Mkritch and his bosses discussed various options and decided to contract a hit man in Los Angeles for the job. Chechen gangs would be blamed for the murder, a plausible cover story given Ruslan’s history as a racketeer and Chechen gangs’ notoriety for revenge attacks. This plan failed when the U.K. denied the hit man from Los Angeles a visa.
Mkritch and his bosses consulted further. Eventually Mkritch’s bosses ordered that he shoot Ruslan and Nazarbek. They would provide false passports, visas and misinformation for a cover story that the Chechen brothers had returned to Russia.
“Now I understand the whole idea was to put me as a victim and finish the case,” Mkritch told police.
Mkritch did not want to kill Ruslan and Nazarbek himself. He said that an assassin was hired. A young American smuggled the murder weapon, a gun, into Britain. A man named Arthur received the gun. Prosecutors in the murder case described what happened next.
In late February 1993, Nazarbek checked into a London hospital for treatment of a sinus condition. He was expected home four days later. With Nazarbek, Ruslan’s brother and bodyguard out of the way, the assassin went to work. He arrived at the brothers’ flat and shot Ruslan at point-blank range in bed while Ruslan slept. Mkritch said Gagik was present but did not take part in the murder.
When Nazarbek came back, he did not seem to notice anything unusual. He went to bed, fell asleep and the assassin struck again. He shot Nazarbek, like Ruslan, three times in the head with a Beretta pistol. Mkritch said the murder weapon was smuggled back to the United States. One key piece of evidence disappeared, but the bodies remained.
I wondered if Alison had sensed a change in her husband after this — erratic behaviour or anxiety. The prosecutor said Gagik and Mkritch moved quickly to eliminate traces of the murders. They bought a new bed to replace one soaked through with blood. They also purchased a refrigerator. Then they called delivery men Patrick Johnson and Patrick Marsh and offered them £500 if they would move a large box from the Chechens’ penthouse to a semi-detached house in Harrow.
When the delivery men commented on the heavy weight of the box, Mkritch told them that it contained a seventeenth-century statue. Gagik said the box contained a refrigerator. Markings on the packaging seemed to confirm this, but Johnson and Marsh became suspicious.
“Four of us were trying to lift it. It was heavy and if it was a fridge-freezer it shouldn’t have been that heavy,” Johnson told the court. “It smelled like a fridge-freezer where everything’s gone rotten inside. There was a sort of lavender fragrance to camouflage whatever the smell was.” After the move, the delivery men telephoned the police. Police officers went to the house in Harrow, searched it, and found the box. When they opened it, they discovered Ruslan’s body inside. He still wore his pyjamas and earplugs. His body had been bound with tape, rolled in a carpet and then stuffed into the box. These details must have horrified Alison as she listened in the courtroom; they certainly horrified me.
The police went to the Chechens’ penthouse. They found Nazarbek’s body. Then they staked out the building. The next day Mkritch and Gagik arrived with an electric saw and plastic bags. I shuddered as I imagined what might have ensued had the police not intervened. They arrested Mkritch and Gagik and collected evidence to convict the men.
I next read with concern that Alison had been briefly arrested. News reports stated that the police had intercepted a vial sent from Los Angeles with a destination address of Alison’s house in West London. The vial contained enough snake poison to kill a hundred people. Reports differed on one key point. Some said that Alison had ordered the venom and was released because she could legally possess it. I did not believe this. Other reports stated that someone else had sent the venom to Alison, a more likely explanation, I thought.
Mkritch also had snake poison. He kept it under a bandage on his body. Police found it when they arrested Mkritch. They identified that type of venom as a poison of choice for security service agents from Mkritch’s part of the world who might need to commit suicide. Mkritch succeeded even without his vial. He hanged himself in prison. Just before his death he told police: “The KGB would not forgive anyone at any time. By talking about these matters now, perhaps I am signing a death warrant for my family.”
Gagik faced trial at the Old Bailey alone. Alison looked on from the gallery. The defence portrayed Gagik as an incompetent body disposer. It argued that he did not participate in the murders. The prosecution said that Gagik helped plan each stage. The detective inspector in charge of the case, Julian Headon, cited greed as a motive.
Headon said that Gagik “was doing business with Ruslan. He knew all the contacts; Ruslan could not speak English and with him out of the way the Chechen government would either have to start again or let Gagik carry on with the [Stinger] deals.” According to Headon, “Ruslan’s death would have put Gagik into the big money…Millions upon millions of pounds.”
The court reached no verdict on who actually pulled the trigger. The judge described the killings as “professional assassinations” and told Gagik, “There is no real reason to believe that your hand was on the trigger. The murders appear to have been planned in this country by Martirossian [Mkritch].”
Gagik received two life sentences for double murder. I read, with sadness, that Alison cried as Gagik was led away to jail. I could not imagine the pain of discovering that your husband had led such a double life.
Stephen had arrived back from Ukraine. We were colleagues now in the same unit at work. I felt so happy to have his company here in my middle world, halfway between home and Kiev. He rented a flat in Chiswick, where Alison and Gagik had lived. I went for dinner one evening, strolled through this green and pleasant neighbourhood and thought of Alison again. I had heard that she’d moved in with her sister, Karen.
I reached Stephen’s apartment and rang the bell. He came to the door holding a wooden spoon. I followed him into the kitchen. Pots bubbled on the stove top. I smelled simmering tomatoes, garlic and basil.
“I’m not kidding. He said, ‘Gobble, gobble’ to me,” I told Stephen as I described a conversation that I’d had that morning with our manager. He stirred a pot while I watched and sipped wine.
“What does that mean?” Stephen said laughing.
“He said something about sacrificing a turkey for Christmas. I think they’re getting ready for job cuts.”
“That can’t be. They’ve just hired,” he said.
We switched topics. We discussed films and gossiped about friends in Kiev. I asked Stephen about his girlfriend Katya. They had met in Ukraine and planned to marry and build a life in England. I felt adrift compared to Stephen and Katya. The only real decision I had made was that even though I liked London, I did not want to settle here. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be fully accepted. A few weeks later I flew home for Christmas.
When I arrived back at work after the holidays, I saw an ad for a Kiev correspondent in our internal newsletter. I applied for the position. The next weeks passed in a blur of work during the day and study at night. I had to pass a newsroom test in order to qualify for the job. At home, I spread a map of the world across the kitchen table, memorized countries and their capitals, feeling that I was back at school again. Then I gathered key facts about each country and learned those as well. I passed the exam and prepared for the board interview.
At the end of February 1994, I found out that I got the job. Excited at the prospect of fieldwork once more, I shed belongings I had gathered in London and tuned my Lada for a return journey across Europe, back over the Carpathians to Ukraine. As I prepared for my trip, I heard that Alison had had an encounter with the police. She issued a copyright violation writ against them for a picture published without her permission. Alison’s mother had taken the picture. It showed Alison in a bikini. I did not know what to make of this but really now thought only of my move.