Death of a Dissident (59 page)

But his body would. Alpha radiation in the environment is harmless; it cannot get past skin. If an alpha-emitting substance is ingested, however—that is, swallowed or inhaled—it spreads quickly throughout the body, to all organs and tissues, gets inside every cell, and attacks from within. The low energy of alpha radiation, like a short-range weapon, is more than sufficient to cause havoc inside the living cell. It attacks the DNA in the nucleus, shredding it into fragments. The cell dies. Particularly vulnerable are rapidly dividing cells, such as in the lining of the intestines, in the bone marrow, and those in the hair roots; hence Sasha’s symptoms.

On Monday Professor Henry called me: “I checked my books. Thallium is a gamma-emitter. They would have detected it in the hospital. But they should keep looking for alpha-emitters. I will have to talk to Scotland Yard.”

The first question Sasha asked me on Monday morning was about the press. Had they finally understood? Did they get it right—that he was poisoned by Kontora? He was still fighting his war, and he wanted to make the most of it.

“Sasha, there are ten TV cameras and fifty reporters outside. But as you know, one look is worth ten thousand words. To get the most impact I need a picture of you, the way you look,” I said apologetically.

Marina shot me an angry glance.

“Give me a mirror,” Sasha said.

She went out to look for a mirror.

“What are my chances?” he asked, using the moment alone.

“They give you fifty-fifty, but you are a strong—”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “Look, I want to write a statement, in case I don’t make it. Name the bastard. Anya [Politkovskaya] did not do it, so I will, for both of us. You put it in good English, and I will sign. And you’ll keep it, just in case.”

“Okay, I will, but we will tear it up together when you get out of here.”

“Sure we will.”

He had trouble speaking. Still, as he was dictating his statement I could sense something very new in his tone. For the first time, I was receiving instructions from him, and in a manner that left no room for discussion. Through our whole relationship there had been a certain boyishness in him. He had assigned me the role of a grown-up, from whom he expected to get approval. Now he had grown up, sure of himself, talking while I took notes. It was as if the venom that aged him twenty years in three weeks had also made him wise and confident. Later, when Marina told me about the “other Sasha” who had revealed his hard edge to her only rarely, I recognized this side of him.

Marina returned with the mirror. For a minute he studied himself. He was satisfied—he looked terrible.

The next day, his image, a compression of suffering and defiance, flashed on millions of TV screens around the world. Meanwhile his would-be posthumous
J’accuse
, signed in the presence of Marina and another witness, lay sealed in an envelope in my hotel safe.

I brought him the newspapers. His photo was on every front page.

“Good,” he said. “Now he won’t get away.”

Those were his last words to me.

Moscow, November 21: Several Duma deputies allege that Boris Berezovsky and Akhmed Zakayev are behind the Litvinenko poisoning. “Berezovsky’s close links to Chechen terrorists
[suggest]
they could have organized both the murder of Politkovskaya and the poisoning
of Litvinenko,” says the former FSB chief Nikolai Kovalev. The next day, Tom Parfitt, the Moscow correspondent of the Guardian writes, “The idea that the Kremlin gave an order to eliminate Mr Litvinenko seems highly unlikely. He just wasn’t worth it … [but] Berezovsky’s position is looking increasingly shaky—along with the positions of other individuals whose extradition Russia is demanding…. They need evidence to back up their claims that they’ll face retribution if they’re sent back to Russia. The death of a liberal journalist and the poisoning of an ‘enemy of the FSB’ ought to satisfy Judge Timothy Workman.”

For the next twenty-four hours, Sasha was heavily sedated, and he slipped in and out of consciousness. Most of the day on Wednesday, November 22, I was dealing with the press in an endless succession of interviews in the propaganda war with the Kremlin that was now in full swing. I finally came to the hospital in the afternoon. I looked at him through the glass from an adjoining cubicle. He had aged more in the past day; he now looked like a seventy-year-old man, bald, gaunt, skin over bones. He had not eaten for twenty-two days. He had had several visitors: George Menzies, his solicitor; Andrei Nekrasov, the filmmaker; Akhmed Zakayev’s entire family; Boris with Lena. Valter Litvinenko, his father, had flown in from Russia, and he and Marina alternated holding vigil at his bedside: he at night, she in the daytime.

Before Marina left for the night on Wednesday, Sasha suddenly woke up and looked at her. “I am going home, darling,” she said. “I will be back in the morning.”

“Marina, I love you so much.” They were his last words to her.

That night he went into cardiac arrest and was put on a respirator. He never regained consciousness, dying at 9:21 p.m. the next day, Thursday, November 23. His father was at his bedside. The staff at the hospital phoned Marina just as she returned home from her day shift. She picked up Tolik and they went back to the hospital.

London, November 24, 2006: Sasha’s statement is released to reporters outside University College Hospital:

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.