The KG-used-to-B

There is a man lying in a London hospital.
He is bald, terrifyingly thin, and could possibly need a bone marrow transplant.
Just a few weeks ago, 43-year-old Alexander Litvinenko was insanely fit man who ran 8km a day.
What has bought about the incredibly and sudden change in his condition? Well THAT is a story straight of the Cold War.
I have always been a little Cold War obsessed. I think it's a result of two things:
a) having lived through the last years of the Cold War and being old enough to remember Gorbachev, Thatcher, Reagan and the fall of The Wall.
b) too much Ian Fleming as an adolescent (ashamed to say I own a couple of first edition James Bond novels).
So to discover a few weeks ago that Russian journalist and long-time Kremlin/Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya had been gunned-down - assassinated - and the FSB (the "New KGB") had been implicated was a delicious remnant of Cold War-style problem-solving I couldn't resist learning more about.
Politkovskaya was only days away from publishing a massive story about the killings and beatings of civilian Chechens by Russian servicemen - obviously embarrassing to the Kremlin - when she was murdered. As a journalist, her death also raised some interesting professional questions for myself (Is there anything I've written that might have pissed-off the City of Mel-VILE sufficiently that they might want to kill me? How unforgiving they can be simply for fucking-up the details of the annual Jacaranda Festival!).
In a bizarre way I was positively excited the other morning to learn Litvinenko - himself a former top KGB agent and therefore colleague of Mr Putin's - was now in hospital with suspected thallium poisoning. At the time of his suspected poisoning he had been investigating the assassination of Ms Politkovskaya.
FYI, thallium is one of those delicious Cold War drugs that doesn't taste or smell and can be easily slipped into a drink or onto food... rendering the person who consumes it reasonably dead remarkably efficiently.
In 2004, Politkovskaya herself fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning on a flight to southern Russia for the Beslan school hostage crisis. The tactic which involved two gun wounds delivered to her head and body whilst alighting from her apartment elevator was far less subtle. Though personally, I wish they'd used the Bulgarian method - poisoned umbrella tips.
Anyway, do you see how delicious and intriguing this all is? I'm not wishing these people ill, can I just say. No I'm on Politkovskaya's side and I do want Litvinenko to pull through... it's just that I really can't wait for the next instalment. It's better than anything Ian Fleming could have written! (Actually, if you've ever actually READ a Bond novel you'd know that's not hard. They're shocking. The movies are a million times better).

EDIT
From news.com this morning, November 24,
Poisoned ex-Russian spy dies
FORMER Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had been fighting for his life in recent days after an apparent poisoning, has died, the hospital where he was being treated said today.
"We are sorry to announce that Alexander Litvinenko died at University College Hospital (UCH) at 9:21pm (8.21am AEDT this morning) on the 23rd of November 2006," the spokesman for the hospital said.
"He was seriously ill when he was admitted to UCH on Friday November 17, and the medical team at the hospital did everything possible to save his life."
The condition of the 43-year-old had worsened on Thursday, doctors and friends said, as mystery deepened over what caused his condition.