Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (25 page)

Nathalie overheard a soldier saying that five of them, including Boyce, were going to be shot. But the executions were inexplicably annuled before they could be carried out. At 11 a.m. on 1 September, all of the prisoners were informed that they were free to go. Bewildered as to why they were being released, but not daring to ask any questions, they gratefully made their way into the street.

Sidney Reilly’s arrival at the embassy had coincided with the end of the shoot-out and he was unaware of what had taken place. As he stood in Vlademirovsky Prospect he could only guess at what had happened.

He reached inside his pocket and felt for the forged Cheka papers of Sigmund Relinsky, the person he was pretending to be. Then, with characteristic brazenness, he approached one of the Cheka agents who was standing guard at the embassy gates. After showing his card, he asked for information. He was told that the Cheka ‘were endeavouring to find one Sidney Reilly and had actually raided the British Embassy in the hope that he would be there.’

Most men would have fled the country on hearing this news. But not Reilly. Instead of crossing the border into nearby Finland or Sweden, he decided to return to Moscow in order to place himself in the eye of the storm.

Tumultuous events were under way in the Bolshevik capital and he wanted to be there in order to influence their outcome.

Mansfield Cumming knew nothing of what had taken place in Petrograd. He was as yet unaware of the temporary arrest of Ernest Boyce and nor did he know that his Russian operations were hanging by a thread. It was to be some days before he learned that all of his senior agents had been compromised by Reilly’s attempted coup d’état.

In Moscow, there was an unnatural calm for almost twenty-four hours. As in Petrograd, all of the English prisoners had been released without explanation. For the time being, Lockhart was still a free man. But on 2 September, the Bolshevik newspapers splashed their front pages with news of a most dramatic nature. The government had uncovered an Anglo-French conspiracy that involved undercover agents and diplomats: its goal was nothing short of the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime. Reilly and a number of others were named as organisers of the conspiracy.

There was worse to come. A second bulletin revealed a number of key details about the plot. ‘Ten million roubles assigned for this purpose,’ it read. ‘Lockhart entered into personal contact with the commander of a large Lettish unit . . . should the plot succeed, Lockhart promised in the name of the Allies immediate restoration of a free Latvia.’

Each new bulletin contained new and more damning revelations. ‘Anglo-French capitalists, through hired assassins, organised terrorist attempts on representatives of the Soviet.’ The plotters now stood accused of the murder of Uritsky and the attempted assassination of Lenin.

Most alarming, for Lockhart at least, was the fact that he was being named as the organiser of the plot. The Bolshevik-controlled newspaper,
Pravda
, labelled him ‘a murderer and conspirator against the Russian Soviet government’. They then gave a detailed description of his alleged crimes.

‘A fine diplomatic representative organising murder and rebellion on the territory of the country where he is representative. This bandit in dinner jacket and gloves tries to hide like a cat at large, under the shelter of international law and ethics. No, Mr Lockhart, this will not save you. The workmen and the poorer peasants of Russia are not idiots enough to defend murderers, robbers and highwaymen.’

Lockhart remained in his post, even though the accusations against him grew ever more damning. He spent his daytime hours studying the newspaper stories being published about him.

‘We read the full tale of our iniquities in the Bolshevik Press,’ he later wrote, ‘which excelled itself in a fantastic account of a so-called “Lockhart plot”.’ He said that the entire story ‘read like a fairy tale’, but he must already have guessed that the ending would not be a happy one.

Lockhart’s situation was rendered more complicated by the fact that his love affair with Moura was public knowledge. He had flaunted her at dinners, balls and gypsy dances in the countryside. When news of the so-called Lockhart plot reached the Cheka, the first thing they did was arrest Moura.

Lockhart was distraught at the thought that he had been the cause of her incarceration. On 4 September, after another day of sensational stories in the press, he could bear it no longer. He decided to appeal to the Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Lev Karakhan, and beg for Moura’s release.

Karakhan listened patiently to Lockhart’s pleas, as well as to his vigorous denials of the stories printed in the Bolshevik press. ‘Now you know what we have to put up with from your newspapers,’ he said.

He made it abundantly clear that he would not be able to secure Moura’s freedom, whereupon Lockhart decided to take his complaint to Yakov Peters, Deputy Chairman of the Cheka. In doing so, he was placing himself in the lion’s den: it was Peters who had interrogated him just four days earlier.

Lockhart strode boldly up to the front entrance of the Loubianka and knocked at the door. When the guards asked the reason for his visit, he demanded an immediate meeting with Peters. This caused ‘some excitement and much whispering among the guards in the entrance hall.’

Peters allowed himself a private chuckle when he learned that Lockhart had come to see him and immediately invited him to step into his office. ‘I tackled him at once about Moura,’ wrote Lockhart. ‘I told him that the conspiracy story was a fake and that he knew it. Even if there were a grain of truth in it, Moura knew nothing about it.’

Peters listened with great patience and promised to do whatever he could. He then stared Lockhart in the eye and delivered his bombshell. ‘ “You have saved me some trouble,” he said. “My men have been looking for you for the last hour. I have a warrant for your arrest. Your French and English colleagues are already under lock and key.” ’

Peters called for his guards and Lockhart was led away to the cells. It was not long before he learned that he stood accused of assassination, attempted murder and planning a coup d’état. All three crimes carried the death sentence.

The Cheka had been extremely busy in the days that preceded Lockhart’s arrest. Within hours of the attempt on Lenin’s life, their operatives instigated mass arrests right across the capital.

Among those arrested was Elizaveta Otten, with whom Reilly had only recently started a love affair. She also happened to be one of his chief couriers. News of her arrest alarmed Reilly, for she was privy to countless secrets.

The Cheka officers immediately began interrogating her, bombarding her with questions. She played innocent, professing ignorance as to Reilly’s real identity. When the officers told her that her lover was an English spy, and a most dangerous one at that, she feigned indignation and shock.

In a petition she later wrote to the Red Cross Committee for the Aid of Political Prisoners, she said that she had been horrified to discover that Reilly was not who he claimed to be.

‘I discovered that Reilly had been foully deceiving me for his own political purposes,’ she wrote, ‘[and] taking advantage of my exclusively good attitude to him.’

Given that she had been working as his chief courier, her words must be read with a large dose of salt.

The Cheka officers were still interrogating Elizaveta when young Vi, one of George Hill’s agents, happened to arrive at her apartment. ‘The door was opened and Vi found herself covered with the revolver of a Cheka agent.’ So wrote Hill, who learned of the incident later that day.

Despite her youth, Vi remained remarkably cool under pressure. She pretended not to know Elizaveta and gained herself time to think by bursting into floods of tears. She told the officers ‘that she had simply brought a blouse for the lady which she had made herself.’

She was nevertheless interrogated and asked scores of questions as to whom she knew and why she knew them. ‘The Chekists failed to break down her story, though one of them, holding a revolver to her head, said she was lying.’

Unable to uncover anything incriminating, the officers eventually told her that she was free to go.

It was as she turned to leave that disaster struck. Sidney Reilly’s most important agent, Maria Friede, now arrived unexpectedly at the flat. It was most unfortunate that her visit coincided with the Cheka raid. She, after all, had supplied Reilly with a large number of military secrets obtained from her brother, Colonel Friede. Indeed, she had come to the apartment in order to drop off yet another batch of compromising documents.

‘On seeing the Chekists, she completely lost her head and begun to scream,’ recounted Hill. ‘The officials seized her and after a moment’s search had the documents in their possession.’

They were so pleased with what they had found that they failed to notice Vi slip quietly out of the front door and hurry off down the street. She dived into a shop, hoping that she had not been seen or followed. Then, after waiting a while, she took herself to one of Moscow’s public baths and spent two hours in the steam room. Only then did she consider it safe to return to the secret address that George Hill was still using as his headquarters.

Another of Reilly’s agents, Dagmara Karozus, had also been visiting Elizaveta’s flat at the time of the raid. She, too, managed to get away. The Cheka officers repeatedly interrogated her but failed to find anything incriminating. She was told that she was free to go and she immediately made her way to a safe house on the other side of town. It was an extremely lucky escape.

Maria Friede was not so fortunate. She was terrified by the Cheka agents and broke down in tears. She confessed that her brother had been working for Reilly ever since his arrival in Russia. This news was swiftly transmitted to the Cheka’s headquarters and the colonel was arrested shortly afterwards. He was then put through an intense and gruelling interrogation.

Friede knew the game was up. According to the KGB defector, Vladimir Orlov, he ‘admitted that he regularly supplied Sidney Reilly with data regarding the strength and movements of Red Army units.’

He also revealed that he had worked for the American Secret Service, supplying their chief agent, Xenophon Kalamatiano, with false identity papers. He almost certainly hoped that his confession would entitle him to clemency. It did not. He was summarily executed by firing squad.

Each new search undertaken by the Cheka turned up ever more damning revelations. They were soon on the trail of Colonel de Vertemont, the French spy, and raided his apartment without warning. The colonel was caught red-handed with 18 pounds of pyroxylin, detonation capsules, a secret spy code and 28,000 roubles in cash.