How a hit on a retired spy named Sergei Skripal became the latest—and most terrifying—front in Vladimir Putin’s war with the West.
As a Russian double agent working for the British, he'd been code-named “Forthwith”—quickly—but this afternoon the poison in Sergei Skripal's system went unhurried, making its way around his body over a period of hours. Skripal was 66, comfortably heavy in retirement, an ex-colonel who'd been cast out of the intelligence services in Russia and now lived in exile in the English city of Salisbury. Neighbors knew the place as “Smalls-bury” and said that nothing too dramatic ever happened here, which would stay true for another couple of hours yet.
- GQ
