APRs IN not in yet.2/15please place. Text Revise ___________ Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ THE KREMLIN’S ) O K N E , N ) I A V L T I L L E ( M Z A S R T I A E C S W ( A A J T S R A O T P A A N L , E ) R N I O T T U A P V ( L A V S O , K ) A N Y O N I D S N S O I L ( N E X D U , O ) V N E G Y I A G K N A A Z ( L A D I Y M B R S A I H P D A C R A G M O R T E O T H E P P 2 2 6 V A N I T Y F A I R www.vanityfair.com A P R I L 2 0 0 7 0044 SSPYPY PPOISONINGOISONING ll-o.vf.indd-o.vf.indd 1 22/26/07/26/07 55:41:30:41:30 PPMM 0407VF WE-54 APRs IN not in yet.2/15please place. Text Revise ___________ Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ LONG SHADOW The sensational death of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by polonium 210 in London last November, is still being investigated by Scotland Yard. Many suspect the Kremlin. But interviewing the victim’s widow, fellow émigrés, and toxicologists, among others, BRYAN BURROUGH explores Litvinenko’s history with two powerful antagonists– one his bête noire, President Vladimir Putin, and the other his benefactor, exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky–in a world where friends may be as dangerous as enemies FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE From left: Alexander Litvinenko at London’s University College Hospital on November 20, 2006, three days before his death; Italian security consultant Mario Scaramella; Chechen activist Akhmed Zakayev; Russian president Vladimir Putin. A P R I L 2 0 0 7 www.vanityfair.com V A N I T Y F A I R 2 2 7 0044 SSPYPY PPOISONINGOISONING ll-o.vf.indd-o.vf.indd 2 22/26/07/26/07 55:42:05:42:05 PMPM 0407VF WE-55 APRs IN 2/12/07. Text Revise ___________ quad: apr short. please clone pic to bleed Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ returned home at seven as promised, changed scrambling to solve a mystery that many have clothes, checked his computer, and sat down characterized as too bizarre for a John le for dinner. Around 11 he rose to go to bed, Carré novel. Alexander Litvinenko, his doc- saying he had an early meeting. When Ma- tors announced, had been poisoned with a rina went up later, she found him in the bath- radioactive element called polonium 210. He room. He said he didn’t feel well. Then he had, in all likelihood, been murdered. vomited. He remained sick through the night, throwing up almost every half-hour or so. n his last years Litvinenko had grown The next morning, leaving Sasha in bed, obsessed with Putin, a man for whom Marina dropped Anatoly at school and he had worked in the Russian secret ser- swung by a drugstore to purchase anti- vices, and whose hand he seemed to see nausea tablets. She returned home to ! nd in the world’s every evil, from Middle her husband hunched over the toilet again. Eastern terrorism to Afghan drug traf- He told her this was no normal sickness. Ificking. From his deathbed Litvinenko issued The vomiting was too strong. Everything a statement blaming his illness squarely on that came out looked gray. “It looks like Putin’s government. The British press erupted someone has poisoned me,” Sasha said. in an orgy of articles excoriating the Kremlin, There was no need to say more: this was the stories that gained even more traction when n November 1, 2006, moment they had feared for six years. Back in it turned out Litvinenko had visited with two after leaving their modest beige brick town Moscow, Sasha was known as the infamous former K.G.B. men on the day he was prob- house in the North London neighborhood of K.G.B.-trained lieutenant colonel Alexander ably poisoned. All through December most Muswell Hill, a petite 44-year-old Russian Litvinenko, who had publicly denounced of Europe watched, rapt, as Scotland Yard émigrée named Marina Litvinenko took her Vladimir Putin’s government for all manner of detectives tracked telltale traces of polonium husband, Alexander, nicknamed Sasha, and murders and corruption. Friends viewed Lit- everywhere the two K.G.B. men had been: in Odropped him at the subway station. He had a vinenko as an American- style whistle-blower; London hotel suites and bars, in an ex-wife’s pair of appointments in central London but enemies, and he had many, considered him home in Germany, and even on the jetliners promised to be home in time for dinner. It a thug turned traitor. Now, Marina believed, on which the two had flown to London. was a special night, the sixth anniversary of Putin was having his revenge. To this day, no one knows who poisoned their escape from Russia, and to celebrate, An ambulance was called, and Litvinenko Litvinenko; any examination of his death Marina was making Sasha’s favorite dinner: was taken to a nearby hospital; 21 days later leads to one giant tangle of loose ends. The chicken and pancakes in herb sauce. he was dead. On the day he died, what might Marina spent the day attending a birthday have been written o" as another obscure Rus- party for a friend’s 3-year-old, then retrieved sian dissident’s strange death exploded into an THE SPY WHO LOVED ME her 12-year-old son, Anatoly, from school international espionage scandal that threat- before starting to cook. Sasha, a handsome, ened Russia’s relations with the West, espe- Opposite, Litvinenko’s wife, Marina, after his funeral. Below, strapping six-footer with feathery blond hair, cially Britain, and sent hundreds of reporters from left: Litvinenko in his post- F.S.B. days; celebrating the day he got his British citizenship; his F.S.B. identi! cation card; LITVINENKO SAW as a Russian soldier. HIMSELF AS “PUTIN’S ALTER EGO”: LITVINENKO THE SYMBOL OF LIGHT, PROGRESS, AND LAW; PUTIN OF CHAOS AND DARKNESS AND VIOLENCE. 2 2 8 V A N I T Y F A I R 0044 SSPYPY PPOISONINGOISONING ll-o.vf.indd-o.vf.indd 3 22/26/07/26/07 55:42:15:42:15 PPMM 0407VF WE-56 APRs IN 2/12/07. Text Revise ___________ Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ quad: apr short. please clone pic to bleed ; E N E V E L D I V A T D N E Y C B N , I T F V E L O N R U A F R B : S Y H B P , A T R H G G I O R T O R H A P F A P R I L 2 0 0 7 www.vanityfair.com V A N I T Y F A I R 2 2 9 0044 SSPYPY PPOISONINGOISONING ll-o.vf.indd-o.vf.indd 4 22/26/07/26/07 55:42:20:42:20 PMPM 0407VF WE-57 quad: apr of trash can is short. please clone to APRs2/15/07 Text Revise ___________ bleeds Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ 4 1 5 HOT ON THE TRAIL (1) Boris Berezovsky. (2) An o! cial police label seals the door to a Hamburg home visited by Dmitri E R (3) E Kovtun. H Police and media outside S (4) T Litvinenko’s home. I Andrei D Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun. E R (5) Alex Goldfarb. (6) Polonium 210 C contamination in Haselau, Germany. 2 3 0 V A N I T Y F A I R www.vanityfair.com 6 M A R C H 2 0 0 7 0044 SSPYPY PPOISONINGOISONING ll-o.vf.indd-o.vf.indd 5 22/26/07/26/07 55:42:22:42:22 PPMM 0407VF WE-58 APRs2/12/07 Text Revise ___________ Art Director ___________ Color Revise __________ quad: aprs are short. please clone pic to bleeds 3 2 like its F.B.I.; Litvinenko was the equiva- lent of an F.B.I. agent, and an obscure one at that. His specialty was organized crime, and his job involved investigations, stake- outs, and interrogations of Moscow mob- “THIS IS PART sters. Gary Busch, a London-based trans- portation consultant who has worked with Russian security services, recalls encounter- OF A CLEAR PATTERN, ing Litvinenko at an F.S.B. o! ce during the AN ACCELERATING DYNAMIC,” LITVINENKO SAID. 1990s. “He was a thug,” Busch remembers. Litvinenko turned out to be much more “THEY ARE ELIMINATING PEOPLE ON A LIST. than that. To understand his strange odys- THE STATE HAS BECOME A SERIAL MURDERER.” sey, I spoke at length with the half-dozen people closest to him, including his best story, like most good spy yarns, is nowhere est producer of natural gas.) The next it’s an- friend and neighbor in London, Akhmed near as black-and-white as the tabloids would other Russian journalist shot in the head, or Zakayev, a onetime deputy prime minister ) B R have you believe. Among the few things a democracy advocate blown up in his car. of Chechnya. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, A F D known for sure is that Litvinenko was nei- Russia has been violent for so long that few a charming woman with wide-set Slavic L O N ther the saint nor the famous dissident the in the West seem to realize that the kinds of eyes, met me at a London Internet café, G I ( W A D press wanted him to be.