Except for Western consuls in Moscow, strange events of espionage are a part of humdrum life. Last Q4, he arrived in Moscow, wide-eyed and engulfed by the city's tantric energy. That briefcase had his iPod, his press badge, his digital recorder, and some Russian homework. He believed nothing of it, till he had dinner later with an American politician who wasn't stunned by his story. "Oh, yeah,"the politician related, in Sam's recounting, "It's your turn.

That's the FSB"-the security service that succeeded the KGB. "They do that to new ambassadors and new writers when they first get to Moscow. It's not rare to come back home to find the furniture subtly-but noticeably-rearranged. Occasionally , a chunk of furniture is missing, but reappears hours later on. Or groups of dubious tech experts arrive, unannounced, to mend unbroken wiring. Scared , and not desiring to add her very own fingerprints, she left it untouched in the corridor. When she left for work the following morning, the gun was gone.

He marvelled if he was just being paranoid. But when the English ambassador got concerned and lodged a formal complaint, the escapades all of a sudden stopped. ( When I called the correspondent, he told me : "I just can't be on this line. Days later on he found the passport-in clear sight, sticking out between books on his bookshelf. And the US executive is at pains to downplay any espionage situations, if they speak of them . "My impression is that there's not quite as much of that because there was before,"announces a consulate speaker. "But traditionally this is a matter on which we push the mute button.

We don't wish to make sure they know it bothers us.". And though we reporters could be a little self-important, we aren't the only ones under surveillance. One American entrepreneur I spoke with decided he needed to sell the dining room table in a new UPDK building he had just moved into. When he began to take it apart, he found a mic the dimensions of a pencil eraser drilled into its framework. Consuls , too, live in UPDK buildings but often the agents' techniques are more extreme. It appeared to have come from the FSB, though nobody could conclusively prove it. Spy games infect folk with paranoia for an easy reason : you never can tell when somebody is watching. Julia Ioffe is a reporter living in Moscow. She has written for Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web.