information. A list of people who might be responsible for killing Anna Politkovskaya,” he said. The list was being offered by Mario Scaramella, a dubious figure on the margins of Italian politics who would later be arrested in a criminal investigation in Italy. Litvinenko had served as a source of sorts for the Italian’s attempts to undermine Romano Prodi, the country’s prime minister. Scaramella several times had paid him to fly to Italy and help build the case that Prodi was a stooge of the KGB; once he even videotaped Litvinenko saying so.
The two met that afternoon at Itsu, the sushi bar. Scaramella handed over a four-page e-mail—a purported hit list from Dignity and Honor, an association of former KGB agents with a history of issuing threats against supposed traitors. Among the names on the death list were those of Scaramella, Litvinenko, Berezovsky, and Anna. Litvinenko didn’t think it stood up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, he went by Berezovsky’s office to make photocopies, and gave one to the billionaire. Then he headed for a meeting with Lugovoi, who just the night before had shared a bottle of red wine with Berezovsky, his old boss.
By most accounts, Litvinenko was in good spirits. That night, he and Marina were planning to celebrate the sixth anniversary of their escape to England. They would have a quiet dinner together—Marina was planning to prepare chicken, a favorite dish.
He was also buoyed by the potential profits from a Lugovoi partnership. The two had agreed that Litvinenko would receive a 20 percent cut of any business he brought to the multi-millionaire’s security company. If things went well, Litvinenko told his friend Oleg Gordievsky, he could earn a half million pounds. Among other things, that would allow him to end his financial reliance on Boris Berezovsky.
Sometime after four p.m., Litvinenko made his way down the street to the Millennium Hotel, to look for Lugovoi in the Pine Bar. It would be their last business meeting.
CHAPTER 10
Polonium
THE NOBLE MILLENNIUM HOTEL, BUILT AS AN ELEGANT MANSION in the eighteenth century, is situated on Grosvenor Square, in London’s Mayfair district. The neighborhood around the square has several historical ties with the United States. General Dwight Eisenhower established his headquarters there during World War II, and the north side of the square is dominated by a monument to FDR. On the west side, the concrete-and-glass behemoth that is the American embassy clashes with the prevailing Georgian architecture.
This identification with America explained why, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the British feared an assault on the embassy. Authorities beefed up patrols and installed concrete blast barriers around the complex. But some nervous Mayfair residents thought that was not enough. A Swedish financier named Peter Castenfelt organized a neighborhood revolt, demanding that police seal access roads. As long as they were open, Castenfelt said, any attacker could drive up, detonate a bomb, and injure or kill nearby residents. I have known the soft-spoken Castenfelt for several years; well connected in capitals from Washington to Moscow, he has a habit of turning up in the middle of high-profile situations. “This is the No. 1 security issue in London that has not been resolved,” he said, and led the group in buying double-page protest ads in
About five p.m. on November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko strolled along the square’s south side and entered the Millennium’s sedate green-and-white marble lobby. He turned into the Pine Bar, where he found Andrei Lugovoi sitting with a cigar-smoking associate, Dmitri Kovtun.
Waiter Norberto Andrade knew Lugovoi as a regular and had already brought shots of gin to the wealthy Russian businessman and his companion. Although everyone knew that Litvinenko was a teetotaler, Kovtun offered the former KGB officer a drink; by Russian custom, it would have been impolite not to do so. Litvinenko declined as expected, and sipped the green tea mixed with honey and lemon that the waiter had also set before them.
The three men were there to continue exploring the possibilities of an informal partnership, one that would use Litvinenko’s talents at intelligence gathering to attract British business for Lugovoi’s security company in Moscow. But the meeting was cut short after about a half-hour by the appearance of Lugovoi’s wife and eight- year-old son. Lugovoi and his family had booked a room at the Millennium and planned to attend a soccer match that evening between Britain’s Arsenal and Russia’s CSKA Moscow.
Litvinenko bid them good-bye and caught a ride home with his Chechen friend Akhmed Zakayev. Around seven-thirty p.m., he sat down for dinner with his wife, Marina, and their son, Anatoly. It was six years to the day since they had arrived at Heathrow Airport and were granted political asylum after defecting from Russia.
As Marina later would recall, her husband was expecting to meet again with Lugovoi and Kovtun the next day. He went to bed around eleven, only to complain of nausea and twice throw up “violently,” she said. She gave him milk of magnesia, which made him vomit once more.
Whatever was troubling his system, he wanted it out. So, as Marina slept, Litvinenko continued to drink the milk of magnesia and vomit through the night. He noticed that what came up was oddly gray. Early the next morning, Litvinenko rang Lugovoi to say he couldn’t make their meeting; he felt terrible.
Over the next two days, Litvinenko began suffering stomach pain and intense diarrhea in addition to the vomiting. Paramedics were summoned, and they concluded that he was dehydrated. Give him liquids, they advised. The next day, Marina summoned a Russian friend who was a doctor, and he was alarmed that Litvinenko cried out in pain at the slightest touch. Paramedics were summoned once again, and this time they rushed Litvinenko to nearby Barnet General Hospital. He was so weak he could barely walk.
“Marina, this is something abnormal,” he told his wife. “When I was in school at the military academy, we studied poisoning like this that was caused by a chemical weapon. This really reminds me of that.” Marina said she couldn’t believe it. How could it be possible that he had been poisoned? But Litvinenko was increasingly certain.
Upon his admission to the hospital, doctors immediately administered intravenous hydration. Marina stroked his head, only to become newly alarmed. His hair was coming out in her hand.
During the next week, Litvinenko’s condition fluctuated. He seemed to be recovering, able to stand and swing his arms for exercise. Then he began vomiting again, this time bringing up blood. His doctors said tests indicated bacteria in his intestine, and they prescribed antibiotics.
Marina became frantic. Her husband’s hair covered his pillow. He could barely speak. His skin was yellow. The doctors delivered disturbing news—Litvinenko’s white blood cell count had dropped sharply. His bone marrow was depleted. They flailed about for an answer, testing him for AIDS, hepatitis, and certain strains of radiation sickness. The results were negative. His symptoms seemed typical for a cancer patient, but there was no clear explanation. When the BBC’s Russian-language service reached Litvinenko on his cell phone, he stated the obvious. “Look,” he told the reporter, “now after a serious poisoning I am still in very bad shape, I feel badly and I am staying at one of London’s clinics.”
Litvinenko kept insisting that he had been poisoned. He told the hospital staff he was a Russian defector, and said that could have something to do with his sickness. Most reacted with skepticism, even long-time patron Boris Berezovsky. But then a nurse appeared with the news that he had tested positive for thallium, a heavy metal, and poisoning was suspected. She gave him a powder, presumably Prussian blue, the same substance administered to Nikolai Khokhlov after the old spy’s poisoning five decades earlier. It was still the accepted treatment to remove certain radioactive materials from people’s bodies, and took its odd name from a dye for Prussian military uniforms.
British police arrived in response to the hospital’s report of a possible poisoning victim. After several hours of questioning, most of it focusing on where he had been in the past few days and with whom, Litvinenko was loaded into another ambulance and moved to University College Hospital, a more secure setting. He was placed under armed guard.
“It was so strange,” Marina said, “because three weeks earlier no one had taken any notice of anything, and now all of a sudden everybody was trying to save him.”
News from Moscow added to the somber atmosphere in Litvinenko’s room. At around six p.m. on November 18, a minor Chechen leader named Movladi Baisarov was gunned down on one of the city’s busiest streets by other
