Farewell Read online

  Learning a foreign language was the way to gain direct access to the outside world. It meant communicating with foreigners without the help of an interpreter and getting a better sense of the contents of non-Marxist philosophy and history books (not through quotes cleverly put together by critics); it also meant learning directly about international news, not through the deformed, selectively restrictive, and targeted lenses of the Soviet press as represented by Pravda or Izvestia. Moreover, it was a tool that allowed one to serve the motherland in the entrenched camp of decaying imperialism. It reinforced the ideological indoctrination of the trainees. The curriculum included advanced studies in Marxism-Leninism, critique of the main bourgeois doctrines, and seminars aimed at immunizing against contagious ideas spread by the capitalist, revisionist, leftist, or nationalist ways of thinking.

  However, a significant amount of time was devoted in the schedule to special training. Recruiting and handling agents, secret writing, encrypting and deciphering, tailing and countersurveillance, and deliveries and pickups from dead-drop mailboxes were among the many tools making up the perfect spy kit; each of these tools required months of training to be mastered. The methods were taught by former intelligence officers and then proven in the field. For instance, one of the exercises was all about uncovering and losing potential tailers who were actually KGB mobile surveillance apprentices whose mission was to tail the “suspects” without being spotted. Theory was not neglected either. Future intelligence officers studied the history of the KGB as well as the structure and operation of the foreign secret services they would have to work against. After two years, the trainees, also well prepared by a solid higher education, were ready to operate in the field.

  An engineer by training, Vetrov specialized in scientific and technical intelligence. Among the professional skills he acquired, one was important in his private life, too. At the “school in the woods” Vetrov learned photography, which became his hobby for years to come. He would pester Svetlana for hours to take her portrait. He ended up with hundreds of slides taken during their stay in France.

  Meanwhile, the young couple had moved because of Svetlana’s multiple athletic achievements. In 1959, she became champion of the USSR in the 4 × 100 meters relay. And for two years she had remained on the national team in athletics, where she stayed until 1965.

  She owed it in part to Vladimir. He knew his wife was a gifted runner, but that she was a little on the lazy side. He decided to become her coach. He knew the field well, even though he did not have the time anymore to practice athletics himself. He had noticed that Svetlana had weak feet, so he got a special mat, like the ones used in sports clubs, and made her jump up and down on her toes every morning. Svetlana traveled a lot to training sessions and competitions. Often, Vladimir arranged to take his vacation in the spring to be able to travel with his wife to the southern resorts, where the national team trained before the season.

  At the end of 1960, Dynamo awarded Svetlana one room in a communal apartment. This prestigious and wealthy sports club had several buildings built in the upscale neighborhoods of the capital. The Vetrovs’ apartment building was located at 37 (currently 33) Kutuzov Avenue, across the street from the building where members of the USSR Communist Party, including Leonid Brezhnev himself, lived. At last, the couple could leave the narrow room they were sharing with Vladimir’s parents.

  The happy couple in their first home. No more sleeping on boards resting on four chairs to set up every evening in the room they shared with Vetrov’s parents!

  This was their first home, just for the two of them, and they decorated it with love. The room was spacious and light. Volodia and Svetlana bought fine furniture made from red birch, a couch, and a beautiful Chinese rug with blue roses.

  Kutuzov Avenue. The massive building where the Vetrovs lived, located on a thoroughfare for government officials’ autocades. Prior to moving in, new occupants were investigated by the police.

  In this new place, they had only two neighbors, another big change from the caravanserai of Kirov Street. One of their neighbors, Ludmila Mikhailovna Bernstein, headed the design department of the Ilich plant. A veteran and a former sniper, she was a kind, well-educated woman. She lived a lifestyle that went against all Jewish traditions: her favorite meat was pork. Her mother, already an elderly woman, was as nice to socialize with as her daughter was. The four tenants got along well; they all kept their doors unlocked.

  One day, in this cozy atmosphere, Vladimir learned he was about to become a father, and he was overjoyed by the news. He started right away reading everything he could find about pregnancy. He kept telling his wife what she should and should not do, giving her advice he found in books and magazines. She had to do a certain type of gymnastics, and she had to eat more fruit. He never came back home without a lot of fresh fruit, which he left throughout the apartment in easy-to-reach places.

  Vladimir dreamt of having a little girl, who would be pretty like her mother and would be called Svetlana. They had a boy in 1962, delivered at the Grauerman maternity ward where Vladimir had also been born. This boy became the love of his life and the apple of his eye.

  The couple named him Vladislav. Svetlana had not recovered yet, so Vladimir went by himself to the registration office. But the employee probably did not hear well and wrote down “Viacheslav” in the birth registry. Vladimir did not notice; he was on cloud nine. Svetlana did notice and burst into tears. “What have you done? You ruined my child’s life!”

  Indeed, according to Soviet law, a birth certificate could not be changed in any way, just like a passport could not be changed. Even if the first name was entered with a typographic mistake, your child had to keep it exactly as registered by the State, for life. Vladimir must have looked truly distressed when he presented himself at the registry office the second time around because the employees took pity on him and rewrote the name, laughing. “If your wife is still unhappy with it, come back, and we’ll write you a third one.”

  For a long time, Vladik would accept only his parents. Yet Svetlana, who had resumed her athletic activities, often needed to travel, staying away from home for eight to ten days at a time. Although he adored his son, Vladimir was unable to take care of him; he had to work. On the eve of a trip, Svetlana would take little Vladik to his grandparents. As soon as she had turned her back, the little boy would start sobbing. “Go, go, quick!” her father would shout. “He’ll calm down.” Svetlana would leave, heartbroken.

  Vladik would start yelling as soon as his other grandfather would appear at the door. The old man would stop right there, on the threshold, with the door ajar, and would cry also. “My own grandson won’t accept me!” For Maria Danilovna, Vladik was sacred. She easily admitted that her love for her only grandson was excessive. This was a very happy time for the family at large.

  This was also a time filled with hope. In 1962, Vladimir finished his training as an intelligence officer. There was talk about sending him to the United States or France, since by then he was fluent enough in English and in French. To polish his training, and to wait until he got a KGB residency abroad, Vetrov got a position as an engineer in the foreign relations department of the USSR State Committee of Electronic Technology (GKET). He started working there on September 20, 1962, and stayed until August 15, 1965. This was, of course, a cover, since a Soviet government employee operating abroad had to be able to talk about his previous job. Another advantage of the position was that it provided many opportunities for Vetrov to familiarize himself with contacting foreigners, and some of them could later on testify to the fact that, indeed, he had responsibilities in a civilian organization.

  The GKET was located along Kitaisky Passage, in front of the recently built Rossia Hotel, a ten-minute walk from the KGB headquarters. At the time, before it moved to Yasenevo in 1972, Soviet intelligence services were still in the Lubyanka. It was difficult to determine in which of those State committees Vetrov spent more time. He did not confide much to his wife w
hen it came to his work, except for aspects that might have had an impact on their family life. All she knew was that he specialized in electronic equipment for planes and missiles.

  KGB headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square. Actually, the entire area, left and right, and behind the main building, was occupied by various divisions of the KGB.

  Svetlana graduated from the Lenin Teachers’ College in June 1961, with a “free diploma,” as it was called, so she was not assigned a mandatory teaching position, because the Vetrovs were expecting to be sent abroad for a mission. Then, Vladik was born. Svetlana had gained weight. Afraid of staying out of shape, she resumed her athletic activities. She was taken back into the national team in track and field, and athletics occupied a major place in her life again. It was supposedly “amateur” sports, but at her level, it was a full-time job. There were training sessions in the spring and in the fall, with endless competitions in between, and she was well paid at that! Svetlana received an athletic grant for an amount that was higher than an engineer’s salary. However, her new position as the wife of a KGB officer also brought unpleasant surprises. For security reasons linked to her husband’s activities, she was not allowed to take part in competitions organized in capitalist countries. She could not go to the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. She could not go with her team to England or the United States.

  Time passed and Vladimir was still on the payroll at “the Center,” as the headquarters of intelligence in Moscow was called. Svetlana was getting bored at home and decided to accept a job at the Borodino Battle Museum. This is a famous circular panorama representing the battle against Napoleon, with real objects and models in the foreground and huge paintings in the background, giving the illusion of being there. The museum was a military establishment run, at the time, by General Nikolai Andreevich Kolosov. A bit tired of dealing with colonels as researchers and tour guides, he liked to add a few pretty women to his staff. The knowledge that Svetlana gained about Napoleon’s Russian campaign, French history and civilization was very helpful when she lived in France. Moreover, the panorama was located at the end of Kutuzov Avenue, near the Triumphal Arch, a twenty-minute walk from the Vetrovs’ home.

  Meanwhile, the couple had moved again. In 1963, they exchanged their room and Svetlana’s parents’ room for two rooms in a three-room apartment on the fourth floor of a building almost across the street, 22 Kutuzov Avenue. Vladimir, Svetlana, and her parents now had a little more living space. It was a residential building of the Party Central Committee, built in 1939. Under Stalin, there were machine guns in the attic to protect his route when he was traveling to his Kuntsevo residence.5 The Vetrovs’ neighbor was a woman employed at the auto mechanics station servicing the vehicles of the CPSU Central Committee. Soon after they moved in, with the help of the KGB, they were awarded her room to allow the entire family to live together, at last.

  The mission they had been expecting for so long became reality in 1965. Vetrov was sent to France, a very sought-after position among the ranks of the First Chief Directorate. But this was not thanks to well-known protectors. It was simply due to Nosenko’s6 betrayal in 1964, which forced the PGU to call back many of his “burnt” operatives worldwide. The staffing of the KGB residency7 in Paris was especially affected by the situation. A gifted and promising candidate, Vladimir was among the young officers nominated to those vacant positions.

  On August 16, 1965, he was officially attached to the Ministry of Foreign Trade, which would be, for the next five years, his official cover. And so, at age thirty-three, Vetrov at last had the opportunity to establish himself in the career he had chosen.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Good Life!

  France, and particularly Paris, has a very special place in Russian fantasy where the streets are crowded with poets and painters, men are chivalrous and witty, and women are beautiful and elegant. In this picture, all French people are wealthy and lead a comfortable life. People dance and sing in the streets, and lovers stroll through parks, exchanging passionate kisses every ten meters. “True” France is the country of tolerance where everybody is free to do as they please. It is also the opposite of Russia where nothing works, chaos prevails, and the fabric of life is interwoven with hardship and humiliation.

  This romantic view of France dates back to the Age of Enlightenment, widely promoted by Catherine the Great in her illiterate empire. Russian nobility made a point to learn French, and everything coming from France was lauded as being the incarnation of beauty and reason. The war against Napoleon did not change a thing, in spite of the fierce battles and the high number of Russian casualties. Even the fact that the Soviet regime substituted social values for nationalistic ones, and was closer to Germany from an economic strategy point of view, did not succeed in weakening the attraction of French culture to the Russian mind.

  At the end of August 1965, overwhelmed by emotion, the Vetrovs, with little Vladik, landed at the Bourget Airport, near Paris. They crossed town immediately—the grand boulevards, the Opera, Place de l’Etoile—so many familiar names that rang like a royal song to Russian ears. Finally, they arrived at their future home, the impressive residential building housing the Soviet colony, 16 Boulevard Suchet, in the elegant sixteenth district. Ecstatic, they got out of the car dispatched by the Soviet trade mission that had welcomed them at the airport.

  They were in for a big surprise! What easy life in Paris? They received two rooms in a communal apartment. Their accommodations were even worse than in Moscow! Each floor contained ten rooms or so, for six or seven families. There were two toilets, one at each end of the corridor. There was only one kitchen. The first four floors were assigned to the Soviet citizens working in Paris, and the fifth floor was used like a hotel for those visiting on business; all in all, it was a busy anthill.

  The inhabitants of this posh neighborhood, with wealthy families generally occupying an entire floor and sometimes even the entire building for just one household, referred to the Soviet building as the “miniature Renault factory.” In the morning, the men would walk to their office together. In the evening, they would all come back in a wave.

  The Vetrovs’ life in Paris can be characterized by the contrast of two social systems, two cultures, two lifestyles. Nationals representing their country abroad try to bring with them their customs, and those cultural differences are often enough to lead to awkward situations. In the case of two hostile, irreconcilable ideologies, one can easily imagine the tension.

  On the Vetrovs’ floor lived KGB members, GRU officers (military intelligence), and “clean” businesspeople, who were not paid by any Soviet intelligence agency. Everybody knew everybody. On average, the Soviet residents were not very sophisticated.

  For example, the Vetrovs were struck, at their arrival in Paris, by the absence of drunks in the streets. Then one day they saw one and sighed in relief. So, Paris was not that different from Moscow. As they got closer to the man, they recognized their neighbor, a representative of the Soviet book import-export organization Mezhkniga.

  Another example, under Soviet rule the expression “communal kitchen” became the euphemism for more colorful expressions used by people, such as “nest of vipers” or “spiders in a jar.” The communal kitchen was indeed a mix between a bazaar, a neighborhood coffee shop, a place where women competed for beauty and elegance, and a platform for intellectual contests. Vetrov never set foot in the kitchen. But Svetlana had no choice since this was the only place where she could prepare meals for the family and boil water for tea. She tried to use the kitchen at hours when there were fewer people. Otherwise, fights were quick to start. For this reason, Vladimir took his wife out as often as possible.

  It was a big relief for them when, less than a year later, they could move to a two-room apartment located above the offices of the Soviet trade mission, in an elegant building located at 49 Rue de la Faisanderie, still in the sixteenth district. Their immediate neighbor was Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who would become the twentieth presid
ent of the Republic of France in 1974. The Vetrovs could not believe that such a highly ranked public servant, then secretary of finance and economic affairs, could live such an unpretentious life. There were no security guards in front of his building. More than once, they saw him drive his family in a tiny Austin Morris, and they often observed him during his walks in the Bois de Boulogne, never under the protection of any security escort. What a contrast with Soviet ministers whose paths never crossed the paths of ordinary citizens!

  The two places where the Vetrovs lived in Paris. The first one, 16 Boulevard Suchet, where they occupied two hotel-style rooms with a shared bathroom…

  …and the second one, fully private, 49 Rue de la Faisanderie, above the offices of the Soviet trade mission.

  From then on, Vladimir’s commute was just two flights of stairs. It was the same thing when he needed to meet with his immediate superior, the deputy resident for scientific and technical intelligence who, under the protection of a diplomatic passport, was officially the deputy trade representative in France. The head of the Soviet trade mission abroad was always a “clean” civil servant.

  KGB members officially assigned to the embassy could easily neglect their official duties. Once protected by the heavy doors of the magnificent building built under Louis XIV, 79 Rue de Grenelle, they did not have to report to anyone except their resident. As for intelligence officers operating under the cover of various Soviet organizations, they were obliged to fulfill their official duties first before getting to their main function—espionage.

  Vetrov held the post of chief engineer. He was in charge of the activities of several Soviet import-export companies specializing in electronics and instrumentation for measurement and control. It was no picnic. The job entailed managing the ongoing files, conducting negotiations with French industrial and commercial companies, escorting Soviet delegations, writing up analytical reports, and doing research to collect information on the international economic situation, pricing, and so forth. The cover of the trade mission had its advantages too for KGB personnel. Their French partners provided the most favorable environment to recruit agents.