This was translated, producing an exchange of stony looks among the Chinese.

Cheong murmured a few words to the interpreter, who said, ‘Mr Cheong is most disappointed. He very much wished to meet Charles Verge in person.’

‘And Charles is very anxious to meet him. However, since time is short, I suggest that we start the presentation.’ Sandy Clarke beamed another reassuring smile and nodded at the technician. Thank God for digital media, he thought; at least I shan’t have to speak for the next fifteen minutes. Charles wouldn’t have done it this way, of course. He would have worked the audience first, set the scene, hinted at the vision, created a receptive atmosphere. They had formed an effective partnership so often in the past, Charles’s dynamism and his own poise, but today he was on his own.

Clarke moved to a seat against the wall and the room slowly filled with the sound of traditional Chinese music; the screen flicked alive to a scene of white clouds and the title, in both Chinese and English characters, came into focus: The New City of Wuxang. The titles faded and the clouds parted to reveal a patchwork of green fields, a rural landscape in Zhejiang province. Below could be seen a small village, rice paddies, a lake, a wood-and suddenly something else: an interchange, a row of towers, and then a huge city, digitally realised, stretching away in magnificent order towards the horizon, its buildings and highways glittering purposefully in the sunlight.

It was a lie to say that Charles had been totally involved in the development of this proposal. The truth was that he had shown little interest in it, though it was far and away the biggest thing they’d ever been called upon to design. The statistics were staggering, the quantities of concrete and steel and dollars, numbers with long strings of zeros. Yet Charles had remained remote from it all, attending design sessions reluctantly, offering advice only when pressed and then in a tone almost of amusement, as if the whole thing were absurd.