Britain: Le Carre, Call MI5, Fast

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The incident: as Carlos Medina Perez, a third secretary in the Cuban embassy, left his apartment in London last week, he ran into some people who were waiting on the street. Medina Perez started shooting at them. After they fled, he surrendered to police, claiming that he had feared for his life.

The diplomatic flap: the Foreign Office quickly announced the expulsion of Medina Perez and the Cuban Ambassador, Oscar Fernandez Mell. Officials said those fired on were performing routine surveillance.

The spy thriller: intelligence sources let on that the group outside the apartment had included Florentino Aspillaga, a Cuban intelligence agent who defected to the U.S. last year. In London a Cuban embassy spokesman charged that the CIA and Britain's MI5 were pressuring Medina Perez to defect and that he had opened fire to keep from being kidnaped. MI5 sources said Medina Perez was a Cuban intelligence agent who had convinced the British he was ready to defect. Had he been lying so he could set up Aspillaga for assassination? Or had he panicked? Calling Le Carre.