Current AffairsMartin Sixsmith is a former BBC Moscow correspondent who, since leaving Russia in 2002, has written a number of books with Russian themes, including Moscow Coup: The Death of the Soviet System, and a humorous novel, I Heard Lenin Laugh. There is nothing funny about the Litvinenko case however, and the author has produced a sober work of non-fiction that is also a gripping whodunnit.
It involves the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, an exiled Russian agent who was poisoned with polonium 210 in London and died an agonising death there in December 2006. Several suspects have been named in the western media, ranging from agents of the Kremlin to disaffected political or business associates. In what Sixsmith describes as a war that has been raging hot and cold since 2002 between some of Russia's richest men and the strongest president since Josef Stalin, each side accuses the other of the darkest deeds. Claims and counter claims are made, sometimes without the slightest basis in fact, and the hand of President Vladimir Putin or his arch-enemy, Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch resident in London, is seen behind every evil.
Having kept up his Russian contacts in both Russia and the United Kingdom over the years, Sixsmith (a former colleague in Moscow) is uniquely placed to have a stab at getting to the truth of the matter. He goes everywhere and talks to everyone, in both London and Moscow. He even goes right inside the Kremlin and asks bluntly if they did it. And, like Hercule Poirot, he treats every theory with scepticism, until the pieces of the puzzle start to fall together.
Winston Churchill once described Russia as a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma; the key, he believed, was Russia's national interest. Many commentators in the Litvinenko case, as well as the Scotland Yard detectives who went to Moscow to investigate possible leads, have focused on how the death of Litvinenko might be linked to Russia's national interest, at least as perceived by some ruthless elements of the Russian federal security service, the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. Sixsmith also goes to the heart of the beast - FSB Moscow headquarters in the Lubyanka - and asks there if they did it.
IT WAS IN the interests of a lot of people to get rid of this troublesome exile. Litvinenko was in the pay of the Kremlin's most prominent enemy, Berezovsky, and was consumed with a desire to expose murder and corruption at high levels in Russia. These included the compelling case that FSB agents had manipulated sympathy for Putin's war against Chechnya by blowing up Russian apartment blocks and blaming Chechen terrorists. He was also investigating the killing of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had been writing about Russian excesses in Chechnya for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Sixsmith also considers the possibility that Litvinenko's assassin was a former FSB agent who bore a grudge, or an agent of Berezovsky seeking to blacken Putin's reputation, or someone Litvinenko might have been blackmailing after discovering some sinister things going on at the interface between business and politics in Russia.
There is much new information in the book, including some fascinating background information about Litvinenko, who was hardly a white knight in his earlier career in the FSB and had been making a nuisance of himself even with close associates, with his anti-Putin zeal. Sixsmith explains many inconsistencies, particularly one which puzzled me - how traces of polonium 210 were found at locations Litvinenko visited before meeting the prime suspects.
As this is a thriller of sorts, it would be invidious to give everything away, but safe to say that in Lenin's former fiefdom it is the murderers who are laughing. Sixsmith names names but there is almost zero chance of the prime suspects being brought to justice in the current murky climate in Moscow.
The book is composed of 65 short chapters, each teasing out one or other aspect of the mystery, making it an accessible step-by-step guide to a Byzantine episode that has coloured relations between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Russian Republic.
My one criticism is that it has no index, which may be due to the astonishing speed with which it was researched and published, less than six months after Litvinenko's death.
Conor O'Clery was Moscow correspondent of The Irish Times from 1987 to 1991
The Litvinenko File: The True Story of a Death Foretold By Martin Sixsmith Macmillan, 312 pages. £16.99