Farewell

by Eric Raynaud

  The jolt that shook the KGB as an aftershock of the Vetrov “earthquake” was felt all the more painfully because it occurred in a zone of “low seismic activity,” so to speak. The KGB could not have anticipated actions from a service (the DST) it did not suspect of operating in the USSR. Had the captured spy collaborated with the Americans, the British, or the Germans, that would have been one thing, but this? As the joke had it, circulating in the hallways of Soviet counterintelligence services, the last time secrets had been revealed to the French before the Farewell case was during the “Lockhart plot”!3

  To explain the unprecedented success of the Farewell operation, the DST put forward its deliberate intention to act contrary to all rules, but this is only partially true. Two circumstances made this anomaly possible.

  The first one was the belief, put to the test through a long period of checks, that French services had given up agent manipulation. “With an American or a British handler, Vetrov would have been caught red-handed within a month,” claims Igor Prelin.

  The second one is the fact that all the contact terms and conditions were devised by Vetrov in person. “Myself, when I was dealing with a competent foreign agent, I would trust him,” recalls Igor Prelin. “It would have been stupid to impose any elaborate scheme, in Moscow, on an individual operating on his own turf. I always played the innocent with him, pretending I had nothing to do with secret services, that I was only a transmission belt, and I listened. If he had a shrewd plan, I’d say ‘Bravo!’ and the agent was all happy to be so smart. If I realized the risks involved, I tweaked the plan ever so tactfully, asking questions rather than giving instructions.

  “Throughout this book, we have seen that the plan Vetrov proposed to the French left very little room for the unexpected. There were always good reasons for the presence of the protagonists in the various rendezvous places. Vetrov was not taking huge risks in borrowing documents in Yasenevo, and Ferrant even less in shipping the Farewell documents in the diplomatic pouch (the contacts with Xavier Ameil were more risky, but they were never expected to last). The only real danger was if Directorate T urgently needed a missing document. During the weekends, those risks were minimal.

  In the eighties, however, such certainties had not yet been established. The main question was how this unbelievable operation could have taken place in the heart of Communist Moscow. Could the existence of secret services still be justified if an amateur, with no special training like Ameil, was able to fulfill a mission usually reserved for a professional? Or if a counterintelligence service like the DST demonstrated its ability to bring an operation to a successful conclusion, a task that is, theoretically, the prerogative of intelligence services? Or if a woman and three men had what it takes to brave many thousands of individuals who were part of the powerful KGB machine and, in the height of unlikelihood, prevailed? All this called for careful thought.

  In 1986, the KGB Second Chief Directorate analyzed the mechanism used by the DST in the Farewell operation. The PGU certainly did the same thing, but the two services, designed to complement each other, did not show eagerness to share information. Lieutenant Colonel Karavashkin, at the time deputy head of the French section for counterintelligence, officially requested Vetrov’s investigation file.4 It took the PGU a year to send the seven three-hundred-page or so gray volumes to their colleagues in counterintelligence. The first volume contained the interrogation reports, the second one the search reports, seizure reports, and crime scene inspection reports, the third one the witnesses’ depositions, and the fourth one experts’ reports, and so forth. The last volume ended with the sentence execution certificate and the death certificate.

  It took Karavashkin three months to study all the paperwork. His main conclusion was that the Farewell case did not shed light on the working methods of the French secret services. Had Vetrov accepted the plan suggested by the DST, the operation would have failed in a matter of days. The procedures he imposed on his handlers were those applied by Soviet intelligence. “In the future, though,” said Karavashkin, “if the French are good students, one can assume they will benefit from this experience in agent handling.”

  Karavashkin had adopted a businesslike approach and reasoned from analogy with the way KGB members operated in France. According to him, the manipulation of a KGB officer in the middle of Moscow required a whole set of technical measures, some of which were very complex.

  Assuming an intelligence officer in Paris, such as Vetrov, goes to a secret rendezvous with an important agent, Pierre Bourdiol, for instance. On that day the entire residency is on alert. Only two or three men know what is supposed to happen. Others execute diversion and cover maneuvers, not having a clue about the particulars of the operation (names, circumstances, kind of operation). Several hours before the rendezvous, half a dozen officers leave the Soviet embassy, setting in motion one by one the DST’s tailing teams, hot on their heels. Each officer behaves in a manner intended to make the shadow believe the tailed officer is the one on his way to make a drop or take delivery from a dead letter box or to rendezvous with his agent. He runs errands, leaves his car somewhere, and goes down in the subway. In this way, each officer is dragging a maximum number of shadows in his wake.

  It is only after the main body of the DST forces has been diverted onto other surveillance targets that the true “handler of the day” leaves his office or his home. Like all of his colleagues, he follows a long security route through town. He goes by places where another KGB member, sipping a beer at an outside coffee table, checks that he is not being tailed. This is what is referred to as physical countersurveillance.

  The handler then performs unpredictable maneuvers. For instance, at 16:34, as he is driving his car in the right lane, he changes to the left lane at the last moment. If he was followed, the tailers cannot do the same last-minute maneuver. They are thus forced to inform their center, or another car, to take over. During this ploy, an operator listens to radio conversations on the DST frequencies. If at exactly 16:34 he intercepts any message, generally ciphered, it means the officer is under surveillance. If another message is intercepted at the same time as the next unexpected maneuver, scheduled for instance at 16:49, then there is no doubt left: the DST is hot on the officer’s heels. Then, a beeper alerts him that the operation is cancelled.

  If countersurveillance and radio monitoring do not reveal suspicious activity after three hours of acrobatics, the officer arrives at the meeting place. There, he and his agent check once again that the way is clear. Only then do they get in contact.

  Such are the basics of the trade, adopted by all special services worldwide, because this canonical modus operandi works. No one in the KGB doubted Vetrov had been handled that way in Moscow.

  In particular, Soviet counterintelligence was convinced that during the mandatory three hours of driving around town before meeting with Farewell, Ferrant must have been backed up by the American embassy radio control service. At the time, the French embassy in Moscow was not equipped to perform this kind of technical operation. There was a close collaboration between Western special services in the USSR, particularly in military intelligence. At the time, contacts between American and French officers were very frequent. Therefore, reasoned Karavashkin, the Americans could very well have responded to Ferrant’s request to be covered, or they could have received the express order to do so from the CIA headquarters.

  On a rendezvous day, a CIA operator must have had a sheet of paper in front of him with a column of numbers, like, for instance, 15:38, 16:29, 17:10, 17:51, and 18:07. If at those exact times he intercepted any message on the frequencies used by mobile surveillance, or a ciphered phrase or simply a sound signal, he wrote it down. Then, a CIA station field officer would come by after six p.m. to check on the situation. All he would know himself is that the French were executing a covert operation that day. If he observed that there were no events at those exact moments when the French officer was making various moves to shake off potential p
ursuers, he could call an office colleague of the French military attaché to tell him, for instance, that he is sending the latest American newspapers over by courier. If, on the contrary, he sees that there is every indication that their man is under surveillance, he invites the colleague over to play bridge the next Saturday. Then, depending on the scenario, the Frenchman will simply drive by the Arbat restaurant to alert Ferrant, who is waiting in the parking lot, so that he can take a trolley to go to his rendezvous. If his colleague does not drive by, it means that the operation has been cancelled and Ferrant must go home.

  That’s what Karavashkin thought. But what actually happened?

  Ferrant’s KGB “guardian angel” was Slava Sidorkin.5 Very often, by an injustice of fate, the secret service’s best officers, the ones who brilliantly executed their missions, die unknown. Conversely, history remembers the names of burned, arrested, and imprisoned agents, of individuals behind colossal blunders and memorable faux pas. In the service’s history, Sidorkin will be remembered as the man who missed Vetrov.

  A former boxer, he had the face of a weasel, a pointed snout, a receding forehead, and prying, insolent eyes. After fulfilling his military duty, Sidorkin graduated from the Seventh Directorate (surveillance) School in Leningrad. After a year of service, a promising young man, he was admitted to the Dzerzhinsky School, where counterintelligence officers were trained. In five years he mastered twenty words of French, and he was sent for a field term to the French section of the Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence). His instructors had no illusions about him. Sidorkin was not cut out to be an operative. They gave him the advice to stay in the school to teach instead, but Slava persisted. Despite the little hope that could be placed in him, the section gave him this “job for the good guy,” as the Russians say. Sidorkin was in charge of overseeing the French military, a post that did not require outstanding talents.

  His enthusiasm for work being skillfully paced, the Ferrant file was as thin as a theater program. In three years, he placed the French officer under mobile surveillance only half a dozen times, on days when the tailing team he was responsible for had really nothing else to do. Sergei Kostin was able, on the other hand, to find notes that were sometimes written down in their registry by the security guards posted at the French embassy and at the House of France.

  Foreign delegations and residential buildings reserved for foreigners were guarded by the police round the clock. Actually, the special regiment of the Ministry of Interior was assigned exclusively to the protection of delegations from friendly or neutral countries. The security of NATO members’ embassies and of their largest residential buildings depended on the Diplomatic Representations Guard Department of the KGB Seventh Directorate. The men in police uniforms were counterintelligence officers or NCOs. Having been at the same post for years, they knew every passing face. At the request of their colleagues from the Second Chief Directorate, they often drew psychological profiles of certain foreigners or the list of Soviet people meeting with them. They secretly photographed visitors. Regarding known intelligence officers, like Ferrant, the guards received instructions every once in a while to record all their comings and goings.

  We have the entries corresponding to days when Ferrant had a rendezvous with Farewell: September 4 and 18, October 2 and 16, November 6 and 20, and December 4. According to Patrick Ferrant, these entries were not reliable because, as we saw previously, functionaries were not infallible and often forgot to record the French couple’s movements.6 Those indications are of relative interest, but they sometimes lead to conclusions or hypotheses that are not insignificant. They must be sorted into three groups.

  The first group contains days with discrepancies between sources. On Friday September 4, when, according to Vetrov, they met at seven p.m. in the park, Ferrant shuttled between his office and his home:

  19:00 - leaves the embassy.

  19:02 - goes into the House of France, 13 1st Spasonalivkovsky Lane.

  19:25 - leaves the house.

  19:27 - comes back to the embassy.

  20:16 - leaves the embassy again.

  20:18 - goes home for good.

  Thus, two witnesses saw Ferrant several times from their sentry boxes. Considering Ferrant’s height, it is not likely the guards could have mistaken him for somebody else. We have to admit that Vetrov must have forgotten the exact date of their first rendezvous after their summer vacation.

  On October 16, although the third Friday of the month, and thus a backup meeting day, both entries are conflicting again. According to the guard on duty at the House of France, the Ferrants left in their car at 20:02 and came back past midnight, at 0:08. On November 6, Ferrant is believed to have left the embassy at 19:10 and arrived home at 19:12.

  From those examples, it appears that, two years after the fact, Vetrov’s memories were getting fuzzy. Having confessed to the clandestine rendezvous, he had nothing to gain by giving the wrong dates. Those discrepancies question the credibility of Vetrov’s depositions as far as dates are concerned.

  The second group of records includes two meetings where it all fits perfectly. On Friday September 18, at 18:07, Ferrant and his wife left their apartment; they were back at 20:09. Similarly, on October 2, Patrick and Madeleine left their home at 17:40 and drove back through the gates at 21:21. The rendezvous was at 19:00 not far from the Triumphal Arch. Having left the House of France in his car once at 18:07, and once at 17:40, Ferrant could have easily arrived at the meeting place on time, but—this is of cardinal significance—there was not enough time for any security route!

  Added to that, it would have been sheer folly to leave a diplomatic car anywhere with a woman inside. On a closely monitored thoroughfare like the Kutuzov Avenue, it would have been reported immediately to counterintelligence. Ferrant, therefore, needed to park his car in the Arbat restaurant parking lot, located at the beginning of Kalinin Avenue, near the department stores. In this way, Madeleine had the alibi of shopping while her husband slipped away for an hour or so.

  Taking September 18 as an extreme case, the route was as follows: The Ferrants drove away from the House of France at 18:07. They turned into Bolshaya Polyanka Street and then got on the Garden Ring. To get to the Arbat restaurant in rush-hour traffic, they needed ten to fifteen minutes. By the time they parked the car and crossed Kalinin Avenue through the underground tunnel it was 18:30, in the best-case scenario. The Borodino Battle Museum was twenty minutes or so away by trolley or bus, provided it came within the ten remaining minutes. Ferrant had never been late at the rendezvous; Vetrov was specifically questioned on this point.

  In those conditions, it appears that Ferrant had barely enough time to turn around every so often to check if a shadow was waving at him to signal his presence.

  The third group concerns the November 20 and December 4 rendezvous. On those days, based on the Soviet guards’ records, Ferrant left the embassy at 18:13 and 18:15, respectively, and was last seen entering his apartment building two or three minutes later. Does that question the veracity of Vetrov’s statements? Probably not, since the Ameil episode was, for the main part, confirmed by Vetrov. Should the accuracy of the guards’ records be in doubt? Despite a few errors noticed on other occasions, the guards were KGB members aware of the importance of their job—but still.

  Despite the inaccuracies, nothing substantiates the assumption that, on his way to meet with his mole, Ferrant was taking even the most elementary precautions. As for the Americans controlling the radio waves, it did not happen. “Paul,” the professional, appears to have behaved with the same nonchalance as the amateurs Xavier Ameil and Madeleine Ferrant.

  The complex scenario imagined by Karavashkin, involving security routes all over town and American radio assistance, resulted from the reflex of a professional. Even when confronted with the evidence, he refused to believe that the handling of Vetrov could have been accomplished with such amateurishness.7

  To French professionals, on the other hand, the situ
ation appears plausible. Admiral Pierre Lacoste, former head of the DGSE (French foreign intelligence service), answering Sergei Kostin’s questions, was of the opinion that if the Farewell operation succeeded, it was precisely because it ran counter to all the rules of the trade, because it was managed by amateurs. Considering the draconian counterintelligence regime that existed in the Soviet Union at the time, true pros would have soon fallen into the KGB’s clutches.8

  Regardless of the errors committed by the DST in the Farewell operation, it is still surprising that the KGB did not have a clue. Hubris was the main explanation. The French section of the KGB Second Chief Directorate (counterintelligence) was so convinced that they had dissuaded the French from actively pursuing intelligence work in the USSR, and that they so cleverly maintained the illusion they were controlling each step of each foreigner, it was in a state of blissful contentment, resting on its laurels. Furthermore, the French section was a victim of the system imposed by the PGU (intelligence service), which intended it to be the only one in charge of security within its ranks.

  All the same, Soviet counterintelligence should have reacted at least in two concrete circumstances. They had noticed that there were often French people in the Borodino Battle Museum area.9 If they did not look further into the matter, it was because this was normal. The museum was one of the places in Moscow most closely linked to French history. This proves once more that Vetrov had planned his collaboration with the DST very carefully. His presence there could be easily explained by the proximity of his garage and his wife’s job at the museum, and the presence of a French person would also seem logical, even if a liaison officer.

  The second KGB error is more embarrassing and is matched only by Patrick Ferrant’s assumed unconcern. This intelligence specialist is thought to have done something imprudent, a mistake the amateur Ameil would not have made.