right out of Pynchon via Le Carre, so to speak.

[Mark Kohut]

MARVIN KALB, WHO LATER WORKED FOR CBS AND NBC, tells a story about being
tailed when he first arrived in Moscow in 1956, to work at the US Embassy.

He decided to take a walk around Red Square on his first full day in the
Russian capital.  He soon noticed that he was being followed by a man in a
black overcoat—undoubtedly a KGB agent.

The two ended up in the department store GUM, just off Red Square. As Kalb
explained in his memoir *The Year I Was Peter the Great*
<https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-year-i-was-peter-the-great/>, he bought
two ice cream cones there. He held one out behind him, without looking. The
agent took it without a word, and the two went on, one following the other.