Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [119]
They watched indeed. The Kennan screening was advertised around town and open to the public. I looked at the registry: there were two guests from the Russian Embassy. I spotted them easily—the KGB stamp was instantly recognizable—in the second row, close enough to the podium to get good-quality audio on their hidden recorders.
“Everyone knows I am not an admirer of Berezovsky,” spoke the dean of Kremlinology, Peter Reddaway, after the film. “But the film is convincing and Putin must respond to the allegations to reassure us that he is not what he appears to be.” The two embassy types listened with stone faces.
Yushenkov’s tour lasted a week and included screenings in New York and Boston, at places like Columbia and Harvard. Invariably he made a strong impression. He was a good speaker, and he projected passion and conviction. Aliona was obviously smitten; she listened to him with her face raised and eyes fixed as if he was a sage, and they spent hours talking when she took him on sightseeing tours.
A year later, Yushenkov was assassinated in Moscow by an unknown gunman. Aliona called me from Denver.
“You know what we talked about during all those hours we spent together?” she said. “It was about Russia. He was in love with Russia. He recited poetry—Yesenin, Lermontov—that I had never known. Actually, he transformed me. After I’d realized that it was the FSB that bombed our house, I had a problem with Russia. Perhaps he sensed that. He said, ‘You may never go back, but you should know that that scum that killed your mother, they are not Russia. You and your sister are.’ He promised that he would get to the bottom of it. And he knew what he was up against. He was the greatest, the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”
Tbilisi, February 1, 2002: Russian Security Council Secretary Vladimir Rushailo arrives in the former Soviet republic of Georgia for talks about the situation in Pankisi Gorge, the region bordering Chechnya. The Russians claim that the Gorge is used as a training and staging ground for the Chechen guerrillas. Rushailo demands that the Chechens be ousted from Georgia and threatens military action. Akhmed Zakayev, deputy prime minister of Maskhadov’s government, says that there are no Chechen bases in Georgia, only eleven thousand to twelve thousand refugees. Georgia requests U.S. military assistance. On February 28 the Pentagon reveals a plan to send two hundred military advisers to Georgia. Zakayev welcomes the arrival of Americans: “The Chechen side is eager to cooperate with any force waging war on terrorism.”
On the day Yushenkov arrived in Washington, Yuri Felshtinsky and Sasha Litvinenko landed in Tbilisi. Sasha, wearing dark glasses, went through passport control as Edwin Redwald Carter, civis Britannicus. Yuri went through separately, and they reunited in a room at the Sheraton Metekhi Palace, where they were joined by the head of a local security company, “the most reliable and best connected in Georgia,” according to Boris’s security advisers in London. They had come on a secret and dangerous mission: to meet up with the man who claimed to be Achemez Gochiyayev, the FSB’s main suspect in the Moscow bombings.
“There is a notion of a ‘beacon’ in our trade,” Sasha explained to me. “After the big splash with the book and the film, we became a beacon. It was only a matter of time before someone contacted us.” Sure enough, a few days after the screening, one of Boris’s aides received a phone call from Georgia. After that, Felshtinsky handled the negotiations using a clean, pay-as-you-go mobile phone. Yes, of course, he would be interested to talk to Gochiyayev. He agreed to wait on a certain date at a particular street corner in Tbilisi. Felshtinsky would be holding a copy of the International Herald Tribune. The man who would meet him would be wearing a green baseball cap. He would take him to see Gochiyayev.
“We can guarantee your security within