by Amy Knight
Once he arrived back in London on November 1, Kovtun decided to follow up with C2, who he hoped would poison Litvinenko. Using Lugovoy’s cell phone, because his own was out of minutes, Kovtun put in a call to C2 at around 11:30 A.M. In later oral testimony to the Inquiry, C2 said that, while he knew Kovtun slightly because the two had worked together at the Il Porto Restaurant, he had had no contact with him for six years. C2, a native Albanian, was working at a coffee shop in East London, far from the city center. He told Kovtun that he was busy and could not meet him right away. That was the only conversation they had.11
Kovtun, in a much later statement to the Inquiry, claimed that he had tried to contact C2 because he wanted him to come to Moscow and work as a chef at a restaurant he and Lugovoy were preparing to open. (And in fact they apparently did open a restaurant, called Ded Pikhto, which Lugovoy later developed as a chain of eating establishments.) But why would Kovtun try to recruit an Albanian—who he hardly knew and who did not speak a word of Russian—to come to Moscow? In the words of the Owen Report: “the elaborate explanation that Mr. Kovtun has given for the call that he made to C2 … amounts to a tissue of lies.” As for D3, Kovtun’s response to his testimony was that D3 was using heroin at the time the two met in Hamburg.12
It might be added that Kovtun contradicted himself more than once on the reason for his London visit of November 1. In his most recent statement, made to the Inquiry in 2015, he insisted: “I have declared repeatedly that I arrived in London by chance on 1 November … I had not contemplated a trip to London.” Yet earlier he claimed that he had come to deliver a report to one Alexander Shadrin, the CEO of Continental Petroleum Ltd.13
Lugovoy, meanwhile, had decided to mix business with pleasure. On the morning of November 1, he brought with him to London (along with a vial of polonium) his wife, two daughters, a daughter’s boyfriend, his young son, and an associate in his security business, Viacheslav Sokolenko. The ostensible purpose of the visit was that the whole group was attending a football (soccer) match that evening between Britain’s Arsenal and CSKA Moscow. Berezovsky’s son-in-law, Egor Shuppe, had arranged for the tickets.
The Polonium Trail
Where had the polonium that Lugovoy and Kovtun obtained come from? As The Owen Report observed: “It is self evident that the isotope polonium 210 is a very rare substance … the isotope is difficult to produce and dangerous to handle.” The Inquiry established, from scientific experts, that the production of polonium in Russia begins at a nuclear reactor at the so-called Mayak facility, near Ozersk, where bismuth 209 atoms are bombarded with neutrons. The recovery of polonium 210 from the irradiated bismuth takes place at another facility called Avangard in the city of Sarov. Small quantities of polonium 210 are then exported to the U.S. for use in devices such as anti-static guns, which remove static electricity from surfaces. The Avangard facility is the only commercial producer of polonium 210 in the world.14
Interviewed on November 28, 2006 (apparently without prior advice from the Kremlin), the head of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), Sergei Kirienko, had this to say:
Russia exports 8 grams [of polonium 210] every year. 8 grams is a large quantity for polonium 210. We used to supply it to Britain. I think supplies to English companies were stopped in 2001 or 2002. We still supply 8 grams a year to American companies. Each time such companies are obliged to provide an official document, the end-user’s certificate and assurances that it is only used for industrial purposes.… The polonium produced in Russia for exports … is controlled very strictly. There is just one producer and it is produced under tough control in line with international agreements.… Therefore I do not believe that someone has stolen it at a producing facility.… Besides, this is a very hazardous substance. It is transported in strictly protected containers. Even if you touch it via pores, via your skin, it penetrates into the body and settles in bones and lungs. And this means death. Therefore I cannot quite understand as to who was ready to steal it.15
What Mr. Kirienko did not say—and what unfortunately was not brought out in the Inquiry—is that the responsibility for ensuring the security of nuclear facilities, including Avangard, is assigned to the FSB. The FSB’s anti-terrorism division, as well as its counterintelligence division, are officially tasked with thwarting the theft of nuclear materials.16 Significantly, in 2001, Nikolai Zelenkin, deputy head of the FSB office in Sarov, announced that the FSB had developed new, very restrictive measures for access to the Avangard plant.17 It thus would have been virtually impossible for Lugovoy and Kovtun to obtain polonium in Russia without the complicity of the security services.
Polonium was apparently chosen for Litvinenko’s murder because it is an alpha emitter and, unlike gamma rays, alpha rays cannot be detected during the screening process at airports. According to one expert on polonium, “the choice of polonium was genius in that polonium, carried in a vial in water, can be carried in a pocket through airport screening devices without setting off any alarms … once administered, the polonium creates symptoms that don’t suggest poison for days, allowing time for the perpetrator to get away.”18
Indeed, the accused killers expected that Litvinenko would die without anyone knowing the cause. But they botched the job, mishandling the polonium and failing, on November 1 at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel, to administer to Litvinenko a dose that would have killed him more quickly. Had he not been so physically fit, Litvinenko doubtless would not have survived so long. His lengthy and painful deterioration enabled the doctors to finally identify the poison just as he succumbed to its effects on November 23, 2006.
But a key question remains. In deciding on polonium 210 as the poison for Litvinenko, why did the FSB not give Lugovoy and Kovtun at least some basic information and training on how to handle the substance, warning them of its lethality? Most probably because, in the eyes of the FSB, the two Russians were expendable. If they contaminated themselves and, inadvertently, others in the process of killing Litvinenko, the adverse health effects would take time to emerge. And the intention was for Litvinenko to die quickly, before the cause could be discovered. In that case, no one would have known that others had been harmed by the poison that killed Litvinenko. Above all, if the FSB had given Lugovoy and Kovtun a notion of how dangerous the poison was, they might have refused to carry out their mission.
The Pine Bar
The morning of November 1 started as a routine day for the Litvinenko family. Marina dropped Anatoly at the Underground station to get a train to his school, and then she went off to visit a friend. Litvinenko told her he was going into the city by bus to meet a business contact and later Mario Scaramella, his Italian associate in his work for the Mitrokhin Commission, and Lugovoy. At 2 P.M., Litvinenko arrived at the Grosvenor Street offices of Dean Attew, company director for Titon International Ltd. According to Attew’s later testimony: “We … discussed work commitments. He was there for about thirty minutes. Alex was his usual self, happy, healthy, as he always was.”19
At 3 P.M., Litvinenko met Scaramella at Itsu, a Japanese restaurant near Piccadilly Circus. Scaramella was in a panic because he had just received emails in English from a former Russian intelligence officer named Evgenii Limarev, reporting that Litvinenko and Berezovsky were about to become the next victims, after Anna Politkovskaya, of the Kremlin’s vengeance. Much to Scaramella’s dismay, Litvinenko did not appear to take the threat seriously: “It doesn’t matter, if it’s from Evgenii, it means not credible … it’s shit if it’s from Evgenii.” Litvinenko was preoccupied with eating his beloved sushi and told Scaramella that he would have his son Anatoly translate the emails and get back to him in a few days.20
Litvinenko’s next meeting, which was to prove fatal, was with Lugovoy and Kovtun in the Pine Bar of London’s Millennium Hotel at around 5 P.M. The two had been sitting at a table for about half an hour before Litvinenko arrived, and had already ordered alcoholic drinks, along with a pot of green tea. Lugovoy told Litvinenko that they were i
n a hurry because they had tickets to attend a football match. According to Litvinenko’s deathbed statement: “Lugovoy said ‘If you want some tea, then there is still some left here, you can have some of this.’ I could have ordered a drink myself, but he kind of presented it in such a way that it’s not really need [sic] to order. I don’t like when people pay for me, but in such expensive hotels, forgive me, I don’t have enough money to pay that.” Lugovoy ordered a clean cup, and Litvinenko had a few sips of the tea. After a few minutes of conversation, they all got up to leave, with promises to meet the next day. Lugovoy’s young son, Igor, appeared and Lugovoy introduced him to Litvinenko, saying “this is Uncle Sasha,” whereupon the two shook hands. (If even a minuscule amount of the poison had gotten on Igor Lugovoy’s hand, it could have been absorbed through his skin and into his bloodstream.)21
We now know, thanks to recovered videos from surveillance cameras at the hotel, that, while they waited for Litvinenko, Lugovoy and Kovtun made separate trips to the gentlemen’s “loo,” presumably to measure out polonium into receptacles. Later tests revealed high levels of polonium in two of the stalls. And a teapot later proved to be heavily contaminated with polonium, even though, several weeks after the poisoning, it had been washed many times. (Polonium 210 is virtually impossible to remove from surfaces.)
Lugovoy claimed initially in an interview with Ekho Moskvy on November 24 (the day after Litvinenko died) that Litvinenko had had nothing whatsoever to drink at their meeting at the Pine Bar, saying unconvincingly that they were all in too much of a hurry to eat or drink anything: “This is absolutely definite, 100 per cent sure: he didn’t order anything and we did not offer him anything either.” But in an interview that same day with the London Daily Telegraph, he was more equivocal: “We had nothing to eat, but I can’t remember if he had tea or not.”22
In early December 2006, during a joint interview with Der Spiegel, both Lugovoy and Kovtun agreed that green tea and gin had been consumed at the Pine Bar.23 Finally, in a much more recent statement, provided from Moscow to the Inquiry, Kovtun recalled that Litvinenko “grabbed the teapot on the table and, without waiting for an invitation, poured himself some tea … he gulped down two cups of hot tea one after the other … [and] then had a coughing fit.” Of course, the accused killers should have known that the bar bill, paid by Lugovoy, would tell all. It included four Gordon’s gins, three teas, and a champagne cocktail.24 Their inconsistencies reflected their growing awareness that the investigation, centered on that fatal half-hour meeting with Litvinenko, was closing in on them.
After saying good-bye to his two Russian colleagues, Litvinenko made his way to Berezovsky’s office. As noted, his relationship with the wealthy businessman had become somewhat strained because the latter had been cutting back on his financing of Litvinenko; but, nonetheless, he was always free to visit. By this time, after his meeting with Lugovoy and Kovtun, Litvinenko began to realize the significance of the emails Scaramella had handed over to him. Here is what Berezovsky, who was flying out of the country that night, later recalled:
I did not spend any time with him because I was in a hurry. I saw him using the photocopier in the print room. He came up to me and handed me two or a maximum of three pages of paper. He told me that they were very important and that it was absolutely confidential. I do not remember if I read the photocopies, but I remember that they had several names on them.… I then again passed Litvinenko in the corridor, on doing so he said to me, “Boris, it’s very important you should pay attention to that.” I said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” He said, “I know that you are leaving but don’t forget, please, you should pay attention to that.” I said, “Okay.” He then left. I do not know where he went after this as I went back into a meeting.25
The next time Berezovsky would see Litvinenko would be several days later, when Litvinenko was on his deathbed.
Litvinenko’s friend Zakaev picked Litvinenko up from Berezovsky’s office to take him home in the early evening of November 1. Zakaev, who often gave Litvinenko lifts in his Mercedes when the two were in the city, was driving, and a Chechen friend, Yagari Abdul, was next to him in the front seat. Litvinenko sat in the back. He did not yet show any signs of illness, but by this time was extremely agitated over the messages he had received from Scaramella and urged Abdul to translate them into Russian so he would not have to wait for his son Anatoly to do it. Abdul did his best, but Zakaev told me that at the time they just thought Litvinenko was making a big deal out of nothing. He tried to calm Litvinenko down as he dropped him off at his house. The usual drama with Litvinenko, so Zakaev thought; he was lovable and earnest, but easily excitable.26
An Agonizing Death
The next day, when Zakaev called Sasha, as was his routine, he learned from a very concerned Marina that her husband was feeling ill. In fact he had been vomiting heavily all night. A day later, on November 3, an ambulance took him to the hospital. From that point onward, until Litvinenko’s death on November 23, Zakaev—along of course with Marina and later Alex Goldfarb and Litvinenko’s father, Valter—stood vigil at his bedside.
It did not take long for Litvinenko to conclude that Lugovoy and Kovtun had poisoned him, but he did not want to make his suspicions public because he wanted to keep his killers off guard. (In fact, they left Britain two days after Litvinenko drank the fatal dose.) Zakaev was shocked when Litvinenko told him that Lugovoy and Kovtun were the probable source of the poison. Despite his closeness to Zakaev, Litvinenko had never before mentioned to him his association with the two men. Why? Litvinenko, with his subsidies from Berezovsky cut back considerably, was desperate to get more contracts from British consulting firms. He evidently thought that teaming up with Lugovoy would help him, but he also must have known that Zakaev would disapprove because of Lugovoy’s background in the security services. As Zakaev realized, Litvinenko had been playing with fire.27
The identification of Litvinenko’s mysterious illness was a nearly impossible challenge for his doctors. At first they suspected food poisoning; but as his condition worsened, they began to look for other causes. Meanwhile, Goldfarb arrived from the United States and was alarmed to learn that Litvinenko was neutropenic, meaning that his immune system was not working. This could not have been caused by either an infection or food poisoning. Goldfarb contacted Britain’s top toxicology expert, Dr. John Henry, who had helped diagnose the poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, an attack he survived but which left him disfigured by facial lesions. Henry agreed to intervene.28
Henry was puzzled when he examined Litvinenko. The hair loss was consistent with poisoning by thallium, a radioactive substance, but thallium also caused muscle weakness, and Litvinenko’s handshake was strong. It was not until November 23, the day of Litvinenko’s death, that Dr. Henry was able to conclude, after extensive research and consultations with other experts, that the poison in Litvinenko’s body was polonium 210. Had Goldfarb not enlisted Henry, Litvinenko might have been buried without anyone knowing the cause of his death, except that it was poison.29
Marina Litvinenko’s description to me of the day Sasha died, after three weeks of agony in a London hospital, is etched clearly in my memory. Once the police learned that her husband had been poisoned by polonium, and that in the days he had been sick before entering the hospital he had unwittingly contaminated their home, Marina and Anatoly were told that they could not even return to get their belongings. For Marina, of course, the shock of this news compounded her grief over losing her husband.30
Marina was unhappy about the letter her husband sent from his deathbed, which was published worldwide, accusing Putin of her husband’s poisoning. Goldfarb and a lawyer named George Menzies had drafted the letter, with her husband’s concurrence, and released it only after consulting a reluctant Marina. For her at that time, it was about the loss of her husband, not retribution, and the letter resulted in a constant barrage of inquiries from journalists for months, just as she and Anatoly were trying t
o recover from the shock of what had happened. Yet Marina holds no grudges (as far I could tell) and she eventually decided that the best way to honor her dead husband was by publicity. She became a fierce and very successful advocate in efforts to hold the Kremlin, and Putin himself, to account for her husband’s murder.
Repercussions
As noted, the two accused killers clearly knew very little about the poison they had handled. Otherwise, they would not have been so careless, contaminating themselves, and leaving traces of the poison everywhere they went—“like the crumbs spread by Hansel and Gretel,” in the words of a British authority—which is how the police were able to identify them as the culprits. Lugovoy and Kovtun were both so contaminated with polonium 210 that upon their return to Russia they had to check into Moscow’s Special Clinic Number Six for several weeks. Kovtun, who lost most of his hair, was the more severely affected. The conclusion of British experts, who obtained their medical records from Moscow, was that both men had no immediate health consequences, but in the longer term had an increased risk of cancer over the normal population. Scotland Yard sent investigators to question them at the Russian clinic, and the records of the interrogations are now available. As might be expected, both suspects denied, unconvincingly, that they had anything to do with the killing. Later, they would suggest that either Berezovsky or MI6 poisoned Litvinenko and claim that they got second-hand contamination from him.31