October 30, 2000,
Private Terminal, Sheremetiezo Airport, Moscow
FOR ONE OF THE first times in Berezovsky’s life, the Oligarch was moving slowly. Each step was like pulling his shoes out of thick mud, while his bare right hand clung numbly to the cold metal railing at his side. The retractable stairway leading up to his private Bombardier Global Express jet was barely taller than he was, but those six narrow steps felt like the longest journey Berezovsky had ever taken.
The icy breeze pulled at the high collar of his overcoat, each breath stinging his lungs with a palpable mingling of scents: jet fuel, car exhaust, cigarette smoke. And yet, above all, it smelled like Moscow, the city that had been his home for so long. The place where he had built an empire, bought a government—and now he was leaving.
He had fought this moment as long as he could. Putin’s warning—or threat, as Berezovsky saw it—reiterated to Badri at the FSB offices might have scared off a more prudent man. But Berezovsky had at first seen it as another challenge, another obstacle in his path. On September 4, after those fateful meetings, Berezovsky had gone on the offensive, although Badri pleaded with him to tread carefully. He had published an open letter in his newspaper, Kommersant, detailing Putin’s attack, as he saw it—outlining how the president and the government had demanded that the businessman give up his legally owned shares in ORT or face destruction. In the letter he had demanded that the government should instead give up its own holding in the television station, that Russia needed a truly free press, and that Putin’s efforts against him were part of an overall effort to take control of all the media in the country.
Berezovsky had known that publishing such an open letter, a direct attack on the president, was incredibly risky. But he had hoped that the act would bring the people of Russia to his side, as well as the journalistic community. And yet the blow had turned out to be another miscalculation. No matter how he tried to couch the battle he was engaged in, he was an Oligarch facing off against a popular president.
The next move had been Putin’s, and it had again taken Berezovsky entirely by surprise. On October 17, the Oligarch was paid a visit by the prosecutor general, who arrived at the Logovaz Club accompanied by a squad of federal agents. Although he wasn’t there to arrest Berezovsky, he had come to ask questions about Aeroflot—something that Berezovsky had thought he had dealt with before Putin’s ascension to the presidency. The prosecutor general had suggested that Berezovsky would likely face criminal charges again, that his involvement in the national airline involved financial fraud and currency smuggling. Furthermore, they said that businessman Nikolai Glushkov, one of Berezovsky’s close friends, whom Berezovsky had placed in charge of Aeroflot management, was also in danger of a criminal investigation.
Another barely veiled threat—and this time not only against the Oligarch himself, but against a friend and colleague. Berezovsky had been unable to protect Litvinenko, a relative nobody, from eight months in prison—and at the time, Putin had been only the head of the FSB. He had no doubt that if the president wanted to put Glushkov in irons, there was little he could do to stop him.
The government wasn’t finished with him yet. The very next day, Berezovsky received notice that he was being evicted from his beloved dacha in Alexandrovka, which, though technically state-owned, Berezovksy had been legally renting since 1994. The notice came with no explanation or leave for petition; Berezovsky simply needed to vacate the premises, immediately.
Even so, even through the Aeroflot threat and the eviction, Berezovsky had intended to continue the fight. But on October 26, Putin had made his intentions clear in a way that Berezovsky couldn’t ignore. On his way to an official visit to France, the president had given an interview to the newspaper Le Figaro, speaking in words as clear and harsh as a Moscow snow:
“Generally, I don’t think that the state and the businessmen are natural enemies. Rather, the state has a cudgel in its hands that you use to hit just once, but on the head. We haven’t used this cudgel yet. We’ve just brandished it, which is enough to keep someone’s attention. The day we get really angry, we will not hesitate to use it. It is inadmissible to blackmail the state. If necessary, we will destroy those instruments that allow this blackmail.”
According to The Moscow Times, which published the exchange in its entirety the next day, there was no doubt whom Putin had been speaking to; the Times identified Berezovsky by name, and referred to the statement as both a warning and a threat.
After that interview, Berezovsky had no doubt—he wasn’t just in danger of losing his dacha, his stakes in ORT and Aeroflot—he was facing actual, physical danger. Even Roman Abramovich, a usually calm and rational voice, who had been disturbed by Berezovsky’s handling of the Kursk incident and had tried to play the role of peacemaker with the Kremlin on numerous occasions, had admitted that Putin’s interview seemed threatening. For his part, the young entrepreneur still believed that Berezovksy and the government could find a way to work things out, if only Berezovksy could take a step back and calm his emotions. After all, Berezovsky and the president had once been friends; Abramovich believed that it was Putin who felt betrayed, that Berezovsky had turned on the hard-driving president, rather than the other way around.
But Berezovksy was certain that they were now well past the point of apologies and stepping back. He could not rid his thoughts of that cudgel, in Putin’s hand, raised over his head. He had survived assassination attempts before, but this was the president of Russia, speaking in his own, direct words.
On that breezy airfield outside of Moscow, moving slowly up the metal stairs, Berezovsky paused to take one last breath. He was near the top step now. He could already feel the warmth coming from inside the lavishly appointed jet. He could smell the leather of the interior and the slight wisp of floral perfume from one of his statuesque flight attendants. And yet his shoulders sagged beneath his coat.
Despite everything, a part of him wanted to stay and fight, but even Badri agreed, the danger was too great. As he stood there, about to take that final step, his hands tightened even harder against the steel of the handrail. Putin had a cudgel and he was not afraid to use it; but Boris Berezovsky had been underestimated before.
Gusinsky had underestimated him and his men had ended up facedown in the snow. Korzhakov had underestimated him, and he had gone from Yeltsin’s right hand to sudden unemployment. Even George Soros had underestimated him.
Berezovsky raised his chin, and a slight, defiant smile moved across his lips.
For a man with enough money in the bank, and the right sort of determination, the world could be a very small place—and an ocean, a very narrow distance.