Russian Roulette

by Giles Milton

  He was so proud of this Massino disguise that he had himself photographed for posterity. With his luxuriant beard and oil-slicked hair he looked the picture of a prosperous Levantine entrepreneur.

  In Moscow, Reilly was to adopt a different identity. Here, he became Mr Constantine, a successful Greek businessman who gave his address as 3 Sheremetevsky Lane. This was the home of the actress Dagmara Karozus, the niece of one of his oldest friends.

  Reilly knew that the moment of greatest danger would come when he switched from one persona to another. It was imperative that the Cheka should never make the link between Constantine, Massino and Reilly.

  He decided that the safest place to change both costume and disguise would be on the train between Petrograd and Moscow. He would leave the former city as Monsieur Massino, decked in his Levantine business garb, and emerge in Moscow as Mr Constantine.

  Other British spies would later follow suit, constantly switching identities in order to keep one step ahead of the Cheka.

  Reilly spent four weeks in Petrograd, renewing acquaintances with people that could prove of use to him in the future.

  ‘I had many friends in the city,’ he wrote. ‘I knew where I could go when I arrived there. I knew upwards of a score of people on whose co-operation I could implicitly rely.’

  These trusted friends were to provide Reilly with places of refuge when he found himself in trouble: without them, his undercover operations would have been impossible.

  Among his most important contacts was the distinguished lawyer, Alexander Grammatikov, a close associate of Lenin. Senior Bolsheviks trusted Grammatikov as one of their most loyal supporters: Lenin himself had intervened to protect him from allegations that he had previously worked for the tsarist secret police.

  Unbeknown to the Bolsheviks, these allegations were true. Grammatikov was secretly hostile to the new regime and was prepared to do everything in his power to undermine it.

  ‘[He] gave me a very graphic and terrible account of the position of affairs in Russia,’ wrote Reilly. ‘The new masters were exercising a regime of blood-thirstiness and horror hardly equalled in history.’ Grammatikov expressed his belief that Russia ‘was in the hands of the criminal classes and of lunatics released from the asylums.’

  Grammatikov was to prove a conduit to some of the most senior Bolsheviks in the new government. He was on particularly friendly terms with General Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich who sat on the Bolshevik’s Supreme Military Council. The general was a fellow bibliophile and had recently been in touch with an eye to buying some of Grammatikov’s books.

  Grammatikov saw this as an opportunity to get Reilly from Petrograd to Moscow, a train journey that could only be undertaken with a special pass. He informed the general that he would bring the books in person, but only if he could have two passes for travel. The general issued the passes without asking any awkward questions. A few days later, on 7 May, Grammatikov and Reilly stepped off the train in Moscow.

  Sidney Reilly had many flaws in his character but one of the most alarming was his emotional hatred of Bolshevism.

  It was true that many of Mansfield Cumming’s spies detested Lenin’s ideology, and even went so far as to form a Bolshevik Liquidation Society that met regularly to discuss the nature of the threat.

  But most of these men viewed Bolshevism with the same clinical detachment that a surgeon might have when operating on a patient’s growth: seeing it as something to be cut out.

  Reilly was more passionate in his hatred: he found it hard to keep a distance between himself and the enemy. ‘Bolshevism,’ he wrote, ‘. . . had been baptised in the blood of the bourgeoisie.’ Its leaders were ‘criminals, assassins, murderers, gunmen, desperadoes.’

  The disgust felt by Reilly towards Russia’s new ruling elite was due, in part, to the fact that he was a social and intellectual snob. He viewed society as a hierarchical pyramid in which his own position was extremely close to the top. He particularly disliked the fact that the Bolsheviks had inverted the pyramid, welcoming into their ranks all the most downtrodden elements of society. Often, this was purely on the grounds that their grievance against the old regime was assured. ‘A man who could read and write was eyed askance; the illiterates were obviously of the oppressed, and now their time had come.’

  Although the placing of so many poorly educated people in positions of authority was distasteful to Reilly, it was to prove of considerable benefit during his first months in Russia. He was travelling around the country with papers that were, as he himself confessed, ‘something more than dubious, and which were frequently scanned with an air of great knowingness by Commissars who could neither read nor write.’ Even in Moscow, many of the lower ranking commissars were illiterate and unable to tell whether or not the various passes and visas were genuine.

  Reilly was appalled by the state of the new Bolshevik capital. It had suffered considerable damage in the street fighting that led to the Bolsheviks seizing control and evidence of the bloodshed still lay all around.

  ‘A city of the damned,’ he wrote. ‘There had been looting at first, but now there was nothing left to loot. The rabble had been riotous, full of the lust of blood and destruction. Now, the rabble was cowed and frightened, except for the few that were Bolsheviks.’

  Reilly was also struck by the pervading sense of fear that was already blighting people’s lives. It was as if everyone was undertaking their daily lives in silence, scuttling through back streets in order to avoid the unwanted attentions of the secret police. ‘Over all, silent, secret, ferocious, menacing, hung the crimson shadow of the Cheka,’ wrote Reilly. ‘The new masters were ruling in Russia.’

  Reilly had experimented with living under his fake persona while in Petrograd, testing it in the city’s squares and markets. He played the role of Massino with aplomb and was confident that he could fool even the most observant of Cheka agents. But he was reticent to shed his real identity just yet. In an act of customary boldness, he first intended to present himself at the Kremlin as Sidney Reilly, an official emissary of the British prime minister. He wanted to see if he could bluff his way into a face-to-face meeting with Lenin.

  Exactly what he hoped to achieve by this high-wire strategy remains unclear. He may simply have wanted to see with his own eyes the man he was determined to destroy. He certainly thrived on dangerous games and always relished the idea of entering the lion’s den. Whatever his reasons, it was characteristically audacious and self-centred. Reilly informed no one of his plan, not even Mansfield Cumming. He preferred to work as a lone operator, reliant upon no one but himself.

  On this occasion, all began well. Reilly marched up to the Kremlin gates in full dress uniform and informed the sentries that he was the personal emissary of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He demanded to see Lenin.

  It must have been a convincing act, for he was immediately granted entry and taken to meet one of Lenin’s senior aides. However, no sooner was he inside the building than the Bolshevik officials manning the gates immediately began investigating the identity of this uninvited emissary.

  Reilly’s presence in Moscow was as yet unknown to the skeleton staff of the British Embassy. Robert Bruce Lockhart was taken by surprise when, at six o’clock that evening, he received a telephone call from Lev Karakhan, the Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

  The commissar had an extraordinary story to recount. ‘That afternoon,’ he told Lockhart, ‘a British officer had walked boldly up to the Kremlin gate and had demanded to see Lenin.’

  Karakhan provided Lockhart with a few more details before asking if the man was an impostor. Lockhart was as perplexed as the commissar and asked to know more. He was told that the man’s name ‘was Relli’.

  This meant nothing to Lockhart. ‘I nearly blurted out that he must be a Russian masquerading as an Englishman, or else a madman.’

  But he knew that Mansfield Cumming was intending to send new agents into Russia and he chose to bite his tongue. ‘Bitter experienc
e . . . had taught me to be prepared for almost any surprise and, without betraying my amazement, I told Karachin [sic] that I would inquire into the matter.’

  There was only one man who could tell him more. Ernest Boyce was now working as Cumming’s principal agent in Moscow and he was also the link man with the main Stockholm bureau. Lockhart was sure that he would know the identity of this mystery individual.

  Boyce was nonplussed when Lockhart recounted the story of Reilly’s visit to the Kremlin. He calmly replied that, ‘the man was a new agent, who had just come out from England.’

  Lockhart was furious that he had not been pre-warned and ‘blew up in a storm of indignation.’ He insisted that Reilly come to the embassy on the following day in order to explain himself.

  Reilly agreed to meet with Lockhart but made no apologies for his actions. Indeed, he expressed his surprise that Lockhart was so angry. ‘The sheer audacity of the man took my breath away . . .’ fumed Lockhart, ‘although he was years older than me, I dressed him down like a schoolmaster and threatened to have him sent home.’

  Reilly, who was forty-five years of age, was amused to be ticked off by a man fourteen years his junior. He had already warmed to Lockhart and now used his natural charm to placate him. ‘He took his wigging humbly but calmly and was so ingenious in his excuses that in the end he made me laugh.’

  Lockhart was, by his own admission, captivated by the human chameleon seated opposite him. Reilly was the person he secretly wished to be. ‘The man who had thrust himself so dramatically into my life was Sidney Reilly, the mystery man of the British secret service,’ he would later write in his memoirs, ‘and known today to the outside world as the master spy of Britain.’ Reilly’s methods, he said, ‘were on a grand scale which compelled my imagination.’

  Reilly returned to the Kremlin two days later, this time with his friend Grammatikov in tow. He was granted an audience with General Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, Director of the Bolshevik’s Supreme Military Council and ‘the brain centre of the entire Bolshevik organisation.’

  Reilly was at his loquacious best. He painted himself as a Bolshevik sympathiser, telling the general that he was ‘very interested in Bolshevism, the triumph of which had brought me back to Russia.’

  This was ‘quite true’, noted Reilly in his memoirs; although he had obviously not come back to celebrate the triumph.

  Reilly was anxious to discover two key pieces of information from the general. First, he wanted to know the state of relations between Germany and Russia now that the two countries were no longer at war. Secondly, he wanted to know if there were any divisions in the Bolshevik leadership.

  He soon discovered that the leadership was split from top to bottom on the very issue of peace with Germany. The general himself was furious with the concessions that his fellow Bolsheviks had made to the German high command. Dropping his guard, he confessed to Reilly his fears that the Foreign Commissar, Georgy Chicherin, had been ‘bought by the Germans.’

  Reilly had been accorded a private glimpse into the rival factions that already existed in the new regime. One of his aims was to push Russia back to war. He now knew that this was not a forlorn hope: several senior Bolshevik commissars wanted to do the same.

  Over the weeks to come, Reilly went out of his way to court the general. He quickly saw the benefit of cultivating contacts within the regime, commissars who could provide access to Lenin’s inner circle.

  ‘Nobody could be more officious on our behalf than Bruevich,’ wrote Reilly. He even supplied Reilly with a pass that enabled him to attend a meeting of the Soviets in the Grand Theatre.

  Reilly sent a series of reports to Mansfield Cumming detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bolshevik leadership. He admitted that their seizure of power was almost complete and that they were the ‘only real power in Russia.’ Yet he also revealed that the political opposition was growing in strength. ‘If properly supported,’ he wrote, ‘[it] will finally lead to [the] overthrow of [the] Bolsheviks.’

  Reilly proposed a twin-pronged strategy for dealing with Russia. The most immediate objective was to safeguard the stockpiles of Allied weaponry in the ports in Northern Russia. This would necessitate the landing of significant numbers of British troops, something that could only be done with the co-operation of the Bolsheviks.

  At the same time, Reilly recommended funding the opposition movement with the long-term aim of toppling Lenin’s government. ‘[It] may mean an expenditure of possibly one million pounds,’ he told Cumming, ‘and part of this may have to be expended without any real guarantee of ultimate success.’

  Reilly never received the one million pounds. It was far too much money for a country still at war. But his advice about safeguarding the Allied weaponry in the White Sea ports certainly struck a chord. There was a growing feeling in Whitehall that military intervention might be the only way of preventing the revolutionary government from playing fast and loose with the stockpile of munitions.

  Sidney Reilly soon found that he had courted General Bonch-Bruevich rather too assiduously. ‘[He] intended to be obliging to the point of embarrassment,’ he wrote. ‘We were permitted to go nowhere unattended . . . wherever we went we were followed.’

  This was deeply frustrating for Reilly, who wished to start investigating ways of toppling the Bolshevik regime from within. He could not do this while his every movement was coming under scrutiny. ‘It became obvious that, if I were to carry out the mission on which I was engaged, I must disappear.’

  In order to shake off the agents on his tail, he decided to pretend that he was returning to Petrograd with his friend, Grammatikov. In reality, Reilly would remain in Moscow under the assumed identity of Mr Constantine while Grammatikov would return to Petrograd with a third person pretending to be Reilly. ‘Our only task was to light on someone who bore a passable resemblance to me,’ wrote Reilly.

  He soon found someone willing to play the game, enabling Grammatikov to leave Moscow by train with the pseudo-Reilly in tow.

  The genuine Sidney Reilly watched them leave from a secret vantage point in the station. He was nervous as he saw them board the train, for he knew he had reached a point of no return. There could no longer be any pretence that he was a bona fide businessman eager to help the Bolsheviks. Now, he was embarking on an undercover life outside the law. He risked imprisonment and execution if his deception were to be unmasked.

  He also felt anxious for Grammatikov and the pseudo-Reilly. ‘I knew that hidden eyes were watching them, that unseen spies were dogging their footsteps.’ But their deception was helped by a sudden change of weather. ‘The day was squally and my representative with his nose appearing from a voluminous if ragged coat, bore a sufficiently close resemblance to me.’

  Reilly spent the rest of the day perfecting his assumed identity, the Greek businessman, Mr Constantine. He decided to embark on a wholly new existence, eschewing all the acquaintances of his former life. The only exception was Grammatikov’s trustworthy niece, Dagmara Karozus. A dancer at the Arts Theatre, she offered him lodgings in her apartment.

  Reilly was delighted to discover that she shared her flat with a twenty-two-year-old blonde actress named Elizaveta Otten. Elizaveta had two obvious attractions: she was fluent in four languages and had the looks of a movie star. Reilly immediately marked her down as both a potential lover and potential spy.

  In the first instance, however, it was Dagmara who proved invaluable. She was a good friend of a girl named Maria Friede, whose brother, Colonel Friede, was the Chief of the Bolshevik Staff.

  Colonel Friede gave every appearance of being a loyal Bolshevik. He was so trusted by the regime that he had access to all of the military reports being sent to Moscow. But Colonel Friede’s support for the Bolsheviks was a façade. In reality, he despised the new rulers of Russia and was prepared to betray all the secrets of the regime.

  ‘I had one or two surreptitious meetings with Friede,’ wrote Reilly, ‘and when we were each assure
d of the others bona fides, he became my most willing collaborator.’

  Reilly made the bold claim that every military communiqué of importance now passed through his hands. ‘All army orders, all military plans, all confidential documents relating to the army fell within his [Friede’s] province and many a copy of a highly confidential document he handled was read in England before the original was in the hands of the officer to whom it was addressed.’

  Colonel Friede smuggled the documents to his sister, who then passed them on to Reilly. ‘Every morning he [the colonel] would bring home copies of the Bolshevik despatches and orders,’ wrote Reilly. ‘The following morning, she brought them round to the Cheremeteff Pereulok, where they were duly handed over to me.’

  Reilly’s claim to have access to so much military information is an extraordinary one, yet it is endorsed by an unlikely source. A senior KGB general named Alexander Orlov was able to examine the Cheka’s file on Reilly shortly before defecting to the West. The file bore witness to many of Reilly’s claims.

  ‘Sidney Reilly . . . formed a highly efficient network of spies,’ wrote Orlov. Members of this network included Colonel Friede, Weneslav Orlovsky, the chief of the Soviet Criminal Police, Major General Zagriazhsky, Major General Politkovsky and an important clerk of the Soviet Executive Committee. All of these men handed him highly sensitive information – information that was then sent to Mansfield Cumming’s headquarters in Whitehall Court.

  Alexander Orlov expressed a grudging respect for Reilly. ‘[He] was soon able to supply London with a regular supply of fairly accurate information about the Red Army, the doings of the Soviet government and the political happenings in Russia.’

  Sidney Reilly was not the only agent sending reports back to London. Mansfield Cumming’s Russian network was steadily expanding as the nature of the threat became more apparent. Many of Cumming’s agents were working in the shadows, their names unknown even to Robert Bruce Lockhart.