Lev continued to give me bottles of various things, (still no vodka, however, ridiculous though it sounds), and occasionally asked how I was getting on in my attempts to obtain the information he wanted. He frequently asked me not to mention his interest to anyone, and gradually became more and more concerned with the secrecy of the whole business, until eventually he even wanted to keep our acquaintanceship secret. He asked me to say that I had bought the bottles of booze, if anyone asked.

The officers had asked me to co-operate fully with Lev, as though I was interested only in what I could get out of him, so I complied with his requests for secrecy -apart from informing the RCMP of everything he said, of course. This request to play along with the Russian made me wonder what I should do if he offered me women - a ploy which seems to be used frequently in spy movies and novels, I told my wife that I felt it would be my duty to take advantage of any such offer that Lev might make, My wife wasn't so sure. Unfortunately, no offer of that sort was ever made.

 

The second transaction took place about a week after the first. Primed with information from the RCMP officers, I gave , Lev two papers. One was another set of details on a thermo-electric device, the other was an annual report of the labs. The latter, however, was merely a hand-out for general circulation, with no details of the work being done. I told Lev that there were two sorts of Annual Report -Internal and External. This was the External one, and I said, truthfully, that my contact was trying to get me one of the Internal ones. Lev got quite excited, and said that the Internal Report was what he really wanted. It seemed he wasn't going to give me any money this time, so I tried to look disappointed. Then he said he was sorry he had no cash with him, but he would pay me next week, so I cheered up.

 

I went home to lunch after that, and when I got back, Lev was waiting for me. We said he had just been to the bank, and produced sixty dollars. This time as the RCMP officers had predicted, he asked for a receipt, "for confirmation of our friendship." I didn't understand the logic of that idea, but I made out the receipt, as he asked. He then asked for my address in Britain, which he wrote on the back of the receipt. He told me that if a friend ever came to Britain, Lev would give him the receipt, to show me that it was indeed a friend of his. I wasn't very happy about giving him this address, actually my parents' home, because I had no doubt that, if this affair were not quickly brought to an end, a “friend” would indeed be knocking at my parents' door, receipt in hand, very soon after we got home to England.

 

Lev then told me that he would "prefer to take the papers from my desk”! There was a failure of communication here. I thought he meant that I should not hand him the papers when I got them, in case anyone should see the hand-over, but should leave them in my desk for him to collect. It later transpired that he meant to keep the papers in my desk and take them from there, whenever he wanted to look at them. It seemed he was afraid of being caught with them on his person, although he didn't actually say so.