Harding Luke - A very expensive poison: the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putins war with the West

International Praise for Luke Hardings

A Very Expensive Poison

An astonishing story.

The Observer (London)

ImpassionedHarding paints deft portraits of the tragicomic duo suspected of carrying out the crime.

New Statesman (London)

A superb expositionAs a former Moscow correspondent, he is well-placed to sketch the political and criminal background to the case.

The Spectator (London)

An expert chronicler of a sensational but opaque crimeEnthralling.

A. D. Miller, author of Snowdrops

Harding lays out every fact, connecting it in thrillerish detail to the dark undercurrents of life in todays Russia.

Oliver Bullough, author of The Last Man in Russia

Luke Harding

A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON

Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardians bureau chief in Moscow. The Kremlin expelled Harding from Russia in the first case of its kind since the Cold War, in part because of his reporting on Alexander Litvinenkos murder.

He is the author of four previous nonfiction books: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the Worlds Most Wanted Man; Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia; WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy; and The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (the last two cowritten with David Leigh).

Two of his books have been made into Hollywood movies. Dreamworks The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks, was released in 2013. Director Oliver Stones biopic Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files, appeared in 2016. In 2014, Luke was awarded the James Cameron prize. His books have been translated into twenty-five languages. Luke lives near London with his wife, the freelance journalist Phoebe Taplin, and their two children.

ALSO BY LUKE HARDING

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the Worlds Most Wanted Man

Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy (with David Leigh)

The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (with David Leigh)

A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, JANUARY 2017

Copyright 2016 by Guardian News and Media Ltd

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Guardian Books, London, and Faber and Faber Ltd., London, in 2016.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-101-97399-8

Ebook ISBN9781101974001

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Cover photograph TongChuwit/Shutterstock

www.vintagebooks.com

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a

Dioxin: Any of three unsaturated heterocyclic compounds, two having the formula C4H6O2 and the third C4H4O2

Gelsemium: A colourless, inodorous, bitter alkaloidal substance obtained from the root of G. sempervirens

Polonium: A highly radioactive metallic element, discovered in 1898 by Professor and Marie Curie in pitchblende

Ricin: An extremely toxic lectin present in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis.

Thallium: The chemical element of atomic number 81, a soft silvery-white metal which occurs naturally in small amounts in iron pyrites, sphalerite and other ores. Its compounds are very poisonous (symbol: Tl)

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

Prologue

The Men from Moscow

Passport control, Gatwick Airport, Sussex
16 October 2006

Two of the Russians arriving that morning stood out. What precisely made them suspicious was hard to identify. But in the mind of Spencer Scott the detective constable on duty at Londons Gatwick Airport there was a curious sense of doubt. It was 16 October 2006. Passengers were disembarking from a Transaero flight from Moscow. They were collecting luggage. A stream of new arrivals queued up at passport control, and then proceeded for customs and excise checks.

The first Russian was of medium height, thirtysomething, with blond Slavic hair. He was wearing a casual jacket and carrying an expensive-looking leather laptop case. He appeared prosperous. The second, with dark hair, receding slightly, and a yellowish complexion, was clearly his companion. They werent behaving oddly as such. And yet there was something a furtiveness that pricked Detective Constable Scotts attention.

I though they were of interest and basically as they came through immigration controls I stopped them and questioned them, he recalled. Scott hadnt been told to look out for them; he was acting on a hunch. He asked them their names. One man spoke English and identified himself as Andrei Lugovoi. His friend, he said, was Dmitry Kovtun. Kovtun said nothing. It appeared he spoke only Russian. Scott took a grainy low-res photo of them. Lugovoi was on the right. In it they look like dark ghostly smudges. It was 11.34 a.m.

Lugovoi and Kovtuns story seemed convincing enough: they had flown into London for a business meeting. Lugovoi said he owned a company called Global Project. Moreover, his friend was a member of the finance department at a respectable Moscow bank. Their travel agent had booked them in for two nights at the Best Western Hotel in Shaftesbury Avenue. The hotel wasnt cheap: 300 a night. Lugovoi handed over his reservation. It was genuine.

Still, there was something unsettling about their answers, Scott felt: They were very evasive as to why they were coming to the UK. Normally, those subjected to a random stop would open up about families, holiday plans, the lousy English weather. The two Russians, by contrast, were elusive. As I asked them questions, they werent coming out with the answers that I wanted to hear or expected to hear. They were giving me very, very short answers, Scott said. Their replies offered no information.

Scott looked on the internet but couldnt find Global Project. The Russians told him that their business meeting was with Continental Petroleum Limited, a company based at 58 Grosvenor Street in London. Scott rang the firms landline. A man answered, confirmed they were registered with the UKs financial authority. OK, then. The constable checked the police database. Nothing. Britains intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, hadnt flagged Lugovoi and Kovtun either. Apparently, they werent of interest.