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All that, as yet, remains unproved. Meanwhile, a slew of whodunit theories are jostling for prominence. Following an autopsy that spurred the police to treat Litvinenko's death as a murder, Scotland Yard antiterrorism officers have been combing sites all over London, while colleagues traveled to Moscow. "This continues to be an extremely complex investigation, and detectives are pursuing many lines of inquiry," said a police spokeswoman. Litvinenko's excruciating and sinister death and the swirl of international politics around it make this a case worthy of John le Carré, but as the police insist, the classic questions of any murder inquiry still apply: Scotland Yard, in short, is looking for motive, means and opportunity.
Who had a motive?
WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT ALEXANDER Litvinenko dead? To answer that question, investigators are having to immerse themselves in the intrigues of postcommunist Russia and their echoes in London, the favored home away from home for Russian exiles, where Litvinenko sought asylum in 2001. (He became a British citizen two months ago.)
Litvinenko had spent the 1990s as an officer in the élite organized crime unit of the Federal Security Service (FSB), which was tasked with penetrating organized-crime gangs in the murky post-Soviet world of big money and official corruption. Like anyone else who touched that cesspit, he had collected some powerful enemies--and at least one ally. That was Boris Berezovsky, one of Russia's first billionaires, who made his money in cars and oil partly by using his excellent connections with Boris Yeltsin to buy state assets for much less than they turned out to be worth. In 1994, as his Mercedes was pulling out of his headquarters, a huge car bomb decapitated Berezovsky's chauffeur but left Berezovsky unharmed. Litvinenko was assigned to the case, and over time the two men became friendly. In 1995 hit men gunned down Vladislav Listyev, a popular TV personality who also ran Berezovsky's ORT-TV network. Officers from a rival organized-crime squad came to Berezovsky's headquarters to arrest him and search for documents. But in the doorway, with his pistol drawn, Litvinenko held off eight of them armed with Kalashnikovs, while Berezovsky furiously phoned allies at the Kremlin. Berezovsky said he and Litvinenko became "like brothers" that night.
Litvinenko claimed to have saved Berezovsky's life a second time. In 1998 he said he had refused an order "to kill the Jew who has stolen half of this country"--by which his superiors meant Berezovsky. As a result, Litvinenko believed, an unsuccessful attempt was made on his life. Those claims were made at a surreal press conference at which Litvinenko appeared with six other disgruntled FSB officers. Some wore ski masks, but Litvinenko, his face uncovered, calmly stated that bosses at the FSB were using the organization "for their private ends to liquidate those who bothered them" and line their own pockets.