Once Upon a Time in Russia (12 page)

Which was exactly why Berezovsky had brought Litvinenko to meet with Putin, now that he was the new head of the FSB. First, Berezovsky had written a letter, demanding that the FSB address the assassination order—but he had felt the extra step of bringing his whistle-blower to meet with the new head of the agency would be icing on the cake. He felt sure Putin would show them the respect they deserved.

After the brief introductions were over, Putin ushered them to their seats in front of his desk. As Berezovsky had remembered from the brief encounter in St. Petersburg, Putin was not a man for idle chitchat. He quickly steered the conversation to Litvinenko's claims and the stack of evidence the young agent had brought with them. Putin then immediately assured Berezovsky that he was taking the charges very seriously, not simply because his predecessor had lost his job, but because he was a man who believed in law and order. But Berezovsky could also see, in the way Putin avoided looking at the young agent, from the way he skimmed through the evidence without any sense of shock or disgust about what he was seeing, that his years with the KGB had made him inherently suspicious of a man who had turned on the security agency.

Putin finished the meeting on a high note, telling them both he would look into these things, and if he found any more issues that needed to be dealt with, he would make sure the right things were done.

Even so, it wasn't until Berezovsky and Litvinenko were out in the hallway, Putin's door shut behind them, that the young agent seemed to relax, if only a fraction, loosening his shoulders beneath his jeans jacket. Berezovsky could tell that Litvinenko was waging an inner battle with himself, wondering if he had done the right thing, wondering if this new FSB director was really going to make an effort
to root out the bad elements in his agency—or instead root out the agent who had blown the whistle in the first place.

Berezovsky, for his part, was waging no inner war. The Oligarch wasn't going to leave these things to chance or fate or faith, or even to the efficient, loyal cog who Yeltsin and the Family had pulled from the wilds of St. Petersburg. Berezovsky had a plan. If the FSB did not act immediately to finish cleaning up its own mess, Berezovsky intended to force its hand.

November 17, 1998,

Interfax Press Center, Tverskaya Street, Moscow

Berezovsky watched with a choreographer's pride, as a palpable hush swept through the crowded conference room; the five men on the dais moved in a single file, choosing their seats behind a frenzied bloom of microphones from a dozen different news organizations—many of them owned by Berezovsky himself—and beneath the watchful eye of a pair of oversize television cameras. Flashbulbs went off like fireworks, and then the hush was replaced by an awed rumble, the gathered journalists jockeying with each other for a better view of the bizarre spectacle.

Four of the men on the dais were wearing black balaclavas, and two more had donned large, dark sunglasses. Only Litvinenko himself was unadorned, dressed in a jacket with a poorly matching tie.

He was without a mask or sunglasses not because of any sense of newfound fearlessness. He was out there, for the world to see, because the media had already identified him as the lead whistle-blower, shortly after Berezovsky had published his own open letter to Vladimir Putin in the
Kommersant
, Berezovsky's newspaper—demanding that the FSB restore order and law to the security agency.
That letter had been published six days ago—but Berezovsky had come to the conclusion that the dramatic changes he was asking for demanded an even more dramatic presentation.

It hadn't been easy to convince Litvinenko and the other agents he had gathered to go public like this; but in the end, they had realized that the cameras and journalists provided much more security than a false anonymity. Did these men really think that those black masks would keep a determined FSB from exacting vengeance, if that was the route the agency intended to take? The men's only real option, in Berezovsky's opinion, was to go big and go public—an approach directly in Berezovsky's wheelhouse.

Concealing himself in a corner of the Interfax conference room, obscured by the shadows cast by the drawn shades of the long hall filled with row after row of journalists, Berezovsky listened as Litvinenko kicked off the conference—speaking carefully into the microphones, telling much the same story he had told in the private videotaping session, for the secret tape that Berezovsky still had in his possession. Detailing the orders to assassinate Berezovsky and a number of other wealthy businessmen, detailing kidnapping plots and any number of corrupt decrees from their superiors at the FSB. In the end, asking, begging Mr. Putin to clean up the agency.

In the circus-like atmosphere that Berezovsky had orchestrated, it was once again hard for the Oligarch not to marvel at the incredible changes in his fortune. Not four years earlier, when someone had attempted to take his life, he had been forced to slink off to Switzerland, wrapped up in bandages, a joke people pointed and laughed at, a man they called Smoky behind his back. Now here he was, a president in his pocket, waving a finger at the most-feared security agency in perhaps the world. How the FSB would eventually respond to Litvinenko's
whistle-blowing was an unknown—many would certainly see such a public press conference as an embarrassment.

Whatever the fallout for the agents, Berezovsky was certain of one thing. The world would hear what Litvinenko had to say—and that meant that Berezovsky, himself, would be untouchable.

January 1999,

Krasnoyarsk, Siberia

T
HE MI-8 HELICOPTER BANKED
low over the frozen landscape, tilting hard to the left as it narrowly avoided a sudden bristle of Siberian fir trees, rising up from the foot of a nearby cliff face. In the heated interior of the copter's leather-paneled cabin, Roman Abramovich tested his harness once again, while avoiding, as best he could, leaning with too much of his weight against the cold glass window to his side. Across the cabin, seated facing him, Badri Patarkatsishvili grinned from behind his thick, white mustache. If he thought for a moment that Abramovich was scared of either heights or unchecked velocity, he was mistaken; but being in a fifteen-year-old helicopter that hadn't seen zero degrees in months and was now flying through icy Arctic air was another story altogether.

Of course, Abramovich was no stranger to this frozen corner of Russia. He had grown up a long stone's throw from this section of Siberia, and he had built his trading business in the oil fields and refineries just a few stops down along the trans-Siberian railroad. The snowy, ice-covered mountains he could see on the horizon to his left,
the thick, lush forests that seemed to rise up out of the ground like verdant brushstrokes across the permanently frozen tundra—these were as familiar to him as the heavy scent of burned oil coming from the helicopter's overtaxed, twin turbines.

“Over there,” shouted Eugene, seated to Abramovich's right, hoping to be heard over the immense racket of the helicopter's rotors. “Another few hundred yards, past those trees.”

The third man who had joined them on the short chopper ride from the center of the city of Krasnoyarsk, Eugene was Abramovich's most trusted employee, his business partner and right-hand man. He was the only man Abramovich would have dragged so far—the long trek from Moscow had taken them most of a day, and had involved a car, a private jet, and a train, not to mention this chopper—to contemplate something as crazy as the proposition that Badri, assuredly in partnership with Berezovsky, had proposed.

To be fair, Krasnoyarsk itself was a unique and beautiful place; a sort of jewel tucked away in the Siberian tundra, a glistening, rapidly modernizing city situated right on the twisting banks of the Yenisei River. Once upon a time, this area had held Stalin's gulags—prison camps out of every Russian's nightmares, grim places in the middle of a wilderness of icy mountains and wolf-ridden woods. But in modern times, Krasnoyarsk had transformed into a place of factories, mining corporations, oil concerns, and much more; one of the three largest metropolises in the entire region, after Novosibirsk and Omsk, the cities out of which Abramovich had built Sibneft.

“Now, that is something,” Badri responded, jabbing a thick finger at the window, inches from Eugene's face. “Isn't it just as beautiful as I described?”

The Georgian wasn't talking about Krasnoyarsk, the trees, the cliffs, or the mountains. Abramovich glanced past his business associate
Eugene at the low, barracks-like buildings that spread out in front of the helicopter for what appeared to be at least a quarter mile. There were low, windowless cubes and rectangles that could only be factories. Interspersed between them, smelting plants with smokestacks rising high enough to give the helicopter pilot something to test his skills against. High barbed wire topped chain-link fences around circular storage facilities and many parking lots full of flatbed trucks. Even train cars, lined up in sleek black rows, next to a very large open loading dock filled with gargantuan machinery.

But the most notable aspect of the view below was not the enormity of the factories, the smelting plants, the storage and loading facilities—it was the fact that those smokestacks were obviously dormant; no exhaust at all came from the giant plant. Abramovich guessed that the air outside the chopper was as crisp and clean as he remembered from his childhood, a wind gusting out of the Arctic Circle, cleansed by the river and the trees.

“I'm not sure I see anything beautiful about a dead factory,” Abramovich responded, but his words just made Badri laugh even louder.

Abramovich had grown fond of the Georgian strongman. He was amiable and direct—and in many ways the most straightforward man Abramovich had ever met. He had a keen sense of humor, an ability to put people completely and immediately at ease; at the same time, something about him always meant business, and one look from him could send shards of terror down even a born mobster's spine. Even so, with Badri—unlike Berezovsky, who was impulsive, emotional, perhaps even bipolar—you always knew where you stood.

Over the past year and a half since the Sibneft “loans for shares” deal had been finalized, Abramovich and his right-hand man,
Eugene, had gotten to know the Georgian quite well—mainly because Berezovsky, their patron, had proven to possess an appetite for excess that even Abramovich had underestimated, the sort of ravenous hunger that made him think of a mythical beast from some Siberian fairy tale. Not a week had gone without a phone call requesting money for some escapade or another—sometimes involving ORT, but just as often involving some personal purchase that Berezovsky simply couldn't do without. Sometimes the call would come from Berezovsky himself, but more often, as the months progressed and the Oligarch became more and more caught up in his political machinations, the requests came through Badri; the Georgian would show up at the Sibneft offices, grinning widely behind his mustache. The demands for money ran from the banal—fifteen thousand dollars here, eighteen thousand dollars there—to the practically insane. Millions—one, two, ten—and usually it had to be right away, cash if possible. Often, the requests came without any description of what the money was going to be used for, but sometimes Badri would explain what it was that Berezovsky so desperately needed.

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.