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Floating Diplomats. Real-life, modern embassy buildings—not only in Russia—have swarms of bugs in their steel-and-concrete bones. Even after they have been debugged by experts, the only really sleuthproof place is a room newly lined with metal and sound-deadening material. Diplomats sometimes hold important conferences in "floated" rooms set up temporarily in a lobby or corridor, or else meet in a freshly inspected room with locked doors and covered windows. Even so, they talk in low voices, and write out all critical words or figures to frustrate undiscovered bugs.
Such precautions ensure reasonable protection—today. But each swift advance in electronics brings new refinements in snooping. There is talk of bugs that probe and communicate by laser light; of infra-red cameras that see through curtains; of receivers that intercept microwave beams, or wring valuable figures from the entrails of computers. In a few more years, the whispers of ambassadors in a floated room may be no safer from prying ears than pillow talk in a resort motel.
*However, stories of bugged martini olives in a Moscow bar are apocryphal since 1) the liquid would deflect sound waves, and 2) Moscow bars can be more effectively studded with conventional bugs.