The old man still had the pen in his hand. "Before I sign," he had said, "I have a question that is not in my statement."
For a moment nobody understood what he had said. Then everyone did, all at once, and the room changed.
The Foreign Office official's pen stopped. I had watched that man write for three days, through briefings and, in one case, a corridor, and I had never once seen his pen stop. Across the chamber, somebody on the Crown's benches drew a breath sharp enough to hear. At the signing table, the envoy's face didn't change at all, which told me exactly how much it wanted to.
"Speaker," said the envoy. "The statements were agreed."
"They were. I have read mine as it was agreed." The old man set his free hand flat on the table, beside the treaty. "This is a question. It was not possible to ask it during the negotiation, because during the negotiation it did not exist."
"Then ask it," said the envoy, after a pause in which I suspect he considered several other answers.
