Once Upon A Time In Russia Part 10

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

January 10, 2001, Megeve, Rhne-Alpes Region, France BORIS CROUCHED LOW IN the backseat of the armored limousine, his face inches from the bulletproof side window, to stare up at the gunmetal canopy of clouds. He couldn't be sure how long the car had been parked in that spot; he had spent the first few minutes simply gazing at the crown of mountains that surrounded them, his thoughts lost in the swirl of snow that seemed to be blowing through the heliport from every conceivable angle.

Megeve was beautiful and foreboding. Berezovsky had never seen anywhere quite like it. The tiny resort town perched at the very top of the French Alps, a frozen, high-alt.i.tude junction between a half-dozen ski resorts known only to the wealthiest. A desolate, yet somehow charming quaint little town that felt like it was situated at the apex of the world, with air so thin, it made him dizzy just rising to his feet.

It had taken a drive up the side of a mountain, along a narrow, sometimes single-lane road, looking out over sheer drops and hairpin turns stacked on top of each other, just to get there. Their progress had been so slow at times, and Berezovsky had been certain he would be the last to arrive at the summit. But somehow, he was now alone at the top, his only company the swirling snow. Only the soft purr of the limousine's engines broke the monotonous silence. Twice, his driver had gestured toward the small, enclosed cafe attached to the main building of the heliport, wordlessly asking if Berezovsky would be more comfortable waiting inside. And twice, Berezovsky had ignored him, his gaze pinned to the sky.

Even so, he heard their approach well before there was any change in the thick canopy of clouds. It began as a low throb, barely audible over the car's engine. Second by second, the throb grew into a low thunder, the unmistakable sound of oversize steel rotors fighting their way through moist mountain air.

It was another minute before the first helicopter burst through the clouds, curving down toward the nearest snow-covered helipad, bright red landing lights flas.h.i.+ng like hungry irises, intent on nearby prey. The second helicopter swooped down out of the gray just a few minutes behind the first, touching down while the initial chopper's rotors were still spinning. A few more minutes, and finally the two sets of rotors had slowed enough for the helicopters to release their cargo. Almost in tandem, the pa.s.senger doors swung upward. Badri hopped out first, from the closest of the two, his head topped by a high, mink Cossack-style hat, most of his ruddy face obscured by the collar of a matching fur coat. Behind him, out of the second helicopter, came Roman Abramovich's party.

Berezovksy had expected that the young businessman would come alone, but the first person out of his pa.s.senger cabin was Abramovich's twentysomething Austrian chef. After the chef came Abramovich and his wife, Irina, each holding a hand of one of Abramovich's young children. A true family affair. In retrospect, Berezovsky shouldn't have been surprised. Abramovich was on holiday, and he had flown in from the Chteau Sevan in Courcheval, where he often spent his winters. They had, in fact, chosen Megeve because it was central to the vacation spots of the Alps. Although it now felt a little off: Berezovsky here in exile, Abramovich here in the midst of his family vacation.

Berezovksy watched from the car as Badri greeted Abramovich and his family. Then the small group headed together toward the warmth of the cafe. Only when they had reached the door, Badri holding it open for the handsome family, did Boris finally signal to his driver that it was time to escort him along.

The cafe was small and quaint, walls mostly windows, tall gla.s.s panes looking out over the cascading mountains. The interior was filled with small metal tables surrounding a counter where you could order croissants, coffee, beer, and little else. But it was more than enough for their purposes. As Berezovsky entered, he saw that the chef, the wife, and the children had taken a table close to the window facing the two parked helicopters. Abramovich and the Georgian were on the other side of the cafe, far enough away that they wouldn't be overheard.

Berezovksy took his time reaching the table, and the conversation was already in full swing before he even sat down. Both sides had made it quite clear in advance that the meeting would be brief. Abramovich didn't want to take much time out of his family vacation, and Badri and Berezovsky weren't in Megeve for a drawn-out negotiation. All the negotiations had already taken place; once again, Badri had been the go-between, traveling all over the world to meet with Abramovich and his bean counters. In Munich, Paris, London, they had worked over the numbers, back and forth, until there was nothing left to do but finalize the proposition. Perhaps this could have been done over the phone or on paper, but this uniquely Russian situation meant it should be done in the uniquely Russian style: face-to-face, not in a courtroom with lawyers, not with papers and signatures, but between men. Unlike what had transpired at the chteau in Antibes, this was truly a negotiation to end a relations.h.i.+p.

A uniquely Russian relations.h.i.+p.

"One billion, three hundred million," Abramovich said, as Berezovsky took his seat, and it almost seemed that the young man was tripping on the words.

It was a ma.s.sive amount of money. At that moment, it could have been compared to the entire pension fund of the Russian Federation-maybe a quarter to half of the capitalization of Gazprom, the biggest gas company in Russia, and perhaps more than the entire current valuation of Sibneft itself. A king's ransom, an amount that would make Berezovsky one of the richest people in the world.

Berezovsky could tell by the way Badri's hands shook, clasped together in his lap, and the way a smile played at the corner of his lips, that his friend was equally affected by the amount. Badri had helped come up with the number, in consultation with Abramovich and Abramovich's right-hand man, Eugene. From what Badri had told Berezovsky, the number had been conceived by adding together the payments Abramovich had been making to Berezovsky each year, projecting a decade into the future, and then taking that calculation and ma.s.saging it into something that seemed fair.

The fact that Roman was willing to hand over this enormous lump sum, a historic amount by any consideration, was, in Badri's view, a testament to the younger man's respect and honor of their relations.h.i.+p, of what they had accomplished. Because, in Abramovich's mind, this was not a payment for future work, this was not a payment to purchase anything that Berezovsky now owned, it was a payment intended to dissolve their relations.h.i.+p.

What that meant, in a legal sense, was a matter of opinion. There were no official doc.u.ments, there was no true paper trail that solidly defined what Berezovsky was owed or what part of Abramovich's empire he legitimately owned, but Abramovich had come up with a number he felt was fair, a payment he believed Berezovsky should accept, in return for the ending of their partners.h.i.+p, for lack of a better English word. One billion, three hundred million, to never owe anything again, to end all the payments, to end their business a.s.sociation.

Did Abramovich also see it as an end to their friends.h.i.+p, too, if that word meant anything in their relations.h.i.+p?

Berezovsky guessed that Abramovich would not have seen their friends.h.i.+p, now or before, in the same terms that Berezovsky had. To Abramovich, it had been a friends.h.i.+p built on payments, built on krysha. Berezovsky had been Abramovich's protection and his liaison to the Kremlin. He had helped Abramovich build an oil company. Was there a way to put a price on that? This wasn't an English or Western partners.h.i.+p, there weren't contracts or lawyers or signatures. Abramovich, in real, provable terms, wasn't buying shares-he was buying his freedom. And he was willing to pay more than a billion dollars for it.

The conversation s.h.i.+fted from the amount to the mechanism. A billion dollars was not an easy amount of cash to transfer; this was not going to be a matter of overstuffed suitcases delivered by little blond accountants.

Abramovich intended to make the payments from his aluminum profits, which brought in a steady cash flow. The payments would be made in bearer shares, exchanged through a Latvian bank.

As Badri and Abramovich worked out the details, Berezovsky was unusually silent. In the past, other than at the meeting at the chteau, when the three of them were together, Berezovsky would dominate the conversation. Never a man to stay in the background, he had always been described as a person who loved the sound of his own voice. But in this moment, he was swept up by complex feelings.

One billion, three hundred million. He should have been ecstatic, he should have been contemplating the future with a bankroll that seemed nearly bottomless. He could live like royalty for the rest of his life, his family would be wealthy for generations. He had gone from being an outsider, born a Jew in an anti-Semitic culture, relegated to special inst.i.tutions on the outskirts of Russian life-to this moment, on the verge of becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. And yet, he couldn't feel happy.

Just as Abramovich had bought Berezovsky's share of ORT, Abramovich was now giving him this huge sum of money to make him go away. He wasn't offering him a billion dollars because he was significant or important-quite the opposite. He was giving him this money because he was no longer relevant.

For Berezovsky, it was the ultimate dishonor. He had always needed to be in the center of things, a lead actor, a major player.

If he wasn't important, he wasn't alive.

In the past, his enemies had tried to kill him with bombs, with FSB a.s.sa.s.sination orders, with criminal charges. He believed that now, they were trying to kill him with a big fat check.

And Berezovsky truly didn't know what he was going to do next. It was a strange feeling, being without a strategy, without a mission. It felt . . . wrong.

As the meeting drew to a close after less than an hour-one billion, three hundred million dollars offered and accepted-Roman Abramovich rose, signaling his family to put their coats back on for the short walk to the helicopter. Before he followed them outside, he paused to give both Badri and Berezovsky a final, warm, Russian embrace.

In the younger man's mind, perhaps, they were ending a business relations.h.i.+p, a krysha relations.h.i.+p, but they were parting at the same level of friends.h.i.+p they had always shared.

Abramovich would head back to Russia, his vacation over, and continue building his empire.

But where would Boris Berezovsky go next? Where did a man in exile go, after he was just handed a billion dollars?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

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 c.o.c.kpit 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 pa.s.senger 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-G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+t 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 c.o.c.kpit.

The lead pilot squinted through the gla.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+ft, 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 c.o.c.kpit door at their backs, followed by intense shouting. Most of the words were m.u.f.fled 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 c.o.c.kpit 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 c.o.c.kpit. Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see at least a dozen of similarly clad aggressors, crowding into the jet's pa.s.senger 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.

November 8, 2003 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 pa.s.s 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 Megeve heliport had done nothing to get his friend released. In fact, in a surreal state of affairs, just a few months after the Megeve 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 a.s.sociates 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 a.s.sumed 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 protege'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 Megeve. 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 a.s.sets 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 "G.o.dfather 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 pa.s.sion-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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

November 1, 2006, Itsu Sus.h.i.+, 167 Piccadilly, London IT WAS A LITTLE after ten minutes past three in the afternoon, and Alexander Litvinenko suddenly found himself surrounded by a little too much plastic, a little too many bright neon swatches of color for his tastes. But he had to admit, the sus.h.i.+ wasn't half bad, and the bustle of people pa.s.sing by on Piccadilly, outside the front windows of the restaurant, provided a pleasant contrast to his lunch companion.

He'd gotten to know the man he called Mario fairly well over the past couple of years. As usual, the Italian looked like he had just stepped off the plane from Rome-and in this case he actually had. They were at ease with one another, having been introduced years earlier, when Litvinenko had been working with an Italian governmental committee that had been investigating ex-FSB operatives supposedly involved in Italian politics. Even so, Mario had always struck Litvinenko as a man who wanted to be a spy, more than a man who actually had the goods to be one. To Litvinenko, the Italian was a tourist in the gray edges where Litvinenko made his home-but he was eager, and it always seemed like he wanted to be helpful.

When he had first contacted Litvinenko this time around, asking to meet over a late lunch, Litvinenko had been justifiably skeptical. The man was often trying to arrange meetings to pa.s.s over information that was either less than useful, or too subtle to be easily interpreted-and today, in particular, Litvinenko's day was a busy one. That very morning, just a few hours earlier, Litvinenko had met with contacts from Moscow at a nearby hotel to discuss a deal. One of the men-Andrei Lugovoy-was, coincidentally, a former ORT employee of Berezovsky-the same ex-FSB agent who had been briefly imprisoned after Glushkov's reported escape attempt in 2003.

The group of Russians was going to meet again that evening for drinks-which left little time for Litvinenko to complete the other errands he had in mind for that day. Fitting Mario in for a late lunch at the sus.h.i.+ joint was going to have him rus.h.i.+ng all over the city-but then, at the last minute, he'd decided to give the Italian a little bit of his time.

In general, the years since Litvinenko had made London his home had been busy. Agitating, as his friend Berezovsky liked to say, was a full-time job. Litvinenko had written or cowritten a pair of books attacking Putin, had met numerous contacts among like-minded revolutionaries, and he always had his eyes open to try to find more ways to use his particular skills for profit or ex-pat politics. Like his patron, he had his fingers in many things, projects that came and went, most having to do with information, with navigating his way through the gray edge-or helping others navigate their way through the gray edge.

Whether it was a government, a corporation, or something else, Litvinenko knew that what he could provide would always have some value. The fact that sometimes he found himself working with individuals in less than "clean" fields . . . well, that just came with the territory.

Arms dealing, corporate espionage, political machinations, these intrigued him, and he often allowed himself to go a little too deep, to play out conspiracies in his mind-but he had witnessed enough real conspiracies to know that there were often elements of fact in the most surreal situations.