‘What’s that?’

‘Vodka made at home, from potatoes, wood even. What the soldiers get. It is very dangerous.’

‘Don’t they drink beer?’

‘Beer too expensive. And anyway, drinking in barracks is strictly forbidden. So the soldiers go out at night and buy secretly from babushkas, old women. Then one junior soldier stands in the passage – guarding, you say? – while the others drink themselves crazy.’

‘But morale – you say it’s bad?’

‘Zheordie, you must understand. There are too many armies. For example, Ministry of Interior has own army, one and half million men – Kulikov’s men, we say, from General Kulikov, Interior Minister. That is more than the regular army. Then Ministry of Defence has own army. Special forces for this, special forces for that. You know, there is even special force for underground?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Konechno nyet! It is called GRU. Special troops trained to live in tunnels and work in missile silos. Altogether too many armies, no money. Food is very bad. Soldiers eat shit – on starvation rations all the time.’

‘Like what?’

‘According to the law, it is such kind of menu. For the morning, it is tea, two pieces bread – one white, one black. Fifty grams butter, but only once a day. Butter only once. And kasha, of course. Porridge. Always porridge.

‘For dinner, they could get meat in their soup, but very small pieces. Usually young soldiers, for their first half-year, get no meat, because the cherpaks, the second-years, grab it. In the evening dishes, every day it is potatoes purée, with piece of so-called fish, bread black and white, tea, and three pieces of sugar.

‘For celebration – on important days, state holidays – they have special menu. What does it mean? It means, two biscuits per man, and makaroni po flotski – macaroni naval style, with very small meats, like the ship’s rat chopped up. Maybe piece of water melon, and one grape per man.

‘That’s what soldiers eat. That’s why they are ready to rob, do anything.’

As I fetched another round of vodkas from the bar – with a double for myself this time – I wondered what the hell we’d do about our own food once we got over there. None of our cooks had high enough security clearance to come on an operation as sensitive as this one, so we’d either have to eat with our hosts or fend for ourselves.

Again Sasha knocked his spirit straight down, with another cry of ‘Vzdrognem!’

‘Also,’ he went on, ‘there is much torture of recruits.’

‘Bullying, you mean.’

‘Torture also. Many beatings. If sergeant does not like junior soldier, he drags him out of bed and makes him stand on one leg half the night. You have heard of velociped, the bicycle? No? It is what they do to young recruit. They come to him while he is sleeping, lift up bottom of bed, and put between the fingers on the feet—’

‘His toes?’