Farewell (40 page)

In Lefortovo, the liberal reign of Ivan Mitrofanovich Petrenko was coming to an end. He paid dearly for his friendly attitude with the Vetrovs and was let go for having bent the internal rules in their favor.

Once caught, a traitor could only hope for clemency. To obtain it, though, he had to satisfy two contradictory, even mutually exclusive, demands. On one hand he had to prove that he sincerely repented and was willing to disclose everything to the investigation. On the other hand, the more he confessed, the less chance he had that his life would be spared.

Vetrov had a more tangible hope, though, and staked everything on it. He could prolong his existence and partially redeem himself by participating in an intelligence game. Making the most of Vetrov, the PGU had a chance to deceive the DST and, through it, all of the West.

“I grant you, the issue presented itself each time a mole was uncovered,” said Igor Prelin.
⁵
“But not to disinform the other side. In this situation, it was extremely difficult to hide the fact that the mole was arrested; in time, the adversary was bound to find out. From a counterintelligence standpoint, the most severe blow dealt to the adversary, after an agent had been identified, was to catch the handler red-handed. The main point, though, I must say, is that the case examining magistrates were never certain the mole had told them everything. So, offering the mole a part in an intelligence game was one of the methods used to squeeze the last bits of information out of him.”

Examining magistrates know that a spy who has been arrested is ready for anything. After his confession, Oleg Penkovsky, the CIA and MI6 mole within the GRU, offered to go to the West and blow up any city. He even suggested leaving his wife and two children behind as hostages, to be shot if he did not come back. It was learned later that when still working for the West, Penkovsky had volunteered to explode a nuclear device in Moscow, a city where his friends and relatives lived. Utterly shocked, the Americans dissuaded him.

Vetrov must not have had any illusions. Before him, many captured agents had sincerely cooperated with the KGB. Not only had they confessed everything, but they also went along with all kinds of games aimed at compromising their handlers. Still, they were shot by firing squad.

What else could he do, though? A deception operation could at least delay the fatal end, dreaded by any human being. For those reasons, when Vetrov saw Svetlana again in late 1983, he repeated what he had written to her a few days earlier:

“If you can, help me. Do everything they’ll ask you to do. This is my only chance.”

“They” were the three investigating magistrates, who were now present during each visit, closely monitoring the couple’s every move, even moving toward Svetlana when she just reached for her handkerchief. Vetrov could only take her hands in his and kiss them.

Visits were no longer organized to allow the prisoner to see his wife and son. Vetrov could inquire about Vladik, Svetlana, and other relatives, nothing more. The conversation was about topics of interest to the investigation and the PGU. The only purpose of Vetrov’s presence was to prove to Svetlana that he was going along with the process, was still alive, adequately fed, and of sound mind.

On this last point, Svetlana had her doubts. During the visits, Vladimir always behaved in a very cheerful way, similar to the high one reaches after drinking with friends all evening. If his wife hesitated on an especially sensitive point or tried to omit a detail, he intervened immediately in a bantering tone: “But why don’t you say such and such?” or “But you still forgot this!” Svetlana is convinced that Vladimir was drugged.

As early as the second visit, another man was present. He was a man in his sixties, short, dark-skinned, with the classical physique of an idealistic ascetic, with a lean body, an emaciated face, like Felix Dzerzhinsky, James Angleton, Peter Wright, and so many other famous spy hunters. The man had introduced himself only by his first name and patronymic, Sergei Mikhailovich. Svetlana did not know if it was a pseudonym, and she did not know his last name. Yet, he was one of the best known and most feared men in Yasenevo. As deputy head of PGU internal counterintelligence, Colonel Golubev personally supervised Department 5K’s activities and, consequently, all the investigations of treason by Soviet intelligence officers. He was the Great Inquisitor.

Although feared throughout the PGU, Golubev was not simply an avenging arm, a man only able to see, in every new traitor he met, a future head rolling under the guillotine blade. He did not mind a little psychology. When he learned that Karavashkin, then head of the Ninth Department (Europe) of the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence), was working on Vetrov file, he called him several times on the ciphered line, engaging him in long conversations on the psychological phenomenon of treason in secret services. Those conversations would last such a long time that Karavashkin had to lock his door to not be interrupted.

One day, the colonel said to him, “I never considered an individual brought in front of me solely as a traitor. What drives someone to betray is so complex, it is always a whole set of circumstances. I remember taking pity on a sad case. You probably have guessed who I am talking about. He said to me, ‘Sergei Mikhailovich, give me a good cig. It may turn out to be my last one.’ By ‘good cig’ he meant an American cigarette. Of course, I immediately pulled out my pack of Marlboros, and we stayed there a good fifteen minutes, smoking without exchanging a word. I did not want to ruin one of the rare peaceful moments he could enjoy.”

It did not take long for Svetlana to be charmed by the man for whom charm was a professional tool. She readily accepted the mission he asked her to fulfill.

She had to deliver two written messages to the Thomson-CSF office in Moscow. First, the exact same letter Vetrov had written to Prévost in October 1982. Then, a shorter note from Svetlana, in broken French.

The KGB hoped that Jacques Prévost would respond to his Russian friends’ appeal for help. In which case, Svetlana was supposed to meet him and tell him about the murder. Nothing more, just the crime of passion. She would then say that Vetrov was in Irkutsk for the moment, but not in a prison camp. Certain individuals who committed crimes, but did not belong to the underworld, could serve their sentence under less strict conditions. They worked at plants manufacturing toxic products, such as a chemical industrial complex, and went back to their camp barrack only to sleep. The rest of the time, they were neither convoyed nor guarded. She was supposed to tell the French that this was Vetrov’s case.

It would be, therefore, easy for her husband to escape. He would take care of everything himself in Soviet territory, but to leave the country he needed a French passport. This is why Svetlana was contacting Jacques. She even had passport photos of Vetrov (taken in Lefortovo prison). She was to give them to Prévost during their first meeting. Then, if the DST agreed, she would receive a passport with a French name but with Vladimir’s picture.

Naturally, the KGB plan was not resting on the gratitude the DST had toward its agent nor on the explicit promise made to him in President Mitterrand’s name. Objectively, Vetrov’s experience and the information he kept in his head were extremely valuable to any adversarial intelligence service. Therefore, from the DST’s or the CIA’s perspective, this was a fully justified investment. In exchange for only one passport, Western services had the opportunity to get a first-rate source.

Svetlana did not know the rest of the plan. Of course, the KGB never intended to let Vetrov flee to the West. Did it just want to compromise a French citizen, if not to prove him guilty of espionage? The “special quality” of the relations between the USSR and France did not lend itself to a scandal of international dimensions. One did not exclude the other. Secret services always need bargaining chips. In response to a blunder committed in France by a Russian intelligence officer, the KGB could present its chip and thus hush up the scandal.

April 10, 1984, was unusually warm; Svetlana even unbuttoned her coat. The French-Soviet Chamber of Commerce headquarters on Pokrovsky Boulevard was usually guarded by an orderly asking visitors the reason for their visit. On that day, there was nobody on duty, probably on purpose. Svetlana went upstairs to the second floor. She had been given all the instructions necessary to find the Thomson delegation offices. She rang the doorbell and waited. Nobody came. She turned the doorknob and the door opened.

Svetlana went in. Contrary to what she had been dreading, she was very calm.

“Anybody there?” she asked in French.

No answer. She stepped forward, making her way through the suite with its offices furnished in a Western style. Suddenly, in an office, a young woman lifted her head and looked at Svetlana.

“Bonjour,” said Svetlana.

“Bonjour!”

The woman was clearly French. Svetlana opened her purse and pulled out the envelope.

“I have a letter for Jacques Prévost. Would you mind transmitting it to him?”

The secretary took the envelope and read the name written on it.

“It is very urgent,” added Svetlana.

“No problem.”

She slipped the letter into a drawer.

That was it. Svetlana thanked the woman and left. Another card played to prolong Vetrov’s life.

The letter did reach its destination, but, familiar with double dealings, Raymond Nart immediately sensed a trap. Nobody contacted Svetlana, and she was now a suspect in the DST’s eyes.

We now know that this KGB deception maneuver trying to involve the DST was also meant to lure Vetrov. The investigating magistrates wanted to make sure he was sincere with them. That is why they photographed the mole, supposedly for a passport, and it is also why they bent the rules for Vetrov a few more times.

What Svetlana did not say at the time the book was being written is that the couple was allowed long, intimate visits. In Lefortovo, a special room was furnished with a table that could be used for meals, liquor being also allowed, and a bed the inmate could use, with his wife or any other woman. One day, as minutely recorded in the investigation file, Svetlana had been authorized to bring a bottle of vodka,
zakuski
(Russian appetizers), and other treats for a romantic evening which lasted eight hours. And no one noticed that Vetrov had also given Svetlana a small note written in French.

Two days later, Svetlana was summoned to Lefortovo. Sergadeev showed her a few letters from her husband that had been confiscated during the search of their apartment, and he asked her to comment on certain sentences. Those messages contained a fair amount of criticism of Soviet power and imprudent allusions to the great life they could have had in France. The magistrate was surprised that the camp censors let the letters go through.

Disarmed by his bantering tone, Svetlana answered, “Well, that’s the whole point, they did not go through censorship! Volodia managed to mail them through people who had served their sentence and were released.”

“Is that so? And what did he pass to you?”

Asking this question, Sergadeev was bluffing, not expecting anything in return. But Svetlana opened her purse and pulled out a short note her husband had slipped to her during their last rendezvous. It was another call for help to the French, asking them to assist his family financially. It was also much worse than that: to prove he could still be useful to the DST, Vetrov provided a few corrections regarding four Soviet agents.

Vetrov’s last hope vanished at this very instant. How could they trust a man who, although under the pending threat of capital punishment, continued to pass intelligence secrets to the opposite side? Did Svetlana realize that by remitting the note to the examining magistrates, she had betrayed her husband and, actually, sent him in front of a firing squad? Did the experienced and skilled magistrate Sergadeev allow her to understand that? Apparently not. From that moment on, the KGB abandoned the idea of deceiving the DST with Vetrov’s help.

It nevertheless continued its little game with the uncovered mole. One day, Sergadeev asked Svetlana to come to his office in order to brief her, should a Frenchman respond to Farewell’s SOS.

“But Jacques…Jacques Prévost came to our place a few days ago,” she said. “Surely you know about it.”

Sergadeev was flabbergasted.

“You mean, Prévost went to see you at home?” he eventually uttered.

“You didn’t know?” added Svetlana, even more surprised. “I thought…”

She thought her apartment was constantly under surveillance.

“And what happened?” asked Sergadeev.

“Nothing special. I explained the situation, and he ran away as if the house was on fire.”

The investigating magistrate was in despair.

This is what Sergadeev told Igor Prelin. However, is such bad luck credible?

Nart and Jacques Prévost claimed on the contrary that this visit was absolutely impossible. First, because Nart had forbidden Prévost from going to Moscow; second, because in mid-December 1983, Jacques Prévost had a heart attack which incapacitated him for six months. The Thomson executive was in Moscow last in early December 1983, and did not set foot in that city ever again. In fact, the last time he went through customs at the airport, before flying back to Paris, he was retained for half an hour by two field officers, one being a lieutenant colonel; they eventually let him go, but for Prévost, who knew that Vetrov had been arrested, those thirty minutes were the longest of his life. There was, therefore, every reason to think Svetlana had lied. Was it a petty revenge over her husband’s examining magistrates?