by Giles Milton
After a painfully slow three-day journey, Lockhart and his fellow nationals reached the Russo-Finnish border. There was a last-minute hitch over the British Government’s release of Litvinov, but they were finally allowed to cross the frontier and bid their farewells to Bolshevik Russia.
Lockhart would never return. Eight weeks later, at a spectacular show trial, he and Reilly were tried and sentenced to death in absentia.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A DEADLY GAME
Mansfield Cumming’s spy network had fallen apart at the seams. The recklessness of Sidney Reilly, coupled with the treachery of René Marchand, had led to the exposure and expulsion of almost all his agents.
Both Reilly and George Hill were back in England. So, too, was Ernest Boyce, having suffered the indignity of being incarcerated in the fortress of Peter and Paul in Petrograd. The only good news was that his role as Cumming’s chief spymaster inside Russia had not been unmasked.
John Scale, head of the Stockholm bureau, was also in England. His return, at least, was a voluntary one. There were many pressing issues that needed to be resolved before attempting to smuggle spies back into Russia.
Cumming might have been forgiven for despairing at the situation in which he now found himself. Yet he was able to find lines of comfort in the disastrous situation that had unfolded inside Russia. The past two years had shown him and his men a dangerous new world. Agents like Hill, Reilly and Rayner had proved that professional spies, with resources and backup, could operate with impunity inside an enemy country.
The killing of Rasputin was one of the successes. So was the gathering of military intelligence, which had enabled Cumming to form an accurate assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Red Army. And although Reilly’s plot had been foolhardy, it had come remarkably close to succeeding.
Other successes were less tangible but no less real. Mansfield Cumming’s agents had managed to supply London with an accurate profile of a wholly new regime that was led by men whose ultimate goal was to export their revolution across the globe. Reilly and Hill had proved themselves particularly adept at working undercover and acquiring highly classified information.
Arthur Ransome had meanwhile chosen a different approach, forging close (and often amicable) relationships with Russia’s revolutionary leaders.
Cumming’s team had proved something else that was to be of great importance in the future. They had been adept at linking up with anti-Bolshevik activists who, under the pretence of working for the regime, were in fact doing everything possible to undermine it. This use of fifth-column insiders was a new tactic and it was to prove of the greatest value in the years to come.
Although Cumming’s Russian network had been crippled by the mass arrests, it had not been entirely destroyed. His agents had long made use of the British expatriate community of Petrograd; men and women who spoke fluent Russian and could pass themselves off as native Russians. Among these unofficial operatives was John Merrett, the British-born owner of a Petrograd engineering firm.
Merrett was no stranger to the world of deception. He had spent much of the previous year collecting secret information for Captain Cromie and had relished the dangers of espionage.
After Cromie was killed, Merrett ‘discontinued his visits [to the embassy] in order to avoid detection,’ wrote acting consul Arthur Woodhouse, ‘having altered his appearance by growing a beard and wearing non-descript clothes.’
On one occasion, Woodhouse had bumped into him in the street and mistaken him for a stranger. ‘I met him accidentally and failed to recognise him. I knew he was employed in some risky enterprises, but refrained from enquiring his object . . . rumours of a modern Scarlet Pimpernel had reached us, but only subsequently were we able to confirm this.’
Woodhouse was not the only person to be fooled by Merrett’s disguise. ‘What was my surprise on entering Mr Merrett’s house to see my host transformed into a bearded, shabbily dressed Russian in top boots, who contrasted very much with the well dressed Englishman of two years ago.’ So wrote one member of the expatriate community.
Merrett was a born adventurer who welcomed situations of grave danger. Now, as a result of discussions between Mansfield Cumming and John Scale, he was to be assigned a more important role. He was charged with keeping the organisational structure of the courier system operating until such time as new agents could be infiltrated into Russia.
He was also to lead an audacious plan to smuggle out of Russia all the remaining British nationals living in the country. These were primarily businessmen and bankers who had declined to leave with the diplomats and whose companies had now been confiscated by the Bolsheviks. There were rumours that they were to be held hostage by the regime.
One of these businessmen asked Merrett if he was not worried about being caught by the Cheka, given that it would almost certainly lead to his execution. Merrett shrugged off the risk. ‘He laughingly replied that while the Bolsheviks were busy arresting him at the Moika, he was to be found in the country, and when they were after him in the country, he was to be found somewhere else.’
He was in fact arrested by Red Guards on at least one occasion, but managed to slip from their clutches. ‘Fortunately, I succeeded in escaping on my way to prison and was thereafter only able to avoid re-arrest by adopting disguises and sleeping in ever-changing and out of the way quarters,’ he wrote.
Amid all this evasion, Merrett started smuggling British nationals out of the country, right under the eyes of the Cheka. He would assemble little groups of them at a safe house in Petrograd and then place them in the hands of trusted couriers. These couriers, the surviving remnants of George Hill’s network, would lead them over the border into Finland.
One of the escaping businessmen asked Merrett what he should do if anyone stood in his way. Merrett’s response was characteristically blunt: ‘Knife him,’ he said.
Merrett eventually helped 247 British nationals to flee the country. His work became increasingly dangerous, for Cheka officers were continually on his trail. It was clear that he could not operate indefinitely in Russia without the backup of a trained operative.
The collapse of Mansfield Cumming’s Russian operations was soon to be followed by a further blow. Armistice was declared in November 1918, and in the weeks that followed, senior figures in Whitehall argued that there was no longer any need for an autonomous secret service.
Lord Curzon, Acting Foreign Secretary, was one of the sceptics. He informed his colleagues that Cumming’s organisation was ‘a luxury we could not afford in the present state of our finances as it did not produce value for the money spent on it.’
In the aftermath of war, Cumming’s bureau was increasingly targeted by the heavy guns. Both the Admiralty and the War Office proposed that his foreign espionage operations should now be combined with domestic security. There would be one amalgamated organisation that was to be dominated by military intelligence: Cumming would be demoted to a junior partner.
Cumming played his hand with skill in this crucial round. In a robust defence of his organisation, he argued that military intelligence officers were wholly unequipped to deal with peacetime espionage. ‘They have no knowledge or expertise of the matter at all,’ he wrote, ‘and are competent only to say what the military requirements will be.’
Nor did Cumming want to have anything to do with the War Office, whose staff had continued to poach his best agents throughout the final years of war. He was adamant that his secret service should remain as an autonomous bureau run by himself and answerable only to the Foreign Office.
A number of parliamentary committees met to discuss the issue. It was a critical time for Cumming for the very existence of his organisation was at stake. The first glimmer of good news came in January 1919, when the most important Cabinet sub-committee reported on its findings. It had made a close investigation into Cumming’s operations over the previous years and pronounced them to have been a success. Under his tenure, it concluded, ‘th
ere was an enormous growth in all kinds of secret operations abroad, involving the expenditure of very large sums of money.’
The expense had been justified by the results. The committee heaped praise upon Cumming, saying that information obtained by his agents ‘has been equal, if not superior, to that obtained by any other country engaged in the war.’
Vindicated by one committee, Cumming now found himself attacked by another. The Treasury was intent on tightening the purse strings and senior officials had set their sights on Whitehall Court. Cumming’s budget had been running at about £80,000 a month during wartime. Now, he was told that it would be slashed to just £65,000 a year.
This proved too much for Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for War. He had a high opinion of Cumming’s organisation and told his colleagues that ‘with the world in its present condition of extreme unrest and changing friendships and antagonisms . . . it is more than ever vital for us to have good and timely information.’
He reminded ministers that it had taken years for Cumming to build up his organisation. If the proposed budget cuts took place, all the hard work would be ‘swept away by the stroke of a pen.’ Furthermore, it would be ‘an act of the utmost imprudence to cripple our arrangements at the present, most critical time.’
Cumming’s undercover operations in Russia proved a critical factor when ministers finally came to take decisions. The world was indeed embarked on an uncertain course, as Churchill had said, and Bolshevik Russia remained a threat to global peace. It seemed foolhardy to jeopardise the existence of an organisation that had proved adept at acquiring intelligence from inside an enemy country.
It was decided that Cumming’s bureau would be left untouched and that ‘all anti-Bolshevik work abroad’ – including all underground operations in Russia – would be his responsibility alone.
Cumming had been fortunate to secure Churchill’s backing; he also had the continued support of Charles Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Hardinge reminded sceptical ministers that Cumming’s work was ‘exceedingly technical, requiring very special qualities which are not easy to find.’ He added that the Foreign Office had been fortunate to find a chief who had ‘a unique experience of secret service both in peace and war.’
Cumming had won a decisive victory and he looked to the future with renewed optimism. Just a few months later, he was able to inform Compton Mackenzie that ‘far from closing down, as we thought we should have to do after the war, we are actually expanding and we have any amount of work to do in the immediate future.’
There was to be one lasting change. In the aftermath of the war, Cumming’s organisation began increasingly to be referred to as the Secret Intelligence Service. The name was eventually officially adopted, and is retained by the service to this day (although it is more usually referred to as MI6 or Military Intelligence 6, the name it had first acquired during the First World War).
George Hill’s return to London in November 1918 gave him his first opportunity to meet ‘the Chief’. He felt unusually nervous as he climbed the stairs to the top floor of Whitehall Court and knocked on Cumming’s door. He had been forewarned that Cumming had a formidable presence. Now, as he entered the room, that presence quickly made itself felt.
‘For half a minute, he leisurely surveyed me and I have never been so thoroughly looked over before or since in my life.’ After an uncomfortably long silence, Cumming suddenly stood up, shook Hill’s hand and asked him to report on his work.
Cumming expressed his admiration for what Hill had achieved. He had proved a model agent, working undercover for many months without arousing any suspicion. Cumming’s reward was to recommend him for the Military Cross, and he also ensured that he was made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order.
‘He has attended Bolshevik meetings at night when street fighting was at its height,’ read the citation that accompanied Hill’s award, ‘passing back and forth through the Bolshevik fighting lines, and has been almost daily under fire without protection.’
Hill was invited back to Mansfield Cumming’s offices within a few days of his first meeting. This time, Sidney Reilly was also present – his first meeting with C since his return to England.
Reilly feared that he would be censured for his reckless behaviour in Moscow. Indeed, he had gone so far as to beg Lockhart to report favourably on his behalf.
Now he was relieved to discover that he had no need to worry about Cumming’s disapproval. Cumming remained impressed by the amount of intelligence that had been smuggled out of Russia and ensured that Reilly, like Hill, was awarded the Military Cross.
Cumming had summoned the two men to his offices because he had a new mission for them to undertake, one that would take them back onto Russian soil. The victorious Allies were about to begin delicate negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference and urgently required information on the fighting that was taking place in Southern Russia.
It was well known that an anti-Bolshevik army led by General Denikin was engaged in a violent offensive against Lenin’s Revolutionary forces. What Cumming needed was an accurate assessment of Denikin’s prospects. He also wanted to know the likelihood of him uniting forces with Admiral Kolchak, who was leading a second anti-Bolshevik army in Eastern Russia.
Hill asked Cumming when he and Reilly would need to leave England. He was looking forward to relaxing in England after such a stressful stint abroad and hoped to have at least a couple of weeks to catch up with friends and family. Cumming told him that their train was departing in two hours. There was no time to pack and precious little time for farewells.
Hill had a rare moment of hesitation, one that Cumming was quick to notice. He discussed the situation with him ‘much more like a friend than a senior officer’ and his kindness finally convinced Hill to go. Two hours later, he and Reilly were aboard the train and bound for Odessa. For Reilly, in particular, it was a most dangerous undertaking. If caught by the Bolsheviks, he would be executed.
Sidney Reilly and George Hill were not heading back to Russia alone: Cumming had recently hired a new recruit to his organisation, someone he had first met four months previously. His name was Paul Dukes and he was charged with the task of rebuilding Cumming’s shattered network inside Russia.
Dukes was a talented musician and former conductor with the Imperial Mariinsky Opera. He had been living in Russia since 1908 and had witnessed first-hand the revolution that had swept the Bolsheviks to power. Indeed he had been one of the trio of Englishmen who had first glimpsed Lenin on his return to Petrograd in 1917. He had also seen the civil unrest that accompanied Lenin’s first months in government.
Dukes’s intense eyes hinted at an inner sharpness, an ability to think on his feet and take clear decisions in moments of crisis. This natural intelligence, coupled with his fluency in the language, had already earned him unofficial employment in the service of the Foreign Office. It was almost certainly his vivid despatches about the Bolshevik revolution that brought him to the attention of Mansfield Cumming.
‘One day, when in Moscow,’ wrote Dukes, ‘I was handed an unexpected telegram. “Urgent” – from the British Foreign Office. “You are wanted at once in London”, it ran.’
He wasted no time in heeding the call. He took the train to Norway, bought himself passage across the North Sea and eventually arrived in Aberdeen. Here, he was met by a passport control officer who put him on the first train to London where a car was awaiting him.
Dukes was mystified by the summons. ‘Knowing neither my destination, nor the cause of my recall, I was driven to a building in a side street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square. “This way,” said the chauffeur, leaving the car.’
Dukes was led into a labyrinthine building with ‘rabbit-burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the roof.’ He was eventually ushered into a tiny room, the office of a colonel in uniform.
Dukes was not at liberty to provide his name when he came t
o publish his account, but it may well have been Colonel Freddie Browning, who was still employed as Cumming’s unofficial deputy.
After a warm handshake, the colonel informed Dukes that he was being offered a job in the Secret Intelligence Service. He was to return to Russia and remain there, ‘to keep us informed of the march of events.’
Dukes was taken aback by the unexpected job offer and blurted a series of objections. The colonel brushed these aside with a wave of his hand and told him to return to Whitehall Court on the following day. The arrival of a young secretary heralded the end of the interview: a bewildered Dukes was led back through the maze of passages.
‘Burning with curiosity and fascinated already by the mysticism of this elevated labyrinth, I ventured a query to my young female guide. “What sort of an establishment is this?” I said.’
Dukes noticed a twinkle in her eye. ‘She shrugged her shoulders and without replying pressed the button for the elevator. “Good afternoon,” was all she said as I passed in.’
Dukes’s induction into the Secret Intelligence Service was to become a great deal more mysterious on the following day. He was escorted back to the colonel’s office and provided with a more precise brief. He was to gather intelligence on Bolshevik policy and was also to investigate the level of popular support for Lenin’s regime.
‘As to the means whereby you gain access to the country,’ said the colonel, ‘under what cover you will live there, and how you will send out reports, we shall leave it to you . . . to make suggestions.’
The colonel excused himself and left the room for a moment in order to see if ‘the Chief’ was ready to give Dukes a more detailed brief. In the few minutes that he was left alone, Dukes had the opportunity to admire the bound volumes that adorned the shelves. Among them was a complete edition of Thackeray’s works in a decorative binding of green morocco. He took down Henry Esmond in order to look at the title page.
