Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (13 page)

He had first set eyes on Evgenia when he interviewed Trotsky on 28 December 1917, but he did not speak to her until later that evening, when he visited the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. He poked his head into a room and, amid a group of unfamiliar faces, immediately recognised her.

‘This was Evgenia,’ he would write, ‘the tall, jolly girl whom later on I was to marry and to whom I owe the happiest days of my life.’

Ransome had been looking for the official censor to stamp his despatch: Evgenia offered to help him find the right person. She also said she would try to find them both some food in the censor’s office. ‘Come along,’ she said, ‘perhaps he has some potatoes. Potatoes are the only thing we want. Come along.’

They eventually found both the censor and his potatoes: the latter were in the process of burning on an overheated primus stove. Evgenia rescued them from the pot and shared them out.

Ransome, trapped in his unhappy marriage with Ivy, was smitten by Evgenia. She was no beauty; she was tall, ungainly and big-boned. ‘She must have been two or three inches above six feet in her stockings,’ wrote George Hill, who preferred his women to be petite, young and sexually alluring. Yet even Hill eventually accepted that feminine charm was not all about surface beauty.

‘At first glance, one was apt to dismiss her as a very fine-looking specimen of Russian peasant womanhood, but closer acquaintance revealed in her depths of unguessed qualities.’

The Americans in Petrograd called her ‘The Big Girl’ because, explained one, ‘she
was
a big girl’. She played an important role in the months that followed the revolution for she controlled the visitors who wished to get Trotsky’s ear. She was far more than a secretary; she could provide (or deny) access to all of the Bolshevik leaders.

‘She was methodical and intellectual,’ wrote Hill, ‘a hard worker with an enormous sense of humour. She saw things quickly and could analyse political situations with the speed and precision with which an experienced bridge player analyses a hand of cards.’

She was ruthlessly efficient in her work. ‘I do not believe she ever turned away from Trotsky anyone who was of the slightest consequence, and yet it was no easy matter to get past that maiden unless one had that something.’

Ransome took the new Bolshevik leadership very seriously and his reports on their activities – often sympathetic – caused him increasing difficulties with officials in London. His relationship with Evgenia did not help matters. In the British Embassy in Petrograd, there were whispered rumours that far from serving the British government, he was actually working as a double agent.

Ransome did little to discourage these rumours for they only served to boost his credentials amongst the leading Bolsheviks. Besides, he shared some of the views of the revolutionary leaders and genuinely hoped that Lenin and Trotsky would drag Russia into a brighter future.

Mansfield Cumming was quick to realise that the change of regime in Russia required a whole new approach to espionage. His team of agents were no longer working in a friendly country. The new government was overtly hostile and it was extremely likely to expel all those who had previously been working for the Russian bureau. If Cumming were to retain an intelligence-gathering team inside the country, it would have to change its modus operandi.

A Secret Service booklet produced in the aftermath of the revolution tackled the difficulties of agents having to work undercover in a hostile land. Entitled ‘Notes on Instruction and Recruiting of Agents’, it covered many aspects of spy-craft, from writing in code to the adoption of disguises.

This latter point was to prove of great importance to Cumming’s agents. The ‘Notes’ warned that the adoption of a wholly new persona carried considerable dangers and had to be completely believable if it was not to be unmasked. The guise of commercial traveller was recommended, but the ‘Notes’ warned that this was ‘a hopeless business unless the agent really knows & understands the article he is supposed to sell and also really transacts business in such article.’

The ‘Notes’ also provided information on infiltrating enemy organisations, notably their secret services. This, it confes-sed, was ‘one of the most fascinating branches of S[ecret] S[ervice] work.’ It said that ‘clever agents’ could cause immense damage and ‘lead to the complete disorganisation of the service against which they are working.’

The most important instruction was for agents not to compromise their fellow spies in the event of them being captured. ‘If you do get caught, keep your mouth shut and don’t give anybody away.’

The remnants of Samuel Hoare’s team had been allowed to remain in Petrograd in the weeks that followed the Bolshevik revolution, although they were no longer able to work at the Russian War Office. Cumming now took the bold decision to place his Russian headquarters outside the country. It would henceforth be based in Stockholm, at arm’s length from Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The bureau was to be run by an ex-army officer named Major John Scale, one of the men implicated in the murder of Rasputin.

‘Tall, handsome, well-read, intelligent,’ wrote one who knew him, ‘with a debonair manner which endeared him to everyone.’ Major Scale was to prove an efficient operator in the months ahead.

He was given ostensible employment as British attaché to Sweden, but this was merely a cover for his work as the Stockholm bureau chief. He was tasked with providing Cumming’s agents inside Russia with money, information and logistical support.

Cumming also needed a link man in Moscow, someone who could simultaneously be in contact with both John Scale and the agents working undercover inside the country. This job was to be performed by Ernest Boyce, a silver-haired lieutenant with considerable experience in military sabotage.

The idea of creating bureaux outside the frontiers of Russia was a good one. It was to work so well, indeed, that the system was soon expanded with offices in Helsingfors (today’s Helsinki), Riga and Libau (in Latvia), Kaunas (in Lithuania) and Reval (in Estonia).

There were also smaller offices at various frontier posts on Russia’s borders with the Scandinavian countries. The men who worked at these posts had intimate knowledge of the local area and were able to help Cumming’s agents smuggle themselves in and out of Russia.

They also supplied his men with the necessary forged papers and stamps, thereby increasing their chances of reaching Petrograd or Moscow without risk of arrest.

At the same time as Cumming was restructuring his Russian operations, Lenin was creating his own Bolshevik intelligence service.

The Cheka (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) was established within six weeks of the Bolsheviks seizing power. From the outset, it was viewed as a means of ruthlessly crushing dissent, whether it came from Russian citizens or from the agents of foreign powers.

Cheka agents would soon become the deadly rivals of Cumming’s men in Russia and would devote much of their time to tracking them down and unmasking them. With all the resources of the state at their disposal, they were to prove a formidable foe.

‘It is war now – face to face, a fight to the finish,’ said Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka. He was known to his comrades as Iron Felix, with good reason. Lenin’s chief henchman was ruthless and devoid of pity: indeed, he seemed to be devoid of any human emotion whatsoever.

‘A man of correct manners and quiet speech,’ wrote Lockhart, ‘but without a ray of humour in his character.’ He had a sallow face with a thick black moustache and his jet hair was worn
en brosse
.

‘The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes. Deeply sunk, they blazed with a steady fire of fanaticism. They never twitched. His eyelids seemed paralysed.’

His chilling appearance struck fear into all who met him. In both manner and temperament he could not have been more different from the avuncular Mansfield Cumming.

Dzerzhinsky’s name would later become a byword for terror and he would leave the streets of Russia awash with blood. Yet his early life betrayed no inkling of what was to come. He was neither Russian and nor was he a member of Lenin’s much vaunted proletariat. Rather, he was the son of a Polish nobleman and was brought up in a devout Catholic household.

Dzerzhinsky loved the fervour of the faith and his early dream was to become a Catholic priest. When he eventually came to revolt against his background, he did so with equal fervour. By the time the Bolsheviks came to power, he had spent more than a decade in Siberian prisons. Now, he saw the chance of having his revenge. He would become the Bolshevik’s most assiduous executioner.

The charter of the new Cheka made it clear that it would strike against any enemy of Bolshevism, even if that enemy came from abroad. Its goal was ‘to suppress and liquidate all attempts and acts of counter-revolution and sabotage throughout Russia, from whatever quarter.’

The Cheka was to function as secret service with a military wing attached; it would rapidly expand as the enemies of Bolshevism became more numerous. In the first few weeks of its existence, it had just a handful of staff and its entire records fitted into Dzerzhinsky’s briefcase. By mid January 1918, the staff had already topped one hundred and its powers had been extended to include the right to conduct the summary trial and execution of suspected counter-revolutionaries.

It was also given a contingent of Red Guards to undertake the liquidation of enemies. By the time the Cheka’s headquarters moved to Moscow, which was made the new Bolshevik capital in March 1918, staffing levels had risen to 600.

On the night of 11 April, the Cheka gave a dramatic display of its ruthlessness. Dzerzhinsky had long been wanting to strike against the anarchist activists in the city: they had seized a number of key Moscow buildings and were terrorising the streets. After a careful monitoring of their twenty-six strongholds, Dzerzhinsky sent in his agents, reinforced with armed guards. They were sanctioned to use all necessary force and proved themselves to be extremely efficient. By the time the operation came to an end, forty anarchists were dead and five hundred more were under arrest.

Dzerzhinsky allowed Lockhart to see the properties he had captured from the anarchists, perhaps to serve as a warning that he meant business. ‘The filth was indescribable,’ wrote Lockhart as he toured their former strongholds. ‘Wine stains and human excrement blotched the Aubusson carpets . . . the dead still lay where they had fallen.’

In one house, the Cheka had interrupted an orgy. ‘The long table which had supported the feast had been overturned and broken plates, glasses, champagne bottles, made unsavoury islands in a pool of blood and spilt wine.’

A woman lay on the floor, a single bullet hole in her neck. ‘
Prostitutka
,’ said Dzerzhinsky’s assistant, who was acting as Lockhart’s guide. ‘Perhaps it is for the best.’

Lockhart was appalled by the violence. ‘It was an unforgettable scene,’ he wrote. ‘The Bolsheviks had taken their first step towards the establishment of discipline.’

The Cheka would not find all their targets so easy to kill. For at the same time as Dzerzhinsky was tightening his grip on Moscow, Cumming was interviewing new agents to send into Russia. Among them was one who was to become a legend in the world of espionage.

His name was Sidney Reilly, but he would be known to both friend and foe as Reilly, Ace of Spies.

PART TWO

MASTERS OF DISGUISE