Rossivsky peered south-west, looking high in the sky for the glint of sun on aluminium. Then he saw it, a bright silver dot. He watched the approach as the aircraft grew and grew, gradually getting lower, until he could make out the six giant jet engines and could hear their approaching roar. Sixteen pairs of landing wheels appeared underneath the giant jet’s fuselage and nose. The Antonov An-225 Mriya, the world’s largest cargo aircraft, 640 tonnes fully loaded, was coming in to land. With a puff of dust, and the scream of reverse thrust, the Antonov touched down, and rumbled past him right the way to the end of the runway. Bigger than a jumbo jet, the An-225 was originally designed to deliver the Buran space plane to the Baikonur launch site nearly 1,000 miles west, when that now-obsolete project was at the frontiers of space science.

Its cargo today was nothing to do with cutting-edge science and technology, and was no product of human ingenuity.

It far pre-dated that.

Rossivsky turned his attention to the concrete apron. An olive-green articulated low-loader with military markings, growled into life. Plumes of filthy diesel smoke rose from the MAZ-239 as it began to inch forward. The transporter, designed to carry six forty-tonne T-72 main battle tanks, was being tested by an even heavier load. On its back, and in places wider than the vehicle itself, was a 185-foot-long object, roughly the shape of a giant dagger, wrapped in a silver tarpaulin. He had not seen beneath that tarpaulin, for all of the weeks of organisation that had been required to bring it here from the mine of Karabulak, 400 miles to the north east.

The low-loader approached the Antonov whose rear tail ramp had now been lowered. Four large mobile cranes were on hand to manoeuvre the object gently from the low-loader onto two specially made motorised cradles, self-propelled undercarriages each capable of dealing with a 200-tonne weight. Once the object was safely stowed on the cradles, engineers in hard hats used handheld remote controls to drive the irregularly shaped silver-sheeted object inch by inch into the belly of the aircraft. It took an hour to stow it.

The project, codenamed Millia, was the brainchild of a reclusive British-based billionaire, a man who had the money to do anything he wanted.