How Blair's 7,000-mile journey to Japan turned into a flight of despair

When Tony Blair boarded his chartered BA Boeing 777 at Andrews Airforce Base at 8pm on Thursday in the heat of Washington's evening sunshine he was smiling and utterly relaxed, even a little euphoric. When he came down the steps of the aircraft clutching his wife Cherie's hand 14 hours later into the darkness of the Japanese night he was grim-faced and unsmiling as he was greeted by a British embassy party at Tokyo's Haneda airport.

A 7,000-mile journey which would have been a chance to relax and revel a little in the euphoria of the rapturous reception he had won from Congress as the fourth British prime minister to address both its houses is one he will no doubt remember with horror for the rest of his life.

By the time he arrived in Tokyo he had spent several hours on the aircraft's satellite telephone in call after call to London after being told first that David Kelly had gone missing, and then that his body had been found five miles from his home.

The deep crisis into which Dr Kelly's tragic death has plunged the Government will have been all the more difficult to handle in the Prime Minister's first-class cabin at the front of the aircraft because the three people whom he would have naturally turned to had left him to return to London.

Alastair Campbell, his director of communications and the man at the centre of the war with the BBC over the Iraq dossiers, along with Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Sally Morgan, his head of government relations, had all been excused the wearying six-day tour of the Far East which was to be Mr Blair's last government business before a holiday in Barbados.

Downing Street officials would only confirm last night that he had spoken on the flight to the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbitt, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon - whose job could be on the line - and his old friend Charles Falconer, the Constitutional Affairs Secretary. As the political head of the judiciary he is the man responsible for advising on who could head a judicial inquiry.

After one of the journalists on the flight had called his office not long after 10am and been told that Dr Kelly was missing, the news spread rapidly around the aircraft.

Journalists had been told to expect a briefing in the last three hours of the trip and assumed the Prime Minister would discuss his talks with President George Bush. That never happened. The one clear sign of the torment in the Prime Minister's cabin was that despite officials having a substantive story to announce to journalists - the suspension of military proceedings against the two British Guantanamo Bay prisoners pending talks in the US between administration officials and Lord Falconer - Godric Smith, the Prime Minister's spokesman, did not visit the journalists until it was far too late for a lengthy briefing. And even then, as Mr Smith began speaking, he was summoned back to the Prime Minister's cabin and returned again a few minutes later. By this time the aircraft was flying at 4,000 feet, a mere eight miles out of Tokyo.

As BA stewardesses hovered nervously around him, Mr Smith said over the standard speaker system used on such occasions that he had two items, of which the first was Dr Kelly. He said: "The Prime Minister is obviously very distressed for the family. If it is Dr Kelly's body [Thames Valley police had not yet confirmed the identity of the body] the Ministry of Defence will hold an independent judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading up to his death. He said that Mr Blair had been "spending a fair amount of time on the phone" to Sir Kevin and the two ministers, adding: "We have indicated that if this is Dr Kelly's body, then the Government intends to hold an independent judicial inquiry. In these circumstances, people should not jump to conclusions and they should exercise restraint."

In the brief questioning that followed he refused to say whether the Prime Minister had spoken to Mr Campbell and said "as far as I know" the prospect of his resigning had not come up. He then went on to give brief details of the Guantanamo Bay developments before returning to his seat just before the aircraft landed.

British embassy officials in Tokyo indicated that the Prime Minister would continue with his full programme in the Japanese capital today. He was due to open a Pizza Express restaurant, make a speech on inward investment and the euro, hold talks with business leaders and hold a press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister at Hakone.

It is a formidable agenda for a man who must be in turmoil at the tragic consequences of the crisis which has afflicted the Government in the aftermath of an unpopular war in Iraq; consequences which appear to have cost the life of a public servant and which now strike at the core of New Labour's being.