The Terminal Spy
A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“A story that is at once a real-life thriller and an immensely sinister cautionary tale about the new Russia.”—Star Tribune
In this breathtaking true crime narrative, an award-winning journalist exposes the troubling truth behind the world’s first act of nuclear terrorism.
On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London’s Millennium Hotel. Hours later, the Russian émigré and former intelligence officer, who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, fell ill and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering his murder.
Who was Alexander Litvinenko? What had happened in Russia since the end of the Cold War to make his life there untenable? And how did he really die?
The life of Alexander Litvinenko culminated in an event that rang alarm bells among Western governments at the ease with which radioactive materials were deployed in a major Western capital to commit a unique crime. It also evoked a wide range of other issues: Russia’s lurch to authoritarianism, the return of the KGB to the Kremlin, the perils of a new Cold War driven by the oil riches of Russia and Vladimir Putin’s thirst for power.
Alan S. Cowell, former London Bureau Chief of the New York Times, has written the definitive story of this assassination and the profound international implications of this first act of nuclear terrorism. A masterful work of investigative reporting, The Terminal Spy offers unprecedented insight into one of the most chilling true stories of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 2006 poisoning of the former KGB agent turned dissident Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive polonium captured the world's imagination. In this less than crystalline account, New York Times London bureau chief Cowell plays up the spy-thriller intrigue. Building Litvinenko almost into a miniseries protagonist he was "usband, father, traitor, whistleblower, son, spy, lover, fugitive" Cowell recaps his career as a KGB functionary and then critic of Russia's postcommunist kleptocracy; his relationship with tycoon Boris Berezovsky; his exile in London's murky Russian expat community and outspoken attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he denounced, from his deathbed, as his killer. Cowell's analysis of the crime and the investigation, especially his retracing of the tell-tale trail of polonium, is repetitive and often confusing. He characterizes the murder sometimes as a brazen act of "nuclear terrorism" intended to restart the Cold War, sometimes as a careful, surreptitious hit. The question of whodunit Putin? Berezovsky? vengeful KGB veterans? Russian businessmen exposed by Litvinenko's private sleuthing? to protect the Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, of all people? flounders inconclusively among competing conspiracy theories. Cowell relishes the mystery of the case, but doesn't dispel it.