I was shown into a glass-walled side office with framed pictures of flare stacks and six tense individuals standing around a table of contracts. Lucy Piper was there, typing, one phone between ear and shoulder, one flashing on the table beside her. She raised an eyebrow by way of greeting. I was introduced to Jill Friedman from the European Bank, Ahmad Suleiman representing the Qatar Investment Authority. Carter stood at the back, arms crossed, bristling. He had a rugby player’s build and a drinker’s flush to his face. He had taken a big gamble and was a presidential signature away from breaking the casino. I recognised him, seeing him up close, and knew I’d been in his company before, but couldn’t think where. His lawyer and chief negotiator stood beside him, sixty-something, thinning white hair, tight-jawed. This was Ronald Steiner, who I’d heard about in Iraq: go-to man for oil contracts. He looked furious.

Walker was playing an audio file off his MacBook: two men talking in what sounded like a car, a debate in Russian about the term pon-yatino. From people’s expressions, he’d played it a few times before. A translator was struggling.

‘A pon-yatino is like an understanding, rather than a written agreement.’

‘So which is stronger?’ Steiner wanted to know. The men on the recording, I gathered, were the head of Kazakhstan’s state energy company and the Russian Minister for Oil and Gas. Saracen had extraction rights on any new discovery, but it seemed the Kazakhs weren’t compelled to grant those rights unless certain criteria had been fulfilled. The criteria were spread across the table alongside intel on Gazprom’s proposed offer, and satellite images of the region with military activity circled.

The voices continued:

‘No Western company.’

‘No. He is clear.’

‘He understands. It is unacceptable.’

‘You have spoken to …’

‘To Putin, to his people. They say this has always been the position.’

‘Always.’

Steiner hit pause.

‘The field or the line is unacceptable?’ he asked.

‘Both, I think,’ the translator said.

I was trying to figure out what the line referred to, when I saw it. Among the paperwork on the table was a map showing a proposed route for a pipeline. It ran west from the field to Aktau, under the Caspian to the terminal south of Baku in Azerbaijan. From Baku to Erzurum in Turkey, up through Bulgaria and Romania to Austria. Plans came courtesy of Bechtel Engineering. They were costed. Either a team of hundreds had worked overnight or there were longstanding ambitions in play.

‘You’ve been up to the drill site?’ Steiner asked. It took me a second to realise I was being addressed.

‘Just returned.’

‘How does it look?’