By then the street outside the TRB had stopped being a street.
Camera vans stood double-parked down both sides with their dishes up, cables taped across the pavement in bright ribs. The barriers at the entrance had been reinforced twice and pushed back once. Correspondents were going live in four languages within fifty meters of each other, all of them saying versions of the same sentence: the raid is believed to have returned, and the Bureau has confirmed nothing.
Inside, nine survivors were moved deeper into the building, away from anything with a window. No one went out through the public entrance. The world knew Ireland had cleared Floor 20 and knew nothing else at all.
