Free Death of a Dissident by Alex Goldfarb Page B

160 hostages but are encircled by Russian troops in the border village of Pervomaiskoye. Sasha Litvinenko, among other FSB men, is there, in the trenches with the regular army. After a weeklong siege, and several futile attempts to take the village, Russian commanders insist that there are “no hostages left” and launch an intensive bombardment, killing many hostages and some rebels. The next morning, Raduyev and the bulk of the rebels escape through Russian lines, taking twenty hostages back to Chechnya. Litvinenko is stunned by the army’s brutality
.

    Davos, Switzerland, February 3, 1996
    Vladimir Gusinsky, nicknamed “Goose,” answered the phone at his hotel room in Davos. When he heard the voice of his caller, he was speechless. It was his archenemy, Boris Berezovsky.
    They were both attending the World Economic Forum of 1996.
    “Volodya, don’t you think that we should let bygones be bygones, and sit down and talk?” Boris said.
    A former theater director and a leader of Moscow’s Jewish community, Gusinsky, forty-three, was at one point considered thewealthiest man in Russia—that is, before the loans-for-shares scheme created a new, richer breed of oligarchs. He owed his fortune to his friendship with Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Goose’s Most-Bank was the principal depository of municipal funds. His real estate company snapped up the best properties made available in city-controlled privatizations. He also owned a newspaper, a weekly news magazine, a radio station, and NTV. The network loved to give the Kremlin headaches, attacking its policies day and night and mocking its officials on
Kukly
(The Puppets), the popular political satire program. In his political outlook, Goose, a bespectacled intellectual, was close to Grigory Yavlinsky, the left-of-center democratic politician and a friend of George Soros. Gusinsky did not like Yeltsin and he feared the cabal of military and state security types in the president’s circle.
    The twists and turns of Goose’s rivalry with Berezovsky had been the talk of Moscow for months. At one point, Goose even had to flee the city for London for five months, after Boris’s Kremlin pal, General Korzhakov, sent some goons to harass him in what became known as the Most-Bank raid.
    On that memorable day in December 1994, Goose’s motorcade left his country dacha as usual. In the lead was a fast car with watchers scanning both sides of the road. Then came Goose’s armored Mercedes, followed by an SUV swaying from side to side to make sure that no one attempted to pass, and finally a windowless van carrying a team of former paratroopers led by a fierce, egg-headed gorilla nicknamed Cyclops.
    Suddenly, word came through the guards’ earphones: “We have company.” Someone was tailing the convoy. Gusinsky’s driver floored the gas pedal and they screeched up to the Most-Bank headquarters, located in one of the city’s tallest buildings, which also housed City Hall. It was formerly the headquarters of Comecon, the economic command center of the Soviet bloc. Shielded by bodyguards, Goose quickly disappeared inside and rushed straight into the safety of the mayor’s office.
    Moments later his pursuers arrived, about thirty strong, in flak jackets and balaclavas, armed with automatic weapons and grenadelaunchers. For the next two hours, in horrified disbelief, Goose watched from the mayor’s window. The attackers, who evidently belonged to a branch of the secret service, disarmed his men and put them facedown in the snow, where they remained for nearly two hours, in full view of a crowd of spectators and TV cameras. The city police, called to the scene, exchanged a few words with the attackers and then quietly drove away. So did an FSB squad, alerted by Most-Bank staff, who thought a robbery was in progress.
    Eventually the assailants left, as mysteriously as they appeared, without identifying themselves or explaining the reasons for the raid. The next morning Goose took his