A Very Expensive Poison

by Luke Harding

  Two months later, Kovtun’s unit received bad news. He and his comrades were being transferred back to Russia’s Caucasus. The north Caucasus was the most explosive corner of what was now the new Russian Federation: the scene of wars and skirmishes between Russian troops and a restive Muslim population since the time of the young Tolstoy and the early years of the nineteenth century. (Three years later, in 1994, Boris Yeltsin pulled the trigger on what would become the first Chechen War.)

  Inne told her husband she wasn’t going to Chechnya. She wanted to stay in Germany. Kovtun didn’t fancy fighting either. They came up with a plan. He would desert! They would escape together to West Germany and claim political asylum there. They would start a new life.

  Escaping the Russian base turned out to be simple. According to Inne: ‘We packed our things one night and crept out of the barracks, through the fence.’ They took a taxi to Hamburg, driving through the dark. They spent the night at a police station. The next morning they were taken to the aliens’ department. About twenty-five officers from the same Soviet military group also ran away from military camp, though at different times.

  Back in Russia, the authorities started criminal proceedings against Kovtun for desertion.

  The Germans accepted Kovtun’s asylum claim and placed him temporarily on a boat in Hamburg. Germany’s second biggest city was a temple of post-war prosperity, with a port, a proud mercantilist tradition and a laidback and cosmopolitan sensibility more British than German. It was in Hamburg that John le Carré – then a British intelligence officer – wrote the novel that made him famous, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Kovtun and his wife found themselves living in an asylum seekers’ hostel in Blankenese, an affluent district in the west of the city, with large villas, some of them overlooking the right bank of the Elbe.

  The hostel was in Björnsonweg, a quiet suburban street named after Norway’s national bard, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. It passes an old municipal waterworks – there’s a sign in art deco letters – and ends in a small forest. According to neighbours there were two hostels here, one home to Africans, the other to asylum seekers from the Middle East and elsewhere. (The street was well-named: as well as being a poet and playwright, Bjørnson was a public intellectual involved in the struggle for freedom of expression and against racism.)

  Kovtun had made it to the west but his marriage didn’t survive the transition. According to Inne, Dmitry was a feckless husband. He had, she said, a major drink problem.

  Contacted by German police in 2006 out of the blue, a decade and a half after severing all ties with Kovtun, Inne Hohne paints a singularly unflattering picture of her first husband. Their marriage was brief, she said, and something of a disaster. At the beginning of 1992, they split because of what she called his ‘escalating drunkenness’.

  She told detectives: ‘He drank a lot, which was eventually the reason for our separation, and in addition he hung about in Hamburg and on the Reeperbahn.’ In addition: ‘Dmitry wanted to be a porn star.’

  The Reeperbahn where Kovtun spent his days was the city’s red-light district. The area in St Pauli had grown up to serve the needs of sailors visiting the port. In the pre-internet 1990s it was a street of peep shows, live sex acts and cinema booths, where you could toss a Deutschmark into a slot and view a minute of porn. The unknown Beatles played their first gigs here. Today, the Reeperbahn is more of a cuddly tourist destination than a house of sin. The last live sex theatre has closed; the sex shops are mostly gone; Andrew Lloyd Webber’s tame Cats was a fixture in its musical theatre.

  Hohne was stupefied by the suggestion that her former husband would be involved in espionage or covert Russian intelligence work. ‘No, I cannot imagine that,’ she told police. He was, she said, temperamentally unsuited to complex projects of any kind. ‘He is not really the type for this, not the sort of person who does big deals or is suited in any way to this.’

  Inne would characterise Kovtun as a dandy and one of life’s serial failures. ‘Dmitry is not particularly down to earth, more a man about town,’ Inna would tell the police. ‘He had all sorts of dreams and plans, none of which he realised, however.’ Kovtun was ‘not a particularly reliable type of person’, she recalled.

  In 1994, Kovtun began seeing a Russian-German woman, Marina Wall. She had moved after the Soviet collapse with her family from Siberia to Germany. They married in 1996. Wall had affluent connections; this may have been part of the attraction. Marina’s doctor mother Eleanora works in Hamburg as a psychotherapist in an upmarket clinic. Eleanora and her wealthy partner Hartmut Kohnke own a string of rental properties in the city, divided into small flats and let mainly to students. Kovtun was named as ‘main tenant’ in one of the properties owned by Kohnke’s firm, Garant.

  Despite having rich German in-laws, Kovtun failed to become prosperous himself. According to Litvinenko, he complained bitterly about how stingy they were. Kovtun told Litvinenko: ‘I am interested in money and money alone in this life. Nothing else.’ Kovtun said that his tight-fisted in-laws owned a ‘super expensive clinic in the centre of Hamburg and over 200 items of property’. They had bought nothing for him, he moaned, apart from a couple of package tours with his wife Marina. Kovtun told Litvinenko he ‘lived like a pauper’.

  This was largely true. Kovtun’s mother-in-law, who retained a soft spot for Dmitry even after he became embroiled in scandal, confirmed: ‘Money and he didn’t go together.’ The shiny position Kovtun had been hoping for didn’t present itself. For a period Kovtun was on the dole, broke, and relying on German welfare handouts. Sometimes he picked up odd jobs. He worked as a refuse collector. He washed dishes in various Hamburg restaurants.

  One of them was Il Porto. Il Porto was an Italian fish restaurant in Grosse Elbstrasse, in the heart of Hamburg’s waterfront tourist area, overlooking the Elbe and the city’s busy port. Opposite were the giant cranes of the German shipbuilder Blohm + Voss; from Il Porto’s pavement tables you could watch ships coming into harbour. Further west along the cobbled Elbstrasse is the Haifisch or Shark Bar, several old merchants’ houses and Hamburg’s 1960s-built commercial fish market. The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a renovated Jugendstil building. It had balconies and a mansard flat in the roof.

  Kovtun worked at Il Porto between 1996 and 2001. The restaurant’s gregarious Italian owner Franco Schiavone employed him as assistant waiter. He wasn’t especially competent, but Shiavone liked him and kept him on. Kovtun’s German was poor. His main job was to collect the dirty plates.

  Later Schiavone was a man with two stories – one he wanted to tell, and one he didn’t. Of Kovtun, he merely said: ‘I want to forget Dmitry.’ Schiavone was far happier talking about his own life and colourful career. As a young man in the swinging sixties he worked at La Dolce Vita restaurant in Soho, London, as well as in Swansea. He was a waiter in Paris and in Cannes, where a friend would smuggle him into press conferences with Hollywood stars. In 1978 he moved to Hamburg and later did a stint on a cruise liner. ‘My philosophy is, in life you have to keep moving,’ he told me.

  Schiavone’s staff were international. His assistant waiter Kovtun was a Russian; his chef an Albanian. During this period Kovtun became friends with the Italian manager, who in the subsequent inquiry was referred to by the codename D3 in order to keep his anonymity. He would play a crucial role later in his story. D3 had hired Kovtun in 1996 when he turned up at Il Porto asking for a job. They played chess, and sometimes went for a beer after work. They kept in touch sporadically after D3 left Il Porto and moved on. ‘We talked about a lot of things,’ D3 said. Once, Kovtun gave D3 a present. It was a book on Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian political philosopher. A sign of Kovtun’s intellectual interests? Or a fitting choice from a future assassin?

  Il Porto was a business success. But in 2001 Hamburg city gave permission for a large and charmless office block to be constructed directly in front of the harbour. It blocked the restaurant’s ‘Elbblick’ – its picturesque view of the
Elbe – killing off his custom. Schiavone shut Il Porto. ‘I practically gave it away,’ he said. He opened up another establishment, La Vela, down the road.

  Out of a job, Kovtun harboured dreams of running his own business. In 2002, he and Marina Wall came up with the idea of a consultancy firm, advising Russians or Russian companies looking to set up in Germany. According to Wall, however: ‘The business did not materialise.’ By this point Wall and Kovtun were drifting in opposite directions. At the end of the year they separated; Kovtun stayed in her flat for a while, sleeping in a second bedroom. Wall met a new partner, a Pole, and became pregnant with their first child.

  ‘Dmitry could not sort himself out here. He did not find any work, he had been a high-ranking officer in Russia and could not prove himself here,’ Wall said. In 2003, after twelve years living in Germany, Kovtun decided to go back to Russia. During his absence the Kremlin had amnestied army deserters. His father had died in 1995; he moved back in with his mother. He was thirty-eight.

  After the split, Kovtun remained on good terms with Marina, and with his German ex-mother-in-law, who lived with her partner in Haselau, a village 21 miles (35 km) north-west of Hamburg in Schleswig-Holstein. From time to time he would visit them. ‘Every woman finds Dmitry charming. It is just that he does not fancy working and he is not a family man,’ Wall said. ‘He is more a man about town. That is why we were not suited.’

  *

  And then suddenly, in 2005, as if by magic, Kovtun’s luck changed. He was back in touch with Lugovoi, his old friend from military school days. They were going into business together! While Kovtun had been scrubbing pots, Lugovoi had been accruing influence. And money. Lugovoi owned a security firm, Ninth Wave. He was providing bodyguards to VIPs. He had acquired a drinks factory too. Kovtun told Wall he was spending most of his time in Voronezh, doing vodka production with Lugovoi. They went cycling together, puffing up the slopes of Dombay, a mountain resort in southern Russia.

  Was this rekindled friendship with Lugovoi only about business? Or something else?

  In July 2006, Kovtun called Wall and said he would be visiting Hamburg. She and Kovtun were getting divorced; Kovtun was due to attend a hearing on 9 August. In the end, he didn’t make it. He told her his new Russian passport wasn’t ready. He would come soon, he said – in the autumn.

  The ostensible purpose of Kovtun’s trip to Hamburg at the end of October 2006 was to tidy up his affairs. Every six months he flew to Germany to get a stamp. Wall had made him an appointment at the city council’s aliens’ department in Hamburg’s Platz der Republik. This was a large rectangular neo-classical building, not far from where Il Porto used to be, with an equine statue of the German emperor William I in front of the entrance. Here Kovtun would get a German resident’s permit inserted into his new Russian Federation passport.

  The real purpose of the trip was different. From Hamburg, Kovtun intended to travel back to London again, a city he had visited for the first time two weeks previously. There he had a job to finish: to poison Alexander Litvinenko. It sounded easy. But Kovtun and Lugovoi’s previous attempt of 16 October in the offices of Erinys hadn’t worked and Lugovoi’s second effort, on 26 October, had misfired too, with the polonium ending up on a bathroom hand towel. Litvinenko was still alive.

  Kovtun flew into Hamburg at midday on 28 October 2006, on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow. Marina, her new partner and children met Kovtun at the airport. They drove him in her BMW to their home at Erzbergerstrasse 4 in the centre of town. Wall’s flat was in a late-nineteenth-century building belonging to her mother and her partner; sepia paintings of Hamburg-Altona’s old town hall and St Michael’s Church decorated the entrance lobby. Most of Wall’s neighbours in the five-storey property were students. The area, Ottensen, is central and congenial, with an S-bahn station nearby, as well as cafés and shops.

  Kovtun said he was going to London to watch a football match. Since he didn’t have a credit card, Wall’s partner booked him a plane ticket on the internet. Kovtun gave him €70 in cash.

  Subsequently, Kovtun’s movements in Germany were easy to reconstruct. As in London, the police found a trail. He had brought with him from Moscow radioactive polonium-210, the unique substance with which he intended to kill Litvinenko.

  Like Lugovoi before him, Kovtun, seemingly, knew little or nothing about its properties. For example, that it left a ghostly signature wherever he went. Kovtun was, it seems, the classic dupe, tricked by whoever gave him the poison in Moscow. And – though it didn’t turn out that way – expendable.

  From the moment he arrived, Kovtun contaminated everything he came into contact with. German detectives found polonium in Wall’s car, on the front passenger seat where he’d sat. And at her home. Radioactive traces were discovered in the living room and bedroom where he’d spent the night in Erzbergerstrasse. Traces too in a cupboard, on pillows – even on a teddy bear and a child’s jacket hanging on the coat rack.

  Kovtun moved; so did the trail; it followed him like a spectre. The next day, 29 October, Wall’s mother Eleanora drove Kovtun to her house in Haselau, where Kovtun stayed the night. They spent a jolly evening. In the kitchen Kovtun unpacked gifts from Moscow – a bottle of vodka, chocolate-coated marshmallows and two glass jars containing pickled mushrooms, a present from Kovtun’s mother. Kovtun was wearing his black polo-neck pullover and dark-blue jeans. ‘He’s a very soft person. He isn’t a businessman, he’s a philosopher,’ Eleanora told German police.

  Despite her fond view of Kovtun, polonium was found in Eleanora’s house too. The following morning, 30 October, Kovtun visited the aliens’ department. One faint trace of radiation was discovered – under Kovtun’s new passport photo.

  The trail of polonium was itself remarkable, but the German police discovered other significant evidence as well. They found witnesses, including one to whom Kovtun confided about his real motive for going to London.

  Usually, when he visited Hamburg, Kovtun would meet with D3, his restaurant manager friend from Il Porto. On 30 October, Kovtun called D3, told him he was in town and said he would like to see him. This was normal: generally Kovtun would make contact out of the blue.

  At about 7 p.m., D3 was having dinner with another friend from his Il Porto days, codenamed D5. The pair were eating in the Tarantella restaurant, a newly opened bistro in the city centre next to Stephansplatz. Kovtun arrived by S-bahn and phoned to say he didn’t know where to go. D3 found him on the opposite side of the street. He invited him to join them. As usual, Kovtun was broke. Kovtun said he didn’t want to eat. According to D3, he and D5 ended up sharing some of their meal with Kovtun. Kovtun asked his former colleagues to order some red wine for him, which they did, a quarter of a litre.

  So far, so unremarkable. All three left the restaurant, with D5 strolling on ahead to buy cigarettes. Their destination was a slot machine arcade in Steindamm, twenty minutes away on foot. At the time Steindamm was a sort of mini-Reeperbahn, a sleazy area of Hamburg known for its drugs, porn shops and street walkers.

  As they walked along, Kovtun revealed something extraordinary. ‘It happened when Dmitry and I were now alone and he told me this tale,’ D3 said. Kovtun had mentioned he was flying to London on business. Now, he said, he was actually going there to commit a murder. What’s more, he needed D3’s help.

  The conversation, recounted by D3 to German police, went like this:

  KOVTUN: Do you know someone called Litvinenko? Have you heard of him?

  D3: No.

  KOVTUN: Litvinenko is a traitor! There is blood on his hands! He does deals with Chechnya!

  The conversation was a weird one. D3 hadn’t the faintest clue who Litvinenko was; why should he? Nor did he know anything of Litvinenko’s alleged treachery.

  The conversation got weirder.

  KOVTUN: Do you know a cook who is working in London?

  D3: Yeah, that guy who was with us at Il Porto.

  Though he had lost touch with him, D3 mentioned a young Albani
an chef who’d been their colleague back in the nineties and early noughties. Since then he’d moved to the UK. D3 didn’t know details. Then:

  KOVTUN: I have a very expensive poison. I need this cook so he can put the poison in Litvinenko’s food or drink.

  D3: You’re crazy! The cook is married, has kids. [Jokingly] Wouldn’t it be much easier to shoot this Litvinenko instead?

  KOVTUN: It’s meant to set an example. Litvinenko is well protected in London. I intend to lure him out with an interview. And then to poison him.

  D3: Look, stop all this nonsense. Why don’t you get a proper job? Why are you telling me, of all people, this crap?

  KOVTUN: You mustn’t tell anybody.

  D3: Who the hell am I supposed to tell?

  KOVTUN: I’ll soon have my own flat in Moscow.

  D3: [Conciliatory] That’s nice. I could come and visit you there.

  Asked by police if Kovtun had put a figure on the cost of the poison, D3 said he couldn’t remember. He said: ‘Dmitry mentioned a sum which was incredibly high.’ It was clear that Kovtun’s own reward for his role in the operation was real estate in the Russian capital. Who would be paying for it wasn’t clear.

  At the time, D3 thought that Kovtun’s fantastical tale was ‘rubbish’, the ramblings of a man who had watched too many TV spy dramas. The story sounded crazy, nuts. It confirmed his belief that Kovtun was a dreamer. Did he ask how Kovtun obtained such an expensive poison? ‘No. I didn’t believe him and therefore I didn’t ask,’ D3 replied to police.

  The story seemed even less plausible because during the same conversation Kovtun mentioned his latest money-making idea. Even by Kovtun’s dismal standards, it was a daft one. Kovtun said that he and his ex-wife might pose naked in Praline, a popular soft-porn magazine. Praline was sold at every station kiosk. They would make ‘loads of money’, he told D3.