The main thing was to steer clear of other guys from the Regiment and of the local slappers, whose intelligence network is shit hot. Bush telegraph keeps all the Hereford talent fully informed about who’s who and who’s where – who’s on the standby squadron, who’s on the SP team and so on. The last thing I wanted was for those women to see a Russian walking around with me in the evening – so we drove off to The Lamb, a pub in one of the outlying villages, and Sasha put down his first pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier like he hadn’t had a drink in months.

With the beer came relaxation.

‘Cheers!’ He raised his glass for the third or fourth time. ‘Tell me your family. You are married?’

‘No. I was. How about you?’

‘The same.’

‘What happened?’

‘My wife – she was killed.’

‘I’m sorry. How?’

‘She was shot. It was street battle. Some Mafia persons were shooting a bank manager from their car. They keelled him, but also three persons on the pavement. Olga was one.’

‘An accident, then?’

‘By no means!’ He turned on me indignantly. ‘On purpose. The Mafia keell all witnesses.’

He paused before adding, ‘Olga came from Alma Ata, in Uzbekistan. That was her home.’

‘You didn’t have children?’

‘She was pregnant. Six months. I think it was a boy. My son.’

‘When was this?’

‘Ninety-three . . . ninety-four. Four years ago.’

‘Well – that makes two of us.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘My story’s much the same.’

Keeping it short, I told him about my marriage to Kath, a Northern Irish girl, and how she’d been killed by the premature explosion of an IRA bomb outside a supermarket in Belfast. ‘Our son Tim was only three then, so he went to live with Kath’s parents in Belfast,’ I explained – and that led on to an account of my feud with the man I held responsible for her death, the leading IRA player Declan Farrell.

Sasha listened sympathetically, then said, ‘It is your own Mafia, I think, the IRA.’ He pronounced the name ‘Ee-ra’.

‘Not really. The IRA’s driven by politics and religion. Political and religious hatred, more than money. Anyway, because we couldn’t get this guy on legitimate operations, I was stupid enough to go after him on my own.’

In a few minutes my reminiscences led me to describe the kidnap of Tracy and Tim.

‘Tracy?’ Sasha interrupted. ‘She is who?’

‘A girlfriend . . . Jesus!’ I hadn’t meant to get into all this. I pushed back my stool, looked at my companion and said, ‘We need another drink.’ When I stood up and went to the bar to fetch two fresh pints, Sasha came with me, pulling out his wallet.

‘Put it away,’ I told him. ‘In England, you’re our guest.’

He gave a little nod by way of saying thank you.