‘I can understand why all of this leads you to suspect Vitrenko of these killings, but you said you knew he is the killer. How do you know?’

The Slav rose and walked over to one of the wide, shallow windows. Fabel could tell that, although he looked out into the dark void of the warehouse, he was seeing something and somewhere else. Sometime else.

‘Like I said, Vitrenko’s unit was isolated in rebel territory. And without air support. To say they were cut off would be to use the language of conventional war, and this was anything but a conventional war. To get back to friendly territory, they had to make their way through a rebel-controlled valley. It took them ten days to get from one end to the other, making short, fast runs at night from one cover to the next. Each night men would die … and, worse, some were left wounded and were picked up by the rebels. And during each day in that valley, pinned down and unable to move from their cover, the survivors would hear the screams of their captured comrades as the mujahidin tortured them. It was enough to break the spirit of the most dedicated and loyal soldier. But something happened in that valley, between Vitrenko and his men: something unbreakable was forged between them.’

He turned from the window and lifted the cigarette to his lips and snapped open his lighter.

‘Out of a hundred-plus-strong force, only about twenty men made it to the valley’s end. Of those, a handful were walking wounded. These were sent back to safe ground, but instead of returning to Soviet territory, Vitrenko and the rest of his men travelled only a short distance from the valley before turning back under cover of darkness. The mujahidin, of course, were not expecting them to return. Vitrenko and his men played the rebels at their own game, taking to the mountains and stalking any small group of fighters they encountered. They would kill all prisoners taken in any engagement except one. This prisoner would be tortured mercilessly for any intelligence he could give and then crucified, left to scream for hours until he died. At first the rebels would try to rescue the victim, but Vitrenko had snipers hidden to pick them off. After the casualties they experienced through these attempted rescues, the mujahidin learned to live with the screams. Vitrenko and his men became like bandits, outlaws, beyond the control of any military management. They also became heroes to the ordinary Soviet soldier in Afghanistan. It was only a matter of time before the GRU – the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, our main field-intelligence service – started to become frustrated: they knew that Vitrenko and his men were gathering important intelligence that was not being passed back. Then the stories became more gruesome. Reports of mass murder of anyone in the rebel-held areas; of robbing and raping.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought that that would have offended Soviet sensibilities at the time,’ said Fabel.