Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  One particular episode in Lugovoy’s life deserves attention. Supposedly, Lugovoy was arrested in 2001 and imprisoned for fifteen months because he had tried to help an associate of Berezovsky, Nikolai Glushkov, escape from prison. This episode served to create the impression that Lugovoy was a rebel of sorts who had, like Litvinenko, been persecuted by the FSB and thus made him appear trustworthy to the London group of exiles. Berezovsky later told British investigators: “I trusted Lugovoy completely. Because he ended up in prison on the accusation of helping my friend who was also in prison at the time … Lugovoy was convicted. And of course this enhanced my trust, the level of my trust in him.”39

  But several people questioned this story. Glushkov, for one, said that no one had seen Lugovoy in Lefortovo Prison during the time he was allegedly detained there. And Andrei Vasil’ev, editor of the newspaper Kommersant, observed: “I find Lugovoy’s story a little strange. He was in prison, had a criminal record, and suddenly he is okay, is allowed to do business, still having contact with Berezovsky. It raises questions.”40

  Lugovoy earned a lot of money, apparently because wealthy and often corrupt Russians were willing to pay high prices for their krysha (cover or protection) and because of his connections with the Kremlin and the FSB. He also became an Anglophile, even sending a daughter to language courses in Cambridge and his son to a private British school in Moscow. (He bragged to journalist Luke Harding, who interviewed him in April 2008, that he had read all the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.)41 Starting in 2004, Lugovoy was making regular trips to London, sometimes with his wife, Svetlana, where they shopped at exclusive stores on Bond Street in Mayfair. He also was looking for London property to buy. But Lugovoy, by all accounts, did not acquire the appearance or graces of a British gentleman, even though, on the day of Litvinenko’s fatal poisoning, he was flashing a $50,000 watch on his wrist.

  Lugovoy made a point of cultivating relations with both Litvinenko and Berezovsky on his trips to London. He also was close to a wealthy Georgian oligarch exiled in London, Badri Patarkatsishvili, who died, allegedly of a heart attack, in 2008. Berezovsky trusted Lugovoy so much that he hired him to provide security for a daughter who was living in St. Petersburg. Lugovoy was invited to Berezovsky’s lavish sixtieth birthday party, held at the elegant Blenheim Palace in January 2006, and sat at the same table with Litvinenko and Marina. Later, in the summer of 2006, Lugovoy and his wife visited Litvinenko at his home in Muswell Hill, spending three hours there. (Marina and Anatoly were away.) Meanwhile, Litvinenko and Lugovoy started collaborating on efforts to sell their insiders’ knowledge of the Kremlin to British consulting firms. Litvinenko, according to Lugovoy’s unsubstantiated claims, was also encouraging Lugovoy to become an informer for MI6.

  In retrospect, it is hard to believe that both Litvinenko and Berezovsky trusted Lugovoy and did not suspect that he was acting on behalf of the FSB. Dean Attew, the head of Titon International, which Litvinenko and Lugovoy were attempting to engage for consulting work, disliked Lugovoy immediately upon meeting him in June 2006: “There was something I would describe as cold, scarily cold about Lugovoy. It wasn’t that I felt frightened; it wasn’t that I felt in harm’s way in any way. I just didn’t like the characteristics of the individual or the profile that was sitting in front of me.”42

  Titon International and Erinys were in the same building on Grosvenor Square and shared a boardroom. Attew advised Erinys head Tim Reilly not to allow Lugovoy in his offices, or to do business with him, but Reilly discounted the advice. He had a more favorable impression of Lugovoy, although he pointed out that Lugovoy was an obvious “new Russian”: “We would call it nouveau riche, so [he] would have all the accoutrements of the Western world, and then there would be an odd, you know, shiny tie, or something like that. It was quite funny. It sounds awful, but you could spot this straightaway, and he was on the make.”43 Reilly was convinced that Litvinenko and Lugovoy were valuable resources for potential Erinys consulting contracts with Russian gas and oil companies because of their past work for the Russian security services: “If you go into any major Russian corporation the security guy is the most important person, because in Soviet times he would be the KGB guy.”44

  For all his savvy as an operator in the world of the secret services and high finance, Lugovoy made a big mistake in enlisting his boyhood friend Dmitrii Kovtun into the venture to kill Litvinenko. Kovtun, by all accounts, was a loser—sullen and furtive, addicted to alcohol, with little knowledge of English. (Lugovoy did all the talking for the two when they were in London.) At forty-one, Kovtun had not done much with his life. His father had been a colonel in the Soviet army, and he had studied at the same elite military school that Lugovoy had attended. But after serving with Soviet troops stationed in Prague and later East Berlin, Kovtun deserted in 1992 and moved with his new Russian wife to Hamburg, where he lived from 1992 to 2003, divorcing his first wife and marrying and divorcing a second. Kovtun earned money by working as a dishwasher and refuse collector, but spent most of his time drinking. His main goal, according to one of his wives, was to become a porn star. It is not clear what Kovtun did after he returned to Moscow in 2003—he lived with his mother, a veterinarian—but at some point he reconnected with Lugovoy, joining him to work on some of his business ventures, including a drinks company.45 Apparently Lugovoy chose Kovtun as partner in his mission to poison Litvinenko because he was a loyal friend. But as it would turn out, Kovtun’s ineptness helped to ensure that the two men would be exposed as the killers of Litvinenko.

  Moving in on Litvinenko

  Why was it so important to kill Litvinenko with such haste after he had been in Britain for six years? In addition to his Chechenpress piece, one explanation might be his work with Spanish security services in their efforts to combat Russian organized crime in Spain, which he had started at least a year before, making trips to Spain for that purpose. Litvinenko had not only provided Spanish authorities with information linking high-level Kremlin officials to the Russian mafia in Spain. He had also revealed evidence of business connections between the Tambov criminal mafia and members of the Ozero cooperative, the elite group that formed part of Putin’s inner-circle. Litvinenko was planning to travel to Spain in November to give testimony to a Spanish prosecutor that would include information about Putin’s ties to organized crime. Significantly, Lugovoy knew about this because Litvinenko had suggested to Lugovoy that he accompany him. Litvinenko cancelled the trip on his deathbed.46

  We also know from the Inquiry that shortly before his death, Litvinenko made the mistake of handing over to Lugovoy a copy of the highly damaging report on Putin’s crony Viktor Ivanov that Litvinenko had submitted to Erinys, apparently so Lugovoy would have an idea of the type of product British firms were interested in. The report was actually written by Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer living in the United States. According to Novaia gazeta, Lugovoy, returning to Moscow from London in September 2006, was caught red-handed with the Ivanov dossier and was detained for two hours at Sheremetevo Airport, where he was “worked over” by Russian authorities.47 But it is more likely that Lugovoy, already collaborating with the FSB, handed the report over to this agency on his own initiative and was not interrogated at the airport.

  Shvets was convinced that the Ivanov report was the final nail in Litvinenko’s coffin. Here is some of what he had to say in his testimony to the British Inquiry:

  Question from the solicitor: If this report had got into the wrong hands—and that’s to say hands connected with Mr. Ivanov, and linked to Sasha’s name—do you think that that posed a risk, and a risk of physical harm to Sasha, that he might be at risk himself?

  Shvets: Yes, I do, I do, and unfortunately there are proverbial words in the report, the Ivanov report, which shows that Mr. Ivanov is vindictive and he comes back to the source of negative information on him with a vengeance. This is unfortunately exactly what happened to Sasha. So the report itself is an unfortunate confirmation that that is correct. T
he reason is not negative information on Mr. Ivanov himself, but the report contains negative information on Mr. Putin as well. I mean the information which alleges Mr. Putin’s involvement in drug-related business when he worked in the office of the mayor of St. Petersburg, and I believe that this is the last thing Mr. Ivanov or Mr. Putin wanted, to have somebody in the West … investigating the details of this alleged involvement.… It is my understanding that they have it in line already, the process for killing people which doesn’t require a lot of preparation.

  When I worked with the first chief directorate [of the KGB], I remember I had a personal experience, there was a lab in Moscow, at that time it was located at Academician Varga Street number 2, which was manufacturing poisons, drugs, different kind of drugs, and other deadly substances which could alter minds and which could kill people. So basically, they had the tool to kill people and at any time, at any minute.

  The issue is how to organize, how to deliver the tool to the target, and it looks like there the people who were in charge, they were in a hurry, because apparently they didn’t want the source of this report to continue this kind of reporting.… So they had this polonium ready to go to be used and then [disposed of]. The only thing was to organize the delivery, and here they have an individual, Mr. Lugovoy, who has access to Mr. Litvinenko on basically a daily basis. So it didn’t appear very much complicated organizationally.48

  However uncomplicated the plot may have seemed, it did not work out as planned. As the veteran Kremlin watcher and sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaia observed to Luke Harding: “My FSB friends told me that this [Litvinenko’s bungled poisoning] would have never happened under Andropov [former KGB head and later Communist Party chief]. They told me that the KGB was much more efficient at murdering back then.”49 Strictly from the standpoint of tradecraft, the FSB was remiss in assigning the job of killing Litvinenko to these two very questionable men. And Putin, apparently driven by a thirst for vengeance against Litvinenko, was reckless in not ensuring that the FSB carried out “Operation Litvinenko” more professionally. Putin had thus far been able to distance himself from the mounting number of political killings that were occurring on his watch. Now the world would entertain the possibility that he had actually ordered this assassination.

  The accused killers: Dmitrii Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy.

  (Photograph courtesy of SERGEI ILNITSKY/EPA)

  8

  THE POISONING

  For Putin, everything is personal.

  Marina Litvinenko, author interview, April 2014

  We talked about nothing … only just “how are things going?” … All was normal. That was it.

  Andrei Lugovoy, on his last meeting with Litvinenko at the Pine Bar of London’s Millennium Hotel on November 1, 2006

  Prelude to a Murder

  Lugovoy and Kovtun first tried to poison Alexander Litvinenko on October 16, 2006, the day that they arrived together from Moscow at London’s Gatwick Airport. At Immigration Control, they had a twenty-minute interview with detective Spencer Scott, who questioned them about the purpose of their visit. Lugovoy explained, in broken English, that they were in London on business and had a meeting with a company called Continental Petroleum on Grosvenor Street. Scott found Lugovoy evasive and so called the contact at that company, who confirmed the appointment. The two men were then allowed to pass through immigration, carrying with them a small vial of the world’s most deadly and rare radioactive poison—polonium 210.1

  When Lugovoy and Kovtun showed up later at the Best Western Hotel on Shaftesbury Avenue, the manager was amused: “We found them to be quite comical, really, on account of how they were dressed and the excessive jewelry that they were wearing … silk and polyester suits and shirts … the colors didn’t match, the suits were either too big or too small, they just didn’t look like people who were used to wearing suits.”2 Little did he know that just weeks later, these same Russians would emerge as prime suspects in what would not only be an assassination, but also an act of nuclear terrorism.

  That afternoon, Litvinenko and the two men met at the boardroom of the firm Erinys with its director, Tim Reilly. Later it was revealed that the room registered high levels of polonium contamination—the lethal radioactive material has a half-life of 138 days—suggesting that Lugovoy and Kovtun had tried to poison Litvinenko there. On the night of October 16, Litvinenko was sick and vomited. He attributed his symptoms to food poisoning, but hair samples taken from Litvinenko after he was hospitalized in November indicated a poisoning at around this time.3

  Reilly could not remember all the specifics of the boardroom meeting, but he said the Russians had joked about the English always drinking tea and suggested that they have some. Reilly prepared tea and went off to the bathroom. While he was gone apparently either Lugovoy or Kovtun slipped polonium into Litvinenko’s cup when the latter was not looking. Litvinenko possibly had a small sip of the tea or simply breathed the vapor. It was not enough to kill him, but it was enough to make him ill.4 Both rooms that Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed in at the Best Western on the night of October 16 were later tested and revealed high levels of polonium. In Lugovoy’s room, no. 107, tests made on December 22, 2006 showed extensive traces of the poison in the lower drain of the bathroom sink, suggesting, as the Inquiry report noted, that either Lugovoy or Kovtun had prepared a solution in the bathroom in preparation for poisoning Litvinenko and poured some of the solution down the sink.5

  Lugovoy returned on his own to London from Moscow on the evening of October 25. The trip had been planned hastily, with the hotel and air bookings made only the day before. We know Lugovoy had polonium with him because the plane he traveled on later revealed contamination, as did his hotel room, 848, at the Sheraton, where he stayed for three nights. The highest readings were in the bathroom wastebasket and on towels discovered in January 2007. Experts concluded that “contamination was consistent with an accidental spillage, perhaps followed by an attempt to clean up and/or dispose of the solution.”6

  Although Lugovoy met with Litvinenko during this visit to London, it was only briefly, in the bar of the Sheraton Hotel and then perhaps the next day. This was not made clear during the Inquiry. Lugovoy did pay two other important calls, however. On October 26, a driver took him to Badri Patarkatsishvili’s lavish mansion in Surrey, where he spent the entire afternoon with the Georgian oligarch. The two had known each other since 1993, when Lugovoy had headed security at ORT, the television channel owned jointly by Patarkatsishvili and Berezovsky. Subsequently, Lugovoy had provided security for Patarkatsishvili on trips to Georgia, and the two continued to have a close association. The passenger seat Lugovoy had occupied in the hired car that took him to Surrey was later tested for radiation, and secondary contamination was discovered.

  Later that afternoon, or possibly the next day, Lugovoy paid a visit to Berezovsky’s office in Mayfair (where the couch he sat on subsequently revealed high levels of polonium contamination). As the Inquiry report noted: “It seems clear that as late as the end of October 2006, Mr. Berezovsky regarded Mr. Lugovoy as a trusted associate—someone who was ‘one of us’ in his dispute with the Putin regime.”7 The same, it would seem, applied for Litvinenko. Although he had spent a career as a sleuth and knew the ways of the FSB backward and forward, it evidently did not occur to him to question Lugovoy’s motives until he was on his deathbed.

  Kovtun’s Failed Gambit

  The hapless Kovtun showed up in Hamburg on the morning of October 28, 2006. His ex-wife Marina Wall and her partner, accompanied by her children, picked him up at the airport, and he stayed the night with them. Kovtun seemed at loose ends and was broke: he borrowed the credit card of Marina’s partner to book a flight to London for November 1. Marina obviously still retained some affection for Kovtun, although he had been an unsuitable husband. She later told German investigators: “Every woman finds Dmitrii charming. It is just he does not fancy working and he is not a family man. He is more a man about town. That is why we were
not suited.…” She added that “I had to do everything. I had to set up the letters on the computer. He was not able to do this. Dmitrii was no handyman. He could not even bang a nail into the wall.”8 Moreover, we learn, Kovtun did not have a driver’s license. He failed the test repeatedly because he was close to blind in one eye after a brawl with some fellow Russians.9 This was the man, also with a serious drinking problem, who the FSB had hired to carry out a high-level political murder in the center of London, using one of the world’s most lethal poisons!

  Marina Wall’s mother, Elenora Wall, was fond of Kovtun and picked him up outside her daughter’s flat the next day so he could spend the night with her. He brought gifts, including Russian vodka, chocolate marshmallows, and pickled mushrooms from his mother, which Elenora especially liked. They spent the evening talking in the kitchen, and the next day, October 30, Kovtun went back to central Hamburg to meet with a friend from a restaurant where he had worked, Il Porto.

  There was a special purpose for the meeting. Kovtun had asked his friend (only identified as D3 in the Inquiry documents) to put him in contact with a former restaurant cook living in London, telling D3 outright that he had an assignment to kill a traitor with poison and needed help. According to testimony by D3, who invited Kovtun to spend the night with him: “Dmitrii said he had a very expensive poison and needed the cook to administer it to Litvinenko. I did not take seriously what Dmitrii said. I thought it was just talk.”10 Kovtun managed to get the telephone number of the cook (C2 in the Inquiry documents) from another former restaurant employee and then returned to Marina Wall’s home, where he spent the night before flying off early to London on November 1. He had, apparently unwittingly, spread polonium in all the various places he visited in Hamburg.