Reviews
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder' by Alan S. Cowell A foreign correspondent analyzes the poisoning death of dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko. By Tim Rutten Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 16, 2008 WHEN veteran foreign correspondent Alan S. Cowell turned his superb newspaper coverage of dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko's bizarre 2006 murder into a book, he knew he was writing a real-life post-Cold War thriller rich in implication. His title and subtitles, "The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder -- The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War," suggest just how rich. It's hard to imagine, however, that even Cowell could have foreseen this complex tale's urgently prophetic dimension, since it's a story that repeatedly leads back to Vladimir Putin, shedding important light on the Russian strongman's exercise of power and on his attitude toward the West. As the Georgian crisis grinds on, understanding Putin and his brand of statecraft are matters of more than passing interest. Cowell, a longtime correspondent for the New York Times, was reporting from the paper's London bureau when the Litvinenko story broke. The Russian had begun a lifetime involvement in intrigue as a counterintelligence agent in the Soviet KGB. After the fall of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, he entered the domestic branch of the FSB, successor agency to the KGB, joining an organized crime unit. Like many a Russian with an eye for the main chance in that wild west interlude, Litvinenko attached himself to one of the emerging oligarchs fattening like carrion birds on the chaotic and corrupt privatization of former state resources -- in his case, Boris Berezovsky. At one point, Litvinenko intervened to keep his patron from being framed by elements of state security for the murder of a television commentator at a station Berezovsky owned. The mogul fled the country and Litvinenko became a whistle-blower, alleging widespread misconduct and corruption in the FSB, which had him jailed for his trouble. Upon his release, Litvinenko joined Berezovsky and a growing number of Russians in London exile. There, he continued an obsession with Putin and what Litvinenko correctly saw as a reemerging Russian authoritarianism with its roots in the security services -- in other words, a creeping coup by elements of the old KGB. While denouncing Putin in interviews with journalists and filmmakers, Litvinenko worked at putting together a private security business. It was in that connection that he joined another former KGB man, Andrei Lugovoi -- who was visiting from Moscow -- for drinks at London's popular Millennium Hotel bar. Litvinenko took a few sips of green tea with honey. Three weeks later, after a stunning and agonizing illness, he was dead. Cowell employs meticulous reporting and numerous interviews with participants to re-create the hotel meeting, but best of all is his recap of the gripping forensic investigation that showed Litvinenko had been poisoned with a minute trace of a rare but deadly radioactive isotope, polonium-210. Investigation showed the substance probably was sprayed into the teapot from which the murdered man was served. Cowell has a "CSI"-worthy eye for forensic exposition, as in this passage: "What was not generally known on the day that Alexander Litvinenko died was that the polonium had been discovered only in one of the final urine samples taken from him. If the [British]Ministry of Defense scientists at Aldermaston had not run the extremely unusual tests when they did, it is conceivable that the nature of the poisoning would have remained a mystery, as Litvinenko's killers surely intended it to be. . . . "The scientists' conclusion began to explain how, "Absorbing." -- The New York Times "Meticulous reporting . . . Cowell plays out the Byzantine possibilities behind this killing with heroic clarity . . . The Terminal Spy is not simply a wholly engrossing and thought-provoking story of espionage and homicide." -- Los Angeles Times "Doggedly reported and dramatically written . . . Cowell tells the story with literary panache but doesn't let his stylish prose eclipse the substance of a sordid tale. The sections about espionage and the assassination are worthy of Tom Clancy, but the author's political analysis is equally riveting. . . . A well-told true-crime tale mixed with expert political/historical analysis." -- Kirkus Reviews "Reads like a thriller. But The Terminal Spy is a chilling and horrific true story. Alan Cowell has done a brilliant job of investigative reporting." --David Wise, author of Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America "Compulsively researched and sourced." -- The Guardian (London) "In The Terminal Spy Alan Cowell, a top-flight investigative journalist, digs deep into today's brutal Russia to find a new Soviet Union waiting to be born. Or maybe it never went away." --Alan Furst, author of The Spies of Warsaw "Alan Cowell has used a veteran journalist's skill to lead us through the roads of deceit and brutality and has exposed the vicious retribution of Russia's security apparatus against the former KGB officer who dared to condemn Putin's modern Russia, and paid for it with his life. This is a story of the real world in which we live--brilliantly told--and chilling in its implications. The Terminal Spy should be read by everyone seeking an insight to today's Moscow." --Gerald Seymour "The cast of characters is astonishing and so complex that the author felt compelled to list them all in a who's who at the beginning, and you'll be glad he did. Complementing this outré ensemble is a Byzantine story line that could have dissolved easily into a hopeless stew in less adroit hands, but Cowell, the New York Times ' former London bureau chief and an investigative reporter, knows the story inside out. And he writes exceedingly well." -- Star Tribune "A brilliant, subtle book . . . a fascinating account which tells us much about the people involved, and even more by inference of the world they inhabit and the society which created them." --Anthony Robinson, former Moscow bureau chief, Financial Times
