Farewell (30 page)

At this point of the interview, Rechensky hesitated; he was not sure he could talk about it. He nevertheless revealed two significant facts and omitted a third one. The first was a remark made by Marchenko himself, who later also got involved in Vetrov’s case. “He was a jerk; Ludmila was head and shoulders above him.” The other opinion expressed by Marchenko about Vetrov, and quoted by Rechensky, was not more flattering: “He was selfish and thought only about amassing wealth. I don’t understand how such a man could be taken into intelligence services.”

What Rechensky did not say was easy to guess: the KGB was already suspecting Vetrov of treason.

Over time, the Farewell case ceased to be a top secret file. It has now acquired a historical interest. Today, light has been shed on many dark chapters of this story by men we could not expect to interview even only ten years ago. This is the case of Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the PGU at the time, and future chairman of the KGB, who was much more forthcoming in 2007 than he was in 1995. “It was a little fishy, this eagerness Vetrov had to confess,” he said.
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“He also revealed details investigators did not know, but were damaging to him; he kept coming back to points we thought were closed. Some concluded that he was hiding something, something much more serious. But those were just assumptions; we had no evidence allowing us to draw conclusions. It has remained impressed in my memory.”

Suspicions were bound to crop up. The crime itself, particularly when perpetrated by a KGB officer, was shocking enough. “Even from the standpoint of his moral profile,” adds Igor Prelin,
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“a man capable of committing a crime as serious as murder might very well have done other terrible things. There is no such thing as a decent, honest, pure-hearted individual who all of a sudden,
bang!
turns into a killer. There is no such thing.”

The investigators wondered whether the purpose of killing the witness, an act so obviously unwarranted in a situation that could have been resolved in so many less violent ways, was to conceal a much more serious crime. They wondered what threat Ludmila could have presented to Vetrov for him to go so far as getting rid of the witness. It took the investigation some time before they considered the possibility of Vetrov’s mistress being his accomplice in his assumed espionage activities.

The KGB suspected something was in the wind, but lacked evidence. It was not an issue: in his current situation, Vetrov could neither escape nor do more harm.

It usually took a year or so to investigate a serious criminal case. Vetrov stood trial surprisingly quickly. Galina Rogatina, who had spent a year in prison in the past, even told her friend Valery Tokarev, “You’ll see, stay tuned.” A phrase Tokarev understood only later. Vetrov was tried by the Moscow military regional court in session at its headquarters, on Arbat Street. The trial started in early September 1982. An officer from the Military Prosecutor’s Office represented the prosecution; a woman was appointed by the court for the defense.

Svetlana had found a reputable lawyer, Vilene Shingarev, who worked in law offices near the Mayakovskaya subway station. He had studied the file and accepted Vetrov’s defense. However, the court rejected his candidacy in favor of their appointment, despite the clearly illegal nature of such a decision, infringing upon the defendant’s rights. Svetlana came to understand why: the trial went on according to a rigid script, leaving no room for improvisation.

The Tribunal of the Military Region of Moscow.

Officially, the sessions were open to the public. In actual fact, only KGB members were admitted to the courtroom. Lubyanka was not keen on broadcasting that one of its officers had perpetrated a slaughter like an ordinary thug, the kind of recidivists grown in the Gulag. Also, in case of the slightest deviation from the planned scenario, they had the means to silence the audience. So it was that Svetlana could not follow the trial before her testimony and, therefore, could only be present at two court hearings.

Vetrov’s lawyer was in her forties. According to Svetlana, she had learned her script by heart. There was no defense, just a bureaucrat executing step by step the instructions she had been given. She kept repeating the questions asked by the prosecutor, without taking it upon herself to raise any objection to the judge.

However, those behind her performance—apparently the martial court remotely controlled by the KGB—had given her only orders, and nothing extra. Being greedy, she did not want to have worked for her salary only. So, after the trial, she talked to Svetlana, claiming that to obtain meetings with Vetrov in Lefortovo, she had to grease the jailers’ palms and that Svetlana had to reimburse her. The lawyer’s ploy was clearly lacking imagination, like her entire behavior, but Svetlana decided to settle the issue amicably. She gave her a pair of earrings, a gold ring, and money.

During Galina Rogatina’s testimony at the hearing, an incident occurred that reinforced her conviction that the KGB wanted to limit Vetrov’s culpability strictly to an ordinary murder in order to quietly pursue a much more extensive investigation behind the scenes. Talking about their relations with Vetrov, she came to the episode when Vladimir wanted to borrow seventeen thousand rubles from them to buy a painting. There were only six people in the hearing chamber, and Galina felt distinctly two pairs of eyes upon her. Vetrov and the prosecutor were staring at her. She stopped in the middle of a sentence.

Vladimir broke the silence.

“Galina Vasilevna misunderstood me,” he said.

Rogatina turned her gaze on the prosecutor. The message she read in his eyes was clear: the prosecution did not want her to drag up this point.

“Alright,” she said. “Maybe I misunderstood.”

There is every indication that Vetrov had been briefed, too, on what he should say in court.

In the end, the Rogatins were grateful to Vetrov. In a desperate situation, whereas some defendants are ready to sell their mothers, Volodia did not make a single remark or allusion that might link them to his crime. He even said about Alexei, “Why do you want to hear him? He has nothing to say. He repaired my car; I paid him for his services, that’s all.”

At the time, Alexei felt offended, but after thinking it over, he realized that Vetrov simply did not want him to be bothered.
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One particular fact shows that the KGB did not consider Vetrov’s crime a trivial event. When Svetlana was summoned for questioning, they tapped his personal phone and bugged every room in the apartment.
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All the contacts with the prisoner’s wife and son were now under control. Only PGU suspicion could justify such measures, and it paid off. The investigation would establish that Svetlana was having an affair with the hearing judge appointed to her husband’s trial. She received him at home. On days when there were two hearings, one in the morning and one in the evening, the couple would use the break to dash to Kutuzov Avenue, then come back to Arbat Street. Of course, Svetlana did not know her home was under surveillance. This affair never surfaced; a few pages in the report archived in Vetrov’s file were the only trace of it.

Did Svetlana yield to the overtures of a man who appealed to her, or was it this attractive woman’s attempt to lighten the sentence about to be passed on her husband? This could have gone either way and have become a gross miscalculation. Indignant at her behavior, the KGB could have indeed requested even more severity from the judge. All questions left unanswered…

According to our witnesses, Vetrov remained his normal self during the duration of the eight-day trial. He did not appear demoralized and seemed even fairly confident. However, he was soon to be devastated by the sentence passed on November 3, 1982.
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Vetrov was convicted on all charges: premeditated murder with unusual cruelty, premeditated murder, and carrying of a knife, which was considered a crime in the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. It was the maximum sentence; after that there was only the death penalty. For that matter, the death penalty was requested by Krivich’s widow and Ludmila Ochikina, lodging a joint appeal
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that was later rejected. When he was authorized to see his family, Vetrov was still in a state of shock from the sentence. This backs up the hypothesis of an arranged trial. Vetrov had followed the instructions given by the investigators, but they did not keep their promise to reduce his sentence.

At the first visit with his family, Vladimir looked much different than his appearance at the trial. He was pallid like a man who needed light and fresh air. He kept rubbing his wrists. He explained that he had been handcuffed for the duration of the investigation. This was an exaggeration since inmates were not handcuffed in their cells. The handcuffs were more likely put on him only when taking him to the visiting room.

Svetlana was shocked at seeing how a man as self-confident and healthy as Vladimir had turned into a haggard ghost. For Svetlana, pity had taken over any other feeling. She no longer tried to clarify certain circumstances, no longer blamed him. She wanted only to give him all the support he needed.

Later, Vetrov was able to see his family regularly. The frequency of visits was strictly regulated, but at least he was back in the hands of his former colleagues. Svetlana visited him every week, Vladik every other week. Despite the rules, they brought parcels as they pleased.

The Lefortovo prison director, Ivan Mitrofanovich Petrenko, a man in his sixties, was kind and understanding. He was a former investigating magistrate for KGB cases of the utmost importance. This department had its offices in Lefortovo itself, in a long multi-floor building, located in front of the prison. Petrenko had already retired when the former director of the prison was fired after one of the inmates, a highly ranked military man, committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window. When the time came to find a new director, people remembered Ivan Petrenko because his father had been at that post in the past. Petrenko accepted the job. Come to think of it, Petrenko had spent almost his entire life at Lefortovo.

Since he was breaking the rules by authorizing more visits than Vetrov was allowed, those meetings took place most of the time in his spacious office. The office was ordinary, and even the hallway did not have the characteristic prison smell.

Svetlana took advantage of every opportunity she had to see her husband. The drama of their life might not have restored love between them overnight, but she now intended to stay by his side. She felt terribly sorry for him, she said.

She herself had the impression that she was alive only when asleep. In her dreams, she went back to her former peaceful and happy life. To find the strength to go through each new day, she forced herself to anticipate the moment when she could rest her head on her pillow and close her eyes. Each morning, the alarm clock threw her back into merciless reality. She imagined what it was like for Vladimir to wake up in his prison cell.

Vetrov told her that he tried to keep living with them in thought. He spent time remembering every inch of their apartment and the location of each object. He was making plans for when he would be released. “I won’t be a burden for you. I’ll find work,” he kept repeating.

By law, the wife of a convict who got a long sentence had the right to regain her freedom. All she had to do was sign a petition for the divorce to be effective, without going to court.

“Don’t let him down, Sveta,” said Petrenko. “You’re his only support.”

“Well of course!” she answered. “Who could abandon a man in his situation?”

Vetrov was aware of his wife being his only support. He was asking for her forgiveness and kissing her hands constantly, repeating that all that happened the last two years was only a nightmare.

“You know you are my only love,” he told her over and over.

Svetlana decided to forgive him. The past, however, would not go away.

One day Vladimir told her, “My only regret is that I was not able to kill her.”

Svetlana shivered; a minute ago he was loving, and now he exuded hatred.

“How can you say such a thing? Did you love her or not?”

Vetrov felt no remorse. He loathed Ludmila.

Meanwhile, his major concern was his personal property. Immediately after his longing for a peaceful and free existence among his loved ones, worrying about his assets seemed to dominate Vetrov’s thoughts. While returning to a normal family life was a fantasy, the other concern was only too real.

Since Vladimir had been convicted and sentenced for a crime of passion, there had been no talk about seizing their assets. However, Svetlana thought it prudent to ask for an official document confirming that their property could not be confiscated. She had expenses, though…

First, she had to pay the fairly high price for the victim’s funeral. Then, she reimbursed Ludmila Ochikina for the clothes she was wearing on the day she was assaulted. There were the parcels to prepare for Vladimir, and the household to run. Svetlana had to sell some of her clothes and two paintings.

When he learned about it, Vetrov had a fit. Before the trial he had given his fancy sweat suit to a common criminal, who was about to go for questioning, in exchange for a phone call to Svetlana from the office of the investigating magistrate to tell her not to pay a thing to anyone. He was the culprit, the message continued, and it was only for him to compensate the victims, even if it took decades to do so, considering the dismal pay inmates received for work in prison.

The Military Prosecutor’s Office did not take the same view. Belomestnykh and his deputies insisted Svetlana pay the full living allowance the murderer had to pay to the victim’s underage child. Krivich, the man killed in the parking area, was survived by two children, but only one was a girl under eighteen. Vetrov was obliged to pay her a monthly allowance until her eighteenth birthday.

At Lefortovo, on the contrary, Petrenko agreed with Vetrov. By law, the criminal had to pay, not his family. Svetlana chose the middle way. She reimbursed expenses, but left Vetrov the responsibility to pay the living allowance.