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Matt, it's episode two and we are still alive. Yes, although I'm more cautious now. I look over my shoulder. I've taken a different route home each day. You've made the changes you needed to make. Yes, I've said goodbye to my family. I will never see them again. I've actually done something similar. I've got rid of all of the green baize tables in my house. They just bring back some bad memories from last week. That's a shame because you had loads. I had loads. I had a disproportionate amount. Shall we dive in? Yeah.
It's November the 5th, 2006. Dr. Andres Virchis walks through the ward at Barnet Hospital in North London. He's one of the hospital's leading consultant haematologists. He's treated patients with every kind of illness imaginable. But he's never seen anything quite like this. He checks the notes from the clipboard, a Mr. Edwin Carter, 43 years old, brought in two days ago with severe dehydration, stomach cramps and vomiting, suspected gastroenteritis.
currently on a course of ciprofloxacin. It's a good, broad-spectrum antibiotic. Whatever Mr Carter's got, this should sort it out. Except it isn't. Mr Carter's gaunt and his skin is turning yellow. His white blood cell and platelet count is steadily shrinking. He's agitated and unsettled, and he's still throwing up. Dr Virgis studies the notes again. He's an optimist, but right now, he's at a loss to explain what's making Mr Carter sick.
Mr. Carter's throat is now so swollen he's having problems speaking. But he's determined to say something. So Dr. Virgis puts his ear close and listens. Somebody tried to kill me. When Dr. Virgis asks who he thinks wants to kill him, the patient whispers, KGB. Dr. Virgis reassures Mr. Carter he's safe in this hospital. There are no KGB operatives here. The senior nurse comes up and takes Dr. Virgis to one side.
He keeps talking about spies and agents, and he says he's not really called Edwin Carter at all. His real name is Alexander Litvinenko, and he says he's been poisoned. Dr. Virgis runs his fingers through his hair. Mr. Carter sounds delusional. Still, it can't hurt to send off for blood tests. So that's what he'll do. He'll keep a close eye on him. And with a bit of luck, those meds will kick in very soon. ♪
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From Wondery, I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And this is British Scandal. Now, Matt, I hate to put you on the spot, but you have had a week to do your revision. It was a busy one last time. What do you remember from episode one? I remember Sasha Litvinenko, the FSB officer, denouncing Vladimir Putin for corruption. Correct. He got arrested a few times.
Gets out of Russia with the help of his friend Boris Berezovsky. Big player. Then there's the whole farce of them trying to poison him.
The guy in the shiny suit, Dimitri Kovtun... Kovtun, yeah, who you had a real soft spot for. He was the budding pornographer. Yes, they went to a weird nightclub where there was a giant penis on the dance floor. And in the bathrooms, you couldn't avoid them. I think one of the details that stuck with me was the guy wanting to kill Litvinenko, but still...
But in time to get to the Arsenal game at night. A man after your own heart. Not so much the kind of murderous part, but just, you know, the football part. Oh, yes. Thank the Lord that's the bit I've got in common with him. Yeah, I don't really go in for football, but I do like to get my assassinations done before tea time because the traffic. Work can just creep into your private life, can't it? And we left it at a very tense moment. So, shall we jump back in? Yes. This is episode two, The Mysterious Edwin Carter. ♪
It's the 8th of November. Sasha Litvinenko tries to get up on one elbow in his hospital bed. His lungs are burning. He slumps back. It's been days since he was admitted. The doctors don't seem to be listening to him. He has no doubt what's wrong. It has to be thallium. Time is running out.
What's thallium? I thought you would never ask. So apparently it's the KGB poison of choice. It doesn't have a scent. You can't see it in food and it's really, really hard to detect. But fun fact, the KGB isn't the only spy organisation to use it. Some Western intelligence agencies also use it. Yeah, you say fun facts. It's more fact than fun, isn't it, Alice? Point taken. Outside, he hears a doctor whispering. We should bring in a psychiatrist. Can you notify the mental health team? Sasha knows there's no time for that.
Suddenly he feels an IV drip go into his arm. He's not sure what they're giving him. A painkiller? A sedative? He feels drowsy, but he has to stay alert. He tries to reach his phone to ring his wife. She'll tell the doctors what he needs, but his arms won't move. He realizes he can't even turn his head or cry out for help. The pull of the sedative is too great, and in seconds his body relaxes and falls into a mindless sleep.
Friday, November the 10th, 2006. Boris Borossovsky lies by a pool in his swimming trunks, sipping a chilled glass of Chateau Petrus. And for those of you that aren't sommeliers, Chateau Petrus is, I think, just a step down from Prosecco on the price list. I believe you're right. Best served room temperature. And with a screw top.
He's in Pretoria, South Africa. He's here to see if South Africa will give him citizenship. He knows Putin is getting bolder in taking action against his enemies. He needs another refuge. It can't hurt to have other options beside London. The meeting's not for a few hours yet. Until then, he'll take in some sun by the pool.
He's hired a group of women to keep him company. One of them lifts herself out of the water and slinks towards him. Just then his bodyguard steps in front of him. Hang on a minute. He's hired a group of women to keep him company? Keep him company, yeah. What, like just play games with him? Play with his He-Man figures? Put his sun cream on, do the crossword. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't possibly comment further. So they're at the pool and the point is the bodyguard has an important message.
Sasha Litvinenko called. He's in hospital. He says it's urgent. He's been poisoned. Not Sasha again. He's become a liability. He's paranoid. And this is another of his dramas. None of it helps the fight against Putin. Suddenly Berezovsky isn't in the mood for sunbathing. He gets up and tells his bodyguard to field all calls from Sasha. In fact, for the remainder of his visit, he doesn't want his name mentioned again.
November the 14th, 2006. Dr. Virtus puts a stethoscope on Sasha's chest, listening intently. He's running out of ideas. Everything he's tried so far has failed. One thing's for certain, whatever this is, it's not thallium poisoning. Sasha looks up at him with clear blue eyes. I feel better.
But Dr. Virgis knows this can't be true. He's never seen anything like it. Sasha's organs are slowly being destroyed. First his liver, then his kidneys, then his heart. But Dr. Virgis is at a loss. Over the past couple of days, he's tested Sasha for every poison they can think of, but he's found nothing. He finishes his routine checks and is about to head out of the room when Marina stops him. She looks scared. She's holding something in her hand. It's human hair.
It's from Sasha. It just fell out when I stroked his head, like a dandelion. And that's when it hits him. Dr. Virgis has seen all these symptoms before in patients with acute leukemia. But here's the thing. Only after they've had two weeks of intensive chemotherapy. What was the date he first got sick? November the 1st. It all makes sense. For the past 14 days, his patient has been slowly revealing signs of radiation poisoning.
A few hours later, Dr. Virgis is back at his patient's bedside. The Geiger counter looks like a chunky pocket calculator. If he is suffering from radiation poisoning, this will prove it. He runs it gently over Sasha's fragile body. He's sure any minute it'll start to screech. Must have gone off the charts. You would think, but Matt, absolutely nothing. What? Dr. Virgis looks at Marina and shakes his head.
He writes in his notes, no sign of radiation. Two days later, another Russian walks down the main corridor in Barnet Hospital. Boris Berezovsky landed from South Africa this morning. He heard Sasha's interview on the BBC. He needs to see Sasha for himself. He stops at the nurse's station and asks where Sasha is. Surely they're going to be at least a little bit suspicious that this guy might be KGB. You would hope, you would certainly hope,
Naturally, the nurse is a bit wary. She turns her back and makes a phone call. Berezovsky watches the nurse glance up at him as she talks quietly on the phone. Hospitals bring back bad memories. He still remembers 12 years ago when he was still in Russia. He was getting into his armoured Mercedes when a car bomb went off. It decapitated his driver and blinded his bodyguard. He was lucky. All he got were burns and a stay in hospital. And who was sent to investigate? Sasha Litvinenko. That's when they first met.
The nurse hangs up and directs him down the hall. He thinks he's walked into the wrong room. He doesn't recognize the guy lying in the bed. He apologizes. He's about to leave when he hears a familiar voice. It's Sasha calling his name. Berezovsky tries not to show his surprise. The shrunken gray man in front of him looks nothing like his old friend. The bastard's got me.
Berezovsky's own face is frozen in fear. He's always felt safe in London, but now, looking at Sasha, he realises how vulnerable he is. If someone's trying to kill Sasha, then he could be next. The next day, Peter Clarke rubs his eyes and looks around the deserted office at Scotland Yard, London's police headquarters. He's the deputy assistant police commissioner in counter-terrorism, and one of the last people to leave the office, again. He switches off his computer and grabs his coat.
He heads to the main doors at the end of the corridor, taps the security code. It's just over a year since London was rocked by a deadly terrorist attack when four suicide bombers hit the underground in rush hour. The memory of it's still so clear, particularly the picture of the bus.
with its roof ripped off by the explosion, there must have been so much pressure on Clark to show that he could keep the city safe. Definitely. Everything felt so tense, didn't it? 2005 was a very different time to be in the city. Yeah, and the whole country felt on edge because at that point you just thought there's going to be another attack and when's it coming? Absolutely, and that's all on Police Commissioner Clark's shoulders. He's about to step through the door to his office...
He turns to see one of his officers. He's just taken a call from a doctor at Barnet Hospital. One of their patients has been poisoned. He's ex-KGB. They think it's radiation poisoning. How sick is he? The doctor says he's in a pretty bad way. Might not survive the night. Clark heads back to his office. Get a specialist interview team over there and send in armed police. I want a 24-hour guard on his room.
Clark needs to get as much information from the victim as he can, while he can. And if the victim really is KGB, Clark knows he's heading into a murky world of Russian dissidents. And that means getting to the truth won't be easy. Never is.
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Late at the same evening, just before midnight, Dr. Virgis stands outside the main doors to Barnet Hospital. He's huddled under the white canopy that covers the doors to avoid the rain. For the past two hours, he's been talking to colleagues at University College Hospital, organizing a bed for Sasha in the critical care unit. Special branch officers are also in the hospital foyer.
Now that they suspect there's been an attempt on Sasha's life, the police are taking no chances. In Britain, it's quite rare for the public to see police with guns, so when you see them, most people are quite shocked. I always feel quite reassured. Do you? Yeah, I think the tough guys are here to shoot the bad guys. I feel safe. Really? When I see police, I feel totally petrified, but then again, I am on the run. Oh, yes, I need to blackmail you about that.
Dr. Virgis is relieved when he sees the headlights and reflective green and yellow check border of the ambulance heading towards them. He watches as they gently wheel Sasha onto the hydraulic lift and into the ambulance. Sasha catches his eye. "Thank you for everything, Doctor." Dr. Virgis nods. He's just sorry he was so skeptical. A few moments later, the blue-lipped ambulance heads out of the bay, a police convoy escorting it. Dr. Virgis watches until the taillights disappear from view.
He knows Sasha hasn't got long to live, and that means they don't have long to find out what's killing him. An hour after Sasha arrives at University College Hospital, Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt steps out of the lift onto the 16th floor. Hyatt's thin face gives nothing away as he heads to the intensive care unit to interview Sasha Litvinenko.
As soon as he enters the room, he can see how exhausted and ill Sasha is. But his job is clear: he has to get as much information as he can before Sasha dies. Pyatt puts in a tape, clicks record, and begins the interview. "Can you tell us what you think has happened to you, and why?" For the next four hours, Sasha tells his story of his work with the Russian security service, his clash with Putin, his friendship with Anna Polyakovskaya.
Hyatt is struck by Sasha's methodical mind. He's thinking like a detective, forensically recalling who he met, when and where. His eye for detail and his memory astonish Hyatt. Hyatt realizes this isn't the normal scenario of a police officer interviewing a victim. Sasha is a detective too, and he's determined to solve the case.
Those two again. Pair of... I cannot take them seriously. The fact that Cofton's... I don't want to keep bringing this up. You're obsessed. His ambition is to be a porn star.
I cannot take him seriously. I'm sure he would kill me. Oh, I mean, given half a chance, especially the amount that you've ragged on his potential future career, yeah. Hyatt asks if there were any other meetings that day. Sasha nods. Mario Scaramella. He wanted to give me some documents on Anna Polakovskaya, the murdered Russian journalist. It was three sheets of paper. I remember they were dirty. I hate dirty paper. It's important to keep documents in good order.
He also said he had some special information: a list of Russia's targets for assassination. And both of their names were on it. Hyatt gets up. The police have their first suspect: Mario Scaramello.
What a name. Great name. Definitely made up name, but great name. Yeah, that's definitely slightly Scaramucci, slightly Scaramanga. It really is. It's got the word scare at the start of it. No offence to any Scaramellas listening, thank you for your time. Yeah, if you are a Scaramella, get in touch. Email the show. Don't write to us on dirty paper though, we hate it.
The next day, Peter Clarke is holding an emergency meeting at the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command Unit at Scotland Yard. This is Peter Clarke, the police commissioner? The very same. Not the other Peter Clarke?
What a pub quiz team they'd be.
They're getting the bottle of wine and 50 quid, aren't they? Absolutely destroy you. I'd walk in there after three pints thinking I quite fancy this and they go, oh yeah, Nick and John are here from Porton Down. Right, we're leaving. And we're never coming back. Clark needs to find out everything he can about Litvinenko's mystery illness. If this is radiation poisoning, he needs to know the type and how the radiation was administered to the victim. Then there's an even bigger question. Is there any threat to the public?
Dr. Goldstone starts with a full rundown of the patient's condition, but he admits they have no idea what's causing his illness. They go through possible theories. What if he's been poisoned by another heavy metal or a chemotherapy drug? Or maybe it's some other radioactive substance. Dr. Goldstone reports that unfortunately, the last test was faulty. It showed traces of a radioactive isotope they hadn't seen before.
Something called polonium-210. Clark leans forward. You mean plutonium? Which they would presume, surely. Also, talk about embarrassing. Like, I think you mean plutonium. It's like, actually, thank you for the mansplain, Clark. But turns out, I don't.
So Goldstone takes a more gentle tack than I would have. No, polonium. It's a very, very rare element. We've never seen a case of polonium poisoning ever. The most likely explanation is some kind of anomaly in the test. Some kind of contamination. Very diplomatic. Pipe down, Clark. That's me, by the way. That's not in the story. LAUGHTER
To be fair to him, he's police, isn't he? He's not science, so... Well, then don't wade in with the only other thing you know that sounds a bit like polonium. But I... Do you mean kryptonite? No, we don't, Clark. Thank you. Oh, but if you'd never heard the word before, you might have thought someone had... Well, don't have a guess. I mean, it's not everybody chipping with what they think it might be. Goldstone is about to move on, but Clark interrupts.
What are the chances of another sample being contaminated? Goldstone looks at the other experts around the room. It's unlikely. Clark gives the order. This time they will send the sample to Aldermaston, home of the British nuclear weapons program. Clark knows a repeat result of polonium is a long shot, but he hasn't many other options or much time.
It's November the 18th at 9:45 p.m., and Detective Hyatt is back in the hospital to interview Sasha Litvinenko. He's got their first suspect, Scaramella, but he can't rely on that yet. Maybe if he walks Sasha through his movements, he might find some other clues. He clicks on the tape machine. "So tell me about the day before you think you were poisoned, the 31st of October. I had one meeting on that day.
Who with? I can't say. Hyatt's taken aback. This is the first time Sasha has been reluctant to talk. But Hyatt pushes. It's possible that was the day Sasha was poisoned. We need to know who you met and when. Sasha pauses, then points to his bedside cabinet. There's a mobile phone hidden in there. It's the one I use to call MI6. His name is Martin. MI6.
So Sasha is also a British spy? It's mad. It's mad. We thought it was already mad, but it's absolutely bonkers. Hyatt rings the number. A man answers. He tells the man Sasha Litvinenko is gravely ill in hospital and is being questioned by the Metropolitan Police under armed guard.
An hour later, a slightly built, smartly dressed man turns up and introduces himself as Martin. Martin is one of those guys with a real poker face. If he's shocked at the way Sasha looks, he doesn't show it. Instead, he greets Sasha and shakes Hyatt's hand. He agrees to answer some questions, but not on tape, and only for the next 10 minutes. So Hyatt takes out his pocketbook and pencil and starts his questions.
So, Matt, the answers that Martin now gives are a really interesting window into the way that MI6 operates. He says that he and Sasha meet up in Waterstone's bookshop in Piccadilly. I'm sure you've been there. Yeah, I've been there for a slice of millionaire shortcake and a cup of tea. I've not been there as a spy. All right, you sound very defensive. So, Martin drinks coffee while Sasha eats pastries. My kind of guys. Right? In the coffee shop, Sasha gives Martin information on Russian organised crime in Britain, especially London. It's a very interesting story.
In return, he gets an encrypted cell phone, a passport and a monthly salary of £2,000. Hyatt asks the names of the people Sasha was investigating, but Martin stays silent. This is urgent. A man is dying and we don't know how many more people are at risk. Martin simply turns around, walks out and disappears into the night. It's a dead end.
You could run after him. Yeah, if you really want him. Go, Martin! Actually, what is going on? There's just a couple more things. Where do you think you're going, by the way? This is really serious. The next afternoon, on November the 19th, they have their first suspect.
DS Peter Clarke is in a police interview room watching Mario Scaramella carefully. He's spent years watching the body language of suspects in police interviews. Watching Scaramella is something else. He's wriggling on his seat like he's on hot coals. Scaramella is in his mid-thirties with thick dark hair and heavy features. He's wearing an open neck blue shirt underneath a jacket with brass buttons and a silk dark blue handkerchief neatly folded in the breast pocket.
Even though it's not a particularly sunny day, he came in wearing sunglasses. A bit theatrical, Clark thinks. And a bit of a giveaway. Sunglasses usually mean a suspect has something to hide. Or a massive hangover. True. Very true. Clark takes him through the events of November the 1st. Yes, Scaramella confirms he met Sasha Litvinenko at the Itsu Sushi restaurant that day. Sasha had soup and he himself didn't eat.
Yes, he did give Sasha papers about the death of the journalist, Anna Polakovskaya. Clark asks him about his work. Scaramella says he's a professor at Naples University, but he also works as a security consultant and nuclear expert. He's helping the UK Independence Party in Britain. He's also advising the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on Russian intelligence. If you could pick the two most rogue outfits in European politics at the time, you would pick UKIP
And Berlusconi. Ding, ding. You just can't get more dodgy than that. Clark lets him talk for a while before he delivers a killer blow. I rang the university. They've never heard of you. Scaramella looks flustered. He backtracks, says that the job's a cover. He's really in the Italian Secret Service. I talked to them too. Sure, they know you, but they turned you down.
Clark watches Scaramella's eyes dart around the room. Then Scaramella tries another tack. Litvinenko poisoned me at the meeting. He's the assassin. Hang on, so now he's saying that Sasha poisoned him and thereby poisoned himself? I agree. It's totally wild. Clark hasn't got enough to charge him, at least not yet. But the more Scaramella lies, the more Clark thinks he might just have his man.
Suddenly the door opens and an officer comes in. The officer whispers in Clark's ear, forensics are on the phone. I love how you've said that with a slight weariness of someone who actually works there. Forensics are on the phone. Oh, not again. Forensics are on the phone. Tell them I'm out. The paperwork with forensics, honestly, such a hassle. Clark leaves the room and takes the call. The forensics officer on the end of the line has just finished testing the hotel room where Scaramella stayed on November the 1st.
It's negative. No traces of radiation found. There goes that theory. Clark takes a deep breath. A minute ago, he'd hoped he had his main suspect. But now, Mario Scaramella's been downgraded. Clark will have to let him go. There are only two others that Sasha met that day. Andre Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun.
He tells his team he wants background checks and traces on every move the pair made on November 1st. He wants flight details, credit card receipts, hotel bookings. He wants to know who they met while they were in London, when and why. Lugovoy and Kovtun just became official suspects. ♪
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It's November 20th, 3.50 p.m., University College Hospital. Sasha's wife, Marina, walks into his intensive care room.
Sasha has a visitor at his bedside, Andrey Nekrasov, a Russian-German filmmaker who's interviewed him quite a bit in the past. Her husband seems animated, in good spirits even. In the past 24 hours, she's seen how his pain has increased, but here he is, clearly glad to see Nekrasov and making a real effort to chat with him, even though his voice is weak. Andrey is going to take my photograph. You need to rest. It'll be too much. I want the world to see what Putin's done to me.
She watches as Nekrasov moves around Sasha's bed, taking shots as Sasha looks directly at the camera. "This is the one," he shows Sasha the image. There's the briefest flicker of shock as Sasha sees the face looking back at him. It's perfect. Marina looks at the image. Her husband's face is drawn, his eyes sunken and his cheeks hollow. He's wearing his hospital gown and has wires taped to his body, linked to drips and monitors.
But he's looking directly out from the hospital bed, his eyes clear despite the pain. For a brief moment, she's struck by how calm he looks, peaceful almost. Maybe, she thinks, it's because for the first time in a long time, he's finally being believed. The next day, the photo will be on the cover of newspapers across Britain. The headline from the Guardian paper reads, Clinging to life and under armed guard, the spy the Kremlin denies poisoning.
Sasha's story has become a national scandal. Later that afternoon, D.I. Hyatt is back at Sasha's bedside. He puts a new tape in the machine and clicks it on. He wants to talk about the two men Sasha met at the Millennium Hotel the day he got sick. Hyatt begins, Sasha starts to describe his business partnership with Lugovoy.
They've been working together about a year now in corporate risk management. His job was to take orders from London-based companies who wanted to do business in Russia. Lugovoy's job was to collect sensitive information in Moscow that the companies could use. Can you talk me through the meeting on November the 1st in the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel?
Sasha remembers Lugovoy was wearing clothes he'd bought three months earlier on a shopping trip to Harrods. It was a kind of cardigan, dark blue and orange with grey jeans, fashionable shoes and a big chunky gold watch with a black face. The watch cost $50,000, he told me. How many colours is this guy wearing? He's a mess. I was actually more struck by Sasha's recall. I can't even remember what I wore yesterday. But Hyatt isn't distracted.
Hyatt continues. Can you tell me if you ate or drank anything at the meeting? Green tea. With honey and lemon. I didn't drink too much. I didn't like it. It tasted... odd. He leans closer to Sasha. Can you remember? In what way would you say it was odd? It had a metallic taste. I didn't like it. He's silent for a moment. It can't be the tea.
That would be impossible. Why would that be? Because after this meeting, Lugovoy's family came into the hotel. His wife and his daughters. And his son, eight years old. He introduced me. I shook the boy's hand. No, it's not possible. Plus, he's my partner. He's my friend. Hyatt lets the words hang in the air. He sees a flicker of doubt cross Sasha's face. The tea did taste strange. The hunt for Lugovoy and Cofton is on.
But there's still no proof that Sasha has been poisoned. That's down to the scientists. Right now, Sasha's blood and urine samples are in a trolley, making their way down a long, strip-lit corridor to a specialist lab for testing. A guy in his mid-30s with round glasses and a white lab coat picks up the tube of Sasha's sample and pours some into a vessel. He attaches a vacuum pump, removes the air, then attaches the lead from the vessel's camera to his computer.
He knows that if there's any radiation, the camera will pick it up and it'll appear on the screen. He's looking for signs of gamma radiation. This is the most obvious thing to look for since most radioactive sources produce gamma rays. And there's nothing, just a small spike, certainly not enough to show anything significant. That tiny spike bothers him though. How can it be there? The most likely explanation is that the sample's been contaminated, but he knows every precaution will have been taken to make sure this isn't the case.
Of course, his camera could be at fault, but that's even more unlikely. He calls a colleague over. Have you cross-referenced the sample and checked the control? He repeats the experiment. They look at the screen. A small gamma ray spike is still there. As he stares at the screen, another colleague comes in, an older scientist who usually works at the other side of the site in weapons development. Have you seen anything like this before?
The older man looks at the screen and pauses for a moment, as if he can't quite believe what he's seeing. I haven't seen this in years. It's incredibly rare and almost impossible to detect. It emits alpha rays, not gamma. It's called polonium-210. Oh, damn, I was really hoping it was going to be plutonium. I know. But Clark was right to send the sample again for testing.
At 3pm that afternoon, the young scientist rings Peter Clarke and confirms the sample contains one million times the lethal dose of polonium. The fact that the patient survived long enough for this to be detected is nothing short of a miracle. He tells Clarke that, of course, as a scientist, he doesn't believe in miracles. Except in this case, there are two. Because polonium is so rare, it's little short of a miracle they discovered it at all.
It's just incredible because had Sasha died, no one would have ever known. And Sasha only doesn't die because he was so fit and healthy. There are theories that many more people have been killed with polonium, but just not detected. That'd be so hard to prove. And obviously, they know it worked, so why wouldn't you use it again? This next bit is crazy. The scientist adds one more thing. This patient is dangerously radioactive. Don't let anyone near him without protective equipment.
November 23rd, 8.30pm, University College Hospital. Marina sits at Sasha's bedside. So she's got no idea how radioactive he is? No, and she's been there most of the day. And so many other people have interacted with him too. She's exhausted. Sasha had two heart attacks through the night. The medical team managed to resuscitate him, but it's pretty clear he's deteriorating. When Marina asked the doctors that morning what his chances were...
They told her, where there's life, there's hope. She's been clinging to those words all day. Her young son, Anatoly, is being looked after by her friends. He's only 12, but he's grown up a lot in the last few weeks. Sometimes it catches her by surprise just how mature he is. Tonight she knows she'll have to prepare him for the worst. She leans over to Sasha now and whispers she has to go. His eyes open slowly. A lump catches in her throat. Don't worry. Tomorrow morning I will come and everything will be fine.
She knows neither of them believe this, but to say anything else would be to voice her worst fears. And right now, that's something she just can't face. She's been home for 20 minutes when she gets a call from the hospital. He's got worse and this time they might have to say goodbye. But when they get to the hospital, they're already too late. A doctor leads them into the family room. Marina can tell by his face. Sasha's gone. The first thing Marina notices is how peaceful her husband looks now he's no longer connected to monitors and machines.
She feels her fingers grip Anatoly's hand, but he breaks free and runs from the room. Marina kisses Sasha's face, strokes his head gently, holds his hand. At least he's not in pain anymore. The rest of the night passes in a blur. She manages to settle Anatoly at around one in the morning, but an hour and a half later, the police ring.
They tell her to pack some things, essentials only. She doesn't quite understand what's going on, but half an hour later at 3 o'clock in the morning, several squad cars turn up. A policeman tells her to take her bags and step outside the house. As soon as she does, officers in hazmat suits start sealing the rooms. That's when she first hears the word "holonium." Her home is a radioactive crime scene. She's lost her husband and her home, and now her health is at risk.
London is about to be thrown into a full-scale counter-terrorism operation. A marina is right in the middle of it. Right, tell me you're not stopping there. Yep. What? Alice! Afraid so.
This is the second episode in our series, The Litvinenko Affair. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. Please support them by supporting them. You help us offer you this show for free. Another way to support us is to answer a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. A quick note about our dialogue. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but all of our dramatizations are based on historical research.
If you'd like to know more about the Litvinenko affair, the text of the public inquiry presented to Parliament in 2016 is available online.
We also especially recommend the books The Litvinenko File by Martin Sixsmith and A Very Expensive Poison by Luke Harding. I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. Karen Laws wrote this episode. Additional writing by Alice Levine and Matt Ford. Sound design by Rich Ward and Joe Richardson. Our senior producer is Russell Finch. Our executive producers are Stephanie Jens and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.
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