Death of a Dissident (60 page)

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 was decontaminated. Pathologists attending his postmortem wore radioactivity-protection gear. Finally we were told that the body would be released to us in a special sealed casket, provided by the HPA. Should the family wish to cremate him, they would have to wait for twenty-eight years, until the radioactivity decays to safe levels—nearly eighty half-lives of Polonium-210.

Before the funeral, our closely knit circle was nearly torn apart by another controversy, Sasha’s last surprise. As we were discussing the arrangements, Akhmed Zakayev declared that Sasha should be buried in a Muslim cemetery because he had converted to Islam the day before he died. It turned out that on November 22, just before Sasha lost consciousness, Akhmed brought a mullah to the hospital who said an appropriate prayer. As far as Akhmed was concerned, Sasha died a Muslim.

I did not know about the mullah, and I was furious with Akhmed. Sasha had never been in any way religious; in fact, he told me that he did not understand those who were. His only passion was to win his battles and to make his point. True, he often said, “I am a Chechen,” but I said that too. That did not make me a Muslim. That was a statement of solidarity, not at all an expression of faith. Not to mention that on the last day he surely was not thinking clearly.

“I know why he did it, Akhmed,” I said. “He felt guilty for what Russia had done to the Chechens and wanted to make a gesture. Like a German would want to become a Jew after the Holocaust. But it was a mistake. This will not help your cause. With what’s going on in the world, let’s face it, Russian propaganda will do everything to shift focus from the murder to the conversion. You are playing into their hands.”

“I am not playing,” said Akhmed. “Everything was done properly, so he is a Muslim.”

Akhmed was a stubborn man. Yet that stubbornness is why the Russians will not win the Chechen war unless they kill off the entire stubborn population.

“I am not an expert in conversions,” I said, “but I am an expert in biochemistry. With the amount of sedation he got on that day, I can’t be sure he was rational.”

“Acts of faith are not rational,” said Akhmed.

The matter was deferred to Marina.

“Let everyone believe about Sasha whatever he wants,” said Marina wisely. “You can have your service in a mosque and we will have ours in a chapel.” Marina ruled that Sasha would be buried in nondenominational grounds.

On December 8, in the pouring rain, as the police kept the media off-limits, Sasha was laid to rest in Highgate Cemetery in London, his grave surrounded by the tombs of famous Victorians and a few atheists, including Karl Marx and the physicist Michael Faraday.

Death surrounds life like a frame around a painting: it signifies completion and bestows definition. A life recently concluded is a freshly painted picture framed for an exhibition, no longer subject to change, additions, or redactions, no second takes, not even final touches. The life is complete, and signed. Yet this frozen set of forms and colors is forever at the mercy of its viewers—hanging on a wall, it is subject to debate and to criticism.

Sasha’s life, as soon as it had ended, became more meaningful, more awash with significance than it had been before November 1, 2006.

As I was coming to grips with his death, I realized that in Sasha I witnessed a miracle of transformation, of the kind when black turns white, right and wrong change places, death and salvation reverse punishment and reward. Within six short years from the time he fled Russia, a scared and confused member of a corrupt and murderous clique, he became a crusader, and then died a torturous death for it. In a different type of witness, his conversion would perhaps evoke ecclesiastical reference. I can simply say that Sasha turned out to be a greater man than most.

For Marina, there was no framing. “He was so superreal, he charged me so much, that I just continue running on that energy as if we are still wired to each other. I don’t think it will ever stop.”

Moscow, February 1, 2007: Speaking at a Kremlin press conference, President Putin indicates that the Russian secret services considered Litvinenko an insignificant target, and would not, therefore, have bothered to murder him. “He didn’t know any secrets,” says Putin. “Before being fired from the FSB Litvinenko served in the convoy troops and had no access to state secrets.” On the same day, Scotland Yard announces that it has completed its investigation and sent the Litvinenko file to the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether anyone should be charged with a crime. The content of the file has not been disclosed
.

“When Watergate was first reported, the White House brushed it aside as a ‘third-rate burglary.’ Then layers of revelations began peeling away, one after another, and the walls around Nixon came tumbling down,” said George Menzies over lunch, some time after Sasha’s death. “Sasha’s case will become Putin’s ‘third-rate poisoning.’ I have a hunch that this murder will be solved.”

George was reacting to my lecture about Polonium-210 as a murder weapon. In the annals of forensic science, I explained, Sasha’s murder will stand out for its ultimate irony: polonium is simultaneously the best and the worst murder weapon ever devised.

Whoever chose polonium to kill Sasha did so because the chances
of its ever being discovered were close to zero. It could not be easily identified chemically: the toxicology lab found only low levels of thallium, a minor contaminant of polonium production. Polonium was unlikely to be detected by its radioactivity, since common Geiger counters were not designed to detect alpha rays. Polonium is perhaps the most toxic substance on earth: a tiny speck is a highly lethal dose, and one gram is enough to kill half a million people. But it is absolutely harmless to a handler unless it is inhaled or swallowed. Most important, polonium had never been used to murder anyone before, so practically no one in the expert community—toxicologists, police, or terrorism experts—would have been looking for it or expecting it. It was sheer luck, plus Sasha’s phenomenal endurance, that it was found. He had received a huge dose. Had he died in Barnet Hospital within the first two weeks, his death would have been attributed to thallium, meaning that anyone could have given it to him.

The irony is that once it
was
detected, polonium became a smoking gun. No amateur killer—even one awash with money—could have used it.

For a freelance killer, polonium in the amounts involved in the attack on Sasha would be impossible to obtain. Polonium is a highly controlled substance made in nuclear labs for use in devices eliminating static electricity, in which it is contained in tiny amounts. According to Dr. John Harrison of the Health Protection Agency, Sasha had received a dose of at least 3 gigabecquerels of radioactivity, which is equal to about a hundred lethal doses. To obtain this amount of polonium from the end product available on the market, one would have to purchase hundreds of recently manufactured static-electricity devices and develop a technology for extracting, concentrating, and handling polonium, which would be virtually impossible for an amateur freelancer.

Any perpetrator who came up with the idea of employing polonium for a sinister purpose would necessarily have to have a high level of sophistication and knowledge of physics, medicine, and radioactive surveillance procedures, not to mention an understanding of polonium’s production and distribution. All in all, it would have required a touch of genius, combined with tremendous resources—and
access to polonium in the first place—to develop a murder plan of this sort on an ad hoc basis. Only an established organization with expertise in the area of science-based poisoning could have perpetrated this crime.

Ninety-seven percent of the known production of polonium, about 85 grams annually, takes place in Russia. Some is exported for industrial use, primarily to the United States. The Russian nuclear reactor that produces polonium is subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, such that each production cycle is supposed to be logged and recorded, although the IAEA does not register polonium per se.

In a story on December 18, 2006, the Russian Web site Gazeta.ru quoted Ekaterina Shugaeva, press secretary of Techsnabexport, the only Russian company officially licensed to transport and export Polonium-210. “Polonium is extremely complex in production and handling,” she said. “This capability exists only at Sarov [a nuclear facility at an old Soviet weapons lab, near the city of Samara]. No one else has the expertise to produce it.” According to Shugaeva, the production cycle starts with the neutron bombardment of bismuth (a metal) at the Ozersk nuclear reactor, near the city of Chelyabinsk. From there, the half-product is transferred to the Sarov facility. There, the polonium is purified from the bulk of bismuth, enriched, and packed. Polonium-210 is produced in a monthly cycle and is dispensed in capsules, which are placed into sealed containers. The containers are then exported to customers in the United States via an air cargo terminal in St. Petersburg. One hundredth-of-a-gram capsule of freshly produced polonium contains five thousand lethal doses.

When Polonium-210 decays—its half-life is 138 days, meaning that half of any given amount decays in the first 138 days, followed by a fourth in the next 138 days, and so on—it turns into lead, a nonradioactive metal. As the amount of polonium decreases, the amount of lead increases. By measuring the proportion of lead in a sample of polonium, an investigator can figure out how old the sample is and establish the precise date it was produced. Moreover, the production process leaves characteristic isotope impurities in every batch. By comparing the lead content and the impurities present in two samples of polonium,
an investigator should be able to say whether they came from the same batch, produced in the same laboratory on the same day.

Samples of Russian polonium have presumably been available to British law enforcement from American sources. The Polonium-210 found in Sasha’s body has by now undoubtedly been checked against the Polonium-210 exported to the United States. From the level of lead and the isotope composition, the investigators should have been able to unequivocally establish the batch and production date of the poison—unless, of course, it originated from an illicit reactor, which is not subject to the IAEA safeguards.

By early spring 2007, the British authorities had not yet released any information related to the polonium source. But there is little doubt that physicists in the British nuclear facilities, working with spies in the British secret services, know exactly where and when the exotic nuclear poison that killed Sasha was produced.