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1 The Triumph of Capitalism   It was the end of the cold war and capitalism had won Everywhere people were either out of a job or making obscene amounts of money If you didn’t have a plan and a German car you were nobody   Because I could tell you were about to leave me, I had to come up with a grand gesture   We were sitting in the lobby of the American hotel, where the walls are painted gold and the rooms cost three times my annual salary You were wearing your best dress and I was wearing my new suit and sunglasses because I’d spent the day going to job interviews I’d been thrown out of the army along with everyone else   Businessmen were prowling the edges of the room like lions They were looking for sexy gazelles They all noticed the way the light reflected off the gold-painted walls and lit up your face   Spooked, I told you I’d buy you anything you wanted So you asked for a submarine fleet It totally served me right     2 Sergei the Submarine Salesman   I got together with a bunch of likeminded investors We were men of vision who saw the big picture and we were going to remake the world We hired a retired submarine Captain called Yuri who drank too much and told us stories of playing cat and mouse with the Americans for forty years under the arctic sea During a long and distinguished career he’d made more than seventy-two circuits of the globe and been married five times Then the oligarchs had taken over and stolen everything, including his fifth wife   We stood in the conning tower of a reconditioned Victor III class submarine fifty miles out to sea off Archangelsk, smoking brutally strong cigarettes in the grey dawn light   The air was so cold it smelt like iron   ‘She displaces seven thousand tons, and she’ll give you fifty five kilometres an hour at top speed,’ Sergei the submarine salesman was telling us ‘Power source is two pressurized water reactors Safe, but don’t stand too close, you know?’   ‘What about the crew?’ said Captain Yuri   ‘Usual crew complement