Farewell by Sergei Kostin Read Free Book Online

KGB residency 7 in Paris was especially affected by the situation. A gifted and promising candidate, Vladimir was among the young officers nominated to those vacant positions.
    On August 16, 1965, he was officially attached to the Ministry of Foreign Trade, which would be, for the next five years, his official cover. And so, at age thirty-three, Vetrov at last had the opportunity to establish himself in the career he had chosen.

CHAPTER 4

The Good Life!

    France, and particularly Paris, has a very special place in Russian fantasy where the streets are crowded with poets and painters, men are chivalrous and witty, and women are beautiful and elegant. In this picture, all French people are wealthy and lead a comfortable life. People dance and sing in the streets, and lovers stroll through parks, exchanging passionate kisses every ten meters. “True” France is the country of tolerance where everybody is free to do as they please. It is also the opposite of Russia where nothing works, chaos prevails, and the fabric of life is interwoven with hardship and humiliation.
    This romantic view of France dates back to the Age of Enlightenment, widely promoted by Catherine the Great in her illiterate empire. Russian nobility made a point to learn French, and everything coming from France was lauded as being the incarnation of beauty and reason. The war against Napoleon did not change a thing, in spite of the fierce battles and the high number of Russian casualties. Even the fact that the Soviet regime substituted social values for nationalistic ones, and was closer to Germany from an economic strategy point of view, did not succeed in weakening the attraction of French culture to the Russian mind.
    At the end of August 1965, overwhelmed by emotion, the Vetrovs, with little Vladik, landed at the Bourget Airport, near Paris. They crossed town immediately—the grand boulevards, the Opera, Place de l’Etoile—so many familiar names that rang like a royal song to Russian ears. Finally, they arrived at their future home, the impressive residential building housing the Soviet colony, 16 Boulevard Suchet, in the elegant sixteenth district. Ecstatic, they got out of the car dispatched by the Soviet trade mission that had welcomed them at the airport.
    They were in for a big surprise! What easy life in Paris? They received two rooms in a communal apartment. Their accommodations were even worse than in Moscow! Each floor contained ten rooms or so, for six or seven families. There were two toilets, one at each end of the corridor. There was only one kitchen. The first four floors were assigned to the Soviet citizens working in Paris, and the fifth floor was used like a hotel for those visiting on business; all in all, it was a busy anthill.
    The inhabitants of this posh neighborhood, with wealthy families generally occupying an entire floor and sometimes even the entire building for just one household, referred to the Soviet building as the “miniature Renault factory.” In the morning, the men would walk to their office together. In the evening, they would all come back in a wave.
    The Vetrovs’ life in Paris can be characterized by the contrast of two social systems, two cultures, two lifestyles. Nationals representing their country abroad try to bring with them their customs, and those cultural differences are often enough to lead to awkward situations. In the case of two hostile, irreconcilable ideologies, one can easily imagine the tension.
    On the Vetrovs’ floor lived KGB members, GRU officers (military intelligence), and “clean” businesspeople, who were not paid by any Soviet intelligence agency. Everybody knew everybody. On average, the Soviet residents were not very sophisticated.
    For example, the Vetrovs were struck, at their arrival in Paris, by the absence of drunks in the streets. Then one day they saw one and sighed in relief. So, Paris was not that different from Moscow. As they got closer to the man, they recognized