Outside a fashionable restaurant on the main boulevard of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, a casually dressed woman in her late 40s gets out of a nondescript black car. A burly man in a suit has jumped out of the car just before her, and now points her towards the door. A young woman who has been waiting in the restaurant lobby for 20 minutes greets her, gestures at my corner table, then disappears.

As the woman walks towards me and introduces herself, none of the other lunchers cast even a discreet second glance. There has been almost no visible sign that I’m having lunch with the country’s prime minister, Ingrida Simonyte.