Memoirs of a British Agent

by R. H. Bruce Lockhart

  But, although I never questioned Reilly’s loyalty to the Allies, I was not sure—indeed, I am not sure to this day—how far he had gone in his negotiations with the Letts. He was a man cast in the Napoleonic mould. Napoleon was his hero in life and at one time he possessed one of the finest collections of Napoleana in the world. He saw himself being left alone in Russia and the prospect of playing a lone hand may have inspired him with a Napoleonic design. In conversation afterwards he always denied most of the Bolshevik allegations. His own theory was that Berzin and the other Letts, whom he saw, were at first sincere in their desire to avoid fighting against the Allies. When they realised that the Allied intervention was not serious, they went back on him and betrayed him to save their own skins. Be this as it may, the so-called Allied plot was to have serious consequences for all of us.

  Reilly’s subsequent career was curious. On his return to England, he speedily established himself with Mr. Churchill and the advocates of post-war intervention, and went to South Russia as a British agent with Denikin’s forces. When that venture ended in disaster, Reilly allied himself with Savinkoff, who was then besieging the statesmen of England and France with requests for support for his so-called “Green” movement. Reilly, who was a lavish spender, exhausted his financial resources on Savinkoff. He became hard up and, in a last desperate endeavour to re-establish his fortunes, set out for Russia in 1926 on some counter-revolutionary scheme alleged to be organised by ex-Guards officers. His subsequent fate is not known with certainty. The Bolsheviks announced that he had been shot while trying to cross the Finnish frontier. Such evidence as is available would seem to prove that he walked into a Bolshevik trap, that his Guards officers, whom he met abroad, were really Cheka agents, and that he was taken to a “dacha” outside Moscow and then shot.

  After this long digression, which contains the whole truth, so far as I know it, about the so-called Lockhart Plot, I must return to my own situation in Moscow. The account of the Allied conspiracy had appeared in the Russian papers of September 3rd. In spite of the serious nature of the allegations I was left at liberty throughout that day. I discovered later that there was considerable difference of opinion in Bolshevik official circles regarding the procedure to be observed towards me. There were several Commissars who were not prepared to swallow the whole of the Cheka’s story without some dilution. The next day I determined to approach Karachan again in order to make a last appeal for Moura, who was still in prison. He was not unfriendly. I told him that the story in the Soviet Press was a tissue of lies, and he laughed good-humouredly. “Now you know,” he said, “what we have to put up with from your newspapers.” He was, however, not very hopeful about Moura, and, deciding on desperate remedies, I made up my mind to approach Peters himself. I walked up from the Russian Foreign Office to the Loubianka and asked to see him. My request caused some excitement and much whispering among the guards in the entrance hall. It took me half an hour to gain admission and still longer to obtain access to Peters. When he received me, I tackled him at once about Moura. I told him that the conspiracy story was a fake and that he knew it. Even if there were a grain of truth in it, Moura knew nothing about it. I begged him to release her at once. He listened to me patiently and promised that my assurance of her innocence would receive every consideration. Then he looked me straight in the face. “You have saved me some trouble,” he said. “My men have been looking for you for the last hour. I have a warrant for your arrest. Your French and English colleagues are already under lock and key.” This last statement was not strictly accurate. Some of them had avoided capture by what was to prove the one comic expedient in our ignominious situation. But this I shall recount later. As far as I myself was concerned, this time I was to be a prisoner in all seriousness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MY TERM OF imprisonment lasted for exactly one month. It may be divided into two periods: the first, which lasted five days and was marked by discomfort and fear; the second, which lasted for twenty-four days and may be described as a period of comparative comfort accompanied by acute mental strain.

  In Loubianka No. 11, a former insurance company’s office, I was kept in a room which was used for the registration and preliminary examination of minor criminals. It had three windows, two of which looked on to an inside courtyard. It was furnished with a table, four wooden chairs, and an old, broken-down sofa, on which, if I was fortunate, I was sometimes allowed to sleep. Generally, I slept on the floor. The real hardship, however, was that the room was never empty, never dark. Two sentries were on guard all the time. The work of the minor Commissars, who used the room, never ceased by night or day. Most of these men were Letts or Russian sailors. Some of them were not unfriendly. They regarded me with a kind of detached interest, spoke to me occasionally, and gave me the Izvestia to read. Others again were surly and hostile. At night Peters would send for me, and I would have to go through a kind of bantering cross-examination. I cannot say that he treated me unfairly. The want of sleep was a severe strain, and for that reason I found his midnight questions trying. They were mostly urgent appeals to tell him the whole truth in my own interests. He would inform me that my colleagues had confessed (one French agent did write an anti-Ally letter which was published in the Bolshevik Press), and he would urge me to do the same if I wished to avoid being handed over to the Revolutionary tribunal. He was, however, neither brutal nor even impolite. As between prisoner and gaoler, our relations were pleasant. He himself was married to an Englishwoman, whom he had left in England. He seemed interested in my romance with Moura. Occasionally, too, he would come into my room and ask if I were being properly fed. The food—tea, thin soup, and potatoes—was not sustaining, but I made no complaint. On the second day, he brought me two books to read: Wells’ “Mr. Britling Sees It Through,” and Lenin’s “State and Revolution.” My one comfort was the official Bolshevik newspapers, which my gaolers took a propagandist joy in supplying to me. Certainly, as far as my own case was concerned, they were far from reassuring. They were still full of the Lockhart Plot. They contained numerous resolutions, passed by workmen’s committees, demanding my trial and execution. They gave, too, full prominence to foreign comment on the plot. The German Press, in particular, did itself proud. During the war it had suffered much from similar accusations of undiplomatic conduct, notably, in the von Papen case, and now it made the most of our alleged misdemeanours, which were described as the most scandalous in the history of diplomacy. There were, too, discouraging reports of Bolshevik victories over the Czechs and the Allies, and still more fearsome accounts of the Terror, which was now in full force. It was not these details which relieved my anxiety. From the first day of my captivity I had made up my mind that, if Lenin died, my own life would not be worth a moment’s purchase. Only one thing could save me: an overwhelming victory of the Allied armies in France. Knowing the Bolshevik passion for peace at almost any price, I felt that such a victory might moderate the Bolshevik attitude towards us. And the Izvestia, to my relief, contained not only bulletins of Lenin’s health but also news from the Western Front. Both were comforting. By September 6th Lenin was pronounced to be out of danger. In the West the Allied advance was meeting with real success.

  From Peters I learnt that my colleagues had been herded together in the Butirky prison. I alone had been singled out for solitary confinement. It was an additional strain.

  Two macabre incidents marked the period of my detention in the “Cheka.” On the third day a bandit was brought into my room. He was a tall, powerful fellow not more than twenty-five. I was a silent witness of his cross-examination, which was very different from anything I had experienced at Peters’ hands. At first he laughingly asserted his innocence. No man was a more loyal supporter of the Soviet régime than he. No man had observed the decrees more scrupulously. The accusations of banditry and smuggling, with which he had been confronted, were the acts of counter-revolutionaries, who were seeking to destroy him. He made a brave show, but the Commissar paid no
attention. With relentless reiteration he repeated his question: Where were you on the night of August 27th? The bandit blustered, became confused, lied, and, when he saw that the Commissar knew he had lied, began to weep and plead for mercy. The Commissar laughed and scribbled something on a piece of paper. He tossed it to the sentry, while the bandit still grovelled before the table. The sentries tapped him on the shoulder, and in an instant his manner changed. Realising that his doom was sealed, he sprang to his feet, hurled one sentry against the wall, and made a dash for the door. One of the Bolsheviks put his foot out, and the bandit fell sprawling on the floor. He was seized and, still scuffling and shouting curses at his captors, was dragged out of the room.

  The second incident, more terrifying in its effect upon my nerves, took place on my last day in Loubianka No. 11. I was reading in the afternoon, when Peters came into the room. I went over with him to the window to talk. When he had a free moment, he liked discussing England, the war, capitalism and revolution. He told me strange tales of his experiences as a revolutionary. He had been in prison in Riga in Tsarist days. He showed me his nails as a proof of the torture which he had undergone. There was nothing in his character to indicate the inhuman monster he is commonly supposed to be. He told me that he suffered physical pain every time he signed a death sentence. I believe it was true. There was a strong streak of sentimentality in his nature, but he was a fanatic as far as the clash between Bolshevism and Capitalism was concerned, and he pursued his Bolshevik aims with a sense of duty which was relentless.

  As we were talking, a motor van—a kind of “Black Maria”—pulled up in the court-yard below, and a squad of men, armed with rifles and bandoliers, got out and took up their places in the yard. Presently, a door opened just below us, and three men with bowed heads walked slowly forward to the van. I recognised them instantly. They were Sheglovitoff, Khvostoff, and Bieletsky, three ex-Ministers of the Tsarist régime, who had been in prison since the revolution. There was a pause, followed by a scream. Then through the door the fat figure of a priest was half-pushed, half-carried, to the “Black Maria.” His terror was pitiful. Tears rolled down his face. His knees rocked, and he fell like a great ball of fat on the ground. I felt sick and turned away. “Where arc they going?” I asked. “They are going to another world,” said Peters drily. “And that man,” he said, pointing to the priest, “richly deserves it.” It was the notorious Bishop Vostorgoff. The ex-Ministers formed the first batch of the several hundred victims of the Terror who were shot at that time as a reprisal for the attempted assassination of Lenin.

  That same night Peters sent for me. “To-morrow,” he said, “we are sending you to the Kremlin. You will be alone and you will be more comfortable.” In my presence he rang up the Commandant of the Kremlin. “Are Citizen Lockhart’s rooms ready?” he asked peremptorily. The answer was obviously in the negative. “Never mind,” said Peters, “give him Bieletsky’s.” Bieletsky was one of the ex-Ministers who had been shot that afternoon. The allusion seemed ominous. The Kremlin was reserved only for the most unfortunate political prisoners. Hitherto, not one had left it alive.

  I was taken to the Kremlin on the evening of September 8th. I was placed in an apartment in the Kavalarieski Korpus. My new quarters were clean and comfortable. They consisted of a small hall, a sitting-room, a diminutive bedroom, a bathroom—alas! without a bath—and a tiny kitchen. The rooms in former days had served as a flat for one of the Ladies-in-Waiting. Unfortunately, the windows on both sides opened on to corridors, so that I had no fresh air. Unfortunately, too, I was not alone, as Peters had promised I should be. I had a companion in misfortune, the Lett, Smidchen, who was the cause of all our troubles and who was alleged to be my accomplice and agent. We spent thirty-six hours together, during which I was afraid to exchange a word. Then he was taken away. I never heard what happened to him. To this day I do not know whether he was shot or whether he was handsomely rewarded for the part he had played in unmasking the “great conspiracy” There was one other drawback to my new prison. On both sides of my quarters I had sentries: one for each window. They were changed every four hours, and, as each change had to come into my rooms to certify that I was there, I was woken up every night at ten, two and six.

  My sentries were mainly Letts, but there were also Russians, Poles and Hungarians. I had also an old man—a former servant of the Kremlin—who did my rooms. He was as kind as he dared to be, but our conversation was limited and confined strictly to requests for the Bolshevik newspapers and for hot water for my samovar. From the Izvestia I learnt that the Allied Governments had sent a fierce Note to the Bolsheviks, demanding our immediate release and holding them separately and jointly responsible for our safety. By way of reprisal England had arrested Litvinoff and thrown him into prison. Chicherin had replied to this protest with a note which set out our alleged misdeeds at great length, but which contained an offer to let us go free in exchange for Litvinoff and other arrested Russians in France and England. Chicherin’s offer was to some extent reassuring. As, however, other sections of the official newspaper continued to announce that I was to be tried for my life, I was still far from certain of my release and even of my personal safety.

  My food in the Kremlin was the same as in Loubianka No. 11—soup, tea and potatoes. Peters apologised for it, stating that it was the same as that supplied to himself and his assistants. From what I had observed during my stay in the Cheka headquarters, his statement was true.

  One of my first acts, after my arrival in the Kremlin, was to write to Peters on behalf of Moura and my staff. Once again my appeal was to his sense of decency. I told him my staff was in no way responsible for anything I might or might not have done. As far as Moura was concerned, I asked him what satisfaction he could have in making war on women. On the third day he came to see me. He informed me that in all probability I should be handed over to the Revolutionary Tribunal for trial. He had, however, released Moura. What was more, he had given her permission to bring me food, clothes, books and tobacco. Provided it was written in Russian and given to him open, he offered to take a note from me to her. At the same time he gave instructions to the Commandant of the Kremlin that I was to have two hours’ exercise daily in the open air. He was in a magnanimous mood. Lenin was now well on the way to recovery. The news from the Bolshevik front was excellent. The Bolsheviks had recaptured Uralsk from the Czechs. Kazan was on the eve of capitulation.

  Peters was true to his word. That afternoon I had concrete proof of Moura’s release in the form of a basket with clothes, books, tobacco, and such luxuries as coffee and ham. There was, too, a long letter from her. Of course, it contained no news of any sort, but it arrived sealed. It was not to be read by the prying eyes of my guards. Peters himself had stamped it with the official seal of the Cheka with a footnote signed in his own bold handwriting: “Please deliver this letter in sealed form. It has been read by me.—Peters.” This strange man, whose interest I had somehow aroused, was determined to show me that a Bolshevik could be as chivalrous in small matters as any bourgeois.

  The clothes and the food—but especially the clothes—were a real boon. I had not taken off my suit or washed or shaved for six days. I was not to be relieved of my anxiety for another fortnight. Only the night before, Krylenko, the Public Prosecutor, had spoken at a meeting and, amid loud cheers, had announced that the Allied conspirators were to be tried by him and that the criminal Lockhart would not escape his proper punishment. From now on, however, my prison life was to be tolerably comfortable.

  Naturally, time lay heavy on my hands. Gradually, however, I evolved a kind of routine, which made the day pass more rapidly. As soon as I was dressed, I sat down to play a Chinese patience. (With my clothes and books Moura had enclosed a pack of cards.) I played a kind of game with myself. With Celtic superstition I said to myself that, if I did not get it out, the day would end in disaster. It was an unhealthy excitement in which I gambled my life against the cards. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I n
ever failed to get the patience out. Some days, however, it was late in the afternoon before I succeeded.

  My card-playing ended, I read. The books I read during my three weeks in the Kremlin included: Thucydides, Renan’s “Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse,” Ranke’s “History of the Popes,” Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” Rostand’s “L’Aiglon,” Archenholtz’s “History of the Seven Years’ War,” Beltzke’s “History of the War in Russia in 1812,” Sudermann’s “Rosen,” Macaulay’s “Life and Letters,” Stevenson’s “Travels with a Donkey,” Kipling’s “Captains Courageous,” Wells’ “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” Holland Rose’s “Life of Napoleon,” Carlyle’s “French Revolution” and Lenin and Zinovieff’s “Against the Current.” I was a serious young man in those days.

  The preparation of my meals was another pastime. After luncheon there was my walk in the Kremlin grounds. My first walk was on September 11th. It was the day on which the Bolsheviks recaptured Kazan, and the Kremlin was a riot of flags and red bunting. In the early days of the Bolshevik régime the Kremlin was a fortress to which visitors were rarely, if ever, admitted. Even at the time of my friendliest relations with the Bolsheviks I had never crossed its threshold. My interviews with Lenin, Trotsky, Chicherin and the other Commissars had always been outside its walls. Now I was able to see the changes which had taken place since the October revolution. The giant monument to Alexander the Second on the parade ground had been dragged down from its huge pedestal. The cross which marked the spot where the Grand Duke Serge had been blown up had been removed.