Authors: Sergei Kostin
Farewell (52 page)
8
Thomas C. Reed,
At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War
(New York: Presidio Press/Ballantine Books, 2004), 269.
9
Ibid.
10
Richard V. Allen, interview by Eric Raynaud, March 12, 2009.
11
Gus Weiss committed suicide on December 25, 2003, by jumping out the window of his apartment in the famous Watergate complex in Washington DC. The reasons and circumstances of his death remain unclear. His thorough knowledge of intelligence matters and his opposition to the war in Iraq might have raised some suspicion among the Internet community:
http://www.rense.com/general45/violnt.htm
.
12
Patrick Ferrant, interview by Eric Raynaud, March 14, 2009.
13
Jacques Prévost, interview by Eric Raynaud, April 7, 2009.
14
De Staël,
Ten Years’ Exile
(UK: The Echo Library, 2006), 108. (
www. echo-library.com
)
15
When the first pages of
Adieu Farewell
were being written, a remarkable event took place with the movie adaptation of the first version of this book (
Bonjour Farewell
, 1997). The film, written by Eric Raynaud and directed by Christian Carion, was in preproduction in Moscow, on location where the Farewell case events took place. Nikita Mikhalkov, who had agreed to coproduce the film and had even been thought of for Vetrov’s part, had just handed over the role to the local star, Sergei Makovetsky.
Makovetsky, who had come to Paris for costume fitting, on the evening of his arrival had dinner with the Russian ambassador in France, Alexander Avdeev (who later became minister of culture). The next morning, he departed for Moscow and informed the French production team that he was refusing the part. When asked more insistently by the producer, Makovetsky explained that he was abandoning the idea of playing “a traitor to the homeland” because of the thinly disguised pressure he was still receiving. Having learned this lesson, the production team decided to leave the Russian capital, losing in the process a significant amount of money that had been engaged in preparation of the shooting. Farewell’s part was eventually interpreted by Emir Kusturica, and the film was shot in the Ukraine and in Finland.
Svetlana and Vladislav Vetrov’s personal archives
Sergei Kostin’s archives
Photos in Moscow: Dmitri Khrupov
We are deeply indebted to all of the witnesses who, willingly or not, contributed to reconstructing this story. Our gratitude goes, first of all, to Vladimir Vetrov’s family, his wife Svetlana and his son Vladislav. We thank with all our heart Ludmila Ochikina for her unhoped-for apparition. This book owes a lot to Galina and Alexei Rogatin, and to Alina Bocharova, whose memories gave life to a man with a complex personality, full of contradictions. We are grateful to our KGB contacts (some are named in the book, while others chose to remain anonymous), without whom the espionage aspect of the case would not have had the same consistency. We are grateful to Valentina Nikolaeva, Mikhail Kochenov, and Sergei Enikolopov, three Russian authorities on the subject of criminal psychology, who helped us unravel many enigmas.
On the French side, our thanks go to Claude and Xavier Ameil, who so generously shared with us their incredible adventure. We want to express our gratitude to other French protagonists of this case who, thanks to Eric Raynaud’s efforts, eventually agreed to contribute to this work. These are, above all, Marcel Chalet and Raymond Nart, who generously forgave the poisoned arrows shot at them in the first version of the book (and which remained in this one). We also keep in mind Jacques Prévost, who generously reopened old files, as valuable as his memory. We are immensely grateful to Patrick and Madeleine Ferrant, who, not without hesitation, agreed to share their memories. We asked them to forgive us for not preserving their anonymity by telling their commendable role in this story. We do not want to forget several journalists and Parisian friends who tried to help us in our research, with varying degrees of success. We are not certain that naming them here will do them a favor.
On the American side, we would not have been able to present the complexity of the Reagan administration and the impact of the Farewell affair at the international level without the kind participation and warm support of Richard V. Allen, President Reagan’s first national security adviser in 1981. We also express our gratitude to Richard Allen for the valuable Gus Weiss material he made available to us.
The first version of the book, still the main part of this updated edition, would have never been written without the patient, discreet, and efficient assistance of Charles Ronsac, director of the collection “Vécu” at Robert Laffont Publishers. By his energy, this adventurous eighty-seven-year-young man supported Sergei Kostin without fail in his low moments, which were not rare during this long investigation. Charles passed away at age ninety-three, and he continues to live through this book and all the others written under his watch.
Finally, the first French manuscript was polished by Bernard Ollivier, who, through the duration of Kostin’s work in France, shared like a brother the author’s joys and disappointments at the end of each day. We are glad and relieved to see that this talented journalist and writer has, since 1997 (and after retiring), had a brilliant career as the man who walked the Silk Road, an unprecedented adventure that he told us about in four remarkable books.
Sergei Kostin is a Russian documentary filmmaker and writer living in Moscow. He is the author of four nonfiction books, mainly about secret services, translated in eight languages, in particular
The Man Behind the Rosenbergs
, and four spy novels published in Russia, the United States (
Paris Weekend
), Bulgaria, and Serbia. First published in France in 1997 under the title
Bonjour Farewell
,
Farewell
was the fruit of two years of painstaking investigation in Moscow and Paris interviewing the key players and witnesses to this amazing adventure.
Eric Raynaud is a French screenwriter who wrote the original screenplay of the movie
L’Affaire Farewell
, starring Willem Dafoe and Fred Ward. He joined up with Sergei Kostin to amend
Farewell
with his own investigation about the case when the film was released in 2009.
Catherine Cauvin-Higgins is a French-Russian-English translator. Her work as a Thomson-CSF interpreter during the Vetrov years uniquely prepared her for her role as translator of
Farewell
. She worked directly with Jacques Prévost, Vetrov’s initial French contact, and Xavier Ameil, his first handler, and she participated in trade negotiations with Vetrov’s peers, in Paris and in Moscow.
After an MA in translation from the Sorbonne, she obtained an MA in political science (Soviet studies) from the University of Houston. She is also a “Langues-O” graduate (Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris) in Russian and Greek. A member of ALTA, ATA, and PEN, she has also translated Yevgeny Zamyatin’s short story “Uezdnoe” (“Province”) from Russian into French.
