip-flopped through to his outer door to bring in the local English-language daily. It was not there. Normally it would be lying on his desktop. He looked up and down the empty alley. He supposed it had been pilfered by a passer-by. At about 1p.m. he picked up the telephone in the bedroom to ask the head porter at the Darwish if he had a playback wire from London. His line was dead.
[The Man Who Knew Everything, Stacey, T.]
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