A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (67 page)
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Authors: Deborah McDonald,Jeremy Dronfield
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical
BOOK: A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
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| 24 | Lockhart, diary entry for 31 Jul. 1918, Diaries vol. 1 , p. 39; Lockhart, British Agent , p. 308. |
| 25 | The Times , 13 Aug. 1918, p. 6. |
| 26 | The Times , 15 Aug. 1918, p. 5; Kettle, The Road to Intervention , p. 298. |
| 27 | Hill, Go Spy the Land , pp. 213–14. |
| 28 | Cromie, letter to Adm. W. R. Hall, 26 Jul. 1918, in Jones, ‘Documents on British Relations’ IV, p. 559. Knowing the people Cromie had available to him, together with the recorded movements of known SIS agents, it is difficult to guess who this ‘trusted agent’ would be if not Moura. |
| 29 | Neue Freie Presse , quoted in The Times , 15 Aug. 1918, p. 5. |
| 30 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, LL. Undated: probably 5 Jul. 1918. The Soviet report was exaggerated. Having arrived secretly in London he met with Lloyd George, whom he persuaded that the Russians were ready to expel the Germans. The British government tried to keep him quiet, for fear of upsetting the Bolsheviks (Ullman, Intervention , p. 209). On 26 June he made a surprise appearance at the Labour Party Conference; most delegates gave him an ovation, but a vocal minority barracked him severely. There was mystification at how he had managed to come ‘straight from Moscow’ as he claimed ( Manchester Guardian , 27 Jun. 1918, p. 5; 28 Jun. 1918, p. 4). |
Chapter 10: The Lockhart Plot
| 1 | According to Kettle ( The Road to Intervention , pp. 313–14), Helfferich was recalled because of his intemperate anti-Bolshevik suggestions. Lockhart ( British Agent , pp. 309–10) was told it was because of his fears about the coming invasion. |
| 2 | Moura’s movements during most of August 1918 are unrecorded. However, there are no letters from her, so she was probably with Lockhart. The few glimpses of her in other sources (e.g. Lockhart) indicate her presence in Moscow. It’s not impossible that she journeyed to Kiev again in her role as spy, but there is no evidence for it. |
| 3 | Figes, People’s Tragedy , pp. 516–17. The full text of the Declaration can be found online (in Russian) at www.hist.msu.ru/ER/Etext/DEKRET/declarat.htm and (in English) at www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jan/03.htm (retrieved 8 Apr. 2014). |
| 4 | Lenin, telegram to Penza Soviet, 9 Aug. 1918, quoted in Werth, ‘A State Against Its People’, p. 73. |
| 5 | Smith, Former People , pp. 133–7. |
| 6 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, HIA. Undated: probably May 1918. By this time, 10,000 roubles was not a great deal of money. As a rough guide, 1 pood (approx. 16 kg) of flour could change hands for over 350 roubles; a cab ride could cost 100 roubles; Russia was in the grip of hyperinflation, and by early 1919 black bread cost 20 roubles per pound, a suit of second-hand clothing could be 2,000 and a pair of boots 800 roubles (various reports in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , pp. 16, 22, 24). |
| 7 | Food was so short and so expensive, Francis Cromie warned in April that any British officials being sent out to Russia should bring six months’ supply of provisions with them (letter to Adm. W. R. Hall, 16 Apr. 1918, in Jones, ‘Documents on British Relations’ IV, p. 552). |
| 8 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, LL. Undated: probably 6/7 Jul. 1918. |
| 9 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, LL. Undated: probably 8 Jul. 1918. She did hint later that some costly bargaining had been involved, and that she had had to ‘ se mettre en quatre ’ (bend over backwards) to ‘find some way out of it’ (Moura, letter to Lockhart, 18 Feb. 1919, LL). |
| 10 | Martin Latsis, article in the Cheka periodical Red Terror , Nov. 1918, quoted in Leggett, The Cheka , p. 114. |
| 11 | Lenin, speech on 7 Nov. 1918, quoted in Leggett, The Cheka , p. 119. |
| 12 | Lockhart, unpublished diary entry, 3 Aug. 1918; British Agent , p. 308. The exact address is given in Malkov, Reminiscences of a Kremlin Commandant , ch. 20; and in Latsis, Two Years of Struggle on the Home Front , p. 19. |
| 13 | In British Agent (p. 314) Lockhart claims that visit took place at his flat on 15 August. However, other sources indicate that it was at his mission office in Bolshaya Lubyanka and must therefore have occurred prior to 5 August, when all Allied mission premises were closed down (based on an account given by one of the Latvians, cited in Long, ‘Searching for Sidney Reilly’, pp. 1230, 1238–9 n. 46). |
| 14 | Decades later, when the story began to be pieced together by Soviet and Western historians, Lockhart and Cromie were judged to be grossly naive and gullible to believe that the Latvian regiments could be subverted (e.g. Long, ‘Plot and Counter-Plot in Revolutionary Russia’), but as Swain points out (‘An Interesting and Plausible Proposal’, pp. 91–100), the situation at the time and the shaky morale of the Latvian regiments made it a plausible idea. On the repatriation of the Latvians see Kettle, The Road to Intervention , p. 259. |
| 15 | Lockhart, British Agent , p. 315. |
| 16 | Cromie, letter to Adm. W. R. Hall, 26 Jul. 1918, in Jones, ‘Documents on British Relations’ IV, p. 559. |
| 17 | Doubt is cast on the misspelt note by Long (‘Searching for Sidney Reilly’, pp. 1238–9 n. 46), who points out that Lockhart used the same story in an entirely different context in a report on his mission in Russia (Lockhart to Balfour, 5 Nov. 1918, FO 371/3348/190442). Long suggests that the Latvians may have been vouched for by Reilly, but there is no reason to think that Lockhart would cover that up. |
| 18 | Wardrop, telegram to Foreign Office, 24 Mar. 1918, cited in Hughes, Inside the Enigma , pp. 135–6. |
| 19 | Wardrop, despatches from Moscow, 5–8 Aug. 1918, in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , pp. 1–2. |
| 20 | Lockhart, diary entry for 5 Aug. 1918, Diaries vol. 1 , pp. 39–40. Lockhart states that George Hill was among those arrested. This must be a mistake, because the SIS agent’s own memoir ( Go Spy the Land , p. 228) indicates that he had gone into hiding by this time; furthermore, he is not listed among those arrested in any contemporary despatches or memoirs (e.g. Wardrop, despatches from Moscow, 5–8 Aug. 1918, in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , pp. 1–2; Lingner, ‘In Moscow, 1918’; report in The Times , 10 Aug. 1918, p. 6; report from the Times Petrograd correspondent, 14 Aug. 1918, printed in The Times , 25 Sep. 1918, p. 9; report from Reuters’ Moscow correspondent, Manchester Guardian , 27 Aug. 1918, p. 5). |
| 21 | Cromie, telegram to Gen. Poole, 9 Aug. 1918, in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , p. 1. |
| 22 | Wardrop, despatch 5 Aug. 1918, in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , p. 1. |
| 23 | Cromie, telegram to Gen. Poole, 9 Aug. 1918, in Foreign Office, White Paper on Russia , p. 1. |
| 24 | Lingner, ‘In Moscow’. |
| 25 | Lockhart, British Agent , pp. 310–11. In justice to Gen. Poole, he had waited for reinforcements, and had hurried his landing because of the anti-Bolshevik uprisings that were taking place. The force landed included one battalion of French soldiers, a detachment of British Royal Marines and about 50 American sailors (Ullman, Intervention , p. 235). Furthermore, Poole was relying primarily on the Czechs (Kettle, The Road to Intervention , p. 306). |
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