Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (24 page)

This was exactly what was most feared by the government of British India. A Soviet-backed armed rebellion in the volatile region of the Hindu Kush was indeed a serious threat. Unrest would rapidly spread to other areas and the meagre forces of British India would be unable to cope.

Bailey’s most urgent task was to find out how, and where, any rebellion would occur. But this was far from easy. He was daily expecting to be arrested and accused of some trumped-up charge, especially in the days and weeks after the attempt on Lenin’s life. Bailey felt as if he was a pawn in a very dangerous game; a game for which he no longer knew the rules.

All he could do was prepare himself for the inevitable search of his lodgings. ‘I destroyed certain papers [and] put my private correspondence into a safe place, leaving a few letters from tradesmen to be found.’

He also concealed an Austrian army uniform that he had only recently acquired: it was to form a part of his disguise if and when he went underground.

Bailey had learned the importance of staying one step ahead of the game. He now planned an elaborate ruse that would help him out of difficulty if ever he came to be arrested by the Cheka. He wrote a letter addressed to the British Government in which he described a huge anti-Bolshevik uprising that he knew was being planned in the mountains to the east of Tashkent.

He revealed that the uprising was intended to destabilise Turkestan’s revolutionary government and added that it was being heavily financed by Germany. ‘This sentence in my letter was to make all the difference to me,’ he confessed when he later wrote about the incident, ‘and probably saved my life.’

The reason why the sentence was so important only became apparent when Bailey was indeed arrested by the Cheka. Accused of involvement in the uprising, he feigned indignation and warned that the British Government would be furious when news of his arrest reached the House of Commons.

It was a throwaway line but a clever one. Many of? Tashkent’s commissars were under the impression that Britain was locked in its own revolutionary struggle between the House of Commons and House of Lords. The last thing they wanted to do was offend the House of Commons, the very body they hoped would soon recognise the Bolshevik Government.

‘I had learnt that in the eyes of the type of man in the employ of the Bolsheviks, the House of Commons was an assembly of riff-raff who were almost Bolsheviks themselves.’

Bailey informed his captors that he had in his possession a sealed letter that he had written to the House of Commons. He said that it contained important information about German support for the anti-Bolshevik uprising. But he refused to open the document on account of the many secret revelations within.

‘I certainly cannot prevent you from breaking the seal,’ he said, ‘but I would not care to be the man who had done it when the news reaches the House of Commons and they protest to Moscow.’

After an animated discussion, Bailey eventually agreed to open the envelope on the condition that he would be set free if the promised information about Germany was contained within. His captors agreed to this and watched intently as Bailey prised off the impressive lump of red sealing wax. ‘I rather feared I had overdone the seal,’ he later wrote.

He read the relevant sentences about German backing for the anti-Bolshevik uprising and then gave his captors time to consider the information. They were astonished by the contents and not a little perplexed. Unaware that Bailey had written the letter with the express purpose of tricking them, they confessed their shock at Germany’s involvement in the anti-Bolshevik movement. After discussing the contents of Bailey’s letter among themselves, they withdrew all their accusations. ‘
Voi svobodni!
’ they shouted. ‘You are free.’

Bailey had had a lucky escape. The incident had been an unpleasant one and he had come within a whisker of being imprisoned. But he remained under suspicion and now had six spies appointed to monitor his every move.

His position was rendered more precarious by the fact that the rule of law in Tashkent had almost completely broken down. ‘Even if I were not executed by the government,’ wrote Bailey, ‘there was always the possibility of soldiers (drunk or sober) taking the matter into their own hands.’

He had long been toying with the idea of going underground. Now, he felt the moment was fast approaching. He was lunching with Roger Tredwell when he was handed a secret message informing him that he was to be arrested once again, along with a number of suspected agitators. The message ended with the sentence: ‘For Bailey, the position is especially dangerous and shooting is not out of the question.’

‘This was not a nice dish to be served up at lunch,’ wrote Bailey.

He had already made preparations for safe accommodation in the event of having to disappear. Now, he burned all his private papers and concealed his field glasses, telescope and camera. He then prepared his new clothes, an Austrian jacket and kepi, before taking them to a house that he knew to be safe. It was a terraced building with a long row of adjoining gardens at the back.

‘My plan was to enter the house in the usual unsuspicious way, to change with great rapidity, to run through the gardens behind, and to come out into the street further down in such a short time that, even if the six spies were sufficiently wide awake, they could not suspect that an Austrian walking out of a house some way down the street was the man they were watching, whom they had just seen walk into another house, dressed entirely differently.’

The success of his plan was to be entirely dependent on speed. As he entered the first property, he slammed the door behind him, aware that there was not a moment to be lost. ‘I tore off my overcoat, pulled on the Austrian tunic and kepi . . . wrapped my overcoat round the civilian hat . . . [and] dashed out into the garden.’ Less than a minute later, he emerged from a house at the far end of the terrace.

In the time that he took to change his costume, Frederick Bailey had ceased to exist. He now had a completely new identity and would henceforth answer to the name of Andre Kekeshi, an Austrian prisoner of war and a cook by profession.

‘I now had to adopt in every way I could think of the habits and manners of an Austrian prisoner,’ wrote Bailey. He remembered the advice that Richard Hanney had been given in
The Thirty-Nine Steps
: to melt into the background and become nothing more than a face in the crowd.

Yet he found it a disquieting experience to live as an underground fugitive. ‘On my disappearance, the town was searched for me. Notices were placarded in the streets of the town and in every country village and railway station, not only offering a reward for my arrest . . . but also threatening with death and confiscation of property . . . anyone who helped or harboured me in any way.’

Bailey knew that he was now on his own. Like Sidney Reilly and George Hill, he would henceforth be entirely reliant on his own wits.

CHAPTER TEN

THE PLOT THICKENS

Sidney Reilly was still in Petrograd when events turned sour. His plan to overthrow the Bolshevik Government had spun wildly out of control and he knew he would need his wits about him if he was to keep one step ahead of the Cheka.

He first realised that something was seriously awry when Captain Cromie, naval attaché at the British Embassy, failed to turn up to a secret rendezvous on the afternoon of 31 August. ‘Not like Cromie to be unpunctual,’ observed Reilly.

After waiting for another fifteen minutes at the pre-agreed location, he decided to make his way towards the embassy. It was ‘a dangerous move’ – for he risked being searched – ‘but I had brought it off successfully before.’

He turned into Vlademirovsky Prospect, only to be confronted by a group of men and women running towards him in panic. ‘They dived into doorways, into side-streets everywhere.’

Reilly was perplexed as to what was happening. A military car sped past, filled with Red Army soldiers. It was heading in the opposite direction to the crowd, racing towards the embassy. Reilly quickened his pace as he reached the end of Vlademirovsky Prospect. As he turned the corner, he immediately realised that something was seriously wrong.

‘The Embassy door had been battered off its hinges. The Embassy flag had been torn down. The Embassy had been carried by storm.’

On the pavement outside there were several bloodstained corpses. Reilly glanced at them and noticed that they were not English. They were Russians, Bolsheviks, who he presumed to have been killed while storming the building.

It was to be some hours before Reilly discovered the grim details of what had taken place. Others had been rather closer to the action. Nathalie Bucknell, wife of one of the few remaining staff at the embassy, was in the passport office on the ground floor when she heard the crack of gunshots coming from upstairs. It was exactly 4.50 p.m. She poked her head into the entrance hall, only to hear more intense shooting and ‘terrible screams’. She was as frightened as she was puzzled; she had not heard any soldiers entering the building.

The embassy porter crept into the hall and peered nervously up the stairwell. He motioned for her to take cover. She did so just in time. As she crouched in the small lobby adjoining the hall, a group of men could be heard careering down the grandiose staircase. At its head was Captain Cromie, wildly firing his revolver. Behind him, and in hot pursuit, were Red Guards. They too were firing their guns.

Nathalie sank to her knees in fear. There was a constant crackle of gunfire as the shoot-out intensified and bullets began to ricochet off the marble walls and columns. She peeked through the keyhole just as one of the bullets hit its target. ‘Captain Cromie fell backwards on the last step.’ He was seriously wounded and clearly in need of urgent medical attention.

The Red Guards dashed into the street, seemingly confused by the lack of other gunmen. As they did so, a second group of soldiers came clattering down the stairs, equally dazed by the shoot-out. One of them paused for a moment to kick Cromie’s half-conscious body.

Nathalie could hear the sound of yet more soldiers on the first floor of the building; they were bawling to the embassy staff who had hid themselves away in fear of their lives. ‘Come out of the room, come out of the room, or we will open machine-gun fire on you.’

Nathalie was joined by her friend Miss Blumberg, who had taken refuge in one of the downstairs rooms. Together, the two women gingerly stepped into the hall in order to see what they could do for Captain Cromie. He was smeared with blood. ‘Bending over him, [we] saw his eyelids and lips move very faintly.’

As Miss Blumberg attempted to speak to him, a group of Red Guards reappeared and started shouting insults. ‘Pointing their revolvers at her, [they] called very rudely: “Come upstairs immediately or we will fire at you.” ’

The two women did not dare to argue; they were led up to the first floor with revolvers poking into their bodies. Nathalie saw graphic evidence of the shoot-out that had taken place. On the floor, lying in a pool of rapidly congealing blood, was the corpse of a Red Guard.

The two ladies were jostled into the Chancery room where Ernest Boyce, head of Mansfield Cumming’s operations inside Russia, was being held at gunpoint. ‘At that moment, the Red Commissary entered and told everyone that they must keep quiet with their hands up and that the Consulate was taken by the Red Guards.’

Miss Blumberg bravely asked if she could give the dying Cromie a glass of water. Her request was brusquely denied by the soldiers. The chaplain was treated with equal contempt when he asked to attend to the semi-conscious English captain.

The rest of the British staff were now brought into the Chancery and told that they were being held as prisoners. Most were still reeling from what had taken place. They knew of the assassination of Uritsky and of the attempt on Lenin’s life, but only Ernest Boyce was aware of Reilly’s planned coup and even he did not know that it had been exposed by the Cheka.

‘The room was now full of soldiers and sailors who were most brutal in their behaviour,’ wrote Nathalie. The porter was led through each room with a revolver pressed to his head. The guards said they would shoot him if he did not unlock every door and cupboard.

The hostages were held for several hours while the embassy was stripped of everything of value, including all its archives and secret documents. The staff were then marched down the stairs, passing the now-dead Captain Cromie, and taken to a nearby building. For the next fifteen hours, they were held prisoner and interrogated, one by one.