Excerpt

• "Then I'll go with you. If they shoot you there, I want to be present. Besides, I've never been to Turkey."

To the uninitiated, the Litvinenkos, staying in a small seaside hotel, looked like typical vacationers, of which there are tens of thousands in Antalya. The fit head of the family, who took morning jogs along the embankment, his pretty wife, covered in a two-week tan, and a mischievous six-year-old child aroused no suspicion among the locals, for whom the Russian tourist is a source of prosperity and the main engine of the local economy. By the time of our arrival, they already felt like old-timers, happily acting as guides and interpreters of local customs.

• "Do you know what he's shouting?" Tolik Litvinenko began explaining to Svetlana when the midday cry of the mullah, carried by amplifiers from the minaret, rang out. "He's shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' so they pray to the Turkish god."

And yet, looking closely, one could notice that the stresses of recent months had taken their toll on the fugitives. This was evident in the searching looks Sasha gave every new person who came into view, in Marina's tear-stained eyes, and in the restlessness of Tolik, who was constantly trying to attract the attention of adults.

• "Do you think the Americans will take us?" was Sasha's first question.

• "First we need to get to them," I replied. "Show me your documents."

Turkey is one of the few countries where citizens of most states, including Russia, can enter without visas, or rather, obtain a visa upon entry by paying 30 dollars. Marina and Tolik entered Turkey with ordinary Russian foreign passports from Spain, where they had gone on a tourist trip. Sasha's document was fake; his real passport had been seized during a search. He showed me a passport from a country bordering Russia (at Sasha's request, I won't name it), with his photo but a different surname.

• "Where did you get it?" I asked in surprise.

• "What, did you forget where I worked? The guys made it. Better to have a hundred friends than a hundred rubles."

• "Well made. But how can you tell it's you?"

• "Here," he showed an internal Russian passport, a driver's license, and an FSB veteran's ID.

• "Tell me, have your curators in Moscow already discovered your absence?"

• "Yes, I called; they've been in a panic and looking for me for a week now."

• "You called from here, so they know you're in Turkey."

• "I called using this," he showed a calling card from an English company. "It goes through a central computer; the call can't be traced. Though, I don't know."

• "You shouldn't have called."

• "Listen, I had to let my old folks know I'm okay. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving. And Marina called her mother, said she was in Spain with Tolik. To hell with them, the bastards, they're hunting us like hares!"