Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution (47 page)

His work for Mansfield Cumming – and the controversies that surrounded it – was quietly forgotten for many years. The intelligence file on his activities in Russia, including MI5’s reports about his pro-Bolshevik sympathies, was only released into the public domain in 2005.

Some agents found it difficult to settle down after the excitement of their undercover work. Frederick Bailey returned to British India after brushing the Karakum sand from his boots. But he was soon off in search of new adventure, heading to Gangtok in the state of Sikkim, where he lived with his new wife, Irma.

He made frequent travels to Tibet and became close friends with the thirteenth Dalai Lama. He also added to his already extensive collection of butterflies, Nepalese birds and stuffed mammals. These were eventually bequeathed to the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Bailey died in 1967, along with Paul Dukes and Arthur Ransome. George Hill died shortly afterwards, in 1968. It was the end of an era for British espionage.

And what of Mansfield Cumming himself? He remained a workaholic to the end, even though he was suffering from increasingly severe angina. He suffered his first heart attack just before Christmas Day, 1922. A second one followed a few days later.

He returned to his offices in Holland Park as soon as he was recovered, but he knew that he could not continue forever. Reluctantly, he decided that it was time to pack up his gadgets and secret inks and retire to Bursledon.

He never got the chance. He was still hard at work when a third heart attack killed him on 23 June 1923.

He had just had a valedictory drink with one of his former agents, Valentine Williams, who had come to wish him a happy retirement. Shortly after Williams left the building, Cumming sat down on the sofa in his office. A few minutes later, he was dead.

‘He died in harness,’ wrote Williams, ‘as he would have wished.’ Work had brought meaning to his life: it was appropriate, perhaps, that it also brought about his end.

He was buried close to his beloved home in Bursledon, just a short distance from the First World War tank in which he liked to tour the Hampshire countryside. There was no obituary, nor even any announcement of his death. He simply disappeared without trace. It was exactly as he would have wished.

His successor had been chosen before his death: it was to be Rear Admiral Hugh Sinclair, the cigar-smoking, pleasure-seeking former head of Naval Intelligence. Cumming had been delighted when he learned of Sinclair’s appointment, describing him as ‘in every way qualified and suitable.’

Sinclair was also made director of the Government Code and Cipher School, bringing code-breaking and deciphering into the orbit of the Secret Intelligence Service.

A few months before his retirement, Cumming had told Samuel Hoare, his former bureau chief in Petrograd, that the service was destined to have an illustrious future under Sinclair. ‘In his capable hands, this organisation will grow to be very useful – it is not too much to say essential – to the Govt. Departments we serve.’

In fact, Winston Churchill had made it clear that its work was already deemed essential by government ministers. The Secret Intelligence Service had begun as a ramshackle network of ‘rascals’, ‘scallywags’ and public school adventurers. In little more than a decade, it had become a slick and highly skilled organisation that could penetrate to the very heart of enemy governments. Mansfield Cumming had successfully overseen the creation of the world’s first professional secret service.

By the time of Cumming’s death, a new team of special agents was at work in Moscow and Petrograd. Their principal task was to infiltrate the Soviet regime’s new chemical weapons programme.

This was a whole new story, one that was once again to involve deception, subterfuge and secret intelligence. Mansfield Cumming, of course, was no longer at the helm. But he would have been pleased to know that by the time the first game of Russian Roulette had come to an end, the second one had already begun.

NOTES AND SOURCES

The material for
Russian Roulette
is derived from two principal sources: published accounts written by the agents themselves and their unpublished intelligence reports and letters. Most of the reports were written for either Mansfield Cumming or for his colleagues in the Indian Bureau (in Simla) and Indian Political Intelligence in London.

The original material is stored in two principal repositories: the National Archives (NA) in Kew and the India Office Collection in the British Library.

MI6 files remain closed, a source of continual frustration to historians. There is the occasional (and exceptional) release of material. Documents relating to Arthur Ransome were placed in the public domain as recently as 2005.

The story of
Russian Roulette
largely concerns British India, and the records of Indian Political Intelligence were released en masse in 1997. They are a treasure trove of information, not least because they contain some duplicate copies of original MI6 records that are still kept under lock and key.

These records reveal the close working relationship between the Secret Intelligence Service and Indian Political Intelligence.

When the files were initially placed in the public domain, the historian Patrick French commented that ‘an ambitious PhD student could have a field day.’ So, indeed, can anyone with a British Library reader’s ticket and plenty of time on their hands.

Espionage is by its very nature secret, but the 751 files and volumes of Indian Political Intelligence, coupled with the thousands of once-classified documents at the National Archives, provide a fascinating glimpse into the murky world of espionage and deception that took place inside Soviet Russia in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution.

In the notes below, full references to each book are given unless they are listed in
Selected Reading.

Prologue

The eyewitness account of Lenin’s arrival at Finlyandsky Station, as recorded by an unnamed Russian journalist, can be found at
http://bigsiteofhistory.com/lenins-address-at-the-finland-station

Paul Dukes’s account of Lenin’s arrival is recorded in his book,
The Story of ST 25
. William Gibson’s impressions were published in his book,
Wild Career: My Crowded Years of Adventure in Russia and the Near East
.

Sir George Buchanan’s memoirs were published under the title,
My Mission to Russia
. Lord Hardinge’s account was published in
The Reminiscences of Lord Hardinge of Penshurst
(London, 1947). Sir George Molesworth, who was later to play a key role in the Anglo-Afghan War and the defence of the Raj, wrote up his experiences in
Afghanistan, 1919.

PART ONE: SHOOTING IN THE DARK

1: Murder in the Dark

Samuel Hoare wrote extensively about his experiences in Russia in
Fourth Seal: The End of a Russian Chapter
(London, 1930). His time as Mansfield Cumming’s bureau chief is also analysed in Michael Smith’s excellent study,
Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service
(London, 2010). Smith also discusses the unlikely secret service career of Oswald Rayner.

The traditionally accepted account of Rasputin’s murder is derived from Prince Feliks Yusupov’s highly coloured autobiography,
Lost Splendour
.

Yusupov’s account has been convincingly picked apart by Richard Cullen in his fascinating book,
Rasputin: The Role of Britain’s Secret Service in his Torture and Murder
.

Cullen’s book revisits all the surviving accounts, published and unpublished, including the autopsy report written by Professor Kosorotov.

With the help of experts in ballistics, he presents a highly convincing scenario for Rasputin’s murder, implicating not only Oswald Rayner, but several other members of Mansfield Cumming’s team inside Russia.

Cullen’s work has sparked a vigorous debate on the Internet: this can be followed at:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1363.0

Rasputin’s death was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 documentary,
Great Lives: Rasputin
(January 2013). This is on-line at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01phgjs

2: The Chief

The best recent biography of Mansfield Cumming is Alan Judd’s
The Quest for C
. There is also much information to be found in Keith Jeffrey’s
MI6
. I also consulted Christopher Andrew’s
Secret Service
for a wealth of background material
.

Other anecdotes about Cumming are to be found in Compton Mackenzie’s
Greek Memories
, Valentine Williams’
The World of Action
(London, 1938), Samuel Hoare’s
The Fourth Seal
(London, 1930) and Edward Knoblock’s
Round the Room: An Autobiography
(London, 1939).

Hoare’s account is adapted from his book,
Fourth Seal
; Harvey Pitcher,
Witnesses of the Russian Revolution
;
Smith,
Six
; Yusupov,
Lost Splendour
; Chambers,
Last Englishman
. The story about William Gibson is from his autobiography,
Wild Career.
Knox’s reminiscences can be found in his book,
With the Russian Army.

3: The Perfect Spy

The most detailed account of Lenin’s arrival at Torneå is to be found in Michael Pearson’s
Sealed Train
. See also Helen Rappaport’s fascinating
Conspirator.
The story about Harry Gruner is explored in Smith,
Six
; there are also anecdotes about Gruner in William Gerhardie’s
Memoirs
.

The story of Trotsky’s arrest is to be found in ‘Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915–21’ by Richard B. Spence,
Intelligence and National Security
, vol. 19, no. 3 (2004). Another interesting article is ‘Interrupted Journey: British Intelligence and the Arrest of Leon Trotsky, April 1917’
,
by the same author, published in
Revolutionary Russia
, vol. 13, no. 1 (June 2000). I also consulted
Leon Trotsky in New York City
by I. D. Thatcher,
Historical Research
, vol. 69, no. 169 (June 1996).

Trotsky’s interview with the
New York Times
was published 16 March 1917. See also Guy Gaunt’s
Yield
.

George Hill,
Go Spy
and
Dreaded Land
; Hector Bywater,
Strange Intelligence
; Smith,
Six
(contains the story of Frank Stagg); Judd,
Quest
; Andrew,
Secret Service
. I also drew much information from a National Archives file of recipes for secret inks: KV3/2
Invisible Ink and Secret Writing
.

Meriel Buchanan,
Ambassador’s Daughter
; Pitcher,
Witnesses
; Pipes,
The Russian Revolution
;
Price,
Reminiscences
.

There are several good accounts of Maugham’s mission to Russia. Maugham wrote a series of articles about it and my own account is largely derived from these articles:
Sunday Express
, 30 September & 7 October 1962; Maugham’s trip is dealt with in some detail by Selina Hastings in
Secret Lives
. Also consulted were Maugham,
Writer’s Notebook
and Voska,
Spy
.

See also Keith Neilson’s ‘ “Joy Rides”? British Intelligence and Propaganda in Russia, 1914-1917,’ published in
Historical Journal
, XXIV (1981) for an analysis of the early years of Cumming’s Russian bureau and Maugham’s mission.