Again, Running Afoul of the Russian Mob Gets You in Trouble

Britain's spy mystery: A slow death by poison

Sarah Lyall / The New York Times November 26, 2006

LONDON: In the new James Bond movie, "Casino Royale," Agent 007 gives a master class in what to do if you are unexpectedly poisoned by your enemies in a public place (for one thing, when you stagger dramatically from the room, make sure to do it in a suave manner).

But while the fictional Bond has an array of useful resources at his disposal - a car filled with potential antidotes that serves as a mobile emergency room; a hotline to trained poison-control experts at MI6 headquarters; and a personal defibrillator that comes in handy during heart attacks - the ordinary real-life poison victim has no such advantages.

Nor is the sequence of events surrounding nonfictional poisoning generally as clear-cut as when Bond, played by Daniel Craig, falls deathly ill within moments of taking the first sip of his spiked martini.

In the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died in a London hospital on Thursday night, the most confounding questions were also the most basic. Who gave it to him and when? And how did they get this particular poison? more here, here and here.

I've been on the fence about Russia the last few years. During my teen years and undergraduate days I had been an avid Russo-file, taking two years of the language in college. I had visions of a Christian revival in the now desolate land and it was interest that a newer interst in my faith lead, again, to Russia with details of the Fatima prophesy and other goings on.

What to make of Putin? Yeah, he was KGB, but he also claimed to be a Christian and had a story of own to tell. What to make of the Russian Orthodox? Yeah, they had been infiltrated by the KGB but my own church had been infiltrated by homosexuals (a far worse fate.) The late Pope John Paul II had eloquently decribed this church as "our other lung", living, breathing, nourishing the Body of Christ. (This analogy can be extended by describing the Protestant church as a bowel movement.)

Now the odious details are starting to eminante from the Russian soil, its time of purgation seems to be just getting underway.