Once Upon a Time in Russia

by Ben Mezrich

  Of course, staring through those cemetery gates, it seemed inappropriate to be thinking about money, even if the numbers ran into the billions. It all seemed so unimportant, next to the murder of the young agent.

  Then again, whoever had killed Litvinenko had certainly managed to elevate the young agent in a way he had never been able to achieve himself. In death, he’d become a much bigger agitation than he’d ever been in life. In fact, in many ways, he was a bigger story than Berezovsky himself.

  It was not lost on Berezovksy that the cameras lined up just beyond the police cordon, not twenty yards from where he was standing, were a legion beyond any he had ever managed to gather on his own. Not just press from Britain and Russia, but from every country in the world.

  Litvinenko had lived in the shadows, but now, in his death, the lights of those cameras were blasting through, like spotlights across a black stage, searching for the lead actor.

  What Berezovsky really needed, more than money, he realized, was a way to step into those spotlights. To do something spectacular enough, dramatic enough, to catch the world’s attention once and for all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  * * *

  October 5, 2007,

  Hermès store, 179 Sloane Street, London

  TEN MONTHS OF PLANNING, ten months of late-night strategy sessions, minute calculations, collected flight plans, train schedules, reports from private eyes and contacts in cities all over the world, and when Berezovsky finally pulled it off, when he finally succeeded, it wasn’t the result of some brilliant machinations on his part, it was simply an accident of chance. When he had left his home that afternoon, he had only been on his way to buy a shirt.

  Even that first effort had ended in failure. Berezovksy had been leaving the Dolce & Gabbana store on Sloane Street, a dejected look on his face, because he hadn’t found anything that fit properly. He had lost a fair amount of weight in the past few months, due to his worsening credit issues. To be fair, he was still very rich; his armored Maybach was parked just a few feet from the posh store, right at the curb, engines running, his driver and bodyguard waiting for him outside. But he was definitely in the kind of mood that called for a little designer-brand therapy, and he felt sure a new five hundred dollar shirt would have raised his spirits.

  But as soon as he had stepped out of the fancy clothing shop, and saw the way his driver was pointing excitedly down the block, he realized that perhaps a new shirt would be a tiny victory, compared to what was about to happen.

  “He’s right there,” his driver shouted, loud enough for Berezovksy to hear from across the sidewalk. “At Hermès. Two doors down.”

  Berezovsky followed the man’s extended finger, peering down the crowded sidewalk, filled with well-heeled Friday afternoon shoppers. Almost instantly, he saw a spectacular sight. The team of professional-looking bodyguards would have been impossible to miss, even for a man not as well versed in the security efforts of the exceedingly wealthy as Berezovsky was. He recognized at least one of the three bodyguards immediately, and that was all he needed; this was truly the moment he had been waiting for.

  “Get the documents!” he shouted to his driver.

  He watched as the man leapt back into the car, quickly retrieving a sealed manila envelope. Then Berezovsky gestured with his hand, indicating for the rest of his team to come out of the car and join them on the sidewalk. As usual, he had his full complement of security with him, now mostly Israeli, well trained, and inconspicuously armed. They contracted around him, creating a phalanx that protected him from all sides, and together, the team moved down the crowded sidewalk toward the Hermès store. Passersby stopped and stared, but also quickly got out of the way, as the lead bodyguard hurried his pace.

  Berezovsky remained in the center of the men, his small form obscured by their much larger presence, until the group reached the front of the Hermès store, pulling to a stop right next to the large, plate-glass window, which separated the bustling sidewalk from the elegant display shelves containing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of purses, wallets, and scarves. As soon as Berezovksy’s team arrived, the other group of bodyguards closed ranks in front of the doorway, blocking the entrance. Berezovksy could see the fear on their faces. Even though they couldn’t see him yet, they knew exactly who they were facing. And, no doubt, they had been given direct orders not to let him pass.

  “This is illegal!” Berezovsky shouted. “I have a right to shop wherever I want.”

  He took the manila envelope from his driver, who was standing close to him, and then stepped back, as his team of bodyguards advanced. Suddenly, a small scuffle erupted as the two groups of men began pushing and shoving each other. As they battled, Berezovsky waited for an opening. When one of his men pushed one of the opposing men back, a space was revealed, just big enough for a pint-size Oligarch.

  Berezovksy took the opportunity and sprinted forward, sliding between the two bodyguards and through the doorway into the elegant shop.

  The store went instantly silent, as the shoppers inside stared in awe at the spectacle out front. But Berezovksy didn’t care about the tourists, store clerks, and Londoners. He scanned the floor with quick flicks of his eyes—and saw his quarry right up front, trying to look inconspicuous. Berezovksy rushed toward him, and didn’t stop moving until he was less than a foot away.

  Roman Abramovich stared down at him. Berezovksy, in turn, smiled sweetly—and suddenly showed Abramovich the manila envelope.

  “I have a present for you,” he said.

  Berezovsky tossed the envelope toward Abramovich’s hands; the envelope missed the younger man’s fingers, then fluttered to the floor.

  But Berezovsky had already turned on his heels, and was heading back out the front door of the shop. He shouted at his driver to get the car, and the jostling swarm of bodyguards separated.

  A moment later, Berezovsky was back in the quiet confines of his Maybach.

  For nearly six months, he had kept that manila envelope close, as he had chased Abramovich all around the country. He had even once shown up at a Chelsea Football Club match, but had been unable to force his way past Abramovich’s security to the owner’s box. And now, entirely by coincidence, he had been shopping two doors down from the man.

  It had taken one giant happy coincidence, but now Berezovsky had officially served Abramovich. When his former protégé finally opened the envelope and looked inside, he would see the most historic papers in modern English legal times. The largest civil lawsuit in recorded history.

  Boris Berezovsky was suing his former protégé for five billion, six hundred million dollars, claiming that the young man had forced him to sell both his television station and his oil interests at unfair prices, through coercion and blackmail.

  A part of Berezovsky believed that Abramovich would never let such a thing go to trial. The man had become well known in the British press for being averse to all forms of public attention. He barely spoke in the open, and kept his life as hidden as possible. Berezovsky believed that Abramovich would probably settle, pay him a large sum of money to keep this out of a courtroom.

  If he didn’t, well, Berezovksy wanted everything to come out in the open. Every step he had taken, everything he had done, in business politics—everything that had happened over the past decade, and more.

  All of it out in the open, in a courtroom in front of the cameras of the world.

  There would be risks involved, for sure. The story had many dark angles, and Berezovsky had no idea how he was going to look when it was all laid bare. Badri had not wanted him to take such a bold step, had in fact warned that it was crazy and that he should let things be. But, in the end, although Badri would not be involved in the suit, he had agreed to be a supporting witness.

  Berezovsky wasn’t concerned with what Badri thought or even what Abramovich might think. What mattered, to him, was that once again, he would be important—and the entire world would be watching.

  CHAPTER THIRT
Y-FOUR

  * * *

  February 12, 2008,

  Downside Manor, Surrey, England

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG at two in the morning in Berezovksy’s bedroom at his estate in a posh suburb of London—waking him from a deep sleep—and he pressed the receiver to his ear to listen to the grief-stricken voice on the other end, he knew in an instant that his fortunes had yet again changed for the worse. Before any discussions of any potential settlement in his historic lawsuit, years before anyone would set foot in a courtroom—any excitement or optimism Berezovsky had felt in the wake of that wonderful Friday afternoon four months earlier, vanished in a stroke of completely unexpected news.

  Five minutes later, Berezovsky was in the back of his car, still finishing with the buttons of his coat. His driver tore through the countryside of wealthy estates, on the short trip to Downside Manor, one of the most elegant mansions in Surrey. But even as Berezovsky’s car skidded up the long driveway to the main house, he could see that the police had already set up their cordon, stringing their damn yellow tape all the way around the manicured lawn, blocking off access to the home itself.

  For once, Berezovksy was out of his car before his bodyguards; he rushed straight toward the nearest constable and began shouting at the man to let him through. Berezovsky wasn’t even sure what he was saying, whether he was speaking Russian or English—by this point, the tears were streaming freely down his face. But the policeman blocked his way, refusing to let him pass.

  The officer obviously didn’t understand. Though they didn’t share the same last name, Berezovsky and Badri were more than brothers. For nearly two decades, they had been in contact nearly every day, had lived like members of the same family, and had built a relationship well beyond friendship. From the very first days at the car company, Badri had been his right hand.

  And now the Georgian was gone. Fifty-two years old, he had succumbed to a sudden heart attack, having dropped to the floor in his bedroom just a few hours ago.

  Berezovsky’s shoulders slumped as he stood in the driveway, as one of his bodyguards tried to explain the situation to the constable. In truth, it didn’t really matter. Badri’s widow had told Berezovksy all he needed to know. The coroner had already declared him dead—and the police were already beginning their investigation.

  Of course, there would be suspicions. Badri was living in exile, and was also the richest man in Georgia.

  A month earlier, he had been a candidate for president of the breakaway nation, a campaign that had ended in pure catastrophe. In December, during the heated political process, the opposition had given the press a tape recorded in this very mansion, evidence that implicated Badri in a scandal that involved his attempts to bribe a high-level Georgian minister to help him defeat the very same pro-Western candidate that he and Berezovsky had previously put into office during the Rose Revolution.

  Berezovksy had never doubted the veracity of the tape. Such a bribe seemed like business as usual where they came from, and in their history. But the incident had completely destroyed Badri’s chances, and in the following election, he had received less than ten percent of the vote.

  The loss had been hard on Badri; the impropriety of what he had done had made him look corrupt, and had ruined his reputation in the place he was most beloved.

  Perhaps that had been part of what had led him to such an early grave. Berezovksy understood the impact that failure could have on a man like Badri. A billionaire could feel depressed as easily as a pauper.

  For certain, Berezovsky believed that Badri had been going through some sort of emotional crisis. Badri had even suggested that he and Berezovsky should reassess their financial arrangements, pulling himself free of what had been a long-term, unwritten sharing of a bankroll. Berezovsky wondered if Badri’s request was a response to feeling that he had been pushed into politics.

  But none of that mattered now. Berezovksy couldn’t believe his friend had died. Berezovksy had always assumed that he would be the one to go first.

  Standing in the darkness, looking up at the lavish mansion from behind the police tape, he felt more alone than ever before. At the same time, he felt a twinge of fear, as he began to wonder how much further his fortunes could fall.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  * * *

  October 3, 2011,

  High Court, The Rolls Building, Fetter Lane, London

  IF PURE SPECTACLE HAD been Berezovsky’s only goal—and even he would admit that spectacle in itself had always been something he’d strived for—from the very first moment of what the press was calling a historic showdown between Oligarchs, he was succeeding on every cylinder. Sitting in the back of his Maybach, watching as the phalanx of reporters from all over the world convulsed around Abramovich and his fashion-plate significant other heading into the modern, glass-and-steel court complex, he felt an intense satisfaction. He could tell, just from the look on Abramovich’s face, that the attention was sheer torture for the normally sheltered man. And this walk through the barrage of press—something that would no doubt become a morning ritual over the many months of the upcoming trial—was just the tip of the iceberg. The British newspapers, television tabloids, and talk show hosts had become obsessed with “The Biggest Trial in History”—and plenty of their passion and titillation had been focused on the extreme details of Abramovich’s wealth. His reported twelve-billion-dollar fortune, his soccer team, his airplanes, his homes, his newest yacht—the Eclipse, the biggest in the world, with multiple helipads, swimming pools, Picassos on the walls.

  For a private man who rarely spoke in public, never gave interviews, and kept counsel with a very few close friends and confidants—a life lived from behind gates and a veritable army of bodyguards—the attention had to seem like a form of persecution. Berezovsky was still somewhat shocked that Abramovich had let this go to trial, that he was going to sit there, in that brand-new courtroom, and lay open much of his life in such a fishbowl setting. The state-of-the-art justice complex, a bulbous, space-age building filled with open atria, spiral staircases, and lofty ceilings—had just been completed. Yet it seemed a strangely anachronistic place in which to debate a case lodged squarely in a moment in Russian history. Then again, the case did hinge around a sudden, spontaneous modernization, a revolution of market forces, the decline of an old way and the rising up of something new. Perhaps glass and steel made more sense than aging stone.

  Whatever the location, Berezovsky felt that, at least here, in the moment before the trial began, he had achieved a victory; he had spent his whole life on a quest to be at the center of things. Here and now, he would have his chance to tell his story in front of the entire world. Whether it was arrogance, confidence, or even maybe a bit of delusion, he was certain the world would be sympathetic.

  He waited until Abramovich had entered the building, then just a little longer for the press to settle back, recharge their camera batteries, restock their audio recorders. And then he signaled to his driver and bodyguards. He was ready for it to begin.

  • • •

  Courtroom 26 wasn’t large; a rectangular box set up so that everything faced the judge’s bench, a space barely big enough to accommodate the two teams of lawyers, bodyguards, and experts, with just a few rows for the registered press. Berezovsky had been placed fairly close to the entrance, which meant that every morning, Abramovich and his team would pass right by him on their way to their seats. He did his best not to have any contact with the other side—no words, not even looks—as they went by, on orders from his legal team. At each day’s recess, the two sides were led to different holding rooms, an attempt to limit any incidental contact that could turn this into more of a circus than it already was.

  From the very opening statements, it became clear how the trial was going to be presented. Berezovsky’s argument was simple: Abramovich had been his protégé, his close friend, and someone he’d considered like a son. He’d made a deal to build an oil and aluminum empire with the young man, a
nd although nothing had ever been written down, they had agreed to split the ownership of their business down the middle: fifty percent for Abramovich, fifty percent to Berezovsky and Badri. When Berezovsky had fallen out with Putin—a fact that was shared ground in their arguments—and had been forced to flee Russia, Abramovich had chosen to end their partnership. He’d used the pressure Berezovsky was under from Putin’s regime to force the sale of Berezovksy’s shares of ORT and his interest in Sibneft and the aluminum conglomerate—now known as Rusal—at fire-sale prices. In fact, Berezovsky further argued, Abramovich had used threats and blackmail to get a price that was almost one fifth of what Berezovsky felt his interests were worth.

  For his part, Abramovich’s argument was equally simple. In his view, there had never been any written agreement because there never was any deal of the sort Berezovsky had described between them. Berezovsky had never owned any shares of Sibneft or Rusal. And in fact, their relationship, from his point of view, wasn’t at all the friendship that Berezovsky had described—it was actually an unwritten partnership between a young man and his krysha. In many ways, Abramovich’s entire case revolved around this Russian concept, something his lawyer argued that a Western judge would have to go back to Shakespearean times to truly empathize with and understand. Abramovich hadn’t paid Berezovsky and Badri one billion, three hundred million dollars in Megève because of a friendship or to buy any shares that didn’t exist. He had paid that money to complete his krysha obligations.

  Although the two sides’ arguments hinged on fairly simple concepts, it was also obvious from the beginning that everything else about the case was going to be as complex as a spider web. A story spanning two decades, involving two men who had ridden through the chaos of that historic time in Russian history. A tale that ran from glasnost to perestroika to Yeltsin to Putin, that involved murders, arrests, an upheaval both political and economic, and of course enormous sums of money. Even though it had come from the opposing lawyer, Berezovksy had to agree that Shakespeare was an apt comparison. The judge, the Right Honorable Dame Elizabeth Gloster, was about to be thrown into a sweeping drama; it would be up to her to determine which of the players were honest, which were star-crossed and tragic—and which might be simply playing the fool.