Purchase
A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder
Broadway
August 2008
On Sale: August 5, 2008
448 pages
ISBN: 0385523556
EAN: 9780385523554
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Thriller Spy
In a page-turning narrative that reads like a thriller,
an award-winning journalist exposes the troubling truth
behind the world’s first act of nuclear
terrorism.
On November 1, 2006, Alexander
Litvinenko sipped tea in London’s Millennium Hotel. Hours
later the Russian émigré and former intelligence officer,
who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir
Putin, fell ill and within days was rushed to the
hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope
slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic
deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering
his murder. Alan S. Cowell, then London Bureau
Chief of the New York Times, who covered the story
from its inception, has written the definitive story of
this assassination and of the profound international
implications of this first act of nuclear terrorism.
Who was Alexander Litvinenko? What had happened in
Russia since the end of the cold war to make his life
there untenable and in severe jeopardy even in England,
the country that had granted him asylum? And how did he
really die? The life of Alexander Litvinenko provides a
riveting narrative in its own right, culminating in an
event that rang alarm bells among western governments at
the ease with which radioactive materials were deployed in
a major Western capital to commit a unique crime. But it
also evokes a wide range of other issues: Russia's lurch
to authoritarianism, the return of the KGB to the Kremlin,
the perils of a new cold war driven by Russia's oil riches
and Vladimir Putin's thirst for power.
Cowell
provides a remarkable and detailed reconstruction both of
how Litvinenko died and of the issues surrounding his
murder. Drawing on exclusive reporting from Britain,
Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and
the United States, he traces in unprecedented detail the
polonium trail leading from Russia's closed nuclear cities
through Moscow and Hamburg to the Millenium Hotel in
central London. He provides the most detailed step-by-step
explanation of how and where polonium was found; how the
assassins tried on several occasions to kill Litvinenko;
and how they bungled a conspiracy that may have had more
targets than Litvinenko himself.
With a colorful
cast that includes the tycoons, spies, and killers who
surrounded Litvinenko in the roller-coaster Russia of the
1990s, as well as the émigrés who flocked to London in
such numbers that the British capital earned the
sobriquet “Londongrad,” this book lays out the events that
allowed an accused killer to escape prosecution in a
delicate diplomatic minuet that helped save face for the
authorities in London and Moscow.
A masterful
work of investigative reporting, The Terminal Spy
offers unprecedented insight into one of the most chilling
true stories of our time.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy