‘Right,’ I said, moving along the ranks, ‘I know that really we should call you by your patronymics, but it’ll be easier for us if we give you numbers. You’re Nikolai Odin, you’re Nikolai Dva, you’re Nikolai Tri.’

I did the same with the Sergeis and the two doubles. All that, coupled with the discovery of the twin Whingers, caused a good few laughs and broke the ice.

Finding that several of the students were from Spetznaz and some from Omon, I deliberately split the two groups, pairing off each man with one from the other organisation, so that they’d all have to mix and communicate. ‘It’s important you all know each other really well,’ I told them. ‘Your lives may depend on knowing how your partner’s going to react in a particular situation. Learn everything you can about each other. Our team have been working together for years, and we’re still finding out.’

Altogether the Russians looked a lively bunch, and fit: by the glow on them, I guessed they’d all been running that morning. They were all aged between twenty-five and thirty-five, but they were noticeably bigger than us – taller on average, and well built. There were a lot of broad, wide-cheekboned Slavic faces, and a couple of broken noses. When I asked how many had fought in Chechnya, nine hands went up, and a similar question about Afghanistan produced four.

‘Khorosho!’ I said warmly. ‘Plenty of combat experience.’

When Anna translated, the remark brought out self-congratulatory smiles all round, and I could see we were going to get on.

The only two I didn’t much care for were a pair who, I knew, had come from SOBR, the organisation that had once guarded the prisons and gulags. Sasha told me that, when the camps had broken up in 1992, a lot of these guys were thrown on to the market – and some bunch they were, too. They had the reputation of being the nastiest of all Russian special forces, with their own line in brutality and torture. Certainly the two we’d got, Oleg and Misha, looked pretty low-brow and uncooperative.

As I handed round the course programme, written in both languages, I said, ‘OK, we’ll be starting right away, with basic CQB. But first we want to take you on the ranges and make sure we’re all together on our commands. We want to watch you firing, and see how you do things. This is as much for our benefit as for yours: we need to get to know your methods.’

So we began, with magazine changes, stoppage drills and zeroing. Their weapon-handling proved to be good, although, as I’d suspected, some of the safety aspects wanted watching. We delivered a few bollockings on this score, especially after Sergei Two let off an AK47 round vertically into the air after he was supposed to have cleared his rifle.