Richard Henshaw."
We shook hands. I introduced Whinger properly, and the others more sketchily.
"Got some stuff for us, have you?" asked Henshaw.
"Well, it's for ourselves really. I'd just like to be sure it's in safe hands."
"Of course. Well, here are your keys. You know where to go.
There are two locks on the cellar door. This key's for the central lock, this one for a padlock that goes through a hasp at the bottom corner. But in any case, the compound's fully secure, so I imagine your equipment will be all right. D'you need any help to unload?"
"No, no. We'll be fine, thanks. Is this the only set of keys you have?"
"No, there's a duplicate set as well."
"Do you mind if I have them too? I'd rather we didn't have anyone else poking around in there."
"Oh all right." He looked a bit sniffy, but disappeared briefly inside and came back with another set.
"There you are. I'll leave you to it. As it happens, I'm quite busy."
"Thanks again, then."
As soon as he was indoors we opened the up-and-over steel door of the cellar and backed the black Volga to the head of the ramp. There was no point in taking the car down the slope, because the approach, between concrete walls, was too narrow for the rear doors to open more than a few inches and we wouldn't have got the boxes out of the back seat. That meant a short carry, and before we began it I scanned round to make certain we weren't being overlooked. No problems on that score: the high wall of the compound blanked off the view from outside. Reassured, I said, "OK, lads. Here we go," and we set about dumping our lethal load.
When all six cases were stacked, Toad brought out the two Rats, switched them off and slipped them back into their compartments in the SCRs. To put the final touch on our security, we replaced the padlock on the foot of the door with one of our own.
Toad was obviously impressed by the size of the Embassy buildings, and from the way he started dry-washing his hands I knew he was coming up with some new idea.
"Now we've got the devices here," he said, 'hadn't I better stay with them? There must be a spare room I could live in."
"Not a chance," I told him.
"The kit'll be fine here. Nobody can touch it. You're coming back with us."
The relief of getting the devices off my hands even for the time being made me feel reckless, and I almost went straight into a recce of the churchyard.
"After all," I said before we reboarded the cars in the embassy compound, 'we're on the spot.
Why not have a look round?"
It was the ever-observant Rick who stopped me.
"When we drove in, there was a guy hanging around out there on the embankment," he warned.
"Where?"
"About a hundred metres beyond the entrance. He looked everything like a dicker, from the FSB or somewhere."
"In that case we'll not piss about in the area," I agreed.
"Especially if he's still there when we pull out."
He was a figure in dark clothes, wearing a cap, leaning out over the river wall as if watching boats go by.
"He's moved this way a bit," said Rick over the radio.
"But it's the same guy."
"Right then," I replied.
"That's it. Next stop Balashit-heap."
I found it a pleasure to start the course the next morning. Our team had all slept well, and the weather was still fine. Whinger and I had gone for a four-mile run at first light, and after a shower and breakfast I felt in good shape. But above all I was chuffed to get back to our proper role of soldiering, and passing some of our skills on to others.
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, "J7of 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.
"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 Th."
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.