In his famous Moonlight and Vodka, Chris de Burgh got it right: Espionage is a serious business. And like every serious business, it must be taken seriously. Less than two decades after the untimely death of Sasha Litvinenko, poisoned at the heart of London’s Mayfair by Russian secret agents by the previously unknown radioactive substance containing a fatal dose of Polonium-210, it is hardly remembered by anyone in the West. No wonder, we live in an information-rich world when the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. Such an obvious thing was suddenly discovered by a simple old man from Milwaukee, and he’s got a point there.
This book is about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, whose legal case seems to many people like open-and-shut. Even to his widow Marina and their son. To MI6, MI5 and the Special Operations branch of the London’s Metropolitan Police who presented it to the public as thoroughly investigated and closed. To judge Sir Robert Owen appointed to hold the inquest “into the death of a Russian Spy” as the BBC and other media has put it — a terrible mistake. To journalists and writers who had been following this case for as long as a decade, not to mention the prime suspect living a good life in Moscow. But not for me. For me this case remains open.
