Polonium 210

What with all the excitement over Cameron embracing the dark side last week, I completely forgot to comment on the illness and death of Litvinenko. His death is obviously a tragedy for his friends and family, but there is something more unnerving about the whole affair than just being another murder.

I have always seen the world of espionage as being a seedy, unpleasant world of petty brutality and constant paranoia. Like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Harry Palmer. Markov being murdered with a poisoned umbrella is as imaginative as my perception of the real world of espionage gets. But the way Litvinenko died is worthy of a James Bond film - to murder someone with a radioactive element would not be out of place in The World Is Not Enough. And with other people being tested for exposure to radiation, the use of polonium 210 could yet prove to be lethal to more than just Litvinenko. It is the very opposite of a drab, domestic killing.

But it is not just the fantastical elements to the murder that interest and horrify me. I believe that the simplest explanation is more often that not the correct one. Consequently I believe Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK, that Sirhan Sirhan murdered RFK. John Hinckley acted alone when he turned his weapon on Ronald Reagan, and there was no Jewish or CIA conspiracy behind 9/11 - a group of sick bastard terrorists backed by bin Laden hijacked those planes and committed mass murder. It may be a lack of imagination, it may be a surplus of realism/cynicism, but most of the conspiracy theories I have heard are complete and total toss. Those murders were the work of random loners, not global conspiracies. They were not state sponsored murder.

With Litvinenko's murder, though, there is no way that it can be the work of a random nutter. This is not the work of a Barry George - rather, it has to be backed by a state or at least a *security* organisation. They murdered him with a substance that comes from a nuclear power station. The long, slow, painful of death seems to suggest two things - first of all, whoever killed Litvinenko really wanted him to suffer. And also, whoever wanted to murder him almost seemed to want the publicity, the outcry, the global media attention.

Put simply, they wanted to make an example of Litvinenko.

It is still early days in the murder investigation, and who knows what that will turn up in the future. But the immediate conclusion is that Putin - or someone senior in Putin's administration - ordered the murder of Litvinenko. And they wanted it done in a public, painful way. They wanted to show their strength, to set up the dissident as an example for others. It is an unpleasant and unnerving thought - that if you make the wrong enemies, they will find you, and get you, no matter what.