Remember Mischa and Grischa, those Russian doubles in Pynchon?

[Mark Kohut]

in his The Pigeon Tunnel, Le Carre writes of his first trip to Russia in
1987, after
the end of the Soviet Union. "if we let you in, we'll let anyone in", said
some Authority.

He speaks of the two, middle-aged, balding, fat KGB guys sentenced to
follow him everywhere
at a distance of not many years.

He called them Muttski and Jeffski.

(terrif story of him leaving a dead drunk journalist's apartment very late,
he too drunk, in the blackest,
quietest section of the city with no idea  where his hotel was. He saw them
on a park bench, evidently taking turns
dozing. He went over, said the name of the hotel loud and louder, and that
he was drunk, lifted his arms elbows out,
a passively harmless yet vulnerable request and the three of them walked
back to his hotel.

PS. BTW, THIS book is a perfect audio book on a long ride, for me. (I can't
follow well many unread books on audio while driving,
but rereads when one already knows the story work to hear every word  BUT,
this book is sketches and conversations, so to speak and Le Carre
reads it himself and "he do the police in different voices" as an American
woman said of Dickens in America (made almost eternal
by Eliot in The Wasteland) and Le Carre is a GREAT mimic, simply great,
creating a character right out of his voice,
maybe as good as Philip Roth (I have heard).