Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (46 page)

Winston Churchill agreed with Lord Curzon on the value of espionage. He attached particular importance to a newly established organisation whose purpose was the interception of secret telegraphic transmissions.

The Government Code and Cipher School, as it was known, had already been tapping communications between Moscow and London during the trade negotiations. It was to play a key role in future espionage operations and would eventually move to Bletchley Park, where its brilliant code-breakers would (in the years to come) decrypt Nazi Germany’s Enigma enciphers. But even at this early date, its work was proving critical in directing government policy.

‘I attach more importance to them [intercepts] as a means of forming a true judgement of public policy . . .’ wrote Churchill, ‘than to any other source of knowledge at the disposal of the State.’

Few ministers believed that the Comintern was serious about abandoning its goal of global revolution and they were soon proved correct. Within months of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement being signed, Moscow’s commissars were once again engaged in secret talks about attacking British India.

These discussions were picked up in London within a matter of hours, for Mansfield Cumming was by now receiving intelligence from the very heart of the regime.

This intelligence was of an extraordinary nature, for it included the actual minutes of Politburo sessions and verbatim accounts from the Soviet inner circle. Cumming even received the transcript of a heated discussion between Trotsky, Stalin and other senior commissars. This was particularly noteworthy, because the meeting had been held behind closed doors at Chicherin’s private residence.

A number of the surviving typescripts still bear their Secret Intelligence Service cover notes. ‘The following information has been obtained at first hand by a highly reliable agent,’ reads one of these notes. ‘It is requested that VERY SPECIAL PRECAUTIONS AS REGARDS SECRECY AND SAFE CUSTODY be taken with regard to the information and documents.’ The documents revealed the Soviet leadership’s ongoing links with Indian revolutionaries.

Lord Curzon was incensed by Moscow’s duplicity and told his Cabinet colleagues that unless something urgent was done, the lies would continue ‘until the dark-haired among us become grey, the grey-haired white and the white bald.’

In the spring of 1923, the Prime Minister gave him the green light to issue his famous Curzon Ultimatum. This was an uncompromising demand that the Soviet government and the Comintern refrain forever from fomenting revolution against British interests.

The British once again released selected snippets of intelligence to bolster their case. Indeed Lord Curzon taunted his Soviet counterparts with the transcripts of intercepted communications. ‘The Russian Commissariat for Foreign Affairs will no doubt recognise the following communication dated 21 February, 1923 . . . The Commissariat for Foreign Affairs will also doubtless recognise a communication received by them from Kabul, dated the 8th November, 1922 . . .’

The left-wing British newspaper, the
Daily Herald
, was appalled by Lord Curzon’s ultimatum. ‘Such a note sent by one Great Power to another would, before 1914, have meant war.’

The Soviet Government also expressed surprise at the aggressive tone of the ultimatum and went so far as to accuse Lord Curzon of inventing the transcripts. But Moscow had no desire to sever the hard-won trade relations at a time of continued economic chaos. It backed down once again, only this time it promised to abandon forever its designs on British India.

‘The Soviet Government undertakes not to support with funds or in any other form persons or bodies or agencies or institutions whose aim is to spread discontent or to foment rebellion in any other part of the British Empire.’

After all the setbacks, a line had finally been drawn in the sand. Even Lord Curzon himself felt that the danger was finally over. ‘I think that I may claim to have won a considerable victory over the Soviet Government,’ he wrote in a private letter to a friend. ‘I expect them to behave with more circumspection for some time to come.

As the dust slowly settled, one question remained unanswered: who was supplying Mansfield Cumming with the top-secret intelligence from Moscow?

One clue to his identity was the fact that he could procure the actual minutes of Politburo meetings. This, coupled with his reports of verbatim conversations between commissars, strongly suggests that Cumming’s finest agent was a Russian mole by the name of Boris Bazhanov.

If so, this represented a sensational coup. Bazhanov was one of Soviet Russia’s most senior functionaries, who rose to become secretary to both Joseph Stalin and to the Politburo.

Unbeknown to Moscow, Bazhanov was also a fifth-column insider. As Lenin’s inner circle discussed tactics for destroying British India, they had no idea that the man taking the minutes was sending them directly to London.

Bazhanov would later publish his memoirs in French under the title,?
Avec Staline dans le Kremlin
. He confessed to having been a double agent from the very moment he joined the Communist Party in 1919, describing himself as a ‘Trojan horse’ who infiltrated ‘the Communist fortress’ in order to undermine the system from within.

‘It was an undertaking of the greatest peril,’ he wrote, ‘but I did not allow myself to be deterred by the thought of risk. I had to be constantly on my guard. I had to watch every word I spoke, every move I made, every step I took.’

Those steps took him to the top of the Soviet ladder. Within a year, he had become one of the regime’s key secretaries with access to all the top-secret reports being produced by Stalin and the Politburo.

‘As a soldier of the anti-Bolshevist army, I had set myself the difficult and dangerous task of penetrating to the very heart of enemy headquarters. I had achieved my goal.’

This was to prove of vital importance for British intelligence. As Bazhanov said, the Politburo was responsible for all major decisions respecting the government of the country, as well as questions of world revolution.

‘I held in my hands the key to the secret bureau where the dark destiny of Russia was being planned, along with the plot against the peace of the civilized world.’

Bazhanov’s behaviour eventually aroused Stalin’s suspicions. In fear of his life, he made an exhilarating flight from Russia to Persia with the secret police hot on his trail. After contacting British intelligence in Meshed, Bazhanov was smuggled to British India by car, camel caravan and the viceroy’s private train. Once he arrived in Simla, he supplied intelligence chiefs with yet more valuable information about the inner workings of the Soviet regime.

Bazhanov would continue to work sporadically for British intelligence until the outbreak of the Second World War, when Britain’s alliance with Stalin proved more than he could stomach.

Bazhanov’s story is as remarkable as it is full of twists. When his autobiography was translated from French into English, all the lines about his work as a mole were mysteriously expunged. Bazhanov does not explain who ordered them to be deleted. Nor does he say why.

He would eventually settle in Paris, a hunted man with a $5 million price on his head. He was to survive no fewer than a dozen assassination attempts, including one notable occasion when a hired thug tried to knife him to death in his garage. The fact that Stalin made such efforts to have him killed is strong evidence that he was telling the truth about his life as a mole.

When first interviewed by the French authorities, Bazhanov warned them that he would be hunted for the rest of his life. ‘I must tell you straight away that if I am suddenly tapped on the shoulder in the street by a stranger in civilian clothes and pushed towards a car, I shall simply shoot him down with the pistol I now always carry with me.’

Stalin’s assassins never succeeded in their quest to kill him: Bazhanov died peacefully at a ripe old age.

By the time of Bazhanov’s heady ascent up the Soviet hierarchy, many of Cumming’s old players had moved on to new games. George Hill undertook a brief intelligence mission to the Middle East, only to be left destitute when Secret Intelligence Service funds dried up. He returned to England and moved into a caravan in Sussex with his wife.

He was recalled into service at the outbreak of the Second World War and given employment in his original field of expertise: sabotage and destruction. One of his most able students was a young Cambridge graduate named Kim Philby, later to become infamous as one of the Cambridge Five. Philby referred to Hill as ‘Jolly George’.

Hill’s final and most extraordinary mission came in 1941, when he led a team to Moscow in order to set up a joint Allied operation that brought together Britain’s Special Operations Executive and Stalin’s secret police. It was the point at which his life had turned a full circle. He had started out his career working with Russia as an ally. Now, twenty-five years later, he found himself doing the same thing.

George Hill’s undercover work in the turbulent early years had cemented his friendship with Sidney Reilly. The two men continued to socialise together and Hill acted as best man at Reilly’s third wedding, in 1923, to the actress Pepita Bobadilla.

Reilly had thoroughly enjoyed life as a spy and was keen to continue serving Mansfield Cumming. But when his offer to work against the Soviet regime was rejected, Reilly turned instead to Boris Savinkov, who remained the most credible opponent to the Russian Government. In 1925, Reilly was lured back to Moscow in the hope of making contact with Savinkov’s supporters inside Russia.

‘I would not have undertaken this trip,’ he wrote to Pepita, ‘. . . if I was not convinced that there is practically no risk attached to it.’

Reilly walked straight into a trap. He was arrested by the Soviet secret police and subjected to a long and gruelling interrogation. He had already been sentenced to death in absentia back in 1918. Now that sentence was carried out. He was executed in November 1925, and buried in the inner courtyard of the old Cheka headquarters, the Loubianka.

Robert Bruce Lockhart had always enjoyed the dangers and intrigues that came with espionage. He also happened to be a gifted raconteur. In the early 1930s, he began working on his autobiography,
Memoirs of a British Agent
. Published in the following year, it became an international bestseller and was turned into a Warner Brothers movie. Lockhart went on to write a string of successful books and also became editor of the
Evening Standard
’s gossip column, Londoner’s Diary.

He would be recalled to service in the Second World War, helping to produce propaganda against Nazi Germany. But his best days were passed: he never again matched the fame and notoriety he had achieved for his role in what had become known as the ‘Lockhart Plot’. He was still a controversial figure when he died in 1970: one of the last people to visit him at his deathbed is said to have been his beloved Moura.

Moura would herself earn a posthumous fame of sorts as the great-great-aunt of Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

Paul Dukes, knighted in 1920, chose a very different path from his fellow agents. In the aftermath of his return to England he was increasingly drawn to Eastern mysticism. In 1922, he joined a tantric community at Nyack, near New York, led by an eccentric doctor known as Omnipotent Oom.

Dukes would also develop an enduring fascination for yoga, which he introduced to the Western world in a series of successful books.

The final significant member of Cumming’s team, Arthur Ransome, had left Russia with Evgenia in 1919. After spending several years cruising around the Baltic coastline in his beloved yacht,
Racundra
, he eventually married Evgenia in 1924. The couple then moved into an old stone cottage above Windermere in the Lake District. Here, Ransome began writing
Swallows and Amazons
, the first in a series of highly successful children’s books.