Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [150]
“Boris,” he said, “you have cast yourself as the archenemy of Putin: politically, personally, and ideologically. Reasonable people believe that you are on the good side in this crusade, even though they may question your motives. For the public at large, this is all pretty irrelevant because it’s all about politics in a faraway land. But this time, the situation is very different. A crime has been committed on British soil, an attempted murder. The story will reach many people, who will react intuitively. The problem is, most people will not want to believe it was Putin. People are instinctively averse to the idea of governments or presidents ordering murders. The more it seems obvious, the deeper they will go into denial. You will be going against the tide, and you are the anti-Putin. If people don’t want to think it was Putin, then they’ll think it must be you. The louder you say it was him, the more this will happen.”
By the end of the day on Friday the 17th the toxicology report came in. It was official: Sasha had been poisoned with thallium, Marina told me on the phone from the hospital. She sounded relieved, in one sense. At least they knew what it was. They were starting him on an antidote.
At that point, all hell broke loose. An armed police squad arrived at Barnet just as Sasha was being readied for transfer to the University College Hospital (UCH) in Euston, the top medical facility in Britain. Before he was discharged, Marina had the good sense to get a medical summary of Sasha’s case written up by the attending physician. I had it sent by messenger to Boris’s office, where we were holding council, and we immediately faxed it to New York. By then our émigré network in America was helping us seek the world’s leading authority on thallium poisoning.
In the meantime, another police squad converged on the house of Akhmed Zakayev in Muswell Hill.
“They took Tolik away,” Zakayev reported on the phone. While Marina was at the hospital, Tolik stayed with the Zakayevs after school.
“You won’t believe it,” he said. “Eight cops in three cars said they had orders to take him. They terrified my grandchildren. ‘Why did they arrest Tolik?’ they asked.”
I rushed to UCH only to discover that the ambulance, escorted by police, had beaten me there. The doors on Sasha’s floor were locked. Through a window I could see two policemen at the end of a corridor. As I gestured to attract their attention, two solemn-looking gentlemen in suits emerged from the elevator. They were obviously there to visit the same patient.
“May I inquire who you are?” one of them asked.
“And who are you?”
He gave me his card and wrote down my numbers. He and his companion were from the Scotland Yard antiterrorist unit. They asked me to give them a day to question Sasha. I tried to call Marina, but she was nowhere to be found. There was nothing more I could do. I went out for a drink.
As I settled in at a nearby pub, Zakayev called: “They are holding Marina.”
“What?”
“She called me from a hospital phone. They have taken her cell phone away, and would not let her see Sasha, or leave. Tolik’s cell phone is off, too. When the police took him, they told me they were bringing him to Marina, but they didn’t follow through. I am on my way to the hospital,” he said.
We got to Sasha’s floor at about the same time. A uniformed officer appeared.
“We want to see Mrs. Litvinenko.”
“She can’t see you right now.”
“Is she in custody?”
“No, she is not, but she can’t see you.”
Cops are cops everywhere, I thought. There is only one way of dealing with them.
“Well, if she is not here in five minutes, we are calling the press to say that you have arrested her.”
“Please wait while I call my superior.”
Two minutes later, the antiterrorist detective appeared, the one I had met earlier. He was obviously the boss around here.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “They’ve overdone it a bit. They’re the local police and they don’t know what’s going on. They were told to secure the witnesses.”
“Why are you holding the kid?”
“He was at a police