by Eric Raynaud
It all started in Moscow.
Although deprived of Western boutiques, Svetlana had remained nonetheless a very elegant woman. She did not work, and her mother, who lived with them, helped with the household chores. Svetlana kept busy looking for paintings and antiques and buying new clothes.
One day, she stopped by a fashion atelier located at 18 Kuznetsky Most. This was a hybrid business, both seamstress workroom and a couture house. Outfits could be custom made, but mostly the shop sold original designs produced in very limited quantities, only one or two of each model. In those years, the shop on Kuznetsky Most was the most fashionable one in Moscow. It was the starting point of the career of two internationally renowned Russian fashion designers, Slava Zaitsev and Valentin Yudashkin. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, as well as wives and daughters of highly ranked members of the nomenklatura still in power, were among the patrons of the shop. The big event was the house’s annual fashion show, a very exclusive event where diplomats were invited to see the new collections. Mere mortals did not have the slightest chance to attend. The director of the atelier, Galina Vasilevna Rogatina, made a point of welcoming her regular customers in person, especially the ones who were buying the highly priced original designs. Svetlana Vetrova belonged to that group. The relationship between the two women rapidly became informal.
Svetlana was an alluring woman. The minute she appeared, many saw in her a beautiful woman with personality, taste, and class. She knew what she wanted, a positive point for a customer, and she was very sociable. Often, Svetlana came to the shop with her congenial and outgoing husband Volodia. When questioned by Galina about his professional life, he answered that he worked as an electronics engineer in a research institute on Leningrad Avenue. Galina did not believe him; Svetlana had already mentioned to her their stays in France and Canada. Galina found it normal, though, that a KGB member would say otherwise.
Galina’s husband, Alexei Vasilevich, worked for the UPDK.4 He was an excellent driver and mechanic. He was the mechanic for the Iraqi military attaché in Moscow, and the chauffeur for the ambassadors from Sweden, Belgium, and Luxemburg. Alexei was quite different from his wife. While Galina was a cultured and subtle woman, he was an ordinary man, simple and direct.
One Saturday, the Vetrovs showed up at Galina’s atelier for no particular reason. They had dropped by because they were shopping in the pet store across the street. They talked about this and that, in particular about how unbearable life was in Moscow in the hot summer days. Galina lauded the virtues of country life. Because of the drift toward the cities, many houses were for sale in fabulous locations, not too far from the capital. The Rogatins bought, for next to nothing, an izba in excellent condition, located two hundred fifty kilometers from Moscow on the road to Leningrad. The village was in the woods, where mushrooms and berries grew in abundance, overlooking a scenic river, the Tvertsa. Fascinated by Galina’s lyrical description, the Vetrovs wrote down the address and promised to come visit.
They drove there the following weekend. A regular car could not go through the track leading to the village, so they walked the last two kilometers. The landscape was indeed gorgeous. The river, winding through the woods, contrasted with solid blue flax flower fields. Birds were singing. There were edible boletuses growing along the trail. Later, the Rogatins took the Vetrovs for a walk to the hamlet of Kresty, another two kilometers away, along a towpath with stone footbridges built across streams, dating back to Catherine the Great.
The Vetrovs fell in love with the place. Three izbas built on a hill overlooked a bend of the Tvertsa. Old willows and linden trees were mirrored in the water colored orange by the setting sun. It was quiet. Never mind the lack of electricity, in June it is light until midnight, and evenings by candlelight are so romantic.
The Vetrovs bought a quaint izba, a traditional Russian log house with a cowshed attached, for seventeen hundred rubles (less than four months of Vladimir’s salary). This purchase was a major milestone in their life. Vladimir, who had been brooding over his frustrations with the KGB, became a new man. Vetrov discovered his second nature of farmer–land owner, and he did not miss an opportunity to go to his “country estate.”
In fact, it was a five-year plan of hard work that awaited the Vetrovs. From 1977 through 1981, during the warm season, they spent almost all their vacations and weekends in Kresty. Vladimir was a fast driver, so they would get there in less than three hours. They left their car at the place of the previous owner of their house, who now lived by the Leningrad road. When they had heavy pieces of furniture and objects to transport, they exchanged two bottles of vodka or a case of beer for a horse-drawn cart. Besides tractors, those carts were the only means of transportation adapted to the dirt tracks filled with potholes. Otherwise, they walked the four kilometers, and when they arrived at their hamlet, they called Katia their neighbor, who took them to the other side of the river in her boat.
Contrary to most Muscovites who bought a house in the country as a starting point for long hikes in the woods, or to go fishing and hunting, the Vetrovs came to their place in the country mainly to work on the house. They wanted to make it their secondary home.
A carpenter they brought with them from Moscow dismantled the cowshed and built some kind of a bungalow. The Vetrovs removed the wallpaper, a symbol of comfort for villagers, in order to expose the magnificent logs. They partitioned the main room, brought in rustic pieces of furniture, a rocking chair, rugs, pelts, and candlesticks. Svetlana whitewashed the masonry of the Russian stove and decorated it. In the backyard, Vladimir and Vladik were building a terrace, and they hung an old cartwheel with chains as a decoration. The place gave the overall impression of belonging to an impoverished squire, just the way Svetlana had wanted it.
Among the objects discovered in the house was an icon, black with soot. Svetlana cleaned it and hung it in a corner of the room, but as an element of decoration only since, by definition, there could not be believers in the family of a KGB officer.5
Another find would play a major role in Vladimir’s fate. As they were pulling off planks from the cowshed walls, Vladik and his father discovered a handmade tool forged by a village blacksmith. It was a pike about eight inches long, with a section shaped as a flattened diamond; it had two obtuse blades and a very sharp point. In the countryside, such tools were used to kill pigs. The pike was rusty and was missing its handle. Vetrov took it for repair to a KGB workshop. Once cleaned and fitted with a new handle, it looked like a paratrooper dagger. Vetrov kept it in the glove compartment of his car. One never knew what kind of encounters could occur on a deserted track in the Kalinin area (today the Tver region)!
Vetrov enjoyed himself thoroughly as a handyman in their country place. He was not that interested in mushroom and berry gathering. He would rather spend an entire weekend building an arch to connect the Russian stove to a beam, for instance. He was very proud of his work, and he never omitted telling visitors that he built the arch himself.
Having an impulsive temperament, he wasted a lot of energy for little efficiency. If he needed a plank, for example, he never made any measurements. He would grab his saw, and voilà, done! Too bad, the plank is too short. He would take another one and, still not using a measuring tape, cut it in two seconds. Now it is too long. He could go through three or four attempts before he would get it right. These details tell a lot about Vladimir’s personality.
The house was surrounded by a big yard, and the first autumn the Vetrovs had a bumper crop of apples. The winter of 1978–1979 was unusually cold, with temperatures down to minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and none of the apple trees survived the freeze. Svetlana compensated for the loss by planting strawberry patches and flowerbeds.
The Muscovites considered it essential to build good relations with the locals. The Vetrovs brought with them, for their neighbors, bags packed with salamis, cheese, canned food, and other food items impossible to find in the countryside. In return, they bought the assurance
that nothing would happen to their place, no fire, no break-ins. The village residents who came to visit were greeted with a shot of vodka or a cup of tea with sweets. They were all so different from the people the Vetrovs socialized with in Moscow, and they had such strong personalities! Vladimir, however, kept his distance from the peasants, whose understanding of hygiene was not the same as his, and whom he regarded as boorish folks. Svetlana, for her part, spent most of her summers in the country, and she could not get enough of their storytelling, staying hours in their company.
In Kresty, there were only two permanent residents, two old women, two babushki (Russian equivalent of “grannies”). Katia, who owned the boat to cross the river, had a cow and goats. The Vetrovs bought milk, sour cream, cottage cheese, and vegetables grown in her garden. Maria Makarovna had worked as a maid for Lev Tolstoi Jr., the son of the great writer. She never ran out of stories to tell about her family and the lifestyles of Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since there was no television, listening to her stories was one of the main distractions available to summer visitors.
Lidyai, the gamekeeper, was another interesting personality in the area. He lived in the neighboring village of Telitsyno. With his large blue eyes and childish features, he was the gentle spirit of the region, displaying a rare kindness and innocence. The Vetrovs saw him often at the Rogatins’, whose house was separated from Lidyai’s by the river.
In fact, the Vetrovs and the Rogatins met mostly when they were in the country. Alexei, who was very good with his hands, transformed his property into an American-style ranch. He repaired two tractors, which he used as vehicles to go back and forth between his house and the Leningrad road. The Rogatins’ village was the closest to the road. Alexei and Galina Rogatin were the first Muscovites to establish a country home in the area, and both were very hospitable. For all these reasons, their house was a hub for all the Muscovites who had bought a house in the neighboring hamlets. On one stormy day, the Rogatins ran out of dry clothes; one after the other, three drenched families, among them the Vetrovs, had knocked at the door to warm up and change clothes before going on their way.
Every now and then, the Rogatins took friends for a walk to Kresty, the most picturesque village in the region. The Vetrovs, who enjoyed having company, always kept a bottle or two in stock, just in case.
Svetlana and Vladik at their country house. Vetrov loved the place so much, he hesitated between defecting to the West or, once retired, driving a tractor for the local kolkhoz.
Whether in Moscow or on the banks of the Tvertsa River, the Vetrovs loved friendly gatherings around a festive table.
Knowing the Rogatins presented a major advantage for Vladimir. In Moscow, finding a good auto mechanic was a real nightmare. You had to get up at five in the morning if you wanted to be among the first ten lucky ones whose car would be taken in that day. Soviet grease monkeys were usually a rude and greedy lot, exacting a bribe of twice the official price the client had already paid. Furthermore, most of the time you then had to take the car somewhere else to fix their slipshod work. And as if it were not already enough, since the car owner was not allowed to stay to overlook the work, the service technicians could easily substitute a bad part for a good one. Finding a good mechanic, even for whatever amount of money he wanted, was a real challenge.
Alexei was an ace. All it took was for him to turn on the engine and drive your car a hundred meters to detect everything that was wrong with it. He worked fast, with no fuss, and at a very reasonable price. The Rogatins also presented the advantage of living in the heart of Moscow, on Smolensk Embankment. They lived in a huge Stalinist-style building that housed, on the first floor, the best art and antique gallery in town. The Vetrovs were regulars. Before long, Alexei took over the maintenance of the Vetrovs’ dark blue Lada 2106, bought when they came back from Canada.
From time to time, Vetrov would bring colleagues who had a car. Alexei already counted numerous KGB members in his patronage. First there was the UPDK, his employer, so deeply infiltrated by the KGB that it could be viewed as a subsidiary of counterintelligence. Then there was Valery Tokarev,6 an old friend of the Rogatins. Although he did not know Vetrov personally, he was an officer at Directorate T, and he had been the last handler of the French mole Pierre Bourdiol. Tokarev, who was intimate with the Rogatins, introduced Alexei to a dozen of his comrades from the PGU, and all became steady clients. We are dwelling on this apparently trivial point because it will be quite significant later on.
In spite of their frequent get-togethers in the countryside and in Moscow, the two couples were not actually friends. The Rogatins found Vladimir contemptuous sometimes. Alexei even had an altercation with him one day. Vetrov let slip the word “yokels” in the conversation, talking about their country neighbors. Rogatin could not accept people who looked down on those who fed them and were in no way inferior to city dwellers.
This is also why Galina could not strike up a real friendship with Vetrov. She had the feeling that having lived in the West, where people were better off than in the Soviet Union, Vladimir could not adjust to the harsh realities of Russian life. In Vetrov’s opinion, this was a sub-life, and everything around was beneath him.
This is an important observation because it reveals what seems to be the double personality of Vetrov. There was in him this superior being—an aristocrat or a Westerner, although he was neither—who looked at the locals with contempt in a place where he was just a visitor himself. However, behind this superficial façade, there was also the son of a working-class family, the grandson of Russian peasants, who loved the countryside, its simplicity, and this special closeness between people so characteristic of Russian culture.
Depending on his surroundings and on the circumstances, Vetrov presented one side of his personality or the other.
CHAPTER 10
Crisis
It may be said that Vetrov’s behavior became explicable as a midlife crisis. He was aware that what had not been accomplished was not likely to be accomplished later. Likewise, he knew his abilities but did not expect miracles. So, Vetrov realized that the future did not belong to him, and that he would never reach his goals and dreams. All this is apparent from what follows.
As early as during his school years, Vladimir considered himself to be clearly above average. He was the best student in mathematics in lower school, and then he did very well in one of the toughest higher education institutions. When he was hired by the KGB, he had to completely change his field of activity, but here again, he became one of the best operatives in his department. In addition to being naturally gifted, Vetrov had the perseverance and the will necessary to achieve a brilliant career. Yet, at forty-eight, he had been pushed to the side and was still a lieutenant colonel.
The Communist regime was in a visible state of slow decomposition. Intelligence officers, directly in contact with the reality of Western culture, had plenty of opportunities to compare the respective values of both systems. The comparison was not in favor of socialism.
In addition to the external erosion, the inside was rotting away1 since, as already mentioned, the PGU officers recruited in the seventies were vastly inferior to the generation of the sixties.
Vetrov was not the only one to be appalled at the degradation of the service. One of his colleagues, in the office next to his, was a veteran, a former fighter pilot. He had been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and he was only short of a second citation by three killings. He too was outraged by what he was observing around him and often would add fuel to the fire which was devouring Vetrov: “Is this what I went to war for?”
While this senior colleague was about to retire, Vetrov, who was still young, felt as a personal offense every promotion of a “connected” colleague, whether that promotion was a new post or a higher rank. He lost sleep over it. Svetlana would try to comfort him:
“What’s wrong with you that you need to torment yourself this way? That’s the way the s
ystem works—there is nothing you can do.”
“Do you think I am a failure?”
“Not at all. You simply are not the son of a minister. And you are unable—you refuse—to kowtow to your superiors. You want to be judged on your personal merit, but they couldn’t care less!”
“OK, maybe so…but my bosses are nevertheless incompetents, and I am head and shoulders above them!”
“So what? How many years do you have left before retirement? Four? You have your family, and Vladik is in college. We have our house in the country that you like so much. You’ll retire, and we’ll spend the warm season in the countryside. What more do you want?”
His male pride prevented Vetrov from taking the same view as she did. He had been working at the same post since they came back from Canada. The promise of nominating him as the head of the Analysis Department of the PGU Institute of Intelligence-Gathering Issues had not materialized yet. This institute had now been in existence since July 1979, following the PGU move to Yasenevo, and it had a new mission statement and a new organization chart. Vladimir’s boss, however, was in no hurry to let him go. Adding insult to injury, ten years had gone by since his posting in Paris, and he was still only a lieutenant colonel. Granted, a man with no connections and claiming no spectacular deeds could not become a general. As they say in the army, “Colonel is a rank, general is a stroke of luck!” An officer, however, owed it to himself to end his career with at least the rank of colonel. It was a minimum level below which a military man was considered a failure.