Sasha broke off and gave a quick, rather nasty laugh. ‘But one day soon, I think we make him kneel.’

When Sasha flew back to Moscow we missed his cheerful company, and I looked forward to seeing him again when he met our recce party at Sheremetyevo Airport.

‘What’s the weather going to be like?’ I asked him before he went.

‘In Russia, autumn is one month ahead. Days warm, nights cool. Typical September.’

His final instruction as I saw him off was, ‘Breeng plugs.’

‘Plugs?’

‘For bath and basin. In Russian hotels, such things do not exist.’

Chapter Four

FOUR

We had the weekend clear for our own preparation, then on Monday morning we set off for Heathrow – myself, Whinger and Rick. Obviously the commander and second in command had to go, and we selected Rick as a third partly because he was one of our signallers – he and Pete Pascoe were level when it came to radio work – but mainly because he was our best linguist. He had an incredible knack of picking up languages informally, learning wherever he went: already he spoke French and German, and Russian seemed to be giving him no problems.

In the event, our flight was delayed for nearly three hours by technical problems – one aircraft went tits-up on the runway, and another had to be brought into service – with the result that the whole day seemed to disappear, and dusk was already settling on the land by the time British Airways’ flight 262 began its descent into Sheremetyevo.

In the distance and far below us on the starboard side of the plane, I saw lights glowing in the dark, and as we came closer I realised I could see the whole of Moscow enclosed within a single ring of illumination. ‘Look at that,’ I said to Whinger. ‘Ten million people inside that circle. Can you imagine it?’

‘Yeah, and a couple of well-placed nukes would finish most of the bastards.’

‘Come on,’ I laughed. ‘They’re our friends now.’

But there wasn’t much sign of that when we landed. We were travelling on civilian passports made out in our own names, and so had to go through Immigration along with everyone else. The hall was hot and dimly lit. Everything looked dirty and dilapidated – walls, doors, lights, the local staff. Worst of all was the ceiling, close over our heads, which looked as if someone had nailed ten thousand copper saucepans to it, rims downward.

‘Jesus!’ I said quietly. ‘This is worse than Africa.’

For forty minutes we sweated shoulder-to-shoulder with passengers from other flights, shuffling forward like snails in queues that stretched towards the booths manned by the immigration officials. As we inched closer, I saw that the lady we were heading for could have walked straight off the set of a James Bond movie: grey uniform with lieutenant’s bars on the shoulders, a mane of long, straight streaky blonde hair and half-inch false eyelashes.