‘The special relationship is safe’

Am I about to become the ‘Spectator One’? Having cleared the first airport-style security check at the US Embassy on Upper Grosvenor Street, I reach a second perimeter inside the building itself. This time the X-ray machine picks up a mysterious electronic device inside my briefcase which turns out to be a mobile phone I do not recognise.

Uh-oh. Here I am, on my way to interview the American ambassador, and there is a stray mobile in my case — a potential trigger device, as everyone around me is thinking, but not saying. Not good.

Hushed calls are made, a Marine frowns and a plainclothes officer straight out of 24 whisks me off to the so-called security ‘igloo’ so that every single item in my case can be checked meticulously. Well, better safe than sorry; I would have been worried if they had just waved me through. But that does not stop images flashing through my mind of orange jumpsuits, years in a Texan penitentiary and the escape scene from The Shawshank Redemption, as the unnamed officer scrutinises my pocket A–Z with evident disapproval. I wonder if he has already given instructions to the sharpshooters across the road (‘Yeah, Clyde, tell alpha team to stand by. We got a hot one in the igloo’).

Minutes later, given the all-clear, and not inconsiderably relieved, I am in the elegant office of Ambassador Robert H. Tuttle, whose expansive grin is a welcome antidote to my brush with extradition. It is a year since he and his wife, Maria, arrived in London, and he is in particularly good spirits today.

‘We’ve had a proposal before the Westminster City Council for some time to really beautify what you just walked through, these barriers. And it was just signed off today. With any luck we can start construction in September because — not that it’s the most important issue on the planet — but it’s a real eye-sore.