Having provided the ammunition for Berezovsky's coup in the FSB and having helped secure the rise of Vladimir Putin, Litvinenko was confidently expecting to be involved in the campaign to clear out the organization's old guard. Berezovsky, for his part, was intent on getting Litvinenko and Putin to work together on his behalf. Sasha recalls their first meeting: ‘I met him soon after his appointment. I was still technically suspended, but one day Berezovsky called me. “Alexander, could you go to Putin and tell him everything that you have told me? And everything that you have not. He is new at the service and would benefit from an insider's view.”’
Litvinenko was nervous before the meeting with Putin. He wanted to impress his new boss and stayed up all night compiling a dossier of evidence to back up his allegations of what some FSB bosses had been up to – the illegal businesses, the protection rackets, the intimidation and the killings. He had collected all the information Putin would need to put things right.
I arrived with two colleagues, but Putin wanted to see me alone. It must be incredibly tough for him, I thought. We had been of the same rank, and I imagined myself in his shoes – a mid-level agent suddenly put in charge of some hundred seasoned generals with all their vested interests, connections and dirty secrets. I did not know how to salute him without causing embarrassment. Should I say ‘Comrade Colonel’ as was required by the code? But he pre-empted me and got up from his desk and shook my hand. He seemed even shorter than on TV.
Speaking many years later with the benefit of hindsight, Litvinenko is scathing about Putin – he had by then spent half a decade attacking him for all manner of alleged crimes – and seems eager to forget the admiration he once felt for him.
I felt he was not sincere. He avoided eye contact and behaved as if he were not the director but an actor playing a role. He looked at my chart, appeared to study it and asked a couple of random questions. I knew he could not have grasped the details in the brief glance he had given it. ‘Shall I leave the chart?’ I asked. ‘No. No, thank you. You keep it. It's your work.’ I gave him another list I had compiled and told him, ‘These officers are clean. I know for sure that you can rely on them in the war on corruption. There are honest people in the system,’ I said. ‘We could bring the situation under control.’ He nodded as though he was in full agreement. He kept my files, said we would keep in touch and took my home number.
Litvinenko waited in vain by the telephone; Putin never called. The purpose of Sasha's files on who could be trusted and who could not was quite clearly to persuade Putin to fire some FSB bosses – those that Berezovsky perceived as enemies – and promote some others whom Berezovsky regarded as allies. It would be naive to think that Litvinenko and Berezovsky had not discussed this presentation to Putin; they were ostentatiously serving notice that they had helped get him appointed and now expected him to pay them back by installing new, friendly faces in all the positions of power. If things worked out according to plan, the FSB would become a Berezovsky fiefdom and remain loyal to him in the power battles that were looming over the succession to Boris Yeltsin. The stakes riding on Litvinenko's exploitation of the alleged assassination order could not have been higher.
After two months of silence, it began to look like the new director was in no hurry to investigate the Berezovsky plot and that Sasha's dossier of who should be fired and who promoted was not being followed up. Litvinenko was bemused, offended and annoyed. When Berezovsky called him to his office to ask what was going on, Sasha told his patron there were two possible explanations: either Putin was genuinely trying to get something done and was being stymied by the hard-liners, or he had no intention of rocking the boat and was planning to collaborate with the apparat. If it was the former Berezovsky could still have faith in the man he helped bring to power, but if it was the latter it would suggest Putin had no intention of being Berezovsky's man and was ungratefully striking out on his own.
Berezovsky was in a dilemma. He had invested time and political capital in getting the new FSB boss installed and felt he was due his legitimate reward. On the other hand he did not want a confrontation with Putin which would risk destroying the goodwill between them. Berezovsky's hesitation was the first sign that Putin had attained a position of sufficient power for the big players in the Kremlin to tread warily around him. Putin himself was undoubtedly weighing up the warring factions with an eye to deciding where his best interests lay. The Berezovsky camp was just one among several. Putin owed him a debt of gratitude, that was true, but gratitude was small beer compared to the need to look after number one. Vladimir Putin was already looking ahead to the power struggles that would determine Russia's fate in the post-Yeltsin era.