Our final episode on the espionage operations that changed the face of the world begins this time from its ending.. from the moment the spy is arrested.
That moment begins with the military engineer, of extreme importance in the Soviet Union.. Colonel "Vladimir Vetrov", the favourite man of the Soviet state and intelligence.. and the man in charge of a top-secret project.. and we will learn his story right away.. as he sits in his luxury car, stopped at the side of the highway, on a cold night in February of the year 1982.. after a long evening in which he drank heavily.. and he is with his favourite mistress, the one he loves behind his wife's back.. after they had spent an evening in which he tried to calm the boiling engines of his mind, which was raging madly and in which thoughts were clashing.
This lady with him was his only true love, and the only one with whom he was entirely at ease, in whose arms he wept and to whom he told all his worries, except of course his work as a spy.. and yet it seems that their talk in the car at some point.. turned into the lovers' dialogue of "what is it? / nothing - what's going on? / nothing".. or "if you cared you would have known by yourself" and that sort of story.. so "Vetrov" did what any ordinary man dreams of doing at that moment with a woman.. he stopped the car at the side of the road, and pulled from the folds of his coat a sharp blade, and rained blows of it on the body of his lover.
And at that very moment.. "Vetrov" is surprised by a man he had seen many times in the Soviet intelligence building.. knocking on his car window.. so "Vetrov" understands that he has been exposed.. and he gets down from the car beside the Soviet intelligence man.. who contemplates "Vetrov's" bleeding companion inside the car in terror.. but "Vetrov" takes advantage of the man's amazement, and surprises him in turn with several stab wounds.. and lays him out dead.. because he imagined that he had been found out.. and that this was why the Soviet intelligence man was tailing him.
The truth is that the man had been tailing "Vetrov" along with a companion of his as a secret guard.. because "Vetrov" was one of the most important men in the Soviet Union at all.. and he knocked on his car window because he wanted to warn him that it was a mistake to stop on the edge of the highway, for his own safety.. and "Vetrov" is surprised by the second intelligence man, the companion of the dead man, as he emerges from the heart of the darkness, and levels his pistol at him sternly, and orders him not to move.
And "Vetrov" falls.. the man in charge of a top-secret project whose name is "Line X".
And "Line X" was an extremely dangerous project, begun by Soviet intelligence in the year 1964, when it found the United States leaping in terrifying technological strides, and drawing in scientists and researchers from all corners of the world, so the Soviets raised the matter to their scientists.. who told them that the United States was ahead of them technologically by about 40 years.. and that this gap was widening with every moment.
Here the "Line X" project begins.. and its aim was to steal every possible technology from Europe and America in the shortest possible time.
And by recruiting more than 300 scientists, researchers and experts, the Soviet Union begins to receive an astonishing stream of technical components, patents and computer programs, and begins to implement and apply them, in every facility and every aspect of life.
And the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the United States narrows at an astonishing speed within several months.
It narrows more and more, and the United States does not understand exactly what is happening.. and how the Soviets are leaping forward scientifically in this dazzling way.
And during a visit to France.. "Vetrov" is enchanted by the beauty and elegance of France.. and he spends extremely happy days in the capital of light, art and love, and he is amazed by the civilisation and the breadth of the freedoms there compared with his cold, harsh country.
And in France, French intelligence assigns to "Vetrov" a French intelligence man.. who tries to recruit him.. as a "Soviet diplomat" as his passport says.. but "Vetrov" does not get recruited.. and he returns to the Soviet Union.. but despite that, he and the French officer became close friends.
And one night, for purely ideological reasons connected with his enchantment with France and his hatred of the communist system compared with it.. "Vetrov" calls his French friend.. and asks to meet him.. and during the meeting.. "Vetrov" tells him of his real work.. and offers him cooperation.
And the French intelligence man realises that he has landed an astonishing catch.. and "Vetrov" is indeed recruited and carries the code name "Farewell". The funny thing here is that the French chose an English name for him.. so that if he fell into the grip of the Soviets.. they would imagine that it was the English who had recruited him!
And "Vetrov" begins his work for the first time as a traitorous spy.. and because he was the man in charge of reviewing, examining and studying all the technologies that were stolen from the West and delivered to the Soviet Union.. he therefore knew all the men of Line X.. and "Vetrov" supplies French intelligence with more than 2000 secret documents, about Line X and the agents who followed it.
And as an automatic procedure, France shares with its ally, the NATO member.. the United States of America.. all the details, and the Americans enter the game.
And France begins to remove the scientists who were Soviet agents belonging to Line X from its scientific, research and secret facilities, and arrests most of them.. and the number of those who fell from the members of the Line X network reached about 50 agents.. against whom sufficient evidence was available.
And the Soviet intelligence men suspect that "Vetrov" is more than just a killer.. he killed an intelligence man under the influence of drink, and nearly killed his lover, whom they saved by a miracle.. and who denied completely that she had seen anything disgraceful in him or that would make her believe he was a spy.
And at the same time, and to the astonishment of France.. the Americans appeared as though they had ignored the whole matter.. and left the men of Line X in their positions.. supplying the Soviets with all the technologies and software they asked for.
Even after "Vetrov" was imprisoned for the crime of murder.. these scientists and experts remained in their positions.. and that reassured the Soviets a little, and convinced them to a large extent that the traitor was not "Vetrov".. and that Line X had not fallen completely.. and they went on receiving these Western technologies eagerly.. and using them in triumph and contentment.
And one night in his prison.. "Vetrov" yearns for his old lover.. so he sends her a sentimental letter, telling her that he had wronged her, because his mind had been charged and exhausted because he had "got involved in big matters".. and extremely dangerous things... and it seems that his lover, with the letter, remembers their last romantic night, and the cheap sentimental moment in which he nearly slaughtered her, so she carries his letter at once to the men in the KGB building directly.
And then, the Soviet intelligence men realise that "Vetrov" has more.. so they bring him and interrogate him... and with prison and weakness and collapse, the confessions of "Vetrov" pour out.. and although the Soviets tried to keep the matter as secret as possible.. the news of the arrest of "Vetrov" on the charge of espionage spread, and American intelligence began for the first time, in its turn, to remove all the Line X scientists.. and arrest most of them; in America alone 150 scientists and researchers of the Line X spies fell.. and others fell in London.
And project X collapses suddenly, and all at once.. after nearly a quarter of a century...
And it was a terrifying shock to the Soviets.. to the point that they executed "Vetrov" after his confession by firing squad without trial. And despite that they decided that they had obtained enough software and technologies.. which had made them almost close the technological gap between them and the United States.. which after having been a difference of 40 years.. became only a few years.. and from there they could develop by themselves.. and move forward on the path of scientific research.
But that was not the end of the story, unfortunately.
The Soviets learned later, after years.. that the Americans had known of the matter at almost the same time from the French.. and they learned why they had nevertheless let them steal technologies for a long period.
The truth is that the Americans had begun at a particular moment to deliberately give the spies of Line X certain technologies.. and allow them to steal them.
Then suddenly, and without prior warning, in one of the computer programs for operating gas pipelines, which the Soviets had stolen from the Americans.. and at a specific timing of its own, planted in its code.. an American "Trojan horse" wakes up.. in the heart of the Soviet systems...
And a "Trojan horse" is a small program, with a special code, that hides under an innocent appearance among the main programs on computers, to steal information.. or to give specific orders to the machine at a particular moment.
And in the middle of the year 1982, the first Trojan horse wakes up, in the electronic brain responsible for managing the "Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod pipeline" for natural gas to western Siberia.. and it closes the safety valves by itself.. then it begins to pump the gas with a sudden force.. and an extremely enormous pressure.
And the gas pipeline of western Siberia explodes in a terrifying, massive explosion.. and it was an explosion that was seen from space, and was the largest non-nuclear explosion that happened in the entire world at that time...
But the "western Siberia pipeline Trojan horse" was not the only one.. nor the last.
For in June of the same year, and while "Aeroflot Flight 411" was flying from Moscow to Sierra Leone, and only two years after its inauguration and design and its upgrading with the American software coming from "Line X".. another Trojan horse activates, and disables the engines of the plane, so it plunges from on high into the middle of the farmland and explodes, and everyone on board dies.. in one of the most horrific air disasters in history.
And in February of the same year, the computer of the "Andreev Bay" nuclear facility decides that it will dispose electronically, of its own accord, of a deadly load of contaminated radioactive water, in Russian waters.. and a massive quantity estimated at 700,000 tonnes pours out of the tanks.. to pollute the sea and the land.
The year 1982 ends.. and the year 1983 comes, with new disasters like these.. breakdowns in power stations and gas pipelines and so on in the heart of winter, people are struck by fear and begin to get angry.. then the year 1984 comes in "with the Severomorsk Disaster".. in which the computer issues a special command, which burns an electrical circuit, and sets it on fire, inside one of the ammunition depots, and the computer blows itself up along with the depot entirely, with more than 900 missiles and torpedoes from the weapons of the Russian fleet, and kills 300 people.
In the midst of this anxiety "Gorbachev" reaches power under American sponsorship.. and he begins to strive for radical change of the system.. and he urged people that they had the right to know the budgets of the army and the intelligence.. and that military reliance must be reduced, and all of it spent on repairing this crumbling infrastructure.. and transparency and so on.. this rhetoric of his charged people against the state more and more.
And these disasters continue to follow one after another across the years.. and death alone snatches more than 2000 people from plane crashes.. and the Chernobyl disaster happens, in the year 1986.. directly after the coming of "Gorbachev", as if it were endorsing what he was calling for.. when the computer shut down the water turbines used in cooling the uranium, so the temperature rose in the heart of the fourth reactor to the point of melting, and the disaster occurred.
And in the year 1989, an incident takes place that is among the worst disasters in the history of the Soviet Union in peacetime.. the "Ufa train disaster".. when the safety valves close electronically, and a large quantity of gas leaks, from a gas pipeline on the shores of the Black Sea.. and this coincides with orders from the control panel to divert a train, and other orders to the train coming opposite it on the same line.. that the railway track was clear, in the area of the leak exactly.
And as the driver of the express train advances on rails he imagined to be clear.. he sees the iron nightmare coming towards him face to face.. so both drivers pull the emergency brake.. and violent sparks fly from the friction of the metal wheels against the rails.. and about 50,000 cubic metres of gas ignite suddenly, before the two opposing trains collide with each other.. and they turn into a mass of flame and molten metal in a terrifying explosion.. which killed 780 people instantly.. and set fire to the rest of the gas line, which is nearly a whole kilometre long.. the incident left only 200 survivors of those who were in the place.. with burns and disabilities for the rest of their lives.
And that was immense pressure on the Soviet government.. and expenses being spent all the time on repairs and compensation and so on.. along with the grumbling of the street and the revolt of the people.. who began to ask what exactly the state was doing.. and about its management, which was leading to all these disasters...
And this chain of disasters was an important reason among the reasons that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.. and its weakness.. and its fall later...
All of that because of the spy "Vladimir Vetrov", whose file with the French carried a name that suited his story...
The "Farewell Dossier".
So we have finished these episodes.. and we have learned how the traitor is recruited.. and how he never enjoys any rest his whole life.. even if he is never exposed at all.. he goes on living in terror and fear and anxiety, because his exposure means his execution or his imprisonment for life with contemptible treatment.. and not even his imprisonment or his execution as a hero.. helping his country.. but as a traitor.. all his family disown him down the ages, and they try to forget his story at any price.
Even woman, the spy cannot enjoy.. any woman he meets is a potential agent to entrap him.. and any friend he meets may be an intelligence man seeking to arrest him.. every knock on the door may be from the counter-espionage unit or from an assassination squad.. he cannot trust anyone or confide in anyone or sleep.. a life of pure anxiety and tension and apprehension.. and in the end.. he dies crowned with shame, and is buried in a grave with no headstone.. no one even remembers him or asks mercy on him.
------------------
- The picture is of "Vladimir Vetrov".
- Previous posts in the first comment.