In August, Paul received an email from Luton. There would be no new contract, he learned, the numbers had shifted; very sorry, but there we are. This was when Nikolai stepped into the breach. He had asked the agency for a native English speaker, Oxbridge preferably, available at short notice. In an informal interview he spoke to Paul as an equal. Engaging him in conversation on EU monetary policy, which was in the news with the debt crisis, he sounded more like a technocrat than an oil executive. He touched briefly on his work as an ‘operations guy’, saying, ‘People don’t know how much care and expertise goes into oil production. I work on brownfields, mature fields. To maintain output is complex, delicate. It’s jeweller’s work, as we say in Russian.’ He spoke frankly about his family situation: his estranged wife had been diagnosed with lupus, an illness that left her constantly tired. Nikolai had recently brought their son, four-year-old Anton, to live with him and his girlfriend. He led the shy boy into the room, prompting a ‘Hello, Mr Cullen.’ When Nikolai checked his watch, Paul was encouraged to see that it was not a flashy statement brand, just an ordinary plastic Casio.

He started work soon afterwards. His new employers, thank Christ, were nothing like his last. Instead of sequestering themselves in an outer suburb, they lived in Yakimanka, in the centre of Moscow. The Kalinin flat was large, solidly comfortable, and showed no sign of having been updated since it was built in the fifties. Nikolai had a love of animals, and the entrance hall was hung with framed photos of his horses, as well as several shots of red foxes in the snow, with their whiskers and black-tipped ears shown in sharp detail. He had taken the wildlife images while out hiking in his younger days, before work took over.

‘Foxes are misunderstood by humans,’ he told Paul when he saw him pausing in front of the prints. ‘They’re not deceitful in the least. Just marvellous survivors, the way they live and thrive in the most extreme conditions.’