Rumours of realpolitik were rife at Davos. Thank heavens Matt Damon was in town

If Putin tried to go to Davos, he’d be arrested and charged with war crimes. But what about lesser Russian villains? The wildest rumour I heard last week was that a big contingent of Russian agents from the FSB and GRU (military intelligence) were ensconced in four rented houses “a couple of villages down the valley”, working out their side of a Russian-Ukrainian peace deal which, as usual, hasn’t been announced.

My source was a Scandinavian investor type with a Mountainhead wardrobe and no reason to know about these agents except he said he’d been chatting with a former British prime minister whose name may or may not rhyme with hammer on. Or toon hack. I forget. In any case, so much of Davos is bright lights and microphones at the intersection of overhyped tech and fatuous cliche that it was good to at least imagine a spot of stone-cold realpolitik at the intersection of good and evil.

“It would make sense, wouldn’t it,” Mountainhead said. “I mean, why wouldn’t they be here? Switzerland is kind of neutral, after all.”

Also, if anything went wrong, Matt Damon was in town, in a suit. He still had the beard he grew for The Rip (out now on Netflix, with Ben Affleck), which in no way diminished the impression that if anything got out of hand “down the valley” he could handle it. No Davos virgin, he was actually there to raise money for Water.org, an NGO he co-founded 17 years ago that claims to have helped 85 million people get access to fresh water via microloans.

Hollywood was otherwise barely represented, or hard to spot. My kind of Davos seems to consist mainly of moderating sessions on ammonia-powered shipping (don’t knock ’em – I once had that Mark Carney on my panel) and listening to presidents take softball questions from conference staff who don’t seem too bothered whether they’re democrats or tyrants. There is a multitude of Davoses depending on who you are and the colour of your badge, and they can be like ships passing in the night.

Occasionally, there’s something new. This year there was a bus, short and white, with blackout curtains, presented by the performance artist Marina Abramović. It didn’t go anywhere; it just sat on a platform cut into the hillside between the conference centre and the promenade by arrangement with a World Economic Forum that wants to tweak its offer to the plutocracy after the departure of its founder under a cloud of misconduct allegations last year.

An amiable beanpole in a labcoat stood outside, inviting people in. All you had to do was surrender your phone to a Faraday bag for half an hour and take a seat. I tried, but had to stand. It was full up with Azerbaijani government officials. Together we breathed, stared at primary colours projected onto the windscreen and practised Tibetan chanting. One of the officials seemed to fancy herself a singer and filled all the gaps. The point was “to create this moment of pause and reflection for people who can have an impact at this moment of conflict,” said the curator, Mirjam Varadinis. “Imagine just a slight shift in their state of mind.”

At that moment the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, strode by in the middle of an arrowhead of security muscle. Imagine.

Photograph by Markus Schreiber/AP