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Covert com ms equipment was another basic item we'd need for demonstrations. Also, I foresaw that it would be indispensable when it came to recceing sites for Apple and Orange and then inserting the devices. Plenty of batteries were required, therefore, and recharging kit. For work in the tunnel we needed good head-torches, short-handled picks and jemmies, plus a wire climbing ladder for going down the access shaft, and lightweight pulleys and nets for lowering the component parts of Apple. Also sandbags for removing spoil from the insertion-point, lock-picking kit for the padlocks, shovels for possible digging on the Orange site.. All this on top of our normal equipment and personal kit.

At one point the CO called me in for a private chat.

"Sit down, Geordie," he began.

"I can see you're not happy.

You've just got to make the best of it."

I nodded.

"This mass-destruction it's not like the Regiment.

"I know. But what you've got to believe is that the devices will probably never be used."

"Easy enough to say that. One thing I'd like to be bloody sure of is that they're not going to get used while the team's still over there."

"Don't be stupid. There's no chance of that."

"How do we know? What if the Resident gets assassinated and there's some kind of Mafia takeover? What if Clinton decides that Ri~ssia's going down the tubes and criminals are about to take over? The international situation might go to rat shit in a few hours."

I stared at the boss, and he said nothing.

"What I'd like to know is, whose finger's going to be on the button? Who's really in charge? If it's the Yanks, I'm not at all happy. They're just as volatile as anyone else. Worse, probably."

The boss gave a non-comirnittal grunt, and I went on, "It's bloody two-faced of our own government, anyway. All these overtures to the Kremlin about giving them help and now this."

"That's politics for you."

There was no good counter to that, and I came away feeling pretty pissed off Thinking ahead, I put in a call over the secure satellite link to the Charge d'Affaires in Moscow. He sounded friendly enough, to the point of asking if there was anything he could do to help.

"Well, thanks," I said.

"We're coming in tomorrow night, as planned, but we don't start the course till Monday so I wondered if we could bring some kit to store in the cellar on Sunday evening?"

"Ah." He sounded a bit taken aback.

"I shall't be here. But I tell you what. I'll leave the keys with the duty officer. That's going to be.. wait a minute… Richard Henshaw. I'll tell him to expect you. What time will you get here?"

I had to think fast.

"I'm not certain we'll have transport by then. But let's assume we will have. We should be there between six and seven in the evening. If there's anything different, I'll call to say so.

"Right-oh. I'll leave a message at the gate."

So far, so good. Then, to take my mind off immediate problems, I called Tony Lopez, late of the US SEAL. special forces, but by now working in CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. I had come to know Tony after he'd rescued me when I got hurt in Iraq during the Gulf War and we'd been interned together for a month. Then, a couple of years later, he had come over for a tour with the Regiment, and had done brilliantly until he'd had his left arm smashed.

His wound was serious enough to finish his career in the armed forces, and when he'd recovered, he joined the CIA. He'd been too discreet to tell me exactly what areas he was working in, but it didn't take a genius to guess that he would have responsibility for special forces projects.

Now, when I got through, he sounded his usual lively self.

"Hi, Tony," I went.

"How are you doing?"

"Good! Good! How about you?"

"Fine. How's the arm?"

"Still improving. About seventy percent now.

"Great. Listen, Tony d'you know people in the Drug Enforcement Agency?"

"Sure do. Why?"

I told him about Rick's friend Natasha, and her sister Irma who'd got sucked into the Russian Mafia operations in New York. I also gave him the name of the brasserie in Brooklyn where the girl was supposed to be working, and asked if he could do anything to help.

He said he'd put in a call to a friend in the DEA, but then in a different voice he added, "So it's you who's been in Moscow. I might have guessed."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. But this assignment could be a hot number. When you go back there, Geordie, take it easy. OK?"

"OK." I wasn't going to ask him anything else. Clearly Tony knew about Operation Nimrod: he knew we'd been over, he knew we were going back… and there were obviously things about the task that he didn't like.

SIX

The runway at Balashika was pretty short, and the captain of the aircraft warned us in advance that he'd have to do a tactical landing. In practice that meant that he banged the Here down so hard on the first impact that it bounced and flew on a bit before coming to earth a second time. Down in the back we all had a good grip of the cargo nets, and although we went weightless for a second or two, with legs and bodies flying up in the air, we were none the worse.

When the tailgate opened the night air struck surprisingly cool.

Sasha was there to greet us, and as we shook hands I remarked on how cold it was.

"I told you," he said.

"Summer is feenished."

But the temperature was good for unloading and, in spite of numerous well-meaning offers of help from waiting Russians, we insisted on humping all our own kit ourselves.

"It's kind of you to have kept them up," I told Sasha, 'but we can handle this. Let them go to bed."

We had everything out on the apron within forty minutes, and as the Here took off for home I watched its navigation lights disappearing into the sky with the same feeling I'd had when I'd looked at the head lo adie before we went out on the HALO jump over France: Lucky bastards, I thought. They're off home. A nice, comfortable stop-over in Berlin, and tomorrow they'll be back.

We, meanwhile, were left two thousand miles from base with fearful problems to solve.

As soon as I saw we had everything up together, I insisted that Sasha fall out. I knew he had a room in the officers' mess on the camp, but he'd told me that at weekends he went home to live with his mother in her flat in Ostankino, a northern suburb of Moscow. At that time of night, he said, it was only fifteen minutes by car so off he went, with promises to be back first thing in the morning.

The important stuff was locked inside green boxes, stencilled with white numbers 1 to 27. We never let any of these boxes out of our sight. We lifted them on to hand-trolleys, wheeled them across to our designated block, and carried them up the steps ourselves. I was glad to find that Sasha had got strong hasps and padlocks organised on most of the doors, and I designated two rooms at the end of the corridor as stores, next to the kitchen on one side and the signal office on the other.

By 2:00 a.m. local time we had everything squared away. The cooking equipment was in the kitchen and the edible stores in the room alongside. We designated the best-protected room the armoury, putting the weapons, ammunition and CND components in there. The room next to that had the only telephone, so we made that our office and com ms centre, housing (among other things) the lock able filing cabinets we'd brought to contain the classified CDs. I created an instant rule that all lap-tops were to remain in the office, unless being used for giving lessons, and that no Russian was allowed in there on any pretext.