A Western diplomat in Russia tells me that he has never been so lonely. With relations between his government and the Kremlin even cooler than the sub-zero temperatures outside, he is adrift in unfamiliar terrain. But it’s not as though he’s short of company: everywhere he goes, he is stalked by women whose sole desire is to make passionate love with him, amenable to any acts, groupings and positions that would best serve his erotic bliss.
“It’s hell,” he sighs. What’s the catch? The women are honeytraps, agents of the Russian government sent to lure him into a compromising position so as to extract information via love or blackmail. The very term honeytrap might seem reminiscent of a different age of espionage: of Cold War turncoats, or even of Mata Hari, the exotic Dutch dancer and femme fatale who spied on the French army for the Germans during World War I.
But irresistible infiltrators have been dominating the news of late. Former Conservative chief whip Simon Hart’s recently published diaries describe an MP who, having succumbed to a lady’s advances, phoned from a flat where he was trapped with 12 naked women and a CCTV camera, panicking that she may be a “KGB agent”. The courts are currently hearing the case of an agent for Russia accused of planning a sexual sting on the investigative journalist Christo Grozev.
In an age of high-tech cyber espionage, why are honeytraps still happening? In short, because personal weaknesses all too easily become nati.
