Spring 2013
Rem Tolkachev was so moved, his eyes were moist with tears.
He reread Vladimir Putin’s decree, which an orderly had hand-delivered to his little Korpus No. 14 office in the south wing of the Kremlin, for the third time.
The president’s order created a special unit within the GRU—the military intelligence service—charged with resolving “sensitive situations.” Its members were authorized to travel to any country in the world to secretly kill anyone the Kremlin saw as a political or economic adversary, even if they weren’t under official sanction from the Russian government.
It was the return of SMERSH, the organization that assassinated regime opponents in the days of the Soviet Union.
This was a task to which Tolkachev had devoted years of effort, drawing on unlimited resources and the support of Russia’s various security agencies. President Putin was now giving official status to his unseen but invaluable role. The old spymaster took no personal pride in this, and he would continue to operate in the shadows, but now he felt imbued with a nearly divine sense of mission.
He mentally blessed Vladimir Vladimirovich, and promised to go to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to pray for him.
This decree was the final nail in the coffin of the despised Boris Yeltsin, who had dismantled whole swaths of the Soviet Union. Life would now go back to the way it was, thought Tolkachev, with “vertical power” again ruling the country. It would be the USSR without communism, for which no one had any more use. Power would be wielded with an iron fist, and any remaining opponents would soon be brought to heel.
For a few moments, Tolkachev almost felt that his little office shared the solemn mood of the Kremlin’s National Security Council hall, with its walls hung with Gobelins tapestries exalting patriotic themes.
Though Tolkachev was one of the most important cogs in the presidential machinery, his office door bore no name. Only its thickness and the sophistication of its digital access lock hinted at its strategic importance. The few people who knew it existed called it Osobié Svyazi, the Office of Special Affairs.
No one could say quite how long Tolkachev had been working there. It was as if he’d been in that wing of the Kremlin forever, and it was almost true. For more than twenty years, the spymaster had obediently followed the orders of all the nation’s modern-day czars, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin.
Born to an NKVD general in Sverdlovsk in 1934, Tolkachev was a classic silovik, a person who spent his entire career in the country’s intelligence agencies. Gorbachev had brought him into the Kremlin during the reorganization of the Second Directorate of the old KGB, now the FSB—the Federal Security Service. Tolkachev’s exemplary personnel file held not the slightest hint of corruption, and he’d shunned the machinations of KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was arrested for plotting against Gorbachev.
Not that this meant that Tolkachev approved of Gorbachev’s destroying the Soviet Union. In fact, he hated the man. But Tolkachev was too much of a legalist to oppose the country’s duly constituted authorities. His mission in the Kremlin was simple: to resolve thorny problems clandestinely and illegally, with the president’s support.
The head of state need only mention a problem, without suggesting any particular solution, and Tolkachev would immediately get to work on it.
His heavy, steel-clad file cabinet held the most explosive secrets of two critical periods: the time immediately after communism faded and before the USSR’s collapse, and the post-Soviet period, a time of upheaval that saw the collapse of many values established over the previous seventy-five years.
In fact, the cabinet held only a tiny part of the secret operations that Tolkachev had carried out, because most of the instructions he gave were oral. When a written order was required, he hand-typed a single copy on an old Remington manual. He distrusted electronic systems, which he considered too easily penetrated.
Though a man of incredible power, Tolkachev didn’t even have a personal secretary. But the head of every civilian and military security service knew they were to obey his orders without question. His name was one of the first ones they were given when they assumed their positions.
His was the voice of the czar.
Tolkachev would be eighty years old soon, but retirement was an alien concept to him, and no one mentioned it. He was practically part of the Kremlin furniture. Besides, who would replace him?
That morning, he had driven his immaculately polished Lada from his Kastanaevskaya Street apartment in western Moscow into the Kremlin through the Borovitskiy gate. People who passed him in the hallways had no idea how much power was exercised by the little old gentleman with the white hair and unremarkable face.
A widower for the last thirteen years, Tolkachev hardly had any social life. He usually lunched at the Kremlin’s Buffet Number 1, where you could get a meal for less than 120 rubles.
People familiar with his office saw further evidence of modesty there. The walls were bare except for a calendar, a photo of Vladimir Putin, and an old poster of Felix Dzerzhinsky, published on his death in 1926. Dzerzhinsky, who created the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, was the man Tolkachev most admired in the world. In fact, his few daytime outings were always to the KGB museum on Bolshaya Lubyanka Street, to gaze at his idol’s death mask.
Tolkachev’s desk was as spartan as his office walls. It had only two telephones and a locked black address book that held the numbers he might need.
One of the phones was connected to the Kremlin’s inside system, but Tolkachev’s number wasn’t listed, and only a handful of people had it. These were usually very high-ranking officials, who were told about Tolkachev when they took their jobs. Most had no idea what he looked like. All they knew of him was his somewhat high-pitched voice with an accent from central Russia.
The armored gray cabinet behind Tolkachev’s desk held the files of the people he had used during the last twenty years. They were all there: siloviki, crooks, killers, gangsters, priests, and soldiers. Even the dead.
To manipulate these helpers, Tolkachev had unlimited supplies of cash. Packets of bills stood neatly stacked on a cabinet shelf. When he ran low, he wrote a request to the Kremlin administrator. No justification was required, and the money would be delivered the same day. Tolkachev was scrupulously, almost pathologically, honest. He would never take so much as a kopek of the sums at his disposal and kept a meticulous account of the amounts he spent. No one ever asked to see it.
The old spymaster’s only pleasure was to serve the rodina—the nation—and its incarnation, the president. A special joy, these days, because the current leader symbolized the renewal of the system Tolkachev had dreamed about for years.
Since becoming a widower, he rarely went out, except for a monthly evening at the Bolshoi Theatre, where he paid for his own ticket—he loved the opera—and perhaps dinner in an Italian restaurant on Red Square. When he was under pressure, he chain-smoked slim, pastel-colored Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes, taking eager little puffs as he thought.
Tolkachev’s reach was immense. Beneath the shell of a legalist state swarmed parallel services and obscure offices prepared to do anything to help the Kremlin solve its problems. Not to mention all those members of the legal apparatus who were bound to obey the president’s representative.
Tolkachev glanced at Putin’s order again, this time with a twinge of envy. Russia’s master had just made his clandestine role official. But who would be running this new SMERSH? Would he be shunted aside in favor of some GRU general?
It occurred to Tolkachev that his age might be the reason for such a change. Was he considered no longer capable of carrying out his delicate task? If that was the case, he would step aside, as befitted a loyal servant of the state.
Just then a red light started blinking on one of his phones. (Tolkachev felt there was no need for a telephone to have a ringer.) It was the inside Kremlin line. Picking up the phone, he heard a woman’s impersonal voice:
“The president wants to see you in his office in half an hour.”
She immediately hung up. You didn’t question an order from the czar.
Gazing out one of his office windows, Vladimir Putin watched the black birds circling the old fortress and swooping among its golden onion domes. Driven by some mysterious genetic instinct, flocks of crows had been living there for centuries. No one had been able to explain what attracted them to the Kremlin’s towers and domes.
Only Boris Yeltsin had ever tried to get rid of them, using trained falcons. A vain effort. The Kremlin crows were still there, and probably would be until the end of time.
Putin was a pragmatic man, and unmoved by the whirling blackness. He wasn’t superstitious, either. He glanced at his watch. This was his last meeting of the day. After that he would head to his dacha in Zhukova, a dozen miles west of Moscow, where most of Russia’s elite lived. The highway there was supposedly the only one in the country that had no stoplights, so as not to slow official motorcades.
Russia’s master was in a very good mood. The work he had begun eight years earlier was nearly finished. He ruled the country with an iron hand, having eliminated practically all his potential opponents. Even marginal groups like Pussy Riot had been put down. Just because you were strong was no reason to show weakness.
Russia itself was doing well, too. Oil and gas brought the state coffers three billion dollars a week, salaries were being paid, the oligarchs cowed, and the security services were fully rebuilt after the 1992 debacle. As in the golden days of the Soviet Union, the people no longer spoke private thoughts aloud.
A hushed voice emerged from his intercom:
“Your visitor is here, Mr. President.”
“Show him in.”
A few moments later, an unseen hand opened the enormous, leather-lined door. The tiny figure of Rem Tolkachev stood revealed in the entrance.
Putin immediately got up and went to greet his visitor, his hand outstretched. This was a signal honor. The Russian president usually only stood for high-ranking foreign visitors.
“Good afternoon, Rem Stalievitch!” Putin said in his hoarse voice. “Please sit down.”
He waved Tolkachev to a long red sofa behind a coffee table with a basket of fruit that nobody ever touched. The president gave his guest a friendly look. One reason he liked Tolkachev was that he was shorter than he was.
Perched on the edge of the sofa, the intimidated spymaster waited to be questioned. Making conversation wasn’t up to him.
“Can I assume you are aware of my decree number 27?” Putin began.
Tolkachev nodded cautiously.
“Yes, Mr. President,” he said in his squeaky voice.
“What do you think of it?”
The spymaster swallowed.
“I think it’s a very wise step, Mr. President.”
Putin gave him a long look.
“You didn’t feel deprived of any of your prerogatives, I hope?”
Tolkachev stiffened slightly and said:
“I serve the nation and I have always followed orders, sir.”
The president gave him an almost affectionate smile. He really did like Tolkachev.
“You would have been wrong to,” Putin said dryly. “Because I’ve decided that you will head the new organization. I didn’t include that in my decree, of course; I wanted to tell you personally. I have already informed the GRU leadership.”
Tolkachev felt that if he stood up now, his legs might fail him. He had never imagined the president would bestow such an honor on him. It wouldn’t change his day-to-day life in any way, but to be officially recognized…
“Thank you, sir,” he said in a voice heavy with emotion. “Thank you.”
Putin brushed the thanks aside and continued:
“I also want to talk to you about another matter. Something that’s been on my mind lately.”
“What’s that, Mr. President?”
“The Berezovsky business. Where are you on that?”
Tolkachev hadn’t expected the question and was silent for a few seconds before answering.
“It’s been eight years since we’ve taken any action, per your instructions, sir.”
Eight years earlier, the Kremlin had decided to eliminate the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. A member of President Yeltsin’s inner circle and former kingmaker, he’d been one of the men behind Putin’s rise to power.
Berezovsky, who held a doctorate in mathematics, was working in optimization research when the Soviet Union collapsed. During the period of upheaval that followed, he invested several million dollars in LogoVaz, the country’s largest car company. By a series of schemes and scams, he seized control of the company, helped by the Chechen mafia. That turned out to be a dangerous alliance.
In 1993 his Leninsky Prospekt showroom was shot up by gangsters. The following year, he was the target of a Chechen car bomb attack. His driver was decapitated, and Berezovsky barely escaped with his life.
A confused period followed, at the end of which Berezovsky, who had left Moscow for a time, returned and joined the president’s “family.”
A series of shady deals followed, all struck under Yeltsin’s aegis. In those days, Berezovsky could waltz into the president’s office at will and shuffle billions of dollars around. In a period of brutal privatizations, he was able to take control of the airline company Aeroflot, the publishing group Kommersant, and the country’s biggest television network, ORT.
His masterstroke came in 1995. In association with a partner named Roman Abramovich, he managed to seize control of a huge oil producer, Sibneft. Berezovsky and his associates paid a hundred million dollars for a company that was worth five billion.
He had never ridden so high. A short, balding man with hooded and intense eyes, Berezovsky was at the peak of his glory. In 2000, thanks to his connection with Yeltsin, he helped launch Vladimir Putin as a presidential candidate.
Unfortunately for him, his protégé didn’t turn out to be the obedient little silovik he expected. From the moment Putin came in power, he single-mindedly starting getting rid of the unscrupulous oligarchs who had ruined the country.
In Russia, nobody stands up to the czar. So most of the oligarchs, including Abramovich, pledged their allegiance to Putin as a way of salvaging part of their fortunes. But Berezovsky resisted. He even counterattacked, suggesting that Putin, to justify war with Chechnya, had orchestrated the 1999 bombings in Moscow that killed hundreds of people and were blamed on the Chechens.
Putin’s response was instantaneous.
Following a series of phony trials, the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sent to Siberia in 2005. Other oligarchs were ruined and arrested. Fearing the same fate, Berezovsky fled to his French château in Cap d’Antibes. Putin dispatched Abramovich to suggest that Berezovsky give up his share of the ORT network. Otherwise, it would be confiscated.
Russia wasn’t a nation of laws, as Berezovsky well knew. He also knew that if he went home, he would be immediately arrested on some pretext and sent to Siberia.
In 2003 he decided to ask Britain for political asylum, and moved to London. He was still very rich, and spent fifty million pounds to settle there with his wife, his mistress, and his six children.
Snubbed by London’s high society, he spent most of his time in the Library Bar at the Lanesborough, in the company of the most beautiful Russian prostitutes in London.
He declared open warfare on Putin, and made a series of provocative statements, even threatening a coup d’état. That sealed his fate. Putin hated oligarchs, but he despised traitors.
The final blow to Berezovsky was delivered by his former friend Abramovich. On Putin’s orders, he pressured Berezovsky to sell him his share of Sibneft. Berezovsky agreed, and was cheated. Of the agreed 1.4-billion-dollar price, he received only 650 million.
Berezovsky was now in free fall. His Aeroflot deal was but a distant memory, and Putin had gone as far as he could to ruin him financially. Only one task now remained: eliminating him physically.
In 2006, Rem Tolkachev was assigned to carry out a sophisticated, complex operation that would become known as the Litvinenko affair. Alexander Litvinenko was a former FSB agent who fled to London, where he was enlisted by MI5. He was then “turned” by the Russians, who asked him to help kill Berezovsky. A twelve-person FSB team traveled to England with some polonium-210, a substance so radioactive that a few nanograms are enough to cause a horribly painful death.
Litvinenko was still friendly with Berezovsky at the time, and the plan was to poison the oligarch with the polonium. But when Litvinenko met his accomplices at the Millennium Hotel in London, he accidentally drank tea that contained some of the polonium. He wound up at the University College Hospital, where the substance he had ingested was identified shortly before he died.
This clearly pointed to the power behind the incident, because polonium-210 comes only from nuclear reactors, where it is used in tiny doses. Alerted, Scotland Yard went searching for polonium, and found it everywhere: on the seat of a British Airways flight from Moscow to London and on a chair used by one Andrey Lugovoy, an FSB agent. It was also found in Itsu, a Japanese restaurant on Piccadilly, and in the Millennium Hotel. Finally, it turned up in a stadium that hosted an Arsenal–CSKA Moscow football match that Lugovoy had attended.
An immediate hunt for Lugovoy was launched, but he fled London on a Russian Transaero Airlines flight. His accomplices also disappeared.
The British were furious, because Litvinenko had recently been granted British citizenship. The way they saw it, the Russians had come to London to kill one of Britain’s own.
From his Kremlin office, Tolkachev supervised the dismantling of the operation, and in the process found the mistake that had given the plot away. The GRU had provided the polonium to the FSB but neglected to explain how to handle it. Tolkachev immediately summoned the GRU general in charge and told him that his lack of oversight had had extremely serious consequences. The English couldn’t prove it, but now they knew that the Russians were behind Litvinenko’s death.
The GRU general got the message. He went back to his office, took out his 9 mm Makarov, and shot himself. This seemed appropriate. Under Stalin in the Great Patriotic War, Russian generals who lost a battle were executed by firing squad.
After that, things seemed to settle down. Lugovoy became a deputy of the Duma, ignored British extradition demands, and never again left the country. Tolkachev carefully cleaned things up, though he did make another attempt on Berezovsky’s life, which failed. The case was then closed.
Temporarily.
Putin broke the long silence.
“I think it’s time to reopen that case, Rem Stalievitch. In fact, I opened it myself a few weeks ago.”
Tolkachev gaped at him. The master of the Kremlin didn’t have to get involved in that sort of thing. That’s what he was there for.
An almost joyful light glinted in Putin’s light blue eyes.
“I’ve decided we should take care of that rat Berezovsky,” he said. “And this time, I’m sure you’ll succeed.”