‘Present to English friends!’ he beamed, holding a watch out in my direction.

‘No, for fuck’s sake!’ I exclaimed. ‘Spasibo – but keep them.’

Then some of his guys arrived with body bags, and at last bundled the corpses out of sight.

Outside, in the corridor, there was a great commotion as other inhabitants of the block argued with the guards on the door, trying to get in and find out what had happened.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Whinger muttered. ‘There’s going to be a monster piss-up.’

‘We’d better sign off with Ivan.’

‘He’s busy. Another day.’

‘OK.’

I looked round for Sasha and beckoned him over. ‘We need to get back to Balashika,’ I told him. ‘Can someone give us a lift?’

‘Konechno. I drive you.’

‘How many vodkas have you had?’

‘Vodka? Nothing! Two only.’

So it was that we pushed our way past the new guards on the door, through the crowd outside and into the lift. Downstairs there was a heavy military presence on the entrance to the block, but Sasha spirited us through it, found the car he’d been driving, and set off.

I felt plagued by guilt – first by the thought that we should all have been in a formal debriefing session, recalling and recording every move of the raid; second by the knowledge that we had lost a man; and third by the fact that I was carrying a small fortune of ill-gotten gains in a Mafia briefcase.

‘Misha,’ I said. ‘He was dead?’

Sasha nodded. ‘Absolutely. We found his body. How did he fall?’

‘Just lost his nerve.’

‘It is a pity. But – nichevo!’ He smiled broadly. ‘We have beeg victory. Like in football – Arsenal nine, Tottenham Hotspot one!’ He gave a merry laugh and drummed his hands on the steering wheel. Then he added, ‘Only one problem.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Mafia bosses will be angry. For sure, they make counter-attack.’

‘On Omon?’

‘No, on government. The President, the Vice-President, the Minister of the Interior. Perhaps one of them will be their next target.’

Chapter Nine

NINE

I thought I was going to have nightmares, but in fact I slept like the dead, and woke up unable to remember where I was. Until I heard Whinger snoring, that is: then everything flooded back.

‘All in a day’s work,’ I’d said cheerily to Rick when we came in the night before – and a hell of a day we’d had. But it had been exhilarating too, and a sharpening change from the routine of training.

Naturally we’d had a wash-up with our own lads as soon as we had come in: they’d got a brew on, and we’d sat up till after midnight analysing the hit. We had also had a discussion – not quite an argument – about what had come to be known as the ‘diplomatic bag’. A count had shown it to contain 110,000 dollars.