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theater. Terkibayev was a known figure in Chechnya, a suspected FSB agent, who had worked in Maskhadov’s press office in 2000. In 2001 he went to fight with the rebels. On two documented instances, in April 2001 and March 2002, he had been detained by federal forces and then miraculously released. The report of his presence among the theater terrorists was a surprise to Zakayev, who had assumed that he had gone to work for the Russians. Subsequent inquiries established that shortly after the siege, in November, Terkibayev surfaced in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he tried to infiltrate Chechen émigré groups. He bragged about “being in the theater.” He was exposed as an agent provocateur and returned to Moscow. Then, at the end of March, he was spotted in Strasbourg among a group of pro-Russian Chechens whom the Kremlin brought to the Council of Europe to promote the controversial March 23 referendum in Chechnya, ratifying a new constitution. Critics charged that the vote was suspect.

Upon return from London Yushenkov passed the Terkibayev file to Anna Politkovskaya, the Chechnya correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, who knew the intricate world of Chechen clans better then anyone. During the hostage crisis, she was in the theater and had interviewed Barayev, the leader of the terrorists. Throughout the crisis she passed their messages to the authorities and later wrote extensively about the episode. She was best suited to investigate the Terkibayev mystery.

Yushenkov was shot on April 17. Ten days later Politkovskaya’s article appeared. She managed to find Terkibayev and get an interview from him. When, some months later, I asked Politkovskaya why she thought he agreed to talk, she could only attribute it to his vanity; after all, among Chechens, being interviewed by Politkovskaya was a status symbol.

Terkibayev confirmed that he was in the theater. He said he had guided the terror group through the streets of Moscow, entered the building with them, and left just before the assault. He boasted that he was an agent of the Russian secret service and a consultant for the Kremlin administration. His role was to report on the terrorist group’s activities. In the story, Politkovskaya directly alleged that at some level, the authorities must have known of the hostage seizure before it took place.

The story was a bombshell. Although ostracized at home, Politkovskaya was widely respected in the West. Later she told me that Alexander Vershbow, the American ambassador to Moscow, invited her to talk about the article. He “ventured an opinion” that allegations of that sort are so unbelievable that they must be backed by irrefutable evidence to be taken seriously. Discounted, I thought, remembering Tom Graham. After the Politkovskaya coup, Terkibayev vanished, despite the best efforts of Moscow journalists to find him. Eight months later he was reported killed in a car crash in Chechnya.

In early March 2003 Trepashkin delivered on his promise. How he got it, no one knew, but one day he brought to Yushenkov and Kovalyov the name, ID number, address, and telephone numbers of Gochiyayev’s business partner. Remarkably, he had never been mentioned by the FSB as a suspect in the case. Was he the man who tricked Gochiyayev into renting the spaces where the bombs were planted? Gochiyayev had claimed that his partner called him at 5

a.m. on the morning of the first explosion, shortly before the blast went off. Now this could be easily checked.

Another thing that Trepashkin dug out was Gochiyayev’s mobile phone number from which he presumably tipped off the authorities about the two other sites where explosives had been found. This too could now be easily verified. Yushenkov promptly passed the information to the official investigators of the bombing. There was no response—except that Trepashkin was called in to the prosecutor’s office and told that he would be indicted for three violations stemming from the search of his home fifteen months earlier. As reporters waited outside to see whether Trepashkin would leave the building, Yushenkov made a