Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died overnight. The AP says:
Police said they were treating the case as an “unexplained death” – but not yet as a murder.
It’s so spylike… So James Bondian. And though it seems incredibly strange, I remember something like this happening before.
It was the late ’70s, also in London. Georgy Markov wasn’t a spy, but he was a dissident, speaking out against the then communist government in Bulgaria.
I’ll let the BBC pick up the story.
The recent release of state papers in Bulgaria confirmed that Mr Markov was regarded as a dangerous dissident by the former communist secret service.
But prosecutors say they’re closing their investigation over who killed him, under legislation allowing a case to be dropped if more than twenty-years have elapsed.
If memory serves me, 60 Minutes did a story about this murder, going so far as to show the tiny ball filled with ricin which was jabbed into his leg from the point of an umbrella.
There’s not much I can add to either story, except to say, there are some people it pays not to tick off.