Farewell (8 page)

A part of his generosity was more official. For instance, when the embassy team was invited to Montsoult for a volleyball competition, the trade representative would put together a prize for the winning team. “Two cases of white wine and two cases of red wine was already viewed as a princely gesture,” Stanislav Sorokin remembers. “However, it could just as well turn into two cases of champagne, or a bottle of vodka per person with caviar. Our team was head and shoulders above the trade mission’s team, and there was no sportive challenge in beating them. So we would go to Montsoult essentially for ‘grocery shopping.’ It was like going to a free store. In theory, it was the prize organized by the head of the trade mission, but everybody knew Vetrov took the initiative for it and was taking care of it. I even wonder whether he was not paying with his own money for it. But maybe it is an exaggeration.”

Nevertheless, little by little, Vetrov acquired the reputation of being a big shot who could do a lot through secret connections and who spent lavishly while remaining a likeable and friendly fellow.

A fishy story for a spy operating abroad? Even more so from Sorokin’s perspective, since he was a counterintelligence officer. “Today, I agree,” he admits. “Including the fact that Vetrov was part of every party, big or small, and of every sport competition. He did want to play this role of generous factotum. As far as we were concerned, we thought that, being part of the trade mission, he had possibilities to buy half-price things we could not dream of having in the Soviet Union. Vetrov wanted everybody to benefit from it. Of course, this was a cover, too. Many high-ranking diplomats or civil servants, residing in Paris or part of a delegation on a trip to Paris, would buy TV sets and stereos only through this competent, helpful young man, who was not counting every cent. His colleagues or even vague acquaintances did not see anything wrong with it since they too were taking advantage of his generosity. However, in those days, we were educated in such a way, and the overall atmosphere was such, that I would never have imagined Vetrov capable, for instance, of receiving a commission on purchases made by the trade mission store, or, later on, by the embassy store. We were under the impression that with our salaries, more than comfortable compared to those in the USSR, we could be as hospitable in Paris as we were in Moscow. That’s the way the Vetrovs were living.”

By 1968, the ground shook under Vetrov’s feet. Whether it was a mistake on his part or a denunciation, Vetrov was accused of trafficking. The whole affair happened behind the scenes, and the witnesses we could interview were not able to give any details, but it is undeniable that some murky business deals were involved. A man less clever than Vetrov would have been sent back to Moscow on the spot, and if not brought before the criminal court, at least ousted from the KGB and the Communist Party. Those who were indebted to Vetrov, and the resident Krokhin in the first place, stood up for him resolutely. The scandal was quickly hushed up, to the extent that Vladimir stayed two more years in France.

There was another possible explanation, though, to the Vetrovs’ comfortable lifestyle. According to those who knew the couple well, Svetlana was the one wearing the pants in the household. Weaker, Volodia could not go against her desires. He would have decided to cover her dealings. Witnesses at the time assume that she was bringing objects from Moscow to sell in Paris, most probably art objects or gems. In Moscow, too, the Vetrovs lived much better than any other Soviet citizen who had spent five years abroad. The trafficking was, allegedly, going on both ways.

Some people also recall that Svetlana, as part of the national team in athletics, often traveled abroad. On each trip, the athletes, whose per diem was ridiculously low, took with them suitcases packed with various items such as caviar, jewelry, and expensive crafts, to sell them on the black market in the country of destination. With the money, they bought basic merchandise such as clothes, shoes, or tape recorders impossible to find in Soviet stores. Once they had sold their inventory at a high price in the USSR, the happy few who had the opportunity to travel outside the country would end up with an amount of money ten, fifteen, or twenty times higher than their initial investment. It is worth pointing out that trips to Western Bloc countries were the most profitable ones. Since Vladimir had been recruited by the KGB, Svetlana could travel only to socialist countries, significantly less interesting from a “business” standpoint. She was thus left with only one possibility: listening to her comrades as they bragged about their business achievements. Such conversations only revived her resentment. Once in Paris, according to malicious gossip, she did not have anything else to learn, but had a lot of catching up to do.

As far as caviar and gems trafficking was concerned, it had become a more and more common practice, especially popular among Soviet diplomats. Holders of a green passport, they were exempted from the draconian customs checks at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. The Vetrovs, on the other hand, had blue service passports, given to the nondiplomatic staff of Soviet organizations abroad and to the members of important delegations. In many situations, this blue passport was a better deal than the red passports delivered to foreign cooperation specialists, teachers, tourists, and other small-fry individuals, but not to go through customs. If caught smuggling goods, the holder of a blue passport, betraying the higher trust the government had placed in him, was exposed to a harsher punishment, at least in theory. In reality, things were much simpler. Astute people were always carrying a nice-looking pen or cigarette lighter they would hand out, along with their declaration of goods, to the customs officer as a souvenir. If facing a tougher inspector, they would get waved on by leaving behind a carton of American cigarettes or a pair of jeans. The main thing was not to carry any book by Solzhenitsyn or other dissident author in one’s suitcase.

Even though KGB members and their families appeared to live a freer life, in many respects they were subjected to stricter constraints. The wives of “clean” civil servants, whether diplomats or administrative officers, often bought what they needed through well-placed acquaintances befriended in stores, who sold them items at a discount. This behavior was strictly prohibited among the spouses of intelligence officers. It would have made the wife easy prey for agents from the other side, who could try to get her involved in illegal business. From there, the intelligence service of the opposite side could attempt to recruit her husband or to compromise him in order to expel him from the country.

Likewise, an intelligence officer living above his means immediately got the counterintelligence thinking. It was even one of the most reliable clues that there was something in the wind. A more recent example was provided by Aldrich Ames, the KGB mole inside the CIA, identified and sentenced in 1994. In the PGU, the intelligence service of the KGB, internal investigations were performed by the Second Chief Directorate’s internal security department (counterintelligence). This was the very same department where Stanislav Sorokin worked.

The topic is worth a digression. In theory, the Second Chief Directorate, which was represented in each of the KGB residencies abroad, was in charge of both infiltrating enemy services and preventing infiltration of its own ranks and of the Soviet colony as a whole. This effort, far more complex than political or scientific/technological intelligence, required not only well trained but also talented human resources.

As everywhere else, talent was scarce. One could not expect to find many talented individuals in the most despised service, regarded as a department of rats. For this reason, although essential to any intelligence agency, internal security services had a fairly mediocre managerial staff. The informants recruited in France by the Second Directorate were not government employees working for the USSR section of the DST, who were trying to infiltrate the KGB residency in Paris, but Russian saleswomen working at the embassy store or the guards’ wives who would rush back home to tell their husbands who they saw shopping at Tati’s. Instead of tracking alarming signs, such as the lavish lifestyle of certain KGB members, they were listening to gossip. Naturally, when one was caught in the bickering between neighbors, there was no time left to go after potential moles.

As a final note to this chapter, we have reached the point of the story beyond which we do not have the same certainties regarding Vladimir Vetrov’s life. Up to now, we based our story mostly on his wife’s and son’s memories, sometimes confirmed by documents, and also on the memories of a few long-standing acquaintances of theirs. Vetrov’s parents, his childhood and youth, and the beginning of his life with Svetlana do not constitute evidence for his prosecution or his defense. From now on, along strips of solid ground, we will often journey through quicksand.

An active and spirited man with a talent for intelligence activities, Vetrov worked with enthusiasm. In those years, he was no exception. This entire group of officers came from a modest social background, and they were all of the same exemplary caliber. Often critical of Brezhnev’s regime, they were, nevertheless, convinced of the superiority of communist ideals. Although open to Western values, they remained good patriots. They would have loved to live well in a free and affluent society, but at home, in the Soviet Union. Well-trained professionally and driven by ambition, they were very motivated to succeed. Success meant doing good work for the Center, putting the GRU and the MID (Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in their place, and outperforming French and American intelligence services—not to mention the expected rewards of decorations, promotions, and career advancement. For most, intelligence was a sport fought against the adversary as a team. Within a team, there were always a few stars, but everybody played in a spirit of mutual aid and respect.

Such a team spirit depended heavily on the resident KGB station chief. In Vetrov’s time, the Paris residency chief was Alexei Alexeevich Krokhin. He had operated in France before, between 1950 and 1954.
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He arrived in Paris for his second turn one year after Vetrov in 1966, and he went back to Moscow in 1974. He was the perfect guy for this generation of operatives.

Krokhin was between fifty-five and sixty years old, of medium height, and slightly overweight. He wore a thin mustache like movie heroes played by Mastroianni in those days. His wife was a former ballerina. He had the reputation for being susceptible to female beauty. He also enjoyed sports. Since he walked with a slight limp, he preferred table tennis, which was new and becoming very popular. He had tables installed in the facilities of the KGB residency at the embassy. He strongly encouraged his officers to play even during working hours, and he sometimes joined the game. He was held in high esteem and very much liked by his officers. It was most certainly under Krokhin’s command that the KGB residency in Paris performed the best.

Officially, Krokhin held the post of minister-adviser, but his real functions were an open secret, as illustrated by the following anecdote. On July 14, 1966, for the Bastille Day celebrations, the whole Diplomatic Corps, all in tuxedoes and bow ties, got in line at the garden party organized at the Elysée Palace. De Gaulle walked toward the Soviet Embassy representatives; he knew them all. He shook hands with Ambassador Zorin: “Your Excellency!” Then, turning to Krokhin: “General!”

Relations between the KGB resident and Vetrov were excellent. Krokhin encouraged the young officer, who was getting consistently better at his job. Svetlana, a pretty woman who knew how to be charming, helped him a lot in his work. Sergei Kostin was at first skeptical when he heard her say, “We were working together.” He would later learn that the rumor had it, in the corridors of the First Chief Directorate, that Svetlana was the main operative of the two. Therefore, regardless of possible exaggeration on everybody’s part, the role she played in her husband’s career at the time was probably significant.

The best-known agent recruited by Vetrov in Paris was Pierre Bourdiol. We can even reveal his code name within the KGB: “Borde.” This forty-two-year-old engineer from Thomson-CSF was married and had children. He met Vetrov at a trade show of electronic components in 1970.
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A sympathizer with the Soviet Union, he was recruited on “ideological grounds.” He was also paid by the KGB, like all other informants at the time.

On assignment first to CNES (French National Space Research Center), then to SNIAS (French National Industrial Space Agency), Bourdiol was in charge of the electronic equipment for the French-German Symphonie satellites and, from 1974 to 1979, for the Ariane rockets.
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French technologies in the field of aerospace engineering were assumed to be a dozen years behind Soviet achievements. According to one of Bourdiol’s handlers, the KGB often needed documents he could provide precisely to confirm that it was still the case. Nevertheless, during thirteen years, Bourdiol would be considered, according to KGB terminology, “an agent of especially valuable interest.”

Vetrov’s reputation as a “quality element” was definitely established after he recruited another Frenchman, of an even higher caliber than Bourdiol.
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When Vetrov left his Paris post, his successor inherited a good “stable of agents” and several advanced “targets.”

According to Marcel Chalet, it did not take long for the DST to spot Vetrov as a KGB member.
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Tailing is not enough to control an intelligence officer. This is when Jacques Prévost arrived on the scene, a character who would play a major role in the Vetrov plot.

Jacques Prévost, the man who introduced Vetrov to the DST (this photograph is the one used on his visas, kept in the KGB archives).

Born in 1927, Jacques Prévost was an executive working for the French company Thomson-CSF, a major player in France’s advanced electronics industry. He oversaw all contracts with the Soviet Union. He had no difficulty getting acquainted with Vetrov. Vetrov, being a specialist in electronics, was the key contact for the French company to sell its products in the USSR.

Prévost had a double interest in establishing good professional and human relations with the congenial Russian. On one hand, the success of Thomson-CSF on the Soviet market depended on its direct contact at the trade mission. On the other hand, since he had been identified as an active intelligence officer, Vetrov had to be closely monitored to determine his frame of mind and to identify any evidence of spying on Thomson.

At his level, Jacques Prévost did not need to do the DST favors for his own benefit. Besides, the “honorable correspondents” of the French counterintelligence were rarely compensated. The company, however, did have a “military” branch, Thomson-Brandt, at the leading edge of technology. It had developed the traveling-wave tube (TWT) that the Soviets wanted so badly, and it needed to protect itself against theft. This device was included in the COCOM list (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), and it could not be exported to socialist countries. Eastern Bloc governments were left only with the possibility of stealing it or buying it through illegal channels. In addition, Thomson had expertise in encryption. Every French embassy abroad was equipped with its Myosotis teleprinters for encrypted messages. It is understandable that the company was closely watched, even infiltrated by the DST.

French counterintelligence services could count on lower-level informants in the various divisions of Thomson-CSF, but with Jacques Prévost they had a contact at the headquarters level. In fact, the relations between Thomson and the DST could be better described as a natural exchange of favors. Thomson brought to the attention of the DST individuals of interest they met in the course of doing business with the Soviets. They provided detailed information regarding their character, their private life, and their habits, good and bad (what the KGB called the identifying particulars). The DST, in return, helped the company resolve red-tape difficulties. It so happened, for instance, at Thomson’s request, that a Soviet minister received a French visa in less than twenty-four hours instead of the usual twenty days. In return, the company managed to obtain the posting in Paris of a Soviet official who was on the DST red list. French counterintelligence was also capable of looking the other way when technology transfers occurred between the company and KGB correspondents such as Vetrov. This type of activity was for Thomson part of building a commercial network, and for the DST part of building a network to be exploited as circumstances would allow. Jacques Prévost reported to a young DST captain, Raymond Nart, who would play a key role in what had not yet become the Farewell affair.

Police captain Raymond Nart, the man who at the beginning of the operation effectively found himself, along with his deputy Jacky Debain, alone in front of the entire KGB.

In Nart’s opinion, Prévost was simply, to use his own words, “one of Vetrov’s agents,” but “out of business necessity.” It was a situation that could be viewed as ambiguous, but it did not shock Nart at all: “No, really, he was a good patriot, and also a good businessman.”
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Friendly, quick-witted, extremely courteous and polite, Prévost was a socialite. When Eric Raynaud met him in 2009 at his home, the former Thomson representative was still the same courteous man, very sharp, with a memory still relatively precise on events dating back sometimes more than thirty years. His memory was skillfully maintained by a thick binder in which Prévost had saved all the elements of the dossier he knew firsthand.

In the framework of his professional activities, Jacques Prévost had developed, over time, an especially dense social network in the Soviet Union, which included several ministerial-level officials. Prévost claimed to be the only French person who had such an extended network available in the USSR. For this reason, the French intelligence services were immediately very interested in him. Before belonging to the DST, Prévost served as honorable correspondent to the SDECE, until the Elysée headquarters staff, qualified to deal with this issue, chose between the two agencies and assigned him to the DST, without seriously consulting with him.

At the end of the sixties, Prévost started taking the Vetrovs out once a month, for lunch or for dinner. Every once in a while, he was accompanied by his wife, which added some intimacy to these official occasions. They would spend a few hours in a good Paris restaurant or in the countryside. Sometimes, other Thomson executives or partners, authentic or not, joined the party. Vetrov and Prévost often met during visits of Soviet trade delegations in Paris. Little by little, their interactions became less formal, almost friendly. Did Vetrov suspect that he was of interest to Prévost both for Thomson-CSF and for the DST? This cannot be ruled out. The KGB residency in Paris maintained a list of the presumed honorable correspondents of their main adversary. If this was the case, Vetrov could even have been encouraged by his superiors to pursue this valuable relationship, even if it meant reporting on Prévost’s every move after each meeting.

However, by then Prévost had noticed a trait of Vetrov’s personality that was quite unusual among Soviet expatriates, usually privileged by definition. “He talked a lot,” Prévost remembers, “and was already very critical of his superiors, of the Party, and even of the regime as a whole. That’s why I tended to be slightly cautious with him.”

Then, during the summer of 1970, a strange event occurred.
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It happened a few weeks prior to the scheduled repatriation of the Vetrovs. It must have been a Friday night; Svetlana could not remember exactly. She was at the castle in Montsoult with her son Vladik. Vladimir was supposed to join them there after work. It was already dark and Vetrov was not there. Svetlana was increasingly worried, especially because the trade mission dacha had a phone line he could have used. She feared the worst but did not tell anybody. After all, her husband could have had to fulfill an urgent mission for the KGB. Vladimir did not call her on the phone until the next morning. He did not say a thing over the phone about what had happened to him. Svetlana learned about the accident only when they were reunited.

According to his wife, Vetrov consulted with her each time he was facing some tricky situation, even if he had to tell her things that were not to his advantage. Svetlana was more practical-minded, and no important decision could be made without her knowing it. Most of the time, she had the last word. However, for once, Vladimir came up with an outrageous story.

He had just left a business meeting for the trade mission. As usual, they all had a drink, but he was not tipsy. He had already left Paris and was on his way to Montsoult when another car hit his Peugeot 404. He could not describe it, since he had lost consciousness on the spot. When he regained consciousness, there was nobody around. This event was a complete puzzle to him.