Once Upon a Time in Russia

by Ben Mezrich

  In the beginning, it was payments to keep ORT afloat; but since the election in 1996, the focus seemed to shift to keeping Berezovsky’s lifestyle intact. The money had gone to purchase rare works of art for the Oligarch’s homes and offices; to settle girlfriends’ credit card bills; to help pay for at least one yacht, a private airplane, and even three French châteaus in the Antibes. All of it under the table, without any papers being filled out or contracts being signed. Just a phone call or a visit from Badri, followed by a suitcase full of money. There was no real paper trail, but if Abramovich had to calculate it, he believed that, in 1996 alone, he had paid at least thirty million to his krysha. In 1997, it had to be closer to fifty million. In 1998, maybe seventy or eighty million more. So much money, in such a crazy fashion: at Sibneft, they had simply begun to refer to the payments as Project Boris, which everyone accepted, if reluctantly, as the price of doing business.

  It was a frustrating arrangement. At times, Abramovich had considered attempting to slow or stop the flow of cash—but the realities of the market and the business environment made any attempt to cut off ties with Berezovsky risky, if not outright suicidal. Without the Oligarch’s continued connections to the Kremlin and to the Family, Sibneft would not have existed—and there was always the chance that, without Berezovsky, the company would suddenly find itself out of the good graces of the Yeltsin government. The higher Berezovsky rose, the greater his political status and, the thinking went, the better it was for Sibneft.

  Abramovich simply had to accept that, often, he was writing checks that had more to do with inflating the entity known as Boris Berezovsky more than any particular business concern. One of the oddest expenditures in the past few months, and one that still irked him, had to do with Berezovsky’s role in the Chechen conflict. As the story went, after Chechen terrorists had kidnapped a pair of Brits from the capital city of Grozny in July of the year before, the Russian government had spent months trying to negotiate their release. Nothing was working, until the white knight Boris Berezovsky stepped in, like a superhero out of a Hollywood movie, making some sort of deal with the terrorists—then flying the hostages out to freedom on his own private jet.

  In reality, most of the negotiations with the Chechens had most likely involved Badri more than Berezovsky. And for certain, the private jet had been paid for by Sibneft—and Roman Abramovich. The ransom that had freed the aid workers had also been paid by Sibneft—and Roman Abramovich.

  But Abramovich had never wanted any press or even acknowledgment for his involvement; he had always been happy to stay out of the limelight that Berezovsky craved.

  Over the past few years, the two men had developed an intricate relationship—built around payments—but also one that mimicked an actual friendship. They celebrated holidays together, spending New Year’s in the Caribbean, birthdays at the Logovaz Club and in the châteaus in France and in chalets in Switzerland; they had spent time on various yachts, on beaches on Mallorca and the Riviera. But Abramovich had also spent countless hours waiting in the anteroom outside Berezovsky’s office, like some sort of assistant, at the older man’s beck and call. Berezovsky certainly did not consider him an equal—and what sort of real friendship could be built on an unequal footing?

  Nor was he exactly a business partner; Berezovsky had nothing to do with the day-to-day business of the oil company, and Abramovich doubted the man could read a balance sheet if his life depended on it. Berezovsky knew how to work the Kremlin, knew how to leverage friendships and political power to make things happen—and he knew how to use a telephone to ask for money. His only other truly impressive skill was that he knew, better than most, how to spot and take advantage of opportunities.

  “You see a dead factory,” Badri responded, his deep voice like a sonic boom. “I see an invaluable asset, that is getting cheaper by the day.”

  Even though it was Badri who had accompanied them on this Siberian excursion, Abramovich had no doubt that it was Berezovsky who had come up with the idea, having spotted yet another opportunity.

  From what Abramovich understood, the situation had come about due to Berezovsky’s on-again, off-again relationship with General Lebed—the military man who had been the third-place finisher in the 1996 election before going over to Yeltsin’s team. Lebed, as a reward for his support of Yeltsin, had been made governor of this entire Siberian province, a resource-rich but far-flung section of the country that seemed always to be engulfed in some sort of labor or economic turmoil. Case in point—the dead factory below had only days ago been one of the largest production facilities of aluminum in the world—now frozen in place because of a labor dispute that had erupted in one of the biggest strikes in recent history.

  Abramovich could still picture the crowds of angry, striking workers, the largest of which they had flown directly over during the short chopper ride to the factory. The laborers had effectively shut down a large swath of Krasnoyarsk; their demands were confusing, but had to do with better pay, safer conditions, fairer hours. Every minute they were on the streets, the aluminum industry took a major hit—but, to be sure, strikes were only one facet of the ugliness that revolved around the multibillion-dollar business of one of the most utilized and useful metals in the modern world. Abramovich was well aware—aluminum was a dirty business. The press in Moscow even had a name for the chaos that had been tearing through the industry over the past twelve months: the Aluminum Wars. A staggering number of murders had been committed in a short period of time, as different businessmen jockeyed for control, amid the labor issues, privatization attempts, and general pricing confusion. Abramovich had even read that there was a murder every three days that had to do with aluminum—from shootings in restaurants and bars to full-out gun battles at smelting plants.

  In fact, the giant, dormant factory they were now flying over was run by a man who had just been arrested for the murder of two of his competitors—even though both men were reportedly still alive. Between the manager’s arrest and the strikes, the company was now in complete disarray.

  Chaos, murder, mayhem—and obviously, in Berezovsky and Badri’s opinion, opportunity.

  When the Georgian had first approached Abramovich with the idea of throwing their hat into the aluminum industry’s ring, Abramovich had turned him down flat. He told Badri that it was madness, that they didn’t need this sort of trouble. But Badri had persisted, saying how much money could be made if someone were to succeed in unifying the industry under one company—much as Abramovich had done with Sibneft.

  Eventually, Abramovich had looked again at the situation, and then had shown the numbers to Eugene, one of the most brilliant business minds around. Together, they agreed that Badri was right, in a fashion. If they could figure out a way to navigate the dangerous waters of the metal’s production, consolidate the foundries, take care of the strikes—there would be an enormous amount of profit to be made. The key would be to convince the rival groups that it would be much more profitable and productive to make deals with each other—rather than try to kill each other. Two particularly vicious groups had to be dealt with, but Badri believed he could talk to them in terms they would understand. If they needed to lock the competing gangs in a room overnight, demand that they make a deal and come out millionaires or murder each other there on the spot—well, that’s what they would do. In the end, Badri believed, everyone’s goal was the same—to make as much money as possible.

  As for the strikes, the labor situation, the politics—no doubt General Lebed would be pleased if someone could move in and get the strikers off his streets. His relationship with Berezovsky was like the wind—you never knew which way it was going to blow. But he would be helpful, if he believed they could actually achieve some sort of unification that would stop the murders and clean up his region.

  In terms of consolidating the industry, Abramovich had an ace up his sleeve: a young man named Oleg Deripaska, who had grown up in similar circumstances as Abramovich—a kid from a poor region su
rrounding the Black Sea. Deripaska had worked his way from the factory floor in the metal business, and had built himself into a major player in the industry. Along the way, he had survived numerous assassination attempts and violent threats—at one point, a threat to him personally had been followed by one of his managers being shot twice. Even so, he had maintained his position at the top of the business, paying off huge krysha bills to various local figures to keep his factories running smoothly.

  Abramovich had gotten to know Deripaska well, and most of his knowledge of the aluminum industry came through hearing the stories Deripaska told. Abramovich had begun to believe that, with Deripaska’s involvement, a consolidation might be possible.

  “Five hundred and fifty million,” Badri continued, still looking out the helicopter window. “You could free a lot of British aide workers for that sort of money, but I think the return on investment is much higher here.”

  The number was approximately what Eugene, Abramovich, and Deripaska had come up with—the amount it would take to buy their way into aluminum with enough of a bankroll to make all the elements happy enough to join together and stop killing each other. The arrangement had been made during a twelve-hour, all-night marathon session. Abramovich and Eugene had brought all the elements together in a room, and had essentially locked the doors until 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Deripaska and the other aluminum magnates essentially had to make a choice—continue killing each other over the metal industry, or settle down, stop the fighting, and make a ton of money together. In the end, the weight—both financial and political—that Abramovich and his connections brought to the table pushed everyone to make the deal—and put an end to the Aluminum Wars. Furthermore, Eugene had come up with a sophisticated, genius scheme to allow them to conjure up the more than half a billion dollars necessary without actually laying down the cash themselves: they would merge the different aluminum elements, and then use the new company’s assets to cover the payment.

  All of it worked out without anyone firing a shot: end the wars, solve the strikes, and put another billion-dollar asset under their umbrella.

  Whatever Abramovich truly thought of Boris Berezovsky, he had an eye for opportunities—even if other people had to figure out how to mine them for their value. And as long as the Oligarch stayed important and close to the people in charge of the government—as long as he was entrenched with the Family—he had the connections necessary to let people like Abramovich do what they did best in a safe, productive environment.

  The question was, how long could Berezovsky remain such an important player—extending himself further and further, embroiling himself in drama after drama, controversy after controversy? Business in Russia was cutthroat—the Aluminum Wars were a prime example—but the political world could be equally, if not more, dangerous. Yeltsin, for all that he had done, was a sick, aging man—he wasn’t going to last forever.

  Abramovich could only hope that whoever eventually took the president’s place could tolerate a man like Boris Berezovsky as Yeltsin obviously had. It took a special sort of demeanor to accept such a dramatic presence, hovering like a sputtering, loud, old helicopter around his head.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  November 27, 1999,

  Moscow

  A FEW MINUTES PAST NOON on a crisp November afternoon, one year and ten days from the bizarre and ill-fated whistle-blowing press conference—which the media and the public had written off as a dramatic farce orchestrated by Berezovsky for his own personal enlargement—Alexander Litvinenko was receiving a hard lesson in the relativity of time.

  The cracked skin of his wrists rubbed raw against the cold metal of handcuffs, his body thin and pale beneath a stiff prison uniform, his shoulders hunched forward as he folded his lanky body into the narrow defendant’s docket of a crowded courtroom, he was wading through what felt like forever—the longest four hours imaginable, as the judge, still in his chambers somewhere on the other side of the courtroom walls, deliberated his fate. Although Litvinenko remained facing forward, he knew that behind him, in row after row of seats in the tightly controlled courtroom, were journalists, cameramen, television reporters. They had come for another spectacle, this time arranged by the state instead of an Oligarch.

  Litvinenko had been fired from his job with the FSB back in January. His dismissal had merited only a sentence or two in the local newspapers. But when he had been unceremoniously arrested on an uncharacteristically cold, snowy day in March, dragged away from his home to Lefortovo Prison—famous for formerly having been the KGB’s jail—he had ended up in a paragraph on the front page, with supporting photos. The charges made absolutely no mention of his whistle-blowing or the press conference he had held for Berezovsky, but rather, accused him of “exceeding his official power and causing harm to witnesses,” something his lawyers, provided by the state, told him involved the in-custody beating of a man who had been smuggling canned goods. Every journalist in the city seemed to be here at the trial that would either lead to his release or to another seeming lifetime in the soul-crushing prison. It was a frenzied feeding of the third estate.

  Lefortovo had been a nightmare. Litvinenko’s first lesson on the relativity of time, it was the longest eight months of his life. Separated from his wife and child, trapped in a cell next to murderers, traitors, thieves, and degenerates, he was horribly alone. Within that hell, he’d also experienced the longest minutes of his life—beatings he had received from prison guards for reasons unexplained. Then he had been placed in solitary confinement, locked in a cage barely wider than his shoulders, for infractions that he’d supposedly committed but that also were never made clear.

  Most of it felt a blur, now, as he waited in that courtroom, expecting little but praying for justice from a judge he didn’t know. His krysha, Berezovsky, had done his best, working behind the scenes to try to secure his release—but even Berezovsky’s power seemed to have its limits. The new head of the FSB, Putin, had deemed Litvinenko a betrayer and traitor for turning on his agency. To Putin, the corruption that Litvinenko had revealed was less important than the disloyalty he had exhibited. Berezovsky had told him on one of his visits to Lefortovo that they should have foreseen the young FSB director’s opinion on the matter; the reason Putin had been brought to Moscow from St. Petersburg in the first place was his steadfast belief in loyalty.

  Berezovsky would do what he could, but Litvinenko also knew that the mogul was currently embroiled in his own drama—of a political nature. In business, the Oligarch was flying high, his fingers in oil, television, and now aluminum. But another election was looming, and this time there would be no propping up President Yeltsin. Even without the constitutional term limits that kept the president from running again, the man’s health had deteriorated to the point that he was nearly a cadaver. After his latest heart attack—at least his fifth—the poor man now rarely appeared in public. Berezovsky and the Family were desperately searching for a replacement to run in Yeltsin’s place—someone who would carry on the legacy that they, and Yeltsin, had created.

  Compared to such important matters—the drama on the national stage—Litvinenko was merely a minor player, a bit part, a member of the chorus. The only person who truly thought of him as anything more was his ballroom dancer—who even now watched and waited with him from across the courtroom, her hands clasped together on her lap, helping him count down through those long, painful last few minutes.

  Finally, there was a commotion from the front of the courtroom, caused by the judge’s entrance. He strolled purposefully to his bench and reached for his gavel. He cleared his throat, adding agonizing seconds to the wait for his verdict—a new lesson for Litvinenko in the relativity of time.

  Then, suddenly, he spat out, “Innocent of all charges.”

  Litvinenko’s entire body stiffened as he digested what he had just heard. The courtroom erupted behind him, cameras flashing, and he could hear Marina laughing out loud with joy. One of the court b
ailiffs came over to unlock the docket where he was held and help Litvinenko out of his handcuffs. Litvinenko raised himself carefully to his feet and was about to take a step toward his wife, when suddenly there was a new commotion, an immense crash from the back of the long room. Litvinenko turned to see a dozen armed men burst into the courtroom. Garbed in camouflage uniforms, faces covered in black balaclavas, the men shoved the reporters aside as they moved down the center aisle, commanding the court bailiffs to stand aside. When they reached Litvinenko, two of them shouldered their automatic rifles, then grabbed him, yanking his arms back behind his back, clinking new cuffs around his wrists. Then they dragged him forward.

  “You’re under arrest,” one of the men coughed in his ear.

  “But the judge,” Litvinenko stammered back, “he just said I’m innocent.”

  The man didn’t respond. Litvinenko couldn’t believe this was happening, right in front of all the news cameras. A judge had freed him, and now he was being rearrested right in the courtroom.

  A message was clearly being sent. The armed men dragged him forward, roughly moving him past the reporters, who scrambled to get out of the way. As he passed Marina, one of the camouflaged men shoved him hard, and he could hear her gasp, shouting something, but then he was being dragged to the back door, toward the waiting unmarked cars outside.