CHINA'S top official on Hong Kong affairs, Lu Ping, may well cross paths with Governor Chris Patten during his trip to the territory this week.
Their diaries reveal plenty of potential for overlap. Mr Lu will be commuting between Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) sub-group meetings in the Xinhua (New China News Agency) compound in Stanley and dinners with potential members of the post-1997 administration in Wan Chai, while Mr Patten will be travelling back and forth between Government House and a string of engagements throughout the territory.
Some predict their limousines could pass within a few hundred metres of each other, as they crawl through Central's traffic jams. Mr Patten's full schedule is also understood to include various private appointments not listed here (see diagram), but he has offered to alter any part of his schedule to bring about an encounter with the director of China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.
'The Governor's diary is, as always, chock-a-block,' said his spokesman, Kerry McGlynn. 'But there would be no problem in re-arranging his appointments to fit in a meeting with Mr Lu.' Yet, despite this, there will be no such meeting. Not so long ago it seemed possible: only last year Mr Lu privately told the former British Ambassador to Beijing, Sir Robin McLaren, that he expected to see Mr Patten in the near future.
But Beijing's stance has toughened since then - after Chinese President Jiang Zemin reportedly 'threw a fit' and insisted there could be no rapprochement with Britain.
Now, local leftists believe the two will never see each other again. 'I doubt very much whether they will even meet at the handover ceremony on June 30, 1997. Why should they?' said Preliminary Working Committee (PWC) member David Chu Yu-lin, who in recent months has emerged as one of the mainland cadre's closest confidants.