Strongman, The

five-thirty, six o’clock, six-thirty,’ Rice recalls. ‘Finally about seven-thirty they said, he’s ready to see you now.’
    She and the American ambassador, Bill Burns, were whisked out into the dark, wet countryside, along the elite Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway, dotted with ostentatious redbrick mansions, through the ‘Luxury Village of Barvikha’ with its Lamborghini showroom and designer boutiques, and then through the tall iron gates of the government estate.
    Rice and Burns had never seen such a building in Russia before – all turrets and dark stairways, like Dracula’s castle. Suddenly the doors of the dining room were flung open and the Americans were confronted with an unexpected sight – the full Russian Security Council, the very heart of Russian power, around a banquet table. Burns ‘could hardly take breath’, according to one witness, while Condi was full of composure. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s the Security Council.’
    The Russians appreciated her sang-froid. ‘She wasn’t even an iron woman – much higher,’ said a Putin aide.
    Her old friend Sergei Ivanov joked to her: ‘We are discussing top-secret matters. Here’s some top-secret military intelligence documents. Would you like to see them, Condoleezza?’ There was much laughter – and some raised eyebrows on the American side when the Russians brought out bottles of Georgian wine. This was just after the arrest of the Russian officers and the embargo on Georgian products. The Russians started telling crude jokes about Georgians – which Rice could understand, despite the interpreter’s attempts to clean them up.
    After a while, Rice said to Putin: ‘You know, we have some work to do.’
    Putin took his guests off to a side room, with defence minister Sergei Ivanov and the foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who acted as interpreter. Here, the talk got serious.
    Putin started lecturing Rice about Ukraine, its history and demographics, and why America was wrong to even contemplate bringing it into NATO. Ivanov recalled in an interview: ‘Putin explained what Ukraine was – at least a third of the population are ethnic Russians – and the negative consequences that could arise, not only for us but for all of Europe if Ukraine and Georgia were dragged into NATO.’
    According to Bill Burns, Rice retorted that sovereign states had the right to make their sovereign choices about which institutions or alliances they wished to belong to, and that this should not be seen as threatening.
    But Putin was not at all persuaded by that. ‘You do not understand what you are doing,’ he said. ‘You are playing with fire.’
    Then the ‘lecture’ turned to the recent events in Georgia, and Rice decided to give as good as she got. ‘President Bush has told me to come and say that if Russia does anything in Georgia, there will be a rupture in US–Russia relations.’
    Ambassador Burns recalls that Putin’s answer was unmistakable: if Georgian provocations caused a security problem, Russia would respond. Rice could feel Putin’s tone turning hard-edged.
    All of a sudden Putin stood up, looking angry and intimidating. Reflexively, Rice also stood up, and in her high heels she was now taller than the Russian, looking down at him. She remembers it as ‘not a nice moment – probably the toughest moment between the two of us’.
    Putin decided to tell it straight. ‘If they [the Georgians] provoke any violence,’ he said, ‘there will be consequences! And you tell that to your president.’
    Lavrov, interpreting, did not translate the last phrase, but Rice had understood. This was a forceful warning from an angry Putin – one that she would remember clearly two years later when Russia brought down the might of its armed forces on Georgia after Saakashvili launched an ill-conceived attack on South Ossetia.
    A Cold War murder
    There is, perhaps, no enemy more hateful to the KGB than one of their own who turns against them. Forgiveness for disloyalty is not something they teach their agents.
    Alexander Litvinenko was an officer in the Soviet KGB and its successor, the FSB. In the 1990s he specialised in counter-terrorism and fighting organised crime. After service in Chechnya he was assigned to a new FSB unit called URPO, the Directorate for the Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Organisations, which in effect consisted of hit squads designed to take out the country’s top mafia crime bosses. But Litvinenko became aware of