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For a time, attention focused on Scaramella, but by the end of last week his level of poisoning and other evidence exculpated him of any suspicion. Instead, the trail of polonium was entangling the group of Russians at the Pine Bar. All seven bartenders on duty that day tested positive for the substance, at levels approaching those found in members of Litvinenko's family, implying they had inhaled it soon after its release--possibly from the vapor given off by a drink into which it had been slipped. The Russians who met Litvinenko in the bar included Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard who had met Litvinenko in the 1990s when serving as Berezovsky's security chief at ORT; Dmitry Kovtun, a former Soviet army officer who has lived in Germany for many years and has known Lugovoy since they were 12; and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, a graduate of the same military school as Lugovoy and Kovtun. Sokolenko says he had never met Litvinenko before their brief encounter in London, and that his only interest that day was to attend a soccer match and do some sightseeing. Both Lugovoy and Kovtun have polonium in their bodies, and so far the main focus is on them; both men (and Sokolenko) deny any wrongdoing.
When Lugovoy learned that British authorities were investigating Litvinenko's poisoning, he volunteered for an interview at the British embassy in Moscow. Polonium was later found in the embassy room, and in lots of other places Lugovoy had visited: on planes he had flown between Moscow and London in October; in five rooms at the Sheraton Park Lane hotel, where he had stayed; and in a fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel he is said to have used on the day Litvinenko was poisoned. Finding polonium in a hotel Lugovoy had used on a previous trip to London prompted British authorities to wonder if there might have been an earlier, failed murder attempt. A senior British security official thought the sprawl of radioactive markers throughout London and beyond implied an amateur operation, not up to the FSB's usual standard. But another official disagreed. "This is such an extraordinary material to be using as a weapon," he said, "I'm not sure if any standard operating procedures would exist for handling it." Lugovoy's explanation for the traces that seem to track his progress around London was straightforward. "Someone is trying to set me up," he said to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. "But I can't understand who. Or why."