Farewell

by Eric Raynaud

  “You’ll come see me again?” asked Vetrov as they were taking him away.

  “Of course I will! As soon as I receive the authorization,” answered Svetlana.

  Those were the last words they exchanged.

  In the defendant’s last statement, clearly inspired by his lawyer, Vetrov referred to the writer Maxim Gorky, who believed that men were enemies only due to circumstances. He also talked about Raphael and his representation of Justice, resting on fortitude, wisdom, and temperance.6 He affirmed that he was not a finished man and that, provided his life was spared, his knowledge and experience could still be of use to the State.

  This was to no avail. On December 14, 1984, the Military Chamber of the USSR Supreme Court, presided over by Lieutenant General Bushuyev, pronounced sentence: capital punishment, or rather “exceptional” punishment, as per the euphemistic language of Soviet laws.

  In January 1985, Svetlana went on an assignment at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. All that time, she had kept working at the Borodino Battle Museum. Her colleagues had noticed that her husband was no longer around, neither dropping her off at work in the morning nor waiting for her in the car at the end of the day. To avoid further questions, Svetlana told them that Vladimir had passed away. He had died, she told them, in a tragic accident during a business trip.

  The USSR Supreme Court.

  She stayed in Leningrad only three days. On January 25, she came back to Moscow and went to Lefortovo with a parcel for her husband. The clerk gave it back to her. Vetrov was no longer there.

  Svetlana called Petrenko, his deputy Shurupov, Sergadeev, and other magistrates, with no answer from anyone. The next day she tried again, to no effect.

  Colonel Golubev had given Svetlana his phone number for her to call him in case Jacques Prévost turned up. Not knowing who else to turn to, she called him. Golubev told her to go to the Supreme Court Military Chamber, 15 Vorovsky Street. He gave her the number of the office where she would get explanations.

  Svetlana went there immediately. Two strapping men, over six feet six inches tall, asked her to sit down and put a glass of water in front of her. Then, one declared in an official tone that on January 23, 1985, the sentence pronounced by the Supreme Court had been executed. Both men were imbued with a sense of the moment’s solemn intensity. It was not every day they had the opportunity to inform the wife of a spy that her husband had been shot. They were all eyes: would she faint or not?

  Svetlana was living through a totally surreal moment. She knew nothing. She did not know the trial was over, and she did not know that, convicted of high treason, her husband had been sentenced to death. During their last visit, Vetrov clearly had wanted to spare her, saying he still had two hopes: the KGB setup and his plea for clemency. The latter was denied on January 14, 1985. No one thought of officially informing his wife to prepare her for the inevitable. Vetrov had not been allowed to say his farewells to his family.

  Despite her shock, Svetlana could think about only one thing: “They are waiting for me to faint.” She would not give them this satisfaction.

  Like a sleepwalker, she left the office, went down the stairs, and found herself in the street. She sat on a bench to breathe and collect herself. Then she walked back home, straight ahead, less than half an hour away. The news sank in only later that evening. She had a violent spell of despair. Fortunately, she was home alone. She told no one. Vladik was to learn about his father’s execution two months later.

  Svetlana had to struggle a little longer in this Kafkaesque universe. She had been told to go get her husband’s death certificate at her district registry office.

  Vetrov’s last photograph shot in Lefortovo. The KGB hoped to launch a deception operation. Vetrov’s expression is striking. The uncovered spy must have had no illusions left about what was in store for him.

  “We don’t have anything, go somewhere else!” answered a grouchy woman, deformed by obesity as is often encountered in Soviet administrations.

  At the central office, it took a woman, who could have been her double, a good fifteen minutes of foraging through papers. She put Vetrov’s death certificate on the counter in front of Svetlana (see Figure 8). It was an ordinary form, showing a long dash in the space provided to indicate the reason of death. It was almost compassionate when you think what it would mean to go through all the necessary procedures having to indicate instead “shot by firing squad”!

  Because of the strangeness of the situation, Svetlana thought for a long time that maybe Vladimir was still alive. Ten years later, she listened with great interest when Sergei Kostin told her that in France the rumor had it that, a KGB lure, Vetrov had undergone cosmetic surgery and was living in Leningrad, where Svetlana joined him every weekend.7 Rumors of that nature could not be stopped since no one had seen the corpse. The next of kin never had this privilege.

  This being said, as it sometimes happens, such rumors are not totally unfounded. Anatoly Filatov, for instance, a former GRU officer sentenced to death, was executed in 1978—or so they thought. Following his appeal to the Supreme Court, his sentence had been commuted to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Filatov was released in 1993. Likewise, a certain Pavlov from Leningrad, who was supposed to have been shot in 1983, ended up later in the famous camp #389/35 in Perm, and he was pardoned after serving ten years. This was certainly not Vetrov’s case; we would have found out by now. So how did Vetrov die? As with any other taboo subject, the execution of criminals creates a whole mythology.

  Figure 8. Vetrov’s death certificate. A long dash is all there is to indicate the cause of death.

  Some say that convicts sentenced to death were executed without advance notice, out of pity. The convicts already knew that their appeal had been rejected, and they were waiting in anguish for the moment they would be taken away. It did not happen at dawn, as in romantic popular novels. The convict, people say, was summoned to step out of his cell and, as usual, marched in front of his guard, executing orders to turn left, turn right, or stop. As he was entering a dead-end section of the basement, he was shot in the back of the head with no warning.

  Others claim that, on the contrary, the convict was placed with his back to the wall in a large basement room with no windows, facing a firing squad. The squad was comprised of rank-and-file internal troops. They all targeted the convict’s heart, but out of eight cartridges, only three were live. Thus, none of the soldiers knew who fired the fatal shots.

  According to still others, each “executing” prison, and there were only five of those in the entire Soviet Union, had one or two executioners who accomplished the task either from personal conviction or from inclination. These three approaches were probably all used at one time or another, hence the differences.

  With regime change and the opening of some archives, the access gained to certain documents in recent years shed some light on this previously gray area.8 Actually, each of the five “executing” prisons was served by a special operational unit, usually comprised of six men. They were detectives with, generally, other official functions in the Criminal Investigation Department. They met only two, three, or four times a month, in the utmost secrecy. Besides them and the regional head of the Ministry of the Interior, no one else had a clue about those missions. The unit met the convict in an area of the prison reserved for them, and then they conveyed him to a facility fitted out specifically for them, the existence of which was known by very few people. Sometimes, in order to avoid harrowing scenes, they told the convict some story justifying his transfer.

  Once in the facility, which could indeed be a basement, a prosecutor, always the same, and always acting secretly, informed the convict that his appeal had been rejected and that the sentence was going to be executed shortly. Two detectives, numbers three and four in the unit, then grabbed the convict under the arms—at that moment the convict’s legs often gave way beneath him—and a third one, number one in the unit, fired one or two bullets in his head, almost at point-blank range. Ea
ch unit did their best to protect the three men from being spattered by blood and brain fragments. Authorities, however, made a point not to humiliate the convict during the final moments of his life. Thus, they dissolved a special unit who forced the convict to kneel down over a barrel filled with sand, a method deemed degrading.

  Then, a medical examiner, always the same one, certified the death. At the same time, the unit leader (number two) drew up the sentence execution certificate that had then to be signed by the prosecutor, the medical examiner, and himself. As the superiors were dealing with the paperwork, numbers five and six, usually the drivers of the vehicle used for the mission, wrapped the corpse in burlap. Then they carried the “package” away to a special section of a cemetery where it was buried with no distinguishing mark that would have helped find the grave.

  Families of convicts who were executed, or died while in prison, were never allowed to recover the corpse or even find out which mass or anonymous grave held their loved one.9 This is what happened in Vetrov’s case.

  Svetlana and Vladik found themselves in a complete vacuum. No more phone calls, no more visits, as if the Vetrovs had never socialized with anybody. Only a few friends with no links to the KGB were there for them. Svetlana herself severed most of her relationships; she did not want to cause problems for the people she knew. Furthermore, she knew her phone was tapped. She did not care about being tailed in the street.

  This affair, however, was not over for everybody.

  CHAPTER 33

  “The Network”

  Overnight, several people in Vetrov’s entourage found themselves closely watched by the KGB. A revealing fact is that the dragnet did not aim at Vetrov’s superiors nor at PGU internal counterintelligence officers who were in charge of preventing possible treason in their service. Saving the honor of their uniform once again, the PGU acted as if, having isolated the black sheep, its staff was beyond reproach. Any investigation was bound to expose serious negligence, to say the least.

  Vetrov actually had the perfect profile of the average traitor. General Vadim Alexeevich Kirpichenko, who served twelve years as PGU first deputy head, must have been well-versed in Treason 101 since he formalized it in an article published in 1995.1 He has passed away since then. Among other things, he supervised Directorate K (internal counterintelligence). Sergei Kostin had the opportunity to meet him in August 1996. This seventy-four-year-old man, unquestionably intelligent and stern looking, was still eager to learn. It was not possible to obtain much information from him about Vetrov, for whom he had only one word: “bandit.” According to the general, it was extremely difficult to spot a mole in one’s own ranks. In his article, he referred to the “recruitability model” articulated by the CIA, which on his own admission did not differ that much from the KGB’s. Intelligence officers likely to respond to rival services are characterized by “double loyalty” (loyalty in words only), narcissism, vanity, envy, ruthless ambition, a venal attitude, and an inclination to womanizing and drinking. Two categories of individuals deserve special attention. First, there are those who are not happy at work, thinking their professional accomplishments are not appreciated. Then, there are those going through a crisis, in particular in their family relationships, causing stress and psychological conflicts.

  Summarizing the personality traits of promising recruitment targets, a CIA methodology document describes three types of potential traitors:

  The adventurer. He aspires to a more important role than the one he has, and more in line with the abilities he attributes to himself; he wants to reach maximum success by any means.

  The avenger. He tries to respond to humiliations he believes he is subjected to, by punishing isolated individuals or society as a whole.

  The hero-martyr. He strives to untangle the complex web of his personal problems.

  Vetrov combined all three types of traitor.

  The general climate within the PGU was not conducive to showing attentiveness to others, helping a comrade, or simply being vigilant. The main concerns were getting a post abroad, climbing the hierarchical ladder, and being promoted. The competition was too fierce all around to afford the time to take an interest in guys who were finished, sidelined, and were no longer a threat as rivals.

  The two men in charge of internal security within Soviet intelligence services provide a convincing case in point.

  In the early eighties, department 5K was run by Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko. This former submariner initially served in the KGB Third Chief Directorate (military counterintelligence and security). Transferred to the PGU Directorate K, he was nominated to the post of security officer at the Soviet embassy in Washington DC in the late seventies. Yurchenko had his moment of fame thanks to an unusual gesture, if not a suspicious one. He handed the FBI an envelope containing secret documents that had been thrown over the Soviet embassy’s wall by a former member of American secret services. The “walk-in” was arrested. To show its gratitude, the FBI sent a detective with a flower bouquet to bid farewell to Yurchenko when he left Washington in 1980.2

  Department 5K performances under Yurchenko in Yasenevo were modest. Investigations against officers suspected of being double agents were extremely rare, and none of them led to the unmasking of an agent guilty of sharing intelligence with a foreign power. This was attributed to the department’s lack of training and experience in counterintelligence, and also to the prevailing attitude rejecting the mere idea that an elite organization like the PGU could have traitors in its ranks.3

  There had to be another reason, and the future proved it with an event that was testimony to the decay within the Soviet intelligence services. Yurchenko, this guardian of officers’ loyalty and morality, defected!4 Recently nominated to the post of PGU First Department deputy chief (field of operations: USA and Canada), he disappeared in Rome on August 1, 1985. Shortly thereafter, he emerged in Washington DC, where he underwent intense debriefing by the CIA. He is the one who, along with other information, gave American secret services the details about Farewell’s end and Howard’s treason. Strangely, three months later, he decided to go back to the USSR, and escaping the surveillance of two “guardian angels” from the FBI, he managed to reach the Soviet embassy. He told them a preposterous story. He had been kidnapped by the CIA in the Vatican, locked up in a secret villa, drugged with a psychoactive medication to make him talk, and so forth. Since his defection involved too many high-ranking KGB officials, this version was the one retained for public consumption. The KGB directorate behaved as if Yurchenko’s round trip to the United States was simply a PGU disinformation operation. Yurchenko was even awarded an Honored Chekist badge, presented by Vladimir Kryuchkov in a solemn ceremony, sickening all the intelligence officers present.5

  After having accepted these honors, Yurchenko disappeared. Some even think he was shot by firing squad. This is not the case. Sergei Kostin, with the help of his KGB contacts and through a next-door neighbor of Yurchenko’s in the countryside, was able to establish that Yurchenko was lying low. He refuses to meet journalists, whatever the subject matter.

  Sergei Golubev, whom we met earlier, had a career path that, according to his superior, Oleg Kalugin, should have made him the perfect bait for any counterintelligence service in the world.6 In the sixties, when he was operating under the cover of the Soviet consulate in Washington DC, he committed the same transgression as Vetrov did later in Paris. Driving his car while intoxicated, he hit a lamppost and was arrested by American police. He was not repatriated, though, and the incident had no adverse effect on his career. In 1966, he was nominated KGB resident in Cairo. Shortly before his transfer back to Moscow in 1972, he caused a drunken scandal in a public place. Again, what would have been fatal for the career of a mere mortal did not prevent Golubev from moving up the ladder. After his transfer back to Moscow from Cairo, he was appointed head of internal security for the PGU Second Service (counterintelligence). While at this post, Golubev was one of the linchpins in the assassination of Bu
lgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978, an event known as the infamous “poisoned umbrella” stabbing.7 The permissive atmosphere prevailing in Yasenevo in those years and the grim aura that earned him his Great Inquisitor’s functions were no incentives for Golubev to reform. At the time Golubev was overseeing the Vetrov case, he was found one day, at five in the morning, dead drunk in his office, his desk strewn with dirty glasses, and his safe wide open. They claim he dropped to his knees, in tears, begging Kryuchkov for forgiveness.

  Golubev survived, even after his former subordinate Yurchenko defected. Edward Howard’s defection to the Soviet Union in the mid-eighties amply compensated for the prolonged state of lethargy in the PGU security service. Directorate K took credit for the series of arrests in Russia after Howard revealed the names of Soviet CIA agents. This was the long-awaited hour of glory for the PGU counterintelligence service and his boss. Golubev was awarded the Order of Lenin, became a general, and was moved to deputy head of Directorate K. He retired and, like Yurchenko, declined to meet journalists until his death in 2007.

  It is understood that if Vetrov’s treason had no adverse consequences at Directorate K, it caused even less of a stir at Directorate T. Only a few of Vetrov’s superiors were slightly reprimanded, including his department chief, Dementiev, and the head of Directorate T, Zaitsev. The most severe disciplinary action in the aftermath of the Vetrov case was the demotion of two employees for slacking off in controlling the use of the copy machine.