The sight of Anna in her DPMs was enough to put a smile even on Toad’s face. I’d arranged with Sasha that all our guys would get an issue of Russian combat kit, so that we blended into the local scenery. Naturally, the garments didn’t fit too well; we could disguise short or long sleeves by rolling them up, but the blouses hung away from our waists and the trousers tended to be bulky. Anna’s kit, in contrast, was immaculately cut to flatter her slender figure, and looked as though it had been styled by some Western couturier. She wore elegant black boots, a black leather belt that emphasised her narrow waist, and a jaunty peaked cap. Even though she wore no insignia you felt instinctively that she was the senior officer present.

‘You got your cars all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thanks. They’ll do well.’

‘Nothing special, I’m afraid. Not like a couple of BMWs.’

‘Oh well – they’re fine for getting in and out of town.’

I wasn’t sure if she knew that we’d already been in to the Embassy, but I wasn’t going to bring the matter up unless she did, so I said nothing on that score and switched to matters about the course.

To open proceedings we got the twenty-four students into the main lecture room and sat them down, while our team lined up across the stage, Sasha hovering at one side. Anna introduced herself to the course, and to the Brits who hadn’t met her, with a brief explanation that she came from the FSB and that she had been appointed our liaison officer. I then introduced our lads one by one, using the names they’d chosen to sport on their chest badges. I felt a right prick saying, ‘Vot Rik, vot Dosti . . . This is Rick, this is Dusty,’ followed by a couple of words about what each man would be teaching – weapons, unarmed combat, explosive entry, house assaults, vehicle drills and so on. When I came to Whinger – last, because he was last in the line – I asked Anna to explain that Vuinzha was not his proper name but the best approximation we could make of his nickname.

‘And what’s that?’ she asked. When I told her, she immediately came up with, ‘Well, we’ve got one of them too.’ She looked around the benches and pointed to a tall, saturnine fellow with sticking-out ears. ‘He’s called Zanuda,’ she said, ‘and that means exactly the same thing. He’s always moaning and groaning.’

Like us, the Russians were wearing name badges, but I got them to call out their first names all the same. This revealed that we had three men called Nikolai and three called Sergei, as well as two Semyons and two Igors.