‘So you’ve got one, right, Chris?’ Lev Lvovich leaned in closer, and his beery breath was warm and damp on my face. ‘It’s all OK,’ he reassured me with a slur. ‘We’re friends. You can tell me!’
It was the middle of the evening, already long dark, and Lev and I were playing a drunken game of chicken to see who might reveal something valuable to the other. I was the BBC Moscow bureau chief, and he was our ‘kurator’ at the Russian foreign ministry, the guy who signed off on accreditations, and who was charged with keeping an eye on what we reported.
‘Got one what?’ I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.
Lev and I would meet every now and then to pretend we were good mates. I had many other things to do, and he was almost certainly a spook, but it was important to keep up the pretence.
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