Sasha Litvinenko received word of Shebalin's threat just before Christmas 2000. He didn't want to spoil the holiday season so he didn't tell Marina about it, but he knew the warning was serious. It was the beginning of six years during which he would be constantly menaced by rumbling intimations of vengeance from Moscow. It was a recurring threat, and on more than one occasion it moved from words to actions. Litvinenko would spend the rest of his life being reminded that there was an unseen hand that might one day reach out and claim its prey.
In London, though, Sasha was growing used to life in a Western democracy. He began to take for granted the guarantees of safety and personal liberty that Britain had cherished for many centuries. He knew that Moscow had not forgiven him and that people there desired his death. But he came to feel that being part of the British way of life would somehow protect him. Vladimir Bukovsky, who was very close to Litvinenko in those years, says his faith bordered on the naive: ‘He was like a younger brother to me. He was straightforward… he had some boyish notions of chivalry. He told me that when he got political asylum in England, he went to the Tower of London. He took his young son, who was seven years old at the time, and he showed him the crown. And he said, “Look and remember. This is the crown which protects us and keeps us safe.”’
Marina too noticed how Sasha was beginning to relax after the years of stress and watchfulness. While other exiles were constantly on their guard, adopting pseudonyms and new identities, Litvinenko was open and seemingly confident. ‘He never tried to hide away, never tried to disguise himself or change his looks… he felt very safe and he was very open. When we moved into the place where we used to live, he was very proud of this. I could see how Sasha, from being a former officer, was growing into an absolutely different person.’
In retrospect the psychology of the situation is intriguing. Here is a man who knows he is being threatened by powerful enemies. Whatever his assessment of the imminence of that threat, he knows that his own safety and that of his family would best be ensured by stepping out of the public spotlight and keeping a low profile. But he does not do so, and his response is once again revealing of his character. Litvinenko, it seems, had priorities other than safety, and those priorities involved him being very much in the public eye. He spent the next six years continuing to provoke the Kremlin and the FSB, almost daring them to come and get him.
Bukovsky tells a sobering story of how he and Litvinenko were walking in a park in Cambridge ‘and the birds were singing and the flowers were in blossom, and all of a sudden there was a call on his mobile phone and it was a former colleague of his from the Lubyanka saying, “Do you think you are safe over there in England? Well, you are dreaming. Just remember what happened to Trotsky!”’ Trotsky, of course, was killed in his Mexico exile by a Kremlin assassin wielding an ice-pick.
It seems madness for someone who knows he is a potential assassination target not to take cover, but remember: Litvinenko is the man who refused the chance to make peace when he and his comrades were offered a deal after the press conference of 1998.
What is common to the two situations is that Sasha would have had to back down to ensure his safety. And backing down is something he was not good at doing. As many who knew him have pointed out, Sasha was an obsessive. He hated losing face. As far as he was concerned Putin had offended him; he had challenged Putin and he was not going to make peace. Sasha was a man who insisted on total vindication. Now, in 2001, his obsessive nature was driving him to ratchet up the stakes even further. He railed at Putin from his London refuge, firmly believing him to be the guilty party in their clash of wills. For Litvinenko it was Putin who needed to be punished not him, and with the backing of Boris Berezovsky and his powerful circle Sasha set out to do just that.
His first months in London were spent doing odd jobs, including a spell as a postman, while Marina picked up her old profession, teaching ballroom dancing to middle-aged English couples who were intrigued by her exotic accent and background. But Litvinenko was biding his time, waiting for the British courts to confirm his political asylum in the UK. Once they did so, on 14 May 2001, his hands were untied and he threw himself once again into the passion that drove his life. In interviews, books and articles on anti-Kremlin websites, Sasha resumed his campaign against his former employers with a vengeance.
The list of his accusations over the next few years is quite astounding. In 2002 he suggested the FSB had engineered the horrific siege of a Moscow theatre in which 130 people died. According to Litvinenko, two of the Chechen hostage takers, whom he called alternatively Terkibayev or Abdul the Bloody, and Ruslan Elmurzaev or Abu Bakar, were working for the FSB. The attack took place at a theatre in the Dubrovka area of Moscow which was showing a musical comedy called Nord-Ost. Forty-two heavily armed men and women entered the theatre and took everyone present hostage, both audience and performers. The gunmen, led by the nephew of a slain Chechen military leader, threatened to kill the hostages unless Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya. With explosives set throughout the auditorium and grenades strapped to their own bodies, the Chechens released a statement declaring themselves ready to die for the cause of Chechen independence.
The Russian occupiers have flooded our land with our children's blood. People are unaware of the innocent who are dying in Chechnya: the women, the children and the weak ones. So we have chosen this action. This action is for the freedom of the Chechen people. There is no difference where we die, so we have decided to die here in Moscow. We will take with us the lives of hundreds of sinners. If we die, others will come and follow us – our brothers and sisters who are willing to sacrifice their lives for Allah. Russia is the true criminal.
It seems unlikely that the Kremlin would have engineered the theatre siege, but that is exactly what Litvinenko claimed, suggesting the FSB had manipulated the rebels into staging the attack. ‘Terkibayev was guided by the FSB when he was in the theatre building. I know that they put the main task before him to go upstairs, get into the room where the hostages were kept, and open fire. After that it was declared that the terrorists had begun shooting and that it was necessary to begin the storm of the building.’ After the assault by Russian spetsnaz special forces in which many hostages and all the terrorists died, Litvinenko said, ‘When they tried to find Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among the Chechens organized the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released.’
Subsequently he claimed the two men had been given new identities and were being employed on special duties by the Russian security forces. ‘Let's speak about the reality. The FSB is a terrorist organization. It is not in the interests of the FSB to search after the terrorists and detain their agent Terkibayev, a terrorist and provocateur. The FSB will continue to use him in terrorist acts and hide him in case of failure.’
Whether Abdul and Abu ever existed is far from clear. But Litvinenko's allegations – based, he said, on good intelligence sources – set the tone for much of the material he was to produce in the coming months and years.