A puzzling poisoning

IT HAS all the hallmarks of a John le Carre novel or a James Bond film. A former Soviet spy is investigating the murder of a Russian journalist. He meets with a contact who may have information. But after they dine together, the former spy falls ill, and later dies.
He was poisoned with a rare radioactive substance, polonium-210.
Except, of course, that this isn't a spy novel, and neither George Smiley, Mr. le Carre's fictional character, nor 007 is on the case.
It's a real and deeply disturbing scenario playing out in London. Alexander Litvinenko, a naturalized British citizen and former KGB agent, died after being poisoned with polonium-210. Two other people, Mr. Litvinenko's wife, Marina, and Mario Scaramella, with whom Mr. Litvinenko met in early November, have tested positive for the same substance.
And that's just the start of the expanding fallout from what appears to have been a carefully planned and artfully carried-out execution of a critic of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Already traces of the radioactive substance have been found on two British Airways planes, and a third is to be tested. Traces also have been found elsewhere in London, and thousands of innocent travelers are calling hotlines, terrified that they may have somehow been tainted by polonium.
And the day after Mr. Litvinenko died, former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was poisoned in Ireland.
Those incidents bring to mind that in 1978 Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed by a poisoned dart fired from an umbrella after walking across Waterloo Bridge in London.
And in 2004 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned, but recovered.
British Home Secretary John Reid says authorities will follow the Litvinenko investigation wherever it leads. Right now, it appears as though it leads to Moscow.
Before his death, Mr. Litvinenko, a critic of Mr. Putin, accused the Russian leader of involvement in his poisoning. In the shadowy world in which he appeared to be operating, where there are enemies aplenty, both real and imagined, and paranoia may simply be a prudent admission that people are out to get you, that's not a surprising accusation.
Certainly it's possible that Mr. Litvinenko's investigation into the death of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya - herself a critic of the Putin administration - may have played a part in his apparent assassination.
However, while speculation on what, if any, role the Russian leadership had in Mr. Litvinenko's death is tantalizing, it is also, at this juncture, fruitless.
Still, it doesn't take a mystery writer or a conspiracy theorist to surmise that if Mr. Litvinenko's inquiries were becoming troublesome and potentially embarrassing to the Russians, he was placing himself in harm's way.