20. Death on the Thames: An Assassin in London (Ep 1)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified: Episode 20 - Death on the Thames: An Assassin in London

Introduction

In the premiere episode of "The Rest Is Classified," hosts David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst turned spy novelist, and Gordon Corera, a veteran security correspondent, delve into one of the Cold War's most enigmatic assassination cases—the murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London. Released on February 17, 2025, this episode meticulously unpacks the events, investigations, and lingering mysteries surrounding Markov's death.

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Background: Georgi Markov and His Life in Exile

Georgi Markov was a prominent Bulgarian novelist and playwright who became a vocal critic of the communist regime in Bulgaria. His transition to life in exile began in 1969 after he fled Bulgaria due to increasing pressure from the authorities, who were displeased with his satirical works that subtly mocked the government and its leader, Todor Zhivkov.

Gordon Corera provides a vivid depiction of Markov's persona:

"[Markov] was a kind of shaggy, lighter-haired, Gordon Corera, that good-looking, really faded writer look. But he was a writer. A very successful novelist and playwright from his native Bulgaria." [11:09]

Markov's involvement with the BBC and Radio Free Europe positioned him as a significant figure disseminating information that was not accessible within the Eastern Bloc. This role inevitably made him a target for state-sponsored retaliations.

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The Assassination: A Mysterious Attack on the Thames

On September 7, 1978, Georgi Markov was walking across the South Side of the Thames near Waterloo Bridge to park his car before heading to work at the BBC. According to a detailed recount by David McCloskey, Markov felt a sudden sting on his right thigh at a bus stop:

"Markov suddenly feels something on his leg... it felt like a sting from a wasp or a bee. He turns to see a man with a foreign accent apologizing before hailing a taxi and fleeing the scene." [05:10]

Initially dismissing the incident as a possible bee sting, Markov continued his day. However, his condition deteriorated rapidly over the next few days, culminating in his death on September 11, 1978. Despite medical examinations, no immediate cause of death was identified, leaving both his family and the authorities puzzled.

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The Investigation: Unraveling the Mystery

The Metropolitan Police, led by Jim Neville from the Anti-Terrorist Branch, embarked on a complex investigation. The initial autopsy conducted by Rufus Crompton revealed an unusual finding—a small, almost pimple-like lesion on Markov's thigh. Further examination led to the discovery of a tiny pellet embedded beneath the skin:

"It's a platinum-iridium mix pellet, about 1.7 millimeters in diameter with two tiny holes that could have contained something, potentially poison." [30:51] – Gordon Corera

This pellet was sent to Porton Down, Britain's secret Ministry of Defence chemical and biological research laboratory. The forensic team hypothesized that the pellet contained ricin, a potent toxin derived from castor beans. However, no traces of ricin were found in Markov's body, adding another layer of complexity to the case.

David McCloskey highlights the investigative challenges:

"It's an utterly mysterious case. Can the police even prove any of this?" [23:21]

The investigation also drew parallels to other suspicious deaths, such as Vladimir Kostov, a Bulgarian journalist in Paris who suffered a similar attack but survived. These incidents suggested a pattern, hinting at a coordinated effort to eliminate dissidents abroad.

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Theories and Suspicions: Identifying the Culprits

While the Bulgarian authorities under Todor Zhivkov were obvious suspects due to their motive—silencing a vocal critic—the sophistication of the assassination suggested the involvement of more advanced operatives, possibly the KGB. Markov himself suspected the Soviets:

"I think it was the KGB." – Georgi Markov [20:20]

However, Bulgarians lacked a well-documented history of using such advanced methods for assassinations, raising questions about the true orchestrators behind the plot. Alternative theories proposed involvement from other intelligence agencies, but no concrete evidence supported these claims.

Gordon Corera emphasizes the ambiguity:

"You've clearly got the motive, as we established for the Bulgarians... But it's a mystery about who might have been behind it." [34:29]

The episode also touches upon the broader context of Cold War espionage, where information dissemination via platforms like the BBC World Service made exiled dissidents prime targets for counterintelligence operations.

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Conclusion: An Unresolved Enigma

Despite decades of investigation, the murder of Georgi Markov remains an open case, shrouded in mystery and speculation. The intricate details of the assassination, combined with the geopolitical tensions of the time, make it a quintessential Cold War spy story that continues to intrigue historians and enthusiasts alike.

David McCloskey sums up the lingering questions:

"By late fall of 1978, the evidence was pretty clear that Markov had been murdered with ricin, but there's still no idea who actually ordered it or carried it out." [38:24]

As the episode concludes, McCloskey and Corera set the stage for future discussions, promising to delve deeper into the investigation's progress and uncover potential breakthroughs in subsequent episodes.

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Notable Quotes

• Gordon Corera [00:20]: "It's not a sin to kill the devil."
• David McCloskey [07:11]: "Well, I don't know what you think, but that immediately it just looks old."
• Gordon Corera [17:15]: "It's full of characters and history... people who were a bit like Georgi Markov."
• David McCloskey [21:06]: "He feels some kind of threat from what he's doing."

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Final Thoughts

"Death on the Thames: An Assassin in London" is a compelling exploration of espionage, political dissent, and the shadowy mechanisms of Cold War assassinations. Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera shed light on a case that exemplifies the era's intricate interplay between politics and intelligence operations. For listeners fascinated by spycraft and historical mysteries, this episode offers a thorough and insightful narrative that both informs and intrigues.

Transcript

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[David McCloskey]

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[David McCloskey]

There's some nutter in cubicle three says he's been shot.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's too much. That was too much. Too much.

[David McCloskey]

There's some nutter in cubicle three who says he's been shot. The nurses said he was sat up. His wife was there. I got the impression he was a little annoyed. He had already told his story to the gp. He had already told it to the nurses, and now he was having to tell it to me all over again. Then he just paused and he said to me, I'll never forget it. I've been poisoned. And there's absolutely nothing that you can do. It was just the way he looked and the way he acted. I thought, well, I will take you seriously and examine you and see what I can find. And when I examined him, I found he had a small, almost pimple like lesion on the back of his right thigh with an area of swelling which looked like he had been stung by a wasp or a bee. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And that was Dr. Bernard Riley describing the scene in September of 1978. He was called on as a junior doctor to the night shift, the South London hospital, to examine a patient. And the man lying in the hospital bed was a Man known as Georgi Markov.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right, David. This is a story of poisoning and assassination. Now, we've got used to those kind of stories recently, with mysterious deaths on the streets of London and even in Salisbury. But this is perhaps the most iconic of those stories when it comes to the Cold War. It's about poison, it's about murder, it's about secret weapons, it's about spies. And I'm afraid it's about nothing less than the murder of a BBC journalist on the streets of London.

[David McCloskey]

This is the fusion of Gordon Carrera's two great loves, the BBC and people getting knocked off in London. So this is. This is the sweet spot for you, Gordon.

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm not sure it's a sweet spot. It's a dark spot, I'd say. But it's, It's a story. It has got fascinating parallels to some of the biggest news stories of recent times, and we'll come back to those perhaps at the end. But it is also about how hard it is to investigate one of these crimes, a murder case, and to uncover who was behind it, and how hard it is to bring anyone to justice, because it is a kind of true crime mystery which actually takes decades to unravel and is still amazingly, an open case when it comes to the Metropolitan Police in London.

[David McCloskey]

Gordon. I mean, you know, you say it's an open case. I mean, as we will see, this story really is a murder mystery, I think, at the end, and that's kind of how we're going to tell it bit by bit. But it is also an incredibly theatrical story with some incredible technology used some incredible twists and turns and some periods where this case goes kind of totally cold. But I think like all good murder mysteries, I think the best place to start is with the murder, with the crime. And so maybe we go to the 7th of September, 1978, which is the day Georgi Markov is murdered.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. And if we wind back a few days from where he's talking to Bernard or Bernard Riley, and we go back to the 7th of September, and it's 1978 and Georgi Markov has driven his car to the south side of the Thames now near Waterloo Bridge, and then walked to work at the BBC, and.

[David McCloskey]

For our American listeners, we should say that it's a recognizable bridge, but it's not the bridge you're thinking of. I googled it and it is on. It's wonderfully on a bunch of spy itineraries in London. So famous, but not. Not the tall bridge.

[Gordon Carrera]

No, it's not Tower Bridge, but it is, I guess it's an iconic bridge, not because of the way it looks, but because of the views you get from it. Because if you look one way east, you can see St. Paul's and now you can see the city of London. Not all of that would have been there in Georgi Markov's. And if you look the other way, you look west, you get a view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. So you really have kind of London arrayed on both sides of you. And on the south side, you also have the National Theatre and the south bank, one of the kind of cultural centres of London.

[David McCloskey]

Georgia.

[Gordon Carrera]

Markov is walking from the north side to the south side. He's going to pick up his car because he can now move it to a car park nearer the office, where it's easier to park later in the day. So he's walking south across the bridge, and it looks like he pauses at a bus stop at the south end of the bridge. There are some other people at this bus stop waiting there, it looks like, for the bus. But as Markov is there by this bus stop, he suddenly, he feels something on his leg. And he feels what seems to be a sting on his right thigh, as if something has struck him. Now he turns, as you kind of anyone would do, just to see what's happened, and he sees a man who's also been at the bus stop, bending to pick something up, an umbrella. And the man apologizes in a foreign accent and then makes off suddenly across the road to the other side of the bridge to hail a taxi. Now, there's been a little bit of a delay because the taxi driver appears to have some kind of difficulty understanding the man, maybe because he's got a foreign accent. But then the taxi then heads off in the opposite direction to where the bus the man had been waiting for would have taken him. Now, I don't know what you think, but that immediately it just looks old.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, it's strange. Yeah. And I guess the apology is strange too, in retrospect. Right?

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. What's he apologizing for?

[David McCloskey]

What's he apologizing for? Yeah, exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

So it is a kind of. It's a weird situation, but it's not that suspicious. I mean, you've just felt what seems like a sting on your leg, which you might think is like a bee sting or something like that. So Markov kind of goes back to work as usual at the BBC, and he actually shows one of his colleagues, he says, you know, Something strange happens.

[David McCloskey]

Follows BBC procedure and BBC Health and Safety procedures. BBC Health and safety procedures rule 2742A, which is you need to show a colleague if you have a strange mark on your leg.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. So he says to the. His colleague can remember this, you know, as you would, I suppose, if a colleague showed you this. And he said he had an angry red spot, like a pimple on the back of his thigh. But there's actually, it's. You know, it's interesting. He's wearing jeans, Markov. And there's no hole in the genes, you know, there's not like a kind of a tear or anything like that. And he's not feeling particularly unwell at this point. So it's not a normal thing to happen, let's be honest. But it's not that weird either, is it? You know, it's not that strange. You'd remember it, but you wouldn't necessarily kind of panic at this point. So Markov kind of finishes his work and he goes back.

[David McCloskey]

So he works for the rest of the. I mean, he stays at work.

[Gordon Carrera]

He stays at work, yeah. And he's doing a long shift, it seems. Cause he doesn't go back home until quite late in the evening to Clapham in South London, not far from where I live. And he lives there with his British wife, Anna. But he starts to feel weak, just a bit odd. And, you know, his temperature is starting to pick up now. By the next morning, he is starting to feel really sick. His temperature is going high. He vomits. He's actually struggling to speak, you know, his wife Annabel calls the doctor and says something's wrong, but nothing, nothing seems to be improving. The doctor doesn't really give them much help. So he eventually checks himself into a quite small local south London hospital called St James's in Balham on the evening of Friday, September 8. Now he's convinced something is wrong, but he is met with skepticism from the nurses, as we heard in the opening reading. And no one can kind of work out what's wrong. Initially, his condition is diagnosed as a fever linked to septicemia. But the symptoms don't quite feel right. His white blood cell count is too high. No one seems sure what's wrong with him. Eventually, Bernard, or Bernard Riley, you know, turns up.

[David McCloskey]

What is the right way to say that? Whilst. Whilst in London, Bernard rather than Bernard.

[Gordon Carrera]

But he's actually at that point, a relatively young junior doctor. And he's come to see him and he does take him seriously, you know, and he does kind of listen to him. And he can see that Markov is feverish, he's nauseous. He's pointing to this area on his right thigh which swollen and he's saying it's painful. Now they take X rays of his leg. It's interesting, they take the X rays, but they don't see anything on the X rays. That's kind of interesting for what we'll find out later. But he does tell Riley that he thinks he's been poisoned and that he's going to die. Now Riley does seem to be taking him seriously and actually kind of calls the police as he kind of gets his colleagues in to try and work out what's wrong. But still no one can work it out. So it is a proper mystery here. And then things start to get much worse. There's a dramatic collapse of his blood pressure. His white blood cell count now is going literally off the charts. I mean, people say they've never seen a count that high. At this point he goes into intensive care. His condition deteriorates. He's now confused and he's pulling out the intravenous lines which have been put into him. So he's in a really bad way. His heart becomes unstable and his condition gets worse. And then eventually on the morning of September 11, he goes into cardiac arrest. They try to revive him, but eventually, at 10:40am on September 11, Georgi Markov is dead. But how at this point, no one is sure and no one is sure whether or not to believe his strange claim that he was poisoned.

[David McCloskey]

So I mean, who is this Guy Markov?

[Gordon Carrera]

He's 49 years old, still pretty good looking in his middle age. Charming smile, kind of bit of a 70s haircut, bit longer hair. I mean effectively he looks exactly what a dissident writer you'd imagine looking like. And that's exactly what he is.

[David McCloskey]

He was kind of a shaggy, lighter haired, Gordon Carrera, that good looking, really.

[Gordon Carrera]

Thank you, David. Faded, slightly faded, faded writer look. But he was a writer. A very successful novelist and playwright from his native Bulgaria. Now Bulgaria, part of the communist bloc, one of the countries in Eastern Europe closest to Moscow and the Soviet Union at the time. That's where he'd been born. That's where he'd grown up. He'd never been a big fan of the communist system, but he kind of worked within it. His father had been an army officer under the pre communist regime, so kind of from wartime and before. But he'd become a writer in the 50s and then the 60s and actually had become a Very successful novelist and playwright. Some of his books were amongst the most highly regarded in Bulgaria in that period. He was still seen as a bit of an outsider. He was trying to get elected to the Writers union, which is the route to, if you like, being on the inside in the Communist system. But he does start to do well. He's driving around in a BMW. He seems to understand how to play the system, to survive in that world. And at the top of Bulgaria is the country's ruler, Todor Zhivkov. He is a kind of pompous but powerful figure. He is the undisputed ruler of the country. And Markov meets him in the 60s. The two go walking together through the woods. They climb a mountain. And the thing about Zhivkov is he clearly liked writers. He wanted to kind of look like he was a. An intellectual himself, and he could hang out with all these writers and cultural figures. So for a while in this period in the 60s, the two men actually appear to be pretty close. You know, the successful writer and the leader of the country. I was trying to work out what the best parallel, what the equivalent is.

[David McCloskey]

In the English world today.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, Ian McEwen maybe is a British novelist, you know, Jonathan Franzen in America, that kind of, you know, kind of literary figure.

[David McCloskey]

I was thinking of a more towels, you know, gentleman in Moscow. He's sort of read by Barack Obama and Richard Branson, you know, guys like that.

[Gordon Carrera]

But he's still trying to push boundaries a little bit in his. In his writing. Crucial moment, 1968 is the Prague Spring. Now, this happens in Czechoslovakia, also in the Communist bloc, and it's a kind of movement by writers and artists there for more freedom to kind of. To open up the country from the heavy strictures of communism, but while still maintaining socialism. And it kind of has its influence in Bulgaria as well. Writers like Markov also want to have a bit more freedom. They want to push the boundaries. But just as the Prague Spring is crushed in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria, there's also a clampdown against this and a feeling that it's gone too far, that writers are pushing it. You know, this talk over dinner that, you know, ungrateful poets should be shot.

[David McCloskey]

And, you know, which is the solution for ungrateful poets at all, you know, everywhere and at all times.

[Gordon Carrera]

Shoot them.

[David McCloskey]

Shot. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

But Shivkov, in particular, the ruler, seems to feel particularly angry that these literary types have used the kind of greater freedom they had for a while to criticize and mock him and to try and undermine the system, and Markov is among them. And Markov, at this point, has got a new play he's taking into rehearsal, which takes a bit more of a kind of sarcastic tone against those in power. And so a friend says to him, you better get out. Time to go. Leave the country. So he leaves Bulgaria, 1969, first goes to Italy, and then a year or so later, he ends up in London. So here he is in London in the 1970s, applies for political asylum as a kind of dissident, and he goes to work for the BBC, which has.

[David McCloskey]

A Bulgarian service, I found out from your notes here. Did you encounter your Bulgarian counterparts during your storied career at the BBC?

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, it's interesting because it goes to a bit of the BBC which, you know, maybe not everyone will know about, which is the BBC World Service, and particularly the language sections. And they've got a wonderful history because it goes back to, really the Second World War, when you had occupied Europe, and the BBC was broadcasting in local languages to people in occupied Europe. And so, famously, you'd have de Gaulle broadcasting in French, you'd have a Belgium service giving impartial news and information to people who otherwise couldn't get it in occupied Europe. And then this continues into the Cold War, and it becomes a big thing in the Cold War. So you have a Russian service, you have a Bulgarian service. I mean, also services, you know, in other parts of the world. You have parts in Asia, big services in Africa as well. But in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, these are really quite important because people haven't got access to anything other than state media. They're trying to jam the BBC, but it's broadcasting real news into their country, which they wouldn't otherwise know about, to kind of overcome the jamming. And so this was all coming out of a wonderful building called Bush House, which is on the Strand or just off the Strand in London. Sadly, it's not owned by the BBC anymore, and the World Service moved out of it. But it was full of characters and history and. And I used to. I mean, I never worked there, but I used to visit there and go talk to people and it would just. You know, it's full of nooks and crannies of people who were working for, you know, the Bulgarian service or the Korean service or the Russian service. And, you know, these would be people who were a bit like Georgi Markov. You know, people would be walking past them on the street in London not knowing who they were, but they would actually be quite famous back home in their own country, because they would often be either dissidents or writers or quite famous broadcasters or exiles, people who'd left or just people who were giving the news back home and would become famous in their home country. And it was full of these kind of wonderful characters. And I think that's what Bush House was remarkable for. It had a great canteen where you'd hear the languages of the world kind of spoken.

[David McCloskey]

And so you've got the, I guess, Bulgarian Ian McEwan broadcasting from Bush House. I imagine for the friendly dictators in the Eastern Bloc, this was a frustrating experience to have well known writers and dissidents sort of pumping information illegally, I guess, according to their laws back back home. That's a thorn in your side. You don't like that if you're Zeepkov.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And I think the problem for Markov was not just, though, his BBC work, because he was also working for Radio Free Europe, and this is a station based in Western Europe in. In Germany. He would go to. To Munich to record, but it was actually backed by the CIA, and that was also broadcasting into the Soviet bloc. And actually, it looks like these were the broadcasts and the programs which particularly aroused anger because he was actually, you know, he was doing talks in 1977 about his time with Zhibkov. He was talking about the times they'd spent together in the 60s, and describing him as a kind of minor dictator, making fun of him, making fun of his sense of humor, saying he was deluded to be a great huntsman, kind of makes out the leader of Bulgaria, this quite despotic figure, to be a kind of pathetic, slightly needy character. And everyone back home is listening, you know, to these broadcasts.

[David McCloskey]

You also wrote in your notes, which we skipped over and we shouldn't have, which is that Markov was working on a satirical book about a chimpanzee becoming prime minister of the UK around 1978.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, under a pseudonym.

[David McCloskey]

That was my plot idea for book five. So I've already been ripped off by Georgie Markov.

[Anne Rice]

Yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, I'm not going to make any jokes about chimpanzees becoming Prime Minister of the uk, but I think, yeah, so he's a kind of satirical guy and that's what he was doing. And I think you can get hold of that book now, although it's not in Markov's name. So he's, you know, he's got this career as a kind of satirical troublemaker, I guess, and pumping out these talks, which are clearly not popular. And so you're Right. This is a thorn in the side of the authorities. And, you know, London has often been this kind of place for dissidents, hasn't it? Where, you know, people come here. It's always been for, you know, couple of hundred years, really, a sanctuary where exiles come, where they often write, and where their home governments get increasingly annoyed about it. And, you know, Georgi Markov is in that tradition.

[David McCloskey]

Now, the interesting thing to me, though, is that it's not like Markov is running some massive opposition movement right, back in Bulgaria. I mean, Zivkov, by this point, has kind of fully got the reins of power back in Sofia. Right. So Markov is not, I guess, if you're a type, a kind of strung out communist dictator, the idea that you've got sort of your country's answer to Ian McEwen, you know, making fun of you over the radio from thousands of miles away, I guess that's kind of it. Right. I mean, that's frustrating, right? You don't. You don't like that.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, but he's not a spy. He's not an operator. He's not running an opposition group, nothing like that. But he, by 1978, clearly realizes he's in some trouble back home. He's actually been sentenced in absentia to six and a half years in jail for what he's doing. And he starts to receive threatening phone calls. A month before he died, he told friends in West Germany that a stranger had phoned him in London three months earlier and told him to stop working for Radio Free Europe or he would die. And the man said he would be eliminated in a refined way, something out of the ordinary. Now, I don't know what a refined way of killing someone is, but it's a threat is a threat, I suppose.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. So there's more elevated ways to knock someone off than a simple gun or pushing them in front of the tube.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And actually, one of the things he did when he went, you know, on the tube, he would stand with his back towards the kind of the wall so that there was no danger of being pushed. You know, he was kind of worried about his safety at this time.

[David McCloskey]

He feels some kind of threat from what he's doing.

[Gordon Carrera]

And someone else has told him that there was a vial of poison with his name on it, but he clearly felt safe enough to keep going in Lond.

[David McCloskey]

So we have a thorn in the side Bulgarian dissident in London. We got motives, certainly, I think, Gordon, for the Bulgarians to come after him. But was it the Bulgarians? Was it Even a murder. And if so, how was it done and who did it? So I think maybe there we take a break. When we come back, we'll look at the investigation and the tale of breakthroughs and dead ends. This episode is brought to you by our friends at NordVPN. Now, Gordon, what do you find most useful about Nord?

[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

And you know how much I care about your privacy, Gordon. And you know that one feature from NORD that I really appreciate is that it also has offline protection, which works even when it is not connected, meaning you can be consistently secure.

[Gordon Carrera]

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[Anne Rice]

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[David McCloskey]

Well, welcome back. We have a dead Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, and really a tremendous amount of suspicion, I think, Gordon, that he might have been murdered, but no idea who might have done it. From the assassin all the way up to who ordered it. And exactly how did it happen? Can the police even prove any of this? It's really an utter mystery, isn't it, at this point?

[Gordon Carrera]

Absolutely, it's a mystery. And the investigation is going to be led by Jim Neville from the Metropolitan Police's what becomes the anti terrorist branch is one of Britain's top cops in the 1970s. You know, if you imagine one of those cops, he's more, I don't know if British references will work for you, but he's more Inspector Morse than the Sweeney. He's, he's a kind of well dressed, refined character. Does that work for you?

[David McCloskey]

So when I think 70s cops, I think of starsky and Hutch. And so does Inspector Morse. Does he have. Is he a fan of denim and Gran Torinos? No, no, no.

[Gordon Carrera]

Inspector Morse is driving around in a Jaguar around Oxford. You know, he's a kind of semi intellectual or quite intellectual cops. So I think Jim Neville is a bit more like that than the kind of. He's not the type who's going to go and kind of rough someone up.

[David McCloskey]

We had different kinds of cop shows, I think, across the Atlantic in the 70s.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. So he worked on the Great Train Robbery, IRA bombing campaigns at one point, interestingly enough, I saw he was seconded to the FBI very early to share information on terrorist investigations. He's a kind of specialist.

[David McCloskey]

He's a Phoebe in training.

[Gordon Carrera]

He's a Phoebe in training. So Markov had not been interviewed by the police because he was too ill, but he told doctors that he thought he'd been poisoned. So we heard that, you know, right at the start. And he also explained this story of what had happened on the bridge and feeling something strike him. So Jim Neville gets to work. He tries to make a plan of the bridge, you know, a timeline of the day. The police try and track down the taxi driver who drove this kind of mysterious figure away. They look for eyewitnesses, but they struggle with this. I mean, this doesn't really get them anywhere, partly, I think, because they get some of the timings of when. When it happened wrong on the day. So the next question is, how did he die? And crucially, you've got an autopsy of Markov and this is going to be carried out by a man called Rufus.

[David McCloskey]

Crompton, which is a great name, best name, I think, so far in the podcast.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, in 1980 he actually gives a lecture to the Royal Society of Medicine in which he describes exactly what happened, which is really interesting. And the initial postmortem comes back and says there's no traces of actual poison in the body and also nothing had been spotted under the skin in the initial X ray. But then Rufus starts to work on the body and we got a description of it from that lecture. I performed an autopsy at Wandsworth public mortuary on 12th of September the next day. Although there was an air of skepticism in the post mortem room where the general odds were in favour of Markov's account of the attack being largely due to the wholly understandable paranoia of a political defector, Commander Neville characteristically fielded the full anti terrorist team and did not miss a single step in his investigation. I noted the mark on the back of the Right thigh. I excised this in the centre of a large block of tissue. An identical block was cut out of the back of his left thigh at the same level. And both were sealed in separate plastic bags and handed to the laboratory liaison officer of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory.

[David McCloskey]

And then those two grizzly plastic bags of flesh get sent off to a, I guess, somewhat infamous facility known as Porton down, which is very accustomed to receiving bags of potentially poison flesh. Is that right?

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, I'm not sure how accustomed it is to do it.

[David McCloskey]

If you've got such a bag, just write Porton down on it, let it put it outside and the post will take it right there.

[Gordon Carrera]

No, I don't. I don't. Don't do that. Please don't listen to David. That will not. That will not get you anything but trouble on lots of level. But pawn down, we should explain to anyone who's not heard of it, and it is a very mysterious place, is Britain's effectively secret Ministry of Defence chemical and biological research laboratory. For many years, a kind of air of mystery has surrounded it about what goes on inside. Now, actually, I was lucky enough to go and visit it back in 2018, and the reason then was the Skripal poisoning had just taken place in Salisbury, just down the road, actually, from Porton down, because it's. It's nearby in Wiltshire. And there'd been all kind of controversy about, you know, the Russians were claiming that actually somehow, you know, the poison that had killed Skripal had come from Porton Down. But Porton down was a place where the tests were taking place and they invited me in to have a look around. It was an amazing place. I mean, in some ways not what you'd expect a kind of secret chemical and biological research facility to look like. I mean, bits of it were incredibly high tech, but other bits were like old suburban bungalow houses. I mean, you know, really odd. I remember going into one.

[David McCloskey]

It's where the people, they're doing the tests on live, right, well, they're being experimented upon.

[Gordon Carrera]

So we went into one and there was a kind of sealed chamber and inside was a. What was basically like a kind of robot which was wearing military clothing and a kind of chemical suit. And into that room they would pump poison gas and chemical agents. And then the robot would kind of walk and the point would be to see whether there were any leaks in them or whether they could withstand, you know, the effects of the various chemicals that were being pumped into. Into the room. And then, you know, I mean, it was a kind of bizarre thing to witness, and then thinking there's actually deadly agents going into this chamber and the poor robot kind of marching along to see if. See if there are any holds in his suit. And, you know, the idea being you're training defensively to see whether, when you build suits for your, you know, your soldiers or for your people investigating this stuff, whether it could be protected. But this is the kind of stuff that they do at Porton down, and they very much stress its defensive work, but they're the experts.

[David McCloskey]

Kind of like the. I guess our Fort Detrick in Maryland or something like that, right? Yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

And so back to Markov. At Porton Down, a scientist called David Gall receives these kind of strange plastic bags. And he spoke actually at the same 1980 lecture as Rufus Crompton to medical professionals. And it's a really interesting lecture because, you know, they're talking to fellow experts. And so the. The language is very kind of clinical. And, you know, he describes the. The lumps of flesh he's been sent as generous because he's kind of happy that he's got kind of quite big lumps because they give him enough chunks.

[David McCloskey]

Of the leg to work with.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of grisly, but that's, I guess, the world that these people inhabit.

[David McCloskey]

This is David Gall. You know, this next bit of the lecture, the lecture series was done at the Royal Albert hall, is that right?

[Gordon Carrera]

No, it was not.

[David McCloskey]

No, it was a live show. All right, here's. Here's David Gall. We were deciding where to take a piece for our work, and I saw that Rufus had put in a pin to keep his orientation on a piece of loose tissue. And it pushed to the hilt, obviously to give him some kind of mark, idly, as one does. I just tipped this with my glove finger to make sure that that was what it was. To my alarm, this pin had moved an inch across the tissue. It was a loose piece of metal. It was really very lucky that it did not roll off the postmortem table onto the floor, under the cupboard and down the drain. And so this is the pellet, right? This is a critical piece of the forensics to determine what happened to Georgi Markov.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, this is the breakthrough. So if it had fallen down the drain, it would have been a disaster. I mean, that would have basically been it. And he thinks it's a pin, but actually it's a pellet and it's absolutely tiny. It's about 1.7 millimeters in diameter. And with Two tiny holes in it which could have contained something, potentially a poison, but there's no actual trace of any poison in it anymore.

[David McCloskey]

And it's a little platinum pellet, right?

[Gordon Carrera]

It is a platinum iridium mix pellet, which is also something very unusual. I mean, you know, this is not a normal pinhead or something you'd normally expect to see. And the assumption becomes that there had been some kind of. Of poison within those two tiny holes and then potentially a kind of waxy coating around it, which body heat would have melted, allowing then the poison to be released. So, clearly, this is something really unusual. As soon as they find the pellet, they know this is not something you'd normally expect to find.

[David McCloskey]

Do they believe at this point that it is poison because of the pellet? I mean, there's no trace of the poison, right?

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right.

[David McCloskey]

In the body or anything like that?

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. So they haven't been able to find whatever poison in Markov himself or in this pellet. And it's not clear yet how this pellet was delivered. So there's still a lot of questions at this point. But the police at this point do get another lead because there's also publicity around this time about the Markov case. And they hear from another Bulgarian called Vladimir Kostov, and he'd been a Bulgarian state journalist who defected and who lived in Paris. Now, on August 26, a few weeks earlier, someone had passed him on an escalator exiting the metro, and he heard a sound like an air pistol being discharged and then felt a sting on his lower back. And he turns around and he thinks someone has thrown something which hits him. And he sees someone running away when he turns around, but he can also find a bruise on him. Now, he falls ill for 12 days and survives. And he doesn't really think that much about it until he sees the Markov story. The police go to see him in Paris, they take a bit of his flesh and send it to put down a generous chunk, and they find another pellet. So here you've got a pattern and a clear link.

[David McCloskey]

So these pellets are actually going deep enough so that I guess, the victim cannot see it.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And this is already kind of interesting because it's something which is able to get into someone's skin, but still it only feels like a sting for them that I think, you know, raises questions about how it was injected or fired into them, as well as what was in it. So you have got a real, you know, what looks like the delivery mechanism, but you've still got a huge amount of mystery as to what really happened and how it was done.

[David McCloskey]

If we go back to just thinking about, I guess, the suspects for a second, I mean, I guess an obvious one because they possess motive, is the Bulgarians. It's Todorojivkov, you know, maybe using his security services to knock off dissidents. And I guess we've now got the case of Markov in London and then the Bulgarian state TV journalist in Paris happening within weeks of each other, which start to feel. Feel linked. Right. But I guess my sense is that the Bulgarians, I mean, did they have a track record, I guess, of using, I mean, you think of poison, I think of the kgb, I think of kind of the Russian services. But was this something the Bulgarians they had experience in?

[Gordon Carrera]

Exactly right. That. I think this is one of the mysteries because you've clearly got the motive, as we established for the Bulgarians, and this sense of Bulgarian dissidents being targeted, but they don't really have a track record of actually using poison to go after people in the way that the KGB of the Soviet Union does who've done this over decades, basically, in terms of using different types of poison. And it's also interesting that Markov himself, when he's in hospital and when he's talking about thinking he'd been poisoned, he actually says, I think it was the kgb. So he's pointing the finger at the Soviets. And again, if you look at the pellet which we've been talking about, this is something which is highly engineered. This isn't like pushing someone in front of a tube train or, you know, shooting something. This is something which takes, you know, sophistication to make an iridium platinum 1.7 millimeter pellet, you know, and find a toxin that will go in which will kill people. So again, that suggests a level of sophistication which doesn't really fit with the Bulgarian secret service. You know, no one thinks that they've got the ability to do that. So you've got a definite mystery here about who might have been behind it.

[David McCloskey]

There were some other theories floating around that it could have been a Western intelligence service too. Right. I mean, probably Eastern bloc, Soviet bloc kind of disinformation, but the sort of press, I guess, atmosphere at the time. Although there's an obvious suspect in the Bulgarians, there is no hard evidence. And so there's a massive amount of speculation in the British press about what's going on. Right. Because it's starting to feel you've got these multiple Attempts. Now, in Western Europe, obviously you've got a guy who's been poisoned, which is in itself mysterious, and yet there's no kind of hard facts to really cling to.

[Gordon Carrera]

No, that's right. So that, you know, there are people putting out the theory it could be Western intelligence, somehow he was working for them as a, you know, a spy or something like that. And you're right as well that the kind of press attention on this starts to build. People start talking about assassination. Interestingly enough, on October 2, another Bulgarian who works for the BBC in, in London dies after falling down the stairs. Now, you know, this is not judged to be a poisoning or an assassination. Although, you know, it's interesting, Rufus Crompton in his lecture says he was perfectly sober. This journalist, he was only, I think, 30 years old, contained no drugs or pellets. In my experience, he says sober young men seldom kill themselves by falling downstairs. Now, doesn't look like there's a link, but there's a kind of talk in the press that there's a SMERSH type assassin. Now, smersh, you know, is actually a real thing in the Soviet Union around the end of the Second World War, meaning death to spies. But it became famous in the James Bond films as this kind of shadowy organization going off, bumping off people in strange ways. It's part of popular culture in a way, and this talk is now there that there's a Smirch assassin loose on the streets of London and that even James Bond can't find him. Now, back at Porton down, they're really working to try and identify the toxin and they go through a kind of process of elimination. Was it radioactive? There's no sign of that. Was it a viral infection? Well, there's, you know, the onset of the symptoms was. Was too rapid and the white blood cell count too high. Chemical agents would produce changes in the nervous system. You didn't see anything like that. So they start looking at different toxins. Botulinus, they work through a list kind of, you know, methodically. Shellfish toxins, animal toxins, you know, could it be snake venom? They wonder. But one of the crucial clues is back to that pellet. You know, the kind of lucky break of finding those because, you know, the holes in the pellet are so small that you'd need something incredibly deadly. So. So you'd need 10 times the amount of cyanide you could fit in those holes in the pellet to kill someone. So, you know, you can immediately rule out cyanide and all kinds of things. So by a process of effectively elimination, they end up with the idea that it's ricin.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, cyanide is the official poison of the rest, is classified so far, so that's disappointing to not have the consistency.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I'm afraid in this case, ricin is your poison of choice and it comes from Castor be. So it's quite kind of naturally occurring. You can make castor oil from it, but from the residue you can also turn it into ricin.

[David McCloskey]

We should say we'll have the Carrera family recipe in the show notes.

[Gordon Carrera]

Please do not listen to David. We will not be providing. Do not try this at home in terms of taking some castor beans and turning into ricin, because you will find the police and others raiding your house or your flat, as they did a few years back. But it's incredibly potent, not often seen porting down. They think that's what it could be, but they don't have much record of it, so they try and do some tests. They actually, I'm afraid if you're an animal lover, look away now or listen away now. They get a pig because it's roughly the same size as a person, and they try and replicate what happened to Markov with the pig. So they. They use a needle to inject it in roughly the same place in the pig's body, I guess on the. On the right thigh. Six hours, pig is totally fine. Then it gets very sick, same symptoms of Markov, and eventually dies. So by that process of elimination, they are focusing now that it was the pellet and that it was ricin.

[David McCloskey]

And we should say ricin, interestingly enough, is in this case, actually the Markov case. I was trying to remember back in the adult caves of my brain from watching Breaking Bad a few years ago when I binge watched it. Walter White and his henchmen Jesse Pinkman, actually talk about the Markov case, I think in one of the episodes, in kind of one of the early seasons, because they are contemplating using ricin to kill Tuco Salamanca for those who watch the show. And they talk about this case, they talk about Markov and they talk about castor beans and how it's distilled for castor beans. So maybe ricin will have to supplant cyanide as the new. The new official poison of the rest is classified. But this will probably be the only case of spycraft that links between our show and Breaking Bad.

[Gordon Carrera]

Another. Don't try this at home. Just another reminder.

[David McCloskey]

Yes, that's a good point. That's a. That's a good point. Despite the recipe in the show notes, don't. Don't attempt it. So maybe there with the evidence now pretty clear by the late fall, I guess, of 1978, that Markov had been murdered, that he was poisoned. The poison was ricin, but we still have no idea, do we, who actually ordered it? Who carried it out? Who actually pushed the pellet into him? You know, was it the Bulgarians? Was it the kgb? I mean, Markov himself said on his deathbed that, you know, he thought he'd been poisoned by the kgb. And when we come back next time, we will figure out who done it and how they did it with a very strange piece of spy tech. We'll see you next time.

[Gordon Carrera]

Thanks for listening.

[David McCloskey]

There's a double agent, a mole working for Moscow inside the upper reaches of CIA. Hi, I'm David McCloskey, co host of the Rest Is Classified. And in my latest novel, the Seventh Floor, an operation gone wrong has CIA officer Artemus Proctor convinced there is a mole working for the Russians. But who is it? To find the answer, she will have to dredge up her checkered past in service of CIA investigating a shortlist of her dearest friends and most cherished enemies. This is a story of modern day espionage tradecraft, a peek at the actual spy war between Washington and Moscow. And most of all, it's a story about what friendship means in a faithless business. The book is available now in hard copy and all good bookshops and also online in ebook and audio formats.