By Kathy Lally
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010; 4:15 PM 

MOSCOW- Anna Chapman, the come-hither Russian spy, threw off her cloak, stowed the dagger and stepped out of the shadows Friday.

She returned to public view at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where she watched two Russians and one American astronaut rocket away to the international space station.

Chapman - one of the 10 sleeper spies arrested in the United States in June, then sent home in a spy swap in July - has kept pretty much under cover here ever since.

But there she was Friday, wearing an eye-catching, bright red coat (hidden identities are so 2009).

Chapman attended the event, according to various accounts, as part of her new duties as an assistant to the head of a bank that works with aerospace industries. When reporters recognized her and crowded around, she said, provocatively, "I have just arrived."

Then a burly man whisked her away.

Since returning to her homeland, Chapman has had one brush with the Russian press. A magazine named Heat, and sometimes called a low-budget, Russian Playboy, paid for a makeup session and then photographed Chapman in tight dresses with the promise of an exclusive. But before the photos were published, the magazine complained, Chapman posted them on Facebook.

No wonder she failed as a spy, the magazine said on its Web site. "She can't keep her mouth shut."

The American astronaut among the threesome launched Friday was Scott Kelly, who is joining his twin brother, Mark, also a U.S. astronaut, at the space station. Talk about double identities.

And then there's this. The bank that reportedly brought Chapman to the Cosmodrome was the FundServiceBank.

Look at the initials. FSB.

Break the Russian code, and you'll find they are the very same initials as today's KGB.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/08/AR2010100802451.html?waporef=obinsite