241 Pizza

Somewhere over the Atlantic:

Mr Blair is corralled away at the front, among the fake-walnut veneer of first class, along with his most senior advisers: Alistair Campbell, his director of communications; Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff; and Anji Hunter, director of government relations. None of the big players wants to miss this. The next seats, at the front of club class, are those of the other Downing Street staff, who are separated from the journalists by curtains.

But in another sign that this is not a normal trip, the advisers are mingling with the hacks, while pointedly not saying anything newsworthy. Ms Hunter walks the aisles, a rolled up Wall Street Journal in her hand, occasionally coshing a tabloid man. The Prime Minister, we are informed, is reading the Koran.

There are others in the mix -quiet, polite men who do not say much -neither politicos, nor journalists, nor bodyguards. These are the military planners and intelligence experts. As the Prime Minister hurtles across the Atlantic, he receives briefings on the logistics and possible strategies for an attack on Afghanistan.

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Charles Coulson, the captain, comes on the loudspeaker. "Would you be kind enough to refrain from using the onboard telephone for the next 20 minutes," he says. "There are some rather important phone calls that need to be made from the first-class cabin." Mr Blair is trying to telephone President Khatami of Iran.

Somehow this adds to the surreal atmosphere: the notion that the course of world history might be altered because the man from the BBC won't get off the line. "I think it costs about a million pounds a minute to use these phones," Cherie Blair says brightly.

We eat our breakfast with plastic knives and forks. "That's the rule now," the air stewardess says sadly. Captain Coulson emerges from his cockpit. You can see he has thought about little but the hijackings since last week. He wants to talk about what happened on the planes.

"Let's face it, someone ripping the guts out of one of your stewardesses would be a good way of attracting your attention and getting you out of the cockpit," he says bitterly, almost in extenuation for his slain fellow pilots.

Mr Blair finally appears from the front of the plane, looking taut and sombre. The curtains separating the compartments are drawn, and the Prime Minister steps into the gap, as if on to a tiny stage. Alistair Campbell looms behind him. There is no preamble, no smile, no nods of recognition to any of the journalists he knows so well. The Prime Minister has his tie on; every button is done up.

"It is a huge and heavy responsibility, which is why we must deliberate carefully. This form of terrorism has no boundaries, it knows no limits." He glances for a moment out of the window of the plane, across the boundless clouds.

There is a measurement to his speech that I have not heard before, a deliberation over the words that signals we have moved somewhere, no doubt briefly, that is far removed from soundbite territory. If Mr Blair is playing a part here, he is doing so with extreme care. "Do not over-interpret what I say," he insists, referring to the earlier suggestion that war may come in days, and there is something close to menace in his voice.

"Be careful of jumping to conclusions. This was the worst terrorist atrocity since the war to be perpetrated on British citizens," he says, dropping the accusation syllable by syllable. The hands, clasping a mug of coffee, tremble slightly.

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