Farewell (22 page)

One of the basic procedures of such an operation was to plan for the exfiltration of the mole in case he or she was uncovered. For the reasons mentioned before, the DST was not equipped to operate so far from its home base. Vetrov, who had chosen that agency, had to know its limitations in this regard. Yet, each time Ferrant tried to bring the subject up, Vetrov wanted to postpone the discussion until later and mumbled an answer: “There is no reason for things to go wrong, anyway.” Besides, as he repeated over and over to Ferrant, it was out of the question for him to leave his country, where he had a son, and where he was preparing to have a nice retirement in his country cottage. Vetrov, incidentally, viewed the operation in the long term, envisioning Ferrant’s successor, and even his own, whom he would recruit himself. “We’re not going to stop here; we’ve got to continue until they drop dead,” he insisted, as furious as ever about the KGB.
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Vetrov could not have ignored that the life expectancy of a mole in the heart of Moscow was short. So, where did he find this self-assurance?

It came mostly from the certainty that, with the DST, he had chosen in France a service not infiltrated by the KGB and, therefore, above suspicion in Moscow. Vetrov added a checking procedure very specific to Soviet counterintelligence. He asked Ferrant to bring him a significant quantity of renowned brands of cognac or gin, much sought-after products in Moscow in those days. With those precious bottles, Vetrov organized “happy hours” in his service, providing him with the opportunity to regularly sound out the KGB spy hunters.

“It’s very simple,” Vetrov explained to Ferrant. “I’ll invite counterintelligence executives to stop by the office for a drink. If one day they start suspecting me, the first thing they’ll do, even before reporting higher up, will be to stop coming, not wanting to compromise themselves in my company. If this happens, we’ll stop everything.”

His plan was both astute and flawed. Although the idea was clever, in order not to come under suspicion Vetrov could only invite his colleagues from PGU internal counterintelligence to those “happy hours.” The plan left out the officers from the KGB Second Chief Directorate which was, strictly speaking, in charge of counterintelligence. While he thought he was acting safely, Vetrov had apparently neglected the main danger threatening him.

Volodia kept giving the impression of controlling everything, as confirmed by Ferrant. What the French officer could not know was that Vetrov had found another way to sound out his colleagues from the Second Chief Directorate.

Alexei Rogatin, Vetrov’s neighbor in the countryside and trusted mechanic of his Lada, had a certain Yuri Alexandrovich Motsak among his numerous clients and friends. Informal contacts are of special value. In this case, it was not a promotion but Vetrov’s life itself that could depend on this connection. Motsak was the head, no less, of the French section within the KGB Second Chief Directorate.

He was fluent in Italian, but knew neither French nor the work habits of his French adversaries. He had been nominated for the job out of purely bureaucratic considerations. A dynamic professional, he had to move up the career ladder. However, the head of the Italian division could not be moved for years to come, so they gave Motsak the direction of the…French division!

By chance, Motsak and Vetrov had car problems on the same day. They ran into one another in the courtyard of the apartment building on Smolensk Embankment where Alexei repaired cars. Soon after, the two men realized they were working in the same organization, and a few minutes later that they shared a common taste for hard liquor. It took only one bottle for Vetrov to realize that he’d hit the jackpot.

Understandably, Motsak declined to meet with Sergei Kostin. He does not come off well in this story that deeply traumatized him. Even though we do not have many details about his interactions with Vetrov, we know that the latter arranged to see his drinking buddy from time to time. For them, the unit of measurement was not a shot glass, but a bottle. Past half a liter of vodka or cognac, Vladimir had no difficulty moving to the subject of interest to him. One could easily imagine their conversation:

“Boy, I am fed up with being at the same position after all those years! If it continues, I’ll ask to be transferred to your division, to counterintelligence. Do you think they’d take me in?”

“Why not? We have a lot of officers who came over from the PGU.”

“Would that be an issue with the French?”

“Not likely! It’s dead calm. They never had agents here; they made it a principle.”

Whatever the actual words of their conversations were, Vetrov clearly had many opportunities to probe Motsak. Thus, for all the duration of the operation, he knew full well that the KGB remained convinced that French secret services were inactive in Moscow.

But what if there was a glitch with “Paul”? Or what if, by a stroke of bad luck, his double life was unveiled? Whatever misfortune strikes the informant—whether under suspicion, being exposed, or wanted for a crime—he must be able to warn his handler immediately. Then, usually, he would go into hiding in a place agreed upon for that purpose, while his handlers start the process to exfiltrate him.

The day “Paul” told Vetrov about “Monsieur Maurice” and his request, he also told him that François Mitterrand knew about his collaboration with the DST. The president of the Republic, they said, had given the order to all French embassies to deliver a French passport or an entry visa immediately to Farewell if he asked for one.

Considering how his first SOS message was handled by the DST, one can hardly imagine how such a measure would be implemented. Did they truly intend to inform all French diplomatic representations abroad that if a man named Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov were to show up at their door they should immediately give him a visa, and maybe even a French passport? If such was the case, it would not have taken too many days for the KGB, who were eavesdropping everywhere, to learn about it from dozens of sources. Therefore, such a plan was not possible. A second assumption is if there were only DST internal guidelines to let Vetrov come to France, what good would it have done him? As an analyst, Vetrov was not authorized to leave the country; he had, thus, no grounds to ask for a visa to go to France or to any other NATO Alliance country consulting with the DST. So?

So…there are two possibilities: either the slightest flattery from the French made Vetrov melt (and those flatteries later multiplied in a spectacular manner), or anxiety drove him mad.

From the very start, Vetrov made it clear that he had no intention to leave his country.
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If this suited the DST nicely, it did not exempt them from their obligation to plan for their agent’s safety. The good fortune they had all enjoyed so far could not last forever. Considering the risks taken by Vetrov, the need to exfiltrate the mole could become urgent at any time. A basic rule of the trade is to create an elaborate escape plan.

Vetrov raised the issue during their second November meeting, on the twentieth. He proposed a warning sign, a flowerpot for instance, on his home balcony. All Ferrant had to do was to drive by Vetrov’s apartment building on Kutuzov Avenue daily to make sure nothing happened to his agent. During his cross-examinations by the KGB, Vetrov claimed that the Frenchman did not react to the proposal. Ferrant claims, on the contrary, that they had many discussions on the subject, but Vetrov chose to make fun of it, imagining a providential fall of the flowerpot on one of the KGB bigwigs who were in such high number in the neighborhood. The jokes would not have seemed that funny to Vetrov’s examiners.

However, on December 4, 1981, “Paul” raised the issue again. They drove by Farewell’s apartment building. Vetrov proposed for his handler to drive into the yard so he could show him his entrance door. “Paul” refused, arguing that they would have no difficulty finding him, should the need arise. Actually, Ferrant had noticed during a previous reconnaissance that the neighboring building was home to Marshal Ustinov, minister of defense, Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, and Brezhnev himself. Understandably, he did not want to find himself in the visual field of one of the stationary and mobile watch posts. Vetrov did not insist. Ferrant proposed an alternative emergency procedure.

One Saturday morning, Farewell should come to the Cheryomushki market around ten o’clock, he explained. “Paul” would be standing by the fresh herbs stalls. He would be accompanied by a woman Vetrov would have to observe to be able to recognize her later, and she would have to do the same. After this step, if Ferrant had an urgent need to meet with his agent, Vetrov would only have to come to the market at ten a.m. on a Saturday and make sure the Frenchwoman saw him. Then, that same day at seven p.m., Ferrant would wait for him behind the Borodino Battle Museum. If it so happened that Farewell also needed to transmit a document urgently, he would drop it, using all the necessary precautions, into the Frenchwoman’s shopping bag. Regardless of this last point, “Paul” would be coming to the rendezvous spot behind the museum.

As we can see, the measures suggested by Ferrant had nothing to do with an escape plan. When the Frenchman touched upon the subject as being the normal extension of the warning procedure, Vetrov interrupted him: “Listen, stop bothering me with all that stuff! I won’t leave. There is no reason for me to leave.”

In mid-December, at the DST’s request, Ferrant revisited the issue. He mentioned Farewell’s exfiltration through Hungary or another satellite country of the Soviet Union, and also the possibility of asylum at the French embassy in Moscow, where Nart would then send two passports, one in Vetrov’s name, the other in his son’s name.
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But here again “nothing ironclad,” confessed Ferrant, Vetrov being unwilling to dwell on the subject.

Vetrov’s reluctance to discuss the exfiltration procedure, in complete contradiction with what he said to his son about it later on, may seem incomprehensible. Was this double-talk due to overconfidence, fatalism, or the manifestation of a split personality? In the end, such a procedure was never precisely defined. The situation was probably not upsetting the DST that much, since they were not familiar with this aspect of the operation anyway, and they were so busy digesting the intelligence data that was being produced by the Farewell operation. As for Vetrov, this was yet another contradiction in his general behavior. As a professional, he knew a rescue plan was mandatory in any agent operation, but he nonchalantly ignored it in the same way he had been systematically ignoring all the other basic rules of espionage. Paradoxically, his attitude was at the core of his successful enterprise.

When talking about espionage, one imagines clandestine rendezvous between an agent and his handler taking place in the most utilitarian fashion. The quicker the exchange, the safer for both. One gives, the other takes; except that, once again, Vetrov’s epic does not fit the picture of Spying 101.

Instead of brief contacts, Patrick Ferrant spent long hours in Vetrov’s Lada. “We talked like friends do. Vladimir shared his news about his family, what they had done over the weekend. He talked about his house in the country, his son, and his marital problems, caught as he was between his wife and his mistress; and then we talked about France.”

Over twenty years later, when Ferrant recounts their conversations, one gets the impression that the story is more about two buddies driving around for fun than an espionage mission in the heart of KGB territory.

Almost no one ever disturbed them during their drives around Moscow or their strolls through parks. Ferrant remembers only one episode when things could have ended poorly. One day, in order to explain a document to his handling officer, Vetrov had parked the car on a street bordering the Lenin Hills park. He suddenly stopped talking. Behind them, a policeman was slowly approaching the Lada. “Keep talking, keep talking,” said Vetrov very naturally, while watching the policeman in his back mirror.

Arriving next to the driver’s seat, the policeman lowered his head and observed Ferrant for a few seconds that felt like an eternity to Patrick. When Vetrov reached for his inside pocket, Ferrant feared the worse. Then, the policeman quietly turned around and left, going back to where he had come from. Vetrov put his hand back on the steering wheel, and the conversation resumed as if nothing had ever happened.

Later, Ferrant wondered what was in his friend’s inside jacket pocket. His KGB officer card? Since policemen all dreamt of being part of the “big family,” the card would have definitely produced a positive effect. In this neighborhood under close watch, however, the man in uniform could just as well have been KGB. Could that have been a weapon, then? Ferrant preferred thinking about something else, and he focused back on the document from Directorate T.

On another occasion, so that his handler would be fully “reassured,” Vetrov spelled out what they could expect if caught: “For me, it will be a bullet in the back of the head; for you, a stupid accident, with your wife—a truck perhaps, or an unfortunate fall on the subway track in front of an incoming train.” To Ferrant, who thought he was protected by his diplomatic passport, learning about KGB methods was not good news. But after all, he was on active duty, and “the job had to be done.”

Actually, over the entire duration of the operation, the French officer was anxious to fulfill his duty: “I certainly did not want to see the deal fail because of a blunder on my part,” he confessed. Vetrov’s nonchalance certainly helped Ferrant relax, but as Madeleine admitted more willingly, tension remained high for her husband until they left Moscow for good.

Moreover, even if he was aware of the quantitative importance of the affair, Ferrant was far from appreciating the explosive nature of the documents he was shipping to Paris. As seen earlier, unlike Ameil, Ferrant could freely use the diplomatic pouch, which in his case was the Ministry of Defense pouch. All the shipped documents went through General Lacaze’s office, where Raymond Nart came regularly to pick them up. Jacques Prévost was thus no longer in the loop.

After this mission, Ferrant moved on to other activities and operations in different countries. “That was the job, you know,” as he would simply put it. It was much later, when he reached retirement age, that he truly realized the role the Farewell dossier played in the outcome of the Cold War.

According to Ferrant, the international context at the time undeniably counted in Vetrov’s treacherous decision, motivated in particular by the war psychosis surrounding him. As Ferrant observed for himself from his contacts with Russian people in the street, this fear of an imminent war was ingrained in the Soviet frame of mind. This had been the situation since the hottest hours of the Cold War, at the end of the fifties.

Ferrant remembered that one day he had become acquainted with a hitchhiking woman who told him as she was getting out of the car, “You are very nice; it’s too bad that our countries will soon be at war.”

“Come on, why do you say that?” protested Ferrant.

“Because there will be a war, we know it,” she declared with a fatalistic shrug.

Ferrant later tried to learn more from Vetrov. In Vladimir’s opinion, the risk of war was his superiors’ fault, which he explained in no mild terms: “Because they’re a bunch of morons, that’s why.”

What Vetrov meant was that, through corruption and nepotism, totally inept and incompetent individuals were holding very highly responsible positions within the regime, and in a world where nuclear weapons kept multiplying, the situation could become dangerous. “His most serious incentive was that he knew his country was on a path to war. It would be carnage, there were madmen in command of the army, and it all could very well end up in nuclear war,” Ferrant recalls.

With this explanation, was Vetrov trying to justify his betrayal, as if he had become the white knight who would save world peace? He certainly never gave Ferrant the impression that he needed to justify himself. This was simply, yet again, an illustration of the contempt he had for his superiors.

Furthermore, according to the French officer, this fear of war was a reality of life in those years of international tensions, a fact often forgotten today. In May 1981, for instance, at the very time when the two men were driving around the streets of Moscow, Brezhnev denounced, in a secret message to the KGB, the new policies implemented by Ronald Reagan toward the Soviet Union. It had been just a few weeks earlier that the American president had joked about bombing the USSR during a mic check before addressing the nation. The joke did not amuse the Kremlin, and the Soviet press had lashed out at the new president’s irresponsibility and amateurism.

The most worrisome speech, though, was delivered by KGB boss Yuri Andropov. This internal discourse, supported by Minister of Defense Marshal Ustinov, claimed that the American administration was preparing in earnest for a nuclear attack. In a martial style not conducive to reassurance, Andropov asked all his officers to get ready. Under code name RYAN (
Raketno Yadernoe Napadenie
for “Nuclear Missile Attack”), the operation became the top priority for Soviet military intelligence.
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Ferrant also took the initiative to move the conversation to current events. Vetrov’s Lada thus became a privileged, if cramped, observatory of East-West relations in the thick of the Cold War.

In 1981 it was difficult not to talk about Poland, which had been in the limelight since the 1980 labor strikes at the Gda
sk shipyards. In the fall, Vetrov pointed out to Ferrant that all the key positions in the Polish state had been backed by Soviet personnel. This was a clear prelude to Jaruzelski’s coup d’état that took place a few weeks later. Vetrov warned, “Something’s up; it’s going to explode.”

The year 1981 also witnessed the assassination attempt against the Polish pope John-Paul II, who symbolized psychological resistance against communism in Eastern Bloc countries, and was a serious thorn in the Kremlin’s side. When Ferrant brought it up, Vetrov simply explained that at the KGB the shooting of the pope was a subject of joking at the expense of the Bulgarians, the main suspects in this affair. On a more serious note, he told Ferrant that there had been a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs way before the assassination attempt. Gromyko himself had confided to the Warsaw Pact member representatives that the problem with the pope would be soon “taken care of.” Later, with the help of a good bottle, Vetrov obtained from one of his colleagues “that without a shadow of a doubt the origin of the assassination plan was in Moscow.”

In fact, as a good professional, Vetrov was rather reluctant to discuss general topics or current news he could not substantiate with documents. When Ferrant asked a question outside the field covered by a file they were discussing, Vetrov was prompt to refocus the conversation: “You’re asking me questions not in my field of competence. So, whatever I’d have to say, it would be hot air.” If he had no answer to a specific question, Vetrov preferred saying so. “A piece of information is only valuable if the source is reliable,” he would remind Ferrant, who made a mental note of it, as part of his spying crash course. He never had the feeling of being “taken for a ride” by Vetrov on specific topics. At all times, Vetrov’s goal of bringing the KGB down seemed the overriding consideration.

Technology intelligence was his field of expertise, and he could talk about it at length. Vetrov felt, in the long run, stealing scientific and technical secrets could only come back to haunt the instigator. He used the following metaphor: “It’s just like a bad student copying from his neighbor. When he can no longer copy, whatever the reason, he has no alternative solution. When we need a fastener for one of our rockets, our research organizations don’t even ask themselves what would be the best type, but wonder which workshop in Cape Canaveral would have it. It’s absurd.”

Once again, he blamed the situation on his superiors’ stupidity and laziness, pointing out there was no shortage of good engineers in the Soviet Union. Vetrov mentioned the report he remitted before he decided to “defect,” the famous document in which he proposed a complete overhaul of Soviet scientific and technical intelligence. Although Ferrant was not able to obtain this report, he assumed that it contained most of the remarks Vetrov was making about his service. Incompetence, favoritism, lack of vision—Directorate T seemed to be a collection of everything Vladimir despised the most within the KGB. The Buran spacecraft is a revealing illustration of this. Before questioning its utility, simply out of mimicry or out of fear of falling behind in the arms race, the Soviets launched their own space shuttle program, based on designs stolen from Western technology. This shuttle completed only one experimental spaceflight. When asked after the Cold War why they made that spacecraft, a few engineers answered they had no idea why, it was just about copying the Americans.

On the same topic, Vetrov described to Ferrant a Directorate T internal meeting that took place in Kaliningrad, where he was present. Brezhnev presided over the meeting, and the agenda was the American space shuttle project. The Communist Party’s general secretary was concerned about how to respond to this new American technological challenge. Brezhnev had specifically asked the KGB experts to forget about the official propaganda and, for once, “tell him the truth” about this issue. Answering the first question about the danger the shuttle presented for Soviet national security, they told him that this could be a deadly threat. To the second question about the VPK’s capacity to deal with the situation, they answered that they could handle it “provided all other research programs were stopped.” This was essentially an unconcealed admission of helplessness. Needless to say, no technological solution was found during the meeting, but it was decided that, in the meantime, all possible steps had to be taken to slow down American technology and military efforts. A vast “peace offensive” was planned in response to the deployment of American Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Although not exactly a secret, this confirmed the infiltration and manipulation of peace movements in the Western Bloc, but the mass demonstrations organized in all Western capitals in 1983 to protest the deployment of the euromissiles had no effect in the end.

As will be seen later, when the Americans discovered, with the help of the Farewell dossier, the extent of the VPK’s dependency on technological espionage, they used it as a formidable weapon, and the trap closed on the “bad student.”

This was undoubtedly what Vetrov had in mind from the very start when he embarked on this adventure.