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266 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

Alexander Litvinenko, I had interviewed Andrei Lugovoy. A former KGB officer assigned to protecting the Kremlin's top members in the 1990s, Lugovoy later opened his own security company. In 2005, he became a business associate of Litvinenko's in gathering information and made regular trips to London to meet with him. Because he had tea with Litvinenko at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London on November 1, 2006, the day Litvinenko was poisoned, he became the main suspect in the British investigation. He could not be extradited, however. After reconstructing the chronology of the crime, I established that Litvinenko had been contaminated with polonium at a Japanese restaurant some four hours before his tea with Lugovoy. I therefore wrote that the crime scene might not have been at the Pine Bar, a finding that he said he greatly appreciated.

Lugovoy was elected to the Duma in 2007 and also hosted a twenty-four-part television series on espionage for which Putin personally decorated him. He was also now reputed to be in the inner circle of power in Moscow. So I called him.

We arranged to meet in the bar of the Hotel National. A short but well-built man with a bullet-style haircut, Lugovoy showed up promptly at 1:00 p.m. After discussing some of the subsequent developments in the still-lingering polonium investigation, I asked him if he knew Kucherena.

"I don't know him, but I know someone who does," he answered. "Why are you interested in seeing Kucherena?"

I told him that I wanted to speak to him about Snowden but I had been unable to arrange a meeting.

"That's no problem," he said, raising his cell phone (which never left his hand). He hit a number on the speed dial and spoke rapidly in Russian (which I do not understand). He cupped his hand over the phone and asked how long I would be in Moscow. After I told him that I was leaving that Friday, he spoke again in Russian to the person on the other end. "You will have an appointment on Thursday," he said.

Later that afternoon, Valentina, Kucherena's assistant, called to say that Kucherena would be happy to see me at his office at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday. I didn't ask Lugovoy whom he had called. Whomever Lugovoy called obviously had the power to arrange the meeting.

Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 266 9/30/16 8:13 AM
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