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The following Saturday, we suspected that he would show up at our home again, and we really couldn't face it, so we went out in the late afternoon and returned at about 7 pm.
As we walked through the door, the 'phone rang. It was Lev. He had just got home after coming over and finding that we were out, and he was quite annoyed -he seemed to feel that we should not go out in the evenings, in case he should want to come round. "Aw, shame! Maybe same other time" we said.
Without consulting us, he bought tickets for us to go to a concert with him, the next weekend. We really didn't want to go, and we told him that we were unable to make it, on that day. He exchanged the tickets for a different day. We resigned ourselves to the fact that , without offending Lev, there was no way we were going to avoid going to the concert. It turned out that he hadn't been able to get three seats all together -they were all in different parts of the auditorium, so on the specified night, my wife and I each sat alone, listening to music we didn't like. What fun! After the performance, Lev wanted us to go and have a drink with him, in his hotel room, but we made some excuse and hurried home.
The next weekend, he showed up yet again, after I had told him we were going to be out, (true—we had only just got in when he arrived) and after he had called our number and got no reply! My wife had a headache, which gave her a good excuse to go to bed (his conversation was getting to be more than she could stand) so, for the first time, it was just Lev and me.
He had brought a bottle of gin with him—the trade delegation at the Soviet Embassy had run out of vodka, can you believe it? Again we discussed life in our home countries and he asked for my address in England, in case he, or one of his friends, happened to come to England some time. I told him I would give it to him some other time. He talked about work and again said he hoped that we could assist each other. I did my best to sound helpful.
The following Monday , at work, he showed me a copy of a page from a directory of at work (Government below) Departments, which indicated that some research on "Thermoelectric devices" was being done at the "Defence Chemical, Biological and Radiation Research Establishment”. I had never heard of this establishment -hardly surprising, since it no longer exists under that name. He asked me if I might be able to get information on this research establishment. It seemed an odd request, as Lev was supposedly a pure scientist, and it appeared unlikely that a Defence laboratory would be carrying out pure research. I asked why he couldn't get the information himself, to which he replied that the bureaucrats at the Department of National Defence would not let a Russian have anything, on principle. When I asked if he had tried to get the information, he said he hadn't, because he knew they would be unhelpful. I tried to put him off, pointing out that I was not a Canadian citizen, but he felt that, since I was from a NATO country, I should be able to get the information.
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