For 26 years the assassin's work has been one of the most ubiquitous and chilling episodes of the cold war, but his identity one of its enduring secrets.
The Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, 49, felt a sharp prick in his leg as he waited for a bus in 1978 on Waterloo Bridge. An opposition activist and BBC broadcaster living in political exile since 1969, Markov was an acute irritant to the authoritarian communist government of Bulgaria. He had been receiving warnings that his life was in danger, but thought little of the pain in his thigh, and continued on his way to work.
Yet amid the jostling commuter crowd was an assassin from the Bulgarian secret services with a specially adapted umbrella. He used it to push beneath Markov's skin a deadly 1.7mm-wide pellet containing the poison ricin.
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