Mwandayi, Towards a new reading of the Bible in Africa – spy exegesisbest solution. Assassination could be applied also as way of punishing
someone who would have switched sides and this usually sends a cold
chill running down the spine of those who could be contemplating help-
ing the enemy.
In carrying out an assassination mission, spies usually favor small-
caliber handguns because they are easy to conceal and the Walther PPK
has remained one of the most favoured handguns in the spy world.^11 If
the target, however, is had to get by the use of a shotgun due to distance
or tricky circumstances which need greater accuracy, special rifles or
machine guns which can be folded easily or disassembled into smaller
disguisable components are used. To avoid loud explosions such guns
are usually equipped with silencers, that is, metal cylinders that baffle
the rapid expansion of gases and greatly reduce the sound a gun makes
when it fires. Assassination devices can also be disguised in a pack of
cigarettes and an umbrella. As testified by Grabianowski, a cigarette
pack with devices is offered to the victim, aimed near his face as if to let
him/her draw a cigarette out with his/her teeth. Once the device is trig-
gered, it ejects a cloud of cyanide vapor into the victim’s face killing
him/her straight away and with almost no trace evidence. Recalling a
successful assassination plot using an umbrella with a pneumatic firing
mechanism and a small poison pellet, Grabianowski narrates how a
Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated using such a de-
vice. The assassin shot Markov with the poison pellet while he stood on a
bridge. As intended, Markov grew sick and died days after and the inci-
dent was covered off as an accidental bump with a pointy umbrella.^12
- Misinformation
Driven by the same goal of trying to outwit one’s enemies through ac-
quiring as much information as possible from the enemy, governments
or concerned organisations spend days and nights also concealing their
activities through dishing out false information to potential enemies for
they know that they too are engaged in acts of espionage on them. The
advantage of such a move is that it keeps the enemy guessing leading
thus to costly miscalculations at times and a steady stream of misinfor-
(^11) Cf. E. Grabianowski, How Spy Gadgets Work, http://entertainment.howstuffworks.
com/spy-gadget2.htm (accessed 20/07/11).
(^12) Cf. Grabianowski, How Spy Gadgets Work.