by Eric Raynaud
The situation bothered Vetrov so much that he was ready to do anything, even to lose his dignity. One day, he went to see his boss, Vladimir Alexandrovich Dementiev. This man had never been an operative; he was a Communist Party executive. He had been nominated to this position of responsibility within the PGU to meet the principle of “staff reinforcement” in practice at the time. It consisted of posting party executives, who were considered the “crème de la crème” in Soviet society, within departments that were considered as underperforming.
In the opinion of the officers who had stuck their necks out more than once, he got the job through his connections; he had no professional experience, and there was no tangible evidence that he ever contributed anything to the common cause. Needless to say that Vetrov and others thought themselves vastly superior to their boss.
Unfortunately, he was the man from whom Vetrov had to seek promotion. Arguing that he was nearing retirement, Vladimir asked to be promoted to the next grade, from the post of assistant to the post of chief assistant. Actually, the highest rank associated with this new position was lieutenant colonel. However, there was still a slight chance that he could be promoted to colonel, for instance, through a short mission abroad or the publication of an important analytical paper.
Dementiev’s reaction was violent and typical of a Communist Party executive: “You have a lot of nerve, Vetrov! You do not ask for a promotion. You work hard, dutifully, and with dedication. Then your superiors notice and can act accordingly. But you’re pushing it! What a lack of humility!”
Life is tough…an assistant at the end of his career aspires to be promoted to chief assistant, but his application is rejected. Why make such a big deal out of it? This Gogolian incident, trivial at first glance, was nevertheless registered in Vetrov’s investigation file used to try to establish the motivations of his betrayal.2 Besides Vitaly Karavashkin, another man studied Vetrov’s file in depth. His name is Igor Prelin. Although long retired, this colonel is in excellent physical shape and sparkling with energy. An “intellectual’s” gray goatee on a lean military face, quick reflexes, a memory like an elephant’s, competent, he is the author of several books and documentary films. For a long while, Prelin was part of PGU internal counterintelligence. A French-speaking agent, he had several extended stays abroad, although never in France. The analysis of Vetrov’s betrayal, one of the major cataclysms that shook the KGB edifice, was one of his professional tasks. In interviews with Sergei Kostin, Prelin never attempted to fool him, hide facts from him, or brainwash him. Naturally, he would declare here and there, “I cannot tell you his name,” or “We do not care about the date here, do we?” Overall, he was a reliable witness, and, therefore, we often refer to his declarations.
Although rebuffed by his boss, Prelin states, Vetrov did not give up. He tried a new approach to reverse the situation. Around 1981, he wrote an analytical report proposing a radical overhaul of scientific and technological intelligence. In order to have the means to complete his project, Vetrov asked for permission to study the information produced by thirty-eight foreign agents recruited by the PGU in various countries. Such information, naturally, was top secret and Vetrov first wrote it down in his notebook, which he kept in the safe at the office. The analysis of the data resulted in a twenty-page document explaining what was wrong with the service, and suggesting a whole series of measures to remedy the situation. Vetrov analyzed every step of the process; information research, gathering, processing, exploitation, distribution, and protection. The changes to be made to improve the system’s operation were far-reaching, targeting residencies abroad as well as Yasenevo personnel, and even the beneficiaries of intelligence data within the military-industrial complex.
This task took Vetrov at least a month to complete. He did not hesitate to take his highly sensitive manuscript home. Svetlana, who remembers it too, read the document to proof it. Then Vetrov had the document typed and, with pride, submitted it to the department chief.
As he told his wife, for once his work would not go unnoticed. By that time, however, nobody at the PGU was willing to make any extra effort. The machine was running smoothly, with a regular exchange between residencies and the Center (for those who were allowed to go abroad), people were quietly climbing the career ladder, getting promotions…so why bother?
Whether Vetrov’s conclusions lacked merit, or the task was considered the responsibility of a superior, Vladimir’s report was filed away, coming to nothing. This humiliation occurred soon after the latest severe blow to his pride, and it played a decisive role in the turn his life would take.
Family troubles added to his professional setbacks and frustrations. The Vetrovs had been married over twenty years. According to their friends and acquaintances, love affairs were part of the couple’s life. Not just Vladimir. Svetlana too had been unfaithful for years, and regularly. Some would even add that she was the one who started it. That may be true. It is worth noting that, when talking about the Vetrovs, most witnesses had a tendency to blame the wife and excuse the husband.
At the end of the seventies, Svetlana, they say, had an affair with a Boris S., the brother of a well-known astronaut. He was good-looking, self-confident, and had a lot of charm. He had a prestigious and enviable job as one of the pilots attached to Brezhnev’s fleet of helicopters.
The lovers were not trying to hide that much; Vladimir knew the man very well, since he had been a friend of theirs for years. They had been in athletics together. The trio would often be seen together. Boris would come visit the Vetrovs at home. More than once, Boris took Svetlana to Kresty in his Volga, and they would spend a couple of days there. The Rogatins even teased Vetrov about the situation: “You don’t mind them going there by themselves, without you? You don’t have electricity in your dacha.” Vetrov would answer by another joke. Deep down, however, he could not ignore the true nature of Svetlana and Boris’s relationship. Evidently, this was a blow to his self-esteem. Besides, he was unable to hide his feelings. As part of his personality, he needed to unburden to others. Several of his PGU colleagues who knew about his private life confirmed that he had a hard time coping with Svetlana’s adultery.
Boris was madly in love with Svetlana. He had a successful career still ahead of him. Vladimir had been sidelined, and the only future he could hope for was retirement. The couple was getting close to their silver wedding anniversary, and in his wife’s eyes, Vladimir did not have the appeal of novelty anymore. Svetlana knew him by heart. All things considered, it may be precisely for that reason that she did not want to leave Vetrov.
Svetlana claims today that Vladimir adored her. He was always very attentive, catering to her every whim, and he was affectionate and cuddly. Before leaving for work, he wanted a kiss. The minute he arrived in his office, he would call her on the phone. He did not have anything special to talk about, he was simply missing her already: “What are you doing? Where are you going this afternoon? What are the plans for tonight?”
Back home, he would protest if his wife was slow to greet him.
“Where is my kiss, little fox?”
This was the term of endearment he used for her.
“Here is your kiss. Your dinner is waiting for you in the kitchen.”
“No, come eat with me!”
“I am not hungry.”
“So just stay with me.”
According to Svetlana, things were that way during the twenty years of their marriage.
Furthermore, Vladimir had gotten into the habit of relying on Svetlana for everything. He would do the shopping with her shopping list. There was a large food store at the street level of their building.
“They had beautiful ham today,” he would say, coming back home.
“So you got some, I hope,” Svetlana would answer.
“No, I didn’t.”
“But why?”
“Because you did not tell me to!”
Svetlana would scold him jokingly, and he liked it. This state of aff
airs suited him just fine.
As she recalls this late period of their married life, in the fall of 1980, Svetlana admits that Vladimir was undoubtedly deprived of affection. In those days, she remembers, she was spending all her time taking care of puppies born from their shih tzu dogs. It is more likely that she was unavailable because another man was on her mind. She says that this period lasted almost six months, enough time for the puppies to grow up and find a home.
After those six months, Svetlana suddenly realized that her husband had changed. He was not calling her from the office anymore; he was not asking for hugs. She suspected that there was another woman. At first, she thought of fighting back, but her pride was stronger. That another woman could have had preference over her was in itself offensive enough. She would not further humiliate herself to win back a man who had betrayed her.
As she was answering questions asked by Sergei Kostin, this journalist who had come to investigate her husband’s life, Svetlana avoided mentioning that Vetrov’s adulterous behavior might have been in reaction to hers. In fact, during her conversations with Kostin, they never talked about Boris or her own love affairs. Outraged as she was at her husband’s apparently serious liaison, she probably had forgotten all about hers.
In any case, the relationship between the Vetrovs got gradually worse. Their lifestyle changed, too. Their house used to be open to all and full of life. Vladimir could show up, with no advance notice, in the company of four or five buddies to eat at home. The guests were, for the most part, Vladimir’s PGU colleagues and a few “clean” friends who had worked with him at Minradioprom. Svetlana would then rush out to go shop in order to feed the party.
Now, he was coming back home alone, often late, and more and more often, drunk. One evening, Vetrov was delivered by a colleague who could barely stand on her own feet. She looked like a madwoman with her fur hat slipping over one ear. And yet, she had done a good deed; Vladimir was so drunk he could not utter a sound. Without his colleague, he would have been picked up by the police and sent to the drunk tank to sober up. Svetlana and Vladik let the woman pet a puppy, and then they put her in a cab.
The next morning, Svetlana vented her anger.
“Do you realize what you’ve done? You came back home with a woman almost as drunk as you were! Shame on you!”
A few days later, sober and friendly, the woman came back to get a puppy. She was a translator working for Directorate T, in an office next to Vetrov’s. She told Svetlana that a colleague of hers would love to come to get a puppy too. By some kind of spontaneous intuition, Svetlana realized she was talking about “the other woman.” She also thought that if Vladimir’s mistress wanted to come to their place, it was not to look at her, the wife he was cheating on, but to see how they lived. She wanted to estimate the assets she could count on if Vetrov decided to live with her. So Svetlana told the visitor, curtly, that the other puppies had already been spoken for.
A year later, Svetlana ran into the translator again, who confirmed that her intuition was well founded. It was indeed Vladimir’s lover, Ludmila Ochikina,3 who had wanted to come to their place. The woman, she says, told her that Ochikina seduced Vetrov. “In fact,” she noted, “it could as well have been me instead of Ludmila. We were all together having fun and drinking. She was bolder, that’s all.”
Svetlana claims that, short of coming in person to their apartment, Ludmila tried to impose her presence in their life. She was constantly calling their home phone number without saying her name.
We are reporting these details about Ludmila without confirmation that they are true. Svetlana would not be expected to speak positively of her rival, and let us not forget she had a lover at the time.
Vetrov’s drinking was getting worse. He rarely came home sober. Svetlana could not take it anymore and decided it was time to confront him.
“Look at you!” she said. “You’ve turned into a drunkard; you’re finished. I could understand if it were for love reasons. But love elevates a person, while you are spiraling down. How can the KGB tolerate your behavior? I am not like them; I’ve had it, enough!”
Vladimir seemed to wake up. He hugged her and covered her face with kisses, asking for forgiveness. He told her she was his only love and that he did not know what had happened to him. Peace was restored in the household. The next day, though, he went to work and it started all over again.
From that time on, they lived separate lives under the same roof. Pretty soon, they had only their son and their assets in common—the three-room apartment on Kutuzov Avenue, paintings and antique furniture, and their country place they loved so much.
Svetlana found it harder and harder to recognize her husband. Over just a few months, he had become another man, although with the same features and body; he seemed inhabited by another being, a mean, grumpy character who spoke and behaved in ways that were not typical of the old Volodia. With a feeling of horror, Svetlana realized more and more that she was telling herself this man was not her husband. In other times, possession by the devil, bewitchment, or some kind of black magic trick would have been suspected. A woman of the twentieth century, Svetlana thought more along the lines of psychological conditioning by means mastered by the KGB or some foreign secret service. Was her husband the victim of such a conditioning? Was he being administered drugs unknowingly? Her delirious thoughts would be dispelled in the morning, only to come back at night even more vividly.
Eventually, Svetlana had enough. One evening when he came home, Vetrov could not recognize the place. Everything was upside down. The paintings had been taken down, and there were two suitcases by the door. Before he could even ask for an explanation, his wife poured out all the anger she had accumulated for weeks.
“We’ve spent many years together. We started from scratch. Everything we have, we built together. And now, you have another woman who wants to help herself to all of this. Fine! You think I am attached to it? I couldn’t care less! You can take anything you want—the paintings, furniture, even the clothes you gave me. Your clothes are in the suitcases. Take them and leave!”
Vladimir was no fool. He was aware that if he cast off his home base, he would drift away. He managed to calm his wife down, but it did not change a thing in the overall situation.
Svetlana remembers another quarrel. Coming back home, Vladimir did not find her at home because she was walking their dogs. He joined her in the park along the Moscow River.
“Why are you excluding me from your life as if I did not exist?”
“You’re right,” answered Svetlana. “I’ve crossed you out of my life. All this time, it’s me who has helped you and supported you. I always stood up for you, even when you were wrong, but that’s all over. You went too far. Now I can’t, and don’t want to, forgive you anymore. To me, you have ceased to exist.”
Whether or not Vladimir used the opportunity to remind her that she was not an angel either, she would remember later and regret her words. Even today, she holds herself to blame. She believes that had she not rejected Vladimir out of pique, his life might not have taken a fatal turn.
And so, at a critical moment of his existence, Vetrov was left on his own. He had nothing else to expect from the KGB, which only filled him with hatred and disgust. He was used to off-loading his troubles onto his wife, but now he was not allowed to talk to her any longer. Everybody thought he was finished, a hopeless drunk. Well, he would show them how wrong they all were about him. They took him for an underling at the end of his rope? He would become a great figure of the world of intelligence, one of those who had an influence on the destiny of the world and the course of history. They treated him like dirt? He would seek revenge by reducing to nothing the efforts of thousands of individuals, of the entire Directorate T. They had no doubt that he was just a drunkard losing his mind? He would mount a sophisticated operation that they would not be able to foil.
To turn around his destiny that way, he had to place himself on the other side of the fence; never
mind if he played with fire and the slightest mistake could bring about his downfall. The success of the game he was about to begin would make up for all the humiliations and the frustrations of his existence.
Vetrov was ready to take the plunge. Confident in his ability and trusting his good fortune, he did not know he was about to leap into the abyss.
CHAPTER 11
The Leap of Death
“The individual who decides to betray never presents the situation in those terms,” explains expert Igor Prelin. “No, he wants to sell his experience, just to make money out of it, or to get revenge on the service he detests. If what mattered most to him was safety, he would contact the British. They would think about everything, he would be extremely well covered during his handling, and would benefit from a first-rate exfiltration operation. Those whose only interest was money would contact the Americans; for them, money was not an issue. And last, those who wanted it all, money, safety, recognition, and revenge, where did they go? Bravo! That’s it—they’d go to the KGB. Except that in Vetrov’s case, that was not possible.”1
After working twenty years for the KGB, Vetrov knew perfectly well that his knowledge and the information he had access to through his analyst job were beyond price for any foreign intelligence agency. He was mindful of the extreme care and the huge means used by a major intelligence service such as the CIA to handle a source within the KGB or the GRU. For each case, the Americans created a special cell comprising several individuals who had to organize the operation down to the smallest detail. When their mole was traveling to the West, like Penkovsky going to London or Nosenko to Geneva, several agents would go to meet him for debriefing and to ensure the safety of the rendezvous. Furthermore, the Americans were extremely generous, offering a numbered bank account in Switzerland, princely gifts, a high rank in their own military hierarchy, and more.