Sigma had a Serbian unit that had cropped up briefly in Palmyra. That startled the GCHQ listeners initially, especially those who’d been around in the Nineties. Like the West, the Kremlin had become keen on the PMCs as a way of lowering official casualty numbers – but the situation wasn’t without friction. When US air strikes ended up killing a lot of Sigma men attempting to capture a Kurdish base last year there were accusations that information hadn’t been shared by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate – suspicions that the defence ministry might have been hostile towards private entities conducting a major operation without its approval.

The scale of things made sense now: the information warfare, the cultivation of Zhaparov, the Agentsumpf. It was possible that a lot of the information warfare online was Sigma-produced. I knew they had advanced cyber capabilities; there’d been run-ins over signal jamming and electronic warfare with both the US and China when Sigma deployed in Sudan. Did mercs do social media now? Brave new world. It looked like Akan needed help, which was fortunate for me.

‘Who else are you speaking to from the UK?’ I asked.

‘No one.’

‘You have contact with GL5?’

‘Informal.’

‘They pay you so they can operate here.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when did the Russians arrive?’

‘Six days ago.’

Just after Joanna had gone missing.

‘Have you come across an English woman?’

‘No.’

‘Do you still have contact with Jan Jágr?’

He looked surprised to hear the name. Jágr was a former military translator from Slovakia. He ran an air-freight company based in Namibia, with two Ukrainian-registered Ilyushin-76 cargo aircraft originally designed for delivering machinery to remote areas of the USSR. The hulls were sheathed in lead to deflect bullets, and he managed to land them almost anywhere. More important, he was a master of paperwork, with a web of thirty or forty front companies under his command, re-registering aircraft every couple of months. This was the way he’d survived three decades as a priority for Interpol. Still, I had to get him out of German custody in 2015, so he owed me a favour.

‘You can contact him?’ Satayev asked.

‘I can try.’

‘We need communications equipment, ammunition, satellite pictures and radio interception. But until I have the roads back, I cannot throw money around. I cannot fight the Russian army out of my own funds. They are already raping, cutting throats, stealing homes.’

‘I can get you what I can.’

‘That is all you’ll say? After I saved your life?’

‘I need to speak to people.’

‘How do I know you have anything to do with anything?’

‘You know me, Akan.’

‘You disappear from the scene, cut all ties, then turn up again in a Russian truck. Explain to me why I have saved your life.’