Russian Roulette

by Giles Milton

  Accompanying him across the Pamir Mountains was Percy Etherton, a tough-nosed adventurer with movie-star looks and a libido to match. His piercing eyes betrayed a hint of the Machiavellian streak that would soon be felt by the many Bolsheviks who crossed his path.

  Before the war, Etherton had made a daring adventure through the heart of Central Asia, resulting in a book called Across the Roof of the World. His energy, dynamism and clinical ruthlessness – coupled with his experience with the Indian Army’s frontier regiment – had brought him to the attention of his superiors. Now he was being posted to Kashgar where he was ostensibly going to be working as the British consul. But he was also to be engaged in espionage, gathering intelligence on the Bolsheviks.

  The third member of the party was Major Stewart Blacker who had previously served with the Indian Army’s elite Corps of Guides. In common with his two colleagues, he had also made voyages deep into the barren hinterland of Central Asia.

  These three adventurers were being sent into the farthest flung regions of the former Russian Empire, accompanied by a group of coolies to carry their baggage.

  Their mission had been organised by the government of India, which had recently received news that Bolshevism was rapidly spreading across the lands that lay to the north of India. Russian Turkestan was said to have been the most recent place to have fallen victim to Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution.

  Even more alarming were the rumours that the 190,000 Austrian and German prisoners of war, held in Central Asia after their capture on the Eastern Front, were being trained and drafted into the Red Army.

  This set alarm bells ringing in British India. The frontier of Turkestan was separated from the Raj by a mere ten-mile wide sliver of Afghanistan which ran along the border. Lenin’s Bolshevik Army could, if it wished, be inside India within a few hours.

  Prime Minister Lloyd George publicly confessed to the British Government’s absolute ignorance as to the extent of Bolshevik rule in Russia’s more remote regions. When he attempted to answer a parliamentary question on the subject, he could do nothing more than pose a string of rhetorical questions: ‘What is the government of the Ukraine?’ he asked. ‘What is the government of Georgia? What is the government when you come to Baku? What is the government in the northern part of the Caucasus? What is the government in any town and city of the Don? What is the government, I will not say in Siberia, but in any city of Siberia?’

  The viceroy of India was equally ignorant as to what was taking place on the other side of the Raj’s northern border. A confidential memo revealed the total absence of reliable intelligence. ‘We are without the means of obtaining prompt and reliable reports on what goes on in Turkestan. We do not know what party is in the ascendant.’

  The despatch of a mission to Turkestan had been discussed on several occasions over the previous months. The first question was whether it should be official or unofficial: both options carried considerable risks. There was a further debate over whether or not to send a team of Indian soldiers to accompany the mission. The viceroy felt that sending troops ‘would excite the liveliest suspicions in Afghanistan and might upset the whole situation.’ After much discussion, the project was deemed so risky that it was quietly shelved.

  But now, as the need for information became an imperative, it was decided to send Frederick Bailey and Stewart Blacker to Tashkent and Percy Etherton to Kashgar. They were to leave India immediately.

  Mansfield Cumming’s geographical remit did not extend to Russia’s vast underbelly. Operations in Central Asia were initially orchestrated by the Department of Criminal Intelligence, which was based in Simla and answerable to the government of India. They, in turn, reported to Indian Political Intelligence in London.

  But the spread of Bolshevism was clearly a concern that overlapped with Mansfield Cumming’s operations and this increasingly led to the sharing of intelligence. Cumming’s men in New York and Berlin had already worked in collaboration with their colleagues in India, exchanging information on the activities of Indian subversives. Now, there was to be an ever-closer liaison over the threat posed by Bolshevism.

  It was most unfortunate that Cumming was not involved in planning the mission to Tashkent. He, more than anyone else, knew that a reliable support network was of vital importance if it was to have any hope of success. Yet Bailey and Blacker were being sent deep into Bolshevik Turkestan with no couriers or backup team. If things went wrong, they would be very much on their own.

  The mission was also marred by the lack of a clear goal. Bailey’s briefing was extremely vague and only served to highlight the woeful ignorance as to what was taking place in Turkestan. ‘No one quite knew what a Bolshevik was or what were his aims and objects,’ wrote Bailey. ‘It seemed that it would be useful to go and see them, and find out what sort of people they were and to try to persuade them to continue the war against Germany.’

  This, then, was the ostensible aim of the expedition: Bailey was being sent on a fact-finding mission as an accredited envoy of British India. But if things went wrong, or if he found himself in trouble, he was to be left to his own devices. There was no Plan B.

  Bailey and his men made a gruelling crossing of the high valleys of the Hunza region and then traversed the barren peaks of the Pamir Mountains. A blizzard almost swept them away near the beginning of their hike and they encountered considerable difficulty crossing the heavily fissured Passu Glacier. But they eventually descended onto the barren Sinkiang plateau and headed for Kashgar, a sun-baked caravan city in Chinese-controlled Turkestan.

  The three adventurers were given a hearty welcome by the outgoing consul, Sir George Macartney; the grand consulate dinners were particularly welcome after their six-week journey from Srinagar. The consulate’s cellar of imported wines was soon consumed but there was plenty of locally distilled fire-water to enliven the evenings.

  ‘After dinner,’ wrote Bailey, ‘we would play the gramophone and dance Russian dances or gamble mildly at Deviatka in depreciated Russian currency.’

  Kashgar marked the end of the journey for Percy Etherton. He was to remain in the city, sending intelligence back to Delhi and thence to London. But he would also find himself engaged in a lonely and highly personal war against the Bolsheviks, or ‘Red Scum’ as he called them. He would become so reviled inside Soviet Russia that he would end up with a price on his head.

  Bailey and Blacker remained in Kashgar for six weeks. Then, in the third week of July, they set off on an arduous overland journey to Tashkent. They were accompanied by a Russian couple named Mr and Mrs Stephanovich who were returning to Turkestan after a tour of duty in Kashgar’s Russian consulate.

  It took a week to reach the frontier of Russian-controlled Turkestan, their journey fortified by fermented mare’s milk. They had been expecting difficulties at the border and were surprised to receive a warm welcome from the Russian guards.

  ‘They were certainly not in sympathy with the Bolsheviks,’ wrote Bailey, ‘and were living in a state of great uncertainty.’

  It was another fortnight’s journey to Tashkent, during which time their mission became public knowledge. ‘The most fantastic rumours about our party had preceded us,’ wrote Bailey. ‘We were the vanguard of a force of twelve thousand men sent from India to capture Ferghana and Turkestan [and] our servants were all sepoys in disguise.’

  The journey proved tough going: there was a biting chill at night and the ground was frozen to iron, even though it was midsummer. Amid the patches of wind-dried snow, Bailey noticed ‘the bones of countless animals and even of some men who had lost their lives on this dangerous road.’

  They made frequent stops en route, for Bailey had brought his butterfly net and he now took the opportunity to pursue his passion for collecting rare specimens. Clouds of them rose from the grassland as they passed and he managed to capture more than a hundred different types, including a magnificent Himalayan Parnassus.

  At one point the men met their first Bolshevik com
missars, ‘picturesque fellows in Russian blouses and top boots, with a revolver conspicuously worn in the belt. They were evidently out to impress us but failed entirely to do so.’

  After two weeks on the road, Bailey and Blacker finally arrived in Tashkent. They checked into the Regina Hotel (the best in town) and began preparing their visit to the Tashkent Foreign Office. Their coolies meanwhile set off on the long route back to India.

  Bailey was hoping to open a dialogue with the new regime but was soon disabused of this notion. The revolutionary apparatchiks who had seized control of the city were ill educated and entirely lacking in government experience. Just a few months earlier, they had been mechanics and oilers on the railways. Now, they held the reins of power.

  Not everything had fallen prey to the revolution. The city’s bars and outdoor brasseries were still open for business and would spring into life in the late afternoon sunshine. Each had its own thé dansant orchestra comprised of Austrian prisoners of war who were being held in semi-freedom in this remote corner of the former Russian Empire. They played their violins in the cool shade of the mulberry trees.

  Bailey and Blacker frequented the Chashka Chai (Cup of Tea) and soon became known to the band. ‘They used to break off their tune and play “Tipperary” as we entered,’ wrote Bailey. The local cinema provided another distraction. When the two Englishmen arrived in town, it was showing The Prisoner of Zenda.

  Bailey learned that Tashkent’s road and rail links with Moscow had been cut by fighting, leaving the city all but isolated from the outside world. He also discovered that a few European residents had been left adrift by the unrest that had followed the revolution.

  Among those trapped in the city were an English couple, Mr and Mrs Edward, and an elderly English widower known as Madame Quatts. She had once been governess to the children of General Konstantin von Kaufman, the first governor-general of Russian Turkestan, but had almost forgotten her English. ‘[She] spoke with hesitation and made mistakes in words and grammar but with this had no trace of a foreign accent,’ wrote Bailey.

  Tashkent was also home to Roger Tredwell, the beleaguered American consul-general. Tredwell shared lodgings with a local family who employed an eccentric Irish governess, Miss Houston. From her, Bailey heard colourful stories of various wandering travellers and oddballs. He also had his own encounters with local eccentrics, including an Englishman passing through Turkestan with a troupe of performing elephants. Who he was, and what happened to him, Bailey was unable to discover.

  It was clear that the revolution was causing severe hardship to the inhabitants of Tashkent. The markets were devoid of fruit and vegetables and the number of unemployed was rising by the week. More serious was the fact that the city’s professional class had been eliminated in the economic catastrophe that had followed the revolution.

  ‘The workmen were running things badly and dishonestly,’ wrote Bailey. They stuck rigidly to the new ideology ‘and had no hesitation in forbidding many of the things they professed to be fighting for, especially for example freedom of the press and freedom of public meeting.’

  Bailey had been charged with sending information about the political situation back to Simla. But communication was to prove far from easy, for the Bolshevik authorities controlled the only telegraph office in Tashkent. The lack of a courier system, like the one developed by Reilly and Hill, was to cause serious difficulties.

  Bailey had intended to use Blacker’s motorcycle to relay messages across the plains of Turkestan and then forward the information over the Pamirs using carrier pigeons. Blacker overcame the shortage of petrol by running his bike on vodka, but the supply of pigeons had been exhausted before they had even reached Tashkent. ‘[They] mostly served to fatten the beautiful falcons of the Hunza Valley,’ wrote Bailey.

  Undaunted, he endeavoured to discover more about the intentions of Tashkent’s Bolshevik regime by paying a visit to Commissar Damagatsky, one of the most senior functionaries in the city. The meeting got off to a bad start. Unbeknown to Bailey, a battalion of British troops based in North-East Persia had recently clashed with Bolshevik forces on the other side of the border. The British had inflicted considerable loss of life. Commissar Damagatsky was fuming with anger and demanded an explanation.

  Bailey was entirely ignorant of the attack: he suggested that the commissar’s information was faulty and asked him how he could be so sure that the troops were British.

  ‘The answer was simple and flattering,’ wrote Bailey. ‘The artillery was good, far better than anything in Russia.’ The commissar added that there was English writing on the shells and said that if Bailey refused to believe him, he would ‘get a prisoner to convince me.’

  Damagatsky was deeply suspicious of these two uninvited Englishmen and remained unconvinced that they were official representatives of British India. It didn’t help matters that when he asked to see their credentials, he was told that they weren’t carrying any. ‘When we were unable to produce the much desired papers, we were accused of being spies.’

  Bailey acted with studied indifference. He repeatedly insisted that he was on an official mission and he also asked Damagatsky for assurances the 190,000 Austrian and German prisoners of war in Turkestan would be properly controlled. This was not forthcoming. Indeed, Bailey soon discovered that at least one contingent of soldiers was being prepared for enrolment in the Red Army.

  ‘Under the command of an ex-sergeant-major with a fierce moustache, a detachment of about sixty Germans could be seen at the big parades in Tashkent, smartly dressed in black leather.’ Bailey watched them saluting and drilling and singing ‘The Internationale’ as they marched.

  He was disquieted by the sight. These troops could easily have marched across the sliver of Northern Afghanistan and into India, ‘with possibly grave effects for us on the course of the war.’

  Bailey was even more alarmed when Commissar Damagatsky openly admitted that this small contingent was merely the precursor to a much larger force. ‘It was the hope of the government,’ he told Bailey, ‘to revolutionise them and enrol them in the Red Army.’

  Bailey next tackled the issue of Turkestan’s stockpile of cotton, an essential component in the production of war munitions. He asked that the supplies be adequately guarded to prevent their export to Germany.

  Damagatsky gave a dismissive wave of his hand and said ‘that the war among the imperialist powers was of no great concern to Soviet Russia and anyone could have the cotton who would pay for it and take it away.’

  Bailey’s final demand was that Tashkent should stop all attempts to encourage Islamic rebellion against British India. Lenin’s call for the Indians to rise up against the British had been a cause of serious alarm, particularly given the unrest in the overwhelmingly Islamic North-West Frontier province.

  ‘This danger seemed to us, at the time, not only to be very real and of immediate urgency, but also we envisaged the danger of awkward complications after the war,’ wrote Bailey.

  On this issue, at least, Damagatsky offered some crumbs of comfort. Religious propaganda, he said, was contrary to the policy of the Soviet Government. He professed no interest in fomenting Islamic rebellion.

  As the inconclusive meeting drew to a close, Bailey feared that he and Blacker would be arrested as spies. ‘Internment for any length of time would, as I realised later, have meant almost certain death,’ he wrote.

  The only place they could be held was the city prison where survival was a matter of chance. ‘A party of drunken soldiers would go to the gaol, take people out and shoot them. Once we were walking down the street, we heard cries and shots from a house. One of these murders was being perpetrated.’

  Bailey added that ‘slightly more justifiable executions took place when the gaol was full and it was necessary to make room.’

  In the event, Damagatsky chose to bide his time. He allowed Bailey and Blacker to walk free from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. But they knew they were marked men. ‘We w
ere followed everywhere by spies and when we returned home at night after going to a concert or cinema, electric torches flashed mysterious signals and bells were rung to report our safe arrival. The police made frequent searches by day and night and once came to us at two o’clock in the morning.’

  It was clear that their lives would be in continued danger if they remained in Tashkent. Sooner or later they would be arrested and quite possibly be killed. Yet flight from the city was also fraught with difficulty. The Cheka was already viewing them as valuable hostages and Bailey knew that Cheka agents would be certain to swoop the moment they attempted to flee.

  With so many factors weighing against them, Bailey and Blacker could do little but sit tight. But they had already realised that the time would soon come when they would have to disappear from view.

  Then, like Mansfield Cumming’s agents in Moscow and Petrograd, they could re-emerge as completely different people.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GOING UNDERGROUND

  Sidney Reilly and George Hill found Moscow increasingly dangerous in the days that followed the landing of Allied forces in Northern Russia.

  The Bolshevik leadership was incensed by what had taken place and was already calling it an invasion. In reality, it was not an invasion at all. A mere 1,500 men had been put ashore and their goal was to secure the stockpiles of unused weaponry, not to attack the Bolsheviks. Yet it had led to a swift reaction from Lenin and Trotsky. The raid on the Western consulates on the day of the landings was a clear sign that Bolshevik Russia was now a hostile power.

  George Hill had been preparing to go underground for many months. Yet when the time finally came, he felt a sudden panic. ‘I had a momentary but first-class attack of nerves,’ he wrote. ‘In half an hour, I should be a spy outside the law with no redress if caught, just a summary trial and then up against a wall.’