Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [27]
Moments later his pursuers arrived, about thirty strong, in flak jackets and balaclavas, armed with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. For the next two hours, in horrified disbelief, Goose watched from the mayor’s window. The attackers, who evidently belonged to a branch of the secret service, disarmed his men and put them facedown in the snow, where they remained for nearly two hours, in full view of a crowd of spectators and TV cameras. The city police, called to the scene, exchanged a few words with the attackers and then quietly drove away. So did an FSB squad, alerted by Most-Bank staff, who thought a robbery was in progress.
Eventually the assailants left, as mysteriously as they appeared, without identifying themselves or explaining the reasons for the raid. The next morning Goose took his family to London and the safety of the Park Lane Hotel, where he remained for several months. The managers of his vast business empire shuttled back and forth from Moscow to London.
The mystery of the Most-Bank raid cleared up a few days later when Korzhakov confessed. His people had roughed up Goose’s men, ostensibly as part of a search for unlicensed weapons. Korzhakov claimed he was just being cautious. Goose’s convoy was taking the same route as the president on his way to the Kremlin, so he couldn’t be too careful. But the general also suggested that the raid was partly a matter of personal pleasure. “Hunting geese is among my favorite hobbies,” Korzhakov gleefully told the Russian weekly Argumenty i Facti on January 18, 1995. Many felt it was his revenge for NTV’s criticism of the war in Chechnya, launched in December, and for mocking him as a hopelessly dumb puppet on the Kukly show.
At the time, many believed that the Most-Bank raid was encouraged by Berezovsky. After all, he was friendly with Korzhakov. Four months later, when Berezovsky was nearly taken away by Moscow police in the aftermath of Listyev’s murder on March 1, 1995—and saved by Sasha Litvinenko—the same logic suggested that it was the mayor’s revenge for the Most-Bank raid.
Now, in February 1996, Berezovsky and Goose were direct competitors in network television, and yet Berezovsky had the nerve to call and invite Goose for a drink. But Goose thought that he knew what it was all about. The way things were going, he would dine with the devil himself if he could get some guidance on how to prevent the catastrophe looming in Russia’s presidential elections.
Just a few months earlier, the privatization dream machine had ground to a halt. For months, lucky bankers had been waking up to discover that they were now industrialists. But in December, without explanation, the government canceled three loans-for-shares auctions in the aviation industry, including a deal for KB Sukhoy, the producer of the famous fighter jets. Rumors flew that the stoppage was the work of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, one of the Kremlin’s leading hawks.
Chubais’s standing grew more and more shaky. As the June elections loomed in everyone’s mind, he was unquestionably becoming Yeltsin’s main liability. Communist propaganda made him Public Enemy No. 1. The chant “Retire Yeltsin, Jail Chubais!” reverberated at rallies. His enemies ruthlessly exploited Chubais’s non-Russian surname and his peculiar looks, especially his red hair. In Russian folk tradition, a redhead is someone to watch out for, a devious and suspicious character. In support of this view, an ancient edict of Czar Peter the Great prohibiting redheads from giving legal testimony was handily discovered in the archives and trumpeted on the airwaves.
By early January, a split had developed in Yeltsin’s inner circle. An anti-Chubais faction, headed by Korzhakov, began whispering into the president