The O.B. could wander to the shops; pick up paper, milk and groceries; twinkle at butcher, baker, and post office lady, and none of them would come within a mile of guessing that hundreds of lives had passed through his hands; that he’d made decisions and given orders that sometimes had altered the course of events, and at other times — more crucially, he’d have said — ensured that everything remained the same. He was generally thought to have been something in the Ministry of Transport. Good naturedly, he took the blame for deficiencies in the local bus service. What enormous things must have happened, River sometimes thought, to make sure that nothing ever changed.
— Dead Lions (Mick Herron), Loc. 1003–7