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

by Deborah McDonald

  Peters was still predicting that Lockhart would be put on trial, but Moura didn’t give up. Whatever devices and persuasions she had at her disposal (and her powers were quite magnificent, as everyone who ever knew her could testify) she exerted now. Three days later, Lockhart was officially informed that he was to be freed. Ambassador Litvinov and his staff were being released from Brixton prison and sent back to Russia, and Lockhart would be part of the exchange.

  Despite the news, he was still depressed and sleeping badly. The loss of the baby, the prospect of leaving Russia without Moura, and the third anniversary of his younger brother’s death on the Western Front combined to keep his spirits and courage at bay.

  The only thing that lifted him was another visit from Moura. Again she was brought by Peters. On this occasion the Chekist appeared in full duty gear in a leather jacket with a Mauser pistol on his belt; he brought confirmation that Lockhart would be set free in a few days. More importantly, he brought Moura, and this time he let them talk.

  ‘The reunion was wonderful,’ Lockhart wrote in his diary.32 During his last few days in the Kremlin, she was allowed to spend real time with him – whole days. Moura would recall those precious hours with exquisite affection: ‘How close we were to each other – how nothing existed except you and me in the whole world.’ They took long walks in the Kremlin gardens, talked at length and sat in cosy silence – ‘sitting very close and so happy with the sheer joy of being together after all the terrible ordeal. How happy I was, how happy.’33

  It soon became clear why Lockhart was having doubts about their plan to go to Sweden. He was giving serious thought to staying on in Russia. Peters, who had become fond of Moura and seemed to regard Lockhart with an odd mixture of natural enmity, jealousy and friendly affection, couldn’t understand how he could even contemplate leaving Moura and going back to the corrupt, decaying capitalist world. Lockhart shared his disbelief. He had been profoundly unimpressed by his country’s behaviour during Russia’s crisis, and like other young people of his era he was still attracted to the fleeting ideal of democratic liberty that the Revolution had seemed to offer and might yet deliver. Peters observed Lockhart’s indecision with interest, but for the moment kept his thoughts to himself.

  Having been pushed to clear the way for Lockhart’s release, Peters had to attend to the details. He was in charge of the Cheka investigation into the Allied plot. Lockhart stood accused of – indeed had been caught red-handed at – the most heinous conspiracy against the Soviet government. His name was blood throughout the Bolshevik press. And yet his release had to be justified to the public and (on behalf of the Cheka) to the government. It was too late to remove him from the frame altogether – he was acknowledged as the leader and mastermind of the plot that bore his name. But as Peters compiled his dossier on the case and wrote his report, he began systematically manipulating the evidence, snipping the cords that tied Lockhart to his eponymous conspiracy, minimising his involvement and diluting the wickedness of his character.

  Peters was already falsifying the report anyway, in order to make the Allied missions seem more culpable and the Cheka less guilty than they were. He covered up Dzerzhinsky’s Latvian agent provocateur scheme, which had been a breach of the law of diplomatic immunity. Peters wrote that the plot had been wholly authored by the Allies, and had been exposed as a result of the loyalty of Colonel Berzin, who had been approached by Smidkhen (‘Lockhart’s agent’) and immediately blew the whistle. Given this false premise, a few more lies and misrepresentations wouldn’t be out of place.34

  The simplest task was to separate Lockhart from the espionage ring centred on Aleksandr Fride, perhaps the most damning of his activities. That was achieved by claiming that Maria Fride had been caught delivering her package of secret documents to the flat rented by Sidney Reilly and his mistress, rather than to Lockhart’s. By the time Peters had finished describing the Frides’ role in providing military and economic intelligence to the conspiracy, it appeared as if they’d had dealings with just about every Allied agent and consul in Moscow except Lockhart.35

  To an impartial mind Lockhart’s apparent non-involvement would look bizarre. And this was only the beginning of the lies and omissions. Peters wasn’t a particularly skilled dissembler or fabricator, and in his efforts to unite his de-Lockhartised version with what was already publicly known, he produced a report that was full of contradictions. Lockhart appeared as both arch-manipulator and hapless dupe, audaciously daring agent and feeble coward.

  Peters’ baldest lie was that Lockhart had been arrested by mistake – contradicting the statement in the same report that the raid had been targeted and that Lockhart and his people had been under observation for some time (this again was to cover up the breach of diplomacy).36 And yet when Lockhart was interrogated (voluntarily, of course, so as not to breach diplomatic rules) he was said to have admitted everything and claimed to have been ordered by his government to enact the plot. Peters portrayed him as an unwilling tool of his own government; he had reluctantly set in motion the plot to subvert the Latvian regiments, but then stepped back and had little or no further involvement. Despite the fact that the conspiracy was known within the Cheka as ‘Kalamatiano-Lockhart & Co’ (after the captured American agent Xenophon Kalamatiano, a principal conspirator in the espionage ring), Lockhart barely featured in Peters’ narrative of it.

  And as for Lockhart being re-arrested when he met Peters to plead for Moura’s release – why, that was merely a formal reprisal for the arrest of Litvinov in London. This was an impossible claim: the Soviet government was only told later that day that the arrest of Litvinov had taken place, and besides, the reason stated at the time of Lockhart’s arrest was that the Cheka had discovered documents signed by him guaranteeing British diplomatic protection for members of the conspiracy.37

  Peters compromised his report still further, denigrating Lockhart’s character. He exercised his own emotions here – there was a sense of betrayed friendship in Peters’ writing. He and the Bolshevik leaders had truly believed that Lockhart was sympathetic to their cause. When Peters showed Lockhart the aftermath of the destruction of the Anarchists, he had imagined he was dealing with a friend. But now he believed (wrongly) that he had been fooled; the duplicitous Lockhart had been conspiring to destroy the Soviet dream. To a committed ideologue like Peters it was unthinkable that a man might act pragmatically, following the policy that seemed best at the time. Therefore Lockhart must always have been plotting. ‘Prior to his arrest, Lockhart would proclaim from every housetop that he was conducting a campaign for the recognition of Soviet power,’ Peters wrote, and ‘cloaked by this trust, Lockhart conducted his secret activities.’38

  Quite likely there was jealousy in the demeaning portrait Peters drew of Lockhart – jealousy about Moura. The man he described seemed a most unlikely arch-conspirator. Peters declared that ‘not one of the criminals who passed through the Cheka presented a more pitiable spectacle of cowardice than that of Lockhart’.39 Having been caught red-handed, ‘like a wretched coward, Lockhart protested that he had not acted on his own volition, but on suggestions made to him from his government’. Thus Lockhart appeared to be merely a diplomat, not the dangerous plotter he was widely believed to be.

  Belying Lockhart’s own fond recollection of their private dealings, Peters described Lockhart’s personal crises over what he should do with the future as the writhings of self-interest:

  Lockhart was a wretched individual, several times even taking up a pen in order to write down everything that had transpired . . . and about his government. But being the pathetic careerist that he was, he stood like a mule caught between two bales of hay, drawn to the one side by British and world imperialism, and to the other by a new, burgeoning world. And each time he spoke about this new burgeoning world . . . Lockhart would seize a pen in order to set down the whole truth. Then, after a few minutes had passed, the wretched donkey would be drawn once more to other bale of hay, and toss the pen aw
ay.40

  Nobody who knew Lockhart would have recognised this withering portrait. But it had one crucial thing in its favour: nobody could possibly object to releasing such a pathetic, feeble creature. Nobody could believe him dangerous.

  While Peters cooked and spiced his report, Lockhart and Moura discussed the future. Despite his desire to stay with Moura, when it came to it Lockhart couldn’t bear to cut himself off from his mother country or make his home in the corrupt, cruel place that Russia had become. The only solution was for Moura to come with him to England. There they would brave the opprobrium of society and make a new life for themselves. She would divorce Djon and he would do likewise with Jean.

  But how could it be achieved? Moura couldn’t leave her ailing mother; there was nobody else to look after her. Moura’s brother was dead (another mystery – he was possibly killed in one of Russia’s wars, but whether it was the Patriotic War or the civil wars isn’t recorded), her wayward sister Alla, having divorced Engelhardt, was living in Paris with her second husband, and Alla’s twin Assia lived in the Ukraine. And there were the children: Pavel, Tania and Kira, in Estonia with Djon. It was all so desperately complicated.

  Inflicting a terrible emotional wound on herself, Moura made her decision: she could not leave now. Everything must be done properly. For the time being, they must part. She would work to secure the money she would need from her father’s estate in the Ukraine (what was left of it), obtain a divorce from Djon, and acquire the necessary permits, passports and visas to get herself and her mother out of Russia.41

  At the same time, Lockhart would pull whatever strings he could with the British and Swedish diplomatic services in Finland and Sweden. They would meet in Stockholm, and then go to England.

  Perhaps Moura was light-headed when she agreed to this plan. She wasn’t well in those last days. With the effects of the miscarriage, the stress and her privations in prison, she had fallen ill and her temperature was flying steady at 39°C. But she still struggled to the Kremlin on his final day of captivity for their priceless last hours together.42

  Wednesday 2 October 1918

  At 9.30 in the evening, Lockhart was taken from the Kremlin in a motor car provided by the Swedish Consul-General. He was driven directly to the station, where a train was waiting to depart for the frontier.

  He wasn’t alone. Other foreign prisoners had been released in exchange for Litvinov. They included Hicks, who was accompanied by his new Russian wife, Liuba. At her request, Lockhart had arranged, through Peters, for Hickie to be allowed out of the Norwegian Legation a day early so that the couple could get married in time to depart together.

  There was no such possibility for Lockhart and Moura, and their friends’ happiness rubbed the wound raw.

  The train was waiting in the darkness some distance from the station, guarded by a platoon of Latvian soldiers. The passengers walked in subdued silence along the tracks to get on board; they felt they wouldn’t be able to breathe easily until they were out of Russia. Some friends had come to see them off – relations of Liuba, Wardwell, the American Red Cross man, and Moura.43

  For the second time in less than a year Moura found herself standing beside a train in the cold, saying goodbye to dear British friends. This time there were no tears – the shock and pain were too deep. She and Lockhart talked little, and only about meaningless trivialities, both trying to avoid breaking down. Moura dreaded appearing a coward, and fought to hold herself in. ‘Remember,’ Lockhart said to her, ‘each day is one day nearer to the time when we shall meet again.’44 While the train waited to depart, she was escorted back to the station by Wardwell. Looking back and seeing the train recede into the darkness, she felt that her real self, her soul, was aboard with Lockhart, and that the person walking along with Wardwell, going home through the Moscow streets, teeth and fists clenched tight, was just an outer shell, a half-stunned automaton, ‘repeating to itself that one mustn’t break down, that one must fight the obstacles and be confident in the future’.45

  Notes

  * The official Bolshevik newspaper (pravda means ‘truth’).

  13

  The End of Everything . . .

  October–November 1918

  Autumn 1918, Petrograd

  One by one they were being taken from her, the men she had loved and cherished. Lockhart was gone, perhaps forever (although she wouldn’t allow herself to think that). Cromie was dead. Now, on her return to Petrograd from Moscow, Moura learned that Denis Garstin – her dear, darling Garstino, the prince of good fellows – had been killed in action at Archangel.

  It had taken nearly two months for the news to filter through the tenuous channels that connected Petrograd with the outside world, and still longer for the full story to be told. Like Francis Cromie, Denis Garstin had died in a blaze of martial valour – or purposeless folly, depending on how one saw it. Having received his marching orders while he was with Lockhart’s mission in Moscow, Garstin had made his way north on foot, passing through the Red Army lines disguised as a peasant, and reached the British forces at the end of July. A veteran of the Western Front, he threw himself into the fighting with the same verve that he brought to every aspect of life. When his unit was engaged by Soviet machine guns and armoured cars, he led a charge against them. Single-handedly capturing one armoured car, he made a second charge; on the brink of reaching his objective, he was hit in the neck by a rifle bullet and killed instantly.1

  What a futile death, but also how strangely fitting. In the last weeks before he went away, he had lost much of his characteristic optimism, worn down by the depredations of the Soviet state and the continued suffering of the poor:

  I . . . have been damnably disappointed in all I’ve tried to do out here, have had chance after chance and seen all swept away by that ruthless fate that seems to dwell in these wide lands and twist the little schemes and hopes of man into malignant shapes, or else wipe them bewilderingly right away. But it’s perhaps for this reason that I shall never be able wholly, or even partially, to wipe Russia out of my life.2

  As his friend Hugh Walpole wrote, ‘it is one of the tragic ironies of life that he should have been killed by the people whom he loved, believing in the future of that land as many of its citizens did not’.3 He had recovered his spirits in the north, with a clear task before him, but going home was the one thing he had been dreaming of when he died – ‘it’s home, home, home, for me at the first chance’.4

  Moura didn’t know if she could go on bearing all this. ‘The dear, brave, loyal boy – who made such wonderful plans for the future – the dear old idealist.’5 She felt terrible guilt that she had sometimes treated him spitefully – ‘a regular pig’.6 Along with a mass of his papers, Garstino had left his dog, Garry, in Moura’s care when he went away. Moura diverted her love to the dog, and he went everywhere with her – ‘we sit and look at each other and remember him’.7

  She managed to sustain her courage in spite of everything, but it was hard. If Cromie and Garstino could be taken so violently, how could she expect any process of natural justice to reunite her with Lockhart? Nothing could be relied on any more in this world.

  The grief was brought still closer when she visited the former British Embassy. She went there looking for some letters that had been sent to Cromie by Meriel Buchanan and Edward Cunard.8 The building was being used as a left-luggage store and occasionally as a refuge for desperate British expatriates still trapped in Russia. Princess Anna Saltikoff, the owner of the building, was still living in one wing, but the rest was now deserted, and it was easy for a person with connections to gain entry. The only person remaining from the old embassy days was William, Sir George Buchanan’s chasseur and butler, now the building’s caretaker. He had once been a proud figure, but now he was aged and sad, reduced by loneliness and hunger.9

  It was a desperately melancholy visit. There were boards over the broken windows, and a piece of paper still pinned to the front door declaring that the place was under th
e protection of the Dutch Legation.

  Stepping inside, Moura found herself at the foot of the long staircase that led up to the first landing. Less than a year ago she had ascended those stairs on the arm of her husband to attend the Buchanans’ Christmas party, the weirdly mournful-convivial gathering where there had been bully beef for dinner, impromptu national anthems, and rifles stored ready for use in the chancery.

  On the hall floor and the bottom step was a dark, rusty bloodstain. Moura guessed whose it was, and it cut her to the heart. Cromie had fallen here with the Cheka’s bullets in his back – there on the bottom step was where his head had lain. Poor dear old Crow. Only a few days ago, Moura had been sorting through old letters and books when she came across the copy of Stevenson’s Virginibus Puerisque that he had given her ‘to remember him by if he was killed’. It brought on a rush of pain and regret.10 She had immersed herself in the book’s lavish, heartfelt essays, and their moods and thoughts permeated the letters she wrote during those last months of 1918.

  What had Cromie had in mind when he selected this particular volume to give to Moura, the lady who returned his affection but not his love? Almost every other page seemed to contain something that spoke about himself and Moura. Perhaps he hoped she might be struck by Stevenson’s suggestion that ‘A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is a marriage of love, for absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate’.11 Yet what about Cromie’s wife, Gwladys, the Welsh cousin he had married in Portsmouth over a decade ago – what had she felt about being wife to a ship’s captain? What was she feeling now?