Out in the open, the wind was formidable. There was no point in telling people to watch themselves. They wouldn’t have heard me, anyway, and anybody with the slightest sense of self-preservation wasn’t going to start pissing about in a place like that.

All Moscow, it seemed, was spread out at our feet. Immediately below us the patches of wasteland were dark, but to the south blazed an immense galaxy of lights, and the main thoroughfares were like brilliantly illuminated rivers down which flowed endless streams of headlamps.

The ladders were lying where the pseudo-TV crew had left them, and we had no trouble locking the sections together. But when we tried to raise the whole length upright, the force of the gale nearly lifted two of us off our feet. Quickly I got a second rope round the top of the ladder and secured our ends to vertical standpipes. That way, we could exert enough friction to lower the whole bridge gently into position. Once it was down, we lashed the near end to a rail, in case it got blown overboard after we were across; even though the ladder was lightweight, it wouldn’t have improved the health or temper of anyone it landed on after dropping sixteen storeys.

By now I was shitting bricks. ‘Wish to fuck I’d never volunteered to lead,’ I said in Whinger’s ear.

‘I’ll go if you like,’ he said – good old bugger that he is.

‘No, no. I’m fine really.’

I was, too – once I’d started. ‘Khuyevo dyelo!’ I said to myself. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ – and then I was on my way.

With a safety rope round my waist and belayed on to the guy next in line, I crawled forward, each knee on one sharp-edged rung at a time, hands clutching the side-rails with a grip like a Scotsman’s on a five-pound note. The ladder swayed horribly as gusts of wind hit me. I tried not to look down, but far below and away to my left I couldn’t help catching glimpses of cars that looked like toys. Half-way across I decided it was better to keep my eyes shut.

Even without seeing I could tell how far I’d got from the bend in the ladder. It flexed most when I was in the middle. Russian ladder, I kept thinking. Russian aluminium. I hope to hell it doesn’t break.