Even in the course of the strangulated saga that is the Belfast Agreement no party's fortunes have taken such a battering as Sinn Fein's in the past week.
The first week after Suspension II saw republicans atop the moral high ground, seething with staged indignation at the "chicanery" of the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, and threatening to reverse "history" by taking the IRA's offer of its methodology for putting arms beyond use back into the bunker.
Indeed, in the opinion pages of this newspaper, Dr Garret FitzGerald tried to fathom what exactly "the Army Council of the IRA is up to", admitting that "even the two governments, with all the resources available to them, must have difficulty in accessing that body's strategic thinking".
On the same day as Dr FitzGerald's thoughts were published, a succession of frantic calls were being made between Belfast, Bogota and Dublin.
It would be interesting to know which law enforcement agency made the initial call. The Special Branch departments of both the Garda and the RUC claim that they knew about the Colombian connection for at least five years.
It is somewhat striking that the three alleged IRA men held last Saturday week in Bogota had the confidence to travel directly from FARC's devolved province to the capital of a country with massive surveillance, and every justification to watch closely the movements of strange gringos.
It suggests that they felt comfortable travelling openly in what the US State Department's website calls "one of the most dangerous countries in the world".
If Mr James Monaghan and Mr Martin McCauley were under surveillance by security forces on both sides of the Irish Border, and their probable whereabouts known, is it possible that the initial communication was made from here?
If so, why last week, rather than any time over several years? Is there a bigger picture developing, connected to the dramatic, even "historic", shift within Irish nationalism?
At last Friday's press conference by Dr Reid reiterated the support of the Taoiseach for the policing implementation plan four times, adding in virtually the same breath that "cross-community support" for the police boards was essential for the plan's success.
At the same time, Dr Reid insisted that not all parties had to sign up to the plan by noon tomorrow. . It was pretty obvious whose support was not needed (Sinn Fein and the DUP) and whose was (the SDLP and UUP).
That evening, viewers of BBC's Newsnight were treated to the rare sight of the SDLP's policing spokesman, Mr Alex Attwood, not being contemptuous of a British minister. When it was put to him that one of the original Patten commissioners, Dr Gerald Lynch, had raised concerns about the human rights safeguards in the implementation plan, Mr Attwood defended the proposals with the vigour he used to employ excoriating the efforts of Mr Mandelson.
By Saturday the Daily Tele- graph was confidently predicting that the Catholic Church was preparing to back Dr Reid's plan, and thus "isolate Sinn Fein". If the SDLP agrees to join the police boards with the support of the Catholic Hierarchy and the major parties in the Dail, then Sinn Fein will be in a very cold house indeed.
At present, the Government and the SDLP are at one on all of the "outstanding issues" identified in the Weston Park discussions and the joint proposals that followed: policing, the stability of the institutions, security normalisation and decommissioning.
On Thursday last the Taoiseach met the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, in Dublin, to discuss the policing plan and the arrests in Colombia. Mr Hume issued a strong statement saying that it was "essential that Sinn Fein clarify its links with the three men".
Taken with his earlier statement that the withdrawal of the IRA's arms offer was "strange", the SDLP leader was acting in marked contrast to a previous willingness to overlook transgressions by the republican movement since the signing of the Belfast Agreement, not least the Florida gun-running escapade.
There seems to be a move to put clear green water between the two nationalist parties, with the Government firmly behind the SDLP, just as in the 1980s, under the then Taoiseach Dr FitzGerald.
There are three strong motivating factors for such a shift in the policy and strategy of the Government.
First, there are now less than five weeks before the deadline expires and either the institutions of the Belfast Agreement face an almost certain indefinite suspension or new elections are called for the Northern Assembly. The institutions can survive with the support of the SDLP and the UUP. It is unlikely that even a very peeved SF would walk out of the Executive.
Secondly, as the SDLP's Alban Maginness said, "elections would be an act of madness", particularly for his party and the UUP. The recent UK general election results which saw the DUP coming dangerously close to overtaking the UUP in parliamentary seats, and SF overtaking the SDLP in total nationalist votes, has galvanised Dublin opinion in a way not witnessed since the early 1980s.
Third, there is a real possibility that the forthcoming general election in the South could see Sinn Fein holding the balance of power in the Dail.
Sinn Fein leaders have made no secret of their desire to be in coalition governments on both sides of the Border. Some within the party eye with relish the possibility of holding a government post traditionally allocated to a junior partner in government e.g. Foreign Affairs, and the prospect of "representing Ireland" on the world stage.
Try to imagine then the mandarins of Iveagh House this week contemplating a possible future nightmare scenario in which Our Man in Bogota, or Lima, or Madrid, or Jerusalem, might be called in by the host government to explain exactly what some Irishmen with false passports are doing with the local insurgents.
Particularly if those Irishmen might be believed to be connected in some way with a junior minister for foreign affairs. That, indeed, would require some diplomacy.
John O'Farrell is editor of the Belfast magazine Fortnight, an independent review of politics and the arts