From Russia with Love

“The name’s Kopcoh,” I said. “TpeBop Kopcoh.” I turned my eyes on the bartender and ordered a medium dry martini with a lemon peel, shaken, not stirred. Then I leveled my gaze on the man next to me. He was a Russian agent. Like me.

“Finally we meet,” he said. He picked up a menu. “I’m familiar with London but I don’t know this restaurant. What’s the chef’s specialty here, Kopcoh?”

I didn’t answer right away. I wondered if somehow he already knew that the chef’s specialty here – sushi – was going to be his last meal.

I had him right where I wanted him. Russians had come to love sushi more than caviar. But most of them, even the oligarchs and high-level agents, still lacked basic know-how. Which was convenient, because all I needed was for this man to make one simple mistake.

And he did. When the sushi came, he mixed wasabi into his soy sauce.

Later, when he was in the bathroom, I removed the small vial of thallium from my pocket. All it took was a tap of powder into the muddy paste he’d made and a quick stir with chopsticks. The wasabi masked the poison perfectly.

It was an unnecessary tragedy, really.

A few short years later, a book called The Story of Sushi was translated into Russian. It could have saved his life.