trip to Spain. In Madrid they’d meet Litvinenko’s Russian-speaking Spanish handler, Jorge. It’s unclear if Litvinenko was acting under MI6’s direction here or simply wanted to present Lugovoi to his Spanish contacts as a useful Moscow-based source.
Litvinenko also had another important appointment. He was due on 8 November to meet Grinda,the Spanish public prosecutor. It would be their first encounter. All Litvinenko’s previous dealings had been with the Spanish secret service, which fed evidence to his prosecutors.
For Litvinenko, this was a serious escalation in his war with the Kremlin. It meant he was willing to testify in open court about the activities of the Russian mafia – and its friends in government. It’s unclear when Lugovoi learned of the planned meeting. According to Goldfarb, it may have triggered Moscow’s frantic efforts to kill Litvinenko, and to silence him as a witness. ‘That gives you a motive,’ Goldfarb said. Grinda was more circumspect, later saying he didn’t believe it was the cause.
Either way, this was the moment for Lugovoi to poison Litvinenko again. For unknown reasons, Lugovoi failed to deploy the latest vial of polonium he had brought. One possible explanation is that the Palm Court bar had video cameras, which Lugovoi would have seen. Or perhaps he suspected he was being watched. Did the British have him under counter-surveillance? (The answer – no.) It’s possible he had got fresh orders from Moscow. Either way, Lugovoi decided to abort the operation.
This left him with a problem: what to do with the poison?
Lugovoi’s solution was simple. In his hotel room he tipped the polonium away down the bathroom sink again, this time mopping it up with a couple of towels. He left the towels for the cleaner. And he appeared to have dumped the container in the white pedal bin next to the lavatory.
When scientists later tested Lugovoi’s hotel room on the eighth floor they walked into a scene from an atomic horror story. The door to Lugovoi’s room was highly contaminated. It showed full-scale deflection and a reading of more than 30,000 counts per second. Inside, there was further contamination – on the carpet, guest directory, and telephone book in a cupboard.
The situation in the bathroom, white-painted and with a tiled floor, was even worse. The inside of the pedal bin registered another full-scale deflection, with 30,000-plus. There was radiation everywhere: on the wall under the sink, the floor and bath, plus another massive reading from the bathroom door.
The two scientists wearing protective gear gazed at their instruments incredulously. They asked to be withdrawn from the room. The team was stood down on safety grounds.
Amazingly, two months later, detectives located the towels that Lugovoi had chucked away. They had ended up stuck in a laundry chute in the hotel’s basement. A three-foot-by-three-foot metal service tube ran the full height of the building. At its bottom was a mountain of unwashed sheets and towels.
Lugovoi’s bath towel was found in a green laundry bag on a shelf. His hand towel was discovered at the base of the chute.
The levels of radiation were so alarming that the towels were sent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the UK government nuclear facility. The contamination was massive. The bath towel gave a readingof 6,000 counts per second, or 130,000 becquerels per square centimetre. (The unit of radioactivity is named after Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who shared a Nobel prize with Marie and Pierre Curie.)
The most extreme object, though, was Lugovoi’s white hand towel. The initial reading came in as full-scale deflection, greater than 10,000 counts per second. Retested at Aldermaston, it yielded an astonishing result: in excess of 17 million becquerels per square centimetre. To give an idea of context, the equivalent of 10–30 million becquerels absorbed into an adult male’s blood would be likely to be
Litvinenko also had another important appointment. He was due on 8 November to meet Grinda,the Spanish public prosecutor. It would be their first encounter. All Litvinenko’s previous dealings had been with the Spanish secret service, which fed evidence to his prosecutors.
For Litvinenko, this was a serious escalation in his war with the Kremlin. It meant he was willing to testify in open court about the activities of the Russian mafia – and its friends in government. It’s unclear when Lugovoi learned of the planned meeting. According to Goldfarb, it may have triggered Moscow’s frantic efforts to kill Litvinenko, and to silence him as a witness. ‘That gives you a motive,’ Goldfarb said. Grinda was more circumspect, later saying he didn’t believe it was the cause.
Either way, this was the moment for Lugovoi to poison Litvinenko again. For unknown reasons, Lugovoi failed to deploy the latest vial of polonium he had brought. One possible explanation is that the Palm Court bar had video cameras, which Lugovoi would have seen. Or perhaps he suspected he was being watched. Did the British have him under counter-surveillance? (The answer – no.) It’s possible he had got fresh orders from Moscow. Either way, Lugovoi decided to abort the operation.
This left him with a problem: what to do with the poison?
Lugovoi’s solution was simple. In his hotel room he tipped the polonium away down the bathroom sink again, this time mopping it up with a couple of towels. He left the towels for the cleaner. And he appeared to have dumped the container in the white pedal bin next to the lavatory.
When scientists later tested Lugovoi’s hotel room on the eighth floor they walked into a scene from an atomic horror story. The door to Lugovoi’s room was highly contaminated. It showed full-scale deflection and a reading of more than 30,000 counts per second. Inside, there was further contamination – on the carpet, guest directory, and telephone book in a cupboard.
The situation in the bathroom, white-painted and with a tiled floor, was even worse. The inside of the pedal bin registered another full-scale deflection, with 30,000-plus. There was radiation everywhere: on the wall under the sink, the floor and bath, plus another massive reading from the bathroom door.
The two scientists wearing protective gear gazed at their instruments incredulously. They asked to be withdrawn from the room. The team was stood down on safety grounds.
Amazingly, two months later, detectives located the towels that Lugovoi had chucked away. They had ended up stuck in a laundry chute in the hotel’s basement. A three-foot-by-three-foot metal service tube ran the full height of the building. At its bottom was a mountain of unwashed sheets and towels.
Lugovoi’s bath towel was found in a green laundry bag on a shelf. His hand towel was discovered at the base of the chute.
The levels of radiation were so alarming that the towels were sent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the UK government nuclear facility. The contamination was massive. The bath towel gave a readingof 6,000 counts per second, or 130,000 becquerels per square centimetre. (The unit of radioactivity is named after Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who shared a Nobel prize with Marie and Pierre Curie.)
The most extreme object, though, was Lugovoi’s white hand towel. The initial reading came in as full-scale deflection, greater than 10,000 counts per second. Retested at Aldermaston, it yielded an astonishing result: in excess of 17 million becquerels per square centimetre. To give an idea of context, the equivalent of 10–30 million becquerels absorbed into an adult male’s blood would be likely to be
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