Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [57]
With every passing day of preparation, Sasha became more and more depressed. He knew that after that operation he would be bound to the URPO gang forever. He even asked his old bosses at ATC whether they would take him back. But no one wanted to mess with Khokholkov.
And then, at the last logistical meeting before the hit, the SWAT team that was supposed to snatch the target flatly refused to participate unless they were paid in advance. They had carried out a prior kidnapping on spec, they said, and they were still waiting for their share of the proceeds. Not anymore. They wanted their cut beforehand.
The operation was postponed.
On December 27, Captain Alexander Kamyshnikov, Khokholkov’s deputy, called Sasha’s department into his office and told them to wrap up their current case, an investigation of mob penetration into a Moscow police precinct.
“This is not the type of case that we should be dealing with,” he proclaimed. “We are the department of special tasks. Have you read this?” He produced a copy of Special Tasks, the recently published memoir of Pavel Sudoplatov, the head of NKVD special tasks under Stalin. He had run the operation to assassinate Leon Trotsky, among other jobs.
“This is our role model!” He waved the book. “Everyone is ordered to read it. We have a new set of objectives ahead of us. There are people, criminals, who cannot be gotten in the normal way. They are tremendously wealthy and can always buy their way out of court. Such people are a grave threat to our country. You, Litvinenko, you know Berezovsky, don’t you? You will be the one to take him out.”
Sasha did not respond, but his mind was racing. Berezovsky had until recently been a senior national security official and was still a Kremlin adviser. Even discussing the assassination of a person of his caliber was crazy and merited investigation under antiterrorism statutes. As far as Sasha knew no one at URPO had a personal grudge against Boris. The order must have come from the top, or as an outside contract. Or maybe it was a provocation to test him?
He was asked again: “You would bump off Berezovsky, wouldn’t you?”
Sasha gestured by shaking his head and pointing at his temple while making a rotating movement with his finger, meaning, “I am not crazy enough to talk about this, because the conversation may be recorded.”
Afterward, Sasha’s team gathered in his office to try to make sense of what had just happened. They decided to go to their boss, Alexander Gusak, who was on sick leave.
“Why are you so surprised?” Gusak responded when he heard them out. “Khokholkov has already spoken to me about bumping off Berezovsky.”
For Sasha, the holidays of early January 1998 were far from joyful. He did not say much to Marina, but she sensed that something was very wrong. He avoided parties. He declined to go to a concert, so she had to return the tickets. When she tried to cheer him up, he sighed, “If you only knew, my darling, how much I don’t wish to party.”
When he returned to work after the holidays, his superiors did not renew the talk of hitting Berezovsky. Nevertheless, he and his comrades knew that sooner or later, their division would be used for special tasks of a political nature. In several heated discussions, the members of Sasha’s team pondered their options: do whatever they were told and hope for the best, or report everything to Kovalev, as Sasha initially suggested. Sasha’s second in command, Maj. Andrei Ponkin, a big, ever-smiling fellow, objected: Kovalev surely knew what the URPO was all about. He would back Khokholkov and squash them.
It was Ponkin who first suggested going to Berezovsky. Boris had already managed to get rid of Korzhakov and Barsukov. If he agreed to back them, Ponkin argued, they might have a chance. Everyone concurred, and Sasha was deputized to approach Boris. His superiors, Gusak and Shebalin, were happy for him to take the lead.
It took him a month to get an