Introductions to the top brass were perfunctory, but I cottoned on to the fact that the guy in charge, a major, was called Ivan – a heavily built, swarthy fellow of about my age, with dense black hair cut short into a kind of point, like a little roof over his head, and mean, yellow eyes that put me in mind of a bear. He spoke some English, but didn’t understand much of what I said.

Anna glided in, her normal, suave self, quite at home in a room full of men. Staring at her, I kept asking silently, What the hell were you doing with our computer, woman? But when she caught me looking at her she gave a terrific smile, and entered into the business of the day with infectious enthusiasm.

It seemed that Keet, the target, had been reported arriving at the block in the early hours of the morning, and had gone up in the lift to apartment number 128 on the twelfth floor. Omon’s information was that a meeting between him and other godfathers was due to take place in the flat at nine that evening. It seemed there’d been an argument over whether the security forces should go straight in, to make sure of arresting one man, or wait and hope to catch several.

To Whinger and myself, the plan for seizing Keet seemed amateurish in the extreme. The proposal was for an assault group to drive up to the ground floor, shoot their way in through the main entrance, secure the lifts and staircases, and then blast their way into the flat.

‘It’s a fucking shambles,’ I muttered to Whinger. ‘The guards on the door downstairs will raise the alarm with mobile phones or bleepers, and the villains will disappear from the flat like rats down holes before anyone gets near them. The assaulters’ll end up killing half the people in the block; there’ll be civilian casualties too, and a tidal wave of bad publicity.’

When Ivan the Bear asked my opinion of the plan, I said tactfully, ‘I’m sure your basic idea’s right, but maybe we can refine it a bit. Let’s think this thing through.’

Ivan told us that his men had the block under surveillance, and that armed guys were posted in cars along the boulevard leading to it. If Keet did try to make a getaway they could always have a go at gunning him down. But his bullet-proof Mercedes might save him, and they didn’t want to run any risk of losing him.

‘Even so, you surely want to wait for tonight’s meeting,’ I suggested. ‘Even if he goes out somewhere during the day, he’ll come back. To catch four or five of them together would be fantastic.’

He agreed, and asked, ‘So – what do you suggest?’