As we flew down over the Ukraine there wasn’t a great deal to see. The rolling wheatlands had been harvested and most of the stubble had already gone under the plough, so that vast tracts of black earth were showing.

The second leg was a different matter, however. ‘We go on the left side,’ said Sasha as we re-boarded. ‘Then we see mountains.’

As we lifted out of Krasnodar, lying beside a lake in the plain, the pilot climbed slowly on a southerly heading, and soon the Black Sea came in sight, away to our right. Over the coast the plane made a slight left turn and started following the shoreline down, just inland of the water. ‘Famous health resorts,’ Sasha said, pointing at spots on the map. ‘Sochi, Sukhumi, Batumi – many sanatoriums.’

By then the sun was setting over the sea, and on the other side of the aircraft – our left – it threw fantastic light over the forested hills which piled ever higher into the distance until we began to see snow on the peaks.

‘Soon we see Elbrus!’ called Sasha excitedly. ‘Highest mountain in Caucasus. Highest mountain in Europe.’

Screwing round my head to look, I spotted two rounded, snow-covered humps, so high above everything else that they were still catching the last of the sun.

‘They’re pink!’ I exclaimed. ‘Like a pair of bloody great tits.’

‘Precisely!’ Sashsa beamed. ‘This is what we would say – kak dve siski, like twin tits.’ Then he pointed left ahead: ‘Grozny over there, behind.’ He started in about the war again – how the Russians hadn’t been able to make headway against the guerrillas, and had no proper military objectives, so that the soldiers took it out on anyone who got in their way.

He was still talking as the sun’s rays at last left Elbrus. The smooth boobs quickly turned a dirty white, stars began to show in the clear sky, and night settled over the Caucasus range.

On our descent into Kars I wondered how the pilots would communicate with the tower. Did someone down there speak Russian, or did both sides talk in English? I never discovered – but we landed safely, to find that the Here from Cyprus was already in.

Tony’s stand-in had been right about the temperature too. As we stepped out of our little aircraft, the cold bit. On that high plateau our breath condensed in the air, and frozen mud crunched under foot. All round the horizon frosty-looking mountains showed faintly in the starlight. Great was my delight when I found mates from the squadron, settling themselves into an empty warehouse with big blower heaters blasting from the corners.