A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy

by Deborah McDonald

  Moura and Djon’s cab turned onto the Palace Quay. Lights could be seen shining in the windows of the British Embassy – the electricity was working tonight; a happy omen, perhaps. Sir George Buchanan was giving a Christmas reception for the hundred or so staff and attachés of the Embassy, as well as for a select group of close Russian friends who had not yet fled the country. Moura and Djon von Benckendorff were among them.

  It was a poignantly British affair, marking Christmas on the day it would fall in Britain – which was 12 December here. This was Sir George’s way of bidding farewell to the country that had been his beloved second home for the past seven years. It had been a triumph, being given the Petrograd posting,6 but now it looked like it could be the death of him. He had always appeared frail, but now he was really unwell – ‘hopelessly worn out’, Denis Garstin thought.7 The stress of being thrust into the impossibly difficult position of having to represent the British government to the hostile Bolsheviks had driven him to a physical breakdown a couple of weeks ago, and he had applied for home leave. He was a broken man, whose mind no longer functioned properly.8 But he continued his work in the meantime and did his duty as host.

  Most of Moura’s close friends were there – Miriam Artsimovich and her fiancé, Bobby Yonin. Francis Cromie was present, despite being on alert over his submarine flotilla, still based at Reval (but not for much longer). Denis Garstin was there – ‘Garstino’, still busy in the propaganda office and still bright and cheerful despite the Bolsheviks having knocked flat a good deal of his enthusiasm for the socialist cause. And of course there was Meriel. She was distraught, knowing very well that when her father took up his leave in the New Year, they would be leaving Russia for good, and she was holding back her tears.9

  It was a strange evening, and a melancholy party, despite the concert and variety entertainment that had been laid on. The electricity held out, and the chandeliers blazed all night. There was a sit-down supper consisting of dishes miraculously conjured from virtually nothing by Sir George’s Italian cook, supplemented by tins of bully beef. There was dancing, lively conversation and laughter among the guests, who were determined to enjoy themselves, but the constant atmosphere of tension pervaded everything; all the attachés had loaded pistols in their pockets, and there were rifles and boxes of cartridges hidden in the chancery offices. Mobs had looted the Winter Palace again earlier that month, and there were fears that any social gathering could turn into a bloody siege in an instant. Meriel would recall later that ‘for the moment we tried to forget the ever-present lurking danger, the sadness of approaching good-byes, the desolation and want hidden behind the heavy red brocade curtains’.10

  When the evening drew towards its close, the British officers sang ‘God Save the King’. The Russians were deeply moved; one man turned to Meriel with tears in his eyes. ‘You don’t know what it means to hear your men sing that,’ he said, ‘while we Russians have no emperor and no country left.’11 When the song was over, Bobby Yonin sat at the piano, and the room filled with the slow, insistent opening chords of ‘Bozhe, Tsarya khrani’,‡ the Russian national anthem. A hush fell. Meriel glanced across at Moura and her husband. Djon’s face was drawn with such anguish, Meriel’s self-control gave way at last, and she cried.12

  Christmas Day

  In England it was January now, but in Russia it was the 25th of December, the day appointed for the British departure from Petrograd.

  There had been a fresh fall of snow in the night, and the embassy motor cars made heavy going of the short drive to the Finland station in the pre-dawn light. To Meriel’s eyes, depressed and grief-stricken, the station looked grubby and bleak. This was the place where Lenin had famously arrived when he returned from his exile in Switzerland to begin fomenting the great revolution. From here the trains ran to the north, into Finland. The British were going home by the overland route which avoided the dangerous German-infested waters of the Baltic.

  Just a handful were leaving today – the Buchanans, the heads of the military and naval missions, General Knox and Admiral Stanley, and a few of their attachés – and the Embassy would continue to exist, after a fashion, but without an ambassador. There was an atmosphere of defeat, a hauling-down of the flag.

  A group of the Buchanans’ friends came to see them off, including Denis Garstin, Francis Cromie and other members of the British missions who were staying behind. William the chasseur, who had driven the motor, was also remaining at the Embassy to manage its domestic staff. When Miss Buchanan gave him her hand, he couldn’t speak for emotion. Only three Russian friends had come – Moura was one, along with Miriam and Bobby. Most Russians were too scared to venture out on the streets or be seen publicly in company with the British Ambassador.13 Passing by the scowling Red Guard sentries at the station entrance, Sir George and Meriel both wondered if they would make it safely to Finland.

  Commissar for Foreign Affairs Leon Trotsky, with whom Sir George had suffered an extremely uneasy relationship during the past few months, had refused to reserve accommodation for them on the train. Sir George donated two bottles of his best Napoleon brandy to the station master, and sleeping berths were duly provided. Some things never changed, and the preciousness of brandy to a Russian was one of them.

  For Moura, the departure of her friends marked the end of an era. Her upbringing by Micky had given her a powerful affinity with the British; she was at ease with the language and strongly attached to her British friends. When she embraced Meriel, both their faces were wet with tears, and Meriel didn’t trust herself to speak. It was bitterly hard for Moura to see her mother country throwing away its cordial relationship with Britain, entering into a dark period of mistrust and hostility.

  There would no longer be an ambassador in Petrograd, but the Embassy would be kept in place, managed by Francis Lindley, counsellor under Sir George since 1915 and now chargé d’affaires. The British government, unable to condone what it saw as the Bolsheviks’ treason, was breaking off its official diplomatic links. However, it was maintaining a semi-official presence. A new man was coming out from London to be Britain’s ‘unofficial agent’ in Russia, whose task it would be to conduct diplomacy with Trotsky and the Bolsheviks. He was a gifted young fellow who had been a consul in Moscow until last summer, when he’d been sent home by Sir George after a scandalous affair with a French Jew, Madame Vermelle.14 Now, on the instructions of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, he was being sent back to Petrograd. His name was Lockhart.

  Moura might have been conscious of an era coming to an end, but what she didn’t know was that a new one – the most profoundly important of her life – was about to begin.

  It took time for the new socialist era to arrive.

  Through the winter, as the revolutionary year of 1917 gave way to the new Bolshevist year of 1918, the place of the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie remained in a state of limbo while the Bolsheviks focused on consolidating their grip on the country and arguing over what was to be done about Germany. The expropriation of lands had begun in the autumn, and most of the great country estates were now in the hands of the government, but private homes and personal wealth were still largely untouched. That would all change during the coming year.15

  Moura Benckendorff, all but alone now in Petrograd, began reverting to her core instinct – self-preservation. With the departure of so many of her friends, Djon back in her life, and no influence in the government, Moura was at her lowest. Her marriage was all but dead. There were political differences between Djon and Moura, as well as emotional ones. The earnest, sentimentally patriotic Djon mourned the loss of the Tsar, who was now living under house arrest in Tobolsk, Siberia, with the rest of the former imperial family. Moura, though she regretted the passing of her luxurious lifestyle, knew, like her father had, that the old system was corrupt and had brought about its own fall. Like many of her generation, she was in favour of democratic socialism.

  Moura and Djon argued frequently during those months after the Revoluti
on, but how much of it was politics and how much was Moura’s personal frustration and dissatisfaction with the dull confines of her new life was impossible to say.

  Having been betrayed by Russia, Djon von Benckendorff took refuge in his mother country. Estonia was socialist, and Yendel was vulnerable to the roaming gangs, but it was no more dangerous than Petrograd now, and Djon had close family there. What was more, with the balance of the peace negotiations tilted heavily in Germany’s favour, he hoped that Estonia might become independent, or at least be absorbed into monarchist Germany. Djon went to Yendel and settled down to make his life there.

  Moura was torn. Her life was in Petrograd. Her elderly mother was here, still living in the Zakrevsky apartment and no longer healthy enough to travel. What remnants Moura had of a social life were here. She had retained a British connection – and some personal independence – by taking a position as an interpreter at the Embassy. (Whispers soon began, suggesting that there was more to her role there than translating; her reputation for espionage continued to cling to her. But nothing was ever known for certain.) Most important, her children were here.

  As the new year began to unfold, Moura discovered an unexpected distraction from her troubles. At least, that was how it looked to begin with – a trifle, an entertaining diversion. She had no idea of the unfamiliar paths the diversion would lead to. Moura, who would do almost anything to survive, was on the brink of her most dangerous gamble, and an affair that would alter the course of her life. The woman for whom self-interest was paramount was about to discover self-sacrifice.

  Notes

  * Now part of Belarus.

  † Contraction of chrezvychaynaya komissiya, ‘extraordinary commission’.

  ‡ God Save the Tsar.

  4

  The British Agent

  January–February 1918

  17 January 1918

  There was a dead horse frozen into the snow near the corner where the Palace Quay opened onto the Troitskiy Bridge. It looked like it had been there for days. Lockhart regarded it despondently as he was driven past under the loom of the street-lamps. The poor beast pulling the sleigh that had brought him and his companions from the Finland station looked as if it too was on the brink of collapse. It was the same everywhere – the horses bone-thin, the people depressed, and the snow piling up on the roadways so that even the sleighs had heavy going.1

  Lockhart had been back in Russia less than a day and already he felt disheartened. This wasn’t the Petrograd he had last seen in the summer, when Kerensky was still struggling to hold down the lid on the soviets. Lockhart had been acting consul-general in Moscow at the time, an unusually elevated post for a man who wasn’t yet thirty. But then Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart was an unusual man.

  He was an adventurer, in the Victorian mould, the kind who shaped the British Empire. A Scotsman born into an ancient lineage of Scotsmen, Lockhart claimed proudly that he had ‘no drop of English blood’ in his veins.2 A man of daring, acute intelligence, charisma, skilled equally with a pen or a revolver, he had at least one debilitating weakness – women. He was capable of ruining himself over them. In his youth, a promising career in Malaya had been compromised by his involvement with the beautiful – and married – ward of a sultan. Forced to part from her, Lockhart wrote her pages of poems that ached with longing and regret.3

  In 1912 he was given a post as a vice-consul in Moscow. He took to Russia with prodigious enthusiasm, bathing himself in its culture and gorgeous language. He was also drawn into the seedier nightlife of the capital. In 1914, on a rash impulse, he returned to England and married a young Australian woman called Jean Turner, and brought her back to Moscow to live with him. While she struggled to adapt, Lockhart continued with his career, becoming immersed in the diplomatic and intellectual life of Moscow and Petrograd. He grew close to Moscow’s liberal elite, especially Mikhail Chelnokov, the Mayor of Moscow, who was a vital source of intelligence on the thinking of Russia’s progressive politicians. He fed his literary cravings on Tolstoy, and on the company of living writers like Hugh Walpole (who later took up a post in the Embassy’s propaganda section) and Maxim Gorky. Lockhart’s career was moving upward; he gradually became a favourite of Sir George Buchanan, and his perceptive reports on Russian life and politics were noticed by both the Foreign Office and the intelligence service.4

  As in Malaya, it was his taste for thrills and women that was his undoing. Having tried hard to curtail his disreputable socialising after his marriage, he was eventually sucked back into it. He was too fond of the night-restaurants where gypsy music played and the atmosphere was rich with sensual promise. Madame Vermelle wasn’t his first sexual liaison, nor even his first with a married woman. But it was the first of his affairs to reach the ears of Sir George. In early September 1917, to forestall a scandal, the Ambassador regretfully sent young Lockhart home on ‘sick leave’.5

  Six weeks later, while Lockhart was dividing his time between writing reports on Russia’s political situation for the Foreign Office and relaxing on his uncle’s Highland estate, the October Revolution exploded.

  The British government, appalled by the treasonous behaviour of the Russian lower orders, and dreading that Russia would withdraw from the war, didn’t know what to do. Within the circles of the Foreign Office and the War Cabinet, the detailed and percipient reports written by Mr R. H. Bruce Lockhart attracted notice, and he was called upon to elaborate, and to give his opinion on future actions. Should His Britannic Majesty’s Government maintain contact with the Bolsheviks? Criminal insurrectionists they might be, but they were now the de facto government of Russia. What was to be done?

  During December 1917 Lockhart was dined, courted and interrogated by scores of politicians and diplomats. Then, on the last Friday before Christmas, he was summoned to 10 Downing Street.6 He was accompanied by a gathering of experts on Russia, including intelligence officers Colonel H. F. Byrne and Colonel John Buchan.7 They were taken to the Cabinet Room, where a meeting of the War Cabinet had just ended. Ministers were standing about, chatting. Prime Minister David Lloyd George, looking old and tired but still fizzing with energy, was standing by the window, arguing with Lord Curzon (whom he famously despised), and gesticulating with his pince-nez. When Lockhart was presented, the Prime Minister peered at him intently. ‘Mr Lockhart? The Mr Lockhart?’ Everyone in the room turned to stare. ‘From the wisdom of your reports, I expected an elderly gentleman with a grey beard!’ While Lockhart stood there feeling self-conscious and looking foolish, the PM patted him on the back. ‘Pitt was prime minister when he was younger than you are,’ he said, and invited the ex-consul to a chair.

  The Welshman and the Scotsman, with no drop of English blood between them, sat down to business.

  Lloyd George could see what most members of his Cabinet (many of whom sat in on the interview) could not. Great Britain must negotiate with the Bolsheviks. There were men present who resisted the idea in the strongest terms. The Bolsheviks were not to be trusted, they said. Lord Robert Cecil, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was leader of a large and vocal faction who insisted that the Bolshevik Revolution was a German plot to knock Russia out of the war. Trotsky, it was rumoured, was in fact a German agent. Was he not at this moment with the Germans, negotiating an end to the war? Why, there was even said to be secret intelligence evidence proving that Trotsky was working for the German government.

  The Prime Minister didn’t believe it, and neither did Lockhart. Sweeping aside all opposition, Lloyd George rose to his feet and delivered his judgement. Russia was in chaos, he declared, and whatever else happened, it was essential that the British get in touch with Lenin and Trotsky. Such a mission would require tact, knowledge and understanding. ‘Mr Lockhart,’ he said, ‘is obviously a man whose right place at this moment is in St Petersburg and not in London.’

  And on that, he brought the meeting to an end.8

  They had their man, but it took time, and many more meetings, to dec
ide what his duties were to be. Lockhart could be given no official authority. The situation was far too delicate. Officially, the British government was diplomatically incommunicado with the Bolshevik government. Therefore Lockhart was to be Britain’s ‘unofficial agent’ in Petrograd. He would be head of a mission, with a small staff under him, but he would have no powers, no authority. All he could do was attempt to talk to Lenin and Trotsky – to open up communication, in secret and entirely off the record. It was quite likely that they would refuse to recognise him or grant him the proper diplomatic privileges. On the face of it, Lockhart was being put in an impossible situation.

  In the days before his departure, he met with another man in an impossible situation – Maxim Litvinov, the Bolshevik Ambassador to Great Britain. Litvinov was a bewildered man. He had been residing in exile in London at the time of the Revolution, and had been startled to hear of his ambassadorial appointment through the newspapers.9 He was not officially recognised by Britain, had no staff and no proper embassy (surreally, the old Russian Embassy and Consulate were still carrying on as if the Revolution hadn’t happened). Accordingly, his meeting with Lockhart was held over lunch in a Lyons’ Corner House.10

  The two men were joined by British intelligence expert Rex Leeper (who had been at the Downing Street meeting) and the Russian journalist Theodore Rothstein. A socialist radical, Rothstein hated British capitalism but feared German militarism more.11 He had a lively, quixotic temperament, and helped the meeting run cordially. There, on the Lyons’ luncheon table, Litvinov obligingly wrote Lockhart a letter of introduction to Trotsky: ‘I know him personally,’ he wrote, stretching the truth in his eagerness to oblige, ‘as a thoroughly honest man who understands our position and sympathises with us.’ In the same letter Litvinov pleaded with Trotsky for a bit of proper support for himself, and for his telegrams to be replied to; it was difficult to be a diplomat when even one’s own government acted as if one didn’t exist. The letter completed, the four men resumed their lunch. Studying the dessert menu, the Russian was delighted to see ‘diplomat pudding’ listed; he ordered it, only to be told that it was all gone. Litvinov shrugged philosophically. ‘Not recognised even by Lyons,’ he sighed.12