From Russia with Blood

Photos

The superfixer Scot Young on holiday with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Scarlet.

The superfixer Scot Young on holiday with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Scarlet.

The superfixer Scot Young on holiday with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Scarlet.

The superfixer Scot Young on holiday with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Scarlet.

Boris Berezovsky (center), known in Russia as the “godfather of the oligarchs,” fled to Britain after falling afoul of Vladimir Putin and used his vast wealth to fight a long-distance war with the Kremlin. (Getty Images)

The mansion on the Wentworth Estate that Berezovsky bought from Young after fleeing Russia in 2001.

The Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili arriving at Berezovsky’s sixtieth birthday party at Blenheim Palace. The pair were inseparable friends and business partners.

Former KGB officer Andrey Lugovoy turned up at the palace by bus, a shabby brown corduroy coat slung over his dinner suit.

Young (right) arriving at Blenheim Palace with Ruslan Fomichev—Berezovsky’s chief financier—and Fomichev’s wife, Katya. The pair’s real estate development in the Russian capital, Project Moscow, was already on the rocks.

The FSB defector and dissident Alexander Litvinenko entering the palace with his wife, Marina.

Yuri Felshtinsky making his entrance. The Russian historian was hard at work alongside Litvinenko investigating FSB links to a series of terrorist atrocities in Russia.

Berezovsky (left) and Patarkatsishvili greeting one another as guests drank pink champagne by a roaring fire.

Young (right) embracing Berezovsky as the old Logovaz director Yuli Dubov sidled by to their left.

Young was not looking quite himself at the party. His dark curls around his collar were slightly slick with sweat, his bow tie was askew, and his eyes were glazed.

Fomichev chatted easily with the party guests, but he was feeling intense pressure from Moscow as his city-center development fell apart.

Berezovsky was in his element as the big man at the party—embracing everyone, toasting mother Russia, and showering his loyal followers with largesse.

Berezovsky was in his element as the big man at the party—embracing everyone, toasting mother Russia, and showering his loyal followers with largesse.

Berezovsky was in his element as the big man at the party—embracing everyone, toasting mother Russia, and showering his loyal followers with largesse.

The Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev (center) presenting his benefactor with a carefully wrapped samurai sword as the birthday festivities drew to a close.

Alexander Perepilichnyy, a Russian financier who fled to the UK to blow the whistle on a massive Kremlin-linked fraud, collapsed and died suddenly while jogging near his home in Surrey, England, in November 2012. (Public record)

Dr. Matthew Puncher, the scientist who measured the fatal dose of radioactive polonium used by two Russian agents to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London, was found stabbed to death at his home in Oxford in 2016.

The high-rolling property dealer Robbie Curtis was part of the “dining club” who regularly met Berezovsky and Young at the exclusive Cipriani restaurant in Mayfair. He was the second of the group to die in an apparent suicide when he tumbled in front of a train in 2012.

The FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko died slowly under the full glare of the world’s media after being poisoned with radioactive polonium in 2006, allowing time for images of his gaunt and hairless frame to be beamed around the globe and for him to solve his own murder by accusing the Kremlin of ordering his killing. (Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin’s former propaganda czar Mikhail Lesin arriving at the Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, DC, on November 4, 2015. The next morning, he would be found bludgeoned to death in the penthouse suite. (FBI)

Scot Young (left) met the organized crime boss Patrick Adams at a pub called the Barley Mow in Mayfair on a wintry afternoon in 2012, and afterward Young told his friends that “nothing would happen” because he was being “looked after.” What the pair didn’t know was that they were being watched.

Young (second from left) caught on film at Boujis nightclub with his girlfriend Noelle Reno (far left). By now he was telling friends, family, and the police that he was being tailed by a team of Russian hit men.

Evidence from the scene of Scot Young’s death, including his bloodied shoes and socks, and the phones in his pocket when he fell. (Laura Gallant, BuzzFeed News)

Evidence from the scene of Scot Young’s death, including his bloodied shoes and socks, and the phones in his pocket when he fell. (Laura Gallant, BuzzFeed News)

Evidence from the scene of Scot Young’s death, including his bloodied shoes and socks, and the phones in his pocket when he fell. (Laura Gallant, BuzzFeed News)

Evidence from the scene of Scot Young’s death, including his bloodied shoes and socks, and the phones in his pocket when he fell. (Laura Gallant, BuzzFeed News)

The view from the window from which Scot Young plunged to his death onto the wrought-iron spikes of the fence below.

On either side of the outside windowsill, Young’s daughters, Sasha and Scarlet, found rows of faint scratch marks in the dirt—about as far apart as the fingers on a hand.