Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (27 page)

Reilly and Hill kept themselves out of danger, but they soon came to the conclusion that there was little to be gained by remaining in Moscow. Their network was in tatters and six or seven of Hill’s couriers had recently been caught and executed by the Cheka. It was only a matter of time before they themselves would be ensnared.

‘Never in my life had I been so talked about,’ recalled Reilly of this difficult time. ‘My name was in everybody’s mouth. My description was posted up all over Moscow.’

According to Hill, Reilly was sharing lodgings with a broken-down prostitute who ‘was in the last stages of the disease which so often curses members of her profession.’ He added that Reilly had always been ‘the most fastidious of men, and while being caught by the Bolsheviks had little terror for him, he could hardly bring himself to spend the night on the couch in her room.’

The net steadily closed in on both men as more and more of their accomplices were arrested. ‘I was quite without cover,’ wrote Reilly. ‘I dared reveal myself to no one.’ He felt as if there were eyes in every wall.

The endgame came soon enough. Reilly was woken in the early hours of the morning by the noise of a car outside his lodgings. It was the clearest possible signal that the Cheka had arrived, since they were the only people in Moscow with access to vehicles.

‘Our house was being raided,’ wrote Reilly. ‘Nearer and nearer came the secret police. Doors were flung open. Muffled screams could be heard. The tramp of feet sounded in the next room. It was now or never.’

With supreme calmness, Reilly put on his overcoat and slipped out of his apartment unseen by the Cheka. At the gate a lone Red Guard was smoking a cigarette. ‘I strolled slowly over towards him, pulling out a cigarette of my own. “Give me a fire, comrade,” ’ said Reilly.

He knew there was no sense in remaining in Moscow. He had already consulted with George Hill and the two of them agreed that he should assume Hill’s alias (that of the Baltic merchant George Bergmann) and head to Petrograd on the fake Bergmann passport.

This is what Reilly now did. The journey, though dangerous, went entirely to plan. Reilly made it to Petrograd and thence to Kronstadt. From here, he took a motor launch to Reval and checked himself into the luxurious Hotel Petrograd. ‘After ten days I departed secretly on the launch for Helsingfors and from there to Stockholm and London.’ He finally arrived back in England in the second week of November.

Lockhart had remained in prison during this time. He grew increasingly hopeful that he would be released, especially now that the British Government had arrested Maxim Litvinov. But he had no idea how long the process might take.

On 22 September, to Lockhart’s surprise and joy, Yakov Peters arrived at his cell with Moura in tow. ‘It was his birthday,’ wrote Lockhart of Peters, ‘and, as he preferred giving presents to receiving them, he had brought Moura as his birthday treat.’

He did not allow Moura to speak privately with Lockhart lest she pass any messages to him. But he proved less attentive when it came to watching her as she paced up and down Lockhart’s room. Unseen, she managed to slip a note into his copy of Thomas Carlyle’s
French Revolution
.

Lockhart had to wait until his guests had left before pulling out the note and reading it. ‘Say nothing,’ it read. ‘All will be well.’

This proved to be correct. On 2 October, Lockhart was told that he was being released. Soon afterwards, he was taken under escort to his apartment. He learned that all the other English nationals were also due to be set free in order that they might be expelled from the country aboard a special train bound for Finland.

There was to be a surprise addition to the party of people aboard this train. George Hill had decided to leave Russia and he intended to do so with customary panache. He had already given his Bergmann passport to Reilly. Now, he decided to re-emerge as his real identity: he was to step back into the world as George Hill, accredited military attaché of the British government who had not been seen in public for some months.

‘The first thing I did therefore was to get rid of my hateful beard,’ he wrote. ‘Then I went to the best Moscow tailor where I picked up one of the few remaining pieces of English cloth and had a new suit made. I bought boots, a hat and a pair of white spats and reappeared dressed again as an Englishman.’

Consul Wardrop refused to put Hill’s name on the official list of Englishmen leaving the country for fear of putting everyone’s lives at risk. After all, there was every chance that the Cheka would investigate Hill’s movements over the previous months and realise that he had been living under an alias. But Lockhart overrode Wardrop’s decision, as he had done so often in the past. He knew that Hill was certain to be caught and executed if he remained behind.

All that was now left for Lockhart to do was to say his farewells to his beloved Moura, who was to remain behind in Russia. Their final scene together took place at the train station.

‘In the cool, starlit night, Moura and I discussed trivialities. We talked of everything except ourselves. And then I made her go home . . . I watched her go until she had disappeared into the night. Then I turned into my dimly lit carriage to wait and to be alone with my thoughts.’

After a painfully slow three-day journey, Lockhart and his fellow nationals reached the Russo-Finnish border. There was a last-minute hitch over the British Government’s release of Litvinov, but they were finally allowed to cross the frontier and bid their farewells to Bolshevik Russia.

Lockhart would never return. Eight weeks later, at a spectacular show trial, he and Reilly were tried and sentenced to death in absentia.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A DEADLY GAME

Mansfield Cumming’s spy network had fallen apart at the seams. The recklessness of Sidney Reilly, coupled with the treachery of René Marchand, had led to the exposure and expulsion of almost all his agents.

Both Reilly and George Hill were back in England. So, too, was Ernest Boyce, having suffered the indignity of being incarcerated in the fortress of Peter and Paul in Petrograd. The only good news was that his role as Cumming’s chief spymaster inside Russia had not been unmasked.

John Scale, head of the Stockholm bureau, was also in England. His return, at least, was a voluntary one. There were many pressing issues that needed to be resolved before attempting to smuggle spies back into Russia.

Cumming might have been forgiven for despairing at the situation in which he now found himself. Yet he was able to find lines of comfort in the disastrous situation that had unfolded inside Russia. The past two years had shown him and his men a dangerous new world. Agents like Hill, Reilly and Rayner had proved that professional spies, with resources and backup, could operate with impunity inside an enemy country.

The killing of Rasputin was one of the successes. So was the gathering of military intelligence, which had enabled Cumming to form an accurate assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Red Army. And although Reilly’s plot had been foolhardy, it had come remarkably close to succeeding.

Other successes were less tangible but no less real. Mansfield Cumming’s agents had managed to supply London with an accurate profile of a wholly new regime that was led by men whose ultimate goal was to export their revolution across the globe. Reilly and Hill had proved themselves particularly adept at working undercover and acquiring highly classified information.

Arthur Ransome had meanwhile chosen a different approach, forging close (and often amicable) relationships with Russia’s revolutionary leaders.

Cumming’s team had proved something else that was to be of great importance in the future. They had been adept at linking up with anti-Bolshevik activists who, under the pretence of working for the regime, were in fact doing everything possible to undermine it. This use of fifth-column insiders was a new tactic and it was to prove of the greatest value in the years to come.

Although Cumming’s Russian network had been crippled by the mass arrests, it had not been entirely destroyed. His agents had long made use of the British expatriate community of Petrograd; men and women who spoke fluent Russian and could pass themselves off as native Russians. Among these unofficial operatives was John Merrett, the British-born owner of a Petrograd engineering firm.

Merrett was no stranger to the world of deception. He had spent much of the previous year collecting secret information for Captain Cromie and had relished the dangers of espionage.

After Cromie was killed, Merrett ‘discontinued his visits [to the embassy] in order to avoid detection,’ wrote acting consul Arthur Woodhouse, ‘having altered his appearance by growing a beard and wearing non-descript clothes.’

On one occasion, Woodhouse had bumped into him in the street and mistaken him for a stranger. ‘I met him accidentally and failed to recognise him. I knew he was employed in some risky enterprises, but refrained from enquiring his object . . . rumours of a modern Scarlet Pimpernel had reached us, but only subsequently were we able to confirm this.’

Woodhouse was not the only person to be fooled by Merrett’s disguise. ‘What was my surprise on entering Mr Merrett’s house to see my host transformed into a bearded, shabbily dressed Russian in top boots, who contrasted very much with the well dressed Englishman of two years ago.’ So wrote one member of the expatriate community.

Merrett was a born adventurer who welcomed situations of grave danger. Now, as a result of discussions between Mansfield Cumming and John Scale, he was to be assigned a more important role. He was charged with keeping the organisational structure of the courier system operating until such time as new agents could be infiltrated into Russia.

He was also to lead an audacious plan to smuggle out of Russia all the remaining British nationals living in the country. These were primarily businessmen and bankers who had declined to leave with the diplomats and whose companies had now been confiscated by the Bolsheviks. There were rumours that they were to be held hostage by the regime.

One of these businessmen asked Merrett if he was not worried about being caught by the Cheka, given that it would almost certainly lead to his execution. Merrett shrugged off the risk. ‘He laughingly replied that while the Bolsheviks were busy arresting him at the Moika, he was to be found in the country, and when they were after him in the country, he was to be found somewhere else.’

He was in fact arrested by Red Guards on at least one occasion, but managed to slip from their clutches. ‘Fortunately, I succeeded in escaping on my way to prison and was thereafter only able to avoid re-arrest by adopting disguises and sleeping in ever-changing and out of the way quarters,’ he wrote.

Amid all this evasion, Merrett started smuggling British nationals out of the country, right under the eyes of the Cheka. He would assemble little groups of them at a safe house in Petrograd and then place them in the hands of trusted couriers. These couriers, the surviving remnants of George Hill’s network, would lead them over the border into Finland.

One of the escaping businessmen asked Merrett what he should do if anyone stood in his way. Merrett’s response was characteristically blunt: ‘Knife him,’ he said.

Merrett eventually helped 247 British nationals to flee the country. His work became increasingly dangerous, for Cheka officers were continually on his trail. It was clear that he could not operate indefinitely in Russia without the backup of a trained operative.

The collapse of Mansfield Cumming’s Russian operations was soon to be followed by a further blow. Armistice was declared in November 1918, and in the weeks that followed, senior figures in Whitehall argued that there was no longer any need for an autonomous secret service.