After many weeks working on The Litvinenko File and having spoken to so many different people with conflicting theories, stories and points of view - all propounded to me with the unblinking vehemence that Russians reserve for politics, both pro- and anti-Kremlin - I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to the bottom of the case. I had started by posing two key questions: who had killed Alexander Litvinenko and what was the motivation of the person or people who ordered his death?
On the first question, a broad consensus seemed to have emerged around two names - Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun - to the point where Scotland Yard apparently felt sure enough of its ground to send a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the media and public opinion were proclaiming them guilty. The evidence against the men was circumstantial but seemingly weighty. The name of Vyacheslav Sokolenko had receded a little from the frame, but the spectre of a mysterious and as yet unnamed third man had been raised by sources with close links to the Russian security forces.
As to whether the killing really had been the work of the Federal Security Service, the question remained tantalizingly unresolved. Moreover, even if it was the FSB, it was still completely unclear at what level the operation might have been planned and authorized. Had it been at the top, in the corridors of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin? Or by individual officers (or groups of officers) with their own agenda to pursue? If it had not been an FSB operation at all, could it have been motivated by commercial conflicts Litvinenko had either stumbled into or deliberately stirred up? Had it been the result of blackmail he was carrying out? Was it revenge by criminals he had targeted way back in his anti-mafia years in Russia? Chechen blood vengeance for his actions during the war? Or was it - as strident voices in Moscow were claiming - a ‘provocation', a double operation staged by enemies of the Kremlin deliberately to blacken the name of the Russian president? Could Boris Berezovsky have cynically sacrificed his own friend and ally in a demented bid to frame Vladimir Putin? Or was it the result of infighting between clans within the Kremlin itself, trying to destabilize the political situation and influence the selection of Putin's heir apparent before the elections in March 2008?
As I mulled over all these questions I began to empathize with Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke's reaction when he first opened the Litvinenko file back in November 2006. He had reportedly been ‘flabbergasted’ by the range of activities which could have given rise to a motive for murder, and now I understood exactly what he meant. I knew I was getting close to the point where I would have to follow in the footsteps of Clarke's investigators. I would have to trace the polonium trail back to its source in the capital of the Russian Federation, and I would personally have to interrogate the men and women who knew the truth.