Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (44 page)

They were so diligent in their prayers that one of Roy’s officers quipped that they were not creating an ‘Army of Liberation’ but an ‘Army of God’. The name stuck. Henceforth, even Roy began to refer to his army as the Army of God. It gave the impression that destiny was on their side.

Roy’s energies were focussed on British India, but he had also been charged with helping the Red Army to mop up resistance in the vast hinterlands of Turkestan. The emirate of Bokhara, to which Frederick Bailey had made his escape, had been stormed and captured by the Red Army just two months before Roy’s arrival in Tashkent.

The grizzled amir had been forced to flee for his life, ‘dropping favourite dancing boy after favourite dancing boy in his flight,’ according to one who was there.

Roy now established a revolutionary government in the former emirate and fired everyone associated with the deposed amir. But one vestige of the old regime remained in place: the amir’s four hundred concubines refused to leave the sanctuary of the palace.

Roy sent them a message informing them that ‘the revolution had freed them from the bondage of the harem and they could go wherever they liked.’ But still none of them showed any inclination to leave the safety of that bondage. Eventually, Roy ordered the harem to be stormed by a band of his most loyal troops.

The young men launched their assault with considerable relish, as well they might: Roy had said that each soldier who took part in the attack could take home one of the concubines as ‘booty.’

He presided over the division of the spoils like a benevolent uncle, claiming (but offering no evidence) that the ladies of the harem had enjoyed the attack as much as the men. ‘[It] was a new experience to women whose erotic life naturally could not be satisfied by a senile old man.’

The reality was almost certainly more sinister. Even Roy admitted that the concubines ‘behaved like scared rabbits’. They must have been absolutely terrified to have their secluded existence shattered by a band of ill-disciplined and sexually frustrated soldiers.

Roy’s ultimate goal was British India, but first he had to break the resistance in the mountainous Ferghana region. This was dangerous territory – a string of high-altitude valleys that lay one hundred miles to the east of Tashkent. The Turkman rebels hiding out there proved highly skilled in guerrilla warfare, for they were toughened by years of fighting and were also familiar with the terrain.

The assault was led by the Red Army, which struck in two fighting columns. ‘While the frontal attack pushed the rebels back over a much longer distance,’ wrote Roy, ‘the other columns struck at their main base only a few miles from the Indian frontier.’

He was there to witness their victory and he was also there when the army swept southwards and ceremoniously planted the red flag on the highest summit of the Pamir Mountains. It was an emotional moment; Roy now stood at the gates of India and the subcontinent was stretched out before him like a vast oriental carpet.

‘Standing on the roof of the world,’ he wrote, ‘I looked at India through a field glass.’

But unbeknown to Roy, India was also watching him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WINNER TAKES ALL

Manabendra Roy had been under observation for nearly five years by the time he pitched up in Tashkent.

He was known to hide behind a number of aliases, including Mr White, Father Martin and Roberto Allen, his most recent incarnation. He was also known to have been involved in illicit gun-running during the First World War.

The viceroy, Frederick Thesiger, the 3rd Baron Chelmsford, was seriously alarmed by the danger posed by Roy and the Comintern. He knew that their initial goal was the North-West Frontier Province, an increasingly volatile region whose Muslim tribesmen were certain to extend a warm welcome to Roy’s soldiers.

If the Army of God successfully captured Peshawar, which was by no means impossible, then Roy would have a base from which to advance south-eastwards towards the Punjab, a distance of some 250 miles. Here, he was equally certain to be welcomed by the local population. The Punjab was suffering serious and continued unrest in the wake of the Amritsar Massacre.

The viceroy’s initial response to the crisis was to order an immediate increase in expenditure on espionage. This led to a boost in the number of staff in the Peshawar intelligence bureau ‘which is specially charged with the detection of Bolshevik agents.’

The viceroy also established a new bureau in Quetta, less than fifty miles from the Afghan border. This, too, was to deal directly with the Bolshevik threat.

His next step was to send agents directly to Tashkent, in order that they could monitor Roy’s activities at close quarters. It was to prove extremely dangerous work. One of these agents had the misfortune to be captured by Roy and was summarily executed.

In spite of the risks, such operations were deemed vital to the security of India. ‘All authorities concerned are alive to the importance of intercepting Bolshevik agents and literature,’ wrote the viceroy.

This could not be done from India itself. ‘With our vast frontier we must rely in the main on the evil being tapped at its source by means of intelligence systems at all chief centres of Bolshevik activities.’

As news of the Army of God filtered back to India, the viceroy took the decision to establish a specialist anti-Bolshevik unit that was primarily involved in dirty tricks. As such, its work was remarkably similar to that which had been undertaken by Wilfrid Malleson and his agents.

‘Work has now been co-ordinated by officers specially appointed for counter-propaganda, co-ordination of intelligence, both internal and external and organisational measures to keep Bolshevik emissaries and propaganda out of India.’

It was not long before this unit intercepted the first delivery of weapons to India – a consignment of 150 automatic pistols. Shortly afterwards, a large quantity of revolvers and ammunition was also seized. Unbeknown to Roy, the net was closing in on his Army of God.

The net was also closing in on the Comintern, although no one inside Zinoviev’s organisation was aware that Mansfield Cumming was eavesdropping on its activities.

Even government ministers in London were unaware of the extent and reach of Cumming’s espionage operations. The work of his agents had become so clandestine in the previous months that only members of his own staff were privy to what was taking place.

In the aftermath of Paul Dukes’s return to London, Cumming had moved into a new, more secretive headquarters. He relocated his offices from Whitehall Court to an anonymous villa at Number One, Melbury Road in Holland Park, West London.

With its bay windows and giant chimneys, Number One looked like any other house in the street. But Cumming, its ostensible owner, was to receive far more colourful visitors than any of his neighbours. Curious residents must have twitched their curtains and wondered how this eccentric old gentleman came to have such an eclectic collection of friends.

Cumming had his living quarters on the upper floor of the house, while the downstairs rooms were turned into offices and workshops. It was the perfect set-up: here in Melbury Road he could create ‘new extensions to my organisation as can be kept separate and distinct from the Main Bureau and to work from this central office any scheme or project that requires absolute secrecy.’

Secrecy had always been of paramount importance to Cumming. ‘[The] first, last and most necessary essential of a S[ecret] S[ervice] is that it should be SECRET,’ he wrote in one of his notes on espionage. He said that this was ‘the first thing to be forgotten in any scheme and the last thing to be remembered in putting it into practice.’

Ever since his appointment to the job in 1909, Cumming had made secrecy the guiding principle of his life. Indeed, he had delighted in wrapping himself in a cloak of anonymity. He continued to hide behind his acronym, C, and never wrote publicly about his work. He once joked that if he ever published his autobiography, it would be quarto, bound in vellum and consisting of 400 pages – all of them blank.

His office diary offers few clues about his daily routine in the troubled period that followed Dukes’s return to London. It contains little more than a list of meetings with Whitehall civil servants. But a couple of the entries are more beguiling and hint at the clandestine work that was still being undertaken by his agents.

‘Promised Jack £750 down, £750 on his return from Moscow, £500 if his report [is] exceptional, on the understanding that he attends the conference of the 3rd International [the Comintern]’. So reads one of the cryptic entries in Cumming’s diary.

The identity of ‘Jack’ remains a mystery, yet he was clearly an agent who was able to move freely within the Soviet regime. The ability to attend meetings of the Comintern was of vital importance, given that this was the organisation in charge of spearheading the global revolution.

Agent George Hill, now back in London, also hinted at the existence of an undercover team working inside Russia. In his memoirs he spoke of ‘a score of other names in this silent service who could tell of tasks done and obstacles overcome which would read like fairy stories and yet contain not a syllable of exaggeration.’

It is possible that Hill himself had recruited one of these mysterious ‘names’ at some point during 1919. If so, it was a brilliant coup: this anonymous agent was to work like a conjuror for years to come, plucking top-secret documents from under the very noses of the Soviet elite. He would transform the quality (and, indeed, the quantity) of information being received at Number One, Melbury Road.

His identity – and the clandestine work he undertook – would not be revealed for another decade. At the time when Roy was training his Army of God, Cumming’s most enigmatic spy was carrying out his work in the deepest of shadows.

One of the documents acquired from Moscow was written by Lev Karakhan, the Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs. It concerned the Soviet-backed Comintern agents who were ‘actively engaged in organising a revolution in India.’ It revealed that they were also fomenting unrest in other British-held territories in a bid to stretch defences to the limit.

‘We have already succeeded in linking up different groups . . .’ wrote Karakhan, ‘and harmonising their movement with that of Egypt, Arabia and Turkey.’

He remained convinced that the overthrow of British India would play a key role in destroying the already shattered economies of the West. ‘[It] will have enormous effects on the whole of Europe,’ he said, ‘[and] is regarded as a means by itself of bringing about the triumph of Bolshevik world policy.’

Karakhan’s memo provided Cumming with irrefutable evidence of the links between the Soviet leadership and the Comintern. Such links were consistently denied by Lenin’s commissars, who insisted that the Comintern was an international organisation and wholly independent of the Soviet government. This was an important deceit to maintain, for it enabled them to distance themselves from any direct role in Roy’s planned invasion of British India.

Cumming kept in regular communication with his colleagues in Indian intelligence, sharing information on the growing nature of the threat. When his documents were collated with those from India, the complete dossier ran into hundreds of pages. It also made for highly disturbing reading. Roy’s Army of God was in a state of high alert and would soon be ready to cross the frontier of Northern India.