Farewell Read online

  Yet such a link would be logical. Even more so considering that when Vetrov arrived in Moscow, less than a year after his departure for Canada, he told his son that he had been recalled home because of the stolen jewels, which they had left for repair in a shop, not knowing that this was prohibited by the Soviet authorities. Vladik was too young then to ask questions, but he is certain that this was the explanation given to him.

  There is another version of the events. One of Sergei Kostin’s contacts at the First Chief Directorate (PGU) had been asked to write a report on Vetrov’s responsibilities within the department. Thus he gained access to Vetrov’s work file at the KGB.3 One can read there the written explanation given by Svetlana in which she claimed that she had brought the jewelry for repair not knowing this was prohibited, and that Vladimir knew nothing about it. In a short handwritten note, Vetrov corroborated the last point of her statement.

  Kostin’s contact drew the conclusion that the PGU internal counterintelligence (department 5K) was firmly convinced that the couple had taken the jewelry items to Canada to sell them there. The goldsmith had allegedly taken the jewels on consignment, and everything would have worked out fine if it had not been for the break-in. After the holdup, the jeweler had to report to the police the Vetrovs’ pieces along with the other stolen items. He probably did not suspect for a moment that such an innocent trade operation was considered such a serious crime by the Soviet authorities.

  Canadian counterintelligence was certainly better informed, and they allegedly seized the opportunity to approach Vetrov. However, aware of being at fault, and for the same reasons as in Paris, the officer did not inform his superiors.

  Clearly, Vladimir did not yield to blackmail, and the RCMP wanted its revenge. It allegedly asked the police to send a letter to Vetrov’s attention through the USSR embassy. As expected, the letter was opened and read—otherwise, the RCMP could have sent the letter to Vetrov’s home address or to the trade mission. The letter was referring to stolen jewelry belonging to the Vetrovs and was asking them to go to the police station, under the pretext that, since the jewelry pieces were not insured, it was necessary to estimate their value. The goal was to lead the KGB to conclude that the Vetrovs were indulging in prohibited deals.

  As strange as that may seem, there is not a single document in Vetrov’s file that refers to a recruiting attempt. Those assumptions were only made by his colleagues, well positioned to know how their adversaries were operating. As operatives, the PGU executives were probably thinking that the Canadian services could not miss such an opportunity. However, Vetrov did not report the recruiting approach as was his duty to do so. The stolen jewels affair by itself was enough to justify his repatriation. The intervention of the Canadian police made matters worse for Vetrov. These are the conclusions drawn by one of Vetrov’s colleagues, who was very familiar with the customs of his organization.

  The third version is from Peter Marwitz, former officer of the Canadian counterintelligence. If this is a true account (prudence requires an “if” here), it changes entirely our view of Vetrov’s stay in Canada. For openers, Marwitz denied any involvement of the RCMP in the plan of sending a letter to the USSR embassy, whether to seek revenge or for whatever reason. This letter, if it ever existed, could only come from the police themselves, and the police could not have known that selling jewelry was prohibited by Soviet authorities. “The Service,” says Peter Marwitz, referring to the RCMP, “had no reason to harm Vetrov, but everything to gain in helping him.”4 For good reasons. “Vetrov drank far too much and had embezzled KGB agentry funds. Vetrov was accessed through a third party, a Canadian agent, then he met a representative of the Service and accepted big money when he agreed to be recruited by the Service just days prior to his departure for Moscow. Therefore Vetrov was ours, however briefly, before he became the DST’s.”

  What to make of such an assertion? If this is true, it raises more questions than it answers.

  Indeed, had Vetrov agreed to work for the RCMP, this agency should have reminded him about it, whether directly or through the CIA or MI6 (British intelligence). It is normal practice to summon an agent, who has been formally recruited, to “produce” even if he or she changed jobs or moved to another country. However, nothing confirms any collaboration with the RCMP after Vetrov returned to Moscow.

  Furthermore, why did he forget about the Canadians later on when he decided to offer his services to the West? If he was already on the Canadian counterintelligence payroll, why look for another employer? Was it because this would have made the first contact much more difficult? Or was it because he knew that the RCMP was infiltrated by the KGB?

  And last, the RCMP obviously did not tell the DST that Vetrov had agreed to collaborate. The French agency knew that its former target had been posted in Canada. Later on, when it received Vetrov’s offer to collaborate, the DST should have or could have asked its Canadian colleagues, under any pretext, for additional information about him. Nothing substantiates such an assumption.

  Could it be disinformation on the part of Peter Marwitz, cleverly concealed in the many relevant corrections he made to the text of Bonjour Farewell, after his correspondence with Sergei Kostin had become a friendly exchange? It is never pleasant to suspect somebody you like of having a hidden agenda, but it is the essence of the trade to be good at being likeable, at earning people’s trust, and to keep this trust even after a few little lies.

  Quizzed on that point during a conversation, Raymond Nart, who had not said a word about it so far, did confirm that the Canadian agency had attempted to no avail to recruit Vetrov, and in a much more formal way than did the DST when the Russian officer left Paris in 1970.

  In any case, the fact that Vladimir Vetrov was recalled to Moscow while his wife stayed in Canada weakens the hypothesis that their premature departure was directly linked to the jewelry trafficking affair, with or without a subsequent attempt at recruiting Vetrov. If the usual guidelines had been followed, the Vetrovs would have both been urgently exfiltrated from Canada.5 So, the explanation must be somewhere else; the jewelry scandal—which happened at a convenient time—must have been just a smoke screen. This is corroborated by the fact that, instead of staying two or three more days in Montreal—and even this would not have made much sense—Svetlana stayed an entire month longer in Canada.

  She remembers this episode as a nightmare, undoubtedly the longest month of her life. She was all alone at home, with only one Russian neighbor in the apartment complex. Every morning she would teach her class in the makeshift school housed by the trade mission. The Russian neighbor was the GRU resident; ironically, KGB people would refer to their military counterpart as “neighbors” and vice versa. He would generally give her a lift, but sometimes she had to ride the bus. She constantly feared that she could be arrested at any time by Canadian counterintelligence agents. Fear alternated with boredom. Every once in a while, friends would come to visit or invite her to their place.

  It is inconceivable that, without a very good reason, the KGB would have left abroad, on her own and for so long, a Soviet woman convicted or suspected of being involved in illegal activities. This would not have happened either if the KGB had had the faintest doubt about her safety in Canada. So what to make of all this? After discussing this question at length with his contacts at the PGU, Sergei Kostin came to the following conclusion: this entire charade would have been necessary to protect a KGB mole.

  Let us suppose that the K Line (which was responsible for internal counterintelligence and the safety of the Soviet colony members) was informed that one of the agents handled by Vetrov was in fact a double agent collaborating with the RCMP. It was expected that Canadian counterintelligence would set a trap for Vetrov in order to catch him red-handed and arrest him. Therefore, exfiltrating him from Canada was now urgent. And that is what they did.

  The source of this critical information must have been extremely valuable to be protected with such extraordinary measures. It coul
d have been an RCMP officer recruited by the KGB. Thus, in order to prevent Canadian counterintelligence from unrelentingly trying to discover the source of the leak and tracing that mole, Vetrov had to go back to Moscow alone. This way, his departure would not look like an emergency exfiltration to the eyes of the Canadian spy-hunters.

  In a democratic country like Canada, in spite of her fears, Svetlana was not running a serious risk of being bothered by the secret services. On the other hand, in this type of affair, time is of the essence. The longer Svetlana stayed in Montreal alone, the better the KGB’s chances to allay the RCMP’s suspicions about a possible mole. In the eyes of the Canadian investigators, there was a possibility that Vetrov had fallen ill while in Moscow and had to undergo treatment for an extended period of time. In any case, this was a possibility they had to study. Each day could bring new leads, thus moving the danger further away from the source.6

  This was a usual trick for the KGB. Usually, for added safety, the individual involved, Vetrov in this case, would not be told the reason for his recall. This would explain why, when he came back to Moscow, Vladimir told his son that he was recalled because of the jewels affair. Once he got reimmersed in the murky waters of his service, with its secret undercurrents, he found out about the true reason of his recall. This is substantiated by a remark Vetrov made to his wife when she eventually made it back to Moscow. Although her return was uneventful, Svetlana was furious: “You are all nuts at the KGB! Abandoning me, leaving me by myself a whole month!” In response, Vladimir told her about some necessity: “It was necessary to make the Canadians believe that I could still return to Montreal.” Svetlana remembers this sentence very well, although she did not understand the meaning of it. But it sheds light on this whole episode, helping us out of the Canadian fog before we move into what will turn out to be Moscow darkness.

  Against all expectations, this analysis based entirely on assumptions and deductions was supported by Peter Marwitz. He even revealed the name of a KGB mole within the Canadian secret services: Gilles Germain Brunet.7 Unfortunately, we have no other information about this character.

  CHAPTER 9

  Urban Worries and Pastoral Bliss

  Wherever the truth lies, the Canadian episode called into question Vetrov’s future with the KGB. His early departure from Canada may be explained by concerns about his safety and the safety of a valuable KGB Canadian mole. However, the jewels affair was undoubtedly a serious breach of Soviet law. For months, Vetrov was subjected to endless meetings, or interrogations, within Directorate K. He was depressed, did not speak much and, in his wife’s presence, did not want to say a word about what was going on at work.

  It took several months after his recall, in the summer 1975, for the dust to settle. In the end, the PGU decided to keep Vetrov. But his career as an operative was definitely over. He would have no more cover posts, and he went to work in “The Woods,” as was nicknamed the new headquarters of Soviet intelligence, located beyond the beltway.1

  He lost the main advantage of working for the PGU while suffering at the same time from its major downside. He would not be able to go abroad ever again, neither as an operative nor as a tourist, because he knew too much, and because they did not trust him completely anymore.

  For Vetrov, this circumstance was a constant source of resentment. He would have been better off working as an ordinary engineer all that time, dreaming obsessively about the unattainable West. Now, he had acquired a taste for a comfortable and affluent life, and this life had been taken away from him by a decision that seemed most unfair to him. All around him, his former comrades, and among them a few who were much less skilled, intelligent, motivated, and less productive than he was, were being sent abroad—Paris, Geneva, New York, and so forth. Vetrov surely had heard about other “faux pas,” even more serious than his own mistakes, but they were perpetrated by “connected” colleagues. In their case, the scandal was quickly hushed and, in order to forget about it even faster, the rich kid at fault was sent somewhere in Sweden or in New Zealand with strict orders to do nothing but twiddle his thumbs. You would run into the same character a few years later, getting out of a brand-new car, dressed to the nines and talking about this sumptuous dacha he had just bought.

  Such was the negative impact Vetrov’s Canadian adventure had on his personal life. It also had consequences on his bureaucratic career. In fact, his nomination to his new post was something of a paradox, often a substitute for logic in the Soviet system. At the PGU, Vetrov was nominated to the post of assistant to the head of the Fourth Department (Information and Analysis) of Directorate T (as in technology). Unfortunately for him, this post could not be confused with “deputy head,” a high-ranking functionary with responsibilities and the potential of replacing, one day, the department head. The position of assistant, without being as technical as the job of a secretary, was, as a rule, a dead-end in the hierarchy of a department. This department was entirely managed by officers deemed unsuited for operational work, who were kept on payroll by the PGU until they reached retirement age. Perhaps this was because each of them knew too much to be turned loose. From a career standpoint, this service was a degrading dumping ground where employees had lost all motivation and were traditionally inclined to drink.

  The paradox was, from that moment on, Vetrov had to handle and synthesize the scientific and technical intelligence reports from KGB residencies worldwide. It was like giving the key to the safe to a person you would not have entrusted with your coin purse! An unreliable officer operating within a KGB residency abroad could potentially reveal secrets regarding its staff, agents, working methods, and the operating mode of the geographic service at the Center. From this new position Vetrov had the capability, if he decided to betray the system, to deliver crucial information about an entire domain of KGB activities, revealing its philosophy, its operation, its methods, and the names of hundreds of officers and agents posted in Western countries.

  By a strange irony of fate, intelligence services in the Western Bloc had no idea that pursuing their “study” of Vetrov was an undertaking now a hundred times more valuable than when their target was in the West. Yet, according to Vitaly Karavashkin, future head of the French section at the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), who had the opportunity to study at length Vetrov’s file, the Western services seemed to be obsessive about doing him harm. After having their revenge against Vetrov by compromising him further in the eyes of Soviet authorities, the RCMP apparently decided to broadcast to the whole world that he was a member of Communist intelligence services. Supposedly, a short while after Vetrov returned to Moscow, a Canadian newspaper published a well-documented article on the KGB activities, naming Vetrov among other known spies. Published information of that nature is not very likely, unless a special service tries deliberately to leak it. Echoed or not by the press in other countries, specialists knew how to use the article. Vetrov’s international career seemed over.2

  Vetrov in KGB uniform. He never wore a uniform and never had one. For official photographs there was only one lieutenant colonel jacket for the entire Directorate T.

  After a while, Vetrov’s work situation at the PGU seemingly got back to normal, proof that the Canadian story was not that serious after all—even if nothing was forgotten in the KGB system. Vladimir proved to be as competent in the analysis of reports as he was in agent handling. He could be, therefore, assured that he would have a stable and well-paid job until retirement, even if he was condemned to stay in Moscow and chances for a promotion were bleak. This is borne out by the fact that in 1977, on the occasion of the KGB sixtieth anniversary, he received, as one of the best officers, a honorary diploma signed by Andropov, head of the KGB, who was about to reach the top of the pyramid of Soviet power.

  In 1972, the KGB intelligence service, the PGU (First Chief Directorate), moved to Yasenevo. From that year on, Vetrov worked in this modern building hidden in a forest, south of Moscow.

  An in-house doc
ument written by his superiors, in the usual austere and impersonal tone, gave him a very positive professional evaluation. “In a short period of time, has mastered a new domain of activity. Approaches his professional duties with creativity and initiative. Took an active part in the social life of the community. Has been elected twice member of his department Party committee. During the last year, served as a military examining magistrate.”3 It is worth noting here that this last mention will become significant later on.

  Shortly after, there were even talks about a possible promotion. Since 1970, Directorate T had its own research center located in the North River Terminal area, nicknamed NIILopukh, after he head of the institute, a certain Lopukhin, a name that evokes, in its shorter form “lopukh,” a simple-minded person. The acronym could therefore be read to say “Dummies Research Center.” This reveals how little regard operatives had for research work.

  By the end of the seventies, there was talk about expanding its scope by transforming it into the Institute of Intelligence-Gathering Issues. The plan was to create an analysis department which, some suggested, could be headed by Vetrov. In his particular case, this would have been a double promotion. Heading a department would automatically entitle him to the rank of colonel. However, the expected nomination took forever to materialize.

  Meanwhile, Vetrov discovered a new passion. Born in an old Moscow neighborhood, he was an urban creature. All he knew about the countryside was those dachas you could go to in half an hour by train, such as the house of their friends the Grekovs near Leningrad, where the Vetrovs spent a few summers after they returned from Canada. Suddenly, Vladimir got infected by the virus going around among Muscovites at the time—the need to experience authentic country living, in genuine Russian izbas, far away from paved roads and without electricity. Vetrov became enamored with this different way of life.