His apartment was very small. That was my first impression as we stepped straight into the living room, which was cluttered with furniture and lined with shelves. Some held books and magazines, some vinyl albums. In one area Sasha’s hi-fi equipment was stacked – Teac amplifier and turntable, dating (by the look of them) from the seventies. At the right-hand end of the room a table was laid for supper: blue-and-white check tablecloth, glasses, knives and forks, but only three place-settings. Beyond it a doorway gave on to a tiny cubicle of a kitchen, and in the opening stood a little old woman, rather bent, with her silver hair swept back into a bun, and wearing a shapeless dress of dark-blue covered in white polka-dots.

‘Here is my mother,’ said Sasha, following up with a few words of Russian.

Rick, in the lead, did brilliantly, cracking off a ‘Dobriye vecher’ (Good evening) and a couple more Russian phrases.

The broad old face – startlingly like Sasha’s – creased into a smile, and the woman gave a little bob, inclining towards us. As we shook hands, I asked Sasha her name and he said, ‘She is Lyudmila.’

The first few minutes were pretty difficult. Sasha insisted that we sat down, so I perched in an armchair and Rick on a sofa.

Because the flat was extremely warm, I asked what powered the heating. The answer was that all apartment blocks in Moscow are centrally heated – that is, not from boiler rooms in individual buildings, but directly from power stations via underground pipes. Sasha said there was always plenty of heat in winter, even when the outside temperature was twenty below zero, but I noticed that there were no controls or thermostats on the old-fashioned radiators.

‘How many rooms d’you have?’ Rick asked.

‘Living room, here. My mother’s bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen. And balcony.’

‘Where d’you sleep, then?’

‘There – where you are!’ Sasha laughed and pointed at the sofa Rick was occupying. ‘I make bed.’ He obviously sensed that we found the place rather small, because he added, ‘For Moscow, this is good apartment. Besides, I am not very much here: always I have been away in army – in Africa, in Afghanistan, in Chechnya. Not much time in Moscow.’

In spite of his protestations, I felt a pang of guilt at having accepted hospitality in surroundings as humble as these. The idea of living in such cramped quarters eight floors up also brought on a surge of claustrophobia.

Looking round, I realised that there was a huge ginger cat asleep on a shelf above a radiator – a welcome diversion.

‘What’s he called?’ I asked.

Back came the answer, ‘Tigr.’

Tiger the cat, Tiger Force. Of course. What other name could he have?

‘Isn’t it awkward for a cat; living high up like this? I mean – how does he go about his business?’