Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [129]
Indeed, seven months before Yushenkov was killed, his associate, Vladimir Golovlyov, a Duma member who was in charge of Liberal Russia finances, was shot while walking his dog. His killers were never found. The predominant theory was that it was a business dispute; Golovlyov had been involved in many privatization deals.
Three months after Yushenkov, Yuri Schekochihin, the crusading journalist from Novaya Gazeta and a member of the Public Commission, died suddenly from an unexplained “allergic reaction.” His medical chart ended up “classified.” His colleagues and his family suspected poisoning related to his numerous investigations of the FSB.
“See,” said Sasha when we learned of Schekochihin’s mysterious death, “I told you, didn’t I?”
Sasha was an oper, not a scientist. He did not believe in coincidences. In retrospect, he had a point.
Moscow, April 30, 2003: The prosecutor general’s office announces indictments as the result of its now-closed investigation into the apartment house bombings. According to the indictments, nine Islamic fighters carried out the bombings. Five of them were already dead, including the Jordanian-born warlord, Amir Khattab, killed by a poisoned letter delivered to him by an FSB double agent. Two others remained at large, including Achemez Gochiyayev, the mastermind of the attacks. Two men were in custody. Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Adam Dekkushev would stand trial on charges of terrorism. Boris Berezovsky dismissed the prosecutors’ findings as ‘’absolute rubbish.”
On May 15 I landed in Istanbul in a last-ditch effort to make contact with Gochiyayev. For some weeks prior to that, the man who called himself his representative had negotiated with Felshtinsky. This time, for the full story, including a personal interview with Gochiyayev, he demanded money. He started at $3 million. He quickly reduced his price to $500,000; a few days later he asked for $100,000, saying that it was his last offer. Felshtinsky could not convince him on the phone that he was saying no because he meant no, not as a way to bring down the price.
We were pretty sure that Gochiyayev was no longer his own master, that he was being handled somehow. First, he could not have gotten into Turkey on his own, without someone providing money and false documents, as he was obviously on Interpol’s watch list. Second, the negotiator who called Felshtinsky displayed a level of sophistication indicative of a serious underlying effort, an organization of some sort. When Boris asked my opinion, I was absolutely against any money being paid, as this could be a trap with catastrophic consequences. I volunteered to go on a second unpredictable mission to Turkey to find out.
Akhmed Zakayev, with whom I discussed the trip, supplied me with a bodyguard, an Istanbul-based Chechen, who was waiting for me outside the Hilton Hotel. We got into a yellow Turkish cab. As we approached the walled entrance of the Kempinski Hotel on the bank of the Bosporus, where I was to meet my contact, I felt a bout of nostalgia for my adventures with Sasha three years earlier.
“I can’t go in there,” said my guard. “I will wait outside. See, I have a weapon here,” he slapped himself in the waist, “and they have metal detectors at the entrance.”
That’s reassuring, I thought. That means that whoever I meet will be metal-free, too.
My interlocutor was about forty-five and spoke an educated version of Russian. He looked like a schoolteacher, not a guerrilla. They were asking for money, he said, because they had to resettle Gochiyayev, who was a hunted man. He suggested we think of it as a witness relocation program.
“We cannot pay you a penny,” said I. “We do not know who you are. No offense intended, but you may be a group on some official terrorist list, or a front for the FSB. If we pay you, we expose ourselves. As for Gochiyayev, with Russian charges looming over him, he is doomed anyway. Sooner or