Luke Harding - A Very Expensive Poison

The interview had lasted a mere thirteen minutes. From the 118 questions submitted to Russian prosecutors Kovtun answered eighteen.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard’s attempts to meet Lugovoi were going nowhere. The next morning, 6 December, the team arrived outside the prosecutor’s office. Staff allowed only one person inside – Detective Superintendent Alan Slater – taking him on an odd circuitous tour of the building. Inside, officials berated Slater about SO15’s alleged failings. The complaints concerned minor administrative details; Slater felt them overblown. ‘I think I’d been summoned there just to be told off,’ he said.

The sergeant asked when he might talk to Lugovoi. The reply: you can talk to him for one hour, when doctors permit.

That evening in London, the press office of New Scotland Yard announced that Litvinenko’s death was being now treated as a murder inquiry. The news went down badly in Moscow. Detectives had been due to interview Lugovoi on 7 December. The interview was cancelled, rescheduled and cancelled again. Russia announced its own criminal inquiry into Kovtun’s ‘poisoning’ – a counter-move. There were further delays, and a meeting in which Russian prosecutors claimed that Litvinenko had aided Berezovsky’s ‘bogus’ claim for UK asylum.

In Britain – actually on sabbatical in Oxford, learning Russian ahead of my Guardian posting to Moscow – I received an email from British Airways.

It said:

Dear Mr Harding

As a valued customer I am writing to give you the latest information regarding the forensic examination of three of our Boeing 767 aircraft.

You may be aware that these three aircraft were identified by the UK government as part of the police investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The email went on to say that initial tests revealed ‘very low traces of a radioactive substance’ on board two of the planes. It said the UK’s Health Protection Agency had concluded there was no risk to passengers from one of them, and that ‘monitoring is continuing on the second aircraft’. BA listed the affected planes on its website. It gave the number of an NHS Direct helpline.

I checked BA’s website: my wife Phoebe and I had flown on a polonium plane. I called NHS Direct. The helpline wasn’t terribly enlightening – it gave general information and suggested that if concerned I should go and see my doctor. I hung up. After all, I was feeling fine.

Behind the scenes, the British authorities were trying to identify all of the aircraft used by Lugovoi and Kovtun in their journeys to and from the UK. In addition to their BA flights, they had travelled on 16 October from Moscow to London with Russian carrier Transaero. They sat in seats 16F and 16E on the outward leg, and in 26F and 26E on the return trip two days later. The police identified the Boeing 737 planes involved, EI-DDK and EI-DNM.

The UK Foreign Office asked the Russian authorities for help. It suggested that, given the potential risk to public health, they test both aircraft for radioactive contamination. The reply was prompt. Russia’s chief public health minister Gennady Onishchenko told the British embassy in Moscow that extensive checks had been carried out. He was happy to announce that no radiation had been found on either plane.

Despite these reassurances, teams from the Atomic Weapons Establishment were made ready. Scotland Yard wanted to examine the aircraft for evidence. In early December, experts tested the second Transaero plane, EI-DNM, after it landed at Heathrow. To their surprise they found low-level traces of polonium – eight becquerels per centimetre squared. Onishchenko’s remarks – widely reported in the Russian press – were a lie.

The results were passed to COBRA, the UK government’s emergency response committee. A request was sent to the Russian foreign ministry asking for permission to test the first Moscow–London plane. This was likely to show higher levels of contamination, since the polonium had originated in Russia. The plane never arrived. It appears the Kremlin instructed Transaero to cancel the flight. EI-DDK never came back to UK airspace.

As for BA 873 – the plane used by Lugovoi and his family to fly to London on 31 October – polonium was found here too. The highest readings came from Lugovoi’s seat, 23D. Contamination was discovered on the BA aircraft in which they flew back to Moscow on 3 December, especially in seat 16D. The very expensive poison had left a very detectable signature.

Back in Moscow, British detectives were finally granted an audience with the man himself, again in Hospital No. 6. DI Slater travelled with Otvodov in a van with blacked-out windows, its blue lights flashing. They arrived, entered via a rear entrance, and went up the stairs to a room with a table.

Lugovoi was dressed in a hospital gown, as befits a patient receiving medical treatment. Underneath, Slater noticed with surprise, Lugovoi was wearing an expensive designer T-shirt, black with a white motif. The gown, it appeared, was for dramatic purposes.

Doctors had claimed Lugovoi was gravely ill. To Slater, he looked positively fit and healthy – and appeared to have been driven to the clinic from outside. Slater had instructions to check Lugovoi’s eyebrows and arms; if he’d been suffering from radiation sickness his hair would have fallen out. He had a full head of hair.

Lugovoi’s interview lasted longer than Kovtun’s and he gave better answers. He talked about his family – he was estranged from one of his daughters, Anastasia, who lived in the city of Kursk. He spoke of his business activities – his factory in Ryazan province which made kvas , beer and wine. And he gave an account of his three trips to London in October and November, including his dealings with Litvinenko.

According to Lugovoi, he and Kovtun had arrived back at the Millennium Hotel at 4 p.m. We know this is untrue: CCTV footage shows them arriving half an hour earlier, with Lugovoi and Kovtun both making separate visits to the gents’ toilets, later found to be heavily contaminated with polonium. ‘We didn’t go upstairs but went straight to the bar to wait,’ he said. ‘About ten minutes later, Litvinenko arrived in the lobby and I invited him to sit.’

Litvinenko spoke mostly to Kovtun about Hamburg, Lugovoi said. The meeting broke up, he added, when his daughter Tatiana appeared at the entrance to the Pine Bar and his son Igor came in: ‘I introduced him to Litvinenko. Maybe they shook hands.’ Lugovoi said he’d known Kovtun for thirty years, and that Kovtun lived in Moscow.

After one and a half hours, a doctor told Slater the interview was over. The detective hadn’t finished. Nevertheless, Lugovoi got up and left, telling Slater breezily in English:

‘Goodbye, see you later.’

The encounter had yielded some useful information. It confirmed Lugovoi’s movements in the UK, and gave a sharper picture of his contacts and associates. But many questions were unanswered. Slater drew up a list. Among them: ‘Clarify Millennium meeting. Who sat where at the table? Can you draw a sketch plan? How was the meeting arranged? What telephones were used?’

The next day, Slater returned to the prosecutor’s office to agree a transcript of the Lugovoi interview. He’d taken notes and typed them up. Otvodov produced the official Russian version of the meeting. Some of what Lugovoi said was missing. It had been edited from the protocol.

It appeared that the Kremlin wanted to remove all references to the Russian mafia in Spain and its links with Russian politicians. Lugovoi’s account of his conversations with Litvinenko about Spain had disappeared. Litvinenko had described how he had helped arrest Zakhar Kalashov, known as Shakro, a leading Russian mafia boss. He had also told Lugovoi about ‘Jorge’, his contact in Spanish intelligence.