Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

The Cheka took hundreds of Allied officials and residents of Moscow and Petrograd into custody. Chekist officials already had plenty of evidence against prominent Britons, Frenchmen and Americans, and believed that there could well be other intelligence operations they had yet to uncover. Better to wait for more Allied spies and agents to come to light. Better, too, to show the Allies that the Bolsheviks would not be pushed around and were able to look after themselves. The Cheka behaved liked the vanguard of the Soviet order when one of its units raided the apartment of Colonel Henri de Verthamont, head of the French secret service. Verthamont escaped over the rooftops, leaving behind a cache of explosives and other compromising material, but Chekists succeeded in capturing six of his agents. As the news spread, the British broke contact with the French in the hope of being left alone. 8This did not stop the Cheka. Lockhart, who had Moura Benckendorff with him, was arrested at his flat at 3.30 a.m. on 31 August. At first he refused to disclose his name. But the charade could not continue and he yielded to the Chekists. Moura and Major Hicks were also taken into custody. 9

Lockhart was promised that there would be no harsh interrogation if he answered the accusations against him. 10It was a gentle confinement by Soviet standards, and Lockhart and Hicks were released on 1 September. 11Next day Lockhart returned to plead with Karakhan for the liberation of Moura and his own servants. Karakhan promised to do what he could. The following morning Lockhart was shocked to read Moscow newspapers ‘full of the most fantastic accounts of Allied conspiracy of which I am said to be the head’. He stood accused of buying up the Latvian Riflemen and conspiring to murder Lenin and Trotsky and blow up bridges around the capital. A further charge was that the Allies aimed to appoint a compliant dictator. 12The details may have erred on the fantastical side; but the truth was that Lockhart was genuinely distressed — both at being rumbled and at the possible public consequences that were likely to flow from this. Events quickened their pace. News came through that Maxim Litvinov had been imprisoned in London so as to ensure the safety of all Britons held in Soviet gaols. 13Then, on 4 September, Lockhart was rearrested. 14This time he was taken inside the precincts of the Kremlin: it was the only area of Moscow where security could be guaranteed, and the Soviet leaders were intent on holding on to their valuable British prize.

His captors yet again handled him with care. He was allowed visits by his lover Moura, now freed from imprisonment, who brought him food and tobacco. They were permitted to write to each other on condition that Peters could vet the letters. 15Peters questioned Lockhart in a seemly fashion before handing him over to Karakhan. He too adopted a gentle approach. It was Karakhan who had issued Lockhart with diplomatic immunity and the two had often conversed. Now state interests and allegiances divided them. 16

The two men had a fiery discussion lasting several days. Karakhan put the blame for the Red terror on the British. If the British had not interfered in Soviet affairs, he exclaimed, there would have been no need for the Bolsheviks to let loose the Cheka. He told Lockhart that Lenin had demanded: ‘Stop the terror!’ 17Karakhan must have known that Lenin held exactly the opposite opinion at that very time. In a speech at the Cheka Club, no less, Lenin ridiculed the soft-bellied comrades who sought a gentler dictatorship. 18As Lockhart knew, Karakhan was one of the more moderate Bolsheviks. What he said about Lenin was really an indication of the kind of communist regime he himself desired. Lockhart for his part upheld the official British line. By signing the Brest-Litovsk treaty, the Bolsheviks had reneged on Russia’s contractual obligations as one of the Allies and had facilitated the massing of German military strength on the western front. Their foreign policy had put a dagger to the throats of Britain and France; they had only themselves to blame if they found themselves the object of Allied hostility. This, at least, is how Lockhart later described the discussion; the Cheka report suggested that he was less robust in putting his case. What is anyhow clear is that there was no meeting of minds. 19

Lockhart attributed his easy treatment to the Soviet appreciation of the growing likelihood of an Allied victory over the Germans. If Germany was defeated, the Allied armies would have the military capacity to advance into Russia. Karakhan asked Lockhart courteously what it would take for Britain and Japan to end their intervention. He claimed that the communist leadership had no concern about the Americans, who were half-hearted about invading; and he judged that the French were too exhausted to be a serious threat. The Kremlin would offer commercial concessions to the United Kingdom, the US and Japan if they would agree to pull out their armed forces. It would even offer an honourable settlement to the Czech Corps and grant free exit from Russia. Conversations with Lockhart continued between 15 and 25 September, and Lockhart thought he was being sounded out as the conduit for a deal with the British. The Soviet leadership had gained a respite through Brest-Litovsk and now wanted some kind of equivalent so as to forestall an all-out British invasion. 20A similar overture was made through Jacques Sadoul to the French government, no doubt without the disrespect that Karakhan had expressed to Lockhart for France’s capacity to strengthen its force of intervention in Odessa. 21This was a pretty desperate idea. Sadoul had long since lost the trust of French diplomats in Russia.

Dozens of Allied officials, including Grenard, the French consul-general, fled to sanctuary with DeWitt Poole in the American consulate. As an additional security measure, Poole ran up the Norwegian flag since Norway was a neutral country in the war and Poole rightly calculated that Soviet leaders would not like to offend the Norwegians. 22Hill was still operating under cover and could not warn Reilly, who was on a trip to see Cromie in Moscow, about what had happened. Reilly’s network of helpers and informants remained vulnerable. When Hill tried to alert them, one of his own ‘girls’ was arrested while visiting one of those working for Reilly. 23Moreover, Marie Fride who also worked for the Americans turned up in the course of the raid. She panicked, inadvertently alerting the Cheka that she too was an Allied agent — and it was her arrest and interrogation that led to the rounding up of the American network. 24Among those brought into custody was Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Fride — Maria’s brother — from the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs. Another was former Major General Alexander Zagryazhski. 25On 18 September Kalamatiano himself was caught coming back from a trip to liaise with the Czechs in the Volga region. 26

Reilly escaped to London via Tallinn and Stockholm. 27He has sometimes been accused of being a Cheka double agent — or alternatively of being tasked, as a British intelligence officer, with closing down the rival network of US agents. Reilly and Kalamatiano met and talked frequently in the office of British businessman William Camber Higgs. 28The story goes that it was on a visit to Reilly that Colonel Berzin secretly found Kalamatiano’s address. DeWitt Poole, on his departure from Russia later in September, told a British diplomat about circumstantial evidence pointing to the conclusion that Reilly had either compromised Lockhart or ‘even betrayed him’. 29Kalamatiano later noted that people connected exclusively with Reilly were released whereas all but one of his own associates were given prison terms. Such speculation is common in matters relating to the operation of intelligence agencies. But the case remains unproven in this instance. It was simply untrue that the French and American networks in Russia were wrecked beyond repair that September or that the British Secret Service Bureau continued to work undisturbed. 30Lockhart was in prison; Reilly and Hill were in hiding and their teams too had been broken up. The likelihood is that the Cheka had got its result by its own diligent efforts. It did not have or need help from Reilly.