Farewell (28 page)

Did that mean that Vetrov intended to defect to the West alone, contrary to the plans he discussed with his son?

A more alarming scene took place at work, and once again, Ludmila would understand it only much later.

She was not the only one to witness a case of serious professional misconduct on Vetrov’s part. It happened in the fall. Vladimir was in their office and said in front of three or four translators that he was behind writing an analytical memo and was forced to take work home. He was joking about it: “See how some are killing themselves at work! They even have homework to do.”

The subject matter is worth a digression. Everybody knew that it was strictly prohibited to leave the office with KGB papers, almost every single document being stamped “secret,” “top secret,” or “especially important.” If needed, taking home foreign press releases, copies of articles published in scientific journals, and other “limited distribution” documents was tolerated.

For a mole, however, it is essential to be able to smuggle out secret files. In those days, copy machines did not exist in Soviet offices. Since Vetrov shared his office, he could not freely photograph documents, and he had received the miniature camera only by the end of his “career” as a mole. A KGB archivist, Vasily Mitrokhin, had spent years copying documents by hand on extra thin paper, which he then hid rolled in his socks and kept in glass jars hidden in his dacha. He waited patiently for the right moment to safely pass them to the West; that moment happened to be the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was not Farewell’s style.

He opted for smuggling secret documents out of the PGU headquarters. Knowing in depth the organization of internal security, he was doing it regularly in complete confidence, albeit with a good adrenaline rush. He knew no secret service could function without basic trust, especially trust in its officers. Short of it, employees would have been spending their time monitoring and denouncing one another, organizing audits and traps to test each other, and so forth.

Furthermore, think of what a PGU checkpoint could be at rush hours, shortly before nine in the morning and just after six in the evening. In a twenty-minute time, thousands of officers and civilian employees walked by the checkpoint. Should every single person be searched, year round? Should they be asked to open their briefcases? There must have been documents in there, probably in a foreign language. Would a security NCO be able to evaluate their content? Or would he have to call an expert each time? Not only would such strict control have offended the personnel, but it was technically impossible. All the moles took advantage of this situation.

Conversely, Vetrov’s performance in the translators’ office proved to be a good calculation: no one ever suspected anything. It was only after the spying crime was uncovered that the witnesses of the scene remembered it. It was then established that the memo was in fact the synthesis already mentioned, covering scientific and technical intelligence gathered in a Western country, and naming the thirty-eight agents and their respective intelligence production.

Indisputably, Vetrov had talked about it in front of several people on purpose. He suspected that one day he would be caught red-handed smuggling secret documents out of KGB facilities. He would then be able to admit to breaking the rules while claiming innocence. Had he needed those documents to communicate their content to a foreign power, he would not have told anyone about it. He would have added that it was not the first time he took documents to work on at home. Several people would be able to testify to it, and if no one had reported it to a superior, it meant all understood that someone might have to finish a task at home that could not be completed at the office due to lack of time. In this way, while exposing himself to some suspicion, he warded off much more serious scrutiny.

Despite this engineered ploy, Ludmila never made any threats against Vetrov. She could not reasonably take her grievances to the Party committee or share her suspicions with internal counterintelligence because she did not suspect anything. Having no hold on him, she could not have given him an ultimatum for a set date either.

The version of the facts presented in the investigation file, stating that Ludmila threatened to go to the Party committee to complain if Vetrov did not leave his wife by February 23, is worth examining separately. In Ludmila’s opinion, which we share, this assumption does not hold. Unless she was willing to be subjected to mudslinging while ending up where she started, there is no way Ludmila could have thought of complaining to the Party committee.

In the Soviet system, the profession of interpreter was considered as auxiliary and belonged to the same category as typist, secretary, driver, restaurant waiter, or flight attendant. Given the status difference between a translator, by definition a woman of easy virtue and a civilian employee, and a KGB officer who had received recognition and decorations for his work, the verdict would not have been in Ludmila’s favor. In spite of his own apprehensions, Vetrov would have gotten off lightly. He would have been reprimanded symbolically. Moreover, to a larger extent than the military investigators, independent from the KGB, the Directorate T Party cell would have irrevocably sided with its officer. Ludmila would have been perceived as hunting married men, and condemned as such, as we saw earlier. This was, therefore, a pure invention on Vetrov’s part that the examining magistrates were quick to believe.

Then how to explain that Vetrov mentioned to Vladik—and later to his investigators—an ultimatum ending on February 23? And as a general question, why would a cultured and kind man lash out at the woman he had loved madly, stabbing her twenty times or so? He must have seen her as a direct and imminent threat to his survival to let fear turn him into a bloodthirsty monster. Ludmila did not have a satisfactory explanation either. And yet, she had time to think about it…

Lacking an explanation, Ludmila proposed an hypothesis. She attributes the murder attempt to Vetrov’s mental state. She justly considers that a mole lives in the constant fear of being uncovered, arrested, tried, executed. Vetrov could not be under any illusion about the fate that awaited him if caught by the KGB; hence, his paranoid suspicion. He might interpret an innocuous remark, perceived as of no significance by someone else without a double life, as an innuendo about his clandestine activity.

Ludmila was cheerful and had a sharp tongue; she enjoyed teasing people. She freely admits that she could have made an innocuous remark, the type she repeated a hundred times before, that was probably interpreted in a totally different light by Vetrov’s feverish mind. Maybe an innocent joke made him believe his mistress knew he was a French mole. Another sentence with no ulterior motive could be perceived as a threat, another harmless word as a blackmail attempt. Ludmila cannot recall anything in particular, precisely because she had no intention to threaten him. Had she said certain things on purpose, she would remember them.

She considers it natural that Vetrov’s proclivity to daydreaming, coupled with the constant fear of discovery, could end in persecution mania. By constantly being on the lookout for an imprudent word on Ludmila’s part, studying each one under the microscope, and contemplating his apprehensions, he ended up being convinced that she knew, she might report on him, and she was about to do so.

Incidentally, the hypothesis of Vetrov going through an attack of paranoia is corroborated by other reliable sources.

Among them Igor Prelin, who also believes the tension Vetrov was under at the time could have made him misinterpret a word from Ludmila, throwing him into a criminal panic.

The other source is Jacques Prévost. The Thomson representative assured us that, “according to one of his sources,” Volodia was convinced Ludmila worked for the CIA, and Vetrov believed that the Americans were about to “finger” him to the KGB because the intelligence documents produced by the Farewell operation were so sensational they were becoming an embarrassment for top U.S. officials.

What captures the attention in this fantastic scenario is not the unlikely theory of Ludmila being a CIA agent, but rather the paranoid state Vetrov must have been in to construct such an absurd story.

One can wonder who could have been this “reliable source” Farewell confided in at such a crucial moment. It would imply that there was another person in Moscow, besides Ferrant, who knew about the operation. We know this was not the case. Who, then? In theory, Jacques Prévost was out of the loop as early as May 1981, since Nart had strictly forbidden him to contact his friend again after Ferrant took over from Ameil. However, Prévost’s file at the KGB shows that he continued traveling to Moscow during that period, including in early 1982. Svetlana confirmed that he met with Volodia in early February. Even though he did not admit to it, because of Nart’s instructions, it is quite possible that Prévost was the person Vetrov confided in about his wild imaginings.

This does not make Vetrov’s paranoia less credible. The compounded effects of solitude and tension on the mole during that period were conducive to such behavior, and Vetrov could certainly not consult a specialist to help him get over this pathology. To make matters worse, the rendezvous with his preferred “shrink,” Patrick Ferrant, were less frequent. We know how critical these meetings were for Farewell’s mental stability (see chapter 17). The French officer did confirm that while they met twice a week before the reception of the miniature camera, sometimes three weeks passed without seeing one another after Vetrov started using the camera. As an example, almost one month was supposed to go by between their last rendezvous on January 26 and the next one, planned for February 23. This is far from the two-month interval requested by Raymond Nart for the sake of security, but nonetheless long enough a period to exacerbate a state of nervous tension into a fit of paranoia.

Another element argues in favor of Vetrov losing control in the last meeting with Ferrant, on the evening of January 26. It was not a contact like the others. For the first and only time during the operation, Vetrov seemed to have been drinking. Livid and tousled, he had lost his self-confidence, replaced with a desperate state of agitation. Vetrov could barely articulate an explanation:

“It’s all over, Paul, all over!”

“Volodia, what’s going on?”

“It’s all over now! All over.”

Staggering along, Vetrov kept mumbling the same phrase. At the sight of such despair, Ferrant put his arm around Vetrov’s shoulders to comfort him, and Ferrant proposed to go sit in his car, but Vetrov refused. After a few moments, as he was about to leave, Ferrant told Vetrov the date of their next meeting, February 23.

Vetrov vaguely answered that he would try to make it, then, still agitated, shouted out to him for the last time, “It’s all over, anyway! That’s too bad.”

He disappeared in the night, distraught. Patrick Ferrant would never see him again.

If Vetrov had reached the point of believing that Ludmila collaborated with a CIA which wanted his ruin, only drinking could help him cope with the extreme stress he was under. It would explain his state of intoxication at the last meeting with Ferrant. The likely scenario is that his paranoia could only get worse during the month of February.

That being the case, it was enough for Ludmila to mention February 23 in any context for Vladimir to conclude this would be retribution day, the date when his mistress was going to carry out her threats. Unless he was the one who set that deadline (see chapter 30).

Yet, he had to give substance to the figment of his imagination. He thus made up a story about documents stolen from his jacket for Vladik’s consumption. He could not do the same in his PGU environment. After the fact, he would have told his colleagues a less convincing but more acceptable story, about Ludmila threatening to appeal to the Party authority. According to Ludmila, there was absolutely no provocation on her part when they were in the car. Vetrov thus bungled a premeditated and cold-blooded murder.

In Ludmila’s account, she saw Vetrov at the office, as usual, on February 22. She is adamant that she did not call him at home in the middle of the night. In fact, she said she only called him at home twice—once to cancel a date, once to wish him a Happy New Year. We tend to believe her on this point, but we have no reason to doubt Svetlana’s account either. Did Vetrov have another mistress, or a former one, who was calling him at home constantly? People who have known Vetrov think it is possible.

The fact remains that Vetrov showed up around six p.m. Ludmila’s colleagues had just left the office; Vladimir had probably been waiting for that moment. Ludmila was in a hurry; she did not want to miss the bus. Vetrov offered to give her a lift home. She turned his offer down. She did not feel like being alone with her lover. She knew too well what the scenario would be. Vladimir would try to kiss her, caress her, and try to convince her to leave her husband. An old record she knew by heart. Besides, she had things to do at home. The next day was her mother’s birthday.

Vetrov insisted and won. He bought a bottle of champagne on the way. He seemed normal.

They stopped by the highway, in a familiar spot. Vetrov opened the bottle of champagne and poured some in a paper cup. They had only one cup, so he offered Ludmila the first drink. Up to that point, they had made small talk. Vetrov had not had the time yet to start his old tune about the wonderful life ahead of them as a couple.

Ludmila had barely put the cup to her lips, when she saw Vetrov make a sudden move. A split second later, she felt a violent blow to the temple. She found out later that it was the bottle of champagne—certainly not the ideal weapon in a car with a low ceiling. So Vetrov grabbed the pique. He hit Ludmila once more at the temple, and then in the mouth, cutting her lip and knocking out a tooth. Then he stabbed Ludmila over and over. For a few very long seconds, stronger than the pain, Ludmila felt sheer horror.
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