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Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) decided to cut down the number of people employed by State security. The envisioned downsizing was so drastic that it was even planned to close the Dzerzhinsky School.

While looking like everyone else with his fedora and his long trench coat, Vetrov is also the typical portrait of a secret agent. This picture was taken when he was a student at the KGB School #101.

    Since they were all considered to be young specialists, the trainees could not be thrown out in the street. They were called into a meeting where the situation was made clear; they were asked to leave the program on a volunteer basis if they wished to do so. Out of thirty men or so, only five or six wanted to regain their freedom. Vetrov was not among them because there was a rumor going around that the intelligence service of the KGB, the PGU (First Chief Directorate), would be spared from the downsizing. On the contrary, the PGU was supposedly about to launch an all-out offensive abroad.
    The PGU was every KGB member’s dream. Intelligence officers formed an elite caste, the most privileged in Soviet society, because they could go abroad. The difference between those who could “get out” and those who could not was obvious. Not only could they travel, discover how other people live, and broaden their horizons, but one prolonged stay abroad was sufficient to solve all of their everyday life problems. They could buy an apartment, a car, home furnishings, and good clothing for the whole family. A second mission abroad ensured you a comfortable life until you died. And when you worked regularly in the capitalist world, as was the case of intelligence officers and diplomats, you had reached the best possibilities communist society had to offer!
    Vetrov had this unique opportunity. His application, along with a few others, was retained by the PGU human resources department. Now he was going to receive more targeted and more advanced training at the KGB Higher School of Intelligence #101, the future Andropov Institute. It was often referred to as “the school in the woods” because it was located in a forest, east of Moscow, past the city of Balashikha. Until the collapse of the USSR, this area was closed to foreigners, and a special permit was required even to go visit Vladimir and Suzdal, jewels of old Russian architecture. This was for good reasons. There was a major missile control center located there, as well as bases and training centers for the KGB elite troops, and many other institutions which were still ultrasecret not that long ago.
    The trainees were housed by the school. On Sundays, those who wanted could ask for permission to go to Moscow. The majority of those who came from provincial towns preferred to stay at the school, which did look like a resort. It consisted of attractive multistory wooden cottages in the middle of a pine forest, with paved walkways. It offered bedrooms with twin beds and a cafeteria where food and service were better than in many restaurants of the capital. Likewise, the library was better stocked than most of the major public library branches in Moscow. One could find books there that had been banned because they were considered anti-Soviet or simply “reactionary,” like the works of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer. Foreign journals and newspapers that ordinary Soviet citizens were not allowed to read were also available there.
    Here L’Express , Le Monde , Time , and Spiegel were part of the curriculum, as were undubbed movies shown every week. Vetrov, who had studied English in middle school, high school, and college, kept it as his elective or “second language,” as the expression goes. From that time on, his “main language” as an operational officer would be French.
    Learning a foreign language was the way to gain direct access to the outside world. It meant communicating with foreigners without the help of an interpreter and getting a better sense of the contents of non-Marxist