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OK, Matt, you know politics. Have you ever been to a COBRA meeting? No, I haven't. But I've spoken to people who have. But I've stood very close to one. Yes, but I've asked. When you say people that have, who have you got? So it's usually convened by the Prime Minister at a time of crisis. All the most important people are in the room. But...
Remember, this is Britain, so the room itself will be just some nondescript meeting room where some of the USB ports don't work. The carpet's got stains on it. The blinds are jammed. Well, Matt, it is my pleasure to cordially invite you to your first ever Cobra meeting. Oh, great. I can't believe they've put you in charge of the door. It's because I'm so intimidating.
November 24th, 2006, is the day after Alexander Litvinenko's death. Peter Clarke, the Deputy Assistant Police Commissioner in Counterterrorism, is hurrying out of the Cabinet Office briefing room in Downing Street. He's just briefed the first COBRA meeting to deal with the emergency.
Right now, he's determined to get back to Scotland Yard without bumping into any press. This case is so sensitive, he needs to hold tight control over information. Any leaks to the press could be disastrous, both for public health and foreign policy. He'll make statements through the Met's website only.
That's alarm bells already, isn't it, relying on the Met Police website? It's not something I visit on the regular. Clark is a solid man, both physically and in reputation. His colleagues joke he's married to the job. He knows over the coming months he'll certainly spend more time at his desk than with his family. This terror threat is like nothing he's seen before. It's Britain's first nuclear civilian attack.
It's also the world's first murder by polonium, at least that we know of. And it's a confusing picture. A poisoned Englishman who turns out to be a Russian spy. A murder weapon that's colourless and odourless and almost 250 billion times more dangerous than cyanide. It's so rare they nearly missed it. And now it's all over London.
As he heads down the steps and away from Whitehall, the street is empty. But as soon as he turns a corner, he runs into a wall of reporters. They all shout questions at once. "Can you confirm Mr Litvinenko was killed with polonium?" "Where did it come from?" "Does he have any suspects?" Clark answers the questions as honestly as he can. It's early days in the investigation and he's got a lot of work to do. He knows there's a fine line between being totally honest and avoiding public panic. And then someone asks the crunch question.
Are the public safe? Nothing much rattles Peter Clarke. He's dealt with terrorist attacks in London before, in the London bombings in 2005. But this question has stumped him. Right now, he honestly doesn't know what to say. He hears himself talk about a multi-agency approach and the situation being under control. The truth is, until he finds out what's going on, nobody's safe.
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I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And this is British Scandal. British Scandal.
Now, last episode, we got to the part of the story that visually everybody will remember. Yes, that striking photo of Litvinenko in his hospital bed, all his hair having fallen out. His decision to release that photo at the time to apply the pressure has had such a legacy because it's still...
The picture, really, years later, that tells the story better than anything else. And it gave him the spotlight that he wanted to get this story global. Yeah, what's amazing is at the time that photo's released, the doctors are still trying to figure out what's wrong with him. The police are still trying to piece together exactly who's done it and why. And of course, tragically, by the end of the last episode, this turned from being...
an investigation into a poisoning, into being a murder inquiry. Yes, and as well as the death of Sasha Litvinenko, at this stage, the authorities are potentially facing an unprecedented nuclear poisoning public health crisis. Well, we need to see how serious that emergency is. This is episode three, The Polonium Trail. MUSIC
November 24th, 2006. It's 10.30 in the morning and two hours after the Cobra meeting. Peter Clarke walks into a packed briefing room on the 15th floor of Scotland Yard. His team is now 100 strong. They fall silent as he starts to talk. Okay, you've all been assigned to your teams. I want to know all about Litvinenko's life in London. I want to know about his past in Russia. But first, I want you all to learn about the murder weapon.
24 hours ago, Clark had never heard of polonium and neither had his team. Now it dominates their lives, which is why half an hour after the briefing, Clark and his team are listening to a police scientist. How it's easy to smuggle in a glass container because it's difficult to detect, that it has a half-life of 138 days, that you have to ingest it in order to die, and how it's one of the most toxic substances on the planet.
I should just explain, when we say half-life, we're not talking about the computer game Half-Life. These guys, well, they may well be in their spare time computer nerds, but that's not the point we're trying to make here. Look, however Clark and the team want to unwind, if they've got a Super Nintendo in the back room, that is fine by me. But they're not nerds. We're talking about how radioactive substances lose their potency. Yeah, less fun. Clark knows these terrorists won't be easy to catch. They're not the kind to post YouTube clips claiming responsibility.
The situation map at the back of the room already has 40 pins representing a spot where polonium has been found. So far, traces have been detected in restaurants, hotels, bars, a nightclub and a rickshaw. It's basically all over London, and new sites are turning up every day. But the Met's scientific officer gives Clark and his team a key bit of information. Polonium-210 is rare, so it leaves a very distinctive signature.
Every time it comes into contact with people or objects, it leaves specific radioactive alpha particles. Follow the trail and you catch the killer. But Clark knows his evidence is also his biggest problem. The alpha particles might lead him to the killers, but the contaminated sites are a danger to the public. They'll need to be cleaned up and fast. And that means Clark will be working under the tightest time pressure he's ever faced.
Yeah, I bet he still skived a bit. No one starts work straight away, do they? He'll check the BBC Sport website. He'll get onto the case by lunch. You're making a coffee. I sometimes make a porridge, make a few personal phone calls, you know, get settled. Check WhatsApp, then solve the murder. Tick, tick. Marina Litvinenko cracks an egg into a pan and turns up the heat. She's only vaguely aware of the knock at the door. When she opens it, she sees a man holding a huge, expensive bunch of flowers.
It takes her a second or two to realise it's Boris Berezovsky. It's our old friend Boris, the oligarch. Of course he would get a big bunch of flowers. He's not going to get them from a petrol station like your average chap. No, definitely not. Very lavish man. He steps in, apologises. He should have called ahead. He doesn't want to interrupt breakfast. He sits down and unbuttons his coat. He just wanted to check how she is.
Right now, Berezovsky looks more like a man down on his luck than a billionaire. His face is worn. He looks even more crumpled than usual, like he hasn't slept. He's clearly shaken by Sasha's death. But Marina knows him well enough to know that every encounter is some kind of transaction. So she gives him a coffee and waits.
Berezovsky tells her she mustn't worry. He'll take care of her financially and find her somewhere else to live. He'll pay for the funeral. Sasha will have to be buried in a lead-lined coffin. It'll be expensive. He'll pay for security. They'll need it. The killers are still out there. And he'll take care of Anatoly's school fees. Marina thanks him. Right this minute, all she wants to do is give her son breakfast. She can't think much beyond that.
They sit in silence for a moment. Then Berezovsky asks about Sasha's deathbed statement. So that's what he wants. Sasha dictated it to Marina from his bed in the intensive care unit. In it, he states that Vladimir Putin sent agents to kill him. She goes to her bag and takes a file out. She hands it to him, but he hesitates. It's okay, she says. It's a copy. It's not contaminated. Berezovsky smiles and takes the file.
As he's leaving, he turns and says, we know who did this, Marina, and I promise I will bring Putin to justice. When he's gone, Marina switches on the television for distraction. An image of her husband flashes up on the screen. It's the photo taken in the intensive care unit. Sasha's blue eyes gaze at her. A reporter says police are questioning several witnesses, but so far, no arrests have been made. Marina double locks the doors and closes the blinds. Whoever killed Sasha is still out there.
The next day, November 25th, 8.45am. Peter Clarke is in the Cabinet Office, briefing Home Secretary John Reid on the situation. In the room are junior ministers, health officials, a member of the Health Protection Agency and intelligence chiefs. Clarke listens as the Health Protection Agency talk through public health procedures. They're similar to what they'd use for a terrorist dirty bomb. The key thing is to keep public exposure to the poison to a minimum.
The trouble is, they still don't know if they've located all the sites. Clark takes the room through a computer-aided simulation of radioactivity spread. Everyone watches in silence as the lines on the screen spread out all over London's streets and to two of its main airports. Clark lists the locations showing levels of contamination. It's at the Pescatori restaurant in Mayfair, on a shisha pipe in Soho. It's in hospitals, in ambulances, in a booth at a nightclub in German Street and at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.
Mr Litvinenko's wife is contaminated, as are the doctors and nurses who treated him. The room is silent for a moment. John Reid is the first to speak. Do we know if this is a one-off attack? We have a lot of Russian dissidents living in London. Are there others at risk? Clark takes a deep breath. The truth is, he doesn't really know. But so far, Alexander Litvinenko is the only victim. John Reid looks at Clark. The last thing we need is for London to become a Russian battleground.
It's not the most important thing, but you do need to know this about John Reed. He is hard as nails. He's from just outside Glasgow and he sounds like he is. And when he was at the MOD, his nickname was Bullet Head. OK, so at this point you can hear a pin drop. Yeah, and he would hear it drop and he would tell you off for dropping it. OK. Clark tells Reed he has every available officer working on this. Polonium is a sophisticated weapon for lots of reasons. For one thing, it isn't easy to get hold of.
Clark doesn't say it out loud, but the implication is the Kremlin could well be behind this. It's sophisticated for another reason too. It passes through the body and only the effects are left. But once it's been detected, it's easy to trace. It's like footprints in the snow. If they follow the footprints, they'll find the killers. What Clark doesn't say is that so far those footprints are going around in circles.
Later that evening, Peter Clarke is still at his desk. He should have gone home hours ago, but he's got a puzzle to solve. Yeah, he's not playing, he's not reading Quizzer magazine. Don't knock a crossword, I love a crossword. I'm just trying to get this marble through this little maze. Have we established that we're really cool yet? I feel like people know by now. The Radiation Protection Division have sent through their report on polonium contamination in the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly.
It's where Sasha met Mario Scaramella on November 1st. Two hours later, he went to the Pine Bar, where Lugavoy and Cofton slipped him the poison. But the police have found heavy contamination at one of the tables in Itsu. Poor Itsu. Well, I mean, it's getting a lot of airtime. Yeah, and it hasn't held them back, has it? It's not like anyone's stopped eating there. In fact, there are more Itsus now than there were in 2006. People like those dumplings, Matt. In fact, Itsu has spread as fast as...
around this country. What's the half-life of Itzu? Is this episode sponsored by Itzu? I mean, that would be a lovely tie-in, wouldn't it? It doesn't make sense. How could there be traces of polonium there if Sasha was poisoned after he left Itzu to go to the pine bar? Clark has already discounted Scaramela as a suspect. So Clark double-checks the transcript of the interview with Sasha. He definitely says he met Mario Scaramela at the Itzu restaurant before he met Lugavoy and Covton.
Clark asks the radiation protection team to email over the diagram of the restaurant. He wants to see exactly where the contamination is. Then he checks it against the diagram Sasha dictated to D.I. Hyatt. What he sees horrifies him. The contaminated table isn't the one Sasha sat at with Mario Scaramella.
So it could be Scaramela and he's let him go. Yeah, exactly. So Clark's mind is racing at this point.
Clark switches off the tape. His eyes feel heavy and tired. He decides to make a coffee. An email pings in. It's a copy of the flight bookings for Lugovoy and Cofton's trips to London. And something grabs his attention. Clark scrolls down the list. Andre Lugovoy made three trips from Moscow to London in the month before Sasha's death. On the 16th, the 25th, and finally on the 31st of October.
What's more, on two of those journeys, he traveled with Dmitry Kovtun. Clark suddenly understands. This wasn't the first attempt on Sasha Litvinenko's life. They'd tried before and failed. The question is, how many times? And how much polonium is out there?
If you know, email the show. Let us know. Have you got any interesting polonium recipes? We'd like to do a mocktail. The chief exec of ITSA has been in touch and said, please stop mentioning me. The next morning, 9.30, Peter Clarke and his team are at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair. The hotel is a striking stately property with gilded coving, golden chandeliers and polished marble.
It's right next to the American embassy and not far from Harrods. Usually at this time of the morning, it's full of well-heeled tourists having breakfast. Right now, though, the hotel is full of forensic officers in hazmat suits. The hotel manager isn't happy. Their cheapest rooms start at £170 a night, and he's worried customers will cancel when they see the place swarming with police, especially ones in protective gear.
He asks the manager to hand over the keys for rooms 848 and 382, where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed on November 1st. The manager hesitates. I'm sorry, that's not possible. There are guests in those rooms. Get the guests out of there now and seal off the rooms.
The sort of hotels I stay in, the biggest drama is likely to be that they've run out of home-brand Cocoa Pops. Not that it's the epicentre of international spy murder. I don't think we're ever going to say those words on this podcast. That's when they track the killer to his UK base, an ibis on the edge of Stoke.
Which actually wouldn't be a bad location for them. You're near some pretty major transport hubs. Very well connected. Yeah, motorway-wise, rail network. Russian spies, listen to this. Think about it. You don't always have to base yourself in London. It's the obvious hub. And it's cheaper. It's cheap as chips. Come on. See, we don't like chips. We're quite keen on Japanese food. I don't know if there's much of that in Stoke.
A short while later, the forensics team set to work in the two rooms. Meanwhile, Clark and another team start trawling through the footage from the hotel's 41 CCTV cameras. Clark wants firm, visible evidence of the moment Sasha was poisoned. But there's a problem. There's no camera in the pine bar where Sasha drank the tea. So Clark's team check camera number 14, the one above the check-in desk. The footage is grainy and jerky.
Eventually, they hit the time that matches Lugovoy's credit card transaction for check-in. Clark studies the image closely. He sees a middle-aged man of medium height dressed in a black leather jacket and a mustard yellow jumper. Clark checks the image against a photograph of Andre Lugovoy. The CCTV image isn't perfect, but it's good enough to show a match. Then Clark sees another man approach. He's a similar age to Lugovoy, but shorter, wears a black zip-up top and drainpipe jeans with turnips.
It's Clarke's first glimpse of Dimitri Kovtun. Now, hold on, there's a really important detail there and it's crucial that we don't miss it. Lou Gavoy is wearing a black leather jacket and a mustard yellow jumper.
What is the matter with him? He's dressed like a wasp. We've heard about their sartorial choices previously. I mean, this is tip of the iceberg. They just stand out too much. Yeah, if you're trying to avoid detection, don't walk around London in luminous yellow clothing. More tips from the top. They fast forward to the time of the meeting in the Pine Bar. They see Andre Lugovoy head towards a flight of stairs and then into the gents' toilets. A few moments later, Dimitri Kovtun does the same.
Both have their hands in their pockets as though they're hiding something. Clark orders all the footage to be sent to Scotland Yard, along with the hotel credit card and phone records for Lugavoy and Cofton. Andy wants to interview all staff who worked shifts during their stay. A radiation detection officer puts his head around the door. There's polonium in both Lugavoy and Cofton's rooms, but the biggest trace is in the gents' toilets just near the pine bar. It's showing heavy contamination in the sinks, on the hand dryer and on the toilet door.
How heavy? The officer pauses for a second. It's pretty much a nuclear disaster zone. Keep it scientific, mate. Give me real numbers here. You might as well have just screamed. Who hired the drama queen? It's a nuclear disaster zone in there. You say that every week, Keith. Just flush it. Now Clark has firm evidence at last that the pine bar could be the scene of the crime. But it's also triggered his worst fear...
a growing trail of radioactive material that could contaminate thousands of innocent Londoners.
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November 26th, 2006, 1.30pm. Peter Clarke walks into the lobby of the Best Western Hotel in Shaftesbury Avenue. It's the place Lugovoy and Cofton stayed on their first visit to London. He needs to know if the polonium is here too. But the manager is sceptical. That's six weeks ago. Both rooms must have been cleaned 43 times by now.
Clark takes the keys, but he knows the manager has a point. The rooms have been let dozens of times over to different guests. The bathroom has been used and flushed hundreds of times over the last six weeks.
They don't put that on the advert. Stay at the best Western Shaftesbury Avenue with our ensuite toilet that literally hundreds of people use every week. It's a horrible thought, actually, isn't it? It puts me off wanting to stay in any hotel. I've never thought about that before. I mean, I often think about the thing that they put on the end of the bed. You know, they put that sort of fixed blanket. But I don't think that gets cleaned as regularly as the bedding. So imagine a UV light over that. Yeah.
Oh, dear, dear. Most people just sling that on the floor, don't they? Sure, OK. Well, what else would they be using it for? I don't want to talk about it. The chances of finding any remaining traces of polonium are slight, but they need to be sure. Clark walks up the stairs and heads to room 107, where Lugervoy stayed. He looks down the long corridor. It's full of his officers in protective suits, testing all areas.
Suddenly, a forensic officer comes out of Lugovoy's room. There are readings all over his bedroom, but the bathroom is especially contaminated. She's getting readings of 1,500 counts per second around the sink, especially in the U-bend where the polonium got caught on human hair and other detritus. Stay at the Best Western, Shetbury Avenue, where our U-bends are full of human hair and detritus. Full of human hair. Don't want to stay at a hotel ever again.
Clark has the evidence he needed. Lugavoy and Cofton both tried to kill Sasha on the 16th of October and failed. This case is already an international minefield, but Clark still needs to find out how many other failed attempts there were and how much polonium is still out there. The next morning, Clark and his team are at the Sheraton Hotel on Park Lane, Mayfair. Where the U-bends are full of toenails and bogeys. It's the place Lugavoy stayed on his second visit to see Sasha.
Clark paces up and down on the soft carpet outside the room. Don't get me started on the carpet. Through the door, Clark can hear the familiar clicks of the alpha particle detectors as they pick up traces. So that's that clicky, what we think of as a Geiger counter sound, right? You know, like... I can't do it, but you can. Go on, go on. Sounds just like it, doesn't it? Exactly that. Like a dolphin. Much like a radioactive dolphin. You're wasted, you know. I know, it was a big night.
But then he hears something new. The clicks have turned into crackles and they're getting louder. Suddenly the door flies open and his officers run out. Permission to stand down. They found polonium traces in the sink, but most of it is in the small bathroom bin. How bad is the runaway factor? The officer looks shaken. Think Usain Bolt, that's how fast you need to get out of there. Clark moves down to the foyer as the search continues. An officer rushes up to him.
We found a hand towel. We nearly missed it. It was stuck in the laundry chute in the basement. This one's off the map. It's showing 10,000 counts a second. Clark knows it'll have to be carefully sealed and sent off to Aldermaston for retesting. They will have to dispose of this with other nuclear waste. Later, the Aldermaston scientist tells him... You probably just sent me the most radioactive towel in history.
It's more evidence of an atomic horror story. The traces of polonium are far worse than Clark or anyone else could ever have imagined. They obviously didn't search my student flat. I can picture it.
I really can. What can you see? So the towel you're talking about in the student flat was never dry. You know what? I say this. Forever damp. I am very clean and I can't abide damp at all. But some of my housemates did not share my standards. Not using your towel? No, no. Lack of cleaning and the smells as a result were terrible. I can only imagine what Clark was going through. You're so great with empathy, Matt.
The next afternoon, a smartly dressed woman with neat grey hair steps into the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly. She's a senior health protection agency officer. She's with a colleague, a middle-aged man in a dark suit with a mop of salt and pepper hair. She's here to speak to staff about testing for polonium-210 contamination. Oh, great, another work training course. Have you done your radiation course? Please sign the slides at the bottom and get them back to me, please. Oh, my God.
She asks the manager to close up for a few minutes. When everyone's sitting around the plastic tables, she explains why they're here today. Everyone will need to collect urine samples over the next 24 hours. The samples will be concentrated down and analysed for polonium. They're looking for signs of radiation poisoning. But as she talks, something strange hits her. The staff don't look scared. She notices a young guy is playing a game on a mobile phone. Any questions? Nobody speaks. It's odd.
She's just tested workers in the Millennium Hotel. Some were visibly shaken. A few were crying. One woman asked if the polonium would make her infertile. A young man took her to one side and shyly asked if he could still have sex with his girlfriend. What a bloke response to a public health crisis. Outrageous. Sorry, can I just ask, can I still have it off? Is that all right? Can I still do it? Just wear this lead condom and you should be okay. But here, nobody says anything.
If you've understood what I've said, please raise your hand. Nobody does. And she realises they all have limited English and the Health Protection Agency don't have any interpreters. She takes an empty bottle and mimes what they have to do. She points to the clock. She needs their samples within the next 24 hours. She thinks they've got it. She rushes out. Next stop is a strip club in Soho. That massive penis is going to be radioactive.
Make it even more of a feature. It's definitely contaminated with something, isn't it?
Also, if you're in that itsu restaurant getting that briefing and you can't speak English and she just mimes peeing into a bottle and points at the clock, I don't think you're necessarily going to fully appreciate it. No, and I love that she's like, yeah, pretty sure they've got it, yeah. OK, next. What, you want me to pee in a bottle and you're going to time me? Yeah, how does she do the 24-hour bit? Pee in a bottle, look at the clock. What, this is a race. What's wrong with just showing you my CV? I've got a record of achievement here. Surely that's more appropriate. PHONE RINGS
She's about to head in when suddenly she gets a call. It's the overseas advice team. They've just put together the list of guests for the hotels where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed. We're looking at 644 people from 52 countries.
Getting hold of all these people and testing their samples won't be easy. This poisoning has become a public health emergency. All that piss. 644. You'd be gutted, wouldn't you? You'd be like, please, let it be three or four. Nearly 650 bottles of piss and I've got to go through them all. How was work today, love? Yeah, not bad. Do you want to talk about it? Never. Never again. Shh.
November the 28th, 2006, 7.30pm. Clark is in a COBRA meeting in Downing Street. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is chairing. Sitting round the table are senior cabinet ministers, members of the public health agency, national health service managers and intelligence chiefs.
I promised you a Cobra meeting and a Cobra meeting I have delivered. Here we are. The NHS official says they're struggling. So far, almost 4,000 people have contacted the special hotline for testing. The testing labs are under pressure too. The Health Protection Agency report that so far over 100 people have traces of polonium in their samples. The highest dose group are from 14 visitors and staff who were at the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel on the day of the attack.
Love to know how the Pine Bar made up for this. Emailing customers, sorry you were potentially exposed to lethal radiation. Here's 10% off a meal on your next visit. Not valid at weekends. Hotel staff at University College Hospital are doing their best to cope, but they're also dealing with their own health emergency. So far, over 70 healthcare staff have been tested for radiation poisoning. Part of the intensive care unit at UCH has been closed down. It gets worse. Traces of polonium have just been found on the London Underground.
This is a year after the 7-7 bombing, so there's been so much focus on the Tube, where travellers are nervous still, even now, let alone then.
It's such a difficult situation for the authorities to be in to know how to handle this. And also this represents it travelling, I presume, when they're talking about those maps on the wall and drawing lines of where the contamination is. As soon as it's on a train, are we talking about this just spreading across the whole city like wildfire? I mean, at what point do you say this is such a public health emergency that we need to make it public? The authorities are in an unenviable position because...
If you do stuff, if you take action, you're accused of creating panic. And people say, oh, they're trying to scare us to control us. If you don't take action, you're accused of negligence. All these officials are human beings under huge pressure. Well, exactly. The government decides not to tell the public. They're going to keep the London Underground open. Clarke reassures the meeting that Scotland Yard's press team have tight control over information on the case. This included...
An hour later, Clark is back at his desk at Scotland Yard, writing a report when suddenly emails start pinging in. His office phone rings and then rings again. Eventually, he takes the call. A reporter tells him news has just broken that radiation has been found on two British Airways planes and that 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff could be contaminated. Why weren't the public told? What does he want to say about this? Clark is in the middle of a public relations nightmare.
Later that day, in Moscow, a small crowd gathers outside a suburban apartment block. It's late afternoon and the sky is beginning to darken. A light rain has started to fall on the news reporters and television crews. They jostle for position near a waiting ambulance. Suddenly, the doors to the apartment block swing open and a man has stretched out.
It's Andrei Lugovoy. Of course, they'd know it was Andrei Lugovoy because he was wearing a bright luminous green pom-pom hat and bright yellow banana boots. A very don't-look-at-me attitude, Andrei Lugovoy. The paramedics pause for a few minutes so the photographers can take pictures. Andrei Lugovoy raises his head from the stretcher. I have radiation sickness. I've been poisoned by Alexander Litvinenko. Everybody shouts questions as Lugovoy disappears into the ambulance.
Twelve minutes later, in the German city of Hamburg, Dmitry Kovtun stands outside the apartment block of his ex-wife Marina Wall and tells journalists he's tested positive for radiation. Alexander Litvinenko, he says, wasn't a businessman. He was a ruthless assassin. Oh, that is so cold. It's unbelievable. And don't expect them to go, yeah, we did it. This guy has died and they're now accusing him of something they've actually done. It's cold. It's cold.
It's so cold. It makes me really not like them. Wow. Okay. But before, you were on board, weren't you? They're this far away from pissing me off. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.
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We're now pretty sure that all of the capital's polonium contamination can be traced back to Lugovoy and Kovtun. We've cross-referenced traces with their credit card and phone data, plus eyewitness accounts. At this stage, we think Litvinenko is the only intended direct victim.
Clark doesn't say it yet, but he wants reassurance that he has the full backing of the government. He's worried they'll want to sweep it under the carpet. It's worth remembering the context of the time as well. Obviously, at this point, this is before we know all this stuff about Litvinenko.
And Tony Blair was working really hard to bring Russia in from the cold. He was working on Putin. It's incredible to think now, given what we know about what's happened since, Putin and Bush were signing treaties to decommission nuclear warheads. There was a sense at this point that Russia perhaps was coming in from the cold, that Putin was perhaps quite a hopeful figure at that point. That feels surreal. Yeah, it feels like a totally different world. All of this is the backdrop. But right now, there's another problem.
The Kremlin are blaming Litvinenko for poisoning Lugovoy and Kovtun. The Russian authorities have launched an investigation into it and are asking for full cooperation from the British police. It's delicate ground. Clark needs to be absolutely sure that Litvinenko is the victim and not the attacker. Relations with Russia are riding on it.
It's December 2nd, 2006, 1.30am. It's a bitterly cold night. Clark walks into the Transport for London bus garage. Floodlights surround one bus as police busy themselves around it. Clark's case is slowly coming together, but he needs conclusive proof that Sasha had no signs of polonium contamination until he met Lugovoy and Covton.
This London bus holds the answer. A small group of police officers stand outside the garage. Clark has told them if anyone takes photos, they're to be arrested. The last thing he wants is a headline saying London's buses are contaminated. I don't know if you've been on a London bus, but a London bus being contaminated with polonium would represent real progress. That's probably the cleanest bus in London.
His team traced the bus Sasha took from Muswell Hill to Mayfair on November 1st. Sasha had used his Oyster card for the journey, so Clark had the bus impounded. Clark sits in his car and waits. One of his officers hands him a coffee and a Styrofoam cup. It's already been a long night, but Clark is determined to stay. His whole case hinges on this finding. At three in the morning, someone knocks on his window. He wakes with a start. An officer tells him the team have finished. He makes his way to forensics.
There's no polonium on the bus. Clark finally has the proof he wanted. Sasha was poisoned at the Millennium Hotel by Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. Now all he has to do is question them. The problem is they're in Moscow.
I'm very sorry, but Dmitry Kovtun is too ill to travel to London for questioning. How ill? The Russian official pauses for a moment. He's in a coma.
It could be true. Both Lugovoy and Kovtun had enough contact with polonium to kill themselves several times over. Then the Russian prosecutor makes a suggestion. We're prepared to prosecute Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun here in Russia. If, that is, we find enough proof of guilt.
Can you send us all the evidence you have? We can take it from there. Of course, Clark has no intention of showing them what proof he has. He needs to protect his witnesses for one thing. The Russian prosecutors are being deliberately uncooperative. But the British government are treading carefully too. They want cast-iron proof before calling for extradition. There's only one way. They'll have to go to Moscow.
Clark gathers all his Russian-speaking officers. He'll need them. He also needs a solid lead investigator, someone calm and methodical and ruthlessly determined to get answers. Getting the right person will be the key to the whole investigation. And there's one person who would be perfect. Five minutes later, Clark is washing his hands in the gents' toilets when Detective Inspector Brian Tarpey walks in.
Tarpy is a long-serving Met officer. He's 45 years old, balding with a good, solid reputation. And he's the very man Clark was going to call. All right, Tarps, Clark says, I've got a job for you. You're going to Russia. Tarps? It's just lads, isn't it? Tea dog, tea man. Tip and tain. We're going to have fun with Tarps next episode. Oh, I can't wait to meet him properly. Tarpsy. Good on a night out, ain't he, Tarps? You're going to teach me how to be a lad by the end of this.
This is the third episode in our series, The Litvinenko Affair. A quick note about our dialogue. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but all of our dramatisations 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. Our sound design is by Rich Evans. Our senior producer is Russell Finch. Our executive producers are Stephanie Jens and Marshall Louis. For Wondery...
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