She would become much more than that – infinitely more. For the time being, Lockhart and Moura made a little social heaven for themselves in the midst of the reigniting war and the gloom of the impoverished city.
Notes
* Now Helsinki.
† Gregorian date. Russia had switched calendars on 31 January; the next day was 14 February.
5
‘What Children We Were’
February–March 1918
The snow glowed a faint blue under the light of the waning moon. All was still, not a soul about, just the silent light on the soft snow, the star-dusted vault overhead, and the rare peace of the city at night. Occasional gunshots could be heard in the distance, but otherwise it was quiet.
Standing close, Moura and Lockhart looked back across the frozen Neva at the lights glittering along the Palace Quay. The British Embassy beside the Troitskiy Bridge, further along the Winter Palace. In between stood the mansions where Lockhart had his flat and headquarters. The lights were few, and in every shadow there was danger, but in their memories they would recall moments like this as precious idylls.
It had become their practice, as the first weeks passed and the regular dinner parties no longer provided enough of each other’s company, to take a sleigh and drive along the banks of the Neva.1 They would go in the evening, and head out across the bridges to the islands, where the city sprawled out over the river delta – Vasilyevsky Island, where the university and the stock exchange were, Krestovsky Island with its pleasure gardens and yacht club, or the huge Petrogradsky Island, the city’s original heart, under whose shoulder nestled the Petropavlovskaya fortress.
All these places had been the playgrounds, institutions and residences of the ruling classes for the past two hundred years, ever since Peter the Great decided to build his port city here, on land wrested from the Swedes. Hundreds of thousands of serfs had laid the roads, dug the canals, laboured on the bridges and piled up the palaces and mansions, and tens of thousands had died doing it. Now their descendants had claimed it all back.
It could be dangerous to be out after dark. People with sense never went out alone, and they walked in the middle of the street to avoid alleys and doorways. Lockhart always carried a revolver in his pocket, with his hand constantly resting on its grip.2 But these two young people had little regard for risk, Moura especially. Lockhart’s ardent nature was getting the better of him, and he was capable of careering full-tilt to destruction for the sake of gratifying it. This woman fascinated and transfixed him.
Moura kept her thoughts and feelings to herself in those early weeks. Their sleigh-rides were moments of carelessness snatched from the political tide that was rising around them. But something was changing in her. She had never felt any particular devotion towards any man. Her fling with Engelhardt had meant little to her – the act of a stifled teenager yearning to escape. Kerensky had been a misjudged bid for survival. Djon she had married because he was a portal into the life of excitement and glamour she craved, but there had never been any depth of feeling; now she had reached a point where she felt contaminated by his touch. It was a relief when he fled to Estonia.
All the other handsome, dashing, attractive men who flocked around her had failed to snare her feelings. There were a few – Denis Garstin and Francis Cromie in particular – for whom she felt affection, but none inspired any romantic feeling, let alone love.
But this man, this Lockhart, with his rather prissy mouth and protruding ears, who described himself as ‘broken-nosed, with a squat, stumpy figure and a ridiculous gait’,3 was different somehow. Certainly, he was a man who made no secret of his desire. On their pleasure drives, with their sleigh speeding along, Lockhart would take advantage of their close confinement to try to kiss her. She didn’t respond; instead she sat, ‘strangely thrilled, bewildered and a little frightened before the strange feeling that subconsciously I felt growing in me’.4
It would be some time before she put a name to that unaccustomed feeling. And if she ever managed to understand why she felt it, she never wrote it down or confided it to anyone. It was true that Lockhart had a presence that commanded attention – as she did herself – and a compelling gaze. He was a man one either loved or detested. One jealous rival called him a ‘contemptible little bounder’, while some in the Foreign Office regarded him as little better than a traitor.5 But nobody could doubt his talents. From the very first he valued Moura for her knowledge and her intellect, which were both considerable. A later lover, who was inclined to be disdainful about the loose, ‘Russian’ manner of her thoughts, admitted that her mind was ‘active, full and shrewdly penetrating’ with ‘streaks of extraordinary wisdom’. She could ‘illuminate a question suddenly like a burst of sunshine on a wet February day’.6
For Lockhart, carrying the burden of Great Britain’s relations with the vast power of Russia, illuminating wisdom was a commodity without price. He was a superbly confident young man, and inclined to trust his own wisdom, but he would take all the shrewd penetration he could get – especially when it came from a person with Moura’s other attractions.
Perhaps that was what had woken the strange, dormant feeling that was stirring in her now, as she stood close beside Lockhart, gazing out over the moonlit snow-city. Until this moment Moura – as her friends and relations saw her – had stood for high society, fun, mystique: a hostess with magnetic charm, a singer of haunting gypsy melodies, a taunter of lovestruck men; nobody had taken her for a source of wisdom.
If she wasn’t careful, if this feeling wasn’t kept in check, sooner or later Lockhart would make another of his attempts to kiss her and she wouldn’t resist. And who could tell where that might lead, what unknown feelings that might unlock?
Their conversations already sailed close to the brink of deeper intimacy. They joked about ‘Bolshevik marriage’7 – the dismantling of the institution of matrimony that the revolutionary feminists were calling for. None called more stridently than Alexandra Kollontai, the new People’s Commissar for Social Welfare, who advocated a culture of sexual liberation, where women and men would be free to have lovers and friends as they chose, and thereby break down the bourgeois system which kept married women in servitude. Her ideas ran foul of Lenin – who was in some ways a staunch conservative – and weren’t received well by working-class women.8 But her free-love ideas titillated the liberal elite. To Lockhart and Moura, who were tip-toeing out to the very edge of bourgeois courtship like explorers on an ice floe, it was an exhilarating and amusing subject for conversation. But – at least as far as Moura was concerned – not for action.9 For now there were little parties with their friends and sleigh-drives along the river and out to the islands, and the promise of something more, always a little out of reach.
‘What children we were then,’ Moura would recall, looking back on this magical time, ‘what old, old people we are now.’10 Just eight months had gone by when she wrote those words; eight months in which both their lives were transformed. If they hadn’t had each other, they might never have survived; but then, if they hadn’t had each other, they might never have been launched into the terrible, wonderful nightmare at all.
The German army, vast and unstoppable, was pushing the frontier eastward day by day. It was just a matter of time before they would be in Petrograd. The Russian army, depleted by Trotsky’s demobilisation and his ‘no peace, no war’ policy, fell back towards their homeland. Many of them – the Latvians, Ukrainians and other men from the empire’s outer nations – had already seen their homelands consumed by the advance. The Bolsheviks argued among themselves and tried frantically to negotiate, but the Germans were resolute – all conquered territories were to be ceded to Germany, and then there would be peace. No negotiations. And in the meantime they went on conquering more.
Lockhart’s mission, less than a month old, looked like failing. His overriding purpose in Russia was to persuade the Bolsheviks to stay in the war. Sooner or later, the Central Committee would agree
to swallow Germany’s terms, and it would all be over. On Sunday 24 February he forced an emergency meeting with Trotsky, who was holed up in his office in the Smolny Institute, the former school ‘for noble maidens’ which had been requisitioned as the Bolshevik headquarters. Lockhart found it a bizarre place; the doors still bore the plaques denoting girls’ dormitories, linen stores, classrooms – but the Bolsheviks had made it into a sty. Unwashed soldiers and workmen lounged everywhere, litter and cigarette butts were all over the floors.11
Trotsky – whose office was an island of order and cleanliness among the filth – was in a towering rage. Having demanded to know whether Lockhart had any message from London (he hadn’t), Trotsky railed against the Allies, especially the British, for their intrigues in Russia, blaming them for the country’s situation. The allegations that Trotsky was a German agent were still being bruited about by the diplomatic missions, together with the patently fabricated evidence. Lockhart winced inside; he had received a message from the Foreign Office that very day, in which the damned fool Lord Robert Cecil was still expressing these very suspicions. Trotsky had a pile of the incriminating documents on his desk, and he thrust them angrily at Lockhart, who was already painfully familiar with them – every Allied mission in Petrograd had seen copies. A few months later it would be proven that all the documents, which supposedly came from a variety of sources all over Europe, had all been concocted on a single typewriter. But still the anti-Bolshevik hotheads believed the claims.12
Lockhart tried to laugh the matter off, but Trotsky wasn’t having it. ‘Your Foreign Office does not deserve to win a war,’ he fumed, sickened by Britain’s vacillating policy on Russia. ‘Your Lloyd George is like a man playing roulette and scattering chips on every number.’13 Lockhart couldn’t help but agree. In his opinion, Britain should either recognise the Bolsheviks and do business with them before they had a chance to make friends with Germany, or come out and make war on them in earnest. This constant indecision would just lead to disaster for Russia and for Europe.
The meeting ended with a promise. Although Russia would have to accept the Germans’ terms, and the peace treaty would be signed, Trotsky believed the treaty would not be honoured. The Bolsheviks had no intention, he said, of letting bourgeois, monarchist Germany walk off with a third of Russia’s territory. The peace, once signed, would not last long. It was a morsel of reassurance for the British.
But private promises would make little difference to the immediate course of events. To the outside world, it was clear that there would be peace between Germany and Russia. Therefore the time had come for the Allied governments to withdraw their embassies – or what was left of them – from Russia. The day fixed for departure was Thursday 28 February. Lockhart had the task of arranging exit visas for the British personnel. He went with an armful of passports to be stamped. Some of the military personnel were suspected by the revolutionary authorities of conducting covert anti-Bolshevik activities, and Lockhart had to invoke Trotsky’s name (and some subterfuge) to get all the passports approved and stamped.
His own was not among them. Despite the pressure on him to accept that his mission was not only doomed but misguided, Lockhart wouldn’t be leaving with the rest. Telegrams arrived from the Foreign Office warning him to abandon his cosy relationship with the Bolsheviks. His wife Jean wrote imploring him to change tack or his career would be ruined. People were vilifying him. Although Lloyd George had continued to support Lockhart in Cabinet and to press for recognition of the Bolsheviks,14 he was losing ground to the consensus. Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, and his deputy Robert Cecil led the anti-Bolshevik party. General Knox, who was now advising the Cabinet on Russia, had called Lockhart’s ‘flirtation’ with the Bolsheviks ‘wrong and immoral’. Another officer with experience in Russia gave his view that Lockhart was ‘a fool or a traitor’ and ought to be hanged.15
And yet Lockhart had elected to stay, and believed he had good reasons for doing so. The peace treaty hadn’t been signed yet, and he had faith in Trotsky’s promise of a short-lived peace.16
What Lockhart had no way of knowing – although perhaps he should have guessed – was that the Bolsheviks were misleading him. Lloyd George wasn’t the only one playing freely with his roulette chips. Lockhart was a valuable asset to Lenin and Trotsky, a man with powerful connections, and they were keen to make use of him. The other Allies had unofficial agents in Petrograd – such as the larger-than-life American Raymond Robins. An emotional, dramatic man and a good friend of Lockhart’s, Robins was officially in Russia as head of the American Red Cross, but in fact was acting as the United States’ unofficial agent. But neither he nor any other agent had been personally despatched by their countries’ leaders. Lockhart was unique: a direct conduit to the British Prime Minister. Robins had no such access to President Woodrow Wilson. Therefore it was vital for Lenin and Trotsky that they maintain a good relationship with the British agent. He was their only hope of influencing the Allies directly. The Bolsheviks were anxious to prevent Japan intervening in Siberia, so Japan’s allies must be reassured that Russia was not going to become friendly with Germany or remain out of the war permanently. And so they fed Lockhart promises that the war would resume sooner or later – promises which they could be sure would fly straight to Whitehall, Downing Street and the War Cabinet.17
Trotsky’s opposition to making terms with Germany was genuine enough, but the real will of the Revolution lay ultimately with Lenin. The day after the embassies left Petrograd, Lockhart had his first meeting with the great leader, in his spartan office in the Smolny Institute.18 At first sight he was inclined to be amused by Lenin’s almost comical appearance – the bald, chubby-faced little fellow was ‘more like a provincial grocer than a leader of men’ – but he immediately recognised the power in him. Whereas Trotsky was ‘all temperament’, Lockhart found Lenin coldly authoritative – he was ‘impersonal and almost inhuman. His vanity was proof against all flattery.’19 Trotsky was present at the meeting, and Lockhart was struck by his silent obeisance. Behind closed doors in Party meetings, Lenin was strongly in favour of a lasting peace with Germany – indeed, if it had been solely up to him, without the electoral power of the Central Committee to thwart him, he’d have had peace months ago – but for the time being he allowed Lockhart to believe that the peace – if signed – might not last. Indeed, Trotsky admitted, there was a genuine fear that the Germans, given Russia’s weakness, might invade, or force the Bolsheviks out and install a bourgeois puppet government.
And so Lockhart went on believing that he was doing the right thing, and that his diplomatic mission wasn’t dead.
Politics and diplomacy weren’t the only reasons he wished to stay in Russia, possibly not even the principal ones; they were just the reasons he was willing to admit to publicly. Privately, there was a much more compelling reason to stay. Moura. His feelings about her were moving beyond mere fancy and romantic fascination, evolving into something that sleigh-rides and stolen kisses could not satisfy.
Moura was in her element during those days, as February gave way to March. She was as happy as she had ever been in her life. All dullness and drabness had receded, and even with all the uncertainty and privations of the Revolution, her life was burgeoning.
Despite the edicts being issued by the government, she still had Djon’s huge apartment for herself and her children, without the uncongenial presence of Djon himself. And she still had Djon’s money. If you were rich enough and had the right connections, there was still a semblance of the good life to be had in Petrograd.
And there was Lockhart. Moura was still struggling with her unfamiliar feelings about him, but the thrill she felt in his company was strong and irresistible. They dined in company at each other’s apartments, and in their spare hours had their occasional sleigh-rides, but still Moura resisted his overtures and treated their friendship as a jest.
Her days were filled with her work at the British Embassy. Even though the diplomatic
staff had departed at the end of February, the place wasn’t shut down, and wasn’t deserted. Aside from Lockhart, a handful of men – including some of her closest friends – had stayed.
Captain Francis Cromie was one. He had been serving as naval attaché for several months, and was now to be caretaker head of Britain’s diplomatic remnant in Petrograd. He was also still responsible for the Royal Navy submarine flotilla in the Baltic. The command had been officially dissolved in January, when the Navy ceased collaborating with the Russian Admiralty,20 but the subs were still there, and still at risk of falling into German hands. He had moved them from Reval to Helsingfors, where they were in the care of skeleton crews.
Like Lockhart, Cromie too had romantic reasons for staying, but more complicated ones. He was attached to Moura, but she was growing away from him, and he had begun to develop an amour with the beautiful Sophie Gagarin,21 who lived in the British Embassy building with her relative, Princess Anna Saltikoff. The princess owned the building and leased it to the British government, and kept an apartment for herself in half of it.22
A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy Page 8
