Farewell (26 page)

“Well, since your husband was working for the KGB, what he knew was, no doubt, of interest to foreign services.”

Svetlana got the drift.

“Oh…you want to know if my husband was a spy on top of it? Is this what that woman wants you to believe?”

“Come on now, calm down,” said Belomestnykh. “We are not suspecting you of anything, your husband either, for that matter. It was a simple question.”

And indeed, the subject was dropped.

A short while later, though, Belomestnykh probed Vladik. He asked a more specific question. He wanted to know whether Vetrov had photographed documents at home or if he ever mentioned seeing French people. Vladik vigorously denied this, and the topic did not come back up for discussion.

Vladik had to go to Kirov Street twice more, once to describe the knife, once to identify his sports bag forgotten in the trunk of the car. Svetlana and her son spoke well of Belomestnykh, a placid and reasonable man.

Sergei Kostin had no difficulty tracking him down in 1996. He was extremely cautious, but nevertheless agreed to meet Kostin.

He looked like a wily old Ukrainian peasant, a fairly big man with a hanging mustache and slow gestures. Although retired, he had remained an investigating magistrate at heart. He listened and asked questions about the book and what was missing in our inquiry. It soon became clear that nothing tangible would come out of the interview. He barely answered on two or three critical points. He promised to call back after consulting with his former boss. “You’ve got to understand, I signed a binding document whereby I agreed not to disclose the secrets of the service.” He never called back. When Kostin decided to call him again, he bluntly refused to give any information. He did not even want to give the exact dates of the trial, a piece of information that, from his standpoint, would have seriously questioned the efficiency of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, fourteen years after the facts. “We are living through troubled times,” he said as his only explanation.

Salome for some, Judith for others, Ludmila Ochikina is the one who triggered Vladimir’s fatal move. Among all the people Sergei Kostin interviewed about Ludmila, no one had really known her. The opinion they had of her, however, was unanimous. The moment has come to present her at greater length, starting with the evidence Kostin was able to gather himself. All in all, no one else in this story has inspired so many negative remarks.

Ochikina was a translator and interpreter trained in English and Spanish, and she worked in the same department as Vetrov. Her task was to translate various documents from Spanish into Russian. Even though the intended recipient—at the VPK, within the Party Central Committee or in a R&D institution—may have been fluent in English or in Spanish, original documents never left Yasenevo as collected. Once translated, the documents were made anonymous. The position thus required more than linguistic competence; the KGB translators were able to provide information allowing them to establish the origin, even the exact source of a document. Moreover, the translations were typed in two copies, one sent to the intended recipient, the other attached to the original and filed in the department archives. A translator could at any time access all of the classified documents; hence the extreme rigor with which the KGB selected its employees.
¹

Ludmila’s husband was a journalist, chief editor of an institutional journal. The PGU believed that she was not happy in her marriage and did not have much respect for her husband. The investigation file reports that one day, as he came home unexpectedly, the husband caught the lovers in the act of adultery. The incident had no repercussions; there was no quarrel, no fight.
²
This was just a farcical footnote in this crime of passion.

“Married or not, a woman usually takes sex more seriously than a man,” stated Igor Prelin. “For Ochikina, Vetrov, even in the position he was in, had more of a future than her husband. So, whether out of calculation or out of true love, Ludmila was bound to ask Vetrov to divorce Svetlana. Vetrov rejected the idea, for pragmatic reasons—divorce would have definitely ruined his career—and for sentimental ones, because he still loved Svetlana.”

As curious as it may seem, Svetlana was not Ludmila’s harshest critic. It goes without saying that Svetlana, a pretty and intelligent woman, was deeply hurt by her husband’s interest in another woman. Worse, he considered abandoning her to live with his mistress.

Svetlana saw her rival for the first time in a picture presented to her by the investigating magistrate. She refused to believe that Vladimir had neglected her in favor of “this shrew.”

“This must be a bad picture,” she commented.

“No, not at all, that’s really the way she looks.”

According to Svetlana, while she was in the Military Prosecutor’s Office she noticed that generals would stop by to come look at the picture. No one could believe that Vetrov preferred Ludmila to his wife.

Svetlana saw Ludmila in person for the first time in court. She saw a woman with henna-dyed hair who was pacing the corridor, like a lion in a cage, repeating out loud, “Where is my murderer? Where is he?”

She looked strange. She must have lost her mind after those dramatic events. Her husband, the journalist, was at her side. Svetlana remembers that he came to the Martial Court sessions with his shopping net, in which one could see cans of food one day, a big cabbage another day.

At the sight of Ludmila, Svetlana felt so offended that she told her husband after the trial, “I could have understood if she had been truly beautiful, if she had had a lot of charm. One can fall in love, lose one’s head. But this, I simply can’t fathom it! It is for that kind of woman that you forgot all about us, your son, me, your home? It cannot be, you must truly have turned into a dead loss, a drunk, a loser!”

On second thought, Svetlana regretted she had not met Ludmila sooner; it would have been less painful. She would have had the certitude early on that Vladimir could not seriously contemplate starting a new life with that woman.

At the time of her husband’s affair with Ludmila, the dominant trait Svetlana attributed to the woman she had never seen was greed. Svetlana was convinced, and still is, that Ludmila seduced her husband with only one goal in mind: to appropriate their assets—paintings, furniture, their country house. She believes that under the pretext of buying a puppy Ludmila attempted to set up a reconnaissance visit to their apartment. She blames her for hounding her husband all the way to his family home. According to Svetlana, Ludmila was constantly calling Vetrov.

The portrait of Ludmila painted by the Vetrovs’ son is no better. Vladik, to this day, detests the woman who, instead of dying, caused his father’s ruin. Vladik, like his mother, saw Ludmila for the first time in court. He too could not understand his father’s attraction for Ludmila.

Father and son used to discuss their love lives openly. Vetrov gave Vladik advice on how to behave with the girls he liked. He also kept his son more or less informed of his relationship with Ludmila.

Since their conversation at the dacha while working on the veranda, when Vladimir told his son about his intention to move out to go live with his mistress, things had changed a lot. Vetrov had become increasingly edgy.

The change in the lovers’ relationship happened by the end of 1981. After the New Year holidays, Vladimir told his son that Ludmila was a bitch and he wanted out. Having tried everything to reconcile his parents, Vladik could not be more pleased at the news, even if he kept it to himself. However, said Vetrov, Ludmila was not prepared to accept a breakup. She was threatening to reveal his espionage activities to the KGB if he left her. Did she keep stolen documents found in his jacket as incriminating evidence for later? Would her testimony have been sufficient to ruin his father’s life? Vladik did not know. But Vetrov told him that his life was in the hands of that woman, and from that moment there was no one Vladik loathed more than Ludmila.

Naturally, no one expected unbiased opinions about Ludmila Ochikina’s character from Vetrov’s friends and relatives. In their eyes, even a saint would have deserved burning at the stake. Strangely enough, the investigation file does not paint her with better colors.

A woman not that young anymore—Ludmila was forty-seven, married, and the mother of a thirteen-year-old girl—managed to get a KGB officer in her bed, a man with a stable and well-paid position, even though he was no longer allowed to travel abroad. After having cleverly seduced him, she started being greedy, endlessly asking for presents. Then, when she found out that her beloved owned many expensive works of art, she incited him to leave his wife, with his share of the assets. As Vetrov refused to destroy his family, their relationship degraded rapidly. It was then that Ludmila blackmailed him. If he would not leave everything to come live with her, she would go to the Directorate Party Committee and tell them everything. Her ultimatum was to expire on February 23.

His back to the wall, Vetrov desperately sought a way to extricate himself from the whole thing. He wanted to settle the conflict amicably. He bought a bottle of champagne and invited Ludmila to go for a drive. As strange as it may seem, the investigation file does not allude to what might have ignited Vetrov’s murderous rage. The lawyers consulted by Kostin could only shake their heads disapprovingly; this circumstance is essential to understand the motives for the crime. In any case, suddenly seized with rage, Vetrov had only one thought: to kill the woman he had loved, and who had become greedy and threatening.

The most negative remarks about Ludmila where collected in the corridors of the KGB. The Vetrov case sent two shattering jolts to the Soviet intelligence edifice. It was talked about over and over for years. It is surprising that in the male-dominated KGB there was so much reliance on gossip.

According to her colleagues, Ludmila was sleeping around. Aware of her success with men, she became more selective, with a preference for field officers who often traveled abroad and were able to give her expensive presents. But it was impossible to obtain a name that would have validated these allegations. Nobody could confirm the rumors going around the directorate. This would explain why Ochikina was not bothered when it was discovered that the crime of passion was hiding an espionage scandal. Those same field officers did not want it to be known that they had a mistress involved in a high treason case. It is believed that they decided to forget all about what Ludmila might have known regarding Vetrov’s collaboration with the DST, because she was viewed as capable of talking about her affairs with several Directorate T executives.

The general opinion among those who knew Vetrov well at the KGB can be summarized by Yuri Motsak’s comments. Motsak was the chief of the counterintelligence French section, and he often had a drink with Vladimir: “Volodia was an alcoholic, but deep down, he was a good guy.”
³
At the PGU, they were all wondering what on earth Ludmila could have said for a man as gentle as Vetrov to explode and try to kill her.

In the light of the rest of the story, blackmail is the first thing that comes to mind, not the threat to complain to the Party committee—a piece of advice also given to Vetrov by Galina Rogatina—but the threat to report her suspicion, if not providing proof, of his espionage activities. Ludmila, however, never brought the subject up, even after Vetrov assaulted her.

“Blackmail, maybe. Since he grabbed a weapon, it is plausible,” comments Igor Prelin.
⁴
“But as far as espionage is concerned, not possible. Even if she had sought revenge, she could not have done it without exposing herself, becoming his accomplice.”

The issue did not present itself during the first investigation. Later, Ochikina was interrogated several times on the nature of her relationship with Vetrov. She could have been in double jeopardy if she had suspected something without reporting to her superiors. Being a KGB employee, not reporting was considered assistance to a criminal, an offense as per Soviet law. And even more serious a crime when it was proven that she also let Vetrov have certain documents. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The collective image of Ludmila Ochikina was, therefore, not a positive one. Although not that pretty, she was successful with men because she was an easy woman; lusting for gifts and other people’s assets, cantankerous, a pest who stopped at nothing to get what she wanted. A blackmailer who succeeded in driving a man as gentle as Vetrov crazy.

A bad Soviet citizen, Sergei Kostin never believed that unanimity was a criteria of truth. The more people would describe Ludmila with the exact same characteristics, the more he doubted their accounts. He had to find her.

This was no easy undertaking. There was no information publicly available under the fairly rare name of Ochikina. Kostin went through a friend, a former policeman, who still had contacts at the Moscow Central Address Bureau, the security branch of the police force. The employee did find Ludmila’s record, but there was a small red rectangle in the upper right corner, meaning no one could communicate the information without a special authorization. “Come on,” said the friend of the friend. “It is a murder case.” He was not lying, for that matter. This is how Kostin got Ludmila’s address. By an amazing stroke of luck, if the telephone exchange database did not contain Ludmila’s name, the KGB did not think of protecting the phone number at her home address.

Yet, Kostin waited several months before calling her. He thought it would be of no use to interview her. Ochikina had no incentive to tell the truth. After the trauma she had gone through, she probably would decline meeting with a journalist. There was also some selfish reasoning. It is easier to rally the general opinion when one does not know the person in question. After you have looked someone in the eyes and tried to understand the person in front of you, it is more difficult to portray him or her in an unfavorable light. However, to be honest, one cannot paint a portrait without even having seen the original model.

A woman with a surprisingly young voice answered the phone; she was clearly cultured, and her style was direct. She made no secret of the fact that the call was totally unexpected and, frankly, not a pleasant surprise. Kostin tried his best to convince her to agree to an interview, arguing that he felt awkward about presenting her in his book based only on descriptions provided by people who did not necessarily like her. If she did not want to help, would she at least confirm a few facts about herself. In the end, she wrote down Kostin’s phone number and promised to call him back.

Kostin waited two weeks, then decided to call again. They eventually agreed to meet two days later in the subway. Kostin started describing himself so she could identify him, but Ludmila cut him short: “I think we cannot miss one another.”

Kostin had vague hopes that they would talk over a drink on Arbat Street. He put his recorder in his bag, just in case.

On the appointed day and at the agreed time, he met a slender woman, casually yet elegantly attired; Ludmila was wearing summer pants, a tunic, and a white cotton jacket. Without being a beauty, she was pleasant-looking. She did not look her sixty-one years. She still knew how to be attractive.

She did not want to sit at a café, and it was clear that, after a few civilities, she was about to send the journalist packing. They sat on a bench across from the Kiev train station. They were driven off the bench by the rain…four hours later.

A detailed account of this rendezvous with Ludmila Ochikina is presented in the next chapter, for two reasons. First, Ludmila’s version contradicts all the others. That was to be expected. But, above all, what required a detailed commentary was that Ludmila’s testimony appeared more credible than the others on several critical points. It is essential that the reader understands why.

There is no evidence to confirm her version of the events. Vetrov is no more, and official conclusions suited all the actors of this drama, on both sides. A logical and coherent account is not necessarily true either. Having gone through two series of tough questioning, Ochikina was well trained.