October 25th, 2006
“Beatles.”
“Rolling Stones!”
“The Beatles!”
“The Beatles broke up in 1970. All of ten years as a band. The Rolling Stones have been going for forty-five years!”
Bryce shrugged. “You say what you want. I still think the Beatles were the better band.”
Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You know what, John Lennon introduced Yoko Ono to the band, and that was the end of things. The worst thing Mick Jagger ever introduced to the Rolling Stones was marijuana!”
Bryce glared at her. “The Beatles had twenty-one singles hit number one on the US charts. How many have the Rolling Stones had?”
Sarah knew she was beat on that one. “Eight.”
Bryce smiled smugly. “I rest my case.”
But Sarah wasn’t giving up that easily. “So the Beatles were more commercially successful than the Rolling Stones have been. So what? The Rolling Stones are, musically, massively superior.”
Bryce rolled his eyes. “By what standards?”
“Mick Jagger. Keith Richards. Brian Jones. Bill Wyman. Four of the most musically talented people in the industry. Who’d the Beatles have? Paul McCartney, okay. He’s good. John Lennon, let himself be blinded to music by Yoko Ono. George Harrison, also okay. Ringo Starr – waste of space.”
Bryce sighed. “It’s pretty clear that you’re not going to let me win this argument.”
“You’re goddamn right I’m not!” Sarah shot back.
“I don’t understand why you’re so insistent on this,” Bryce tried to reply, but it was clear that Sarah wasn’t paying attention, as she headed for the cockpit of the Falcon.
She knocked on the door, which was opened from within. Bryce saw her stick her head inside, then hand something into the cockpit. Sarah returned to Bryce, a smug smile on her face.
A moment later, a very distinctive guitar riff began playing over the airplane’s P.A. system. Shortly thereafter, words began to pour out – “I can’t get no satisfaction…”
Bryce rolled his eyes, the Rolling Stones playing out as the aircraft winged its way toward London.
The thing about this trip was that what Bryce thought it was and what Sarah knew it was were two totally different things. Bryce thought that it was a combination research trip and vacation; Sarah knew that it was an assassination.
There was an individual living in London who was making the United States intelligence community very uneasy. A former KGB agent, he had sought asylum in London in 2000, and had begun working with the SIS, the British counterpart to the CIA, which most people mistakenly called MI-6, following the Bond movies.
The thing was, he had, during his time with the KGB, learned a great deal about American intelligence services. He had passed many of these things along to SIS, and had made it quite clear that he was about to go public with information that could be hugely embarrassing and potentially very, very damaging to the United States.
Overtures had been made to him to try to get him to “see the light” and back off from his plans. However, he was determined to go forward with his plans, leaving the United States no choice – at least, in the eyes of the administration.
The decision had been made to eliminate the former KGB agent. It was to be done in a way that would cast suspicion on Russia, and make everybody think that he had been eliminated by his own mother country.
This would not be an easy task; however, the CIA had made it quite clear that they could accomplish it. This would not be a shooting, or a seduction and stabbing – rather, they planned to use a slow-acting radioactive isotope to poison the former agent – polonium-210.
The agent selected to eliminate her former KGB counterpart was Special Agent Sarah Walker. She had had a very rough year to that point – an official reprimand following a disastrous mission in Brazil, removal from supervisory duty, having a bounty placed on her head by Hizbollah, and surviving a terrible plane crash in Washington, DC. However, it was agreed that within the CIA, she was unmatched for ability and skill.
In the interests of making it a mission that entailed a fair amount of plausible deniability, the CIA had elected to send her under the cover of a research mission, liaising with counterparts within the SIS. To that end, they had assigned Bryce Larkin, her professional and personal partner, to accompany her on the trip. However, Larkin was kept in the dark on the true nature of the trip.
In fact, only a dozen people knew of the true nature of the trip – Sarah Walker herself, CIA Director Graham, the President, the Vice-President, and the majority and minority leaders and
whips of both the House and the Senate. The members of Congress had been informed that this was a delta-classified mission, and that any revelation of any details of the mission would result in federal prosecution.
And so it was that as the plane winged its way toward London, Sarah had begun the argument with Bryce about who was better – the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, trying to take her mind off of what she was about to do. Having loved the Rolling Stones since she could understand what music was, she hadn’t had to work very hard to make it a convincing argument.
Upon landing, they were met by a car and driver from the SIS. He took them first to their hotel, the London Millennium. “Nice digs,” Bryce remarked upon checking into their room. “The CIA actually ponied up for this?!”
“Just don’t tell anybody in the GAO,” Sarah said with a smile. “They’ll stick us in Motel 6 next time.”
From the hotel, they went to SIS headquarters – or, as Bryce jokingly said when they got back in the car, “Universal Exports, please.”
The driver groaned. “Yeah, never heard that one before, sir.”
The next several days, Bryce and Sarah spent most of their time at SIS headquarters at 85 Vauxhall Cross. Bryce spent a good deal of time comparing intelligence gathering techniques with SIS field agents. Sarah spent a small amount of time discussing missions with SIS brass, especially her recent mission in Israel, but spent a larger amount of time by herself, working on the specifics of her mission at hand.
On November 1st, Bryce headed to Vauxhall Cross by himself, Sarah claiming to be under the weather. As soon as he was gone, though, she began to prepare for her mission.
The first thing she did was set up an observation post of sorts that looked out the window onto the approach to the hotel below. A high-definition digital video camera plugged into her laptop, which in turn plugged into the wide-screen HDTV in the front of the room.
The next thing she did was to set up a trunk-line interception point. A simple device, plugged into the phone line in the wall, and then plugged into her laptop, the interceptor would register every call dialed from any phone in the hotel. She had the software set up to automatically ignore anything that didn’t come from the target’s room.
Sarah spent the next two hours preparing the tools she would need once the mission began. She laid out, ironed, and starched a uniform identical to what the female staff at the Millennium wore. She then retrieved a vial from where it was stashed in a secret compartment behind a fake wall in her suitcase.
Opening it, she spilled out four capsules that looked remarkably like Tylenol gel caps. The difference was, these were actually capsules filled with the isotope polonium-210, mixed with saline. As long as they stayed sealed, Sarah was perfectly safe, so she was extraordinarily careful with them.
Keeping a close eye on the television, she watched as the three men she was waiting for arrived over a thirty minute period. The first man to arrive was another former KGB agent – Dmitry Kovtun. He was not a target for assassination, but Director Graham had made it clear that no tears would be shed if he should find himself dead.
About twenty minutes later, another man arrived. Very little was known about him other than his name – Vladislav Sokolenko. The only intelligence the United States had on him was that he had once operated in Chechnya, and this was only known because Major John Casey of the NSA had identified him as somebody he had seen in Grozny following a market bombing in 2004.
Ten minutes later, the final man arrived. Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB agent and the owner of a high-end Russian beverage company. Again, not a target, but not somebody the United States would object to seeing dead.
Sarah waited another twenty minutes before she was able to move into action. During the twenty minute wait, she donned her uniform, placed the polonium-210 capsules back in their vial, and slipped the vial into a pocket in her jacket.
Finally, her laptop beeped, indicating a call from the target’s room. She turned up the volume.
“Hello, Room Service, this is Martina, how may I assist you?”
“Yes, I’m in suite 1704. Could I have tea service sent up please?”
“Absolutely, sir. That will be up in just a few minutes.”
The call disconnected. Sarah left her room, and headed down the hallway to the service elevator. Boarding it, she took the elevator down to the basement, where the room service kitchen was located.
Just as she arrived, she saw one of the kitchen staff putting a pastry tray on a cart with two teapots on it. “Is this the tea for 1704?” she asked, adopting a credible Polish accent.
“Yeah, that’s for the bloody Russians,” the kitchen staff replied. “Take it away.”
Sarah grabbed the cart, and rolled it back into the service elevator. Hitting the button for the seventeenth floor, she positioned herself so that she obscured the security camera’s view of the teapots on the cart.
Very carefully, keeping her motions slight so that the camera would not register them from behind, Sarah slipped the vial out of her pocket. Opening the left hand teapot, she dropped the four capsules into it. They plastic coating would dissolve in about forty seconds, and the polonium-210 would then mix with the tea, creating a very poisonous beverage indeed.
When she reached the seventeenth floor, Sarah rolled the cart out of the elevator, turning left to head down the hallway. Stopping at 1704, she knocked on the door. “Room service!”
It was answered a moment later by Lugovoi. “Excellent, please come in,” he said.
She rolled the tea cart into the suite. Setting cups and saucers for the four men, she then placed the pastry tray on the table. Picking up the left teapot, she began to pour – the target first. She filled his cup, which he immediately picked up and began to drink from. She turned to her right to fill the next cup – but as she did so, Sokolenko stood, jostling her, and causing the teapot to slip out of her hands.
It crashed to the ground, spilling its contents all over Sarah and Sokolenko’s shoes.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she apologized, her fake Polish accent coming out again.
“No, it’s my fault,” Sokolenko replied in a strangely creepy voice. “Please, let me help you with that.”
He bent down and picked up the teapot, placing it back on the tray. Sarah picked up the other, non-poisonous teapot, and poured tea for the rest of the men. As there was still tea in it, she left the tea service for the men. As she was departing, Sokolenko handed her a five pound note, apologizing again.
When Sarah returned to her room, she stripped everything she was wearing, down to her underwear, and stuffed it all in a laundry bag, which she tied tightly shut. She went immediately to the bathroom, and turned on the shower as hot as she could. If any of the contaminated tea had made contact with her skin, it had to be washed off as quickly as possible.
After spending nearly twenty minutes in the shower, Sarah exited, dried off, and dressed in her usual mission outfit – all black. Picking up the laundry bag, she went downstairs, exiting through a stairwell, and made her way to the back of the hotel. Going to the incinerator, she tossed the bag in. It would be gone for good within the hour.
By the time Bryce returned that afternoon, Sarah had put all her equipment away once more, had dressed in a Packers t-shirt and basketball shorts, and returned to the bed. She was watching Doctor Who on the BBC when Bryce entered the room.
“I’m much better looking than David Tennant,” Bryce informed her, looking at the television. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she replied. “How was your day?”
“Boring as hell!” he laughed.
The next day, Sarah and Bryce flew back to Washington. Another argument about the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles ensued.
On November 20th, 2006, former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning, with significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic isotope polonium-210 being found in his body. The British government almost immediately accused Russia of having assassinated him to cover up a number of misdeeds.
On January 20th, 2007, Scotland Yard announced that they had “identified” the man they believed poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. They had captured Vladislav Sokolenko on camera at Heathrow Airport as he flew into London. It was Scotland Yard’s opinion that he had been very sloppy in handling the polonium-210 used to assassinate Litvinenko, as they found traces of it at a number of places that Sokolenko visited in the same time period.
On January 26th, 2007, Scotland Yard revealed that they had discovered a “hot” teapot at the Millennium Hotel. The teapot had off-the-charts readings for polonium-210. A senior official said that investigators had concluded that the murder of Litvinenko was a “state-sponsored assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.” They also announced that they wanted to charge Andrei Lugovoi with Litvinenko’s murder. Russia refused to extradite Lugovoi.
Only twelve people knew the truth of the matter. And only one knew why traces of polonium-210 were found at the places Sokolenko had been.
Author's note: Clearly, this is not what actually happened in November of 2006 in London. However, given how much I like to use actual historical events within this story, I thought it might be interesting to look at the Litvinenko assassination from a totally different point of view.
Despite Scotland Yard's insistence that Andrei Lugovoi is responsible for the death of Alexander Litvinenko, Russia has refused to extradite him. In fact, in December of 2007, Lugovoi ran for a seat in the Russian Duma and was elected.
It is likely that the full truth of the matter behind the death of Alexander Litvinenko will never be known.
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