The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder Audiobook (Free)

Inside a page-turning narrative that reads such as 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 afterwards the Russian émigré and previous intelligence officer, who was simply sharply crucial of Russian chief executive Vladimir Putin, dropped sick and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned with a uncommon radioactive isotope slipped into his beverage, about The Terminal Spy: A True Tale of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering his murder. Alan S. Cowell, after that London Bureau Chief of the brand new York Situations, who covered the storyplot from its inception, offers created the definitive tale of this assassination and of the serious international implications of the first action of nuclear terrorism.

Who was simply Alexander Litvinenko? What experienced happened in Russia since the end of the frosty war to create his lifestyle there untenable and in serious jeopardy actually in England, the united states that acquired granted him asylum? And exactly how did he actually die? The life of Alexander Litvinenko provides a riveting narrative in its right, culminating within an event that rang security alarm bells among western governments on the ease with which radioactive components had been deployed in a major Traditional western capital to commit a unique crime. But it also evokes an array of other issues: Russia’s lurch to authoritarianism, the return of the KGB towards the Kremlin, the perils of a new cool war powered 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. Sketching on exclusive reporting from Britain, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the United States, he traces in unparalleled details the polonium path leading from Russia’s shut nuclear towns through Moscow and Hamburg to the Millenium Hotel in central London. He supplies the most comprehensive step-by-step explanation of how and where polonium was found; the way the assassins tried on several occasions to destroy Litvinenko; and how they bungled a conspiracy that may have had more goals than Litvinenko himself.

Having a colorful cast that includes the tycoons, spies, and killers who surrounded Litvinenko in the roller-coaster Russia from the 1990s, as well as the émigrés who flocked to London in such numbers that the British capital earned the sobriquet “Londongrad,” this reserve lays out the events that allowed an accused killer to escape prosecution inside a delicate diplomatic minuet that helped save face for the authorities in London and Moscow.

A masterful function of investigative reporting, The Terminal Spy gives unparalleled insight into one of the most chilling true tales of our period.