Farewell (44 page)

On a rendezvous day, a CIA operator must have had a sheet of paper in front of him with a column of numbers, like, for instance, 15:38, 16:29, 17:10, 17:51, and 18:07. If at those exact times he intercepted any message on the frequencies used by mobile surveillance, or a ciphered phrase or simply a sound signal, he wrote it down. Then, a CIA station field officer would come by after six p.m. to check on the situation. All he would know himself is that the French were executing a covert operation that day. If he observed that there were no events at those exact moments when the French officer was making various moves to shake off potential pursuers, he could call an office colleague of the French military attaché to tell him, for instance, that he is sending the latest American newspapers over by courier. If, on the contrary, he sees that there is every indication that their man is under surveillance, he invites the colleague over to play bridge the next Saturday. Then, depending on the scenario, the Frenchman will simply drive by the Arbat restaurant to alert Ferrant, who is waiting in the parking lot, so that he can take a trolley to go to his rendezvous. If his colleague does not drive by, it means that the operation has been cancelled and Ferrant must go home.

That’s what Karavashkin thought. But what actually happened?

Ferrant’s KGB “guardian angel” was Slava Sidorkin.
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Very often, by an injustice of fate, the secret service’s best officers, the ones who brilliantly executed their missions, die unknown. Conversely, history remembers the names of burned, arrested, and imprisoned agents, of individuals behind colossal blunders and memorable faux pas. In the service’s history, Sidorkin will be remembered as the man who missed Vetrov.

A former boxer, he had the face of a weasel, a pointed snout, a receding forehead, and prying, insolent eyes. After fulfilling his military duty, Sidorkin graduated from the Seventh Directorate (surveillance) School in Leningrad. After a year of service, a promising young man, he was admitted to the Dzerzhinsky School, where counterintelligence officers were trained. In five years he mastered twenty words of French, and he was sent for a field term to the French section of the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence). His instructors had no illusions about him. Sidorkin was not cut out to be an operative. They gave him the advice to stay in the school to teach instead, but Slava persisted. Despite the little hope that could be placed in him, the section gave him this “job for the good guy,” as the Russians say. Sidorkin was in charge of overseeing the French military, a post that did not require outstanding talents.

His enthusiasm for work being skillfully paced, the Ferrant file was as thin as a theater program. In three years, he placed the French officer under mobile surveillance only half a dozen times, on days when the tailing team he was responsible for had really nothing else to do. Sergei Kostin was able, on the other hand, to find notes that were sometimes written down in their registry by the security guards posted at the French embassy and at the House of France.

Foreign delegations and residential buildings reserved for foreigners were guarded by the police round the clock. Actually, the special regiment of the Ministry of Interior was assigned exclusively to the protection of delegations from friendly or neutral countries. The security of NATO members’ embassies and of their largest residential buildings depended on the Diplomatic Representations Guard Department of the KGB Seventh Directorate. The men in police uniforms were counterintelligence officers or NCOs. Having been at the same post for years, they knew every passing face. At the request of their colleagues from the Second Chief Directorate, they often drew psychological profiles of certain foreigners or the list of Soviet people meeting with them. They secretly photographed visitors. Regarding known intelligence officers, like Ferrant, the guards received instructions every once in a while to record all their comings and goings.

We have the entries corresponding to days when Ferrant had a rendezvous with Farewell: September 4 and 18, October 2 and 16, November 6 and 20, and December 4. According to Patrick Ferrant, these entries were not reliable because, as we saw previously, functionaries were not infallible and often forgot to record the French couple’s movements.
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Those indications are of relative interest, but they sometimes lead to conclusions or hypotheses that are not insignificant. They must be sorted into three groups.

The first group contains days with discrepancies between sources. On Friday September 4, when, according to Vetrov, they met at seven p.m. in the park, Ferrant shuttled between his office and his home:

19:00 - leaves the embassy.

19:02 - goes into the House of France, 13 1st Spasonalivkovsky Lane.

19:25 - leaves the house.

19:27 - comes back to the embassy.

20:16 - leaves the embassy again.

20:18 - goes home for good.

Thus, two witnesses saw Ferrant several times from their sentry boxes. Considering Ferrant’s height, it is not likely the guards could have mistaken him for somebody else. We have to admit that Vetrov must have forgotten the exact date of their first rendezvous after their summer vacation.

On October 16, although the third Friday of the month, and thus a backup meeting day, both entries are conflicting again. According to the guard on duty at the House of France, the Ferrants left in their car at 20:02 and came back past midnight, at 0:08. On November 6, Ferrant is believed to have left the embassy at 19:10 and arrived home at 19:12.

From those examples, it appears that, two years after the fact, Vetrov’s memories were getting fuzzy. Having confessed to the clandestine rendezvous, he had nothing to gain by giving the wrong dates. Those discrepancies question the credibility of Vetrov’s depositions as far as dates are concerned.

The second group of records includes two meetings where it all fits perfectly. On Friday September 18, at 18:07, Ferrant and his wife left their apartment; they were back at 20:09. Similarly, on October 2, Patrick and Madeleine left their home at 17:40 and drove back through the gates at 21:21. The rendezvous was at 19:00 not far from the Triumphal Arch. Having left the House of France in his car once at 18:07, and once at 17:40, Ferrant could have easily arrived at the meeting place on time, but—this is of cardinal significance—there was not enough time for any security route!

Added to that, it would have been sheer folly to leave a diplomatic car anywhere with a woman inside. On a closely monitored thoroughfare like the Kutuzov Avenue, it would have been reported immediately to counterintelligence. Ferrant, therefore, needed to park his car in the Arbat restaurant parking lot, located at the beginning of Kalinin Avenue, near the department stores. In this way, Madeleine had the alibi of shopping while her husband slipped away for an hour or so.

Taking September 18 as an extreme case, the route was as follows: The Ferrants drove away from the House of France at 18:07. They turned into Bolshaya Polyanka Street and then got on the Garden Ring. To get to the Arbat restaurant in rush-hour traffic, they needed ten to fifteen minutes. By the time they parked the car and crossed Kalinin Avenue through the underground tunnel it was 18:30, in the best-case scenario. The Borodino Battle Museum was twenty minutes or so away by trolley or bus, provided it came within the ten remaining minutes. Ferrant had never been late at the rendezvous; Vetrov was specifically questioned on this point.

In those conditions, it appears that Ferrant had barely enough time to turn around every so often to check if a shadow was waving at him to signal his presence.

The third group concerns the November 20 and December 4 rendezvous. On those days, based on the Soviet guards’ records, Ferrant left the embassy at 18:13 and 18:15, respectively, and was last seen entering his apartment building two or three minutes later. Does that question the veracity of Vetrov’s statements? Probably not, since the Ameil episode was, for the main part, confirmed by Vetrov. Should the accuracy of the guards’ records be in doubt? Despite a few errors noticed on other occasions, the guards were KGB members aware of the importance of their job—but still.

Despite the inaccuracies, nothing substantiates the assumption that, on his way to meet with his mole, Ferrant was taking even the most elementary precautions. As for the Americans controlling the radio waves, it did not happen. “Paul,” the professional, appears to have behaved with the same nonchalance as the amateurs Xavier Ameil and Madeleine Ferrant.

The complex scenario imagined by Karavashkin, involving security routes all over town and American radio assistance, resulted from the reflex of a professional. Even when confronted with the evidence, he refused to believe that the handling of Vetrov could have been accomplished with such amateurishness.
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To French professionals, on the other hand, the situation appears plausible. Admiral Pierre Lacoste, former head of the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), answering Sergei Kostin’s questions, was of the opinion that if the Farewell operation succeeded, it was precisely because it ran counter to all the rules of the trade, because it was managed by amateurs. Considering the draconian counterintelligence regime that existed in the Soviet Union at the time, true pros would have soon fallen into the KGB’s clutches.
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Regardless of the errors committed by the DST in the Farewell operation, it is still surprising that the KGB did not have a clue. Hubris was the main explanation. The French section of the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) was so convinced that they had dissuaded the French from actively pursuing intelligence work in the USSR, and that they so cleverly maintained the illusion they were controlling each step of each foreigner, it was in a state of blissful contentment, resting on its laurels. Furthermore, the French section was a victim of the system imposed by the PGU (intelligence service), which intended it to be the only one in charge of security within its ranks.

All the same, Soviet counterintelligence should have reacted at least in two concrete circumstances. They had noticed that there were often French people in the Borodino Battle Museum area.
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If they did not look further into the matter, it was because this was normal. The museum was one of the places in Moscow most closely linked to French history. This proves once more that Vetrov had planned his collaboration with the DST very carefully. His presence there could be easily explained by the proximity of his garage and his wife’s job at the museum, and the presence of a French person would also seem logical, even if a liaison officer.

The second KGB error is more embarrassing and is matched only by Patrick Ferrant’s assumed unconcern. This intelligence specialist is thought to have done something imprudent, a mistake the amateur Ameil would not have made.

The Ferrants had hired a Russian housekeeper to help Madeleine with their five daughters and with the apartment. Patrick had to know that Soviet domestic staff employed by foreigners were in the service of the KGB. Nonetheless, one morning, while Ferrant was at the embassy, the housekeeper allegedly found, on a desk, the photocopy of a document passed by Farewell. There was no doubt: the paper had a KGB logo and was stamped “top secret.”

When questioned about the incident, Ferrant thought the explanation was simple. The incriminating document could not have come from the Farewell dossier because Ferrant never left those documents out, and he always had them with him when he went to the embassy.

What he remembers well, though, is having left in full view a book about the KGB written by John Barron in 1975 and entitled
KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents
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Highly visible on the cover page was the KGB emblem.

This voluntary “slip” was in line with Ferrant’s general attitude during his posting in Moscow. If he was careful not to lose the agents who occasionally tailed him, it was to not get them in trouble. A reprimanded agent is more zealous than a lazy functionary who quietly goes about his business. Conversely, a foreign resident trying to shake off a shadow is necessarily suspicious. Following the same logic, a housekeeper supposed to report compromising facts about the foreigners she works for, but who never provides anything, runs the risk of being poorly rated. To give her something to work on, “Paul” had told her she could look at everything around, except that book. “I often asked this good woman if she had enough to tell her superiors about; I would even suggest reporting such and such event. It gave her a good laugh,” the officer remembers.
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Nevertheless, the housekeeper did not touch the book, but she rushed to tell her UPDK superior all about it. Like most of his colleagues, he was a retired Lubyanka employee. He had the good reflex to call counterintelligence, Ninth Department. At the time, Vladimir Nevzorov, the housekeeper’s supervisor in the French section, could not leave his office. The department head sent an operative from the Portuguese section, instead, to the UPDK.

The man went by the book for this type of situation. He questioned the housekeeper, and then, back at Lubyanka, he informed someone in charge in the French section. Together, they informed the Ninth Department chief. Being a USA specialist, Vadim Toptygin
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did not know the difference between the Quai d’Orsay (Foreign Affairs) and the Quai des Orfèvres (Police headquarters). In his eyes, only the CIA could challenge the KGB. He guffawed.

“Come on! Ha-ha-ha…the French? Able to get their hands on a KGB document? She suffers from hallucinations, your maid! She needs to be examined by a shrink. And you too!”

Had they decided to put Ferrant under surveillance, however, he would have been spotted at the next rendezvous with Vetrov, since, evidently, the Frenchman did not follow a security route before going to Year 1812 Street.