The guard in the hut at the entrance to the airside didn’t give a monkey’s about me, and unless he was about to qualify for the world speed-reading championships, he couldn’t have absorbed much of my pass – not that it would have mattered if he had, for it was a pretty authentic document. Nor did Hawkeye appear to think the orange boiler suit that I wore, and the blue metal tool box that I carried, to be out of order. He might have perhaps wondered why I was on foot and not in a vehicle, but he knew that the Russians were a strange lot, and if being communists meant they had to walk outside on a day like this, then that was their problem.

Fifteen miles to the east, an Aeroflot Illushyn 62 had just been given clearance by the Heathrow tower to land after a Quantas jumbo. Because of the high winds. Captain Gromkyan switched the controls to manual and began his landing descent, his eyes and Kieviz’s eyes glued to the instrument panels. Sinking slowly from the sky, the Illushyn moved onto the correct course for Heathrow’s runway 28 Left, and headed towards the airport at its approach speed of two hundred and ten knots.

I walked towards the maintenance hangars. Pan Am’s massive maintenance complex was over to the left, and beyond that was Air India’s.

The air filled with the howl of the Quantas jumbo coming in overhead, its flaps fully extended and hanging down, its undercarriage poised like talons, a bright light urgently winking, the air below shaking from the noise and the wake; it glided smoothly down and out of sight beyond the sheds, like some gigantic condor.

I reached the shadows of the British Airways hangars, and stayed there, walking around until I could get a clear view of the massive concrete parking area, and the particular section of it that interested me – Delta 32. An Air India Boeing 707 taxied across the apron. A fuel tanker drove off behind its tail into the murky dark. Another roar built up overhead, and with landing lights full on and belly lights winking furiously, full flaps down, and the rudder no doubt angled several degrees to the right into the vicious cross-wind an Illushyn 62 sank down out of the wet sky, through the wake turbulence of the jumbo before it, and onto the wet tarmac of the lighted runway.

Captain Gromkyan allowed the plane to cruise down the runway for some moments, then, satisfied that all wheels were down and the course was true, and assuming there were no obstructions ahead that should make him slam open the throttles and abort the landing – because he couldn’t see anything other than the lights which stretched out towards the horizon and converged some distance before it – he reached out his right arm, and pulled the throttle levers into full reverse thrust.