Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern were already seated around the cabinet table when the Taoiseach's Exocet hit 10 Downing Street. The flight from Dublin had been delayed but still (and not for the first time) New Labour's famed media skills failed the Prime Minister. For it was only after the negotiations were under way that Mr Blair learned of Mr Ahern's dire warning that their joint endeavour - for peace and an inclusive settlement in Northern Ireland - might fail. As word was discreetly passed to Mr Blair, Irish officials were working hard to ensure the media got the Taoiseach's message - that there were "large disagreements" between London and Dublin which could not be "cloaked". In language certain to inflame unionist tensions, Mr Ahern had trenchantly declared: "As far as I am concerned the Framework Document is what has to stand. That is why we are still negotiating and working on it." And he added ominously: "I would like to be able to tell you we can surmount this. I don't know if I can."
If Mr Blair was put out, he apparently showed little sign of it. (He is, after all, creator and leader of "cool" Britannia.) But in Whitehall on Thursday morning there was scarcely-concealed anger at the Taoiseach's tactics.
"The Irish always do this before an important negotiation," said one source. "We've seen this sort of behaviour before," remarked another veteran of Anglo-Irish affairs. "Bertie's f...ing about," was the altogether less diplomatic response of a third source. Publicly, however, Number 10 maintained the fuss was much ado about nothing. The Prime Minister's spokesman didn't know where all the talk of doom and gloom was coming from - certainly didn't recognise talk of "an increasingly bitter divide" in relation to the discussions which had actually taken place.
And from him, and from Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, just the gentle insistence that it was next Thursday - April 9th - which mattered, that the deadline should be adhered to, and that, yes, an agreement could be reached. Much of the backstage irritation derived from a claimed understanding between London and Dublin that there should be no surprises as the talks entered their make-or-break phase. Indeed, both sides had warned the press that there would be nothing from the Downing Street summit beyond a terse statement of the "positive . . . constructive . . . encouraging" kind which could have been drafted by one and all in advance.
We had indeed been warned the Taoiseach would get into his car and head for the airport without a word to the waiting cameras.
As it was, the cameras were able to capture the stern, huddled Irish delegation and a seemingly downbeat Taoiseach, head bowed, as he left Downing Street without a backward glance. And next day, even as London battled to talk up "the atmospherics", Mr Ahern was firing fresh salvoes in the direction of Mr Blair and Mr David Trimble.
Speaking at Mountjoy Garda Station the Taoiseach declared that he had no further compromises to make: "Others have to make the moves. The Irish Government will not be moving any further."
Reflecting on Wednesday night's apparent crisis, one very shrewd observer of this scene said he found it scarcely credible that relations between the two governments could be as bad as the Taoiseach's language implied. The two governments, after all, had been up and down every side of these issues over a number of years.
Minister's and officials had been virtually living with each other in the Castle Buildings complex since last September. Could the gulf really be so great with just a week to go to the scheduled deadline?
"Scarcely credible", too, was the general verdict on Mr Ahern's suggestion that - on all the issues still outstanding - the compromises were for others to make. This was not, after all, a negotiation between the two governments but one which required the Ulster Unionists on board if it was to succeed.
And, sure enough, after an hour or more of talks with Mr Blair after the EU-Asean conference dinner on Thursday night, both sides reported progress made. The play was back on, with encouraging reports, too, emanating from the Belfast-based talks between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP.
Where just a week before John Taylor, the UUP deputy leader, said there was a "one in 20" chance of agreement, one of his most senior colleagues yesterday confirmed the dramatic mood swing by putting the chances at evens.
As British and Irish officials continued their negotiations in London yesterday, Senator George Mitchell was preparing for a weekend of talks with the parties preparatory to tabling a draft final agreement on Monday.
All parties, it seemed, were once more working to the target date, with the vital decisions, and crucial trade-offs, likely to take the process - as had always been expected - pretty close to the wire.
There is more than a suspicion that Mr Ahern had grown irritable as he awaited evidence that Mr Blair was finally putting the squeeze on Mr Trimble. Certainly, that was the significance some Irish players had attached to Mr Trimble's lengthy meeting with the Prime Minister at Chequers last Sunday.
And there is indeed confirmation that Mr Blair is pressuring the UUP - not, as might have been expected, on the Strand Two North/South issues, but on the key SDLP requirements in respect of a new Northern Ireland Assembly.
Moreover, as previously reported by The Irish Times, there are growing indications that Mr Trimble's side is actively considering an executive component for an Assembly which would, after all, have legislative powers.
The SDLP and the Irish Government have been increasingly insistent that the Assembly would need to be led by an executive or cabinet-style committee with collective decision-making powers. And The Irish Times learned last night that the major issue dominating the Strand One talks now is on how to create an effective working majority in the Assembly.
Sources said that under the scheme proposed at present, departmental chiefs would be drawn in proportion to party strengths. Even if they came together in a high-powered committee to resolve budgetary and other key matters, the arrangement would be entirely voluntary, since each would be there as of right and could not be sacked.
According to this view, the departmental chiefs in committee therefore could not constitute an executive and would have no power over individual departmental heads who refused to go along with majority decisions.
Asked if this pointed to the creation of a coalition between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP, the sources would only reply: "The arrangements would need to be attractive and effective for both sides."
Such an arrangement, if it came to pass, would represent the reversal of almost 21 years settled unionist policy. It would certainly come as a profound shock to many members of Mr Trimble's party, and would represent a bold gambit by the UUP leader.
His expectation, however, would almost certainly be that he would then win some of the key arguments over the North/South dimension to any deal (in addition to having secured the removal of the Republic's constitutional claim on Northern Ireland).
Mr Trimble has maintained that the North/South Council must have no separate identity of its own; that there can be no question of direct devolution of powers to it; and that it could be established either in the terms of a new treaty or by a simple enabling clause in the legislation establishing the Assembly. On the latter point, London seems convinced it can satisfy Mr Trimble's demand that the Council be accountable to the Assembly and the Dail, and the Taoiseach's need that it be legislatively based.
The ongoing British-Irish discussions are believed to focus much more specifically on the initial job description which might be set as part of the agreement, and the scale of it.
We do not know Mr Ahern's bottom line and, on declared positions, he and Mr Trimble appear worlds apart. But a bold Ulster Unionist pitch to the SDLP, coupled with other emerging proposals on equality, policing, justice and prisoners, might just transform the picture and render some present working assumptions inoperative.
We may be sure, however, that there will be limits to Mr Trimble's boldness. His most senior colleagues insist that any agreement to a North-South Council with independent powers, capable of developing a life of its own, would never secure the approval of the Ulster Unionist Council.
The UUC may provide the first electoral test of any agreement; the referendum the second, and Assembly elections the third. The third may prove the most critical and problematic.
And it is the memory of 1974 and the defeat inflicted on the Faulkner unionists which will surely guide Mr Blair and Mr Ahern in their ultimate assessment of Mr Trimble's limits.