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

by Deborah McDonald

  The rumours that arose later were misinformed and inaccurate. What they omitted was that spying on Lockhart was only a small part of what she did. What nobody seemed ever to suspect was that the person who primed and prepared her to spy, who laid the path that took her into the Cheka, was Lockhart himself.

  In those weeks of spring and summer, he was ever more preoccupied with the state of his mission: concerned with Bolshevik policy, the position of Germany in it and the multiple conflicting strands of British activity in Russia. Would there be military intervention, covert subversion or diplomacy?

  He was so preoccupied that Moura began to worry when she returned to Petrograd that he might not love her as much as she did him. She would do anything for him, and she yearned to be with him; she wanted ‘happiness, peace, love, work’ and railed against fate and the ‘thousand and one things that come between me and all that’.17 ‘I want you to come to me,’ she wrote, ‘when you are tired, to tell me, when you want my help . . . and I want to be your mistress, when you want passion.’ But for now all they could do was wait, hope, and snatch what time they could together – ‘And you will have to see, whether you really love me.’18

  Perhaps it was that uncertainty which made her push back the bounds of what she was willing to do for him.

  It began with gossip. Her letters, their pages blooming with love, were topped up with snippets of information and hearsay about the comings and goings of the other British missions in Russia. She knew them all well, personally and professionally. General Frederick Poole, who was heading for Archangel with a British military force of uncertain size and purpose, was a major concern. Moura warned Lockhart that there were rumours that Poole was ‘coming with greater powers’, that he might take full charge of all British operations, and bend them all towards military intervention. But Moura added darkly that if it were necessary to discredit Poole and his mission, ‘there is nothing easier than to expose him’. He was ‘in with the Jews’, she said cryptically.19 As an employee of Hugh Leech, she knew something of the underhand financial deals that several senior British officers with backgrounds in Russia had been involved in. Their purpose had been to fund anti-Bolshevik White forces and scupper German banking interests in Russia, but there were signs in Leech’s evasive behaviour that there might have been some misappropriation of funds going on;20 if so, Moura would be the person to sniff it out. He had fled once already to Murmansk and worked his way back.

  She was able to reassure her beloved that Francis Cromie and Le Page were true to him (for which she took a little credit for herself), and the SIS chief Ernest Boyce had a high opinion of him. But there were concerns. Cromie worried her deeply one day by taking her aside and asking her quietly, ‘You’re friendly with Lockhart, and you don’t wish him any harm?’

  Startled, she replied, ‘Of course not, why should I?’

  ‘Well, don’t go to Moscow again,’ said Cromie. ‘It might harm him, he’s got many old enemies in Moscow.’21

  She wrote asking Lockhart what Cromie could possibly mean. ‘I don’t see it at all, but of course in some ways I have the psychology of the ostrich.’ Her psychology was actually the opposite of ostrich-like, but Cromie had alarmed her. It was only too clear that he was referring to the jealous diplomats and businessmen who resented the young upstart with his pro-Bolshevik policy and might take any opportunity to mar his reputation.

  There was another cloud on Moura’s horizon. It took the bluff, moustached form of Colonel Cudbert Thornhill, an SIS officer who had come out to handle intelligence for General Poole’s mission in the north. He’d been in Petrograd before, at the British Embassy in 1915. For reasons she didn’t specify, Moura neither liked nor trusted Thornhill. The feeling seemed to be mutual, though again she didn’t elaborate on the reasons. ‘I am so suspicious of him in every way,’ she wrote to Lockhart. ‘If he comes here and suspects something between you and me and even without that – he will be sure to try and blacken me in your eyes.’ Perhaps this was some lingering rumour from the time of ‘Madame B’ and her salon. She worried in case Lockhart believed whatever it was that Thornhill might tell him. ‘Perhaps not,’ she mused, ‘but it will raise doubts in you – and there is nothing I deserve less.’22 Quickly she assured him that Thornhill was a fractious type who generally didn’t get on with people.23 This was true; there had certainly been friction between him and General Knox, and he’d had a strained relationship with Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming (the original ‘C’), the head of SIS.24 According to Moura, Thornhill and Poole didn’t like each other, which could spell doom for the Archangel mission, whatever it turned out to be.

  But there was more to Moura’s role than gossip. Lockhart’s diplomacy was entering a new and dangerous phase. He could see intervention coming, and the mood among the British in Petrograd and Murmansk was all for it. He was feeling more than ever that the government at home didn’t value his work. As the last days of May passed by, he began to take on a more militant mood, and much of it was focused on the Germans.

  In this respect his antipathy was matched by the Bolsheviks’ fears and suspicions of the occupied Balkan provinces and the much bigger threat of the Ukraine. In their lightning advance in February and March, the German army had overrun the Ukraine, and under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty they took possession of it – ostensibly as an autonomous protectorate – and began shaping it to suit their own purposes.

  On 29 April a coup brought down the Ukraine’s democratic socialist government. The coup was led by General Pavlo Skoropadskyi,* a Ukrainian Cossack aristocrat, and backed by the German army. Before the rise of Bolshevism, Skoropadskyi had been one of the biggest landowners in the Ukraine, a loyal Russian imperialist who had served as a staff officer in the Russian army and aide-de-camp to Tsar Nicholas II.25

  A new government was set up, supported by Germany and composed of Ukrainian landowners, many with Cossack heritage. Skoropadskyi was installed as ruler, taking the traditional Cossack title Hetman – an autocrat presiding over a council of ministers. The first act of the Hetmanate government (as it became known) was to reverse the redistribution of land implemented by the socialist government, returning the Ukraine’s great estates and farmlands to their former owners. Strikes were banned, dissent crushed and peasant revolts violently subdued.26 The Ukraine became a client state of Germany, a rich source of grain for the German war machine, and a kind of sanatorium for German army divisions worn down by service on the Western Front; they were set loose to live upon the land and rebuild their strength and morale at the peasants’ expense.27

  In Moscow, the Bolsheviks were appalled. Not only by what the Hetmanate stood for – a typically heinous bourgeois repression of the proletariat – but also by the terrifying feeling that this was the true face of Germany. Might this be how they intended to treat Russia? The coup in the Ukraine had occurred only three days after the arrival of Count Mirbach as German Ambassador in Moscow, which underlined the Bolsheviks’ fears.

  Lockhart was privately delighted. In his eyes, the Germans were driving a massive Ukraine-shaped wedge between themselves and the Bolsheviks. On 6 May he noted in his diary that the Bolsheviks ‘regard this as a direct menace to their government’; it was seen as an attempt to initiate counter-revolution, ‘not only for Ukraine but for all Russia’. When he and Cromie met Trotsky a week later to discuss the German threat to the Russian Black Sea fleet – which was in Ukrainian hands – they were told that war with Germany was ‘inevitable’, and that he was ready to listen to any proposals the British might have.28 Even Lenin, the determined isolationist, was starting to see war with Germany as a possibility. He told Lockhart that he saw a future in which Russia would become a battlefield on which Germany and Britain would fight each other. He was willing to do whatever it took to prevent it.29 Lockhart took that cryptic assurance as encouragement – not realising that Lenin had his own secret plans for settling the situation.

  For Lockhart and his inner circle, the Ukrainian cris
is offered hope. Anti-British, anti-French, anti-American feelings were reaching a simmering point in Russia. The valedictory mood at Tamplin’s birthday party had reflected the belief that the feeling would grow, that it would take over the Central Committee, and finally drive the British out of Russia. But if the German threat were seen to overshadow the British threat, that would all change. With the token British force at Murmansk, however, and a new force on its way to Archangel, intervention against the German eastern frontier without approval from the Bolsheviks was looking increasingly likely. Direct intervention against the Bolsheviks themselves could not be ruled out.

  There was still a chance to win the Bolsheviks over, Lockhart believed, but time was running out and his government was giving him nothing tangible to offer Trotsky.

  The Bolsheviks – or rather elements among them – began to support guerrilla action in the Ukraine. Captain George Hill, Lockhart’s SIS friend, had close cooperative links to the Cheka and was trusted by the Bolshevik leadership, having helped Trotsky set up his military intelligence organisation, the GRU. Hill was central to the operation. He and his Canadian friend Colonel Joe Boyle had built up a network of agents, couriers and saboteurs which had been active in the Ukrainian mining regions for months, causing huge damage to its ability to contribute to Germany’s war economy. Starting in May he reactivated his agents, organising attacks on German army rest camps.30

  Quite how Moura became caught up in the Ukrainian intrigue was never set down in writing – at least not in any form that survived. But the reasons for bringing her into it were clear enough, as was her role – not as a saboteur but as a gatherer of intelligence.31 Not only was she close to Lockhart, she was absolutely trusted by him, and eager for his approval; she had some experience of espionage – albeit of a genteel, domestic kind; and she knew the British secret intelligence people. That included George Hill. If anyone could secure her a place in the Cheka – which would be needed in order to acquire the necessary travel rights – it would be him.

  The Chekists had still not shaken out all the wrinkles of their newborn organisation; they were hungry for personnel, and didn’t subject recruits to particularly intense scrutiny. Sidney Reilly, after all, had been able to gain a post. Also, there were elements within the Cheka who had a particular interest in undermining Germany’s standing in Russia and the Ukraine, and were already taking steps to bring matters to a head. Around the core of Latvian Chekist deputy Martin Latsis and Ukrainian Jakov Bliumkin, a counter-espionage section was set up to penetrate the German Embassy in Moscow, in cooperation with George Hill.32

  In this environment, it would be easy to insert a friendly agent into the Cheka.

  Crucially, Moura was a Ukrainian. She came from a prominent landowning family, bred into the very class that was now ruling the country (just as it had in her childhood). If you wanted a spy to penetrate the heart of the Hetmanate, you’d have to search a long time before coming up with a better candidate than Moura Ignatievna von Benckendorff. Few could match her for persuasive charm, and none could beat her for courage.

  At about the same time, Lockhart expressed a private worry that the Cheka might have obtained a copy of the cipher he used to encrypt his messages to London.33 It was said, many years later, that they were acquired by Moura, as part of some unspecified arrangement with the Cheka.34

  The wolves were running, but this time she was running with them – and pursuing with the hounds as well. There was something in her which answered to the call of the game – the intrigue, the danger, the sense of knowing things that others did not – and it would never quite leave her as long as she lived.

  In June the game began in earnest.35 Moura made the trip from Petrograd to Kiev. It was a journey she had last undertaken when visiting the Zakrevsky family estate. How long ago that seemed now – a different world, a different girl. It was over two days by train. If she hadn’t had official Bolshevik authorisation on the Russian side of the border and a mission to the leaders of the Hetmanate on the Ukrainian side, it would have taken much longer – and a good deal of dangerous subterfuge – to cross the frontier.

  The familiar dull flatness of the Ukrainian Steppe matched a bleak patch in Moura’s heart. She had tried to get in touch with Lockhart before leaving, but he hadn’t replied. She read in the papers that he had gone to Vologda at the end of May to meet the Allied Ambassadors holed up there. ‘No news from you,’ she wrote to him, ‘and I want you very badly. I may have to go away for a short time, and would like to see you before I go.’ She had heard – not from him – that he was coming to Petrograd. ‘Do try and come as soon as you can,’ she pleaded, ‘I feel so lonely without you.’36

  Lockhart arrived in Petrograd on 2 June to consult Cromie about the situation at Archangel. But he didn’t meet Moura; by the time he reached the city, she had gone. She had begun her journey; not just the literal one to Kiev, but the longer, more insidious journey into the service of the Bolshevik secret state.

  In Kiev she lost no time making contact with the Hetmanate. She had a powerful entrée to their circle, besides merely her birth and class. Those things would make her trustworthy in the Ukrainians’ eyes, but she also had a direct connection. In early May, Hetman Skoropadskyi had appointed one Fedir Lyzohub† as both minister for internal affairs – giving him responsibility for state security – and prime minister. As the right hand of the Hetman, Lyzohub took the traditional Cossack title otaman.‡ Like Skoropadskyi, Lyzohub was a rich landowner. He had been prominent in the regional government of Poltava before the war,37 where he had known Moura’s father, Ignatiy Zakrevsky.

  Moura approached Lyzohub – a solemn, dignified old gentleman with a steep forehead and a neat white beard – and offered her services as a spy against the Bolsheviks. He believed in her wholeheartedly (for why should he not believe in the daughter of a fellow noble, especially when she had such irresistible magnetism?) and immediately ordered the Ukrainian intelligence service to employ her.38

  Moura was introduced to Skoropadskyi himself, and to Foreign Minister Dmytro Doroshenko.§ For the best part of the next month, and intermittently thereafter, she made journeys back and forth between Kiev and Russia, passing intelligence to both sides.39 What she was most skilled at was social espionage – listening for gossip, encouraging indiscretion. There is no underestimating the vanity of semi-powerful men, and their willingness to display their importance to an attractive young woman by telling her secrets. It wasn’t until much later – far too late for them to do anything about it – that the Hetmanate realised that Moura – daughter of their own kind – had been betraying them to the Bolsheviks. By then, Moura herself had more important things to worry about, and had left the province of her birth behind her, never to return.

  During that summer of 1918, that was still in the future; in the meantime, during her trips back and forth to the Ukraine, Moura realised that she was facing a problem that eclipsed all others. She was pregnant.

  Notes

  * Ukrainian sp.; Russian sp.: Pavel Skoropadski.

  † Ukrainian sp.; Russian sp.: Fyodor Lizogub.

  ‡ Chieftain.

  § Ukrainian sp.; Russian sp.: Dmitri Doroshenko.

  8

  A Hair’s Breadth from War

  June–July 1918

  Lockhart had changed his mind. Almost overnight, he had utterly transformed his beliefs and his attitude. His faith in the Bolsheviks, which had been eroding throughout April and May, finally expired in June. They couldn’t be relied on, couldn’t be persuaded to support a British intervention against Germany. In that case, intervention must come whether the Bolsheviks willed it or not.

  During his visit to Petrograd in early June, he had met an officer visiting from Archangel, who had convinced him that intervention would come, but not for a long while.1 This was typical of the British government – they pushed for intervention, but were dithering and dilatory in providing it. Well, that would have to change.

  On his return to
Moscow, he fired off a startling message to London: if they were going for military action in north Russia, it must come in the immediate future. If not, he would resign.2 Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour clucked like a kicked hen at this astonishing about-face. Lockhart must learn to understand the subtle complications of international diplomacy, Balfour insisted. But Lockhart had neither time nor patience for the subtle complications of diplomats. He had enough of his own, and they were becoming increasingly risky. He had been secretly in contact with Savinkov’s anti-Bolshevik movement in April, before its abortive coup; now he began to involve himself more deeply.

  His hope that he could swing the Bolsheviks against Germany was falling to pieces – and had been doing so since the arrival of Count Mirbach in Moscow. On 15 May – the very same day that Lockhart and Cromie had met Trotsky and were told that war with Germany was inevitable – Lenin had been meeting Mirbach and proposing a deal. Germany must accept Bolshevik policy in Russia and promise not to interfere in Russian internal affairs; in exchange, Russia would promise friendly and lucrative trading relations with Germany.3 Lenin had told Lockhart that he would do whatever was necessary to prevent Russia becoming a British–German battleground; Lockhart hadn’t guessed that this was what he had in mind. If the agreement was ratified, it would end all hope for Britain in Russia, other than the vain hope of beating both Germany and Bolshevism by military action.

  On 12 June, while Moura was still engaged in spying, a peace treaty between Hetmanate Ukraine and Bolshevik Russia was signed.4 It wasn’t the end of hostility between them, or spying, but it all but obliterated Lockhart and Hill’s – and Trotsky’s and the Cheka’s – hope of a terminal breach.