November 1994,
42 Kosygin Street,
Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills), Moscow
THE BIG MAN IN the towel was moving fast, steam coming off his thick, bare shoulders in violent plumes as his pawlike feet left wet prints on the hardwood floor. He was surprisingly agile for a man his size. Two steps behind him, Berezovsky was breathing hard trying to keep up. It wasn’t until the gargantuan finally slowed in front of a bank of lockers in a quiet corner of the dressing room, that Berezovsky could be certain that the man was even listening to him.
Berezovsky had been engaged in a one-sided conversation with the man’s back for most of the morning, traveling through half the Presidential Club along the way—from the tennis courts to the steam room, past the movie theater and the dining room, even through the showers. Well aware of the absurd spectacle they cut on their journey through the club, and not merely because of the difference in their sizes, Berezovsky could hear the whispers of the politicians and dignitaries they had passed along the way; the bandages on his arms and head were hard to ignore, and he knew that the boldest of the club’s members had even begun referring to him as Smoky. But to Berezovsky, it wasn’t an insult; he wore his burns as a badge.
The very fact that he had survived the car bombing five months ago marked him as special. By all accounts, he should have died. The explosion that had destroyed his car and killed his driver should have cooked him like a potato wrapped in foil. The FSB agent in charge of the investigation—Alexander “Sasha” Litvinenko, a man Berezovsky found surprisingly sincere—had told him that he actually owed his life to the incompetence of his poor decapitated former employee. His driver had forgotten to lock the car doors when he’d pulled away from the curb; otherwise, Berezovsky would never have gotten out of that burning vehicle.
Berezovsky had spent ten days on his back in a Swiss sanitarium, recovering from his burns and contemplating his place in the world. By the end of his stay, he had come to an important decision: simply being a businessman in modern Russia was no longer enough. In Russia, the walls didn’t hold up the roof; the roof kept the walls from falling in. Without a strong roof, no matter how lavish your house, it would eventually come down.
Which was why, now, almost six months later, he had been spending nearly every day at the Presidential Club. The sprawling complex—Boris Yeltsin’s pride and joy, which he had modeled after a sporting resort he had once visited in the Urals—was much more than an adult playground. From the steam rooms to the indoor tennis courts, these were the true halls of power in the Yeltsin administration. You wanted to get something done, you didn’t go to the Kremlin—you grabbed a tennis racket and booked a court.
Berezovsky continued the monologue he’d been engaged in for the better part of the morning. As the large man in front of him traded his towel for a tailored white shirt and gray slacks, he said, “So, you see, it makes sense from a political perspective. It truly isn’t about the money.”
The man rolled his eyes as he went to work on the buttons of his shirt.
“Boris, I’m not a fool. With you, it is always about the money.”
Berezovsky smiled, though there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He knew what Alexander Vasilyevich Korzhakov really thought of him; not dislike, exactly, but pity. To Korzhakov, Berezovsky was a weak little man covered in bandages, a glorified car salesman. But Berezovsky also knew that, as much as Korzhakov pitied and ridiculed him, he couldn’t ignore him.
Berezovsky was the only businessman who was an official member of the Presidential Club, and he had been invited to join just days after the assassination attempt, his burns still visible on his arms and face.
“Eventually, yes,” Berezovsky conceded. “There will be money. But that’s beside the point.”
Korzhakov laughed. “So you are going to run a TV station?”
It did sound crazy set out in the open, so succinctly; he had built his fortune in cars. But now it wasn’t simply a fortune he was after. The changes he intended to make in his life meant he needed to branch into businesses that would give him power as well as cash. And for days now, he had been pummeling Korzhakov with his most recent inspiration.
“Me? I’m a car salesman. But I’m certain that together, we can find someone who knows how to work a television camera.”
Korzhakov grunted, but Berezovsky could see the calculations beginning behind the man’s eyes. Berezovsky did not consider Korzhakov his intellectual equal, not by a long shot; but the man had a certain animal intelligence that Berezovsky had to admire. His current status was evidence enough. If the rumors were true, Korzhakov was more than just an access point into the Yeltsin government. The president’s health had been fading for quite some time, and the vacuum of power was at least partially being filled by the slab of a man pulling on his pants in front of Berezovsky.
The simplest description of Alexander Korzhakov was that he was Boris Yeltsin’s bodyguard. Since 1987, when he’d left his post in the KGB—forcibly retired, if some reports were to be believed, for his “liberal” leanings—he had been protecting Yeltsin, running a well-armed security team that now numbered in the hundreds. He had been by Yeltsin’s side for no fewer than two coup attempts—and he knew exactly how close Yeltsin’s government had come to falling. In 1991, when hard-line Communists with tanks had attempted to retake Moscow, it was Yeltsin who had climbed atop one of the tanks, like a white-haired beacon of freedom, rallying the people behind him; but it was Korzhakov who had helped the already ailing president onto the iron vehicle, climbing right up beside him for all the photographers to see. And in 1993, when Yeltsin had ordered the storming of the Russian White House to protect the fledgling government from the right-wing politicians who had been trying to forcibly turn back the clock to Communism, Korzhakov had again been by the president’s side. This time it was Yeltsin who had controlled the tanks: parking them in the center of the city, firing at the government building until it was reduced to rubble.
Certainly, over the past ten years, Korzhakov had earned Yeltsin’s trust—and, more important, his ear.
“Alexander Vasilyevich,” Berezovksy said, lowering his voice so the larger man had to lean in to hear him. “Moving forward, it isn’t tanks that will keep our democracy alive.”
“Again, we are back to money.”
“Money, but more important than money—media.”
Korzhakov ran the towel over what was left of his hair.
“Ah, yes. You and your hippie newspaperman are going to save Mother Russia.”
Berezovsky smiled, though he knew there was at least a tinge of venom behind the bodyguard’s words. Your hippie newspaperman. The description might have been used in a derogatory manner, but that didn’t make it any less accurate.
Berezovsky’s entrance into Yeltsin’s inner circle and, indeed, the Presidential Club—had been the result of much strategy and choreography, the core of which had revolved around Korzhakov’s “hippie newspaperman,” a journalist named Valentin Yumashev. The young man—shy, handsome, and usually poorly attired—had been working at a liberal, youth-skewed political magazine—which Berezovsky’s LogoVAZ had funded as a location to place car ads. Berezovksy had always thought that the man’s talents were being wasted writing articles about democracy aimed at teenagers.
The opportunity to use Yumashev’s skills for something more worthwhile had presented itself about a year ago, when he had been hired as a writer to pen the president’s autobiography after interviewing President Yeltsin for an article. Seeking a publisher for the book, Yumashev had eventually approached Berezovsky, who had realized that his involvement as publisher would bring him closer to Yeltsin and give him some level of entrance into the halls of political power.
Even better, Yeltsin had immediately taken to the writer on a personal level—and, yet more significant was that Yeltsin’s youngest daughter, Tatiana, had struck up a relationship with the handsome Yumashev. Almost instantly, Berezovsky was able to ride upward with Yumashev’s fortune, and went from being an outsider to part of Yeltsin’s inner circle—a group of influence known outside the Kremlin as the Family. A man like Korzhakov—a product of the old world, a former KGB general who had made his bones in the military—might have blanched at the sight of a businessman and a twentysomething writer ascending so quickly into Yeltsin’s orbit, but there was little he could do. He mocked Berezovsky behind his back—but he had no choice but to listen when Berezovsky spoke long and loud enough.
And this idea—this golden idea—was something Berezovsky knew was worth speaking about until his throat—or the bodyguard—gave out.
“We aren’t talking about newspapers, Alexander Vasilyevich.”
Korzhakov waved a meaty hand.
“Right, your television station. As if we don’t have enough trouble with Gusinsky and his pornography as it is.”
Berezovsky stifled the urge to spit.
“Gusinsky’s swill is the exact opposite of what I’m proposing.”
It was obvious that Korzhakov knew he’d hit a nerve, and his eyes told Berezovsky he was enjoying the moment.
On paper, the two Oligarchs, Gusinsky and Berezovsky, appeared to be cut from the same cloth—both were from Jewish backgrounds, both had risen from obscurity to great financial wealth by taking advantage of perestroika. But the mere mention of the rival businessman’s name made Berezovsky’s scars twitch beneath his bandages.
Whereas Berezovsky had taken a roundabout route to his fortune, exploiting the inefficiencies in the car market, Gusinsky had taken a more direct approach, building a banking conglomerate with the help and protection of Moscow’s Mayor’s office. Once the coffers of Most Bank had made Gusinsky immensely wealthy, he had turned his attentions to the media, building an independent television station to rival the state-owned network—which, while a ratings behemoth, was still a clunky remnant of the Communist era. Gusinsky’s NTV might not have actually manufactured pornography, but its quest for popularity had led to programming that had ruffled feathers in the administration, especially when it had begun airing programs that took a critical view of Russia’s recent involvement in the Chechen conflict.
“NTV is little more than a nuisance,” Berezovsky continued. “I’m talking about a real television network. ORT.”
Korzhakov raised an eyebrow. Общественное Российское Телевидение Russian Public Television, the state-owned network, dwarfed Gusinsky’s startup. In fact, with almost two hundred million daily viewers, it was bigger than all the American networks combined. It was also leaking money, losing almost a quarter billion dollars a year. And, as everyone knew, it was one of the most corrupt institutions in modern Russia.
“You want the president to give you ORT?”
It was a blunt way of wording things, but Korzhakov had always been a blunt instrument. The truth was, Berezovsky had not invented the concept of privatization. The planned economy had vanished—and something needed to take its place. Privatization, the idea of taking companies away from the state and essentially handing them to financiers and businessmen, was technically the brainchild of an economist named Anatoly Chubais, a brilliant young deputy in the Yeltsin government. It had begun as a noble idea—a way to offer the nation’s resources directly to the people, in the form of vouchers that acted as stock certificates. But the voucher program had failed almost immediately, a victim of the massive inflation that had helped make Berezovsky so wealthy.
This had led to a shift, from a voucher program aimed at the common man to options sold to the only people who had enough money left to purchase them—the small group of businessmen who had taken an early advantage in the new economy. The more desperate the government became to fund itself through Chubais’s program, the more leverage the Oligarchs attained. When one of the largest oil companies in the nation went into a privatization auction, a company valued at many billions of dollars ended up selling for close to two hundred fifty million. Timber, copper, automobiles, textiles—one after another, Russia’s major industries ended up in the hands of a small group of like-minded businessmen.
“You’ve got it backwards, Alexander Vasilyevich. I want to hand ORT to the president.”
Korzhakov looked at him, those blunt gears turning behind his gaze. In two years there would be another election; Korzhakov knew as well as anyone how fragile the fledgling government was. Having the nation’s largest television network in Yeltsin’s pocket might very well make the difference. And if it didn’t? Well, there were always more tanks.
Berezovsky began to lay out his plan. He and a group of colleagues would put up enough cash to buy forty-nine percent of ORT at auction, leaving the government in charge of the majority fifty-one percent. They would use the network to prop up Yeltsin’s democratic ideals, everything building toward the 1996 campaign. Everyone was going to come out a winner.
Almost everyone.
“I can imagine how your friend Gusinsky is going to react.”
Berezovsky shrugged.
“Perhaps he will understand, it’s simply good business and good politics. Or perhaps he can be made to understand.”
Korzhakov didn’t respond. This was not the first time Berezovsky had discussed Gusinsky in such terms; at some point in the past, he might even have used the word terminate in casual conversation. Always, Korzhakov, who had fired mortars at the Russian White House, brushed away his suggestions. Berezovsky saw no distinction between a political rival and a business rival. Both could have a change of heart when looking down the barrel of a gun.
Sooner or later, Korzhakov would recognize Gusinsky—with the Moscow mayor in his pocket—as the adversary he truly was. If not, Berezovsky was prepared to go over the bodyguard’s head. Other members of the Family would be receptive. Tatiana and Yumashev could convince Tatiana’s father, if Korzhakov refused. After all, according to the rumors, Gusinsky had already built a private army of heavily armed bodyguards—some said over a thousand strong—stationed near and around Media-Most’s building in the heart of Moscow. Gusinsky was formidable, with the support of the mayor of the biggest city in Russia; but a mayor wasn’t the same as a president.
“ORT,” Korzhakov mused. “A little bit of business, a lot of politics. How you’ve changed, Boris. And all it took was a bomb going off next to your car.”
Then he jabbed his thick paw toward the bandages covering part of Berezovsky’s scalp.
“You don’t exactly have a face for TV.”
Berezovsky smiled, but, inside, his mathematical mind was already churning forward. It wasn’t his face that two hundred million people needed to fall in love with; he wasn’t the one running for president.
“Let me worry about the business,” he said. “You take care of the politics.”
Before either of these things, Berezovsky thought to himself, there was a goose that needed hunting.