‘bulwark’. Saddam decided that his place in history was assured. Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, much to everyone’s satisfaction.
‘It’s just a pity that in this war both sides cannot lose,’ Jack Heriot told me, in a preparation meeting for my Washington trip. Heriot was number two at the Foreign Office. He used to be a diplomat. He was my age, my status. My rival. He offered me a briefing when he heard of my mission, and I accepted gratefully. We sized each other up, and I confess I liked him instantly, despite the rivalry. I could also see that we would need each other, when the time to replace the Lady finally came around.
‘You will want to talk to the Americans about the Falklands, but they will want to talk to you about the Gulf,’ he told me. ‘It is their obsession. Dual containment.’
I had never heard the phrase before.
‘What?’
‘Dual containment,’ Jack Heriot repeated. ‘That’s what the Americans call it. One load of evil bastards in Iran, and another load of evil bastards in Iraq. Killing each other, big time. Does anyone have a problem with that? I don’t think so.’
‘And our role is?’
Heriot smiled. He was already beginning to put on weight and his belly was tight in his dark blue suit.
‘Publicly, we call on both sides for a ceasefire, for restraint and mediation, and hard work towards peace. Privately, we keep it going for as long as possible.’
‘How?’
‘By backing the loser. Currently, Iraq.’
Ah, the sophistication of the diplomatic mind.
‘Divide and conquer?’
‘If you like. More like the historic British policy of never letting any one rival get too strong. Remember Part One politics at university? We have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.’
‘Thanks for the seminar, Jack.’
‘Don’t mention it. You’ll find it useful leverage with the Reaganauts.’
Oh, will I?
Yes, I did. And yes, we really would come to need each other, Jack Heriot and I. We were called ‘The Likely Lads’ by the newspapers at the time. One of us, they deemed, would ‘go all the way’. The Fleet Street wisdom was that if the Lady fell because of her economic policies then I would carry the can and Heriot would succeed as Prime Minister. But if – by some miracle – what they were now calling ‘Thatcherism’ did work, then I would be the natural successor, especially if the Falklands war was taken to mean our foreign policy was way off track. I knew that being tipped as a future leader carries with it the kiss of death, but I was flattered. Strange, isn’t it? You see disaster ahead, but you take the road anyway. Maybe you even accelerate. It was like that in private matters too. Sex and love? Be careful? No. Full speed ahead, over the cliff.
The covert part of my trip to Washington was that I was to see the US Navy Secretary, Don Hall, an old friend from rowing days in Oxford. I had asked Don to fix up an informal meeting with David Hickox, who was then the Director of Central Intelligence. Hickox was on the way up. Some people said he could make it to Vice President. Or even President. And I needed him on-side. But here was our problem. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, was causing trouble. She said the United States should remain neutral in what she called a ‘post-colonial dispute’ between the United Kingdom and Argentina over ‘las Malvinas’.
Personally I was happy if Sad, Mad, Bad Jeanne remained neutral, or was even openly hostile to us. Having a demented old trout arguing against you in Washington does your cause no end of good. But the FCO and Jack Heriot in particular seemed unnerved by her opposition, and there were also intelligence issues. What were we going to get from the Americans? Communications Intelligence? Signals Intelligence? Eavesdropping on the Argies? Access to information from American human sources in Buenos Aires? Or perhaps, bugger all. What would Hickox be prepared to do? We did not know. It was up to me to find out.
In preparation for the trip I had to visit the US embassy in Grosvenor Square for a courtesy call with the ambassador. It was pleasant enough. Political bottom-sniffing. Coffee and chat and then I left. Half an hour, tops. So there I was, walking out of the embassy, looking for my official car, when I glimpsed a woman walking in. She was – she is – very beautiful. Striking. I had no idea who she was, but I remember thinking of the English folksong, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. It was just a glance, but no woman had ever looked at me like that before. It was the look that a hungry lioness gives a passing zebra. Raw hunger. I was the prey. I glanced back but the moment had passed. She was walking briskly into the US embassy. I remember even now, after all these years, the shape of her body, her hips, the bounce of her hair. I remember thinking that she walked as if she were wearing expensive lingerie. She radiated a secret and exotic sexiness which made me think of the whisper of lace and silk on tanned skin. I climbed into the ministerial Jaguar and returned to the Treasury, humming the tune of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and feeling vaguely ridiculous. Love at first sight – like a belief in socialism – is wonderful at age fourteen but absolutely stupid after the age of, let’s say, forty. I shook my head to clear it of all memories of her, and determined to forget I had ever seen her.
The embassy had booked me my usual hotel in Washington, but my old friend Don Hall offered to put me up for a weekend at his place in Middleburg, Virginia, prior to my official meetings at Treasury and State. He said he would gather together a few ‘like minded souls’ – which meant the Brit-loving community of Washington, members of the Senate Armed Services committee that I might need to sweet-talk, and, I was relieved to hear, Hickox himself, who – Don said – was keen to meet me.
‘He said you are one of us,’ Don Hall laughed.
‘An American?’ I replied, puzzled.
‘No,’ Don corrected me. ‘A neo-con.’
I thought I had misheard or misunderstood. I had never heard the phrase before.
‘A what?’
‘A neo-conservative. He’s done his research. Don always does his research. He says you are a true believer in free markets and in rolling back communism rather than just acquiescing. I told him he was goddamn right.’
Neo-con? What a strange phrase. I thought no more about it. There wasn’t time. Maybe I should have ensured I had received an intelligence briefing about David Hickox in as much detail as he had received one about me, but there wasn’t time for that either. By the time I did get briefed about Hickox, it was too late. I had already made my deal with the devil.
On the plane to Washington, I tried to plan how the meetings should go, but other thoughts crept into my mind unbidden. The exotic looking woman that I had seen walking into the embassy, even though I did not know her name or anything about her. Why could I not get her out of my head? I did an inventory of my life. I had two perfect, photogenic children. I had a hugely intelligent wife with her own career. Elizabeth taught at the LSE. I had hundreds of contacts in politics, in the press, all over Washington, at Oxford, in the American universities and the think tanks. I might make it to Prime Minister, and if I didn’t I could always switch to Wall Street or the City and make a fortune. And yet … And yet.
I did not need this woman I had glimpsed walking into the embassy – absolutely not. I would probably never see her again. But I wanted her, and I could not explain why. I
