Once Upon a Time in Russia (11 page)

Sometimes, of course, that meant the application of violent methods; Litvinenko had recently been promoted into a group of
officers tasked with dealing with organized crime in a particularly intense way, which meant that, whenever he read about a graphic and spectacular murder that had taken place in the streets of Moscow—a bomb going off in a café or a businessman found hanging from a bridge without his hands and feet—Litvinenko and his colleagues might need to “get a little rough” in the quest to solve the crime. But he still believed that, each night, he came home with clean hands.

As he slid into the third-floor office, and took the one empty chair, just a few feet from the edge of his superior's vast desk—he suddenly wondered if that was about to change.

When his superior stopped laughing, he seemed to focus directly on Litvinenko. The man was still smiling, but his words had lost any tinge of humor.

“So your friend has been coming up in conversation.”

The other agents shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. The lead officer continued—but didn't get to a name until a few sentences into his monologue.

“I'm right, aren't I? Boris Berezovsky is your friend, correct?”

Litvinenko did not meet the man's eyes, instead glancing toward the nearest cement wall. He felt an inadvertent shiver, looking at the smooth, hard material. He knew well the history of this building. The precisely rectangular, many-storied, fortified structure rose up above the northeastern corner of Lubyanka Square like some sort of unholy behemoth—and for most Russians, the sight of even the building's shadow sent daggers up the spine. In Stalin's era, this was an address you didn't want to hear mention of, let alone approach. The first floor contained one of the most feared prisons in Russia, Lubyanka, where many of the nation's worst enemies and most famous revolutionaries had been held, tortured, and sometimes killed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Stalin's nemeses had ended
up there—just two floors below where Litvinenko was now sitting. There was an old joke that he had often heard—that this had once been the tallest building in Russia, because you could see Siberia from its basement.

Litvinenko had no doubt that these walls could tell stories that would terrify even the most hardened FSB agent. But his superior, at the moment, was still all smiles—even as he spoke words, as Litvinenko would later remember them, that sent the young agent into a sudden and severe state of shock.

“Boris Berezovsky, you know, the Jew.” And then the man stood and placed his hands flat against his desk. “You should kill him.”

Litvinenko looked at his colleagues in their metal chairs, but they would not meet his eyes. He was certain they had all heard it—but the words seemed so strange, impossible, said so conversationally, as if they were just another normal bit of dialogue. But in his mind, there could be no doubt of their meaning: Litvinenko was being given an order. It was not the first order he had been given by this man that he had seen as wrong. He had been asked to take part in rough interrogations, in a handful of beatings, that sort of thing—but this was insane and extreme.

“Mr. Berezovsky is my associate,” he began trying to put into words some sort of response that would get him out of the situation, “I've known him for some time—”

“Yes,” the man interrupted. “He is your friend, your employer. And he is causing problems for many people, and has been a problem for this country for a long time, and he should be dealt with.”

Litvinenko knew that Berezovsky had made many enemies over the past few years, both in business and in politics. But this conversation, these orders—as Litvinenko saw them—why were they coming now? And why to him?

He had never thought of his superior as an overly complicated thinker. Perhaps he had chosen to involve Litvinenko because he thought the young agent's association with the Oligarch would make the job easy. And since Litvinenko was considered a loyal FSB agent, his superior probably did not think he would choose a businessman, with no FSB ties, over an order. But such a murder? An assassination like this—it was exactly the sort of thing he was supposed to be fighting against. He did not consider himself some sort of hero, but he drew lines, he had always drawn lines. And Berezovsky was his friend, his patron, his supporter. His krysha.

Litvinenko sat in silence, trying to figure out what he should say. He could tell the other agents were struggling not to watch him, but they were waiting to hear how he would respond. He thought again about that prison on the first floor of the building—and the days of the past when men who said the wrong thing to a superior might very well have ended up standing in front of cement walls just like those that surrounded him.

For the moment, he decided to say nothing, to give no response at all. But inside, he was already coming to a conclusion. A rift was opening, a chasm so deep he couldn't see the bottom, and he felt like he was in danger of falling right in. He knew, once again, he needed to make a decision that would affect the rest of his life.

A decision that might very well land him at the bottom of that chasm, for good.

March 1998,

Alexandrovka Dacha, Podolsk District

F
OR A BRIEF MOMENT,
Litvinenko felt himself shrink against the cream-colored couch, vanishing into the cushions as he stared at the dead, glossy, pitch-black eye of the video camera, because in his mind, he wasn't looking into the lens of a video recording device, which was standing on a metallic tripod in a corner of the living room of Boris Berezovsky's state-financed country estate outside Moscow—instead he was looking right into the barrel of a gun, pointed directly between his eyes.

Marina was just a few feet away, nervously watching him, waiting for him to speak; he knew she supported what he was doing, even though it terrified her. She supported him because she believed in him, and the way he thought, and the decisions he had made. And next to her, Berezovsky himself, moving back and forth on the balls of his feet, real anger in his face. Berezovsky supported Litvinenko, as well, but for many different reasons. Fury, revenge, strategy—these were the things that moved behind the businessman's pinpoint eyes. Litvinenko cared little for any of these emotions; this was not a
strategy any more than suicide might be—and yet he felt it was the only thing he could do, the only choice he had.

On the couch next to him were two other FSB agents, colleagues with just as much to lose, taking the same chances as Litvinenko—but speaking because they also felt they had no other choice. The videotaping session was being done in secret—something Berezovsky called an insurance policy. The plan was not yet to go public with the accusations about the assassination orders: this tape itself would be a weapon with which they could threaten the powers above Litvinenko at the FSB to make changes, and back off from such behavior. Litvinenko had convinced himself that what he was doing wasn't a betrayal, but rather, an attempt to change the organization for the better.

Finally, staring into that lens, Litvinenko found his voice. He began to tell the story of how he had been ordered to kill his patron. The other agents chimed in as well, adding their own voices when necessary. Across from them sat one of ORT's best-known journalists, host of a popular show, who acted as interviewer.

The order to assassinate Berezovsky was not the only topic covered. Among the agents, they had witnessed other actions they considered overreaching. One of the agents spoke about a kidnapping plot involving a political agitator. Another spoke of a setup involving a different FSB agent. The words one of the men used—“The reasons we have gotten you out of bed are that these actions are against the law, against the criminal code, and are not moral”—seemed to sum up Litvinenko's own thoughts, and the impetus for the dangerous decision he had made.

He could feel Marina watching him, nodding slowly as he spoke.
I do understand
, he said,
that an officer is not supposed to give interviews on television—but I realize the time has come. I wouldn't do what I do now . . . but I fear for the life of my child and my wife.

The camera continued to roll. Litvinenko was melded into the couch, but he could see that Berezovsky was leaning forward, almost on his toes.

If nothing is done, if this lawlessness were to continue, it would ruin the country.

Litvinenko knew that now he had gone past the point of no return.

He had saved Berezovsky's life, but perhaps at enormous cost. Berezovsky's plan was dangerous: Berezovsky intended to go to the FSB, lodge a formal complaint, and use his power with Yeltsin to make the FSB listen to what he had to say. He had promised to protect Litvinenko, but Litvinenko was not naïve enough to think that Berezovsky would risk his own safety or position for a young agent. Which meant that things could easily spiral out of control.

Berezovsky would know the right people to talk to, and with this tape as his weapon, heads would certainly roll, maybe at even the highest levels of the FSB. But a new man would be brought in to find replacements for them. Whoever took control would have Litvinenko's fate in his hands. Litvinenko could only hope that such a man would understand.

November 11, 1998,

FSB Headquarters, Lubyanka Square

M
OVING THROUGH THE CORRIDORS
of the third floor of that damned ominous building, Berezovsky felt a bit of annoyance as he listened to the heavy breathing of the young agent who was chugging along next to him, nervously clutching a binder of evidence under his arm. Litvinenko was acting as if he were on his way to the gallows, when in fact he was really on his way into history. He'd blown the loudest whistle in agency history, and Berezovsky was proud of his employee and friend. Now Litvinenko just needed to keep his head up and trust Berezovsky. After all, Berezovsky was at the height of his powers.

Winning the election for Yeltsin had been a monumental feat; this next task was simply fixing a flaw that ran like a structural crack down the center of the largest security agency in the world. And he had already accomplished much. Since secretly videotaping Litvinenko and the other agents, he had worked through his contacts to get rid of many of the most corrupt elements in the FSB. That had included replacing the head of the agency with a man he believed
would be more acquiescent to the realities of the new regime. And now he was bringing Litvinenko to meet face-to-face with this new director, to put this issue to rest.

Personally, he wasn't sure that presenting the man with a binder of evidence was the best strategy. Starting off a meeting by handing the new head man a stack of notations about the flaws of the previous leadership wouldn't be particularly productive. The new head would have his own way of doing things; the only important thing was that he like you.

To that end, Berezovsky believed he was already ahead of the game. He had been instrumental in putting the man in that third-floor, corner office.

“Sasha,” he said to Litvinenko, using his nickname, as they were now close friends. “You need to do something about your face. You don't look like you're meeting your new boss. You look like you're heading to a funeral.”

Litvinenko tried to smile, but he was obviously nervous. When they reached the office, Berezovsky didn't wait for Litvinenko to knock—he simply reached for the knob.

The young man on the other side of the sparsely decorated office hopped up out of his chair with the grace of a natural athlete, ushering the two of them inside with a friendly but spare wave of his hand. He wasn't exactly smiling, but his narrow face was amiable, his intelligent eyes taking them both in with rapid flicks, top to bottom. He wasn't tall, but he was obviously very fit, dressed immaculately, and he seemed to have taken to his new role with a confidence that impressed Berezovsky. This wasn't at all the minor functionary Berezovsky remembered. When Berezovsky had met this man years earlier, he was little more than an assistant.

At the time, Berezovsky had needed aid in setting up a car dealership
in St. Petersburg, and the mayor of the city had handed him off to his deputy—a former long-term KGB officer by the name of Vladimir Putin. Berezovsky had been impressed immediately by the young man's efficiency, and at a dinner party, he had learned a bit more about the man's background. A child of poverty, like so many in Russia, Putin had grown up for a time in a communal apartment. He hadn't been a wonderful student, but he was an impressive athlete who had gone on to become a judo champion. After stints studying law and language, he had matriculated right into the KGB, and had then put in more than sixteen years as a dutiful agent. His main job had apparently been analyzing foreign agents and trying to turn them. He had been stationed in Germany, where he'd married, had a couple of daughters, and then come back home to work at the University of St. Petersburg for a former teacher—who, in turn, was elected mayor of the city. And even though Putin had spent so much time in the security agency, he had democratic leanings; in 1991, when Yeltsin took power and communism fell, he left the KGB.

His ascension to the head of the FSB had come on the heels of being brought to Moscow by Yeltsin and the Family. Berezovsky had been privy to that decision; the most important characteristics Yeltsin had been looking for in appointments had been loyalty, efficiency, and strength—and these were things that defined the former KGB man. When Putin's boss, the mayor, had lost his own election in 1996, Putin had the opportunity to work for the winning party. Instead, he resigned, remaining loyal to his mentor. That meant more to Berezovsky than all the efficiency in the world. When you were placing a man in a position of power, you wanted someone who was loyal in the best meaning of the word—you wanted a perfect cog. Berezovsky firmly believed Putin to be that perfect cog; a strongman who could be controlled, who could see the importance of not making waves.