October 25, 2003,
Novosibirsk, Siberia
BARELY TWO MINUTES AFTER five in the morning, the private Tupolev Tu-154 jet was coming down fast, its engines running on near fumes, as the pair of pilots in the cockpit searched for the strip of runway, through the thick, strangely orange fog of a predawn Siberian morning.
The flight from Moscow had been uneventful, and both pilots were extremely experienced, after multiple years in the private sector, and before that, stints in the Russian Air Force. But the refueling stop in such a heavy fog at this airport at the far edge of nowhere, a well-maintained set of runways laid down over a heavy, slick permafrost, bisecting the short distance between a fuel depot and a maintenance office, would have even the most experienced pilots’ hearts pumping.
Nearby Novosibirsk was a burgeoning city, the third-most-populated metropolis in the country, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. But the Oligarch owner of the private jet—the pilots’ boss—had chosen this particular airfield specifically because it was out of the way, and thus a little more protected. To the pilots, the team of heavily armed bodyguards taking up most of the jet’s passenger cabin should have been protection enough, but this refueling stop was what the boss wanted, and thus it was what the boss was going to get.
After all, Khodorkovsky wasn’t the richest man in Russia by accident. He had built his empire from nothing, in banking, oil—God only knew what else—and in the process had become one of the most well-known names in the country. That he was now on the government’s shit list, for challenging the new regime at every step, meant little to the two men at the airplane’s controls.
Like most people the pilots knew in these uncertain times, their political loyalties lay with whomever best filled their bank accounts. At the moment, they were happily pro-Oligarch, even if it meant the slight risk of ending up in a fiery ball in the middle of goddamn Siberia.
Thankfully, both pilots spotted the stretch of runway through the heavy fog at about the same moment. The lead pilot made the necessary adjustments to their descent, and they continued through their landing ritual. A few moments later, the tires touched concrete, coughing up a thin spray of ice and burning rubber. The engines slowed, the brakes kicking in, and the plane smoothly decelerated, as the pilots steered the plane toward the refueling station. Five more minutes, and they came to a complete stop. Outside on the tarmac, a gaggle of maintenance workers instantly moved into action.
“That’s quite a crowd out there this morning,” the copilot noticed, gesturing toward the view outside the cockpit.
The lead pilot squinted through the glass, realizing that his copilot was right. It seemed like almost three times as many refueling specialists as usual.
“Maybe it’s the night and day shift, working together. A little bit of good luck, eh? Should have us out of here in no time. The boss will be happy about that.”
“I’m not sure he has a happy setting—” the copilot started to say, but he never got the chance to finish.
There was a loud, sudden crash from behind the cockpit door at their backs, followed by intense shouting. Most of the words were muffled because of the thick reinforced door, but the lead pilot was certain he heard at least three words he understood: Drop your weapons!
And just as suddenly, a barrage of spotlights exploded across the tarmac in front of them, blasting everything in harsh, artificial light. The pilot covered his eyes with one hand, as the copilot hastily undid his seat belt.
There were more crashes from behind and then a pounding on the cockpit door. Someone was yelling for them to open it—immediately.
The lead pilot didn’t see what choice they had. His hands were shaking as he reached for the door, and it took him an extra moment to finally get it open.
The two men standing in the doorway were large, wearing black masks, but all the pilot could see were the pair of submachine guns aimed at his chest. He quickly put his hands over his head. Then one of the men had him by the hair, and he was dragged out of the cockpit. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see at least a dozen of similarly clad aggressors, crowding into the jet’s passenger cabin. All the bodyguards were on the floor or seated, held at gunpoint. And at the very rear of the plane, being led out of his seat by more masked agents—the richest man in Russia.
7 Down Street, Mayfair, London
“That’s the war we’re fighting,” Berezovsky nearly shouted, slamming a hand down against his desk, in his elegantly decorated office in Mayfair. “Khodorkovsky thought his billions would keep him safe, and that his popularity made him untouchable. And you see what happened? They took him right off his plane, and directly to prison. Do not pass go, do not collect your billion dollars. Money laundering, tax evasion, they are the bullets, but we all know who is holding the gun.”
Berezovsky pointed at his own face, covered by a unique, somewhat obscene rubber mask with Vladimir Putin’s face on it. To his surprise, the American journalist sitting across from him didn’t smile at the display; in fact, she looked uncomfortable, if not a little bit terrified. Her own fault—she had been the one to ask about the mask, and Berezovsky had only put it on as a favor.
The likeness wasn’t perfect, but the countenance was clearly recognizable. That he had been able to find a Putin mask in a local novelty shop had been a minor coup; maybe it showed that his new, adopted homeland truly did have a growing obsession with all things Russian. Likewise, Berezovsky had been amazed at how many newspapers his picture had made it into when he had donned the mask on his way out of a local courthouse, after one of his many extradition hearings.
The list of crimes he had been accused of back in Moscow seemed to grow every day he was in exile. Even though the American journalist had listed them twice already during the interview, Berezovsky himself couldn’t even keep them straight. His exile had protected him. Sadly, his friend Glushkov, from Aeroflot, couldn’t say the same thing. Selling ORT, then being paid off to “disappear” at the Megève heliport had done nothing to get his friend released. In fact, in a surreal state of affairs, just a few months after the Megève payout, Glushkov had found himself in even hotter water. During an approved visit to a hospital for blood work, he had reportedly staged an escape attempt, involving associates in phony guard uniforms; the escape had failed, and Glushkov had been grabbed by FSB agents. After this, he had been thrown back into jail, along with one of Berezovksy’s security employees from ORT, Andrei Lugovoy, who had supposedly been helping Glushkov with his escape.
Worse yet, Badri had been tarred by that same brush, accused of aiding in the escape attempt. The loyal strongman had avoided arrest, having already joined Berezovsky in exile. Of course, the Russian press and the Kremlin had immediately assumed that Berezovsky had masterminded this failed escape attempt, part of the continuing effort to draw him as an enemy of the state, a despicable traitor.
Fair enough, he sometimes thought. For the past three years, since his exile began, he had indeed been engaged in an all-out publicity war with Putin—speaking about his perceived rival to anyone who would listen.
“Khodorkovsky learned how the legal system works in Moscow, didn’t he?” Berezovsky continued, from behind the mask. “Now he’s in a prison cell. He was the richest man in the country. Started off just like me—half Jewish, which meant he was Jewish enough to know that the only avenues open to him were in business. From banking, to Yukos oil. He should’ve left Russia when he had the chance. Instead, he stayed and tried to stand up to them. Look where it got him.”
The same place, Berezovksy knew, where he would end up if Russia ever managed to win its extradition battles. Fortunately for the Oligarch, not only had Berezovksy prevailed in court again and again—rubber mask and all—but just a week ago, he had been granted official political asylum in the UK. Rumors abounded that he had been turning over information to the British Secret Service in return for their protection, and he certainly liked the implications. Given how often he had been appearing in the British press, he felt once again that he had become a very important man. In the West, things were different; politics seemed secondary to money. And, at the moment, he had plenty of money to spend.
How much exactly, he couldn’t be sure. He had bought a beautiful estate in nearby Surrey for more than twenty million dollars; ironically, not far from where Abramovich had one of his homes as well—though Abramovich still considered Moscow his main base of operations.
Berezovksy also traveled in style—his Maybach, his veritable army of bodyguards, his private jet, his own chefs, valets, and butlers. His real estate in France, a villa in the Caribbean, and he was continuously considering huge purchases all over the world. He was building a private art collection, and he had at least one yacht, perhaps three, though he couldn’t be certain how many were under his name.
Of course, his yacht was nothing compared to Abramovich’s—one of which was over 377 feet long, with a pair of helicopter pads and a huge swimming pool that turned into a dance floor. Nor could his real estate compare to his former protégé’s—Abramovich was building a one-hundred-million-dollar palace in St. Barths and combining a block of apartments in Belgravia that could one day be worth twice that. Berezovsky might have a private jet, but Abramovich had a 767. And Abramovich had recently made the ultimate purchase, the storied Chelsea Football Club, probably worth over a billion dollars on its own.
Berezovsky knew, the fact that he could list everything that Abramovich owned—or was going to own—was a symptom of his rising obsession with the man, which had been building since their meeting at that heliport in Megève. Badri had told him many times he should simply let it go—that they were all wealthy now, that he and Badri had been paid an enormous sum—split between them, though they kept much of their assets intermingled—to end their krysha obligations, at least as much as was fair.
Badri, a much less ostentatious man by nature, had been using his money much differently. While he had put some of it into investments such as the Buddha Bar in New York, he had made his primary home in Georgia, the ex-Russian province of his birth, rather than in England or the United States. Berezovsky had pushed his friend into politics in the breakaway territory—using some of his own money to help Badri fund the Rose Revolution, which had put one of Badri’s friends and colleagues—and a democratic, liberalizing influence—Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-West candidate who was only thirty-six, into the Georgian presidency.
Badri—and Berezovsky—were once again close to power, though in Georgia instead of Russia. Badri was considered the richest man in that province, beloved by his people. In that role, Badri had also set off to try to repair his relationship with the Kremlin, even reaching out to Putin himself—and he had suggested many times that Berezovsky give up his war of words and make amends.
But Berezovsky refused; he saw himself on a sort of holy mission. Putin was his nemesis, and he was going to use every minute and every dollar he had to try to bring down the president.
Berezovsky removed the Putin mask and placed it on his desk, as the American journalist scribbled notes into her legal pad. Berezovsky had long ago lost count of the number of interviews he had given; he had been willing to speak to just about anyone who would listen. One of the things he loved most about the West was the hunger of the press for a juicy story—and the multitude of organizations that would use just about any headline to sell a newspaper. If anything, Berezovsky had been born to dole out headlines. His verbal challenges to Putin had gone from recounting the supposed threats and brutal political machinations that had led to his own London exile to outlining his personal quest to fund a violent revolution against the Russian president.
And Berezovsky wasn’t just mouthing words to the press in England, he had surrounded himself with like-minded agitators: Litvinenko, of course, as well as the young agent’s friends in exile, and anyone else who had a beef with the Russian president. Berezovksy was their nexus, their continuous source of funding, and his office at 7 Down Street had become their central gathering place.
He knew that his words and actions were riling the Kremlin and his enemies back in Russia. Berezovsky believed there had been at least one more assassination attempt against him—evidence of which had led to his political asylum—and he expected more to come. But he didn’t care. The very fact that they were going after him meant he was still significant.
He didn’t expect to be able to topple Putin overnight; but the extradition hearings and Berezovsky’s political asylum was proof that the Russian president didn’t have the power to simply wave his hand and have Berezovsky sent to prison, as he had done with Khodorkovsky. It was a facet of one of the other characteristics that Berezovksy loved most about the West, and the UK in particular, the powerful, historic legal system.
He had learned that a man with money, and access to good lawyers, could go after just about any prize. In earlier days, he had filed suit against Forbes magazine for an article written by an American journalist named Paul Klebnikov, which Berezovsky felt linked him to a number of murders, and which claimed he had developed a Mafia-like presence in the Russian government. The article—and a book the journalist had written along the same topic—had referred to Berezovsky as the “Godfather of The Kremlin.” Even though Forbes, at the time, had barely any readers in the UK, Berezovsky had been able to use England’s lax libel laws to put immense pressure on the journalist and the magazine—taking advantage of what many legal experts called “libel tourism” to bring the suit into a court system that seemed most likely to rule in the Oligarch’s favor.
Since then, Berezovsky had been a party in lawsuit after lawsuit, some having to do with business dealings and loan repayments, some trending more personal. Eventually, he expected also to be in a courtroom facing at least one of his ex-wives. But all in all, he considered the Western legal system another weapon in his armament.
He was still adjusting to life in exile, but he believed that by combining Russian strategies and persistence with modern, Western tools—he could stay more relevant than even Abramovich could ever have suspected.
Badri might have seen his passion—his holy mission—as another sign of his self-destructiveness, but Berezovksy believed it was quite the opposite. His obsessions—with Putin, with Abramovich, with his own importance—were keeping him alive.