Assassination Brigade

The meeting drew to a close, and both the Soviet chairman and the US security adviser were standing to shake hands.
Then one of the men in the Soviet chairman’s own party — later I learned that he was the Russian ambassador — took a step toward the Communist chairman. He was holding a grenade that he had pulled from his pocket. The man unpinned the grenade and dropped it on the plush carpet directly at the Russian leader’s feet.
In the split second of frozen horror that followed not a sound could be heard in the room. I could see the pure terror on the face of the Soviet chairman as he gazed down in helpless fascination at the lethal activated grenade lying at the tips of his shoes.
At that moment, with every person in the room paralyzed, the Russian ambassador — the man who had dropped the unpinned grenade — flung himself on top of the explosive. There was a muffled blast; the grenade’s deadly power was smothered by the man’s body. He was blown apart, his head torn from his torso . . . .