At last it began to stiffen again as I drew near to the far side. I opened my eyes and saw that I had only feet to go. A few more seconds and I was safe on the roof of Block B. As I scrambled on to the rough asphalt I was appalled to find that the ladder’s overlap was more like a foot than a metre. The blocks were obviously slightly farther apart than the architects had prescribed. I watched, fascinated, as I saw the end of the ladder creeping in and out, and realised that the high buildings were swaying in the wind.

Igor came across next, and made it with no fuss. So did Nikolai, who hadn’t even bothered with a safety rope. It was Misha who got into trouble. Exactly what happened, I’ll never know. All the rest of us saw, as we crouched shoulder-to-shoulder in the gale, was that he stopped half-way across the bridge. Whinger came up in my earpiece saying, ‘Blue – got a hold-up. Oh, for fuck’s sake . . .’ and then, ‘Get on, yer twit.’

Obviously Whinger didn’t shout. Even if he could have been heard it would probably have been counter-productive, because in that situation, if someone loses his nerve, yelling only intensifies the fright. But seconds were ticking away. From exchanges on the radio I knew that Black team were starting their final approach to the front of the building. We couldn’t afford to lose time.

Another dark figure started crawling out on to the ladder. With a double weight on it, the aluminium sagged horribly. The second man reached the feet of the stationary Misha, who was frozen in a face-down attitude. The back-up guy began talking, first in a low voice, then louder. When bollockings had no effect, the newcomer turned physical. From the blurred movements it looked as though he had started thumping Misha with his fist on the backs of his knees.

Still there was no reaction.

The wind and rain were hitting our faces so hard that, even from close range, it was impossible to tell exactly what happened next. It looked to me as though the second guy had tried to crawl over Misha’s prostrate body. He was right on top of him when there came a sudden eruption of movement. I saw a flurry of limbs, much faster than men crawling, as if the two were wrestling.

An instant later one of them was falling. Without a sound he dropped away into the dark.

Jesus! I thought. Too low for his chute. But of course he had no chute.

He went straight down, 150 feet on to concrete.

I grabbed the pressel of my radio and hissed, ‘Red leader. We have a casualty. One guy’s fallen.’

‘Roger,’ came Anna’s unemotional voice. She said something else in Russian. Then, ‘Can you recover him?’

‘Not a chance. He’s gone right to the ground.’

‘Proceed, then.’

‘Roger.’