Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (31 page)

Superior weaponry and the judicious use of Handley Page bombers eventually won the day. The amir’s forces were driven back over the frontier. But the invasion rang warning bells in Simla and led British and Indian intelligence agents to redouble their efforts to intercept the telegraphic transmissions between Moscow and Tashkent.

These intercepted telegraphs shed much light on the alarming new threat that Bailey had witnessed in Tashkent. In the same month as the amir’s invasion, a top-secret message was intercepted while it was being sent from Moscow to Tashkent.

‘Islam is in imminent danger of extinction,’ it warned, ‘and all Mohammedan races who value their religion as well as their own existence as independent peoples should rise and join us in the struggle for world freedom.’

Such a rallying cry would have made for disturbing reading if it had come from the pen of an Islamic ruler. Far more alarming was the fact that it had been written by a Bolshevik commissar. It revealed Moscow’s intention of harnessing radical Islam to its own revolutionary movement.

Shortly afterwards, Tashkent’s government began issuing propaganda sheets calling upon Islamic warriors across Asia to join forces with the Bolsheviks. It urged the Muslim world to launch a violent crusade against British interests.

‘The British are bleeding to death 300 million Indians . . . they have raised to the ground the tomb of the prophet . . . they have converted the Golden Shrine [in Meshed] into a cow-shed.’

Bailey did his best to monitor the negotiations between Moscow, Tashkent and Afghanistan. One of his agents managed to intercept a number of letters between Lenin and the Afghan ruler. In these letters, Lenin proposed the opening of formal and friendly relations between the two countries. What’s more, he also offered military assistance to Afghanistan.

Shortly after this, Bailey witnessed a meeting in Tashkent between Afghan officials and Bolshevik commissars. ‘They are treated royally,’ he wrote, ‘bedecked with flowers and they were received with salutes; afterwards, there was a gala performance at the theatre.’

Bolshevik leaders in Moscow had awoken to the importance of Islam to the revolutionary struggle in Central Asia. Stalin himself addressed a Muslim-Communist congress that had met in Moscow just a few months earlier. He stressed the need to spread revolutionary doctrine into the mosques and madrasahs of the Islamic world. ‘No one can erect a bridge between the West and East as easily and quickly as you can,’ he told the delegates.

In the autumn of 1919, those same delegates met for a second time in Tashkent and consecrated their lives to insurrection. They sent a resolution to Moscow declaring that ‘Soviet Turkestan is becoming a revolutionary school for the whole East. Revolutionaries of neighbouring states are coming to us in droves . . . through them and with their help we are taking all measures for the spread of the Communist idea in the East.’

Frederick Bailey’s work was extremely dangerous and he lived in constant fear of being caught. ‘The danger of arrest was still as great as ever,’ he wrote. ‘It was impossible not to allow at least a few people to know who and where I was, but I kept the circle as small as possible.’

The Moscow authorities had established a ‘Special Department’ in Tashkent, whose task was to root out spies and traitors. ‘This department posted notices in the streets asking all work people to report at once on the evil doings of the bourgeoisie, speculators, sabotagists and hooligans,’ wrote Bailey. It felt like there were hidden eyes everywhere.

After a long period of no news from Bailey, British Indian officials contacted a Danish Red Cross representative named Captain Brun who was known to have met with him in Tashkent. The captain spoke of his concerns for Bailey’s safety.

‘With my knowledge of his pluck and energy, I hope that he has managed to escape and baffle the energetic pursuit of the government,’ he wrote. ‘But in case they should succeed in finding him, I am afraid his life would be in great danger.’

For some weeks Bailey had been living at the house of an anti-Bolshevik engineer named Andreyev. Now, this lodging became too dangerous. He was helped to find new accommodation by Miss Houston, the indefatigable Irish governess who had remained in Tashkent despite the turmoil.

‘Stand on the corner of Romanovsky and Voronsovsky at five-thirty,’ she told him, ‘and you will see a grey-haired lady coming along from our house direction with a bundle wrapped in a red tablecloth under her arm.’

This was to be his new landlady. ‘She will stop at the Town Hall for a minute and light a cigarette, then go on walking. You must follow; then, when she will go into her house, you pass and afterwards come back and go in yourself.’

Bailey changed his identity on several occasions in order to avoid discovery. But the house-to-house searches that were being daily conducted by the Cheka meant that even his new lodgings had become too dangerous.

‘For a few days, I carried on my old plan of sleeping a single night in different houses,’ he wrote. He travelled light, carrying only a small bundle of clothes, and sought shelter with the few contacts that he knew could be trusted. But this peripatetic life required a large network of safe lodgings. ‘Finding fresh quarters . . . was proving difficult,’ he wrote, ‘[and] for the rest of my time in Tashkent, I flitted from house to house.’

He knew that his days in the city were numbered and that it would soon be time to make his escape.

PART THREE

THE PROFESSIONAL SPY

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MASTER OF DISGUISE

The night was thick with frost and the moon hung low in the sky.

On the banks of the River Sestro, which marked the frontier between Finland and Russia, a lone figure could be seen crouching in the shadows. When he was sure that no one was watching, he slipped into a nearby boat and rowed in silence across the fast-flowing water.

As he jumped out on the opposite bank, he missed the shore and crashed through a sheet of ice, plunging into the freezing water. Dripping and shivering, he pulled himself onto the snowy banks. It was November 1918, and Paul Dukes – Mansfield Cumming’s newest recruit – had just crossed over into Soviet Russia.

Scarcely had he recovered his breath than he heard gunshots. A Red Army border patrol had been disturbed by the crack of breaking ice and the men began firing wildly into the night.

Dukes pushed himself deep into the snow and waited. ‘Finally, all was silent again,’ he later recalled. After spending the rest of the night in the bitter chill, he made his way to the local station at Beloostrov and bought himself a ticket to Petrograd.

The task facing Dukes was a daunting one. Cumming urgently required intelligence on the intentions of the Bolshevik Government. Lenin’s regime was now overtly hostile, that much was clear, but it was not yet known if it had the wherewithal to pursue its goal of creating lasting military alliances in Central Asia and then setting the East on fire.

Cumming also needed information about the Baltic fleet and Red Army, as well as on conditions inside the country. The Bolsheviks were under attack from three separate White armies. British ministers needed to know whether or not these forces should be backed with military hardware and troops.

To fulfil all these tasks was a tall order for one man. Dukes knew he would have to locate anti-Bolshevik insiders in the government commissariats and persuade them to hand over secret documents. If discovered, he – and they – would be shot.

Dukes had learned much from Sidney Reilly about the advantages of having several different aliases. Long before he crossed back into Soviet Russia, he had begun creating a host of false identities. Not for nothing would he later be known as ‘The Man with a Hundred Faces’.

‘To go back as an Englishman was totally out of the question,’ he wrote. ‘I resolved at Archangel to transform myself into a Russian and a Bolshevik.’

He had already switched identity twice on route to Russia, arriving at the Finnish border post as Sergei Ilitch, a Serbian businessman. Now, he changed into the clothes he had bought in Vyborg’s bustling flea market: ‘a Russian
rubashka
(shirt), black leather breeches, black knee boots, a shabby tunic and an old leather cap with a fur brim and a little tassel on top.’ When he glanced at himself in the mirror, he saw what he described as ‘a thoroughly undesirable alien.’

The Finnish guards manning the border post with Russia had been forewarned about Dukes’s mission. As agreed, they helped him to create yet another fake identity. He was to enter Russia as a Ukrainian by the name of Joseph Ilitch Afirenko – the nationality had been chosen in order to explain his slight foreign accent when he spoke Russian.

The guards handed him a newly forged passport and identity papers. One of the men then opened a cupboard ‘and took out a box full of rubber stamps of various sizes and shapes with black handles.

‘ “Soviet seals,” he said, laughing at my amazement. “We keep ourselves up to date, you see.” ’

The seals were an important element in making the identity papers look authentic: Dukes said they were ‘a talisman that levelled all obstacles.’ Many Bolshevik officials were illiterate and only inspected the seals. If these were in order, the bearer was allowed to pass.

Dukes was even more surprised when one of the border guards handed him a freshly typed certificate on official paper that read as follows: ‘This is to certify that Joseph Afirenko is in the service of the Extraordinary Commissar.’ The document attested to his employment by the Cheka.

Dukes felt that this was taking deception a step too far, but the guards said that it would afford him the greatest possible protection once he was inside Russia. He would have carte blanche to travel wherever he wanted.

An important aim of Dukes’s mission was to supply low-level intelligence on conditions inside Russia. This was the oft-forgotten (and less glamorous) side of espionage, yet it was vitally important. The exodus of British nationals from Russia meant there was very little news of what was taking place inside the country. Information about daily life was urgently required. To this end, Dukes began supplying Mansfield Cumming with monthly reports describing the hardships faced by the populace.

The catastrophic decline in living standards became apparent as soon as he stepped off the train in Petrograd. The streets were strewn with garbage and pervaded with the stench of dead and decaying corpses of horses. The inhabitants presented a picture of human misery. ‘Lines of wretched people standing patiently, disposing of personal belongings or of food got by foraging in the country.’