The Forgotten Spy

by Nick Barratt

  Although he swore he would continue to bring British diplomatic mail in the future, in Dimitri’s [Bystrolyotov] judgment, he couldn’t last more than a few months before becoming fully incapacitated. During their meeting, ARNO was totally apathetic, vomited and often couldn’t even move.235

  Three days later, Oldham booked a flight to Berlin but cancelled at the last minute, choosing to travel to Cologne instead before returning to England. He rearranged his meeting with Bystrolyotov but in the end only Lucy made the journey, flying back to Berlin on her own and confronting Bystrolyotov with the true extent of Oldham’s decline and fall on 11 November. As with previous dealings, there was a mix of truth, half-truths and outright lies. Bystrolyotov digested the shocking news and sent a report back to Bazarov:

  In the middle of October, that is, a week before his arrival in Berlin, ARNO was dismissed from the service. How greatly the chiefs were prejudiced against him is indicated by the fact that not even a partial pension was granted to him. The reason was that for the past two years he had been drinking heavily and he had been working carelessly. For the past six months he has ceased working entirely and had not appeared at the office. He had taken official papers home and lost them and had failed to answer urgent inquiries. His colleagues had tried to reason with him but to no avail, so they had given up, with the exception of his former assistant Kemp who still visits him.

  ARNO’s financial situation is bad. He had some money in the bank, but not much. MADAM intends to leave him, to sell the house and car and take her share. She intends to settle in some French resort where there are plenty of Englishmen and work as a housekeeper or companion. If this fails she will become a prostitute. She has asked me not to leave her without support.

  ARNO’s physical condition is poor. He will take a rest after the Berlin trip and will recover some of his cheerfulness and capacity for work but in the end his strength will not last for long and complete disablement will follow in a few months.

  ARNO declared that he will continue to maintain contact in the future and we agreed to meet in Germany next week. There was no deterioration in our relations because of his abnormal condition. Complete apathy, heavy vomiting and the inability to speak or move has made him impossible to talk to.236

  Bystrolyotov’s mission as Oldham’s handler was in crisis. He proposed an exit strategy, which he revealed to Lucy – namely, to offer Oldham a life pension on the sole condition that he put Bystrolyotov in touch with his ‘source’. It is staggering that, even after his engineered sacking, Oldham had clung to the original cover story that he was merely an intermediary for a ‘retired captain from the Foreign Office’ whose name he would not reveal and on whose behalf he was selling material. When pressed on this by Bystrolyotov, Lucy denied any knowledge of such a person. She also stated that her husband never went abroad on Foreign Office business – clearly untrue, given his presence at Geneva in 1931 – and that nothing Oldham said could be trusted.237

  Unsure of what to believe, Bystrolyotov decided to return to London and find a solution – an extraordinary risk to take, given it was entirely possible that Oldham was suspected of treason and therefore under surveillance. As a mark of appreciation for the work he was undertaking, on 17 November Bystrolyotov was bestowed with a personal gun:

  For successfully carrying out several assignments of major operative value and exceptional persistence in doing so.238

  It bore the inscription:

  For a merciless fight with the counter-revolution from the OGPU collegium.

  OGPU Deputy Chairman Balitsky239

  After a brief sojourn to the continent to sort out a few personal issues, Bystrolyotov finally made the trip to London just before Christmas. Not even two years spent working as ARNO’s handler could have prepared him for the terrible scene that lay in wait behind the genteel façade of 31 Pembroke Gardens. Oldham had been on a non-stop drinking binge, with Lucy unable to restrain him as he grew increasingly violent.

  [On] 22, 23 and 24 December, ARNO drank more and more; our entreaties and reproaches irritated him with no result. Finally, I decided to take the matter into my own hands and demanded that he go to the country for treatment. On the evening of the 25th I went to his house and found ARNO dishevelled and asleep in an armchair, an alcoholic who had completely gone to pieces. I shook him awake, but without opening his eyes he reached out for a bottle and drank, thinking that I was his wife. ‘Go away, you bitch,’ he said, before falling asleep again. I persuaded MADAM not to give him any more brandy and urged her to call a doctor when he awoke. When he did so, that night, her refusal to give him a drink prompted him to try and strangle her and she was only saved by the doctor who gave him medication and arranged for him to be taken to the country unconscious. ARNO looked awful and MADAM was shattered and wanted to do away with herself. I spent three days persuading her not to commit suicide while she lay sedated in bed with the marks of ARNO’s fingers very evident on her throat.240

  Thus 1932 closed with Oldham once more in Rendlesham sanatorium, undergoing more treatment for his alcoholism and his suicidal wife on the verge of leaving him, still battered from the attack at Christmas. This was Bystrolyotov’s worst nightmare, but still he persisted with his work when common sense dictated that Oldham had become more of a liability than an asset.

  Changing political circumstances on the world stage also played an important part in Bystrolyotov’s decision. With the rejection of the Lausanne agreement by the Americans in December, the prophetic words of von Papen came to pass as Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor of the German Republic on 30 January 1933 in place of von Papen. Hitler’s international stance was clear; alliances with Britain and Italy were desired to provide security against France, considered to be Germany’s ‘unrelenting mortal enemy’. There was also to be an enlargement of Germany’s lebensraum (‘living space’) at the expense of territory seized from the Soviet Union. In German elections on 5 March, the Nazi party won nearly 44 per cent of the vote and Hitler used his populist mandate to exert even greater authority over the state. The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act on 23 March, effectively ending democracy and making Hitler a de facto dictator in Germany. This made the calls from Benito Mussolini – already leader of a Fascist state in Italy – on 19 March for the creation of a Four-Power Pact even more alarming to the Soviets, as they were not included.

  Yet the faith placed by Bystrolyotov in Oldham’s powers of recovery rather improbably paid off when, in May 1933, Oldham arrived in Paris with another packet of documents for the Soviets, just when they needed access to diplomatic correspondence the most. He claimed he did not know what was inside the packet, only that he had paid for them in full. Furthermore, Oldham said that he was in negotiation for the purchase of a Foreign Office code book called ‘C’ plus various other cipher charts, though the price that his source required was much higher than before. It was clearly a ploy to extract more money from the Soviets. Bystrolyotov countered by asking once again for direct access to the source, which Oldham refused to provide. Yet whilst the cover story provided some legitimate explanation for how he could still gain material from the Foreign Office, it was completely untrue – so how had Oldham managed to obtain new material?

  The answer is staggering: Oldham was able to stroll through the front door. Antrobus recalled that ‘an official could bring a friend in with him without hindrance or comment’241, and even a former employee such as Oldham, who had left under a black cloud less than a year before, was able to enter unchallenged. It transpired from later accounts that Oldham had been a regular visitor to his old office on several occasions, mainly to see friends like Thomas Kemp as well as King’s Messengers with whom he was close, such as Raymond Oake and Charles Jesser-Davies.

  However, he had another legitimate reason to request entry; incredible as it may seem, he was allowed regular access to the Foreign Office because he was permitted to keep a safety deposit box on the premises. Perhaps more than anything else, this revelation should
remind us that Oldham and his associates were living in a different age and, despite some of the changes in attitude and culture that have been described in earlier chapters, the Foreign Office still at times resembled a 19th century gentleman’s club, with its natural assumption that everybody played by the rules.

  We are fortunate to have an account of the episode, provided by one of the assistant clerks, Herbert James Bindon, a few months later.

  He has only just retired and has been in to look over the papers in his box two or three times. On the last occasion – something like May – he came in about the same time (nearly 6.00 pm). I had not finished my work and the presses were unlocked.242

  The presses were where confidential material was stored – exactly the sort of thing that Oldham was after.

  He sat down at his old desk, chatted for a moment, and then got out his box. I think he said ‘I am just going to run through my box and look out papers, and I must also write to Bell at Jeddah.’

  I was of opinion that he was not in possession of all his faculties and was rather thick and heavy. I cannot say if he took any papers away.

  I wondered if he ought to be left there and I discussed with Mr Roberts. He had previously said, ‘I shall only be about 20 minutes,’ and when I went back he was writing to Bell (I could see the heading of the letter) and I asked if he was going to be much longer. He offered to lock up. However, I said I was not going just then. He was left alone but there was nothing important he could get at.

  After about five or six minutes I went back and he said he had not yet finished. He asked who was on duty, and I said Roberts would be there until 7.45. He said he would give the keys to Roberts. I therefore told Roberts, who said he would look out for him.

  On the last occasion I went in, he said, ‘I ought to be finished by 7.45, but in case I am not, what is the combination?’ (meaning the combination lock of the safe in which the keys are kept at night). I said, ‘I don’t know’. He asked if Roberts knew and I came to discuss it with him. I then told Oldham that I could not find out about it. He said, ‘Isn’t there anyone in Room 22 [cipher room] or Central Department who would know?’ I said I did not think so and he had better give the keys to Roberts.243

  This is astonishing – even accounting for the fact that Oldham was still permitted access to his possessions, there was no justification for granting him access to the keys to the presses, even if the combination to the safe was not revealed.

  When I got home I phoned Roberts, who said he had got the keys back but had had some trouble with Oldham. It seems that when he went to look for Oldham he had gone and Roberts had caught him in the hall and found Oldham just going out with the keys. He was a bit ‘funny’ over Roberts asking for the keys and said it was a lot of unnecessary fuss. He also tried to find out the combination from Roberts.

  He was not left alone for more than ten minutes at a time and in Room 5 he could have had access to nothing except the Inter-Departmental book giving a list of holders.

  I checked the stock after his last visit and found it correct.244

  The office keeper, Mr Roberts, corroborated this version of events.

  In May, Oldham borrowed the keys from Bindon and when Bindon went home about 7.00 pm, he asked me to look out for Oldham.

  As Oldham did not come over to me with the keys soon after 7.00 pm, I went down and found he had gone out to get a drink and when he came back I asked him, ‘What about the keys?’ I found he had been out and taken the keys with him and was coming back to return them. I rang up his house during his disappearance to see if he had gone home but he came in while I was waiting to be connected.245

  Clearly, the lax security – and residual deference to a former senior colleague, even after his ‘retirement’ – explains how Oldham had managed to obtain confidential documents for so long. However, he had already drawn sufficient attention to himself to rouse the suspicion of his long-time friend, Thomas Kemp, who had been instructed to keep an eye on Oldham whenever he visited the Foreign Office. Indeed, he had been concerned by reports from Lucy over Oldham’s drinking. She claimed over £3,000 had been spent in three weeks the previous October. It was Kemp who discovered that a bundle of telegrams had disappeared from the duty cipher’s desk. According to the OPGU file, Kemp ‘rushed round to ARNO’s house but discovered he had already left for the continent’.246

  After delivering the new package, Oldham went back to England on 12 May, but soon afterwards returned to Paris on 25 May via Le Bourget airport accompanied by his wife, where they remained for three days. According to flight and passport records, they visited the French capital once again on 2 June. While Oldham spent most of the remainder of the month in England, Lucy continued to travel back and forth to Paris on a regular basis, flying out on 7 and 14 June, presumably to keep lines of communications open with Bystrolyotov.247

  Having risked a visit to the Foreign Office in May, Oldham was perhaps understandably reluctant to chance his arm again and was therefore just as unwilling to see Bystrolyotov without anything new to deliver. Lucy informed Bystrolyotov that Oldham had started drinking heavily again, and that Dr Rowan suspected he was showing symptoms of delirium tremens – hallucinations and violent shaking related to alcohol withdrawal. Furthermore, he was suffering from severe heart pains, which in Dr Rowan’s opinion was a sign that he might expire at any time.

  Yet Bystrolyotov could not be put off indefinitely and so on 20 June Oldham was forced by his wife to fly out to Paris to confront him, though Oldham arrived empty-handed and claimed he did not have enough money to pay his source. Once more Bystrolyotov demanded to know who the source was and once more he was rebuffed. Oldham’s dire physical prognosis meant that Bystrolyotov’s hand was forced. If he wanted to retain any chance of restoring his line of communication with the Foreign Office he had to involve himself even more closely in the Oldhams’ affairs, so he planned a trip back to London to push Oldham back into rehabilitation and Lucy overseas to recover from the strain of the last few months.248

  The Oldhams travelled back via Cologne, taking a short break at the Excelsior Hotel and landing in London on 22 June. Bystrolyotov arrived the following day only to be greeted by yet another alcohol-fuelled domestic fight. Worse, Lucy claimed that Sir Robert Vansittart had taken an interest in Oldham, possibly after the May visit that he’d made. She claimed Vansittart was chief of intelligence or counter-intelligence – he was actually the Permanent Under-Secretary and therefore Head of the Foreign Office. This was terrible news and Bystrolyotov feared that Oldham was about to be uncovered. He alerted the OGPU centre, who were so alarmed at the prospect of exposure that they gave the order to withdraw all illegal operatives from the country including Bazarov and Mally.249

  Meanwhile, Bystrolyotov still had Oldham to deal with, who once again had grown violent. Bystrolyotov called for medical help. While he was waiting for an ambulance to arrive, he gave Oldham two glasses of gin to quieten him down and then, with Lucy’s help, dragged the insensible man upstairs. As at Christmas, when the doctor arrived Oldham was drugged and taken away by ambulance with Bystrolyotov accompanying him to hospital. This was Bystrolyotov’s chance to escape as well, but he remained to see his mission through to the end – extraordinarily brave or extremely foolish.

  Just when it seemed things could not get any worse, Lucy decided that she had finally had enough and wanted to file for divorce. She removed her valuables from 31 Pembroke Gardens and hired a lawyer to start proceedings against Oldham. This meant exposing Bystrolyotov to a highly difficult interrogation, in his guise as Count Perelly, as an official representing a company through which Oldham had claimed to have made £2,000 in commissions. This was a tight situation; anything Bystrolyotov said could be quickly checked, and Bazarov was genuinely concerned about Bystrolyotov’s safety. OGPU believed that Britain’s counter-intelligence services included execution squads, even though none existed in reality. But Bystrolyotov insisted on staying to conclude one final mission, to obtain
the cipher codes for the following year. Reluctantly Bazarov agreed, and the OGPU Centre was informed of the appalling risks that were being faced by Bystrolyotov:

  It is possible that ANDREI will be liquidated by the enemy. Nonetheless, I have not given any order for his immediate departure. For him to depart now would meant the loss of a source of such importance that it would weaken our defence and increase the power of the enemy. The loss of ANDREI is possible today, as is that of other colleagues tomorrow. The nature of their work makes such risks unavoidable.250

  When Oldham was released from hospital, Bystrolyotov beseeched him to gather the codes that he had promised and so Oldham tried to gain access to the Foreign Office, often waiting until nightfall before making his entrance. According to Antrobus:

  It is a grim place after dark. I have often, when on night duty, had to traverse its long and echoing corridors in the still watches. When you are alone in a big, silent building you always feel you are not alone; you start at fancied sounds and you quiver at imaginary shadows; suddenly, you see two great gleaming eyes staring at you from the blackness and you think of bogles and hobyahs and things that go bump in the night – till you realise that it is only the office cat on her nightly rounds.251

  According to the OGPU file, the cat was not the only creature that unsuspecting officials might encounter. Oldham could also be found prowling the corridors, muttering to himself in Gollum-like fashion:

  ARNO resumed his visits, making up to three a day, and even appeared after working hours, moving from room to room in an agitated state, obviously anxious to be left alone.252

  Another attempt to get the codes was made on Thursday 6 July. One of the office keepers, Mr Wilson, later recalled that the housekeeper, Wright, had informed him on Friday 7 July that Oldham had been found in Room 5 and the cipher room the previous evening at around 11.00 pm, having been spotted by the night staff. However, security had been tightened, with staff instructed not to give Oldham any of the keys to the safes.253 Furthermore, a trap had been set by Kemp, who left a file unattended on his desk. Possibly sensing trouble, Oldham did not take it and, not wishing to draw any further attention to his presence, withdrew empty-handed.254