The man with the poison gun

Description

"In the fall of 1961, a KGB agent defected to West Germany. The slim 30-year-old man in police custody had papers in the name of an East German, Josef Lehmann, but claimed that his real name was Bogdan Stashinsky, and he was a citizen of the Soviet Union. On the orders of his KGB bosses, he had traveled on numerous occasions to Munich, where he singlehandedly tracked down and killed two enemies of the communist regime. He used a new, specially designed secret weapon--a spray pistol delivering liquid poison that, if fired into the victim's face, killed him without leaving any trace. Wracked by a guilty conscience, Stashinsky escaped with his wife under the tragic cover of their infant son's funeral, and crossed into West Berlin just hours before the Berlin Wall was erected. In 1962, after spilling his secrets to the CIA, Stashinky was put on trial in what would be the most publicized assassination case in Cold War history. Stashinsky's testimony, implicating the Kremlin rulers in political assassinations carried out abroad, shook the world of international politics. The publicity stirred up by the Stashinsky case forced the KGB to change its modus operandi abroad and helped end the career of one of the most ambitious and dangerous Soviet leaders, the former head of the KGB and Leonid Brezhnev's rival, Aleksandr Shelepin. In West Germany, the Stashinsky trial changed the way in which Nazi criminals were prosecuted. Using the Stashinsky case as a precedent, many defendants in such cases claimed, as had the Soviet spy, that they were simply accessories to murder, while their superiors, who ordered the killings, were the main perpetrators."--Provided by publisher.

Description

In the autumn of 1961, a KGB assassin defected to West Germany. Bogdan Stashinsky had already travelled on numerous occasions to Munich, where he had singlehandedly tracked down and killed the enemies of the communist regime. His weapon was a specially designed secret: it killed without leaving any trace. Stashinsky crossed into West Berlin just hours before the Berlin Wall was erected and spilled his secrets to the authorities. This is the true story of the man that inspired Ian Fleming's 'The Man With the Golden Gun'.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The man with the poison gun: a Cold War spy story2016-01-01
• The man with the poison gunOneworld Publications2016