A Very Expensive Poison (38 page)

Alexander Litvinenko, at home in Moscow, Russia, with his small son Anatoly. A year later, in 1998, Vladimir Putin would fire him from the FSB after Litvinenko exposed corruption inside the agency. Putin, the FSB’s then boss, soon to be prime minister and president, viewed Litvinenko as a traitor.

Litvinenko in exile in the UK with his wife Marina and Anatoly. He escaped from Russia in 2000, slipping into Georgia and fleeing to Turkey on a false passport. On his arrival at Heathrow airport he asked for political asylum, and said: ‘I am KGB officer.’

Litvinenko never mastered English but quickly took to his new home. Here, he poses with Anatoly and two bobbies in Hyde Park. He became a journalist – and part-time consultant with MI6, the British spy agency, which paid him £2,000 a month.

Litvinenko in Cambridge visiting Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident. Bukovsky became Litvinenko’s guru and educated him about the evils of the Stalin era. With him are Anatoly and his mother-in-law.

Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun’s first attempt to poison Litvinenko, in a Grosvenor Street boardroom in October 2006 (
above
), failed. The killers put polonium in his cup – the area marked in purple by Scotland Yard – but he didn’t drink.

The two killers on 1 November 2006 at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, London. CCTV captures them on their way to the gents’ toilets, where they prepared the poison in a cubicle.

Litvinenko (
above
) in the hotel lobby, dressed in a denim jacket with fawn collar, minutes before his fateful meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar.

Kovtun or Lugovoi stirred radioactive polonium-210 into a pot of green tea. Litvinenko drank just ‘three or four sips’. Hours later he fell violently ill.

Lugovoi murdered with a certain breezy style. As well as the deadly tea, he ordered gin, champagne and a cigar. The bill, paid on his credit card, came to £70.60.

Litvinenko’s symptoms baffled doctors. Transcripts of his interviews (
left
) with Scotland Yard’s officers are remarkable. Litvinenko helps solve a chilling murder mystery: his own.

Litvinenko in the critical care unit of University College Hospital, London, three days before he died. The photo shows him bald, gaunt and defiant. Released with his permission, it went round the world.

In a deathbed statement Litvinenko accused Russia’s president of ordering his murder. Putin denied the claim and responded with macabre levity, remarking, ‘Mr Litvinenko is, unfortunately, not Lazarus.’