Navin Ramgoolam had been a difficult man to track down.

“Oh, it’s you,” the Mauritian prime minister told me as I jostled my way through a scrum of his supporters, his face quickly turning from surprise to regret.

It had taken six days, close to 100 calls, dozens of meetings, several circumnavigations of the tropical island and his security detail breaking formation, just for a second, to land me in this moment.

As I shook his hand, somewhat unwillingly given, he touted the government line I had received ever since landing in Mauritius: that the deal that would determine the fate of the Chagos Islands would be “too sensitive” to discuss.

Britain agreed in October to hand over the sovereignty of the remote but strategic Indian Ocean archipelago to its former colony, throwing into doubt the status of a joint UK-US airbase, which is considered a major military asset in the region.