Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [154]
I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff for doing all they can for me. The British police who are pursuing my case with vigour and professionalism and are watching over me and my family.
I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honoured to be a British citizen. I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.
I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and for our son knows no bounds.
But as I lie here, I can distinctly hear the beatings of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip, but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like.
I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present illness.
You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.
You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.
May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me, but to beloved Russia and its people.
Perhaps they listened to Professor Henry and brought an alpha-radioactivity detector to the hospital. Or perhaps they took Sasha’s blood samples to where his case was eventually scrutinized, the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire, Britain’s nuclear lab. One way or another, moments after his death the authorities discovered what had killed Sasha: it was the obscure radioactive isotope Polonium-210, an alpha-emitter.
I learned about it from Zakayev, who called at three o’clock in the morning to report that police wearing radioactivity-protection gear had converged on Muswell Hill less than an hour after Marina and Tolik had returned from the hospital. They told them to take only the most necessary things and leave immediately because their lives were in danger. For the rest of the night they stayed at Zakayev’s. People wearing bright yellow suits, rubber boots, gloves, and gas masks worked at Sasha’s home through the rest of the night, sealing the house, covering the porch and the front lawn with plastic. A heavy police guard surrounded the place.
The detectives from Scotland Yard asked us not to tell anyone about the radioactivity. They first had to assess the public health hazard and make sure that the news of radioactive attack did not create panic in the city. But in the morning, a grief-stricken Valter Litvinenko nearly let it slip when he spoke to reporters in front of the hospital.
“A tiny nuclear bomb killed my son,” he said, sobbing.
In the afternoon, Home Secretary John Reid announced that Sasha was killed by radioactivity. A statement from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) added that it was a “major dose.” Pandemonium broke out in London. Squads of HPA officials and police, brandishing military alpha counters, roamed the city, retracing Sasha’s steps, their every move followed closely by TV news crews. Hundreds of members of the public called the HPA hotline. The British government’s emergency planning committee, which last gathered during the subway bombings, met to discuss the situation. News producers scrambled to find experts in nuclear physics for special-report newscasts. Within hours, millions of Britons became experts in polonium, Russian politics, and Boris Berezovsky’s conspiracy theories. The entire world learned Sasha’s name as the first-ever victim of a nuclear terrorist attack.
It took two weeks before the authorities gave the clearance for Sasha’s funeral. His body presented a major environmental hazard; immediately after he died, it was removed to some secret facility and the hospital space