Farewell (18 page)

First, they needed a code name for their mole. In order to avoid one that might allow the identification of the agent, French secret services had a ready-to-use list of pseudonyms. The first pseudonym available is used, provided it has no link with the real name or biographical details of the person to protect. Soviet counterintelligence personnel had a good laugh when they learned that, during the big hunt launched by the CIA in the sixties and seventies to find the mole named “Sasha,” those named Alexander (the diminutive form of which is Sasha) were under particular scrutiny.
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Marcel Chalet came up with a more elegant solution. A nationally qualified English teacher, Chalet knew the language of Shakespeare very well. To confuse the issue, he chose an English word. This way, if there were a leak, the KGB would think that it was an American or British operation, and would not necessarily look at the French services. Furthermore, the chosen name “Farewell” could suggest a closed case. The hope was it would slow down the KGB’s zeal to identify the source. And last, there was a humane side in this pseudonym, quite touching on the part of a counterintelligence ace. Written in two words,
fare well
conveys well-intended wishes for a safe journey. “And that was indeed,” said Chalet, “what we were wishing our man in Moscow, from the bottom of our hearts.”
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It was also all about putting an end to the improvised nature of the operation, in Nart’s words, to the “reckless heroism” of Xavier and Claude Ameil. The couple, as mentioned, did not have diplomatic passports and would have been in a very precarious situation if things were to go wrong.

Chalet then mentioned the possibility of recruiting a diplomat, but Nart answered he already had just the right man. Explaining the replacement of the Thomson representative, Nart told Chalet for the first time about a certain Patrick Ferrant, deputy military attaché posted in the French embassy in Moscow, where he lived with his wife and their five daughters. Nart had known Ferrant since the time the young man was appointed to the National Defense Secretariat; he was the liaison between the Ministry of Defense and the DST in a few sensitive cases.
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Born in 1940 in Pas-de-Calais, northern France, Patrick Ferrant was a Saint-Cyr graduate. He was fluent in English and had some knowledge of Russian and Bulgarian. He was posted in Moscow in August 1980, as he remembers, on the last day of the Olympics, “as the marathon runners were finishing the race.”
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Summoned by the Ministry of Defense, Ferrant flew back to Paris in April 1981, officially to attend a meeting organized for military attachés posted in Eastern Bloc countries. Ferrant found himself in the office of the newly nominated chief of staff of the French armed forces, General Jeannou Lacaze, at that post since February 1. Ferrant was surprised to see there Raymond Nart and his superior Désiré Parent.

As a military man and former officer of the Foreign Legion, Lacaze did not beat about the bush. “Well, Ferrant, we need to ask you something, and we are urging you to accept. There is somebody to contact in Moscow. Monsieur Nart will now explain.”
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Nart briefed him on the affair and, without elaborating too much, gave the big picture in all of its importance and implications. “Oh, by the way,” interrupted Lacaze, “the guy would like a woman to be the first contact. So you’ll have to find one at the embassy.” Caught unawares, Ferrant mentioned an acquaintance, a woman working for a humanitarian program, but “chances are,” he said, “it’s going to be delicate.” After a moment’s thought, Lacaze added in his direct style, “Listen, why not send your wife?” Unruffled, Ferrant answered, “You are right, General, it did not occur to me. And indeed, from the standpoint of the operation, it is definitely simpler.”

As the meeting broke, Nart had reasons to be pleased. Ameil could, at last, be removed from the operation, and his replacement definitely presented appreciable advantages to handle Farewell. Most importantly, he had diplomatic cover. Also, he was a disciplined military man, punctual and discreet.

On the other hand, Ferrant was not without serious shortcomings for the job. A secret agent must go unnoticed, with an ordinary look, medium size, no striking features. Even though in Moscow he was wearing civilian clothes, Patrick Ferrant was a typical cavalry officer: crew cut, close-shaven, military gait. Nart even asked him to let his hair grow a little in order not to trigger a military salute on the part of the Moscow policemen walking by him. To complete the picture, Ferrant was six feet six inches tall. In the middle of a crowd, his head was visible from fifty meters away, extremely convenient for those in charge of tailing him.

“That’s the way short people look at it,” Ferrant answered, smiling wryly when reminded of his size “handicap.” “As for the ordinary look, the medium size, those are attributes in the manual of the perfect little spy.”

Ferrant, whose subtlety contrasted with his sturdy figure, went on to quote Sun Tzu: “
The essence of the art of war is deception. If able, fake inability; if close by, make believe you are far away. Transform your weak points into as many strong points
.” Ferrant had discovered the Chinese strategist thanks to General Laurent, his superior at the embassy’s military mission, who would later coordinate the shipping of Farewell’s documents to France. The general, in spite of his rank, was informal and open-minded, traits highly appreciated by Ferrant. It will become apparent that Patrick Ferrant was able to put into practice the theory of those maxims while spying in the heart of the Soviet capital.

And the last point that must not have escaped the KGB, Ferrant’s mission in Moscow when he was not fulfilling his diplomatic representative function was to buy or obtain published, unclassified information on military topics. He was also authorized under strict rules to visit certain regions of the Soviet Union, but these activities had nothing to do with secret agent operations. He was the only available candidate in Moscow. As had often been the case in this adventure, the choice of the new handler, running counter to all espionage rules, was guided by necessity.

Before returning to Moscow, Ferrant sat down with Nart for a couple of days to go over his living conditions in Moscow in detail and determine what would be the most natural way to conduct the operation. This was a quick and basic training, considering the little experience the DST had in this area. “The central idea was, roughly, you’re on your own!” recalls Ferrant. Nart, on the other hand, had insisted on his core principle: “We cannot give you an action plan, but in any case, keeping it simple is what will make it work.”

Nart had prepared a contact system between Ferrant and Vetrov “drawing upon principles taught in all intelligence schools, even borrowing a few ideas from clever techniques used by our adversaries.”
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The system was based, in a nutshell, on the use of “dead drops” (or dead letter boxes) to avoid physical contact between the agent and his handler.

On April 30, 1981,
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equipped with those newly acquired principles, Ferrant returned to Moscow where his meeting with Xavier Ameil was scheduled.

Xavier Ameil met Patrick Ferrant again in Moscow on May 13. The encounter was brief. The two men met in the entrance hall of the French embassy, then went for a walk. “It was not necessarily very prudent,” Ferrant admits today, “because we would normally never go for walks like that. Anything which was not the routine was a bad idea, but…oh well.”

Ameil told Ferrant the place and time of his upcoming rendezvous and gave him a brief description of Vetrov. Xavier also gave him earrings, probably intended for Ludmila, as a means of identification. The conversation did not last more than a few minutes, and before he knew it, Ameil had become an honorable Thomson-CSF representative again.

Ferrant now had to inform the person who would play a predominant role in the operation, and who would not suspect for a moment what would be asked of her. With the Farewell case, a new Marianne joined the gallery of France’s heroic women. The woman who would later become the enigmatic “Marguerite” for the KGB was Madeleine Ferrant.

Her only link to the intelligence community was her marriage with a Deuxième Bureau officer. Life to her was her family. The couple had five children, all girls, all living with their parents in Moscow. Madeleine Ferrant, born Moretto, had other things to do than rushing to meet with a Russian spy.
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As General Lacaze did with him, Patrick Ferrant was rather direct when asking his wife for her help.

On the eve of the scheduled meeting with Vetrov, Ferrant invited Madeleine to go for a walk down the Moscow River, as they often did when the weather was nice. After some small talk, Ferrant moved straight to the subject matter. “Well, darling, I have something to ask you to do. You’ll go to the market, and there you’ll meet a guy. [Ferrant repeated the brief description of Vetrov given by Ameil.] He’ll take you in his car, and he will give you some documents. All you have to do is bring them back without being caught.”

Madeleine Ferrant was taken aback. “What kind of funny business is this?” Her husband explained briefly that “they” had asked him to do this and that, but for the initial contact, the man to meet preferred to deal with a woman. Madeleine was not an adventuress. Like her husband, she was anxious to stay in the background, and she cultivated self-effacement, in line with her religious zeal. Presented with a fait accompli, Madeleine Ferrant did not really have a choice. The mother of five prepared herself, not without apprehension, for her espionage mission.

Since the plan called for Vetrov to take her in his car, there was no point for her to drive to the market in the family car, as she would normally do. She decided to take the trolley. For the situation to look more natural, in keeping with their habits, Patrick took their car to the garage mechanic, pretending there was a problem with it, and thus justifying the use of public transportation by his wife. On May 22,
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1981, a Friday morning, Madeleine got on the Line 4 trolley that went all the way to the Cheryomushki market.

One of the three Moscow locations where, in broad daylight, top secret KGB documents were changing hands: the Cheryomushki market.

Meanwhile, Vetrov left Yasenevo. He had an official pretext to leave his office. He had to go to the ministry of the Aeronautics Research Institute. Colleagues from Bulgarian intelligence had given the PGU ten cannon shells from an Oerlikon airplane. Eight had been fired at the test range, and the two last ones were to be studied in detail in order to improve target protection or, perhaps, to serve as a prototype for the development of a similar Soviet product. The shells were small, not much bigger than two large-caliber machine gun cartridges.
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Vetrov put them in the same plastic bag as the one used for the big file he had prepared for his contact and left.

The market was located in a southern neighborhood of the capital, a twenty-minute drive or so from the Kremlin. This part of town was developed at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties as part of a vast public housing construction campaign under Khrushchev. It was the habitat of the scientific intelligentsia, with dozens of research institutes in the vicinity. The market was a big rectangular pavilion with two entrances; there was an area next to it where several rows of tables were used to display the foodstuffs.

Vetrov was anxious to check everything on site. He parked his car in the Light Industry Research Institute parking lot located at 69 Vavilov Street. He stayed a moment more in the car, observing his surroundings. There was nothing suspicious; people were simply coming and going, carrying shopping bags. They had come to buy radishes, the first cucumbers of the season, and fresh herbs.

Vetrov calmly got out of the car and locked it. He waited for a tram to go by, then crossed Vavilov Street at a leisurely pace. When he reached the corner of the market pavilion, coming from Lenin Avenue, a young woman crossed the street, carrying a shopping basket.

Years later, Madeleine still remembers vividly her state of anxiety when she arrived at the rendezvous. Once she got off the trolley, as she was approaching the market, thoughts raced around in her mind. It was obvious to her that a Frenchwoman in Moscow was easy to spot in a crowd, and the KGB, undoubtedly, knew about her every move. She was expecting to see police cars suddenly appear, and to be arrested by the police, causing a huge scandal. “I was certain it would happen that way,” she recalls. And so, she approached the marketplace as a death-row prisoner resigned to her fate walking to the gallows.

Madeleine recognized Vetrov right away, but she did not show it. She shifted the basket to her other arm and disappeared inside the pavilion. Vetrov could verify that, contrary to her fears, the Frenchwoman had not been tailed.

He lit up a Pall Mall. For a man who had never smoked in his entire life, not even during the endless Russian banquets, here he was, smoking over a pack a day for the past few months. Vetrov waited patiently for Madeleine to be done with her shopping so there would be enough produce in the basket to cover the file he was about to hand over to her. To kill time, he went to the newsstand. As he glanced at the magazine covers displayed in the window, he observed his surroundings, just to be sure. The way seemed clear.

He bought a newspaper as he finished smoking his cigarette. Then, with measured steps, he walked along the pavilion and positioned himself behind the exit. Madeleine was punctual. She appeared at eleven o’clock sharp. She walked up to the end of the sidewalk to free the passage, and then she turned around, looking for Vetrov. She froze as she saw him. There was no suspicious movement behind her. Vetrov walked up to Madeleine.

“Hi, I am Volodia.”

“Hi,” she answered, visibly tense.

“I’ll give you a lift,” offered Vetrov.

“Marguerite” followed him to the institute parking lot. When Vetrov opened the door on the passenger’s side, though, she panicked.

“You know what? In fact, I’d rather take the trolley.”

Obviously, she was afraid of getting in the car. To this day, her anxieties continue to haunt her. “I believed that every foreigner was identified as such. Getting in the car of a Soviet citizen was like signing my crime. Considering what he was doing, this Russian guy might just as well have been a dangerous nutcase.”

For Vetrov, this did not help matters. Admittedly, the thick file he brought would easily fit in the basket, but anything could happen on the trolley. There could be a pickpocket. Vetrov had to reassure the Frenchwoman at all costs.

“Really, there is nothing to fear,” he said with his engaging smile. “I assure you, this is much safer that way.”

“Marguerite” was too edgy to think straight, but she allowed herself to get in the Lada.

Sensing how tense she was, Vetrov started the conversation.

“How did you get here?”

“By trolley.”

“This is not convenient. Next time, I would advise taking the subway to the Lenin Avenue station, then the tramway on Vavilov Street.”

“What ‘next time’?” she protested. “I am here today just for the first contact, and then that’s it. I am not a professional agent; I have a family to take care of. I am not going to be involved in this.”

She was met by deafening silence. To break it, Vetrov went on and asked her about her family, since she’d mentioned it. He learned that Marguerite’s family was the largest in the French colony in Moscow.

In spite of his efforts at making her more at ease, Marguerite kept turning around nervously, to make sure no police car had suddenly appeared. Her home was fifteen minutes away from the market by car, at the most. Vetrov, however, turned into Lomonosov Avenue and drove to Kutuzov Avenue.
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Then, he turned right and drove all the way to the Moscow River embankments, making his passenger even more worried. “I knew only simple itineraries; I had no idea of the route he took,” Madeleine recalls. “I got to thinking that he could take me God knows where. My heart was in my boots.”

It took a whole hour before they emerged onto Oktiabrskaya Square, in sight of the French embassy. Vetrov dropped Madeleine off near the Warsaw Hotel and drove back to his office in Yasenevo.

In the end, it went pretty well. Out of a former habit, Vetrov turned right toward the PGU headquarters. He drove a few minutes thinking about the work he had to do at the office. It suddenly occurred to him that he was supposed to leave the shells at the research institute! Worse, he realized the damned shells were in the bag he had just given “Marguerite”! Turning around and going back in the heavy traffic would not have given him the slightest chance to catch up with her, even if he were to hail her right under the nose of his colleagues from the KGB Seventh Directorate posted in front of the House of France. Vetrov decided to trust fate, once again, as he had been doing for a while now.

In the meantime, Madeleine came home with shaken nerves, bringing back the “package.” Another danger was facing her: Natasha, their Russian housekeeper. As any other UPDK employee, she had the duty to report to the KGB about the diplomats she worked for. Madeleine dashed to her husband’s study to hide the file she’d brought back from the market.

When Patrick arrived home a short while later, he wondered if he had not gone a bit far by involving his wife in all this. Well, at least the mission had been perfectly accomplished, and the collected information appeared highly valuable. He opened the plastic bag and discovered a huge binder held together by two pieces of string, and next to it…two small shells. The kind of stuff that could blow up at any time in the heart of his family nest. It was the thickness of the file, though, that made Ferrant realize the scope of the enterprise. That very day, he went back to the embassy to photocopy the documents. Vetrov wanted them back on Sunday. Not an easy task with those damn strings in the way.

That evening Madeleine, who had gotten over all the commotion, told her husband her misgivings about meeting Vetrov again. “I have had my dose of adrenaline; I’m not qualified for this type of expedition. If it became necessary to discuss certain documents, I couldn’t do it.” Ferrant gave her his word that after she returned the file, he would be the one meeting with Farewell. Besides, upon Vetrov’s request, the DST had mentioned involving a woman only for the first contact.

The following Sunday, around five p.m., coming back from the embassy dacha where they had spent the day with friends and their five daughters, Patrick Ferrant dropped his wife off in a parking lot behind the Borodino public park. “Where is Mom going?” asked the youngest. “She went to get some bread—we are out of it,” answered her father as he watched his wife walking away.

Madeleine was five minutes late. Vetrov was waiting in his car. He nodded at her, friendly. The young woman sat next to him and handed over a plastic bag with the files. Vetrov threw the bag on the back seat and asked for the shells. She answered she did not have them and that, in any case, this was a matter to be discussed with her successor, who would be at the Borodino park the following Friday, same time. Vetrov nodded in agreement and did not insist.

What about the shells, then? Surely Vetrov had to provide some explanation to his superiors about their whereabouts. Yet, his investigation file leaves the mystery unsolved. This does not mean that the shells ended up in a trash can. They eventually crossed the border in the diplomatic pouch of the French embassy military mission, staying in transit in General Lacaze’s office, before getting completely lost in the maze of the military administration.

From that moment on, until the bitter end, Farewell would be handled by Patrick Ferrant. Madeleine kept going to the market on Fridays as an emergency backup. Much later in the course of the operation, when he started working with a miniature camera, Vetrov used “Marguerite’s” shopping basket again to drop a few rolls of film in it.

The following Friday, on May 29, Vladimir Vetrov and Patrick Ferrant met for the first time. The contact was friendly. The Russian was all smiles, clearly pleased to get acquainted with the man who would help him see through his insane project to a successful completion.