The omission was significant. Lugovoi had mentioned Spain before Litvinenko’s work for the Spanish security services had become public knowledge. It meant that the Kremlin knew Litvinenko was investigating an organised crime syndicate linked to Putin and to corruption at the top of Russian power. It also knew that Litvinenko was a key witness in a future possible trial.
The now-vanished passage quoted Lugovoi as saying: ‘Litvinenko knew I wanted to go to Spain and we discussed it. He said he had a friend in Spain. Litvinenko told me that Russian criminal elements were buying property in Spain. On the 26th and 27th [October], Jorge called Litvinenko and Jorge speaks Russian. Litvinenko told me that Shakro, a criminal, was arrested in Russia, the same kind of operation is going to be done in Spain. It’s connected with money-laundering.’ Litvinenko had said the sums involved were large – $250 million.
Slater raised the missing section with Russian officials. They brushed away his concerns. Slater reluctantly signed and added a dissenting note saying the protocol was incomplete.
During the second week in Moscow, the detectives got access to other witnesses. They included Lugovoi’s wife, Svetlana; Sokolenko, the third man at the Millennium Hotel; Lugovoi’s personal assistant Angelina Idrisova; his lawyer and doctor.
Svetlana Lugovaya’s interview took place at the prosecutor’s office. Her answers were curt.
DC HALL: Did your husband discuss with you some theories as to [the death of] Litvinenko?
LUGOVAYA: No.
DC HALL: Nothing at all? No theories, nothing? I find it very strange you have not spoken to your husband about this case.
LUGOVAYA: I do not find anything strange because of all of the versions of it and the mix-up.
DC HALL: And which versions are these?
LUGOVAYA: We have to know what to discuss precisely? We do not know exactly what has happened.
DC HALL: What?
LUGOVAYA: None. Simply papers, television. We read the papers but we do not discuss anything.
Under the surface, the Lugovois’ marriage looked to be in trouble. What, if anything, did Svetlana suspect? She and her children had all been exposed to polonium and were treated at a private hospital; little Igor had shaken Litvinenko’s hand. Her husband had put their entire family in peril. What kind of monster would do that? Lugovoya would later divorce her husband. In April 2013, aged forty-six, Lugovoi married again, to a 23-year-old named Ksenia; two years later they had a son.
Sokolenko, meanwhile, said he’d flown to London to attend the CSKA Moscow–Arsenal match. His trip had been touristic, he said. It included beers with other fans who’d flown in from Austria, a bus trip, and a visit to Madame Tussauds. He went shopping with Lugovoi and Kovtun. They visited a toyshop, where Lugovoi bought cartridges for a computer game as a present for Igor. Sokolenko purchased teddy bears. He said he knew nothing about polonium.
By 19 December, the detectives had wrapped up. All that remained was for them to collect the interview tapes from their Russian counterparts. Tarpey went to the prosecutor general’s office. He was surprised to find, for once, no media outside. An official escorted him to a third-floor room. Inside he saw an array of reporters from Russian state TV.
Tarpey said he was ‘totally unprepared’ for cameras and would have objected, given a chance. Russian officials insisted he make a small speech, thanking the Russian prosecutor for his help and assistance. Tarpey muttered a few polite words. He was taken to a table, where officials presented him with lever-arch file binders containing the interview tapes. The cameras whirred and clicked; Tarpey signed a receipt.
It was a nice little piece of television and proof, surely, that Moscow was as keen as London to uncover the truth? For much of the mission, the Kremlin had led Scotland Yard investigators by the nose. It had been a difficult, high-profile trip in which officers had found themselves uncomfortably under the media’s glare. Their task was to collect evidence and often this hadn’t been possible.
Still, Tarpey thought, at least he had the audio-recordings.
When the detectives got back to Scotland Yard they found one final unpleasant surprise. Seven of the tapes were fine. But when they played the eighth, the recording of the interview with Lugovoi, no sound came out. The tape was blank.
From his fifth-floor office, Thomas Menzel had an impressive view of Hamburg. The city’s police headquarters were located in the green suburb of Alsterdorf. The detectives who worked there nicknamed the HQ ‘Polizei-Stern’ or Police Star because of its unusual ten-sided design. Through his large corner window, Menzel could see a light athletics track stadium, cranes, a line of trees and a police training building immediately below him.
Menzel was aware of Litvinenko’s case from the German press. It was, he thought, an extraordinary business – reminiscent of the Cold War, and involving a substance he had never come across before in many previous murder inquiries. Menzel was the head of the criminal investigation department in Hamburg’s Kriminalamt and the director of its organised crime unit. His officers were used to the darker and more extreme aspects of human behaviour: murders, drug violence, rapes.
This was something else.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel had devoted six pages and its cover to Litvinenko’s strange death. The date was 4 December 2006. Menzel picked up a copy and began reading. Halfway through he stopped. He reached for the phone. Spiegel reported that Kovtun had spent four days in Hamburg before meeting Litvinenko in London. Scotland Yard hadn’t been in touch but it was evident London’s problem was now Hamburg’s headache too. It was, seemingly, the biggest case since the discovery that some of the 9/11 terrorists led by Mohamed Atta had been living quietly in the city.
Menzel quickly established a few basic facts. Kovtun was registered in Hamburg, had an ex-wife in the city, and appeared to have lived in Germany for twelve years. The German authorities had no experience of polonium; nobody did. ‘We didn’t know what this substance was,’ he told me.
Menzel contacted two other federal agencies – the office of criminal investigation, known as the BKA, and the office of radiation protection. Soon, he had 600 officers on active duty. Journalists spotted lights burning in the Polizei-Stern over the weekend. Something was up.
Menzel’s team came up with a name for the unusual operation. They called it ‘Der Dritte Mann’ or ‘The Third Man’, after the black-and-white 1949 thriller set in divided post-war Vienna. ‘Der Dritte Mann is a film classic. We thought the title appropriate. We had three men who had gone to London and the atmosphere around it had something of the Cold War about it,’ Menzel said. He added: ‘It was very unusual. It had a political dimension like no other case I’ve been involved in.’
Within a short period, Hamburg police were able to reconstruct Kovtun’s movements in the city – from his ex-wife’s flat in Hamburg-Altona to the town hall where he filled in and signed his new foreigner registration documents. They found traces of polonium under his photo; indeed everywhere they looked. Officers lugged away evidence in boxes from Wall’s apartment in Erzbergerstrasse and from D3’s home. Menzel opened a criminal case. Kovtun was accused of unlawfully smuggling nuclear material into the Federal Republic of Germany.
Washington was paying attention. Duane Butcher, the US consul general in Hamburg, met Menzel on 14 December. In a confidential dispatch to the US State Department, later leaked, Butcher gave an account of Menzel’s findings. He noted: ‘Investigators hope to find out more about Kovtun as an individual – what he did for a living, what his personal background was – and whether he had worked at the Russian consulate in Hamburg in the past.’ Kovtun had met an Italian national in Hamburg – D3. Perhaps there was an Italian connection, Menzel told Butcher.