Such speculation, though, is for later. For the moment Marina was still fighting to save her husband's life. Because of his plunging blood count and dramatic hair loss, Sasha had been examined by the hospital's cancer specialist. He told Marina he could see similarities to the symptoms he was used to in patients undergoing chemotherapy, and said hair loss such as Sasha's usually occurred on the twelfth day following treatment. Marina thought for a moment and replied, ‘Doctor, this is the twelfth day since he started vomiting.’ It was the clue the medics had been waiting for. That same day samples of Sasha's blood were sent for tests to determine whether they contained evidence of chemical toxins similar to those used in chemotherapy.
At last, the poison claim was being taken more seriously. But as well as pointing the doctors in the right direction, it was a development which served to ignite the ferocious political propaganda battle, with claims and counter-claims of who did what to whom, that was to surround Sasha Litvinenko for the remaining days of his life.
First into the fray was the Berezovsky camp. Despite their initial silence Berezovsky and his acolytes were now suddenly vocal in proclaiming their convictions about the perpetrator of the alleged poisoning. Their public comments were exactly what might be expected from the Kremlin's self-avowed ‘enemy number one'; Sasha's predicament was a gift that could be easily exploited. ‘It's not complicated to say who fights against him,’ said Berezovsky after a visit to the hospital. ‘He's Putin's enemy. He started to criticize him and he had lots of fears.’ Berezovsky's aide, Alex Goldfarb was a little more sophisticated: ‘Nobody's saying that Putin personally ordered it… though it's very likely.’
There was no immediate reaction from Vladimir Putin, but Russian politicians sympathetic to the president were quick to give their version. Gennady Gudkov, a member of parliament and former FSB colonel, was quoted by the Russian news agency as saying, ‘My advice to Litvinenko is: stay off the moonshine vodka. Berezovsky's a talented puppet master, but he's not going to make this performance work.’
Sasha himself was strangely heartened by the controversy now surrounding his case. He had spent the last eight years of his life seeking out ways to blacken the name of Vladimir Putin, and his poisoning gave him the greatest chance to do so he had ever had. It is clear from what his wife says about this period of his illness that Litvinenko was still expecting to recover, and, had he done so, his status as an anti-Kremlin martyr would have been assured. In a way, it was an opportunity for him, as well as a threat. If Berezovsky was exploiting Sasha's predicament, he was doing so with Sasha's blessing. In the hospital he was trying hard to make light of the situation, showing off his newly bald head and asking Marina, ‘Do you think I look like Buddha?’ He was unfailingly affable with the hospital staff, always apologizing for putting them to the trouble of changing and washing him, and the nurses became genuinely fond of their exotic Russian guest.
The day after Litvinenko's broadcast on the BBC Russian Service, two developments gave the case a sudden impetus. From now on Sasha's private tragedy was to become a very public business and events began to unfold at a dizzying pace.
First, the results of the blood tests came back positive: there was a – so far unidentified – chemical toxin in the patient's system, although tests for radiation inside his body were categorically, and confusingly, negative. Later the same day the toxin was provisionally identified as the metal thallium. A compound of thallium added to drinks causes hair loss, damage to peripheral nerves and – if untreated – eventual death. The good news was that thallium has an effective antidote, Prussian blue, which is fed to the sufferer, absorbs the thallium in his body and passes out in the stool. The fact that the KGB had been known to use thallium against its enemies seemed only to confirm the suppositions about the origin of the attempt on Litvinenko's life.
The second development was that the British police began for the first time to take an interest in the case, coming to his bedside to conduct the first of many interviews, which were to continue virtually to the day of his death.
With the story now beginning to appear in the British media -and with the name of Mario Scaramella being widely quoted as a suspect – the Italian decided he should defend himself before he was convicted in the court of public opinion. In a series of interviews Scaramella denied he had played any part in the poisoning, or had any motive to do so. He even suggested alternative suspects the media might like to investigate, such as organized crime bosses in Russia who may have borne a grudge against the former FSB crime buster. ‘We know very well who are the enemies of Litvinenko,’ he told several newspapers. ‘The work he did for years was to underline the links among the Russian mafia and some high-level corrupt officers in the Russian government. I can only imagine that the people who he worked against… may be interested to attack him.’
The Kremlin too was now starting to get in on the act, dismissing Berezovsky's allegations against President Putin as ‘sheer nonsense’. Unusually, the normally tight-lipped FSB saw fit to issue a formal denial that it was involved, breaking a decades-old tradition of never commenting on its activities outside Russia, alleged or real.
It was clear that the propaganda battle ignited by the case was going to be widespread and furious, and that it was going to reach the highest levels of international relations. It had brought into the open a vicious war between people like Litvinenko and a powerful president who has managed to neutralize virtually all opposition to his authority in Russia itself, but has driven his most dangerous enemies into a London exile where they are plotting his overthrow by fair means or foul. If Western public opinion had previously been ignorant of this war being fought on the streets of London and other cities, ignorance was no longer going to be an option.