We ate sliced meats and an Uzbek-style plov of mixed rice and meat. The developer made me study the bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape, and read the label out loud. He filled my glass to the brim but drank Coke himself. His guards stood by the door. I kept thinking about a guy lying in an empty flat with his face shot off.

‘I hear the President’s daughter likes to sing,’ I said.

‘She is a beautiful singer,’ the developer said.

‘I have some connections. If she’d like any bands to perform, to play with her.’

‘Oh, she’d love that. Her birthday is coming up. Do you know Coldplay?’

I said I might be able to help. When desserts were done, the Koreans left and Toreali led me to the sloping glass wall. He pointed past a library that looked like a giant contact lens.

‘See that railway being built?’

I could see a dark line where earth had been turned, workers in hi-vis orange, small as ants.

‘It connects down through the country to the East–West highway, all part of China’s One Belt One Road scheme. They are building it for us, connecting up the world. Last week I was having dinner with a couple who have just made the first overland delivery of laptops from Chongqing in south-west China to Duisburg in Germany. This is the return of the Silk Road.’

I looked past the skyscrapers. Roughly the Silk Road, perhaps; the northern route: Khorgos, Alashankou. Six centuries ago the speed of British ships had drained this route of logic. Within a century or so, some of the greatest cities on earth had withered. Maybe someone then, on the Cape of Good Hope, had seen the galleons sailing past and got the same vertiginous sense of history turning.

‘The beauty of the route is it bypasses Russia.’ He winked. ‘Now that Russia’s put up trade restrictions on Western produce people are bringing chickens over the Caspian. Yesterday I had reps from Jiangsu province sealing a commitment to invest $600 million in related projects. So, as you can see, you have come to the right place. Think of Dubai.’

I thought of Dubai. Toreali continued: ‘These are places created on the basis of logistics. It was a small port where they made an economic zone. Now look at it.’

I gazed across the landscape. Almost, I thought. Only, where Dubai carried a certain regal cruelty, Astana remained more earthbound. It wanted to be liked, which gave the pomp an air of Disneyland rather than Singapore or Manhattan. But both had been built out of oil. I said: ‘Someone once described the world to me as countries with long histories but no oil and countries with lots of oil but little history.’ I’d spent time trying to divine the lesson in this. Toreali took umbrage.

‘Kazakhstan has as much history as anyone else. Just because there are not kings and castles.’

‘Of course.’