Russian Roulette

by Giles Milton

He worked around the clock on planning the logistics for his invasion, acquiring a huge quantity of military hardware. This included a ‘large quantity of arms, field equipment, training personnel and plenty of money.’

  By November 1920, everything was ready. The weaponry was secretly loaded onto trains, along with two companies of crack Red Army troops. Their Soviet commander was a veritable giant: ‘nearly seven foot tall,’ wrote Roy, ‘and proportionately broad.’

  The initial destination of this travelling force was Tashkent; this was to become Roy’s principal base. But once the nucleus of his Army of Liberation had been recruited and trained, he would move swiftly to stage two of the planned invasion: ‘the establishment of the advance base at Kabul, and operational bases on the Indian frontier.’

  After months of secret talks and shady negotiations, the offensive was finally under way.

  While Roy was busily acquiring equipment for his army, the Comintern had been engaged in propaganda warfare on a scale never hitherto undertaken. It organised a conference at Baku, on the shores of the Caspian, with the aim of bringing together Soviet revolutionaries and Islamic jihadis and uniting them in a common purpose.

  Some 1,800 delegates were invited to the week-long rally which opened in September, 1920. Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Comintern, travelled from Moscow to Baku in order to declare the beginnings of a holy crusade that was intended to sweep away the democracies of the West.

  Zinoviev was already infamous as a fiery demagogue, one whose speeches could set a crowd alight. In Baku, he surpassed all his previous performances with an oration that electrified his audience. Rising from his seat on the rostrum, he cast his eyes over an auditorium that was heaving with expectant delegates. Some were dressed in the khaki uniform of the Red Army. Many more were decked in the colourful khalats and headscarves of Central Asia. All fell silent as Zinoviev launched into his speech with a rousing call to arms.

  ‘Comrades! Brothers!’ he roared. ‘The time has now come when you can set about organising a true people’s holy war against the robbers and oppressors. The Communist International [Comintern] turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them: “Brothers, we summon you to a holy war, in the first place against British imperialism!” ’

  His war cry was greeted with tumultuous applause. Indeed, the shouting and cheering was so loud that his voice was completely drowned out and it was some minutes before he could continue.

  ‘May this declaration made today be heard in London, in Paris, and in all the cities where the capitalists are still in power,’ he thundered. ‘May they heed this solemn oath sworn by the representatives of tens of millions of toilers of the East, that the rule of the British oppressors shall be no more in the East.’

  This was greeted by another roar of approval. Fired with enthusiasm, the delegates unsheathed their swords and scimitars. Some even pulled out their revolvers and started brandishing them in the air. As the roar of the crowd increased in volume, the band pumped out ‘The Internationale’, playing it three times in succession. As it did so, the delegates shouted ‘Long live the Comintern! Long live those who have united the East!’

  The Times would later carry a report on the alarming nature of the congress. Sneering in its tone, it warned of the threat that the Comintern posed to the world at large and reserved much of its contempt for Zinoviev and Bela Kun, the Hungarian revolutionary who had accompanied him to Baku.

  ‘Of all the strange things which have happened in the last few years,’ it said, ‘none has been stranger than the spectacle of two Jews, one of them a convicted pickpocket, summoning the world of Islam to a jihad.’

  Roy and his Red Army troops faced a long and dangerous train journey to Tashkent, for parts of the route were only nominally under the control of Bolshevik forces.

  ‘Roving detachments of White Guards, who had taken to banditry, still infested the steppes beyond the Ural River,’ wrote Roy. ‘They frequently tore up the railway line and held up trains to plunder.’ He was only too aware that his own trains, with their cargo of weaponry and money, would make an enticing target.

  It took two days to reach the Volga River and another day and a half before they arrived at Orenburg, on the border with Turkestan. From here, it was a further one thousand miles across the bleak landscape of the Kirghiz Steppes.

  Roy had been granted the rare privilege of travelling in the salon car of the Russian Imperial Train, now reserved for senior commissars and dignitaries. Its velvet drapes and luxurious cushions gave the illusion of comfort, but afforded little protection against the biting cold. He was relieved when they finally pulled into Tashkent after seven days of travel.

  Roy stepped onto the platform and was greeted by General Sokolnikov. The general was to help him establish a military base and training camp for his projected army.

  But first, Roy was taken to the building that was to be his Tashkent headquarters. It was centrally located and large enough to house his staff. But like so many of the city’s larger villas, it had been ransacked and gutted in the violence that followed the revolution. The furniture had been smashed, the electric wires cut and the water pipes had ruptured in the freezing weather.

  ‘A few kerosene lamps, feebly aided by flickering candles, tried in vain to dispel the sepulchral darkness of a deserted house,’ wrote Roy. ‘The vast porcelain stoves had not been lit since the arrival of the intense winter cold.’

  He and his men were undeterred by the lack of comfort. In fact, they derived an ascetic pleasure from the hardships of revolution. ‘The joy of participating in the liberation of peoples downtrodden for centuries . . .’ wrote Roy, ‘added to the richness of life.’

  His first task was to open a Tashkent office of the Comintern. This was a key ingredient for future success, since the Comintern was funding his revolutionary activity. Its central role was signalled by the building selected as its headquarters. It was the mansion that had formerly belonged to the Russian Imperial Bank, a building whose vaults still contained the viceregal crown jewels and all the most precious (and now requisitioned) possessions of the court nobility.

  Roy found a profound significance in the choice of such a building. ‘[It was] as if the valuable booty of the Revolution was placed under the custody of the world proletariat, and the honour of holding the trust fell on me.’

  Roy himself presided over the weekly meetings of the Comintern, occupying the throne of the deposed imperial dignitary for whom it had originally been made. It was richly carved in rare wood, upholstered in crimson velvet and bore the Romanov coat of arms embroidered in gold.

  Roy was all too aware that he was working to an extremely tight time frame. He wanted his army ready within months, so that the thrust into India could begin while the country’s defences were still weak. He immediately set to work on establishing a military academy with training facilities, firing ranges and lecture rooms for teaching propaganda. This was achieved within a matter of weeks and Roy soon found himself his first set of recruits. They were a group of Pathan deserters from the Indian Army, along with a small band of Persian revolutionaries.

  The men were swiftly enrolled into the Tashkent academy and trained to use Soviet light artillery. ‘Formidable with rifles, they quickly learned to handle machine-guns and operate the artillery.’

  Within weeks, they were formed into an irregular brigade. ‘It was the first International Brigade of the Red Army,’ wrote Roy, ‘and the experiment was a success.’

  Other deserters were also enlisted and drafted into an irregular force that began patrolling the Trans-Caspian railway.

  Many expressed the desire to train as pilots for Roy’s planned air force. He had brought a large number of dismantled planes to Tashkent, aware that they were certain to play an important role in any assault by land. The havoc wreaked by British planes in the Anglo-Afghan war of 1919 had demonstrated the efficacy of airborne attack in the treacherous terrain of the North-West Frontier.

  ‘To learn aviation w
as the general craze,’ wrote Roy. ‘There was a general scramble; everyone wanted to learn flying.’ At least one of those who received training at Tashkent later went on to become a flying ace in the Red Army’s aviation unit.

  Roy was delighted by the progress that was being made. ‘A step was taken towards the creation of a nucleus of the army to liberate India,’ he wrote. This ‘nucleus’ was initially commanded by Russians but it was not long before Indians were also raised to officer rank, encouraging yet more deserters to sign up.

  ‘The International Brigade soon became an effective auxiliary of the Red Army,’ wrote Roy. Armed with machine-guns, they began ambushing and killing British Indian troops on the Persian border and proved highly skilled in guerrilla warfare.

  ‘Persian groups of the International Brigade could penetrate deep into their country in various disguises and harass the flank of the British Army on the road south of Meshed.’ These were exactly the skills needed for waging war inside India.

  Roy was filled with confidence and now set to work on recruiting from the ranks of the 50,000 itinerant Muhajir that were drifting through the region. These were from a very different background to the deserters from the British-Indian Army.

  ‘A refractory lot,’ wrote Roy, ‘moved only by religious fanaticism.’ He drafted an initial group of fifty into his growing army and was taken aback by their Islamic fervour. They had little interest in the revolutionary struggle. Rather, their motivation for fighting the hated British was ‘the possibility of going to heaven by laying down their lives in jihad.’

  They were so diligent in their prayers that one of Roy’s officers quipped that they were not creating an ‘Army of Liberation’ but an ‘Army of God’. The name stuck. Henceforth, even Roy began to refer to his army as the Army of God. It gave the impression that destiny was on their side.

  Roy’s energies were focussed on British India, but he had also been charged with helping the Red Army to mop up resistance in the vast hinterlands of Turkestan. The emirate of Bokhara, to which Frederick Bailey had made his escape, had been stormed and captured by the Red Army just two months before Roy’s arrival in Tashkent.

  The grizzled amir had been forced to flee for his life, ‘dropping favourite dancing boy after favourite dancing boy in his flight,’ according to one who was there.

  Roy now established a revolutionary government in the former emirate and fired everyone associated with the deposed amir. But one vestige of the old regime remained in place: the amir’s four hundred concubines refused to leave the sanctuary of the palace.

  Roy sent them a message informing them that ‘the revolution had freed them from the bondage of the harem and they could go wherever they liked.’ But still none of them showed any inclination to leave the safety of that bondage. Eventually, Roy ordered the harem to be stormed by a band of his most loyal troops.

  The young men launched their assault with considerable relish, as well they might: Roy had said that each soldier who took part in the attack could take home one of the concubines as ‘booty.’

  He presided over the division of the spoils like a benevolent uncle, claiming (but offering no evidence) that the ladies of the harem had enjoyed the attack as much as the men. ‘[It] was a new experience to women whose erotic life naturally could not be satisfied by a senile old man.’

  The reality was almost certainly more sinister. Even Roy admitted that the concubines ‘behaved like scared rabbits’. They must have been absolutely terrified to have their secluded existence shattered by a band of ill-disciplined and sexually frustrated soldiers.

  Roy’s ultimate goal was British India, but first he had to break the resistance in the mountainous Ferghana region. This was dangerous territory – a string of high-altitude valleys that lay one hundred miles to the east of Tashkent. The Turkman rebels hiding out there proved highly skilled in guerrilla warfare, for they were toughened by years of fighting and were also familiar with the terrain.

  The assault was led by the Red Army, which struck in two fighting columns. ‘While the frontal attack pushed the rebels back over a much longer distance,’ wrote Roy, ‘the other columns struck at their main base only a few miles from the Indian frontier.’

  He was there to witness their victory and he was also there when the army swept southwards and ceremoniously planted the red flag on the highest summit of the Pamir Mountains. It was an emotional moment; Roy now stood at the gates of India and the subcontinent was stretched out before him like a vast oriental carpet.

  ‘Standing on the roof of the world,’ he wrote, ‘I looked at India through a field glass.’

  But unbeknown to Roy, India was also watching him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WINNER TAKES ALL

  Manabendra Roy had been under observation for nearly five years by the time he pitched up in Tashkent.

  He was known to hide behind a number of aliases, including Mr White, Father Martin and Roberto Allen, his most recent incarnation. He was also known to have been involved in illicit gun-running during the First World War.

  The viceroy, Frederick Thesiger, the 3rd Baron Chelmsford, was seriously alarmed by the danger posed by Roy and the Comintern. He knew that their initial goal was the North-West Frontier Province, an increasingly volatile region whose Muslim tribesmen were certain to extend a warm welcome to Roy’s soldiers.

  If the Army of God successfully captured Peshawar, which was by no means impossible, then Roy would have a base from which to advance south-eastwards towards the Punjab, a distance of some 250 miles. Here, he was equally certain to be welcomed by the local population. The Punjab was suffering serious and continued unrest in the wake of the Amritsar Massacre.

  The viceroy’s initial response to the crisis was to order an immediate increase in expenditure on espionage. This led to a boost in the number of staff in the Peshawar intelligence bureau ‘which is specially charged with the detection of Bolshevik agents.’

  The viceroy also established a new bureau in Quetta, less than fifty miles from the Afghan border. This, too, was to deal directly with the Bolshevik threat.

  His next step was to send agents directly to Tashkent, in order that they could monitor Roy’s activities at close quarters. It was to prove extremely dangerous work. One of these agents had the misfortune to be captured by Roy and was summarily executed.

  In spite of the risks, such operations were deemed vital to the security of India. ‘All authorities concerned are alive to the importance of intercepting Bolshevik agents and literature,’ wrote the viceroy.

  This could not be done from India itself. ‘With our vast frontier we must rely in the main on the evil being tapped at its source by means of intelligence systems at all chief centres of Bolshevik activities.’

  As news of the Army of God filtered back to India, the viceroy took the decision to establish a specialist anti-Bolshevik unit that was primarily involved in dirty tricks. As such, its work was remarkably similar to that which had been undertaken by Wilfrid Malleson and his agents.

  ‘Work has now been co-ordinated by officers specially appointed for counter-propaganda, co-ordination of intelligence, both internal and external and organisational measures to keep Bolshevik emissaries and propaganda out of India.’

  It was not long before this unit intercepted the first delivery of weapons to India – a consignment of 150 automatic pistols. Shortly afterwards, a large quantity of revolvers and ammunition was also seized. Unbeknown to Roy, the net was closing in on his Army of God.

  The net was also closing in on the Comintern, although no one inside Zinoviev’s organisation was aware that Mansfield Cumming was eavesdropping on its activities.

  Even government ministers in London were unaware of the extent and reach of Cumming’s espionage operations. The work of his agents had become so clandestine in the previous months that only members of his own staff were privy to what was taking place.

  In the aftermath of Paul Dukes’s return to London, Cumming had moved
into a new, more secretive headquarters. He relocated his offices from Whitehall Court to an anonymous villa at Number One, Melbury Road in Holland Park, West London.

  With its bay windows and giant chimneys, Number One looked like any other house in the street. But Cumming, its ostensible owner, was to receive far more colourful visitors than any of his neighbours. Curious residents must have twitched their curtains and wondered how this eccentric old gentleman came to have such an eclectic collection of friends.

  Cumming had his living quarters on the upper floor of the house, while the downstairs rooms were turned into offices and workshops. It was the perfect set-up: here in Melbury Road he could create ‘new extensions to my organisation as can be kept separate and distinct from the Main Bureau and to work from this central office any scheme or project that requires absolute secrecy.’

  Secrecy had always been of paramount importance to Cumming. ‘[The] first, last and most necessary essential of a S[ecret] S[ervice] is that it should be SECRET,’ he wrote in one of his notes on espionage. He said that this was ‘the first thing to be forgotten in any scheme and the last thing to be remembered in putting it into practice.’

  Ever since his appointment to the job in 1909, Cumming had made secrecy the guiding principle of his life. Indeed, he had delighted in wrapping himself in a cloak of anonymity. He continued to hide behind his acronym, C, and never wrote publicly about his work. He once joked that if he ever published his autobiography, it would be quarto, bound in vellum and consisting of 400 pages – all of them blank.

  His office diary offers few clues about his daily routine in the troubled period that followed Dukes’s return to London. It contains little more than a list of meetings with Whitehall civil servants. But a couple of the entries are more beguiling and hint at the clandestine work that was still being undertaken by his agents.

  ‘Promised Jack £750 down, £750 on his return from Moscow, £500 if his report [is] exceptional, on the understanding that he attends the conference of the 3rd International [the Comintern]’. So reads one of the cryptic entries in Cumming’s diary.