Umbrellas and red herrings

Umbrellas and red herrings

Like so much else behind the curtain of the espionage world, the Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte’s exposé of the man likely involved in the most outlandish assassination of the Cold War is both tantalizing and without a clean conclusion. Not far from Waterloo Bridge in 1978, the exiled Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov felt a sharp prick in his leg. A man nearby hailed a black cab, speaking poor English. Markov’s rapid deterioration and death four d…