He feared death would come through a sabotaged flight or a bloodbath of his bodyguards but it was in a bedroom at his Home Counties manor house that Badri Patarkatsishvili met his end.
Whether the Georgian oligarch and opposition leader died naturally of a heart attack or from foul play is now for British detectives to determine.
They tested for radioactivity yesterday but found none.
“Badri”, as he was known, spent his final day in the company of Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney-General; Lord Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s PR man; and a handful of Russian exiles. There was no security man in Lord Goldsmith’s offices and the Georgian seemed far from paranoid.
The last of his contacts to see him alive was Boris Berezovsky, his friend and long-time business associate, who is now mourning yet another ally’s death in suspicious circumstances.
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Scotland Yard had spent months examining evidence of a plot to kill Mr Patarkatsishvili, 52, but it was at 10.48pm on Tuesday that Surrey Police were alerted by paramedics to his fatal collapse. According to Mr Berezovsky, his friend had been complaining about his heart when they met on Tuesday. A source said that the discomfort of six hours in the warmth of Lord Goldsmith’s room might have been to blame.
The Georgian exile was said to be smoking 20 cigarettes a day, although he could devour as many as 60. His father was said to have died aged 48 of a heart attack but the oligarch had no known medical condition.
“Badri never exercised and was overweight,” a business colleague said last night. “He was 200 per cent a family man with a lovely wife, two married daughters and a granddaughter who was the apple of his eye.”
Since late last year Mr Patarkatsishvili, protected by 120 bodyguards, had been saying that he feared he would be assassinated in London by the Georgian authorities. In December he said he had been the target of at least two assassination attempts in Britain. The Georgian authorities had accused him of plotting a coup.
A covertly recorded audiotape purporting to be a conversation between a Chechen hitman and an official from the Georgian Interior Ministry was played in December to The Sunday Times. The voices suggested killing the Georgian in England or arranging for a helicopter or aircraft crash. “Even if he had 100 people guarding him, well that’s not a problem,” the official is heard to say. “Our issue is such that we’ll destroy these guards.”
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There was every reason for Mr Patarkatsishvili to be frightened. His friend and colleague Alexander Litvinenko had been murdered in London in a suspected Russian poison plot using radioactive polonium-210. The Georgian had even sheltered the dissident former KGB man as he fled from President Putin’s clutches.
The web does not end there. The suspect wanted by Britain to be tried for murdering Mr Litvinenko is a former employee of Mr Patarkatsishvili and Mr Berezovsky. Andrei Lugovoy was security chief at their television station.
Mr Lugovoy, who denies anything to do with the poisoning, has a further link to Mr Patarkatsishvili’s final hours. Mr Lugovoy was jailed in 2001 for a failed attempt to free Nikolai Glushkov, the deputy director of Aeroflot, who was being held for alleged fraud. Mr Patarkatsishvili was accused by Russia of plotting that foiled escape. And who did the Georgian spend four hours with in Lord Goldsmith’s office on Tuesday? Mr Glushkov, now safely in London.
Plots, real and imagined, are all too easy to spot in the world of spies, politicians, financiers and gangsters into which the old Soviet Union descended. Mr Patarkatsishvili was far from above suspicion. He was regarded as little better than a mobster by General Aleksandr Korzhakov, former head of the Russian Presidential Security Service. “Badri”, Boris Yeltsin’s one-time bodyguard told the author Paul Klebnikov for his book Godfather of the Kremlin, “has an alias, like any gangster. In the criminal underworld he is known as ‘Badar’.” Klebnikov claimed that police sources saw Mr Patarkatsishvili as a go-between to Russian organised crime groups. The writer is unavailable for comment — he was shot four times as he left work as editor of Forbes Russia in Moscow in 2004.
Mr Patarkatsishvili was a business associate of Mr Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea Football Club owner. The clique were said to be behind the choice of Vladimir Putin as president. When Mr Putin turned on Mr Berezovsky, Mr Patarkatsishvili stuck with his business partner and Mr Abramovich chose the Kremlin.
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Recently Mr Patarkatsishvili’s prominent financing of the opposition to Georgia’s pro-Western leadership, even standing as a candidate in last month’s presidential election, is said to have pleased Russia.
The Georgian oligarch’s final day of business began with a prolonged meeting with Lord Goldsmith. The former Labour politician had been advising him on numerous disputes with the Georgian authorities over assets and withdrawal of licences. Also present were Mr Glushkov and Yuli Dubov, wanted for fraud in Russia but given asylum by Britain. After four hours of private talks, they were joined by Mr Berezovsky and his PR man, Lord Bell, for another two-hour session.
Mr Patarkatsiskvili was said by Lord Bell to have left the room to get some fresh air but seemed fine and full of energy when he returned. The Georgian then joined Mr Berezovsky at his Mayfair offices and, at 7pm, took his chauffeur-driven limousine home to his home, Downside Manor, near Leatherhead, Surrey.
It is unclear whether the family had their servants prepare a meal or sent out for a takeaway, but after eating, Mr Patarkatsishvili, worth an estimated £6 billion, went upstairs and collapsed in his bedroom. His wife and children called an ambulance.
Mr Berezovsky was woken at 3am to learn that another of his friends had died. He rushed to the manor but police had secured the windows and doors to preserve it as a crime scene and the Russian was refused entry.
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Surrey Police said that the death was being treated as suspicious but a source said this was because it was sudden. Mr Berezovsky issued a statement: “The death of Badri Patarkatsishvili is a terrible tragedy. I have lost my closest friend.”