Free Farewell by Sergei Kostin Page A

identifying particulars). The DST, in return, helped the company resolve red-tape difficulties. It so happened, for instance, at Thomson’s request, that a Soviet minister received a French visa in less than twenty-four hours instead of the usual twenty days. In return, the company managed to obtain the posting in Paris of a Soviet official who was on the DST red list. French counterintelligence was also capable of looking the other way when technology transfers occurred between the company and KGB correspondents such as Vetrov. This type of activity was for Thomson part of building a commercial network, and for the DST part of building a network to be exploited as circumstances would allow. Jacques Prévost reported to a young DST captain, Raymond Nart, who would play a key role in what had not yet become the Farewell affair.

Police captain Raymond Nart, the man who at the beginning of the operation effectively found himself, along with his deputy Jacky Debain, alone in front of the entire KGB.

    In Nart’s opinion, Prévost was simply, to use his own words, “one of Vetrov’s agents,” but “out of business necessity.” It was a situation that could be viewed as ambiguous, but it did not shock Nart at all: “No, really, he was a good patriot, and also a good businessman.” 6
    Friendly, quick-witted, extremely courteous and polite, Prévost was a socialite. When Eric Raynaud met him in 2009 at his home, the former Thomson representative was still the same courteous man, very sharp, with a memory still relatively precise on events dating back sometimes more than thirty years. His memory was skillfully maintained by a thick binder in which Prévost had saved all the elements of the dossier he knew firsthand.
    In the framework of his professional activities, Jacques Prévost had developed, over time, an especially dense social network in the Soviet Union, which included several ministerial-level officials. Prévost claimed to be the only French person who had such an extended network available in the USSR. For this reason, the French intelligence services were immediately very interested in him. Before belonging to the DST, Prévost served as honorable correspondent to the SDECE, until the Elysée headquarters staff, qualified to deal with this issue, chose between the two agencies and assigned him to the DST, without seriously consulting with him.
    At the end of the sixties, Prévost started taking the Vetrovs out once a month, for lunch or for dinner. Every once in a while, he was accompanied by his wife, which added some intimacy to these official occasions. They would spend a few hours in a good Paris restaurant or in the countryside. Sometimes, other Thomson executives or partners, authentic or not, joined the party. Vetrov and Prévost often met during visits of Soviet trade delegations in Paris. Little by little, their interactions became less formal, almost friendly. Did Vetrov suspect that he was of interest to Prévost both for Thomson-CSF and for the DST? This cannot be ruled out. The KGB residency in Paris maintained a list of the presumed honorable correspondents of their main adversary. If this was the case, Vetrov could even have been encouraged by his superiors to pursue this valuable relationship, even if it meant reporting on Prévost’s every move after each meeting.
    However, by then Prévost had noticed a trait of Vetrov’s personality that was quite unusual among Soviet expatriates, usually privileged by definition. “He talked a lot,” Prévost remembers, “and was already very critical of his superiors, of the Party, and even of the regime as a whole. That’s why I tended to be slightly cautious with him.”
     

    Then, during the summer of 1970, a strange event occurred. 7
    It happened a few weeks prior to the scheduled repatriation of the Vetrovs. It must have been a Friday night; Svetlana could not remember exactly. She was at the castle in Montsoult with her son Vladik. Vladimir was