I was awakened by a knocking at the door. I sat bolt upright, listening intently. It was broad daylight.
‘Are you awake, Michael Markovitch?’ whispered a familiar voice. ‘It is I, Dagmara K.,’ and in a moment the door was opened and there was Dagmara with the old lady, who had admitted me on the previous evening, and a gentleman, whom Dagmara introduced as her cousin, Boris Sergeievitch.
My hostess prepared the samovar and set some bread before us, and while we made breakfast asked whether I had been disturbed in the previous night. It appeared that Dagmara had taken refuge with her, and was actually asleep in the house at the time of my arrival. Vera Petrovna – the old lady – had at once awakened Dagmara and sent her to my room to identify me.
‘And of course I would know you anywhere, Michael Markovitch,’ said Dagmara, and beneath her air of archness she stressed my assumed name.
Dagmara gave me an address in the Tverskoi Boulevard where I was to meet her. Shortly afterwards she left the house, and allowing her to get a little way ahead I followed.
‘You are running a great risk, M. Constantine,’ she told me when I had rejoined her. ‘Vera Petrovna is closely connected with Mme Kaplan, who made the attempt on Lenin. She might be arrested at any moment. She is all ready to fly, but at present knows not how.’
So had I begun my excursion in Moscow by putting my head right in the noose.
In the meantime it will be as well if I give some account of what had actually happened in Moscow during my absence.
After the assassination of Uritzky at Petrograd and the attempt on Lenin at Moscow, Moscow was divided into a number of small sections for the purpose of the Tcheka inquisition. To each section was assigned a detachment of Tcheka agents, and every house in turn was ransacked from top to bottom. Among the other places the flat in the Cheremeteff Pereulok was visited. Dagmara and the two sisters S. were together when the raid took place, and in a drawer of the bureau were over two million roubles in 1,000 rouble notes. When the agents of the Tcheka thundered on the door, demanding admission, Dagmara had picked up a bundle of notes and thrust them between her legs, and there had kept them during the whole period of the search. The Tcheka agents, who were tiring of their task, conducted a very superficial examination, left the apartment and descended the staircase. As they came down they met a girl coming up with a portfolio under her arm.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To visit Mlle S.’
‘Show us that portfolio.’
It was the end. The girl was Mlle Friede, who, as I have mentioned before, used to bring copies of the Bolshevik secret documents from her brother to my headquarters in the Cheremeteff Pereulok. Mlle Friede was arrested at once. The agents of the Tcheka returned to Mlle S.’s apartment. During their absence safety measures had been taken. The money had been hidden securely. Nonetheless the two sisters were arrested. Colonel Friede was arrested. Berzin was arrested. By an extraordinary stroke of fortune Dagmara was allowed to go free. Such was the remarkable story which Dagmara told me that day in the house in the Tverskoi Boulevard, almost opposite to the ‘Tramble’ Café, where I had met Berzin so many times. And so had the most promising plot ever concocted against the Bolsheviks been broken down by the folly of Mlle Friede. As absolutely every motor car in Russia had been confiscated by the Bolsheviks, it was understood, not only among my agents, but in general, never to enter a house before which stood a motor car. It was a sure sign that the Tcheka was there. But poor Mlle Friede had become so used to danger in the two months during which she had acted as my agent that she had neglected a most simple and elementary precaution. Our plot had ended in a fiasco.
My meeting with Dagmara was invaluable. I was enabled to gather up the broken threads of my organisation in Moscow. A price was on my head. I was an outlaw. I was to be shot at sight by anyone who identified me. My real identity was known. My noms de guerre, Constantine and Massino, were known. Everything was uncovered. Now that I was in the city of the Terror, my chances of getting out again were, I had to admit, very small.
In the meantime I must lie low and watch points. Spasmodic raids were taking place at every hour in Moscow. People were being arrested by the thousand. Usually there was not a particle of evidence against them. But they were bourgeoisie. That was enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
NEVER IN MY life have I been so talked about. My name was in everybody’s mouth. My description was pasted up all over Moscow. I cropped up in every conversation – myself and Bruce Lockhart. Lockhart, as I have previously shown, was absolutely ignorant of my conspiracy, but the Bolsheviks were determined to drag the Allied missions into it. And Bruce Lockhart was now a prisoner, and it was up to me, if his life were really in danger, to surrender myself in his place. All Moscow had gone rabid. The discovery of my conspiracy had been the spark to ignite the magazine.
All my names and aliases were known. They were published in the official Bolshevist journal together with the proclamation of my outlawry. They were all there – Relinsky, Constantine, Massino and the rest. My arch-enemies had identified me at last under my various disguises with Sidney George Reilly of the British service.
But of my whereabouts nothing was known. Some said that I was in hiding in Petrograd, some that I was in Finland, some that I had returned to England. Some even went so far as to suggest that I was actually in Moscow itself – there in the very lions’ den. I was the most talked of man in the place. I cannot say that I entirely appreciated the unsought publicity.
‘They say he has actually been seen in Moscow,’ said Nicholas Nicholaivitch to me. Nicholas had been an officer in the old Imperial Army, and knew me as Serge Dmitrievitch. Fugitives were not asked more than their first name and patronymic in the days of the terror. ‘They say this Reilly has actually been seen in Moscow. Our friends of the Tcheka are having another little series of raids for him, and, believe me, if he is here, I pity him. They are very thorough, the Tcheka. Not even a mouse could escape them. The svolotch wiped out thirty whole families last night, thirty, my word of honour. Up against the wall, and pop, pop, pop, man, woman and child.’
‘And if this Reilly is in Moscow?’ I suggested.
‘Oh they will find him,’ said Nicholas Nicholaivitch. ‘Nothing escapes them in the end. You don’t know where and when their hand is coming to grab you. You do not know who are your enemies these days. Oh yes, they will find him.’
‘And then?’
‘And then—’ Nicholas Nicholaivitch put his great fingers round his throat and made an unpleasant clicking noise. He laughed – the monster actually laughed. It was curious how dispassionately, not to say good-humouredly the anti-revolutionaries would discuss my probable fate.
‘But seriously, Serge Dmitrievitch,’ said Nicholas’ wife, ‘when do you think the Allies will come? They have been coming – oh so long. Will they really come? One hears rumours. Now they are here, now there, now they are within a day’s march of Vologda, now they have taken Cronstadt. Pray God they will be in time.’
It was a prayer that was going up to the Father of Mercies in many parts of Moscow at that time. The Allies had been expected so long, there were so many rumours, so many hopes doomed to frustration. Would they really come? The populace as a whole was sure of it. Russia might yet be saved. But time passed and the Allies did not come. A terrible thing had arisen in Russia, which, if it were not checked, would spread like a slime over the whole world, foul, reeking, obscure. All the civilisation which had taken so many thousands of years to build would be slowly engulfed in that filthy flood, and the last note of joy would die in the mouth of the world.
I did not spend two nights in the same place or under the same name. Now I was a Greek merchant, whose flat had been seized by a workman’s family; now I was a Tsarist officer, seeking escape from Moscow; now I was a Russian merchant, trying to avoid the military service which the Bolsheviks had made compulsory.
I had my introduction to all these good people, who gave me shelte
r during my precarious stay in Moscow. I knew the names and addresses of many of the conspirators, with whom I was not personally acquainted. I knew also who were the other members of their ‘Five’. For the rest the Bolsheviks were of the very greatest assistance to me. They were so conceited over the discovery of the conspiracy that, from day to day, they published the fullest reports of the progress they were making. In consequence I knew who had been arrested, who was likely to be under suspicion, where I could go without fear of disturbance.
As soon as it grew dark I would creep round to one of the addresses. Making sure that the coast was clear, I would slip in and ring at the door. Then would follow the usual ritual. The door would be poked slightly ajar and a quavering, frightened voice would ask who was there. The formula was always the same.
‘Serge Ivanitch’ – or whoever it was – ‘Serge Ivanitch told me you would allow me to sleep here tonight.’ Then I would give my assumed name and some specious reason for having no abode of my own.
It was in this way that I billeted myself on the cheerful Nicholas Nicholaivitch. Every night it was somewhere else. Rarely, I fear, was I a welcome guest. My coming would reduce my host- or hostess-to-be, to a pitch of the most extreme terror. Their whole attitude would be crying out more eloquently than words, ‘Oh for God’s sake leave me alone, for God’s sake leave me alone.’ I would see their lips twitch and their eyes go blank with nameless terror, and the whole bodies would quiver and shake as if in an ague, but I was never refused.
Many people were finding shelter like that in Moscow during those days. My brave friend and coadjutor, Captain Hill, was in hiding too, moving from place to place like myself, and assuming a similar variety of disguises. We would meet and confer together for a short time during the day. The work which had brought me to Moscow went on.
The last feeble spark of normal life, which had flickered during the past few months in Moscow, had now guttered out. Everywhere there was an increasing dearth of all the necessities of life. Everything spoke of stagnation. The only people one saw in the dirty, litter-strewn streets were the bread queues, listlessly waiting to have filtered out to them from the dirty hands of the food controllers their meagre supply of dirty bread against their food tickets. There was never enough to go round. All day the wretched, starving people stood there. They arrived at an unearthly hour in the morning to be in time. If they were lucky they received their wretched dole and carried it hastily away. Hunger had tempted them into the streets again. Every now and then a raid would take place. The Tcheka cars would drive up, and the Red soldiers dismount with their prodigiously long rifles and bayonets. Then the Commissar – the People’s Commissar as he was ironically called – would proceed down the queue examining passports.
Now and then the street would be blocked by Red soldiers at each end, and all the people who were in it were stopped and interrogated. Arrests were frequent. Whether the victims were shot, tortured or confined in the terrible Butyrsky, who knows? People might wonder for the rest of their lives what had happened to their friends. Wives would leave their husbands in the morning to stand in the queues and never return. They were swallowed in the stygian night. Better by far to know that they had been killed and were out of it, out of it all. Better by far to know that they were dead than confined in the terrible Butyrsky, that haunt of slaughter, sadism and nameless horrors.
The Tcheka raids were conducted with a degree of callousness and brutality which to a civilised mind is inconceivable. On one occasion, when the inhabitants of one apartment failed to remove the chain from the door through the extremity of terror, a Red soldier threw a bomb through the opening. In another place they had no response to their knockings. Their victim this time was an old lady, confined to her bed through a stroke, which had resulted from the murder of her husband before her eyes during the massacres of the previous year. Nobody else was in the flat and one of the Red soldiers, impatient at the delay, threw a grenade at the door. The bomb exploded, killing or wounding five soldiers. The soldiers returned that night and butchered the old lady in her bed as a ‘reprisal’ for the damage.
The evacuation of my agents from Moscow was now proceeding apace. Some managed to obtain their passage to Petrograd, some got to Vologda.
I was exceedingly perturbed by the position of Mlle S. I had an agent at work, who was prepared to pay a considerable sum to secure her release. Through this man I was introduced to a certain M., the friend of an investigator of the Tcheka.
I represented myself as a relation of Mlle S., and asked M. how much it would cost to induce his friend the investigator to turn the evidence in her favour. M. thought the matter might be done for 50,000 roubles.
‘Of course we must remember,’ said M., ‘that the case of your cousin – did you say that she was your cousin? – is peculiar. The arrest has attracted a lot of attention. The evidence against her is almost conclusive. To be sure they will keep her alive, until they have got all the information they can from her, and that of course gives us a certain amount of time in which to act. But the point is that the case against her is strong. No investigator can let her off and go untouched. Our man will have to be well covered and he will have to flee himself. It can be done, but it will be expensive. Still, as Mlle S. is your cousin – you did say she was your cousin, didn’t you?’
I was suspicious of this M. He had a sidelong glance and a way of pushing questions at one, which made me nervous. He would drop an apparently casual remark, and then he would shoot a keen glance at me to see what effect it had upon me.
‘By the way,’ said M., ‘have you heard that Sidney Reilly is in Moscow?’ and he gave me one of his sharp glances.
‘I am not interested in Sidney Reilly,’ I said with no very strict regard to the truth. ‘About Mlle S.?’
‘Ah yes, about Mlle S.,’ said M. ‘It is, I have said, likely to be expensive. Moreover you have to take into consideration the lady’s weak state of health. I understand that she was under cross-examination for eight hours yesterday, and of course during examination the prisoner is not allowed to eat or sit down. In the circumstances it would be as well for me to arrange for some conveyance to take Mlle S. from the Butyrsky.’
Our negotiations were never completed. I found that M. had been lying to me. All that I know is that he made out of the transaction some 10,000 roubles, which I had paid him in advance.
This business had a sequel, which caused me considerable anxiety. One of my agents reported to me that our friend M. had approached him with a scheme which he had worked out for the escape of Sidney Reilly from Moscow. A forged passport was to be secured, railway officials were to be bribed and a passage opened for the hunted man to the Finnish frontier.
It became obvious that M. was a provocateur. It also became obvious that the Bolsheviks, to say the least, very strongly suspected my presence in Moscow. The net was slowly being drawn round me, but by now my work in Moscow was approaching completion.
Had M. recognised me? Were the pursuers really close upon my trail? M. said that they were. When he approached my agent, he described me as already surrounded, and his plan for my escape was proportionately expensive. It could not be done, he said, under 100,000 roubles. Then one morning an attack was made on the French and American consulates. But Poole, Grenard and the others had been warned in time, and had taken hurried refuge in the Norwegian embassy. The Norwegian embassy was promptly closely invested by the Red agents, and the French and American consuls were close prisoners there for more than a week. Kalamatiano endeavoured to make good his escape to the same port of refuge. He was caught in the attempt and hauled before the Revolutionary Tribunal. As a result of documents found on him, a further large number of arrests were made.
But the British government had a card up its sleeve. In its turn it had arrested, in British territory, Zinoviev and a number of other Russian communists. With them in its hand, it began to bargain for the release of the British subjects who were in the trap in Moscow. But of course neit
her I nor my Russian agents could look for relief from this quarter.
I was very uneasy about my meeting with M. On top of this, one of my agents was seized shortly after leaving me, was hauled up before the Extraordinary Commission and escaped by a miracle. How he managed to bluff his captors will puzzle me to my dying day. The Tcheka never erred on the side of leniency towards the prisoner. In fact many genuine and ardent communists became their victims.
As if to add to my difficulties came the seizure of Kalamatiano and the wholesale arrests which followed it.
At this time I was quite without cover. I dared reveal myself to no one. I shrank from meeting people of any sort and for a few nights took shelter in an empty room, where I existed without food or cigarettes. It was the latter I missed chiefly.
At last came relief. One of the conspirators managed to get to me with food, clothes and cigarettes, and the news, moreover, that he had arranged for me to sleep that night at the home of some friends. And that night I slept in a warm bed for the first time in many days.
But my security was not to last. Early on the following morning, my ear caught the dreaded noise of one of the large motor cars, which the Tcheka used in their raids. The mere sound of these cars would create a panic whenever it was heard.
Our house was being raided. Nearer and nearer came the secret police. Doors were flung open.
Muffled screams could be heard. The tramp of feet sounded in the next room. It was now or never. The fate of myself and my hosts was in the balance. I put on my coat and walked out. At the gate a Red Guard was standing puffing viciously at a cigarette.
I strolled slowly over towards him, pulling out a cigarette of my own.
‘Give me a fire, comrade.’
He handed me his cigarette, from which I lit my own. I thanked him and strolled on into the street.
It was a narrow escape and again I had nowhere to go. I decided to try to get into one of the fashionable maisons de passe. These places were about the only houses which were rarely searched. I knew the woman who kept this place and of course I took a great risk as she knew who I was. But it is very often just these fallen women who are greater patriots than their more respectable sisters. They took me in at once and I stayed in a room belonging to one of the prostitutes. They made me most comfortable and the girl herself went with a message to my associates to inform them of my new hiding-place. It must be understood that anybody known to have given me shelter or food would have been instantly condemned to death. But these women did not care, and when I finally left them they refused every payment I offered them.
Adventures of a British Master Spy Page 6