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“Shall we get down to business?” I suggest.

“OK.”

“First, the older children still in there. You need to let them go. They are only children.” Sergey Yastrzhembsky, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation, had asked me to raise this with them as my main priority.

“Children? There are no children in there. In security sweeps you take ours from 12 years old. We will hold on to yours.”

“In retaliation?”

“So that you know how it feels.”

I return to the subject of the children many times, asking for them to be allowed at least some relief, for me to bring food, for instance, but the answer is a categorical no.

“Do you let ours eat in the security sweeps? Yours can do without too.”

I have four other requests on my list: food for the hostages, items of personal hygiene for the women, water, blankets. To anticipate, I get agreement only to bring water and juice. I will be allowed to bring them, shout from downstairs, and then I will be let in.

“Can I come several times? I can’t carry much in one go. There are so many hostages. Perhaps you will allow me to bring one of the men.”

“OK.”

“Do you mind if that’s another of our journalists?”

“No. And also somebody from the Red Cross.”

“Thank you.”

I start asking what it is that they want, but politically Bakar is all at sea. He’s a simple soldier and no more. He explains what this is all about, at considerable length but not at all clearly, and from what he says I identify four points. The first is that Putin must “give the word” – declare an end to the war. The second is that within 24 hours he must demonstrate that these are not empty words, for example by withdrawing troops from one of the districts.

“From which district? From yours? Vedeno?”

“What are you, a GRU agent? You’re interrogating me like a GRU agent. That’s all I’ve got to say, go away!”

It is impossible for me to go away at this point, although I very much want to. I hear myself almost pleading, which is completely the wrong tone, of course:

“Please understand, I need to know what it is you want. And I need to know exactly. Otherwise …”

From time to time I trip over myself. I am racking my brains over an intractable problem: how can I ease the plight of the hostages as much as possible, since the hostage-takers have at least agreed to talk to me, but not lose my credibility in their eyes? And I am making a mess of it. Quite often I can’t think what to say next, and blurt out a lot of nonsense, just hoping not to hear Bakar say “That’s it!,” whereupon I would have to leave empty-handed, having failed to negotiate anything at all for the hostages. As we approach the third point of “their” plan, Boris Nemtsov [chairman of the Union of Right Forces political coalition] phones Bakar on his mobile. The resistance fighters took it from one of the hostages, a Nord-Ost musician, and now they are using it for all their conversations.

While he is talking to Nemtsov, Bakar becomes very agitated. Afterwards he tells me Nemtsov is trying to trick him. Nemtsov said yesterday that the war in Chechnya could be ended, but today, October 25, the security sweeps have been renewed. Then I ask, “Who will you believe? Who would you trust if they told you that troops were being withdrawn?”

Only Lord Judd, it transpires, the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on Chechnya.

We get to “their” third point, which is simple: if the first two demands are met, they will release the hostages.

“And yourselves?”

“We will stay behind to fight. We will behave like soldiers and die in battle.”

“But who in fact are you?” I ask, scaring myself with my audacity.

“The Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion.”

“Are you all here?”

“No. Only some of us. We had a selection process for this operation and chose the best. If we die, there will still be others to continue our struggle.”

“Do you accept Maskhadov’s authority?”

He is thrown by this, and again becomes extremely irritated. His rambling explanation is best summarised as, “Yes, Maskhadov is our President, but we are fighting on our own.”

This is confirmation