In the fall of 2012, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, it became clear that my family and I were being followed. I had been in Moscow as ambassador then for less than a year. As I wrote to the head of our security team on October 7, “My guards informed me that I was followed today while attending my son’s soccer game. And they then kept with us as we went to McDonald’s.” My head of security replied that if we saw them, it was because they wanted us to see them.
A few weeks later, agents from Russia’s security service FSB, or so we assumed, sat in the pew behind us in church, which truly unnerved my wife. They followed us on the streets, and closely tailed our Cadillac. On one occasion, one of my drivers overreacted to being followed. With my family in the car, he began driving faster and more erratically, weaving through Russia’s crazy traffic until I finally intervened and urged him to relax. After all, our situation was not like in the movies. We could never lose them for good. They knew where we lived.
