Farewell

by Eric Raynaud

  Vetrov had an hour left before meeting his son. He drove around the Triumphal Arch and headed in the direction of the open-book-shaped COMECON building. He then turned into Smolensk Embankment and entered into the yard of the building where the antique shop was.

  The Rogatins were home. Galina was wearing a robe, and they were about to spend a quiet evening watching TV.

  Vetrov had an unusually neglected appearance. He was wearing an old parka, and his hair was tousled. He seemed, most of all, very agitated.

  “Look at you, you’re a mess! What’s up?” asked Galina.

  “Give me a drink. I just hit a woman with my car. It sent her flying. I believe she’s dead.”

  “Damn!” said Alexei. “Where is your car?”

  “In your yard.”

  Since it was time to take their young boxer for his evening walk, anyway, Alexei took his dog and left.

  Galina took Vetrov to the small kitchen. She poured both of them a generous glass of peppered vodka. Thirty minutes later the bottle was empty. Galina noticed that the vodka had no effect on her or on Vetrov. She kept repeating, “Is he crazy, or is it me?”

  Vetrov now told her that he had given Ludmila a lift home. On the way, they had stopped by the loop. Vladimir added that a bus had just stopped there and people were getting off. This detail makes the rest of his account more implausible. Vetrov pointed out that his intention was to settle their conflict in a friendly manner. But Ludmila said something that made him angry, and he was beside himself. He grabbed, he said, a hammer to hit her. A hammer blow knocked her eye out, he said. These details—the hammer and the wounded eye—are pure fantasy but are of great significance.

  Vetrov described accurately how he killed the man who had intervened, even mentioning that he used the pig slaying pique found in his country house. Then, he said, he intended to finish Ludmila off, but in the meantime she had managed to get out of the car and was trying to run to the bus stop. So he threw the weapon away, got back behind the wheel, and drove behind Ludmila, giving her a direct hit with the car. The shock threw Ludmila several meters away, where she landed, lifeless.

  At this moment of Vetrov’s account, Alexei came back home.

  “What are you talking about? I looked at your car, and there’s no trace of anything.”

  Vetrov’s Lada was indeed like new. No sign of impact anywhere, neither in the front, the fenders, or the hood. This model—the Six—had plastic trims around the headlights. At the slightest shock, those trims broke or were dislodged. But both were still in place and intact.

  “I’m telling you so!” screamed Vetrov.

  Alexei did not insist.

  “What do you want from me?” asked Galina.

  Calmly Vetrov pleaded, “Could we pretend I was here with you?”

  Having experienced prison, Galina sighed.

  “Volodia, you’re already in jail. Even if your Ludmila had been killed by a street hooligan, you would be the first to be taken in for questioning. Do you have money to leave to Svetlana?”

  Agitated now, Vetrov answered, “Yes, yes, I’m supposed to get some from Leningrad.” Then, looking down at his watch, he said, “Damn! I’ve got to go; I am supposed to pick up Vladik at university. I may be back.”

  Not wanting trouble, Alexei exploded.

  “Be back? What for? If you committed a murder, go to the police! Why are you dragging us into your mess?”

  As soon as Vetrov left, Alexei went to the phone. It was to call Svetlana.

  Vetrov was about five minutes late. Vladik walked toward the meeting spot. He was standing in front of the archive building, on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street. At the other end of the street, a few hundred meters from where Vladik was, a car suddenly sped toward him. Before he could even recognize their Lada, Vladik knew it was his father, and he knew that “it had already happened,” as he said.

  He was therefore not surprised by the smell of blood in the car when he got in. His father was very tense, and Vladik understood this was no time to ask questions.

  “You killed her?” he simply asked.

  Vetrov nodded.

  “And on top of it, I did a guy in.”

  He drove off like a madman. The smell of blood inside the car was so strong that Vladik felt nauseated. He pressed his hand on the seat and realized the seat cover was moist. He moved a little to look and realized it was covered with dark stains.

  “Wait,” he said to his father. “We need to remove the seat covers.”

  Vetrov applied the brakes. They had just turned into Plyushchikha Street. A little further, in front of a building entrance, there were two large dumpsters. Vladik removed the covers, including the back seat cover which was also spattered, and stuffed them into one of the dumpsters and got back in the car. The smell was still there, pungent. Vladik discovered blood on the floor mats, and he removed them too.

  “Dad, we’ve got to wash the car,” he said. “The wheels, the inside, the whole thing.”

  Vetrov nodded in agreement.

  The drive between Plyushchikha Street and their house took five minutes. Too short for Vladik to ask his dad to tell him everything that had happened. He just learned that the murder took place near a spot where they used to go swim in the summer.2

  When they arrived home, only Svetlana’s mother was in the apartment.

  “You stay home now,” Vetrov told Vladik.

  “What about the car? I want to help wash it!”

  “No, no. I’ll do it myself.”

  Vetrov cast an unusual glance at his son. Vladik remembers it as if it were yesterday. One could read in his eyes submission to his fate, a feeling Vladik had never noticed in his father before.

  “We won’t meet again, you and me.”

  “Try to get into the embassy!” said Vladik.

  “It’s of no use; it’s a matter of minutes now.”

  Vladimir gave his son an awkward embrace and left. Vladik ran to his room and opened the door to the balcony. He watched as the Lada left the building courtyard. He was not aware of the bitter cold.

  Later he gave some more thought to his father’s last words. Beyond the words, Vladik realized that his father knew he would be arrested. Yet, Vetrov did not plan to flee to the French embassy nor to an emergency hideaway a mole is supposed to have. Believing Ludmila was dead, he must have thought that her body would soon be found, and the police would have no difficulty tracing her back to him. He thus knew he was done for and decided to go ahead and meet his fate gracefully.

  Svetlana came back home fifteen minutes after Vladimir had left. Following Alexei’s phone call, she went to see the Rogatins. They had agreed to meet at the trolleybus stop across from the COMECON building. Having exchanged the information they had gathered separately, they were left with no doubt about what was going on.

  Struggling with the gravity of the situation, Vladik could only focus on details.

  “We got rid of the seat covers. They were soaked with blood,” said Vladik to his mother.

  “You probably got blood on your pants.”

  Vladik checked, nothing.

  “Where is he?” asked his mother.

  “He went to park the car.”

  “No. He went somewhere to commit suicide.”

  Svetlana had spoken spontaneously. She had the distinct feeling that her life was over. Having just killed two people, Vladimir must have felt the same all the more acutely.

  Not knowing why, she thought that he would go to her brother’s, Lev Barashkov. The singer lived in a twenty-story high-rise, located at 26 Baku Commissars Street. So Vladimir, she imagined, would first go to see Lev and ask him to take care of his family, and then he would go to the top of the building to jump to his death.

  Svetlana dialed a number. “No,” answered her brother, “we’ve not seen Volodia.” Since she could not think of anything better, and since Vladimir had not come back, she decided to go to the Barashkovs’. It was about ten p.m.

  Vladik offered to accom
pany his mother. Before leaving, he took Vetrov’s Minox camera from a drawer of his desk. He dared not get rid of it near their building. Without his mother noticing, he threw the camera into a garbage dumpster in front of his uncle’s building.

  They had tea with the Barashkovs. Vetrov did not show up, neither at Lev’s nor at home. It was getting late. Svetlana decided to go back home. Outside, it was snowing so hard that snow was covering the footsteps of a passerby walking fifteen meters ahead of them.

  They arrived home past midnight.

  “Well, go to bed now,” Svetlana said to her son. “What else can we do?”

  CHAPTER 22

  A Not So Radiant Future

  Vetrov had not disappeared. He was arrested ten minutes after he had left his home.

  Contrary to what he thought, Ludmila Ochikina was not dead. In fact, Vetrov had not mowed Ludmila down with his car, as he told everyone who would listen including later the investigating magistrates. As Ludmila was running in the beam from the headlights, terrorized by the roaring noise of the car behind her, a truck was coming on the left. The two vehicles were on a collision path. In order to run Ludmila over, Vetrov would have crashed his Lada into the truck. So he suddenly turned right and exited like a madman onto the highway.

  As soon as Ludmila felt out of danger, her strength failed her. She collapsed, her body hurting all over. Wherever she touched herself, she could feel blood. Ludmila crawled toward the path walked by bus passengers.

  That’s where she was discovered by a woman passing by.1 Ludmila was able to give Vetrov’s name and his car plate number before losing consciousness. While Ludmila was taken away to the wail of ambulance sirens, the police radioed Vetrov’s car plate number to all traffic police centers (GAI). Although there was no GAI post between the Rogatins’ building, the MITKhT, and the Vetrovs’ apartment building, the police “sieve” was too fine to let him escape.

  Vetrov drove to his garage. His car was probably spotted by the policeman perched in a glass cabin in front of number 26, where Brezhnev and Andropov lived. A “thoroughfare for government officials’ autocades,” Kutuzov Avenue was patrolled day and night. The closest police car was within one kilometer. Fittingly, the patrol stopped in front of the Borodino Museum, literally the central spot of this story. Complying with the warnings given by a policeman with a striped baton,2 Vetrov stopped the car. He knew the game was over.

  They took him to the local police station. Police station #75 was halfway between the Borodino Museum and the Vetrovs’ apartment building, near the overhead bridge. Vetrov readily admitted to the double assault of Ludmila Ochikina and the passerby.

  When a KGB member ended up in the hands of the police, for drunkenness or any other reason, the police were supposed to immediately inform Lubyanka. The phone call was received by the PGU officer on duty. He immediately notified Vetrov’s superior. More than any other KGB division, intelligence services did not want to wash their dirty laundry in public. A flying squad was immediately dispatched to the police station #75, but the policemen were inflexible and refused to remit Vetrov to the KGB.

  It was not until three a.m. that a few detectives went to the Vetrovs’ apartment. Svetlana had not been able to sleep. She gave the detectives the clothes Vladimir was wearing at the time of the crime—his suit and his sheepskin coat, but not his shirt. Svetlana had noticed that in spite of her efforts to wash it thoroughly, it was still badly stained. The detectives asked her to come with them to the police station.

  Svetlana had no way of knowing that her husband had already admitted to the crime. She tried to cover for him. Vladimir, she said, told her he slipped on black ice in the street, seriously hurting his neck. The detectives did not insist.

  She was back home at five a.m. She went straight to work, where her colleagues noticed her state of exhaustion. She mentioned heart pains. She gave tours of the museum in a trance, like a sleepwalker.

  In the afternoon, as she was opening the door of the apartment, she heard the phone ring. It was Vladimir Dementiev, Vetrov’s boss. Svetlana knew they were not on the best of terms, but he was nonetheless very friendly on the phone. In the opinion of her husband’s colleagues, this was a crime of passion and Svetlana, indirectly, was one of the victims. The KGB officer gave her no advice on how to behave in front of the judges; he just wanted to express his sympathy.

  Vetrov’s crime was such a shock for the service that the next day the PGU director, Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov, was informed. “Sure, there were scandals before in the service, but never of that magnitude,” Kryuchkov still remembered many years later.3 “This was no ordinary case, believe me. So, because it was so extraordinary, I was receiving reports every single day, literally.”

  A little later in that fateful day, there was a phone call to the Vetrovs’ apartment from Lefortovo, the KGB jail that would become part of Svetlana’s new “normal” for over a year. Meanwhile, the defendant had been transferred to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the only institution with the authority to conduct investigations into criminal cases within the army, the police, and State security. Thus, Vetrov found himself in Lefortovo, under the jurisdiction of the military prosecutor, but under KGB guard.

  The Lefortovo prison.

  Svetlana wrote down the list of things and foodstuffs she was allowed to bring to her husband as early as the next day. Underwear, a sweat suit (Vetrov had a good one with a hood, made in Finland), an electric shaver, two pieces of soap (one to wash himself, the other to do his laundry), his toothbrush and tooth powder (no toothpaste allowed since it was possible to hide things in the tube), thread, needles, and also smoked salami, lard, cheese, sugar, stock cubes, tea, cookies, onions, one head of garlic, and cigarettes. Everything was measured in grams, no canned food, no Pall Malls, only Soviet cigarettes (Java brand). She spent the day preparing the parcel. Life went on.

  If Svetlana had accepted this blow dealt by fate, the Rogatins were still in doubt. Despite everything Vetrov had told them over time, they could not believe the murder story. They knew Volodia was weak. Only a man subjected to humiliations he could not respond to, who suffered from the situation and accumulated resentment to the point of explosion could turn into a wild beast. A psychologically strong man would not have got himself into such a state. And yet…

  Galina called her friend Alina on the phone; she knew people at the MUR (Moscow Department of Criminal Investigations). Alina could not believe her ears either. She could remember that Volodia had not even pushed away the Rogatins’ dog after it had clawed his cheek. He kept petting it as if nothing had happened. She felt that the stress she had witnessed in the summer was the explanation to Vladimir’s behavior. He was not himself. Vetrov’s PGU colleagues, and Ferrant later, did not have a clue either. Vladimir could have a row with somebody, but no one would have suspected he could even slap a woman. In fact, people around Vetrov could not have imagined such a move on his part.

  On February 24, Svetlana took the parcel to Lefortovo. She deposited it at a window and then went to the administration block. She was met by Colonel Leonid Grigorievich Belomestnykh, the examining magistrate for high-priority cases processed by the Military Prosecutor’s Office in charge of the inquiry. He was tall, calm, fifty-something. He introduced his two deputies, Vladimir Alexandrovich Shvarodilov and Nikolai Vasilevich Kartavenkov. The atmosphere was formal, and the looks were stern.

  They all got in a minivan en route to the Vetrovs’ apartment about to be searched. To avoid having the whole building buzzing with rumors, they took with them an NCO (noncommissioned officer). This way, with the driver, they had the two required witnesses.

  What kind of evidence is expected in a murderer’s home? Delicately, the magistrates started looking at the books on the shelves. Svetlana prepared tea and snacks; she conveniently had some caviar.

  This little snack revived the magistrates’ energy. They bombarded her with questions, sometimes asking the same thing ten times. At first, Svetlana did not unde
rstand what was going on. Finally she burst into tears.

  “Alright, that’s enough,” said Belomestnykh to his deputies. “Leave her alone now!”

  The magistrates left the apartment, taking many of Vetrov’s personal documents, such as his Communist Party card and all his decorations. Vladimir may not have been deemed worthy of the order of the Red Star or the Red Flag, but he had five medals. Even Svetlana was surprised at these.

  The next day she was summoned to appear at the headquarters of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, 47 Kirov Street. Later, she went there daily, or every other day, depending on her schedule at the museum.

  Most of the time, Belomestnykh was the one writing down her depositions. First, the investigation was to establish whether Svetlana could have been an accomplice or the instigator of the murder. She had to explain the same thing a hundred times and answer the same questions over and over, although asked slightly differently each time. Sometimes, she tried to sidestep. For instance, in order to keep them out of this story, she did not want to tell the investigator that Vetrov had been at the Rogatins’ that evening. Belomestnykh smiled. “You have no idea whom you are dealing with.” And he would tell her how she should have answered the question.

  As it became increasingly clear that Svetlana was innocent, the magistrates changed their attitude toward her. Belomestnykh was now acting with understanding, even empathy. He proposed tea. “This is to have my fingerprints, right?” asked Svetlana jokingly. She had to provide a thousand details about Vetrov, the people he was seeing, their life together, and the most minute events of that fateful day. She understood that Vladimir was not hiding anything. The magistrates needed her testimony for cross-checking. Now, who was the passerby killed by Vetrov? He was described in the judicial inquiry file as a fifty-year-old man named Yu. (probably for Yuri) Krivich. He held a modest position as deputy chief of supplies at Mostransgaz.4 Krivich could have been there at the same time out of pure bad luck, and intervened out of a natural masculine reflex to come to Ludmila’s aid. The version that prevailed is different.