From fifty yards short of the structure, I could see planks and spars of wood piled up inside the opening. The shelter, whatever it was, appeared to be full of rubbish. All the better for us.

We slowly wheeled round and walked towards the car again. Facing that way, I realised that there was one watch tower in sight, but it was a long way off, and, as far as we could tell, unmanned. To complete the casual picture, I went over and had a piss against a gorse bush, after which we got back into the car.

‘Mobile again,’ I told Whinger. ‘Nothing moving your way?’

‘All clear.’

We returned to base without incident. Had I imagined the unseen eyes? Rick said he had felt nothing – and he normally picked up danger signals before anyone else. Once again I started wavering. My first reaction, as we drove away from the shelter, had been. Right, let’s go for it. Let’s get the damned CND straight in there and not bugger about taking it into the city centre. Then the feeling of unease returned, making me realise how hasty I was being. Obviously we needed to recce the site properly before we went crashing into it. Even though the building looked as though it had been abandoned for years, it could still be the scene of some training activity. Better keep calm, take time to settle in and get the feel of things.

‘Carry on as planned,’ I told Whinger. ‘We’ll aim to roll into town after dark.’

We had a meal – Dusty produced a great corned-beef hash with plenty of onions and fried eggs on top – and waited till it was fully dark. Then we backed both Volgas as close as we could to our block’s rear entrance. I could tell that everyone was on edge, from the way they were talking in short bursts. We put dickers out to watch either end of the building, and when they confirmed that the coast was clear, we began carrying the kit out.

From measurements taken earlier, we knew that one Lacon box would effectively fill the boot of each car, and that the rear doors were too narrow to take one at all. We’d therefore opened the boxes up and brought out the CNDs in their original packing. The main components, in their black steel cases, were forty inches by thirty by twelve, and the SCR, an incredibly heavy lump, was a twenty-inch cube. The cases had built-in handles at the corners for a four-man carry.

Before we left the building, Toad opened up the small compartment in the base of each SCR and brought out its Rat. I hooked one into my belt and gave the other to Pavarotti. Now those two had to stay within a hundred feet of their devices, otherwise the pagers would go off automatically and start transmitting their alarm signal.