A Very Expensive Poison

by Luke Harding

According to Emmerson, there was no doubt who gave the order – Russia’s president. He dismissed alternative theories proposed by the Kremlin as outlandish and absurd. There wasn’t the ‘slightest doubt’ that Lugovoi and Kovtun were the assassins. The forensic evidence confirmed this, Emmerson said. So did what had happened since 2006: Lugovoi’s unexplained wealth and his successful career in Russian politics, none of which would have been possible without a Kremlin leg-up.

  The ‘cold, hard facts’ said that Litvinenko’s murder was a political crime. It bore all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored assassination, the QC asserted.

  The polonium used to murder him came to London from Russia. It was very expensive, Emmerson said. ‘The scientific evidence shows that the quantity of polonium of the purity used in the assassination of Mr Litvinenko would have cost tens of millions of dollars if it was purchased by end users on the commercial market. Just the amount that was used for the assassination. Well, obviously, a commercial transaction of that magnitude … would have to be recorded, and if it had happened, the authorities would know about it. It is, we say, moreover, unlikely in the extreme that any private individual or purely criminal enterprise, a pure bunch of hoodlums involved in an organised crime gang, why on earth would they choose such a costly method of assassination, tens of millions of dollars, when they could simply put a bullet in someone’s head?’

  For the Russian state, on the other hand, the costs were by no means prohibitive. It just had to divert some of the material it was producing already. Polonium was selected ‘in order to leave no clear trace as to how death was sustained’. It very nearly worked.

  Emmerson’s conclusions were blunt, and framed in highly personal terms: ‘We say, sir, that when all of the open and closed evidence is considered together, Mr Litvinenko’s dying declaration will be borne out as true: that the trail of polonium traces leads not just from London to Moscow but directly to the door of Vladimir Putin’s office and that Mr Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more than a common criminal dressed up as a head of state.’

  The barrister’s opening statement was bold and provocative – an accusation against a major world leader expressed in language not usually heard in a court.

  The Russian government had ostensibly paid little attention to the inquiry, viewing it as biased, unreliable and the latest manifestation of an anti-Russian campaign waged by the west and its puppet media. From Moscow, Lugovoi dismissed it as a ‘judicial farce’. Traditionally, Russian officials were insouciant in the face of what they dubbed ‘provocations’.

  On this occasion, though, someone was watching. That someone was irritated.

  Two days after the inquiry began, RAF controllers noticed two dots moving at high speed towards the south coast of Britain. The dots kept going. These were Russian Tupolev Bear bombers – giant, lumbering, Soviet-era aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs on long-range missions, their bright red communist stars still visible on a gleaming silver fuselage. The Bear bombers were heading directly towards the Channel. Downing Street scrambled two RAF typhoons to intercept them.

  Since the war in Ukraine, the Russian airforce had dispatched Bear bombers on similar probing missions to European countries and to the Pacific coast of the US and Canada. They had buzzed military and civilian aircraft. There were repeated forays into the airspace of the Baltic republics. In one incident in April 2015, a Russian SU-27 fighter missed a US military jet flying above the Baltic Sea by a few metres.

  These sorties were a crude expression of displeasure. And a reminder that the Russian government presides over a nuclear arsenal and isn’t to be messed with. Even David Cameron, a prime minister who showed little interest in international affairs, got the memo. ‘Russia is trying to send some kind of message,’ he said.

  *

  In the weeks before the inquiry began, I met Anatoly Litvinenko at University College London. In the spring of 2015 he was a second-year student of politics and East European studies; his last piece of coursework an essay on Putin. His choice of university was a nod to his father, who died just across the road in University College Hospital.

  Anatoly is quiet, low-key and speaks with a typical London student accent. He seems mature for a twenty-year-old – something his friends attribute to his close relationship with his mother, a loving and affectionate parent. ‘I’m so glad we can still hug,’ Marina told me. ‘After it happened, I realised I couldn’t just be strict. I remember Sasha saying: “Be soft on him.” I try and tell him every time that I love him.’

  The UCL café was crowded, so we descended past the stuffed body of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham to an empty basement bar. Anatoly was dressed in a quilted overcoat and wearing fashionable lightweight black specs, bought in Berlin when his last ones broke.

  We talked about his expectations of the inquiry. ‘I’m pretty sure there will be some kind of closure for me and my mum,’ he said. What would it bring? ‘Probably a chance for us to move on. To move on past the whole thing, which has been central to my life for eight years.’ He paused. ‘I want to remember him as Dad, to have a chance to grieve properly.’

  Anatoly recalled visiting his father in hospital nearby, and his last words to him: ‘If I do die from this, take care of your mum, look after yourself and study hard.’ He said he didn’t recognise his father at the end: ‘It wasn’t my dad at all.’ Alexander’s death put him in a strange place; he coped by immersing himself in schoolwork (‘I got a bunch of stupidly good marks’) and shutting out his grief. ‘There was a huge media storm. For a while I was lost in the chaos,’ he said.

  Anatoly had brought along some old family photographs. One from 1997 shows a grinning, small Anatoly lying above Alexander on a sofa at their Moscow home. It’s a happy symmetry. The photo was taken at his parents’ apartment in the Moscow suburb of Chertanovo. Like many Russian kids, Anatoly spent the long summer vacation at a dacha 25 miles (40 km) outside Moscow that belonged to Marina’s parents. There was a vegetable plot and a pagoda.

  Anatoly’s maternal grandparents were regular Soviet citizens. His grandfather, also named Anatoly, spent his life working in a components factory and lost two fingers in machines; his grandmother, Zinaida, always insisted young Anatoly finish his food. Anatoly Sr was highly intelligent, but at the age of twelve, with the Soviet Union fighting for its existence against the Wehrmacht, he was forced to leave school and find a job. He finally went to technical college in his thirties.

  Anatoly was named after his grandfather, now aged eighty-three and still living in Moscow. He said they are similar in character. ‘He’s quiet and introverted. He loves chess and mental games. He was unbeatable at dominoes. His colleagues at the factory got angry because he won every single match. If he were born later, he’d have been an avid gamer.’

  As a child in Russia, Anatoly thought his father worked in some kind of law enforcement. After he moved to England he told his schoolmates his dad was a journalist and a police officer. He remembered his father as the more indulgent parent. Marina was the strict one – a ‘typical communist mum’, as she put it to me. Father and son would play chess. Anatoly always won – Alexander was a lousy opponent.

  ‘My dad loved England. He felt extremely safe here. He loved the freedom of expression, the fact that people could vote for whomever they liked,’ Anatoly said. One photo shows a visit to Hyde Park. Alexander introduced Anatoly to Speakers’ Corner; they posed together next to two London bobbies in uniform. Litvinenko is grinning and wearing a pair of knee-length khaki shorts. Alexander told his son that, unlike in Russia, you could trust British justice. You could stand up on a box and say anything.

  Anatoly was aware his father was a personal enemy of Putin’s. But, by 2006, Moscow felt like the past. ‘It was over. We were having a quiet normal life,’ he said. The family would go for pizza at La Porchetta, their favourite local Italian restaurant on Muswell High Street. Once a week the two of them went to Finsbury leisure centre. Anatoly had a taekwondo class;
Alexander went for a 10-mile (15-km) run. Afterwards, Anatoly would splash in the kids’ pool, while Alexander swam lengths of vigorous front crawl.

  On the way home to Osier Crescent, Anatoly would make a short cut – taking the diagonal across a muddy park and crawling through a hole in the fence. Alexander would go on the path. He was, Anatoly said, reluctant to get mud on his trainers. Like other Russians who had grown up with very little, Alexander had something of a ‘a post-Soviet rush’ towards consumer stuff, he said.

  Sometimes his father was away on business trips. ‘When he was there, he was fun,’ Anatoly said. ‘He was quite relaxed, happy to joke around with me.’ That summer of 2006, they watched the World Cup on a giant screen, cheering on England against Trinidad and Tobago. Alexander flew a Union flag from their balcony. When they first arrived in London, Anatoly asked Alexander which team he should support. His reply: not Chelsea, Abramovich’s club. ‘I picked Arsenal,’ Anatoly said.

  I had asked Anatoly if he might write something for the Guardian. We had discussed this during earlier conversations. He was considering becoming a journalist after university, maybe specialising in Russia. He handed me several handwritten pages of A4.

  His piece was moving. One of the hardest aspect of losing his father, Anatoly wrote, was not having had the opportunity to become friends with him – as he had with Marina:

  ‘As a kid, you tend to perceive adults, be it parents or anyone else, differently from how you would at age sixteen, eighteen or older. These days I’m able to joke around and have interesting conversations with my mother. We have discussions and arguments. I have gained a certain maturity that allows for mutual respect. And through this sort of relationship you are able to get an insight into the other person: how they think, what troubles them, what forms their views on life and so on. You get to understand what really makes the person.’

  With his dad, Anatoly wrote, he was forced to reconstruct the person from what was left – from ‘little titbits’ here and there. ‘From small things I remember. How I used to run to him if I did something wrong and was getting scolded by my mother, how I could run to him for sanctuary, or how incredibly proud he was of my smallest academic achievement.’

  Alexander had loved rock music. Anatoly hadn’t much liked it as a child, but now found himself as a young adult listening to the same bands as his father. ‘But I can never share my opinions of the music with him,’ he wrote.

  He continued: ‘This, perhaps, is why the inquiry is so important to me. When there is a story of a death so sensational, it’s very easy to get lost in the events of the few days and weeks, those of November 2006, with facts, accusations and intrigue. For me personally, this isn’t paramount. For me, it’s important to understand what Alexander Litvinenko was like behind the scenes, beyond the press conferences and the polonium; to construct an image, even half a one, in order to have a role model to look up to.

  ‘And most importantly perhaps, to always remember him as a person, a human being and my father, rather than just an aspect of political history.’

  After coffee and croissants we set off together to visit his father’s grave. Litvinenko is buried in Highgate West Cemetery in north London. We took the Northern line to Archway and then waited at a bus stop in the chill. ‘That’s about as weird as it gets,’ Anatoly said, pointing to the electronic sign that tells us which bus is arriving when. One of the buses that go to the cemetery is the 210 – as in polonium-210. ‘How crazy is that?’ he smiled.

  We got on another bus and walked up to the cemetery’s imposing black gates. They are locked to visitors, but Anatoly was known here; a woman radioed her colleague inside: ‘There’s a grave-owner; can you let him in?’ Anatoly, Marina and a few close friends visit every year to mark the anniversary of Litvinenko’s death.

  We walked up a small bucolic path. It’s an incongruous resting place for a patriotic Russian officer. Litvinenko’s grave is set among mid-Victorian tombstones and fluted funerary columns. There are squirrels and magpies in a tranquil clearing; opposite lies an admiral whose family vault resembles a grand naval warship.

  The conversation returned to the question of Putin’s guilt. ‘You have to ask yourself, which countries have the capability to produce polonium? Which country did my dad have a problem with? It’s simple,’ he said. And added: ‘There was a radioactive trail that leads back to Lugovoi. You can’t make that up.’ Of Putin, he said: ‘Dad used to get irritated about how many people in the west trusted Putin. The reality is: he’s dangerous. He shouldn’t be appeased.’

  *

  After Emmerson’s opening statement, Marina and Anatoly Litvinenko gave evidence from the witness box. It must have been harrowing for Marina to relive it all again. Over two days she told the story of her husband’s life and death.

  There was also testimony from Dr Nathaniel Cary, the consultant forensic pathologist who examined Litvinenko’s body. The scene in University College Hospital was extraordinary, like something from a horror movie. Cary said that he and other officials examining the corpse wore two protective suits, two pairs of gloves taped at the wrists and large battery-operated plastic hoods into which filtered air was piped.

  Cary said that medical staff left Litvinenko’s radioactive corpse in situ for two days. It fell to him to remove drips and disconnect tubes. He took a small sample of muscle from the right thigh to test for polonium. He then put the corpse in two body bags. Following this ‘very hazardous’ recovery operation, Cary said he conducted a post-mortem on 1 December 2006, together with a full team wearing protective gear.

  In a long career, Cary had examined murdered children and victims of other gruesome crimes – but not this. ‘It’s been described as the most dangerous post-mortem undertaken … I think that’s right,’ he said. The case was unique. It was the first known example of acute polonium poisoning anywhere in the world.

  Slowly, a picture was forming – of mediocre assassins who left behind clues. As Emmerson put it, the nuclear trail was ‘almost as sure as the path of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel’. A senior scientist explained radioactive readings taken from a range of sites associated with Lugovoi and Kovtun. Litvinenko’s deathbed interviews with police were made public. So was the last photo taken of him alive. There was discussion of Litvinenko’s corporate security and investigation work. To what extent might this explain his murder?

  For those following the inquiry, this new evidence was fascinating and multi-layered. For the first time, the public could see CCTV footage of Litvinenko arriving at the Millennium Hotel and of his shifty-looking killers in the minutes before he was poisoned. Other guests had their identities blurred out: they looked like surging blobs. There were surprises. Who knew that British spies use Waterstone’s bookshop as a meeting place? Or that Litvinenko’s anonymous monthly payments from MI6 were listed on his bank statement next to a meal from Nando’s in Finchley?

  Every evening the new evidence was posted to the inquiry’s website, www.litvinenkoinquiry.org. Sometimes the court official responsible – a pleasant New Zealander called Mike Wicksteed – didn’t finish work until midnight. There were witness statements, newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews from Moscow with the two murderers, telephone schedules, forensic contamination reports. The contamination schedule listed every location where polonium was discovered. It ran to an impressive 265 pages.

  At lunchtimes, Marina Litvinenko would head over the road from the white neo-Gothic court building to Apostrophe, a sandwich bar. Over soup and green tea, she would discuss the case with her legal team: Emmerson, junior counsel Adam Straw and her solicitor Elena Tsirlina. Sometimes I would join them. Our mood was more cheerful than gloomy. Marina would greet witnesses, kiss old friends on the cheek; her fortitude was amazing.

  Back in the courtroom, there were entertaining moments. In April 2012, Andrei Lugovoi took – and apparently passed – a lie detector test in Moscow. A Russian TV documentary producer named Alexander Korobko arranged it. I
n the wake of the result and with pompous fanfare Russia’s state media announced that Lugovoi’s innocence had been conclusively demonstrated. ‘We did the test because Andrei was so passionate about his innocence,’ Korobko told RT, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel.

  To give the test added credibility, Korobko got a British member of the Polygraph Association, Bruce Burgess, to conduct it. Burgess had embarked on a career in lie detection after doing other jobs including working as an apprentice ladies’ hairdresser. He trained in the US at the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego. In the noughties he appeared on various UK daytime TV shows, including Trisha and Jeremy Kyle. He would carry out tests on individuals accused of marital infidelity; the parties would get the result – usually showing one of them had been unfaithful – live on air in the studio.

  Korobko made Burgess an offer: an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow, plus a £5,100 fee. The producer was enigmatic about who would be taking the test. He merely told Burgess the subject was a ‘celebrity’. Burgess flew to the Russian capital with his son Tristam. There they were introduced to Lugovoi. The Burgesses performed the test, recorded on video, in Moscow’s Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel.

  Nearly three years later, the inquiry summoned Burgess to give an account of what transpired. Aged seventy, with shoulder-length white hair and beard, Burgess looked like a 1970s rock star gone to seed. He admitted to feeling uncomfortable after discovering in Moscow that Lugovoi was accused of murder. After discussions, Burgess said he came up with three questions. The two main ones were: ‘Did you do anything to cause the death of Alexander Litvinenko?’ and ‘Have you ever handled polonium?’

  The inquiry was shown video footage from the encounter. Lugovoi sits in a leather armchair in the middle of a business suite, legs spread. Seated at a table behind him are an interpreter and the Burgesses. Their subject is hooked up to a polygraph, which measures breathing rate, pulse, and sweating. When asked the two key questions, Lugovoi replies: ‘Nyet.’