The Most Fiendish of All Spy Gadgets

In all but four of the 25 James Bond films so far, the titular super spy starts his adventure with a visit to Q, MI6’s brilliant but grumpy creator of spy gadgets. From a briefcase full of weapons to a safe-cracking cigarette case to a watch with a built-in laser, Q always has exactly what 007 needs to complete his world-saving missions. Given that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War, it is perhaps unsurprising that both the character of Q and many of his creations are based on people and equipment Fleming worked with in real life. But during the Cold War, real-life spy gadgets weren’t confined to the West; as we covered in our previous video “The Thing” – the Revolutionary Spy Gadget That Baffled the West, the intelligence services of the Eastern Bloc had their fair share of fiendishly clever contraptions. And in 1978, perhaps the most fiendish of all spy gadgets would make international headlines when it was used to carry out a bold and bizarre murder in broad daylight.

Our story begins in 1969 with 40-year-old Bulgarian journalist Georgi Ivanov Markov. Born on March 1, 1929 in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, Markov initially pursued a career as a chemical engineer and a schoolteacher before becoming a writer. Starting with his first novel, The Night of Caesium, in 1957, over the following decade Markov published dozens of novels, short stories, and plays, becoming one of Bulgaria’s most successful and influential writers. However, his writing was increasingly seen as critical of the Bulgarian Communist Party and its leader, Todor Zhivkov, leading to several of his works being censored or banned. Though Markov was a close personal friend of Zhivkov, this relationship could only keep him out of trouble for so long, and in 1969, under intense pressure to conform to the Communist party line, he left Bulgaria and settled in Bologna, Italy, with his brother. Though Markov hoped to return to Bulgaria once the heat had died down, in 1971 the Bulgarian government refused to extend his passport and he decided to stay in the West. In 1972, Markov moved to London, learned English, and began working for the Bulgarian section of the BBC World Service as a writer and broadcaster. Meanwhile, back in Bulgaria, Markov’s works were removed from libraries and bookstores and Markov himself expelled from the Union of Bulgarian Writers and sentenced in absentia to six years and six months in prison for defecting to the West.

Markov thrived in London, writing and staging a number of plays including Archangel Michael, which won first place in an Edinburgh festival. In 1975 he married English-born Annabel Rilke, a fellow broadcaster at the BBC, and a year later the couple had a daughter, Alexandra-Raina. In 1975, Markov began writing freelance scripts for Radio Free Europe and the West German radio station Deutsche Welle, which broadcast pro-western propaganda into Eastern Europe. These scripts included the series In Absentia Reports, broadcast weekly on Radio Free Europe, which exposed and criticized life under the Bulgarian Communist regime. These broadcasts formed the basis for Markov’s memoir, the Truth That Killed, posthumously published in 1984.

In addition to criticizing the policies and practices of the regime, Markov also called out its hypocrisy and corruption, revealing – among other things – the mistresses and other indiscretions of top party leaders. His broadcasts grew even more vitriolic in 1977 when his father became terminally ill and the Bulgarian government denied Markov and his brothers permission to visit him in his final days. Infuriated by Markov’s unceasing attacks, President Zhivkov decided to rid himself of the troublesome dissident. The assassination was directed by Minister of the Interior Dimiter Stoyanov and carried out by the Bulgarian Secret Service, the Darzhhavna Sigurnost,. At Stoyanov’s request, the Soviet KGB agreed to provide technical assistance – on the condition that no trace of Soviet involvement would be left.

It is now known that three separate attempts were made on Markov’s life. The first took place during a dinner party with colleagues from Radio Free Europe, while the second took place in Sardinia where Markov was vacationing. But the third – and ultimately successful – attempt took place on September 7, 1978 in the heart of downtown London.

That day, Markov was working a double shift at the BBC. After working the early morning shift, he went home to rest for a few hours. On his return for the afternoon shift, he parked his car south of Waterloo Bridge and headed to a nearby bus stop to catch the bus to BBC headquarters at Bush House in The Strand. As he approached the bus stop, Markov felt a sharp pain in his right thigh, and turned to see a man behind him bend down to pick up an umbrella. The man apologized in a thick foreign accent, then climbed into a nearby taxi and sped away.

On arriving at work, Markov inspected his leg and discovered a small, pimple-like swelling on his thigh and a matching spot of blood on his jeans. Otherwise, however, he was unhurt. But when he returned home at the end of the day, he suddenly began to feel extremely ill, spiking a high fever. The following morning, his condition had deteriorated so much that his wife had him admitted to St. James’s hospital. Delirious, Markov insisted he had been poisoned by the Bulgarian government, but few of his doctors believed him. Instead, the attending physician, Dr. Bernard Riley, tested Markov for a host of potential ailments – even a venomous snakebite. He did, however, order an X-ray of the swelling on Markov’s leg, but this revealed nothing. On account of his high white cell count, Markov was diagnosed with septicemia or blood poisoning and placed in intensive care. Yet despite the doctors’ best efforts, Markov died four days later on September 11, aged 49.

While the doctors at St. James did not take Markov’s claims of poisoning seriously, the Metropolitan Police did, and ordered a thorough autopsy of his body. The autopsy was conducted by Rufus Crompton, who rediscovered the tiny puncture wound and swelling on Markov’s right thigh and extracted tissue samples from the area for further analysis. These samples were sent to Porton Down, the British Ministry of Defense’s chemical and biological weapons laboratory. Here they were analyzed by Research Medical Officer David Gall, who soon made an unusual discovery: embedded in one tissue sample was a tiny metal pellet, 1.5 millimeters in diameter – smaller than the head of a pin. Further examination revealed that the pellet was made of a platinum-iridium alloy and cross-drilled with two 0.35mm holes, forming an x-shaped cavity only 0.28 cubic millimeters in volume. Though no traces of poison were ever detected, Markov’s symptoms and the miniscule dose used ruled out all but one culprit: ricin.

Ricin is a lectin or carbohydrate-binding protein found in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis. These seeds are processed worldwide to produce castor oil, used in a wide variety of products including soaps, waxes, polishes, lubricants, and laxatives. While the process of making castor oil destroys all traces of ricin, making it safe for human consumption, the leftover bean waste contains high levels of the toxin, which can be readily extracted. Once inside the body, ricin inhibits the action of ribosomes, structures inside cells which assemble amino acids into proteins. The body’s cells are thus unable to produce the proteins they require to maintain proper functioning, leading to multiple organ failure and eventually death. When injected, the median lethal dose for ricin is only around 22 micrograms – exactly the amount contained in the pellet found in Georgi Markov’s leg.

Based on their analysis and Markov’s testimony prior to his death, scientists at Porton Down hypothesized that the pellet had been fired into Markov’s leg using an air rifle disguised as an umbrella – the same umbrella Markov had seen being picked up by the fleeing foreign stranger. The pellet had also likely been coated in a sugar-like substance designed to melt at human body temperature, causing it to release its toxic payload immediately after injection.

This theory was bolstered by the fact that just three weeks earlier, another Bulgarian exile and dissident, Vladimir Kostov, had suffered a nearly identical attack. On August 27, Kostov, the former head of the Paris Bureau of the Bulgarian State Radio and TV Network, was leaving the Arc de Triomphe metro station when he heard a sharp crack and felt a stinging pain in the right side of his back. A platinum-iridium pellet identical to the one found in Georgi Markov was later extracted from the wound, though mercifully it failed to release its poison and Kostov made a complete recovery.

Just days after Markov’s death, a joint investigation was launched by Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad, Special Branch, and the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police. Their first order of business was to track down the taxi which had driven the alleged assassin from the scene, in the hopes of obtaining a more detailed description. Yet despite questioning hundreds of taxi drivers, the investigators came up empty. Soon, every other lead dried up, and the case went cold. Georgi Markov was buried at the Church of St. Candida and Holy Cross in Dorset, the identity of his assassin still a mystery.

It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that further details of the Markov Affair began to come to light. Two former KGB officers, Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky, publicly confirmed that the KGB had indeed developed ricin-firing umbrellas, and that several such devices were provided to the Bulgarian Secret Service. Indeed, following the collapse of the Bulgarian communist regime in 1989, a stockpile of assassin umbrellas was discovered in the Ministry of the Interior in Sofia. Kalugin and Gordievsky further identified the perpetrator in both the Kostov and Markov assassinations as Fransesco Gullino, a Danish hitman of Italian extraction. In 1970, Gullino was arrested for smuggling drugs and currency into Bulgaria, and recruited into the Bulgarian Secret Service. Given the codename “Agent Picadilly”, he worked out of Denmark as an antiques salesman – a cover which allowed him to travel freely throughout Europe without raising suspicion. Bulgarian records indicate Gullino flew to London three times in 1977 and 1978, leaving the day after Georgi Markov was attacked. In spite of these revelations, however, UK investigators were unable to track down and apprehend Gullino, who remains officially at large.

With the collapse of communism in Bulgaria, Georgi Markov’s image and reputation were gradually rehabilitated, and in 2000 the author was posthumously awarded the Order of Stara Planina, Bulgaria’s highest civilian honor. The citation for the award praised Markov’s:

“…significant contribution to the Bulgarian literature, drama and non-fiction and for his exceptional civic position and confrontation to the Communist regime.”

While assassination by poisoned umbrella may seem like the sort of absurd incident that could only have taken place during the Cold War, astonishingly a similar crime was committed in Hanover, Germany as recently as 2011. On July 15 of that year, 40-year-old software engineer Christoph Bulwin was walking home from work when he noticed a strange man waiting on the sidewalk ahead of him, holding an umbrella. Instinctively, Bulwin crossed the street, but the man followed him and stabbed him in the left buttock with the umbrella, to the end of which he had fixed a syringe. Bulwin fought back and chased his assailant, but he managed to escape.

Believing he had been maliciously infected with HIV or some other bloodborne pathogen, Bulwin immediately had himself examined by a doctor, but every test turned up negative. However, a week later he began to feel ill, his condition rapidly deteriorating until, at the end of August, he slipped into a coma. Blood work revealed levels of mercury 2,000 times higher than normal, indicating that Bulwin had been injected with methylmercury, an extremely neurotoxic compound. Though at first his condition seemed to improve, Bulwin remained in a coma for ten months before dying from a seizure in May 2012. Though police managed to find witnesses who claimed to have seen the assailant and compile a detailed description, they were ultimately unable to track him down. The killer’s identity – and his motives for killing Christoph Bulwin – remain a mystery to this day.

So if there is a moral to this whole macabre saga, it might be: beware of strange people with umbrellas. Or, if you happen to be a suave international super spy, be sure to return all your equipment intact. There is no telling what nasty surprises your long-suffering quartermaster might cook up for you…

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