I had talked to Andrei Lugovoy, through intermediaries, several times before I flew to Moscow. He and his assistants had been polite, helpful and informative. He had never seemed difficult, panicked or in any way threatening. In fact he had been more talkative and open to the media than one would expect from someone in his situation. I got the impression that Lugovoy was taking things calmly and felt himself in a strong position. We provisionally agreed we would meet when I came to Russia.
When I got there several conversations took place to confirm our arrangement, but there was, I felt, a certain cooling in the telephone discussions. I wondered if something had happened. Perhaps it was the announcement that Scotland Yard had sent a file on the Litvinenko case to the Crown Prosecution Service or perhaps it was something behind the scenes, but for the first time there was a certain reluctance to talk.
He was still insisting he was being interviewed by the British police as a witness rather than a suspect – ‘There has been no change in my status, or at least there has been no official notification from the British side of any change’ – but now he was much more cagey. He had, he said, been called to the Russian prosecutor's office ‘seven or eight times since the British went away’. He ‘wasn't ruling out’ the possibility that he would travel to London if he was asked to do so, but he added,
I have engaged both Russian and British lawyers and I will take their advice on the matter. You know, there is such a thing in English justice as the right to a fair trial. And I would just like to know how we could get one in the atmosphere of psychosis we've seen in the British media, where they've portrayed us in such a way that ninety-nine out of a hundred British people are convinced we are guilty of this murder. So, to be honest, I really have to consider if it is worth going to meet people who from the very outset are so dead against us and so conditioned to make us the culprits in this affair.
It was, I thought, a reasonable observation.
Lugovoy said his former business partners in London had all suspended contact following the press reports about him, but he and Kovtun were continuing to get support and good wishes from ordinary Russians they met on the streets. ‘They come and offer us a cognac or a vodka. They say, “Keep your spirits up, lads. We don't believe what they're saying about you, especially what they're all saying in the West.”’
Lugovoy confirmed what Berezovsky had told me – that the two men had spoken on the phone on 6 February – but he would not comment on the contents of the conversation except to say that it was ‘constructive’.
After days of phone calls, excuses and prevaricating, I got the distinct impression that Lugovoy had changed his mind about meeting me. I remembered the words Boris Berezovsky had said to me – ‘I have the impression that he is not independent… that there is someone standing behind of him that doesn't allow him to do this step’ – and decided to confront him with my suspicions. I needed to discover if Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, the men who were being so widely accused of putting the murder plot into practice, were independent figures or if they had ties and allegiances which determined how they acted. With unresolved questions over who had ordered the assassination and why, it was of vital importance to know if they were answerable to a specific group, whether inside the FSB or outside.
The decisive telephone conversation was fraught. From the outset Lugovoy seemed tense and quickly launched into a diatribe against the British press, saying they had convicted him without a trial. Then he turned his wrath against Scotland Yard, denying that a file had been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service and claiming that the British detectives would need to come back to Moscow again shortly. ‘I'm tired of all this,’ he said. ‘I've got my life to think about. You know, they interrogated my wife for nine hours without a break. My wife! Nine hours!’ He suggested he still could not give a definitive answer as to whether he would be able to meet me before I left Moscow. But it was my next question, asking if this was really a decision he could make for himself or if he was waiting for someone else to make it for him, that threw him into a towering rage.
‘What are you saying? Are you asking if…? Who decides? You what? Are you saying the FSB or something…?’ It seemed to be a sore point. Lugovoy was becoming increasingly indignant: ‘You know what? That question you asked – Who makes the decision? -that's an outright provocation (provokatsionny vopros). You know what? I'm not going to have any meeting. I'm sorry; I'm busy.’ And he hung up the phone.