Adventures of a British Master Spy

by Sidney Reilly

  ‘Promise me one thing,’ he kept on saying to me. ‘Promise me one thing, that you will never go to Russia.’

  I soothed him and reassured him, as we sat there. ‘I promise,’ I said to humour his strange fancy. ‘I will never go to Russia.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Sidney went on, ‘however great the temptation, however plausible those that ask you, whatever promises are made. Even if I myself should write, asking you to come to me there. You must disobey. They are devils in the Tcheka,’ he went on almost to himself. ‘By one way or another they will get whom they want into their clutches, and, once there, no hope for him.’

  ‘Never be tempted into Russia.’ Oh, if Sidney had only remembered the warning he himself gave me so solemnly and awfully there in our rooms. His words remained in my mind and impressed themselves there. Never before or since did I see him, whose nerves were like strong steel, and whose courage and strength were unfailing, as indeed his manifold adventures testify, never before or since did I see him so shaken as he was on that night.

  ‘Your husband is on the verge of a breakdown,’ the doctor told me. ‘Business worries. Can’t you get him away from his business? Take him for a holiday somewhere – the south of France, the Mediterranean – anywhere – a complete change of surroundings. This imagining of things, restlessness, sleeplessness, somnambulism are quite common symptoms of an overwrought mind.’

  Imagining things? Should I tell the doctor what I myself thought I had seen, beckoning there from the shadows opposite our window? But everything seemed so normal with the daylight streaming into the room, and the noise of many people on the Embankment and all manner of tugs and shipping hooting and feeling their way down the river.

  I laughed at the fears I had felt. A breakdown – yes, that was it. I was relieved. Even a breakdown was better than that cowled thing which had beckoned to Sidney from the shadows on the other side of the road. Sidney had been very worried over his business affairs lately. The adjournment of his lawsuit had depressed him. Besides, what dreadful adventures had he been through in the past? He never spoke of them himself, and had not then set on paper the narrative which is contained in the first part of this book, but Capt. Hill had told me of some of the things my husband had done. I did not tell the doctor of them however.

  ‘Whatever you do,’ Sidney would say, ‘do not bring the service into it.’

  Sidney was quite keen when I broached to him the proposal of a holiday on the Continent. However, he had certain affairs which demanded his attention before he left London, and accordingly our departure was delayed for a few days, days which were to be among the most eventful in my life.

  During the next week the feeling grew on me that we were being watched by unseen eyes, our every movement noted, and our comings and goings scrutinised. For some days I let the obsession grow on me, hiding it from Sidney as well as I could. But once again at midnight, being overwrought and unable to sleep, I slipped out of bed and went to the window – and, yes there in the same place, the mysterious figure was watching. A feeling of suffocation came over me. I longed to breathe free and pure air. Ah, that the business which still held Sidney in London might soon be over, that we might get away somewhere, far, far away, where the midnight watchers could not reach us.

  It must have been about this time that the friend of my husband whom he mentions in his own narrative was spirited away from London. D. – my husband never told me of him, and I do not know his real name – was, I believe, one of the most prominent of Sidney’s Russian agents in Moscow at the time of the hatching of the Lockhart conspiracy, and he was one of those people for whose sake Sidney made his heroic return to the city of the Terror after the assassination of Uritzky in Petrograd. D.’s wife had been murdered during the early days of the Terror, and he was one of the most persistent and relentless of the enemies of Bolshevism. He told nobody in London of his return to Russia, whither he was lured by the agents of the Tcheka.

  I suppose it to have been just after this event that Sidney came in one day, looking unusually grave, and repeated the warning which he had given me before.

  ‘Promise me that whatever happens you will never go to Russia. Even if I write asking you to come to me there, you must never go.’

  I gave the promise lightly. The contingency seemed so very remote. I asked his reason for exacting my promise.

  ‘There are two or three people left, to be revenged on whom for services rendered the Bolsheviks would give their eyes. There are two or three people during whose lifetime the Bolsheviks will never sleep at peace. General Koutepoff is one. Then there is Boris Savinkoff. There are two or three others. The Bolsheviks will get them back to Russia if they can, and then—’ Sidney spread out his hands in an expressive gesture.

  I realise now that the man called D., who was lured back to Russia about this time, must have been one of those arch-enemies of the Bolsheviks, one of those people who knew too much of the inner workings of the terror of Eastern Europe and would not rest until they had brought it crashing to its ruin. Strangely enough, I did not realise fully then that another of them, and the greatest of them all, was my husband, Sidney George Reilly.

  As far as my memory serves me, it was on a Tuesday that this conversation took place, and it must have been on the Monday night that D. was caught by the far spread tentacles of the Tcheka.

  The next day the messenger of the Tcheka arrived.

  It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. Sidney and I were sitting together, making arrangements for our journey to France, which was now quite settled for the following Friday. The servant entered and announced to my husband that a Mr Warner had called and asked to see him.

  Our visitor was shown in. In spite of his name his appearance was anything but English. A tremendous black beard almost hid his face, growing right up to his prominent cheekbones, above which a pair of cold and steely blue eyes probed first Sidney’s face and then my own. His build was colossal, his shoulders high and massive, and his arms were long and huge as those of a great ape. Yet when he shook hands I noticed with a start that his hands were long, refined, white and delicate.

  ‘I wished to see you privately,’ said this engaging stranger to my husband. His voice was educated and pleasant to hear and he spoke without trace of an accent.

  ‘This is my wife,’ replied Sidney with a bow in my direction. ‘I do not think that you can have any business with me which she may not hear.’

  ‘As you like,’ said Mr Warner with a slight shrug, ‘though as a matter of fact the business on which I have come is highly confidential.’ He paused. ‘It is a political matter.’ Another pause. ‘It is connected with Russia.’

  I saw a light leap to Sidney’s eyes. I knew how he hungered for news from that unhappy country, how he still clung obstinately to the conviction that the cause of civilisation was not yet altogether lost there.

  ‘Go on,’ said he, when our visitor paused again. Mr Warner looked towards me with an air of puzzled enquiry. ‘Go on,’ repeated Sidney. ‘You may speak in the presence of my wife.’

  Again the stranger bowed and shrugged.

  ‘I have just come from Moscow and Petrograd.’

  ‘Ah!’ escaped from my lips in an involuntary sigh of realisation and apprehension. Mr Warner fixed me with a cold and hostile eye, as he resumed his speech.

  ‘I have just come from Moscow.’

  ‘And how are things there?’ asked Sidney.

  ‘As bad as bad can be,’ said Mr Warner. ‘The people are oppressed and are crying out for liberation. We want a man in Russia.’

  My gaze became riveted on Mr Warner’s left ear, which was not quite hidden in his voluminous beard. The ear impressed itself upon my notice. I remembered it accurately afterwards. It had apparently been frost bitten at some time or other and was disfigured in a singular manner.

  ‘That was a fine organisation you had in Russia, Captain Reilly. We have picked up the strands again. We have got it working again. All your old
agents are there. You remember Balkoff? He’s with us. And Tuenkoff? And Alvendorff? And Vorislavsky? They are all working for us again. Some day or other we overthrow the Redskins, and the good times begin again. But – you know what we Russians are. We scheme and scheme and scheme, and build wonderful plot after wonderful plot, and quarrel among ourselves over irrelevant details, and golden opportunity after golden opportunity slips by, and nothing is done. Pah! it is enough to disgust a man with the whole thing. And all the time the valuable days are slipping by and nothing is done. You would weep, Captain Reilly, if you knew what wonderful chances we have had – and wasted. We are at a loss. We do not know what to do. When we have an idea we have not a man who has the courage and resource to carry it out. We want a man in Russia, Captain Reilly, a man who can command and get things done, whose commands there is no disputing, a man who will be master, dictator if you like, as Mussolini is in Italy, a man who will compose the feuds which disunite our friends there with an iron hand and will weld us into the weapon which will smite the present tyrants of Russia to the heart.’

  I saw Sidney’s eyes kindling as the stranger spoke, saw the blood mounting to his cheek, saw his right hand clench and unclench. He was obviously deeply stirred. Excitement was surging up within him.

  ‘When you went, Captain Reilly,’ Mr Warner continued, ‘after your last visit to us, hope died within us. You cannot blame us. We had rank and file, men ready and eager for action, but we were leaderless. You cannot conceive what trouble it has been to build up our organisation once again. But we had no leader. We still have no leader. In our perplexity our organisation felt that it wanted advice, the advice of a strong proved man, who knew Russia. With one accord they all, Balkoff, Opperput, Alvendorff, Vorislavsky and the others called for you. It was agreed that one of us should come to England to see you and ask for – your advice. Behold we are ready to strike. We wait for the hand to guide us.’ Mr Warner ceased with a gesture and a flourish.

  ‘Who are you then?’ asked Sidney.

  ‘You do not know me, Sidney Georgevitch,’ said the other with an inflection almost of sadness in his voice. ‘And yet I know you. You remember how, when you were in Petrograd at a loss what to do, you were discovered by Alexander, who used to be in Maullé’s saloon, and how he hid you in his house in the Kamenostrovsky Prospekt: you remember how after a fortnight he smuggled you away in a motor boat belonging to a Mr Van den Bosch, who brought you safely to Reval. Why do you think Alexander ran that great danger? Out of affection for you, because you tipped him generously in the old days? Bah! men do not put their neck in the noose for any such reason as that. It was I, Sidney Georgevitch, who recognised you in the street, and paid Alexander to take you into his care. It was I who arranged for Mr Van den Bosch to come on a wildgoose chase to Petrograd after a business deal which nobody was contemplating. I had to work behind the scenes for reasons which – to you, who knew Red Russia – will be perfectly obvious. I could not meet you without bringing both of us into danger, and that is why I have not had the pleasure of meeting the gallant Captain Reilly until this moment.’

  ‘At least tell me your name, that I may thank you fittingly,’ said Sidney.

  ‘Drebkoff,’ replied Mr Warner simply. ‘Now head of the White Russian organisation in Moscow. I see that you still doubt me, Captain Reilly. See, here is my passport. I travel you will see as an Englishman born and a British subject. Do you still doubt me? See, here is a voucher written for me by Savinkoff, whom I saw in Paris. Here is a letter from V., with whom I conferred in Berlin. Here is a letter from Mr X.’ (here Warner named a very prominent English statesman) ‘asking me to see him as soon as I arrive in London.’

  ‘These documents seem genuine right enough,’ said Sidney, examining one by one the papers, which our visitor threw upon the table. ‘Yes, this is Savinkoff’s hand,’ he went on in a tone of increased respect, as he named the great hero and leader of the White Russians, for whom he entertained a particular veneration.

  ‘Here,’ went on Drebkoff, ‘is a letter – a petition rather – to you from our friends in Russia, begging you, Captain Reilly, imploring you to join them in Moscow and lead just one more attempt, a successful attempt this time, to overthrow the tyranny of the Bolsheviks. Look what I have here. It is a Bolshevik passport made out for a certain Serge Ivanitch Konovaloff, an officer of the Extraordinary Commission. See, it is ready signed and sealed. Mark, there is the place for the photograph, and in my pocket is the official rubber stamp. See, here is the space for the description of the aforesaid Serge Ivanitch Konovaloff with not a letter yet filled in. At Helsingfors you will drop your British identity. Here is your Bolshevik passport. Captain Reilly, Russia is crying for you to come and lead her out of her captivity. As soon as you cross the border a million men will rally to your side. Come and be our leader. A whole great country is yearning for you to return.’

  It was at this stage that I spoke, still gazing at our visitor’s deformed ear.

  ‘My husband cannot go,’ said I. ‘He is unwell. The doctor has ordered him a complete rest. He cannot go to Russia.’

  I am afraid my little speech was rather a bathos following on Drebkoff’s high-flown rhetoric. Its chilling effect was obvious and immediate. Sidney, who had been excitedly examining the papers which Drebkoff had brought, suddenly dropped them and straightened himself up, looking a little sad and wistful. Drebkoff shot a glance over towards me full of annoyance and hostility.

  ‘My wife is quite right,’ said Sidney. ‘I should probably be worse than useless at the moment. I do need a rest, there is no gainsaying it. I have been overdoing things a bit lately. Afterwards, Drebkoff, you and our friends may count on me.’

  ‘We are ready now,’ Drebkoff answered with an air of sad submission. ‘Afterwards may be too late. Supporters melt away when they are kept waiting. Keenness gradually goes. Hope dies. Opportunity comes but once. Oh my unhappy country, my unhappy country. Nothing ever seems to go right.’

  Our visitor rose slowly to his feet with an air of such utter dejection, that for the moment I felt quite sorry for him.

  ‘What will our friends say? What a terrible message I have to take back, what a blow to all their tenderly cherished hopes. I dare not face them with it. Captain Reilly, the one man in all the world on whom they thought that they could rely. Unhappy country! Unhappy people!’

  ‘What about Savinkoff?’ asked Sidney. ‘He is in Paris – the very man for you, a really great man, a great personality, a born leader and organiser.’

  I could read in Sidney’s tone how great was the sacrifice he was making in handing over this business to Savinkoff, the Russian leader, whom he admired so wholeheartedly. But Drebkoff shook his head despondently.

  ‘The people will not rally round Savinkoff as they would round you, Captain Reilly. No, he has not the name that you have. I will not detain you now. I shall be in London about a week, conferring with your Foreign Office. Perhaps, though my mission has proved abortive, you will do me the honour of lunching with me at the Savoy tomorrow.’

  With bowed head and chin sunk on his chest, Drebkoff walked dejectedly out.

  On the following day Sidney announced that we would not go to France on the morrow. He had been in earnest consultation with Drebkoff over luncheon at the Savoy.

  ‘The man seems quite genuine,’ Sidney told me afterwards. ‘About his papers there can be no doubt. He is staying in London about a week. It is not so long to wait. And I am anxious to learn fully what are the prospects of our friends in Russia.’

  Sidney’s words fell on my ear like a knell, but I hid my distress from him as well as I could. Why I should have been suspicious of this Drebkoff at that time I cannot say. But I was, and Drebkoff sensed my hostility and did his best to placate it. He invited us both to dinner with him on the Friday on which we should have sailed to France.

  Drebkoff was the most thoughtful and charming of hosts. The dejection which had sat upon him when I last saw him had quite departe
d, and he discussed the White organisation in Russia in cheerful and optimistic tones. He spoke of its scope and its potentialities, named its leading members in Russia, and their prominent correspondents abroad, and generally expressed himself most hopefully of its future work. Not once did he recur to the question of Sidney’s accompanying him on his return to Russia, whither he was bound as soon as his secret political mission in London was accomplished.

  We spoke of other things, and Drebkoff showed himself a man of wide culture and varied information. But somehow the conversation always went back to Russia. Sometimes, it was Sidney who led it back, sometimes Drebkoff. They had many mutual friends, and Sidney told me afterwards that, though previously he had not met Drebkoff, he knew his name as a member of one of the ‘Fives’ in my husband’s widely flung organisation in Moscow. The evening passed quickly and charmingly, and when I said Goodbye I felt half ashamed of the suspicions I had entertained with regard to this good-natured, bearded giant. But my suspicions had not entirely disappeared.

  Sidney took every precaution. He wired to Savinkoff in Paris, and received from the Russian hero a most eulogistic account of the work of our visitor. The bona fides of Mr Warner seemed established beyond cavil. And yet I remained suspicious of him, although I did not know then that behind my back he was using every sort of argument to persuade Sidney to reverse his previous decision not to return to Russia at the moment. But Sidney had promised me that he would not be persuaded, and all the eloquence, which, unknown to me, Drebkoff was pouring out day after day, was wasted upon my husband.

  The week drew on to its end. Drebkoff was due to return to Russia via Finland. We were leaving London for Paris en route for Provence. I heaved a sigh of relief when our final preparations were made, our tickets bought, our places reserved in the train. The packing was finished, the luggage neatly stacked in the hall. Drebkoff had called to take formal leave of me, and was accompanied by Sidney to the station.