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In the spring of 1994, Elena Filatova was in her apartment in Tver, a city northwest of Moscow, when her phone started to ring.

Filatova, an interpreter by trade, had been working two jobs at the time. One promoting a master’s program for the Portland School of Business in Tver, another doing translation work for a local Canadian housing project.

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Hoping to drum up interest in the university program, she had taken out an ad in the local newspaper, attaching her number to it.

And when she answered the phone, it appeared her bait had worked: the man on the other end seemed interested in the program. When she told him they should meet to discuss it, he said he happened to be just across the street from her.

Next thing she knew the man was at her front door, showing her his badge from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the security agency that succeeded Russia’s KGB. The man, later identified as agent Aleksander Dyomin, was not interested in the university program — he wanted to know about the Canadian project.