Three British pathologists, covered from head to toe in white protective suits, stood around a radioactive corpse that had been sealed in plastic for nearly a week. The victim was Alexander Litvinenko, a forty-four-year-old ex-KGB officer who had defected from Russia to England six years earlier. He had been brought to the Barnet General Hospital by his wife, Marina, on November 3, complaining of abdominal pain. During his stay at the hospital his condition continually worsened. The initial diagnosis was that he had been poisoned by thallium, a non-radioactive toxin used in Russian rat poison. Since the KGB had reportedly used thallium as a poison in the Cold War era, and Litvinenko was one of the most severe critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the theory gained traction in the press that Litvinenko might have been the victim of the Russian security service, the FSB, which had been created in April 1995 out of the remnants of the KGB. As Litvinenko had been writing exposés of putative FSB operations in London, it seemed at least plausible that the FSB had taken revenge on him.
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