As soon as the brass had dispersed, I called the team together for a Chinese parliament. We got a brew on, and sat round discussing this amazing turn of events.

Rick remembered that, a few months ago, there’d been reports of the Russians losing a whole load of such devices. ‘There was something on the Internet that I downloaded on to our Russian file,’ he said. ‘Wait one, and I’ll pull off a copy.’

While he went to make a search, Whinger and I filled in the other guys on the layout of the Kremlin and the British Embassy, which had suddenly become of critical importance. I felt instinctively that because the Orange site was out in open country, we’d be able to hack it without too much trouble: it was Apple, right under the walls of the Kremlin, that made my neck crawl.

In a few minutes Rick returned with a couple of pages printed off his lap-top. ‘Listen to this,’ he began, reading out his transcript. ‘“A respected Russian scientist and former adviser to President Yeltsin said on Thursday that during the 1970s, under orders from the KGB, Moscow had secretly developed suitcase nuclear bombs. The devices had an explosive capacity of one kiloton – the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. They could be activated by one person, and could kill 100,000 people. The bombs were designed for terrorist purposes. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, at least 100 such devices have remained unaccounted for.”’

Rick broke off, looked up and said, ‘Guess what this respected Russian scientist is called.’ When nobody answered, he said, ‘Yablokov. We all know what that means.’

Somebody gave a groan. Yabloko was one of the first words we’d learnt on our Russian course. It means ‘apple’.

‘Either it’s a fluke,’ I said, ‘or someone’s having a laugh.’

‘Maybe someone nicked a couple of suitcases from the KGB, and we’re just taking them back,’ Pavarotti suggested.

‘There’s a worse possibility than that,’ said Pete. ‘If we’re doing this to the Russkies, who’s to say they haven’t done it to us already? What if there’s a CND nicely placed in the wall of the Thames, under the House of Commons terrace?’

‘Yeah,’ Whinger agreed, ‘and another under the guardroom, right here in camp.’

‘It’s no bloody joke,’ I told him. ‘Don’t you remember that time in the seventies when the Finns stopped an articulated truck and found it contained the roof for a Mexi stay-behind shelter, destined for England? If the bastards were getting dug in in the UK then, why should they have stopped now?’