When he saw the money he blushed bright red and tried to push it away. ‘No, Zheordie. No, please . . .’

‘Take it.’ I caught his right hand with my left and pushed the notes into it. ‘You know where it came from. We got more than we need. We want you to have a share. And change it quickly, before somebody decides it’s fake.’

For a second or two I thought the silly bugger was going to cry, as he blinked and looked down at the notes. But he soon got hold of himself and said, ‘Too much. Too much.’

‘Put it in your pocket and shut up!’ I grinned and gave him a clip on the shoulder. ‘It’s time we got the lads down to the range.’

The students were in fine form, and gave an ironic cheer when we appeared. Apparently there’d been a clip about the raid on the morning’s TV news, and bush telegraph had whizzed a full account of it round more efficiently than the Internet. Nobody seemed in the least put out by the loss of Misha, least of all his former colleague in SOBR, who appeared to regard him as entirely dispensable.

I’d been intending to play the whole thing down, and I asked Anna to explain that, for political reasons, it was essential that Brit involvement in the bust remained under wraps. But the Russians were so enthusiastic about the hit that I decided to make a virtue of it and called a special seminar at which we took everyone – the students who hadn’t been there, and our own guys – through all the stages of the raid: planning, equipment, preparations, execution.

It proved an inspired idea: everybody was gripped by the analysis and discussion, and learned useful lessons. Of course I said nothing about the handout of dollars, but I did deplore the lack of a formal debriefing session. ‘I’m not criticising anyone,’ I said. ‘That isn’t my business. But at home we’d have done it a different way – and in fact it’s what we’re doing now. It’s always important to talk through what’s happened. That’s the way you avoid mistakes in future.’

‘Misha,’ somebody started. ‘Why did he fall? Why no safety rope?’

‘He was supposed to have one. I told everyone to rope up, but it seems he hadn’t bothered. Your special forces people are like us: you don’t take kindly to orders.’

I saw two of the Russians exchange glances, and added, ‘That’s not criticism. It’s a statement of fact.’ Finally I said, ‘I must emphasise that our participation in the raid was completely unofficial, so we can’t have any mention of it leaking to the media. Otherwise we’ll be in the shit with our own people. Understood?’

All through that day I felt I was blundering deeper and deeper into a moral maze.