The cars were sluggish and noisy, with heavy steering; but even though driving them was a pain, at least we had wheels of our own. I hadn’t expected such freedom: I’d imagined we would be more closely supervised. The entire training area was ringed by the concrete wall, so we were in fact enclosed. We soon found that a perimeter track skirted the inside of the wall, heading out north-eastwards in the direction of the space complex; and after a couple of ks we began to see, beyond the wall, amazingly large, white dish-aerials pointing skywards in serried ranks. Although I said nothing, I could immediately imagine why the Pentagon fancied taking that lot out.

The land was almost dead flat, with only a gentle rise and fall to relieve the monotony. Patches of pine and birch forest alternated with wide-open scrub and grass, criss-crossed by dirt tracks, reminding me of the training areas at Pirbright. Here and there a primitive wooden observation tower stuck up above the trees. Clearly the training area was well used, but two things about it made me feel reasonably secure. One was the sheer size of the landscape. In terrain as open as this it would be very difficult for anyone to watch us without our being aware of the surveillance. The other factor in our favour was the decrepit nature of the fixtures and fittings. On several of the wooden watch-towers the ladders had rungs missing, and the red-and-white barriers which Sasha had mentioned were bent and rusting. All this, we felt certain, reflected the cut-down in the Russian forces: clearly, they had nobody to do the maintenance and were generally short-staffed.

Three ks from base, as we were cruising gently, Rick suddenly pointed to his left. There, at the end of a glade with a shallow ditch running out along its base, was a derelict air-raid shelter or bunker – a dome of concrete protruding from a bank of higher ground, with a small rectangular opening in the side that faced us.

I felt my heartbeat speed up. At first glance this looked an incredibly promising candidate for the burial of Orange. The perimeter wall of the training area was only a few yards behind it, the nearest dish aerials a short distance farther off. We’d never get closer than this. I could scarcely believe we’d found one site already.

‘Black to Grey,’ I called over the radio. ‘Stopping to have a pee. Hang off and watch my back.’

‘Grey. Roger,’ came Whinger’s voice.

In the warm afternoon sun Rick and I strolled towards the bunker while Mal stayed at the wheel. Small birds were singing and the place had a peaceful atmosphere. All the same, I was nagged by a feeling that somebody was watching us.

‘We won’t go any closer,’ I said quietly to Rick. ‘Turn back.’