Adventures of a British Master Spy

by Sidney Reilly

  The organisation of the conspiracy was now complete. It was arranged that upon the signal being given, their Lettish bodyguards were to arrest Lenin and Trotsky, and to parade them publicly through the streets, so that everybody should be aware that the tyrants of Russia were prisoners. At the same time the provisional army was to mobilise under General Judenitch, and the provisional government be instituted. As soon as affairs in the city were sufficiently quiet – a matter of a very few days – an army was to march off to co-operate with General Savinkoff against the Red forces which still were in the field against him. Another force would be dispatched to Petrograd where a simultaneous rising was to take place and Uritzsky, the head of the Tcheka, to be arrested. The scheme sounds fanciful enough, but our organisation was now immensely strong, the Letts were on our side, and the people would be with us as soon as the first blow was struck.

  We had now merely to await the return of Trotsky, and, as it happened, there was not long to wait. On the 20 August Mlle Friede informed me that in eight days’ time there was to be a meeting of the central committees of the Soviet in the Grand Theatre. Lenin was to address them and Trotsky was to give a report of the position on the Koltchak front.

  I saw Berzin that same evening and learned that he already had the news. One of the Lettish regiments would in the course of its duty be on guard at the exits and entrances of the Grand Theatre. The meeting might have been arranged for my benefit. I told Berzin that whatever commandant was detached for duty was to choose the men whom he was absolutely sure were faithful and devoted to our cause. At a given signal the soldiers were to close the doors and cover all the people in the theatre with their rifles, while a selected detachment was to secure the persons of Lenin and Trotsky. The special detachment was to consist of my inner circle of conspirators, with myself at their head. We were to be previously introduced into the theatre by the commandant and to take up our place in hiding behind the curtains. In case there was any hitch in the proceedings, in case the Soviets showed fight or the Letts proved nervous when it came to the point, in case of a thousand and one unforeseen accidents which might intervene, the other conspirators and myself would carry grenades in our place of concealment behind the curtains.

  When our plans were completed there came the news that the grand meeting had been postponed for a week. It was to be held on 6 September. I did not mind that. It gave me more time to make my final arrangements. I decided to take advantage of the delay and return to Petrograd, confer with Grammatikoff, and give my final orders.

  Incidentally, it would be useful to know what was the attitude of the Letts in Petrograd, and to what extent the organisation had grown there. Berzin would be useful in this matter. He was in touch with the Lettish colony in Petrograd, and I wished to use him for the issue of Lettish proclamations.

  I saw him again in the Griboiedov Pereulok and suggested that he should proceed to Petrograd. He was agreeable to set off at once. I gave him my address there and told him to ask for Mr Massino, the name which, together with the character of a very respectable Levantine merchant, I bore in Petrograd.

  On the night of 28 August, Comrade Relinsky, travelling on a pass signed and sealed by Veneslav Orlovsky, President of the Tcheka-Criminel, boarded the train to Petrograd.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN PETROGRAD I was Mr Massino, a Turkish and Oriental merchant. I proceeded at once to No. 10 Torgovaya Ulitza, Mr Massino’s Petrograd address. Elena Michailovna was waiting for me. There was quite a dainty little repast ready, some soup, some fish, a fowl and some cheese, fortified by a bottle of wine, which Captain Cromie had sent from the embassy. Elena told me that Berzin had been there that afternoon, as he had promised me in Moscow. He had waited about an hour and then gone to see some friends in the Latvian quarter. He would see me on the following day.

  That night my sleep was the sleep of a child. Tired! God, how I was tired. But now at last the end for which we had striven was in sight. Berzin had distributed his roubles wisely. One blow and Lenin and Trotsky were our prisoners, Moscow in our hands, and this monstrous abortion, which had crept from the teeming womb of time, was crushed, crushed forever, its noisome head broken beneath our heel. Tomorrow I must see Grammatikoff, hear what progress the Expeditionary Force was making towards Vologda, learn what move Savinkoff was likely to make, send my report to England, and then back to Moscow and be prepared to strike. Although we had not yet reached the needle point, though the worst was yet to come, I felt as if the load I had carried for the past few months was slipping off my shoulders. There’s many a slip, of course, ’twixt the cup and the lip. But what could go wrong? There would be danger for us of course in the Grand Theatre, when the blow was first struck, but at any rate there was no possible escape for those monsters against whom we were to pit ourselves. Myself and my picked band might die, but with us would die the tyrants who had made of Russia a charnel-house. Nothing could possibly save them. Once they were out of the way, well there was always Savinkoff and others of our friends to re-establish the broken and blood-drenched country.

  • • •

  The dear city, which had been my home during so many happy years before the war, looked more ruinous and deserted than ever. The streets were littered and untidy and after the heat of that August day stunk abominably in the nostrils. Such people as I passed looked apathetic, listless, hungry. Any fears I might have entertained about being recognised were soon set at rest. The wayfarers eyed me suspiciously, furtively, slunk past with a sidelong glance of the eye, and as soon as they were safely behind me scurried rapidly away. They were afraid, afraid of the nameless terror which stalked the streets of what once had been among the fairest of European cities. At any moment the Red Terror might pounce upon them and bear them away to the sound of their muffled screams. No one could tell in what dark doorway it lurked, in what foul alley it lay waiting, this dread monster which sated its sadistic lust upon the lives of men. Men had been alive and flourishing yesterday – as much, that is, as men in Russia could be said to flourish – and the morning dawned, and where were they? The silent dungeons of No. 2 Gorohovaya could tell a story which a man might hear and never sleep again, a story of nameless horror and revolting torture and ghastly death, a story the like of which has never been told. I for one hope it never will be told in its entirety. Who could tell the whole truth about Russia?

  As I have said before, the Bolshevists were in a very small minority. But the population was cowed by that secret terror. It seemed to have in it an element of the supernatural. The vengeance of the Tcheka was so swift, so silent, so sure. You could trust nobody. The brother born from the same womb as you, the wife of your bosom, the woman of your heart might be in league against you. Truly the abomination of desolation is sitting where it ought not, and the forces of anti-Christ are abroad in Russia today.

  Some few years after the events I am at present narrating, a friend of mine, whom I will call D., escaped from Russia and arrived in London destitute, but happy to have escaped with his life. Night after night in his English sanctuary he would awaken screaming in mortal terror that the forces of the Tcheka were upon him. He could never get that fear out of his mind, even by the banks of the Thames. He feared to be left alone. He was uneasy and suspicious in the company of his friends. He was in mortal terror in a crowd. Ultimately, impossible seeming though it is, he went back to Russia. His wife had been killed there, shot down by the Bolshevists while she was trying to escape. Then he heard that she was still alive. Even in London the secret visitors came for him. They were friends, of course, and anti-Bolsheviks. They told him that his wife was in prison, but that the agents of the White Russians in Moscow could secure her release, but it was imperative that he should go to Moscow himself. A forged passport had been prepared for him. All was ready. So D. went to Russia, and was never heard of again.

  Now shortly after I arrived in Petrograd I knew that I was being followed. At first it was but a suspicion. A feeling of uneasiness came over me, such
a feeling as I was to experience often enough before I got out of Russia. Then my suspicion gradually grew and grew until it became a certainty. One of my usual Petrograd haunts was raided. In another a trap was laid and I escaped by inches. The Tcheka had discovered something. But what? I was uneasy. My mind went back to the sinister figure of Marchand whom I had distrusted from the first.

  It was imperative, however, that I should give no inkling of my suspicion that I was being followed. I decided to take a bold step and see Orlovsky at his office. The obvious fear shown by everybody I approached in Petrograd made my task comparatively easy. Anybody who approached with any degree of confidence I suspected at once of being a Bolshevik official and in my turn I avoided him, and so arrived without accident at the Fontanka quay. Here in the old days was situated the Ministry of the Interior, and here now was the headquarters of the Tcheka-Criminel, the organisation of which I was a collaborator.

  A dirty and villainous-looking porter met me at the door and scrutinised me with suspicious eye and without saying a word.

  ‘Is Veneslav Orlovsky here?’ I asked him, and handed him my passport, which described me as a collaborator of the Tcheka-Criminel. The clown pondered the passport for a full minute without saying anything. It was obvious that he could not read: equally obvious that the seal on the document impressed him. At last he stamped his foot. Two Red Guards appeared out of the darkness at the back of the hall.

  ‘Veneslav Orlovsky,’ said the porter. The guards placed themselves one on each side of me. We marched. We went up the stairs and arrived at the door, which led into the apartment of the President of the Tcheka-Criminel.

  I remained for some time chatting with Orlovsky and left him at the end of about half an hour. As a result of our consultation we concluded that whatever might be the fate of M. Constantine, Comrade Relinsky was not suspected.

  It was midday and intensely hot. Nobody was about. The Fontanka presented a spectacle of squalor and ruin. I passed the usual bread queues, hungry, listless, only not rebellious, waiting, waiting for their meagre allowance of black rye bread with the patience which is all Russia. A car swept along the dirty, litter-strewn road containing two Bolshevik officials. All cars had been impounded by the Bolshevists and were at the use of the communist authorities. They did not wait in food queues. A few pairs of eyes turned and followed the car up the street, rebellion smouldering in them for a brief moment. Then even the light of rebellion went out, and the eyes swung round again to the patient contemplation of the backs in front of them. Bolshevism was one thing. In front of them was bread.

  Accordingly Comrade Relinsky ousted Mr Massino, and I decided for the time being to keep away from any place where I was known under any other identity than that of the worthy collaborator of the Tcheka. I felt perfectly safe and reasonably optimistic.

  The blow fell quite suddenly. Berzin had already returned to Moscow to put everything in readiness as far as he was concerned. I rang up Grammatikoff to inform him of the slight modification of my plans and to give him the news that Mr Massino had left Petrograd. It was quite in order that Comrade Relinsky should be professionally interested in the resident alien bourgeois merchant, Mr Massino. There was sardonic humour in Comrade Relinsky being suspicious of Mr Massino. Grammatikoff answered the phone himself and his voice was hoarse and unnatural. It seemed as if he was trying to disguise it.

  ‘It is I, Relinsky,’ I assured him.

  ‘Who?’ asked Grammatikoff. I repeated the name.

  And then it was that the blow fell, stunning me with the force of its sudden impact. I seemed to plunge suddenly into the depths of a black abyss and then fetch up with a jerk, while the walls whirled and danced around me.

  ‘I have somebody with me,’ said Grammatikoff, ‘who has brought bad news. The doctors have operated too early and the patient’s condition is serious. Come at once if you wish to see me.’ I realised with a sinking feeling that Grammatikoff’s voice was not hoarse because it was disguised. It was hoarse with horror. What could be his meaning? Something terrible had obviously happened, something to do with our conspiracy, something of which he dared not speak in plain terms over the wire.

  Not a conveyance was to be had for love or money. As I have said, all motor vehicles had been confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and converted largely to the purposes of the Tcheka-Politique. Horses starved in Russia. They were whipped to the last ounce of strength they had in them, and when they dropped, were left where they were. Until the carcase had decomposed too far, the hungry people would cut meat from it.

  I hurried as much as I dared in the direction of Grammatikoff’s house. One dared not hurry too much. A man who hurries had business. A man who has business is suspect in Red Russia. However, within an hour I was in Grammatikoff’s flat and listened to his tale of woe. A bitter tale too it was to hear.

  ‘The fools have struck too early,’ said Grammatikoff. ‘Uritzky is dead, assassinated in his office this morning at eleven o’clock. At the very moment when you telephoned me the bearer of the bowstring was with me. It was Hermann, a Jew, whom I know to be a genuine sympathiser of ours. “Monsieur Grammatikoff,” he said to me, “you must fly at once. The reprisals will be horrible. The bourgeoisie will be shot down by the thousand, and you in particular will run an enormous risk. Fly. I will try to arrange a passport for you.”’

  Hermann was right. The reprisals would be horrible, and in the midst of them our conspiracy might very easily be exposed. Some poor wretch might well try to purchase his safety by telling what he knew, and the danger to ourselves and our friends was imminent.

  ‘It is a terrible risk our staying here,’ said Grammatikoff. ‘I am, of course, already under suspicion. If anything is discovered before anything else it will be your name and mine. Moreover the svolotch arrested Alexandra Petrovna two days back, and the Lord alone knows what they found on her. Besides a woman, you know, and under torture … Well, it is a comfort she did not know very much.’

  As he spoke Grammatikoff was emptying the drawers of his desk of papers and burning them in the grate. At any moment we might hear the steps of the terrible Tcheka on the stairs.

  ‘Where will you be tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘I shall go to my sister’s. And you, Sidney Georgevitch? You will not return to No. 10?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Massino must return to Petrograd. There are friends of his who might be implicated, and he must warn them without any delay.’

  We arranged a meeting for the following day and parted.

  How much had the svolotch discovered? How many of our friends in Petrograd were suspect? Would there be an outbreak of the Red Terror following the death of Uritzky? As yet everything was quiet. Nothing had happened. The Bolsheviks had made no move. Was it possible that Hermann had been misinformed? Perhaps things were not so bad after all. If anything had happened, the Tcheka would surely have struck by now. It was in a somewhat happier frame of mind that I reached the Torgovaya Ulitza. Elena Michailovna let me in.

  I told her to prepare herself for instant flight. Her movements in just such a situation as this had been previously arranged. Then I rang up Captain Cromie, the Naval Attaché at the British embassy, and asked him to meet me at the café kept by Serge Sergevitch Balkoff, where we had our usual rendezvous. A meeting was arranged for twelve o’clock. I had only time to burn my papers. I watched the last flame gutter out, the last thin wisp of smoke curl up and vanish.

  ‘All is quiet,’ whispered Balkoff and led me to the little room at the back of his café. The fingers of the little clock above the mantel pointed to the hour. I was just in time. Even as the door closed behind me, the clock gave a little burr and with a high pitched tinny note struck out the hour. Cromie was not yet there.

  Queer how silent it was. This place had always been busy enough in the old days, and even now under the present regime did not want for custom. I recalled other occasions, when I had sat here waiting for Cromie as now I was waiting, waiting for Grammatikoff when he was to reveal
to me the plan by which I was to get to Moscow months before, waiting here years, years ago for Sascha, long before the Germans had put the world in a flame, when I was young and St Petersburg was still one of the gay cities of the world. I pictured the gay throng assembled round the little tables in the café, heard in imagination the ripple of conversation, the chink of cups. How silent the place was. I waited to hear Balkoff tiptoe across the empty outer room. Silence. Five minutes past twelve.

  Not like Cromie to be unpunctual. My feelings may be imagined, as I waited there. In my mind I went again over the happenings of the last two months, my high hopes and their ignominious sequel. I had been within an ace of becoming master of Russia. I would have satisfied my superiors by bringing Russia into the line against Germany. But how much more would I have done. What is happening here is more important than any war that has ever been fought. At any price this foul obscenity which has been born in Russia must be crushed out of existence, crushed out, while yet it was small. Peace with Germany? Yes, peace with Germany, peace with anybody. There is only one enemy. Mankind must unite in a holy alliance against this midnight terror.

  With a whirr and a cling the little clock on the mantel struck, recalling me with a start from my flight of mental rhetoric. A quarter past twelve and Cromie not here. I dared not wait any longer. Balkoff, comrade though he was, was probably suspect. But it was imperative that I should see Cromie that day.

  I decided to risk a visit to the British embassy. It was a dangerous move, of course, both for the embassy and myself. But I had brought it off successfully before.

  The street was clear. I stepped out. Before I went I gave a word of warning to Balkoff – to be prepared to leave Petrograd and slip across the frontier into Finland.

  In the Vlademirovsky Prospect I met some men and women running. They dived into doorways, into side-streets, anywhere. There was evidently a panic. What had happened? Then suddenly the cause was revealed to me. A car shot by, crammed with Red soldiers, then another, then another. The Tcheka was out.