Within a week of the request for a training team, we’d set a timetable. A recce party – consisting of myself, Whinger and Rick – would fly to Moscow on 15 September and spend a day checking the facilities of the camp and training area. We’d return on the seventeenth and have three weeks in which to make final preparations. The whole team, with all our kit, would go out early in October.

Before any of that, though, the Russian course leader, Major Ivanov, was due to spend a couple of days seeing how we did things in Hereford – and as his opposite number I went to meet him off the plane at Heathrow.

I cut it a bit fine. By the time I’d put my car in the stack and walked over the bridge into the Terminal Two arrival area, Aeroflot’s flight SU247 from Moscow had already landed and passengers with hand luggage only were coming through the Customs screen. By arrangement, I was carrying a white square of cardboard bearing the word ACTIVE in big black capitals, and I stood by the barrier holding it in front of my stomach.

In the end it wasn’t needed, because I spotted my guest before he saw me: a big fellow, a good six feet, and broad with it, walking very upright. He had a wide forehead with mid-brown hair swept across it, a rather flat face, and a quick, alert look as his gaze swept back and forth across the waiting crowd. I also noticed a fuzzy vertical scar on his left temple. As he came towards me I had time to think that in the old days you would have expected a Russian officer to carry duelling scars, but this one was clearly the result of a burn.

The guy was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket that looked rather expensive, and was carrying a hold-all slung over one shoulder. As he drew level with me I raised my right hand to attract his attention, and said, ‘Major Ivanov? Zdravstvuite.’

He stopped, focused on me and said, ‘Sergeant Major? Zdravstvuite.’ His face broke into a smile, revealing that his two front teeth were made of metal, and he said, ‘Vui gavarete pa Russki?’

The words slipped out so fast that I took a second to recognise them. Then I managed, ‘Nemnogo.’

‘Khorosho!’ He looked delighted. We shook hands over the barrier and I motioned him towards the exit. As he came through, he fired off something else in Russian, and my bluff was called.

‘Sorry,’ I went. ‘When I said nemnogo, I meant it. Only a very little.’

He smiled again and said, ‘Doesn’t matter. I speak English OK.’

I tried to take his hold-all off him but he wouldn’t let me, and we set off for the car. He walked fast, with a springy gait, and I could see straight away that he was fit.

‘Good flight?’