‘Get people talking about historical injustice: the famine introduced by collective farming; Kazakhs burning their grain and slaughtering their cattle rather than letting them fall into Russian hands. You could have a Pinterest board of famine pictures.’

‘I’ll get our team on it.’

‘And keep Galina onside,’ Chambers said.

‘We’ve booked the Marriott’s thirty-eighth-floor bar for her birthday celebration,’ Piper said. ‘There’s a catering team coming from Paris. It’s under control.’

My coffee and croissant arrived. Both were good, as promised.

‘Toby,’ Piper continued, ‘I’m told you read Kazakh.’

‘A little.’

‘Can you check this?’

She pushed the draft of an article towards me. It talked about all the good work Saracen was doing. Accompanying the piece was a photograph of the Caspian refinery, its vast metalwork lit against the night. It had a Union Jack flying.

‘Is this for local readership?’

‘Yes.’

‘The piece is great. I wouldn’t stick a Union Jack on the Caspian. And I’d get the word “land” in there,’ I said. ‘Land is the main treasure. You’re helping them be prosperous so they can keep their land.’

‘Clearly no one’s told them what’s under it,’ the woman from Saracen muttered.

‘It’s symbolic. Oil will go, not the land.’

‘But it’s oil they’re against.’

‘They’re not against it; they just don’t think they’re getting dividends. Tell them poverty here’s dropped from around fifty per cent to four per cent in the last fifteen years. That’s people not dying. It wasn’t because of NGOs, it’s because companies got the black stuff out of the ground.’

‘Hear, hear.’ Chambers pushed his chair back and rose. ‘I’ve got to run. Toby, been a pleasure.’

Chambers and Cook had to return to the trade delegation. They were late for a tour of a factory manufacturing asthma inhalers. Stefan had messaged. He said we had a problem; he’d explain if I could suggest somewhere safe to meet.

THIRTY-SIX

I found a motel on the edge of the city’s industrial area. Migrant workers smoked together in the overheated lobby, hi-vis vests steaming on radiators. There was a shop beside reception selling alcohol and microwave food. I booked a room, checked it, closed the curtains and returned to the car.

‘Meet at the lorry park on the Alash Highway,’ I told Stefan. ‘Ten p.m. Pull in. I’ll flash my lights, then follow me.’

I drove back to where the road forked, then pulled off behind the rusting frame of a disused petrol station, hidden from the road but still able to see the vehicles passing. At five minutes to ten Stefan’s rental BMW passed. No other vehicles around. I pulled back onto the road, overtook him.