...It is May 7, 1982, shortly after 3.30pm. Ali Magoudi, a Parisian psychoanalyst, paces back and forth awaiting the secret arrival of his next patient — whose identity, if revealed, would set off an earthquake in French politics.
The figure who enters, 45 minutes late, is François Mitterrand, no less — the president of France. Magoudi discovers that his patient does not want to talk about his childhood or his dreams, but about Margaret Thatcher and the crisis over the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.
"Excuse me," Mitterrand begins, apologising for his late arrival. "I had a difference of opinion to settle with the Iron Lady. What an impossible woman, that Thatcher! "With her four nuclear submarines on mission in the southern Atlantic, she threatens to launch the atomic weapon against Argentina — unless I supply her with the secret codes that render deaf and blind the missiles we have sold to the Argentinians. Margaret has given me very precise instructions on the telephone..."
|