bannering

"Reparations was a misguided concept from the start," Bannering said.

Arthur Bannering's voice continued its commentary above the whirring of the projector.

Beside him Selby and Bannering were standing too stunned to move.

Bannering said, watching his face.

"Let's not get our perspectives confused," Arthur Bannering cautioned.

"That explains what's happening," Bannering said, nodding.

"There were interminable elections," Bannering said.

The corners of Bannering's mouth twitched upward, and he gave Scholder a quick, satisfied nod.

Winslade had arranged for the rest of them to meet Arthur Bannering and some of the others for lunch.

Anthony Eden exclaimed when Bannering finished describing the intelligence activities that had led up to Proteus.

Eden agreed, and the cabbie dropped them off with a chirpy "Ta, guy," as Bannering added a tip to the fare.

"That was when Overlord decided that Mussolini had to be induced to switch sides," Bannering said.

Winslade and Bannering were waiting at the end of the platform at Liverpool Street, which meant that something unexpected had happened.

Admiral Pound, the First Sea Lord and a former naval colleague of Churchill's, looked across at Bannering.

But further investigation and interminable discussions between Winslade, Bannering, and Anna Kharkiovitch had gradually put the issue in a different light.

Probably wining and dining with Churchill and Arthur Bannering somewhere in London, Ferracini guessed.

Arthur Bannering, tall, upright, distinguished in appearance and bearing, silver-haired and meticulously groomed, grunted noncommittally as he walked beside Winslade with long, easy strides.

He was assisted, both in the experience and in the memoir, by Charlan Bannering, daughter of the late Baron Howdl of Sordaling.

Gordon Selby was with him, having moved back from England over a year previously, and Arthur Bannering had flown up from his State Department posting in Washington.

Since arriving in London, Bannering had developed the compulsive habit of scrutinizing passers-by, especially in the vicinity of Whitehall, where the British Foreign Office was located.

A new resolution and firmness seemed to be taking hold in the higher levels of government, too, Bannering said, when he and Anthony Eden arrived at the hotel for breakfast the next morning.

A few yards away, Arthur Bannering sat nonchalantly reading a newspaper at a table underneath a sunshade, while Winslade, sphinxlike, smiled to himself as he gazed out at the ocean.

They had also heard from Arthur Bannering that afternoon of another failure on the English side of the operation: Eden's offer to meet Molotov in Moscow had been declined.

I have spent many evenings in taverns in and around Sordaling, engaged in sa-lacious discussion of the history of Lady Charlan Bannering, daughter of Baron Howdl.