by Giles Milton
‘On seeing the Chekists, she completely lost her head and begun to scream,’ recounted Hill. ‘The officials seized her and after a moment’s search had the documents in their possession.’
They were so pleased with what they had found that they failed to notice Vi slip quietly out of the front door and hurry off down the street. She dived into a shop, hoping that she had not been seen or followed. Then, after waiting a while, she took herself to one of Moscow’s public baths and spent two hours in the steam room. Only then did she consider it safe to return to the secret address that George Hill was still using as his headquarters.
Another of Reilly’s agents, Dagmara Karozus, had also been visiting Elizaveta’s flat at the time of the raid. She, too, managed to get away. The Cheka officers repeatedly interrogated her but failed to find anything incriminating. She was told that she was free to go and she immediately made her way to a safe house on the other side of town. It was an extremely lucky escape.
Maria Friede was not so fortunate. She was terrified by the Cheka agents and broke down in tears. She confessed that her brother had been working for Reilly ever since his arrival in Russia. This news was swiftly transmitted to the Cheka’s headquarters and the colonel was arrested shortly afterwards. He was then put through an intense and gruelling interrogation.
Friede knew the game was up. According to the KGB defector, Vladimir Orlov, he ‘admitted that he regularly supplied Sidney Reilly with data regarding the strength and movements of Red Army units.’
He also revealed that he had worked for the American Secret Service, supplying their chief agent, Xenophon Kalamatiano, with false identity papers. He almost certainly hoped that his confession would entitle him to clemency. It did not. He was summarily executed by firing squad.
Each new search undertaken by the Cheka turned up ever more damning revelations. They were soon on the trail of Colonel de Vertemont, the French spy, and raided his apartment without warning. The colonel was caught red-handed with 18 pounds of pyroxylin, detonation capsules, a secret spy code and 28,000 roubles in cash.
The Cheka also arrested Kalamatiano and interrogated him. Although he revealed nothing, one of the Cheka officers noticed that he never parted with the cane that he held in his hands. The officer asked to see the cane and began to examine it closely.
‘Kalamatiano turned pale and lost his composure,’ wrote Vladimir Orlov in his account of the incident. ‘The investigator soon discovered that the cane contained an inner tube and he extracted it. In it were hidden a secret cipher, spy reports, a coded list of thirty-two spies and money receipts from some of them.’
Kalamatiano was in serious trouble.
The Cheka had proved ruthlessly efficient in times of crisis. It had been founded less than nine months earlier, yet it had been highly professional in crushing internal dissent.
Its efficiency was due in part to Dzerzhinsky’s uncompromising leadership. He had been given a free hand in the running of his agency and had been offered every possible support from the regime. Unlike Mansfield Cumming, he did not have constant interference from other government departments. Nor were his agents working in dangerous and hostile foreign countries. Almost all of Dzerzhinsky’s men were operating on home soil and this gave them a significant advantage over Cumming’s spies.
The Cheka had proved particularly adept at penetrating the networks of foreign agents working in Moscow and Petrograd. Although Sidney Reilly had escaped capture, his presence in Russia was now known. His couriers, too, had been compromised by the planned coup d’état. If caught, they were certain to be shot.
Reilly was en route to Moscow at the very time when the Cheka officers were rounding up suspects. He was acutely aware that Dzerzhinsky’s agents would soon be on his trail and he decided to avoid all of his old haunts. Instead, he made his way to the home of an anti-Bolshevik friend where he found Dagmara Karozus hiding in fear of her life. She had scarcely stepped outside since the Cheka had let her walk free from Elizaveta Otten’s apartment.
Dagmara warned Reilly that he was in extreme danger. She also gave him her own account of the raid on Elizaveta’s flat – a story that would eventually find its way into Reilly’s memoirs. ‘In a drawer of the bureau were over two million roubles in 1000 rouble notes,’ wrote Reilly. ‘When the agents of the Cheka thundered on the door demanding admission, Dagmara had picked up a bundle of notes and thrust them between her legs and there had kept them during the whole period of the search.’
Reilly’s meeting with Dagmara was to prove crucial to his survival. She was able to inform him of all the arrests that had taken place and provide him with several new addresses that she knew to be safe. Reilly himself was acutely aware of the perilous situation in which he now found himself.
‘A price was on my head. I was an outlaw. I was to be shot at sight by anyone who identified me. My identity was known. My noms de guerre, Constantine and Massino were known. Everything was uncovered.’
He had only himself to blame. His vainglorious plan to topple the Bolsheviks had led to this sorry situation.
Reilly spent several days at the apartment of Olga Starzhevskaya, one of his several lovers. It gave him the opportunity to meet George Hill and work out a strategy for future operations. He told Hill of his urgent need for a new passport and a change of clothes. Yet he remained sanguine in the face of adversity.
‘Reilly’s bearing when I met him was splendid,’ wrote Hill. ‘He was a hunted man, his photograph with a full description and a reward was placarded throughout the town . . . yet he was absolutely cool, calm and collected, not in the least downhearted and only concerned in gathering together the broken threads and starting afresh.’
Reilly left Olga’s flat on 4 September, just in the nick of time. It was raided by the Cheka on the following day and Olga herself was subjected to a lengthy interrogation. When she was told that her lover, Konstantin Markovich Massino, was actually Sidney Reilly, she feigned disbelief. She told the Cheka officers that she had always understood him to be Massino, ‘who I deeply loved and intended to share my life with.’
She also said that she had never doubted him to be anything other than Russian. ‘I believed him and loved him, regarding him as an honest, noble, interesting and exclusively clever man.’
With Hill’s help, Reilly was able to move temporarily into the offices of a Soviet business. But fearing capture, he constantly switched addresses, never spending more than one night in the same apartment. He also changed his identity on a daily basis. ‘Now I was a Greek merchant . . . now I was a Tsarist officer . . . now a Russian merchant.’
He was unwittingly aided in his underground life by the Bolshevik press. ‘They were so conceited over the discovery of the conspiracy that, from day to day, they published the fullest reports of the progress they were making.’ As a consequence, Reilly was able to keep himself informed as to who had been arrested and who was under suspicion.
The Cheka used the conspiracy as a means to liquidate all the most prominent opponents of the Bolshevik regime. In revenge for the attempt on Lenin’s life, they summarily executed five hundred well-known figures from the old regime, including politicians, businessmen, publishers and writers.
‘Next morning,’ wrote Hill, ‘they published a list of all the people whom they had executed. I do not think that I have ever read anything quite so terrible. The people they had seized were entirely innocent.’
This was the beginning of the Red Terror, a wave of bloodshed that swept through the capital. It was enthusiastically endorsed by the regime, which encouraged people to strike at anyone who was not a committed Bolshevik.
‘For every head of ours, we shall cut off a hundred stupid bourgeois heads . . .’ declared Karl Radek. ‘But it is you, comrades, who must take part in this terror. The Red Terror is the terror of the workmen, the terror of class against class. The last rouble, the last fur coat must be taken from the bourgeois.’
One central question remained unanswered: who
had betrayed Reilly’s coup d’état to the Cheka? Reilly began investigating as soon as he arrived in Moscow and it did not take him long to discover what had happened. The finger of accusation pointed directly at René Marchand, the correspondent for Le Figaro who had first aroused Reilly’s suspicions at the meeting at the American Consulate.
Shortly after this meeting, in which Marchand overheard many details of the plot, he had called Felix Dzerzhinsky and asked for an urgent meeting.
Dzerzhinsky immediately summoned Marchand to his private apartment, which was just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. At their meeting, Marchand betrayed everything he knew of Reilly’s planned coup. He told Dzerzhinsky that Reilly was intending to seal off the Congress of Soviets at the Bolshoi Theatre and have Lenin and Trotsky seized at gunpoint.
‘At a signal given by Reilly,’ said Marchand, ‘the Lettish soldiers would close all exits and cover the audience with their rifles, while Reilly, at the head of his band, would leap on to the stage and seize Lenin, Trotsky and the other leaders. All of them would be shot on the spot.’
Reilly had been right to suspect Marchand. The Frenchman had long been a secret Bolshevik sympathiser who was prepared to betray everyone involved in the coup.
The near success of the plot stunned Dzerzhinsky and he immediately informed Lenin, who was still in a critical state from his gunshot wounds. Lenin’s first question was whether or not Marchand would allow his revelations to be published in the Soviet newspapers. This, after all, was an unprecedented scoop. It laid bare the network of Allied agents working against the Bolshevik Government.
Marchand had already told Dzerzhinsky that public exposure was impossible. ‘[It] would mean the ruination of his journalistic career and he would be ostracised by all the Western countries.’
Lenin came up with another idea, one that would expose the planned coup but without directly implicating Marchand. ‘Ask him to describe what he had been a witness to in a letter to President Poincaré,’ he said. This letter would then be ‘discovered’ by Cheka officers during a routine raid on his apartment.
Marchand agreed to this proposal. He was a personal friend of the French president and might reasonably be expected to inform him of what was taking place. It was equally plausible that the Cheka would find the letter during an inspection of his apartment.
This was exactly what now took place. The letter was ‘discovered’ and then published in order that the Bolshevik regime could instigate a brutal retribution against all Allied nationals in both Moscow and Petrograd.
Sidney Reilly and George Hill were still on the run and had yet to be arrested by the Cheka. Lockhart was not so fortunate. He was now being held in solitary confinement in a small room at the heart of the Loubianka. Guarded by two sentries who rarely spoke, he was terrified about his fate. He knew that if Lenin died from his gunshot wounds, he was certain to be executed.
Each night at around midnight, he was taken to be interrogated by Yakov Peters. From Peters he learned that almost all the remaining English and French nationals in Russia were now under arrest. He also witnessed Yakov Peters’ personal involvement in the Red Terror. One day, while he was standing in Peters’ office, he saw an empty van drive into the Loubianka’s central courtyard. Three former Tsarist ministers were led outside and pushed into the van, followed by a grotesquely overweight priest. Lockhart asked where they were going.
‘They are going to another world,’ said Peters dryly. ‘And that man,’ he said, pointing to the priest, ‘richly deserves it.’
Lockhart found Peters a curious figure, half bandit and half gentleman. He brought books for Lockhart and made a great show of his generosity. Yet he had a ruthless streak that chilled the blood. He had lived for some years in England as an anarchist exile and had even been tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of three policemen. To the surprise of many, he had been acquitted. In conversations with Lockhart he recalled the happy years he had spent living in London as a gangster.
After five days of imprisonment in the Loubianka, Lockhart was transferred to the Kremlin. Accusations continued to be levelled against him in the press and he was told that he was to be put on trial for his life. Yet the trial was continually delayed and he eventually heard that it was unlikely to go ahead. The explanation for this was straightforward: the British Government had arrested the Soviet envoy, Maxim Litvinov, along with a number of other Russians living in England. It was to prove a classic tit-for-tat manoeuvre: Litvinov would only be released once the British hostages had been freed.
Reilly and Hill kept themselves out of danger, but they soon came to the conclusion that there was little to be gained by remaining in Moscow. Their network was in tatters and six or seven of Hill’s couriers had recently been caught and executed by the Cheka. It was only a matter of time before they themselves would be ensnared.
‘Never in my life had I been so talked about,’ recalled Reilly of this difficult time. ‘My name was in everybody’s mouth. My description was posted up all over Moscow.’
According to Hill, Reilly was sharing lodgings with a broken-down prostitute who ‘was in the last stages of the disease which so often curses members of her profession.’ He added that Reilly had always been ‘the most fastidious of men, and while being caught by the Bolsheviks had little terror for him, he could hardly bring himself to spend the night on the couch in her room.’
The net steadily closed in on both men as more and more of their accomplices were arrested. ‘I was quite without cover,’ wrote Reilly. ‘I dared reveal myself to no one.’ He felt as if there were eyes in every wall.
The endgame came soon enough. Reilly was woken in the early hours of the morning by the noise of a car outside his lodgings. It was the clearest possible signal that the Cheka had arrived, since they were the only people in Moscow with access to vehicles.
‘Our house was being raided,’ wrote Reilly. ‘Nearer and nearer came the secret police. Doors were flung open. Muffled screams could be heard. The tramp of feet sounded in the next room. It was now or never.’
With supreme calmness, Reilly put on his overcoat and slipped out of his apartment unseen by the Cheka. At the gate a lone Red Guard was smoking a cigarette. ‘I strolled slowly over towards him, pulling out a cigarette of my own. “Give me a fire, comrade,” ’ said Reilly.
He knew there was no sense in remaining in Moscow. He had already consulted with George Hill and the two of them agreed that he should assume Hill’s alias (that of the Baltic merchant George Bergmann) and head to Petrograd on the fake Bergmann passport.
This is what Reilly now did. The journey, though dangerous, went entirely to plan. Reilly made it to Petrograd and thence to Kronstadt. From here, he took a motor launch to Reval and checked himself into the luxurious Hotel Petrograd. ‘After ten days I departed secretly on the launch for Helsingfors and from there to Stockholm and London.’ He finally arrived back in England in the second week of November.
Lockhart had remained in prison during this time. He grew increasingly hopeful that he would be released, especially now that the British Government had arrested Maxim Litvinov. But he had no idea how long the process might take.
On 22 September, to Lockhart’s surprise and joy, Yakov Peters arrived at his cell with Moura in tow. ‘It was his birthday,’ wrote Lockhart of Peters, ‘and, as he preferred giving presents to receiving them, he had brought Moura as his birthday treat.’
He did not allow Moura to speak privately with Lockhart lest she pass any messages to him. But he proved less attentive when it came to watching her as she paced up and down Lockhart’s room. Unseen, she managed to slip a note into his copy of Thomas Carlyle’s French Revolution.
Lockhart had to wait until his guests had left before pulling out the note and reading it. ‘Say nothing,’ it read. ‘All will be well.’
This proved to be correct. On 2 October, Lockhart was told that he was being released. Soon afterwards, he was taken under escort to his apartment. He learned that al
l the other English nationals were also due to be set free in order that they might be expelled from the country aboard a special train bound for Finland.
There was to be a surprise addition to the party of people aboard this train. George Hill had decided to leave Russia and he intended to do so with customary panache. He had already given his Bergmann passport to Reilly. Now, he decided to re-emerge as his real identity: he was to step back into the world as George Hill, accredited military attaché of the British government who had not been seen in public for some months.
‘The first thing I did therefore was to get rid of my hateful beard,’ he wrote. ‘Then I went to the best Moscow tailor where I picked up one of the few remaining pieces of English cloth and had a new suit made. I bought boots, a hat and a pair of white spats and reappeared dressed again as an Englishman.’
Consul Wardrop refused to put Hill’s name on the official list of Englishmen leaving the country for fear of putting everyone’s lives at risk. After all, there was every chance that the Cheka would investigate Hill’s movements over the previous months and realise that he had been living under an alias. But Lockhart overrode Wardrop’s decision, as he had done so often in the past. He knew that Hill was certain to be caught and executed if he remained behind.
All that was now left for Lockhart to do was to say his farewells to his beloved Moura, who was to remain behind in Russia. Their final scene together took place at the train station.
‘In the cool, starlit night, Moura and I discussed trivialities. We talked of everything except ourselves. And then I made her go home . . . I watched her go until she had disappeared into the night. Then I turned into my dimly lit carriage to wait and to be alone with my thoughts.’
