Tim Worstall

Alexander Litvinenko

I’ve been following this Alexander Litvinenko story as it involves, Russia, exotic metals and so on, subjects dear to my heart and business life, and as it’s been going on I’ve been thinking that it’s like something out of a spy novel.

Prof Henry said he no longer believed thallium
sulphate to be the most likely poison used. "It is very likely that he
has had radiation poisoning because his white cell count has gone down
to zero. Now we are beginning to think it may well be radioactive
thallium.

"The thallium levels are lower than
expected. The thallium [sulphate] is the least of it – the
radioactivity seems more important. He may need a bone marrow
transplant to get him better.

"Something other
than thallium is involved. There are several possibilities. One is that
he was given thallium plus a second cytotoxic {poisonous to cells]
drug, the second is that he was given thallium plus a different
radioactive compound, the third is that he was given radioactive
thallium.."

With this extra piece of news today it stuck me that it actually is from a spy novel. I just wish I could remember which one. For I have definitely read a novel where one of the characters is poisoned by the KGB. At first they don’t know what it is, then they think thallium (aha!) and treat him with Prussian Blue, but the assassins were very sneaky and actually used radioactive thallium…it wasn’t the thallium that was meant to kill him at all, it was the radioactivity.

I really do wish I could remember the name of the novel. Was the writer retelling a true tale from further in the past? Or are assassins getting their techniques from novels these days?

In

6 responses

  1. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “..are assassins getting their techniques from novels these days”
    We’ll know if the next Lebanese minister to be assassinated is slain by an albino monk…..

    Reply
  2. Ross Parker Avatar
    Ross Parker

    I haven’t got around to reading “The Poison Tipped Umbrella” yet 😉

    Reply
  3. Alfred Avatar
    Alfred

    You could be thinking of “Wolves eat Dogs” by Martin Cruz Smith, a Renko novel largely set in Chernobyl.
    Tim adds: No, it wasn’t that one. I remember thinking all the way through that that he’d got one thing wrong. While there is a cesium isotope that’s radioactive, the book read as if he thought all were.

    Reply
  4. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    The Wall Street Journal had an op-ed piece on this incident today. Unfortunately, what you’re recalling is no novel, but a previous, and very similar, Soviet assassination attempt. In other words, the only book the current crop of assassins is reading is the old KGB playbook:

    On the evening of Feb. 18, 1954, in Frankfurt, a man called on Georgy Okolovich, a leader of an anti-Soviet émigré union. The business at hand was murder. But things took a different turn when Okolovich opened the door. “I’m a captain in the Ministry of State Security and I have been sent from Moscow to organize your assassination,” the visitor told him straight out. “I don’t want to carry the order out and I need your help.” His name was Nikolai Khokhlov. He defected to the U.S. and revealed that the Soviets used assassination as a political instrument.
    Three years later, Mr. Khokhlov was at a conference in Germany when, while with friends, he drank a cup of coffee and collapsed hours later. The doctors called it simple food poisoning, but his condition deteriorated until, 10 days into his illness, his hair began to fall out; his bone marrow was found to be severely damaged and his body showed an almost total loss of the white cells that are vital to the proper functioning of the immune system. Later tests uncovered the culprit: deliberate poisoning by a new and previously unknown form of thallium.
    *******
    When I heard the other day that Alexander’s condition was worsening, I thought that the doctors perhaps made the same mistake as in the Khokhlov case. Thallium has never been known to attack the blood stream, but that’s what’s happening to Alexander Litvinenko. Specialists at the U.S. military hospital in Frankfurt only later discovered that Mr. Khokhlov was exposed to radioactivated thallium, which initially only results in non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms; and only later did they observe a moderate elevation of blood lipids, leukocytosis and anemia that occurs in most high-level intoxications. By the time the symptoms known to be after-effects of radiation began to appear, the radioactivated thallium had already disintegrated, making it very hard for doctors to find, and for investigators to confirm, the poisoning. The same scenario may be playing out with Mr. Litvinenko. Yesterday the London hospital treating him said it could not confirm that the poison was thallium — a diagnosis that in the Khokhlov case was only made by a special U.S. military hospital.

    Reply
  5. john Avatar
    john

    this inccident definitly reads like a novel, its almost too perfect. the ex rebel spy, the meeting with KGB (FSB)agents over a cup of tea and the italian in a sushi bar (ummm intresting) so much so that i think someone is trying to frame Russia and Putin.

    Reply
  6. CG Avatar
    CG

    Finally some one else connecting the Litvinenko story with Wolves Eat Dogs. That book was the first thing I thought of when I read about spies and plutonium poisoning. JuliaM (above) asks”are assassins getting their techniques from novels these days?” Tonight I watched Three Days of the Condor- Sydney Pollack film from the 70s. The CIA hires readers to feed them good plots for their dasterdly deeds- such as invading a Middle Eastern country to destablize the region. Remember- Art always comes first. Politicians and Soldiers only copy.

    Reply

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