For years, a Russian consul spied on the German army. Officials got wind of it and tried to turn him into a Russian defector. As the situation began to blow up in their faces, German officials hustled to end the matter discreetly - so as not to endanger the current German-Russian love affair.

The small baroque town of Amorbach in the Odenwald, south of Frankfurt, offered a perfect backdrop for the unique showdown last November. Just like in the good-old-days of the Cold War, German special agents tiptoed about the ruins of a medieval Benedictine convent and followed a nondescript man in his mid-forties who was obviously waiting for someone at a restaurant in this 4,220-person town.

Under the agents' scrutiny, a member of the German army entered the restaurant. He was carrying classified documents with him that contained information about telecommunications and arms technology. As so often occurred in the past, the secret documents quietly changed hands. The man receiving them spoke German with a thick Russian accent and paid a hefty sum. His pockets full and the transaction completed, the the army officer got up and left the restaurant. The other man was left to pay the bill. As soon as he did, he was captured by the waiting German agents. When they arrested him, the agents discovered that the criminal turned out to be a Russian diplomat.

The operation has since turned into myth -- one of the most dramatic espionage scandal since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It has all the components of a juicy spy thriller: treason, a chase and a diplomatic scandal. In fact, it even forced the man -- 45-year-old Russian Consul Alexander Kuzmin, to return to Russia early. The truth is that Kuzmin had been working for the notorious Muscovite military secret service GRU. His mission: to spy on the German military.

The case illustrates how keenly, 15 years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russian agents are to search for and obtain classified information. In fact, President Vladimir Putin -- himself a former KGB agent -- and his secret service seem to be creating their very own translation of "Glasnost." For them, it has come to mean the chance to spy on both friends and enemies.