As for the other cellmate, let’s call him *Oleg, Skripal liked the look of him even less. He was a smaller man, quieter too. So what was wrong with Oleg? Skripal objected to the tone of his remarks and he didn’t trust him. Along with the tattoos and jail-house routines, every Russian has heard of the stukatchi, the prison informers who share a cell, trying to extract information from a target inmate. After a few nights, and a smart remark too many, Skripal handed Oleg a good beating. And with that pumping of fists into his cowering cellmate, maybe Colonel Sergei Skripal, one-time member of the GRU’s 1st Commission, now reduced to the status of common prisoner, worked out some of the anger and confusion engendered by his fall from grace. Sasha, of course, didn’t get involved. The following day Oleg was removed from the cell, and in the weeks and months that stretched out ahead, nobody replaced him. That was just fine by Sergei and Sasha, each had established that the other was not to be trifled with, and over time a sound rapport built between them.
The routines of Lefortovo came to dominate every hour of his life during the crushing, dark weeks of that first winter. The prison day ran from 6am to 10pm when ‘lights out’ was officially called. There were three square meals, and the menu was on a three-day cycle. Once a week they would be individually escorted for a shower – with the inevitable finger-clicking there and back to the cell. The sheets were changed once a week also. Smokers got given a packet of cigarettes every day.
After a few repetitions of the cycle, it was in January 2005, oh happy day, Liudmila was allowed her first visit. The inmates of Lefortovo were at least allowed certain privileges in the new Russia, as befits people who have not yet been convicted. They were permitted to wear their own clothes, and their visitors could bring other goods and comforts that, after suitable inspection, were allowed in their cell. Once a month they were allowed a parcel too, up to 10kg, usually made up of clothes and food. Liudmila made sure that a TV and small fridge got delivered, which made Sergei even more popular with his tattooed cellmate.
What touched Sergei most though was that during her monthly visits, lasting around forty minutes a time, she would bring him home-cooked food. Meatballs and gravy with kasha, cured fish, you name it. What an angel! And while he knew that he could rely on his fists to get him through some situations in there, Skripal understood from the outset that it was the love and support of his family alone that would sustain him through the daily interrogations.
These began soon after his arrival and went on, with only occasional breaks, for months. Out of the cell at 9am, up the corridors, clicking fingers, to the interrogation room in the FSB Investigations Department, back four hours later. He’d have some time off then back up for more. Sometimes two sessions a day, sometimes three.
Such is the formalism of the Lefortovo process, and the veneer of legality that surrounds it, that the interrogators observe their own protocols. Sessions cannot last longer than four hours, and his questioners kept to a shift pattern. Over the months he added them up – there had been seventeen different FSB officers asking the questions. The interrogation rooms have exterior windows, but in keeping with the old KGB ‘isolator’ principles, they had been covered with paper so that light could come through but there could be no looking across the courtyard or glimpses caught of other inmates.
At night, lying in his cell, Skripal would mull over the day’s interrogation. Was he going to end up like Yuri Burlatov, murdered in prison? They still wanted to find things out from him, try to get him to the point where he would confess everything in return for some leniency. Maybe that would keep him alive for the time being.
As for the sessions themselves, they followed a certain format. ‘Against me, they never used physical force,’ Skripal recalled, ‘they knew I could take pain, it would not work.’ He had certain rights also – for example to plead Article 51 under the penal code in court, which allowed the suspect to avoid self-incrimination.
The questioning itself followed monotonous and repeated cycles; endless details of his identity, his service, his routines in Malta or Madrid, his contacts with foreign intelligence services. What was their game? Trying to catch him in lies? Or was it just the ponderous stumbling, day after day, of seventeen different interrogators who each felt they had to go through the motions, ticking off their own checklist?
Of course he could deduce a certain amount from their questions. He was asked again and again about the .22 pistol that Yuri had given him. Was it some kind of payback or honorary gift from the CIA? Ridiculous. Stupid questions like that give the suspect strength. And he was asked about his businesses and other contacts in Madrid.
He knew of course that Yuri had been through Lefortovo too, before his murder, and began to obsess on the idea that he had been broken in interrogation. But what did Yuri actually know about Sergei and his contacts with Richard Bagnall or Stephen Jones? Very little. It was Sergei who had spotted Yuri after all, not the other way around. But some of the information underlying the interrogators’ questions about Madrid could have been underpinned by things Yuri had told them.
They knew something, his FSB interrogators, that was for sure. He’d happily talk about the pistol all day long. But there were other things that had been found in the Skripals’ flat. Bank statements from Spain, and that souvenir given to him by Richard on the day he took Sergei’s family to the flamenco club.
Little by little it became clear also that they had logged his trips abroad. They knew a lot about Izmir, and of course it dawned on Sergei that he’d been under surveillance, but somewhat less about his previous journey abroad, to Malta, early in 2004. Well of course that told him something about how long he’d been under close scrutiny. Had Yuri broken in interrogation or done a deal? Of course he couldn’t be sure, but what did Yuri really know about his dealings with MI6 anyway?
Early in 2005, far away from the ongoing interrogations in Lefortovo, Stephen Jones checked into a hotel. It was a nice place, somewhere pleasant with good food and a few sights. But Stephen knew the drill. He would wait in his room, read a book perhaps, mark time until his asset turned up. But of course FORTHWITH did not arrive. He was engaged in altogether less convivial conversations in the KGB’s infamous lock-up.
Stephen returned home. Skripal was a no-show. There were protocols to be followed at Vauxhall Cross. There could be no attempts to contact their agent or Liudmila – that could just make things worse for the prisoner. Discreet inquiries via the Russian authorities, ditto, they would just establish Skripal’s guilt. The counter-intelligence people were all over it too. The arrest and murder of Captain Burlatov, well, that was one thing. He might have made an awful mistake, revealed himself by a slip in his communications or in a drunken moment of candour with a colleague. But two GRU penetrations lifted within six months of each other? No, there was something else going on here that called for a full-scale counter-intelligence investigation.
Over months in his Russian interrogation room, Skripal knew that nearly all of these FSB questions could be answered truthfully or by reference to cover stories. The souvenir? That was just something his friend the Gibraltarian businessman had given him. That gun? It was a present from a fellow Russian officer. Invisible ink? He had needed it to show his own agents how to communicate. And as for the questions about his last couple of trips abroad, well, if they’d actually spotted him talking to British spooks, why not confront him with the evidence? Skripal deduced that the surveillance in Izmir could not have followed him up to Stephen’s room nor identified the MI6 man as he arrived or left the hotel.