They wore chunky jewellery. According to hotel manager Goran Krgo, the two men resembled stereotypical eastern European gangsters. They looked like — I think the expression is: like a donkey with a saddle. Waiting for them was Tim Reilly, the Russian-speaking head of Erinys; he shook their hands and led them into the boardroom. The meeting began in typically English style, with talk of the sunny weather.
Then Lugovoi steered the conversation round to tea. He suggested they all drink some, joking that the English had cups of tea all the time. Reilly declined and told them he had just drunk water from the cooler. Lugovoi was weirdly persistent.
Reilly served cups of tea to his three guests. He sat to the right of Litvinenko, who was at the head of the table with his back facing the bay window; immediately across the table from Reilly was Lugovoi. He said nothing. After making tea, Reilly — fortuitously for the would-be assassins — went to the loo. For the next 30 minutes, the tea sat in front of him, a little to his left — an invisible nuclear murder weapon primed to go off.
Lugovoi and Kovtun must have been barely listening to the conversation: for them, the only question was, would Litvinenko drink? It appeared there had been substantial spillage. Reilly wondered whether he, too, had been an intended target.
One spot in front of where Litvinenko had been sitting showed exceptionally high alpha-radiation readings of more than 10, counts a second. That meant the radiation could only have come from deployed polonium. Other parts of the baize had readings of 2, counts a second. One chair — where either Lugovoi or Kovtun had been sitting — registered at 7, counts a second.
The Russians would later claim that it was Litvinenko who had poisoned them, during this, their first significant encounter in Mayfair. All subsequent traces, they said, could be explained by this initial radioactive contact.
It was a version they would repeat to Russian state media, which transmitted it as true. He had travelled on the 43 bus, getting on at Friern Barnet, then taking the tube into central London from Highgate station. Lugovoi and Kovtun, by contrast, left a lurid nuclear stain wherever they went, including their hotel rooms, well before their first meeting with Litvinenko.
After leaving Erinys, Litvinenko took the pair to his favourite branch of Itsu in Piccadilly Circus, close to the Ritz. They sat downstairs. Polonium was found here, too. The visitors took their leave of Litvinenko. Afterwards, Lugovoi claimed that he and Kovtun strolled around Soho for an hour and a half. Scotland Yard later retrieved the pipe.
It was easy to spot: the handle gave off a ghostly alpha-radiation glow. Back at home in Muswell Hill, Litvinenko felt mildly unwell. He threw up, just once. His vomiting spasm was due to exposure to radiation — just from being near the poison.
Litvinenko thought little of this episode. He had unwittingly survived his first encounter with polonium. At 1am, the would-be killers returned to the Best Western hotel. At some point that day or the next, Lugovoi handled polonium in the privacy of his room, He appears to have transferred it here from one container to another.
And to have disposed of it down the bathroom sink. There were lower readings elsewhere in the bathroom, and in the bedroom next door.
The two Russians had booked into the Best Western for two nights, with Lugovoi paying in advance. But the next day, 17 October, they abruptly checked out and took a taxi to the Parkes hotel in Beaufort Gardens, Knightsbridge. The real reason, most probably, was to distance himself from the poison, which he had efficiently tipped down the bathroom U-bend. Front office manager Giuliana Rondini was on duty when the Russians walked in. After chatting, Lugovoi made a request.
Rondini was used to dealing tactfully with these kinds of inquiries. She recommended a house across the street. Failing that, she suggested an Italian restaurant. Pizza with extras, I would say. About He said that he and Kovtun had hired a rickshaw and that they were going on an hour-long joyride through central London — two off-duty assassins enjoying themselves amid the bright lights of Soho.
Their rickshaw driver was Polish. It appears they asked again about girls. This was HeyJo, a club founded in by a former fruit-and-veg stall owner from Essex called Dave West. It featured mirrored walls, frilly pink cubicles, waitresses dressed as naughty nurses, and a bronze phallus. There was a dancefloor and a Russian-themed restaurant, Abracadabra, with silver tables.
The bordello theme extended to the bathrooms, where water spouted from penis-shaped taps. Lugovoi and Kovtun spent two hours at HeyJo, leaving at 3am. Detectives later found traces of radiation in cubicle nine — on the backrest and cushions.
No polonium was found on the phallus. The floor was clean. The following morning, as they checked out for their flight back to Moscow, Rondini asked Lugovoi how they got on. In short, he had failed. The upshot was that, within days, Lugovoi returned to the UK, this time alone, bringing with him another container of radioactive poison.
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