Once Upon a Time in Russia

by Ben Mezrich

  November 8, 2003

  7 Down Street, Mayfair, London

  “That’s the war we’re fighting,” Berezovsky nearly shouted, slamming a hand down against his desk, in his elegantly decorated office in Mayfair. “Khodorkovsky thought his billions would keep him safe, and that his popularity made him untouchable. And you see what happened? They took him right off his plane, and directly to prison. Do not pass go, do not collect your billion dollars. Money laundering, tax evasion, they are the bullets, but we all know who is holding the gun.”

  Berezovsky pointed at his own face, covered by a unique, somewhat obscene rubber mask with Vladimir Putin’s face on it. To his surprise, the American journalist sitting across from him didn’t smile at the display; in fact, she looked uncomfortable, if not a little bit terrified. Her own fault—she had been the one to ask about the mask, and Berezovsky had only put it on as a favor.

  The likeness wasn’t perfect, but the countenance was clearly recognizable. That he had been able to find a Putin mask in a local novelty shop had been a minor coup; maybe it showed that his new, adopted homeland truly did have a growing obsession with all things Russian. Likewise, Berezovsky had been amazed at how many newspapers his picture had made it into when he had donned the mask on his way out of a local courthouse, after one of his many extradition hearings.

  The list of crimes he had been accused of back in Moscow seemed to grow every day he was in exile. Even though the American journalist had listed them twice already during the interview, Berezovsky himself couldn’t even keep them straight. His exile had protected him. Sadly, his friend Glushkov, from Aeroflot, couldn’t say the same thing. Selling ORT, then being paid off to “disappear” at the Megève heliport had done nothing to get his friend released. In fact, in a surreal state of affairs, just a few months after the Megève payout, Glushkov had found himself in even hotter water. During an approved visit to a hospital for blood work, he had reportedly staged an escape attempt, involving associates in phony guard uniforms; the escape had failed, and Glushkov had been grabbed by FSB agents. After this, he had been thrown back into jail, along with one of Berezovksy’s security employees from ORT, Andrei Lugovoy, who had supposedly been helping Glushkov with his escape.

  Worse yet, Badri had been tarred by that same brush, accused of aiding in the escape attempt. The loyal strongman had avoided arrest, having already joined Berezovsky in exile. Of course, the Russian press and the Kremlin had immediately assumed that Berezovsky had masterminded this failed escape attempt, part of the continuing effort to draw him as an enemy of the state, a despicable traitor.

  Fair enough, he sometimes thought. For the past three years, since his exile began, he had indeed been engaged in an all-out publicity war with Putin—speaking about his perceived rival to anyone who would listen.

  “Khodorkovsky learned how the legal system works in Moscow, didn’t he?” Berezovsky continued, from behind the mask. “Now he’s in a prison cell. He was the richest man in the country. Started off just like me—half Jewish, which meant he was Jewish enough to know that the only avenues open to him were in business. From banking, to Yukos oil. He should’ve left Russia when he had the chance. Instead, he stayed and tried to stand up to them. Look where it got him.”

  The same place, Berezovksy knew, where he would end up if Russia ever managed to win its extradition battles. Fortunately for the Oligarch, not only had Berezovksy prevailed in court again and again—rubber mask and all—but just a week ago, he had been granted official political asylum in the UK. Rumors abounded that he had been turning over information to the British Secret Service in return for their protection, and he certainly liked the implications. Given how often he had been appearing in the British press, he felt once again that he had become a very important man. In the West, things were different; politics seemed secondary to money. And, at the moment, he had plenty of money to spend.

  How much exactly, he couldn’t be sure. He had bought a beautiful estate in nearby Surrey for more than twenty million dollars; ironically, not far from where Abramovich had one of his homes as well—though Abramovich still considered Moscow his main base of operations.

  Berezovksy also traveled in style—his Maybach, his veritable army of bodyguards, his private jet, his own chefs, valets, and butlers. His real estate in France, a villa in the Caribbean, and he was continuously considering huge purchases all over the world. He was building a private art collection, and he had at least one yacht, perhaps three, though he couldn’t be certain how many were under his name.

  Of course, his yacht was nothing compared to Abramovich’s—one of which was over 377 feet long, with a pair of helicopter pads and a huge swimming pool that turned into a dance floor. Nor could his real estate compare to his former protégé’s—Abramovich was building a one-hundred-million-dollar palace in St. Barths and combining a block of apartments in Belgravia that could one day be worth twice that. Berezovsky might have a private jet, but Abramovich had a 767. And Abramovich had recently made the ultimate purchase, the storied Chelsea Football Club, probably worth over a billion dollars on its own.

  Berezovsky knew, the fact that he could list everything that Abramovich owned—or was going to own—was a symptom of his rising obsession with the man, which had been building since their meeting at that heliport in Megève. Badri had told him many times he should simply let it go—that they were all wealthy now, that he and Badri had been paid an enormous sum—split between them, though they kept much of their assets intermingled—to end their krysha obligations, at least as much as was fair.

  Badri, a much less ostentatious man by nature, had been using his money much differently. While he had put some of it into investments such as the Buddha Bar in New York, he had made his primary home in Georgia, the ex-Russian province of his birth, rather than in England or the United States. Berezovsky had pushed his friend into politics in the breakaway territory—using some of his own money to help Badri fund the Rose Revolution, which had put one of Badri’s friends and colleagues—and a democratic, liberalizing influence—Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-West candidate who was only thirty-six, into the Georgian presidency.

  Badri—and Berezovsky—were once again close to power, though in Georgia instead of Russia. Badri was considered the richest man in that province, beloved by his people. In that role, Badri had also set off to try to repair his relationship with the Kremlin, even reaching out to Putin himself—and he had suggested many times that Berezovsky give up his war of words and make amends.

  But Berezovsky refused; he saw himself on a sort of holy mission. Putin was his nemesis, and he was going to use every minute and every dollar he had to try to bring down the president.

  Berezovsky removed the Putin mask and placed it on his desk, as the American journalist scribbled notes into her legal pad. Berezovsky had long ago lost count of the number of interviews he had given; he had been willing to speak to just about anyone who would listen. One of the things he loved most about the West was the hunger of the press for a juicy story—and the multitude of organizations that would use just about any headline to sell a newspaper. If anything, Berezovsky had been born to dole out headlines. His verbal challenges to Putin had gone from recounting the supposed threats and brutal political machinations that had led to his own London exile to outlining his personal quest to fund a violent revolution against the Russian president.

  And Berezovsky wasn’t just mouthing words to the press in England, he had surrounded himself with like-minded agitators: Litvinenko, of course, as well as the young agent’s friends in exile, and anyone else who had a beef with the Russian president. Berezovksy was their nexus, their continuous source of funding, and his office at 7 Down Street had become their central gathering place.

  He knew that his words and actions were riling the Kremlin and his enemies back in Russia. Berezovsky believed there had been at least one more assassination attempt against him—evidence of which had led to his political asylum—and he expected more to
come. But he didn’t care. The very fact that they were going after him meant he was still significant.

  He didn’t expect to be able to topple Putin overnight; but the extradition hearings and Berezovsky’s political asylum was proof that the Russian president didn’t have the power to simply wave his hand and have Berezovsky sent to prison, as he had done with Khodorkovsky. It was a facet of one of the other characteristics that Berezovksy loved most about the West, and the UK in particular, the powerful, historic legal system.

  He had learned that a man with money, and access to good lawyers, could go after just about any prize. In earlier days, he had filed suit against Forbes magazine for an article written by an American journalist named Paul Klebnikov, which Berezovsky felt linked him to a number of murders, and which claimed he had developed a Mafia-like presence in the Russian government. The article—and a book the journalist had written along the same topic—had referred to Berezovsky as the “Godfather of The Kremlin.” Even though Forbes, at the time, had barely any readers in the UK, Berezovsky had been able to use England’s lax libel laws to put immense pressure on the journalist and the magazine—taking advantage of what many legal experts called “libel tourism” to bring the suit into a court system that seemed most likely to rule in the Oligarch’s favor.

  Since then, Berezovsky had been a party in lawsuit after lawsuit, some having to do with business dealings and loan repayments, some trending more personal. Eventually, he expected also to be in a courtroom facing at least one of his ex-wives. But all in all, he considered the Western legal system another weapon in his armament.

  He was still adjusting to life in exile, but he believed that by combining Russian strategies and persistence with modern, Western tools—he could stay more relevant than even Abramovich could ever have suspected.

  Badri might have seen his passion—his holy mission—as another sign of his self-destructiveness, but Berezovksy believed it was quite the opposite. His obsessions—with Putin, with Abramovich, with his own importance—were keeping him alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  * * *

  November 1, 2006,

  Itsu Sushi, 167 Piccadilly, London

  IT WAS A LITTLE after ten minutes past three in the afternoon, and Alexander Litvinenko suddenly found himself surrounded by a little too much plastic, a little too many bright neon swatches of color for his tastes. But he had to admit, the sushi wasn’t half bad, and the bustle of people passing by on Piccadilly, outside the front windows of the restaurant, provided a pleasant contrast to his lunch companion.

  He’d gotten to know the man he called Mario fairly well over the past couple of years. As usual, the Italian looked like he had just stepped off the plane from Rome—and in this case he actually had. They were at ease with one another, having been introduced years earlier, when Litvinenko had been working with an Italian governmental committee that had been investigating ex-FSB operatives supposedly involved in Italian politics. Even so, Mario had always struck Litvinenko as a man who wanted to be a spy, more than a man who actually had the goods to be one. To Litvinenko, the Italian was a tourist in the gray edges where Litvinenko made his home—but he was eager, and it always seemed like he wanted to be helpful.

  When he had first contacted Litvinenko this time around, asking to meet over a late lunch, Litvinenko had been justifiably skeptical. The man was often trying to arrange meetings to pass over information that was either less than useful, or too subtle to be easily interpreted—and today, in particular, Litvinenko’s day was a busy one. That very morning, just a few hours earlier, Litvinenko had met with contacts from Moscow at a nearby hotel to discuss a deal. One of the men—Andrei Lugovoy—was, coincidentally, a former ORT employee of Berezovsky—the same ex-FSB agent who had been briefly imprisoned after Glushkov’s reported escape attempt in 2003.

  The group of Russians was going to meet again that evening for drinks—which left little time for Litvinenko to complete the other errands he had in mind for that day. Fitting Mario in for a late lunch at the sushi joint was going to have him rushing all over the city—but then, at the last minute, he’d decided to give the Italian a little bit of his time.

  In general, the years since Litvinenko had made London his home had been busy. Agitating, as his friend Berezovsky liked to say, was a full-time job. Litvinenko had written or cowritten a pair of books attacking Putin, had met numerous contacts among like-minded revolutionaries, and he always had his eyes open to try to find more ways to use his particular skills for profit or ex-pat politics. Like his patron, he had his fingers in many things, projects that came and went, most having to do with information, with navigating his way through the gray edge—or helping others navigate their way through the gray edge.

  Whether it was a government, a corporation, or something else, Litvinenko knew that what he could provide would always have some value. The fact that sometimes he found himself working with individuals in less than “clean” fields . . . well, that just came with the territory.

  Arms dealing, corporate espionage, political machinations, these intrigued him, and he often allowed himself to go a little too deep, to play out conspiracies in his mind—but he had witnessed enough real conspiracies to know that there were often elements of fact in the most surreal situations.

  When Mario had told him that he had procured information that Litvinenko needed to see, it was too intriguing an offer to pass up. Even a would-be spy could stumble into something real once in a while.

  But from the moment they had sat down in the sushi joint, Mario had sounded like a busted record, telling Litvinenko that he had heard, through sources, that Litvinenko was in danger—that Russian elements were planning an assassination. This was certainly not new information; Litvinenko was well aware that many members of the FSB thought of him as a traitor. He was convinced that Putin had seen his actions as an ultimate, almost incomprehensible betrayal. Likewise, Litvinenko had pushed the entire agency’s buttons by his whistle-blowing, and his actions since he had come to London hadn’t helped matters at all. He had made many open accusations against the FSB and Putin personally, even once going so far as to call the president a pedophile.

  Litvinenko would’ve been surprised if there weren’t people in Russia who wanted to do him harm. In fact, he had even been told by contacts that at least one FSB training group was using a photo of him on their rifle range, as a target.

  “If you came to London to warn me about my former agency,” Litvinenko said, stabbing at the pieces of sushi on the table in front of him with a chopstick, “you could’ve put it in a postcard.”

  The Italian smiled, then shook his head.

  “Don’t confuse the appetizer with the main course,” he said, trying his best to sound dramatic.

  He pulled a packet of papers out from under his coat. Then he tossed them across the small table, and waited as Litvinenko looked through the first few paragraphs.

  Litvinenko finally raised his eyebrows.

  “This is something, isn’t it?”

  Mario held his hands up in front of him.

  “Not something you would want to put in a postcard, I think.”

  Litvinenko reread the paragraphs, then continued on through the document. The sounds of the sushi bar—the clatter of chopsticks, the conversations of other diners—receded.

  The papers had to do with a case Litvinenko had been extremely focused on in the past few weeks. A murder, of course—these things always tended to revolve around a murder. This time, it had been the gunning down of a well-known journalist in Moscow who had made a name for herself through her opposition to the Kremlin. One month ago, she had been assassinated, shot four times at close range in an elevator in her apartment building, the pistol left right beside her dead body.

  The papers that Mario had just handed him might very well provide a clue to the situation. Not a smoking gun perhaps but a link Litvinenko might be able to follow further.

  To many, Litvinenko was nothing but
a rabid conspiracy theorist. The books he had written had been dismissed by many as being similar to the sort of crap 9/11 deniers had put out in America, even years after the terrorist attack. But Litvinenko didn’t care what people thought of him. He lived in a world of conspiracies and, often, the imagined were much tamer than the real.

  He put the papers in his jacket and quickly rose from the table. He needed to make copies of them immediately, and he also wanted to show them to the one person with an imagination even more vivid than his own.

  • • •

  The afternoon had dwindled away by the time Litvinenko was on his way toward the Mayfair hotel for his already arranged meeting with the Russians from the morning. It felt like his entire day—much of it in transit, by car, by foot, by bus—had him in a haze of jumbled, interlocking thoughts. He was still going over that morning meeting at the hotel, something that should have been the only thing occupying his mind. But the papers Mario had handed him vied for his brain’s attention. The investigation into the journalist’s murder in Moscow was a pet project that he felt certain would yield fruit, in his continued personal battle with his perceived nemesis—and perhaps the papers would lead him further on that quest.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to discuss anything with Berezovsky yet that day. His boss was going through many problems of his own. Though Berezovsky’s lifestyle seemed as extravagant as ever, if not more so, in the past couple of years, rumor had it that the Oligarch’s finances were not what they once had been. The Russian government had relentlessly gone after whatever properties and assets of his they could get to, and Berezovsky had made many investments that collapsed, and many more that didn’t seem very profitable. His ex-wife Galina was gearing up for an epic divorce battle, which many in the UK believed could earn her hundreds of millions of dollars.