I remember another Bond Movie where the plot was to build a pipeline through Afganistan to ship out all the Russian Oil. That was an interesting plot as well.

I hear the new Bond film mentions the unusual shorting of certain airline stocks right before 9/11, one of the biggest indicators of prior knowledge. I believe the Commission started looking at these, but didn't like where it was leading, so ended up concluding it was just luck.
The point in the death of the real life Russian spy is that all these agencies have huge budgets and they are continuously planning or carrying out covert operations of some sort. I'm convinced many stories in the news are the result of black ops with this recent assassination in Lebanon being one of them. I always ask myself who really benefits from an incident? Who is being blamed and does the response seem orchestrated?
The Russian spy incident was unusual in that it was so public, and the use of radioactive materials would suggest this was pretty high up. I bet the real life 007s are taking a good look at it.

The former KGB colonel who recently died of undetermined cause may not have been a target of others. It is possible that he was trying to sell some fissionable material in the black market. If so, he may have been carrying around and left some dangerous material sitting somewhere in his recent travels.