Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich Page B

Federation and the Republic of Chechnya, which was almost universally opposed by the Russian public. But that conflict seemed to be heading toward some sort of resolution.
    Of course, Litvinenko knew better than anyone that Berezovsky was his own best propagandist. The stories he told in their evening sessions grew more extravagant the more the vodka flowed—or the more ears were turned in the Oligarch’s direction. These stories ranged from the merely humorous to the fabulously extreme—from tales of Berezovsky single-handedly saving Yeltsin, democracy, and capitalism, to stories about his rapidly growing portfolio of businesses—Sibneft, ORT, and now Aeroflot, the national airline—to narratives that seemed so insane it was impossible to know if they could be true—such as the story of Berezovsky rescuing, again single-handedly, a group of hostages held by Chechen rebels by showing up in person on his private jet, and trading the poor civilians’ safety for a hundred-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe watch.
    It was certain that Berezovsky did have relations with the Chechens; but Litvinenko suspected that most of the conversations with the terrorists had involved Badri, the Georgian, who had theproper “demeanor” for dealing with the type of men who wore Kalashnikov rifles to business meetings. Whatever the case, Berezovsky was riding high—and that meant Litvinenko was also living well. Berezovsky had never been richer; his wealth had been estimated to be close to three billion dollars, though nobody knew for certain. Directly after the elections, Abramovich’s oil company had sprung up in value by, some said, more than a factor of twenty. Berezovsky, in turn, was receiving payments on an almost weekly basis. It seemed that all he needed to do was pick up the phone and dial, and a suitcase would arrive filled with US dollars. For his part, Litvinenko understood that sort of business relationship; after all, Berezovsky could pick up the phone and dial him, too, and Litvinenko would hurry straight to his office—his FSB badge in one hand, his automatic in the other.
    But ever since Vlad Listyev’s murder, so long ago, Litvinenko hadn’t needed to draw his weapon even once at Berezovsky’s behest. Now that Korzhakov was gone and Tatiana Yeltsin seemed squarely in Berezovsky’s camp, Berezovsky himself had the most powerful krysha of all. In fact, he had solidified his position with the Family even further by hiring Yeltsin’s son-in-law to run Aeroflot. Litvinenko had begun to believe that the only thing bigger than Boris Berezovsky’s delusions of grandeur was Boris Berezovsky’s actual life.
    Litvinenko’s life might not have been quite as grand—but it was certainly happy. He and his ballroom dancer were well provided for, and he saw most of what he did for the FSB in basically noble terms. The world around them was still gripped by chaos, but he was essentially a beat cop, and his job was to try to clean up as much of the mess as he could.
    Sometimes, of course, that meant the application of violent methods; Litvinenko had recently been promoted into a group ofofficers tasked with dealing with organized crime in a particularly intense way, which meant that, whenever he read about a graphic and spectacular murder that had taken place in the streets of Moscow—a bomb going off in a café or a businessman found hanging from a bridge without his hands and feet—Litvinenko and his colleagues might need to “get a little rough” in the quest to solve the crime. But he still believed that, each night, he came home with clean hands.
    As he slid into the third-floor office, and took the one empty chair, just a few feet from the edge of his superior’s vast desk—he suddenly wondered if that was about to change.
    When his superior stopped laughing, he seemed to focus directly on Litvinenko. The man was still smiling, but his