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the record.’

      ‘Yes, but … deep background? Who knows, I may one day write a book about all this.’

      ‘So might I,’ I joked. ‘I keep a diary and one day it might keep me. Go ahead. Take notes if you wish.’ She had a frank way of holding my gaze that I have never seen in a woman before or since. ‘Curiously, I trust you,’ I said slowly. I thought I was about to die. After a minute or so getting out a suitable pen and notebook, she plugged the silence.

      ‘You clearly think the Lady is wonderful.’

      ‘Yes, I do.’

      ‘I have heard she is also bossy, intolerant of dissent, that she doesn’t listen to her Cabinet and …’

      I stopped her.

      ‘But that is precisely why she is so wonderful. These are compliments.’

      ‘It is a compliment to say she’s bossy and won’t listen?’

      I sighed.

      ‘The British Cabinet is full of people who think they should be Prime Minister. They all think they are in with a chance to succeed her, eventually. In the meantime, most of them do what they are told. Some of them – like Michael Armstrong – in their hearts despise her because she has the capacity for greatness, whereas they do not and they know it. She is intolerant of dissent. But she loves argument. That’s not the same thing. She listens and she argues back, then she takes a decision and you fall in line or you get out. In government you need to be bossy when you’re right. That’s why she fired Armstrong.’

      ‘And what if you’re wrong?’

      ‘She’s not wrong.’

      ‘But what if you are?’

      ‘Then to be bossy in pursuit of error is the classic political tragedy. Read Macbeth. Or Caesar. Or Lear.’

      ‘I have. And I have also acted in Macbeth.’

      ‘Let me guess which part.’

      Leila laughed again. I watched her hair fall on her shoulders and her tiny teeth flash white. God, how I wanted her. Waiting was the most delicious pain.

      ‘Don’t change the subject. They say that she listens to you?’

      ‘Sometimes. Mostly. Yes, I think so. That’s why she is so rarely wrong.’

      I laughed at my own arrogance, though I knew Leila was impressed. Then I changed the subject.

      ‘Now Miss Leila Rajar, I have a number of questions for you.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said, putting her hand to her breast in mock shock. ‘You do? Questions for me? On deep background?’

      ‘Yes. I am a great friend of the United States of America but I have watched American TV news and I do not think that anything an obscure finance minister in the government of the United Kingdom has to say will be of any interest to your viewers. Neither do you, otherwise you would want an on-camera interview rather than a very pleasant lunch.’

      She looked down at her food and picked at a piece of salmon.

      ‘Hmmm. Let’s suppose you are correct,’ she admitted. ‘But let me also admit that what you say is of great interest to me personally.’

      ‘Why?’

      She put down her fork and put her hands together on the table.

      ‘Because you are of great interest to me, Robin. Ever since Harvard. I like the way you think. I … I want to get inside your head.’

      I should have been less surprised had she slapped me across the face. There was that look from her again. The look of a hungry lioness. I was uncharacteristically lost for something to say.

      ‘I … well … are you flirting with me, by any chance?’

      ‘Of course. You are … you have something against flirting during the hours of daylight?’

      I took a deep breath. Lace and silk and the touch of her hand.

      ‘You realize that if we ever get together no one will ever get us apart?’ I blurted out. Leila said nothing. She stared at me, slightly taken aback.

      ‘That might not be so good for your career,’ she said.

      ‘Or yours,’ I replied. She coughed. We both looked away.

      ‘Perhaps we should have some coffee,’ I suggested. ‘In my case a very large espresso. I have to meet some spending ministers this afternoon and apply a vice to their ambitions. Or their testicles. Which are mostly the same things.’

      We sat in silence until the coffee arrived. By the end of the lunch I had discovered a number of things about Leila Rajar.

      She had a PhD in international relations from Georgetown and a first degree in economics from Pepperdine in California – facts that she kept hidden from the viewers of CBS News.

      ‘American viewers like pretty,’ she said. ‘But they get suspicious of smart. Especially smart women. I don’t play dumb, but I don’t emphasize any of my qualifications either. It’s survival.’

      I also found out where the name Rajar came from.

      ‘It’s Persian,’ she said. ‘Iranian, though I prefer the word “Persian” since it pre-dates the religious gangsters who are now destroying my country. It’s really spelled Qajar, but some-how it was botched when it was trans-literated from Farsi when my father fled to LA.’

      ‘Fled?’

      ‘When I was seven, I guess. The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, had it in for him. I grew up in Los Angeles – Los Irangeles as they call it. There are so many Iranian exiles in LA. The rest of the Qajars have been forced out by the Islamic Revolution. They are scattered around France, England and the US.’

      ‘Why were they forced out?’

      ‘Why do you think?’

      ‘Stupid question,’ I admitted.

      ‘Politics,’ she answered anyway. ‘Just like under the Shah only worse.’

      ‘What kind of politics?’

      ‘The only type that matter in Iran. Dirty politics. Violent politics. In which people lose everything their family has had for hundreds of years, and sometimes lose their lives.’

      ‘Animal Farm,’ I said.

      ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘Animal Farm. George Orwell. The Pigs overthrow the Humans in a farmyard revolution but by the end of the book the Pigs behave exactly as the Humans do, or worse. Orwell thought all politics was like that. He’s wrong. But Khomeini and his followers are certainly in the mould, persecuting the same people that the Shah persecuted.’

      ‘Animal Farm then,’ she agreed. ‘Pigs, certainly.’

      Another silence fell over the table.

      ‘I really should go,’ she began.

      ‘Can I see you again?’ I blurted out. ‘Despite the potential dangers to our careers?’

      Her eyes washed over me. There was a delay of a few seconds. Excruciating. Yes or no?

      ‘Yes,’ she said, and then she stood up and kissed me gently with her full lips on my cheek. It was the most sexual thing that had ever happened to me in my life. Just a kiss, but hotter and more passionate than any kind of sex. I felt the blood pound in my neck and face as if during an orgasm.

      ‘Of course,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Call me.’

      Then she was gone. I called her a few hours later.

      ‘This is me playing hard to get,’ I said. I could hear her giggling. ‘I really do want to see you again.’

      ‘Good,’

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