Anna had a passionate affair with Marcus Read, but broke up with him after meeting Alex Chapman while she and Marcus were on a night out drinking together.

A year later, Anna — who has been deported to Russia after her arrest in New York last month — tied the knot with Alex. “Anna was feisty, fiery, totally unpredictable — and very sexy. The sex was brilliant, we were getting on great. And then, suddenly, she was off,” The Mirror quoted Marcus, as saying. The 37-year-old added: “She was always a bit mysterious, but I was totally astonished when I heard she was a Russian spy.” Marcus, who makes art and music installations for festivals, first saw Anna in a nightclub in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, in 2001.

He was staying with a friend and Anna was staying with her diplomat father, the erstwhile Russian ambassador to Zimbabwe.

Marcus said: “I’d been in the country for about five weeks, DJ-ing in a club.
“I saw this beautiful girl walking past, looking at me and when she walked past again, I offered her a drink.”

The duo chatted for two hours, although Anna wasn’t fluent in English. Nothing happened that night, but Marcus was so smitten by Anna he asked her for her address and called round two days later.

He said: “I arrived at this huge ­palatial ambassador's ­residence. We sat by the pool and chatted for hours, then shared a really passionate kiss. We swapped numbers and promised to stay in touch as I was flying home the next day.”

A couple of weeks after he arrived back in Hove, East Sussex, Anna phoned Marcus saying she’d like to visit him.

Marcus said: “She explained that two witnesses and myself would have to sign a form to formally invite her to the UK, which I was happy to do.”

He continued: “I picked her up from the airport a couple of days later. She was wearing a short skirt, a low-cut top and had a huge bottle of whiskey.

“We went back to my place, had a couple of shots and went straight to bed. Although she wasn't too experienced, the sex was great. She was very sensual and intimate.” Over the next few weeks Marcus and Anna lived as a passionate couple. Six weeks into her stay, they headed to London for another party.

Marcus said: “We went to a mate’s warehouse flat. I noticed her sitting on the bed with a guy, staring at him and talking really intensely.” The man was Alex Chapman. Anna told Marcus that Alex reminded her of her father, Vasily Kushchenko, said to be a close ally of Russian PM Vladimir Putin.

Marcus said: “She just said to me, ‘I’m really sorry, but I am obsessed with that guy, he reminds me so much of my father and I can’t get him out of my head.’ It was obvious she’d decided to move on. She’d found her next bloke and after a week or so she left.”