It would be going too far to say that I personally knew the Prime Minister. Unlike many colleagues, I would never have addressed him as “Ruud.”

Not so much out of journalistic distance (because a good story justifies a wreckage of social conventions), but because much of the informal name-dropping in The Hague always struck me as teetering on the edge between forced familiarity and sycophancy. And so, for me, Ruud was Mr. Lubbers.

There was, however, a certain fascination in the moments I encountered him. Fleeting moments, mostly.

The evening of his great election victory, his sharply drawn look of discomfort, surrounded by cheering party loyalists; the unappealing haste with which I once saw him devour sandwiches in a TV studio; a gathering of De Zonnebloem (a project by Ria, his wife) when our eyes met while passing an attractive hostess. He said, “Not bad.” Did I hear that right? And then the phone call I made to Ria, asking if she would contribute to a televised reception marking his ten-year anniversary as Prime Minister.

“You don’t honestly think I have anything nice to say about that man, do you?”

Silence.

I was certain she loved him.

But who was he?

Even in interviews, he remained more of a mysterious passerby than the proverbial Macher, the trailblazer of the no-nonsense era.

No nonsense? Really?

Rarely have I so misjudged the impact of a TV interview as I did with this man, who had truly elevated the exhalation of verbal fog into an art form.

Despite the good feeling afterward, his slow-flowing streams of words, once transcribed, often turned out to be cryptic constructions—like the Black Hand Gang for grown-ups.

I remember one interview in which he kept talking about “dimenzies,” dimensions with a z—the z of delusion, in which entire quarters of an hour would quietly disappear.

All of which is to say: I knew Lubbers only through observations and professional encounters—until that evening I had arranged to meet him in Het Torentje.

To present the Prime Minister—not just any private matter—but to inform him about the derailment of my love life.

“Shall we say tomorrow night at ten?” said the voice I could imitate so well.

It would be about Sarah.

Her name was not Sarah. After the dire call from Jerusalem, a shiver ran through her body; stripped of all direction, she wandered through the house which—except for the final months, when we had briefly cured each other’s loneliness—had never truly become hers.

She had been dismissed on the spot for living with a “local citizen,” came the announcement. Lightning strike. Short circuit. The end of a diplomatic career that had barely begun; press attaché in the service of Zionism, first posting: The Hague.

Months earlier, I had approached Sarah to help arrange an interview with Shimon Peres, the Foreign Minister, who had charmed many hearts in our country with his soothing peace rhetoric—but who, in Israel, was often scorned as a “Jaffe nefesh”—a “beautiful soul,” a sweet talker.

Peres turned out not to be the problem. But the misery of her posting in rainy The Hague was written all over her face. She could joke about the soggy national character: the drawn curtains, the average gray morning, appointments only by appointment, a language that sounded like chewing gravel—where did that word gezellig even come from?

But no irony could compete with the feeling of abandonment that had etched itself into her heart—as if fate—though temporary, she knew—had personally chosen her. You could see it immediately, as she bit her trembling lip.

The conversation was no longer about Peres when she told me about the impossible relationship with a married fellow diplomat—ended because the affair had felt like ideological betrayal. A national mission is not well-suited to a personal entanglement, regardless of the aching emptiness from which it had grown.

Her loneliness became mine. The restless reporter once again pulled away from the warmth of love, because he never fully opened the door when happiness knocked. I went home with her and we had a brief affair.

It would take three months before we realized we would not continue; that life would send us in different directions. And then came the call from Jerusalem: “You’re coming home now.”

She cried. Everything was shattered.

I walk past the Mauritshuis, heading for Het Torentje. The streetlights are soft, like a step back in time.

No one sees me. I walk with purpose, overly confident. There is no turning back; better to stride ahead like Kees de Jongen diving into life through his imagination.

Is there a bell?

A heavy door swings open. Someone I’ve forgotten shows me the way to his office—which, more like a living room than a workspace, feels unexpectedly pleasant.

The Prime Minister sits behind his desk, shirt sleeves rolled up, a slender beer within reach.

“How’s Brandpunt?”

Good, surprisingly high ratings.

“Beer?”

Gladly.

“Tell me.”

This is what I do best, when it counts.

I tell him in a flood of words how I met Sarah, that the embassy had at least informally approved of our—now obviously temporary—relationship, that it wasn’t my journalistic role but her relationship with a “local citizen” cited as the reason for dismissal, that surely my Dutch nationality couldn’t be seen as a national security threat by the Israelis, that I was even prepared to involve Her Majesty to save Sarah’s job, and that I knew he’d be traveling to Jerusalem with colleague Hans van den Broek next week—so perhaps he could...

The Prime Minister uses the word “quintessence.” That’s clear, I hear him say, with that odd z again replacing a soft s. He understands the desperation, but apologizes that he knows little about diplomatic protocols. He reaches for the phone and asks Jaap to come to Het Torentje—a top civil servant who lives in Scheveningen and does know about diplomacy. It might take half an hour. The Prime Minister pours another drink and gets back to his paperwork—plenty of documents awaiting his signature.

I feel uneasy. Only now do I fully realize that I’ve crossed all journalistic boundaries by burdening a politician with such a private matter. If this gets out, my career is over before it begins. I think of Sarah and push those doubts aside.

Jaap turns out to be a tall, thoughtful man whose job it seems to be to keep as much nonsense as possible away from the Prime Minister. We sit at a separate table, the PM within earshot. “This isn’t a chief’s matter,” I hear him say. “If we do anything, it should be handled at the diplomatic level.” His response doesn’t disappoint me in content, but his tone doesn’t reassure me either. Like a tightrope walker who has finally conquered vertigo, I voice my fear: that at the diplomatic level, Sarah might be doomed to Kafkaesque fate. Do they know Mr. De Poel also has contacts with the PLO? That he has, on occasion, traveled with terrorists? That the woman in question was thus pulled out of a reckless entanglement?

“Diplomacy often employs selective memory,” I warn.

And I suggest: “Perhaps it would be better if Mr. Lubbers just casually asked Shimon Peres in the corridors how things stand. That seems far more effective.”

“I’ll do that,” says the Prime Minister.

Years later, when cab drivers in Tel Aviv found out they had a Dutch TV journalist in their car, they’d often say: “Oh, there’s a story about a Dutch journalist…”

Lubbers’ informal hallway intervention regarding the doomed romance quickly became a public secret in Israel—and even grew into a minor media hype. With headlines in bold print, the affair made the front pages of Yedioth Achronot and Ma’ariv—the country's most widely read newspapers—with the striking narrative that Shimon Peres had used bureaucratic tools to kill off a Hague Romeo and Juliet romance.

Poor Peres was grilled on Israeli TV. Sarah was named “Woman of the Month” on a radio show, and debates flared over gender equality in Israel’s diplomatic circles. Was Sarah treated differently than her male colleagues who had flings abroad?

The leak was the result of internal bureaucratic warfare in Jerusalem, where the Likud party (Yitzhak Shamir) and the Labor party (Shimon Peres) shared a rotating premiership in a unity government. Officials on the Likud side apparently had something to gain by sabotaging Peres and leaking the backroom exchange with Lubbers to the press.

To my great relief, the affair was largely ignored by the Dutch media. Apart from Algemeen Dagblad and De Telegraaf, it was considered a non-story—perhaps also because I had asked friendly correspondents to exercise discretion. “Not a word, Fons,” chuckled NRC’s Salomon Bouman reassuringly.

Sarah came out of it victorious. She may have taken a hit, but she went on to have a long and successful diplomatic career.

A year passed before I met Ruud Lubbers again.

As my camera crew set up on the lawn of the official residence on a warm afternoon, the Prime Minister asked: “Shall I show you Father Cats’ house?”

A brief tour followed.

He wasn’t one for elaborate commentary; his sense of heritage was limited to a few crisp historical notes—but once again I was struck by the ease of his hospitality.

I realized I liked him. The unreadable tone and expression with which he shielded his emotional inner world.

Not a word about Sarah.

As we walked outside for the interview, he casually dropped the line:

“It ended well with that girl, didn’t it?”

I nodded.

He said: “Check.”