Was It Something I Wrote?

By VALERY PANYUSHKIN
NYT

Moscow

IT’S a warm evening in the summer of 2010. I am leaving a cafe in the very center of Moscow when I notice my car is missing its license plate. I know what this means: I am being followed.

Because the senior officers in the F.S.B. (the main successor to the Soviet K.G.B.) don’t trust their agents, they demand not only an account of the subject’s movements but additional proof, in the form of a license plate, that the observation is being carried out, that the report is not made up, that the target is indeed being followed. It would be silly to pretend that I am not afraid. I am afraid.

I call my friend Marina Litvinovich, an editor who has had many years of experience dealing with the Russian security services. More than once she has been attacked on the street. When this happens they call you by name, beat you half to death, then leave you, taking no money or valuables, thereby ensuring that you never, even for a moment, think you have just been mugged.

“Marinka, what do I do if my license plate has been unscrewed from my car?”

(More here.)