At this point Reilly promptly disappeared, not to be seen again by Lockhart until they met up again in England some months later. Liaising with Capt. George Hill, another British intelligence operative who was also working underground,31 a series of meetings was held between Reilly and Berzin, at which two further instalments of 200,000 and 300,000 roubles were handed over. It was also agreed that the coup itself would be staged on 6 September during a joint meeting of the Executive Council of the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) and the Moscow Soviet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Reilly’s plan was that Lenin and Trotsky would be humiliated rather than shot, by being led through the streets without their trousers. In a further example of Cheka provocation, Berzin now proposed that both Lenin and Trotsky should be shot. Although Reilly objected to this on the grounds that it would make martyrs of them, official Soviet accounts of the ‘Lockhart Plot’ have asserted that Reilly’s plan was indeed to have them shot immediately on arrest.32
On 25 August, the French journalist René Marchand accompanied the French Consul Grenard to a meeting at the US Consulate. The meeting had been convened by Consuls Poole and Grenard to bring together their respective intelligence contacts – Reilly, Kalamatiano and de Vertement. Marchand, who was later exposed as a Bolshevik sympathiser, passed on an account of what he had heard to the Cheka. To preserve Marchand’s cover it was suggested to him by Dzerzhinsky that he write a letter to French President Raymond Poincare, describing the conspiratorial discussions he had witnessed. Before this could be posted, the Cheka would search his room and find the letter. This discovery would then act as the pretext for uncovering the plot.
Matters were pre-empted in a dramatic and totally unforeseen way, when, on 30 August, Leonid Kannegiser, a Workers’ Popular Socialist Party activist, shot dead Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd Cheka. That same day, in a completely unconnected incident, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary Party, shot Lenin as he left a meeting at the Michelson factory in Moscow. Lenin survived, but only just. Of the two shots fired at point-blank range, one missed his heart by less than an inch and the other missed his jugular vein by a similar margin.
These unconnected events were now knitted together by the Cheka to implicate and link Bolshevism’s many opponents into one giant conspiracy that warranted the unleashing of a full retaliatory response. The ‘Red Terror’, as it came to be known, resulted in over a thousand political opponents being summarily rounded up and shot. The Cheka raid on the British Embassy in Petrograd resulted in the death of Cromie, who apparently put up resistance. Using a list supplied by Berzin, the Cheka also rounded up those who were involved in the ‘Lockhart Plot’ and more besides. Lockhart was arrested, although later released in an exchange for Litvinov, who had been arrested in London in reprisal. Elizaveta Otten, Reilly’s lover and chief courier, was also arrested, along with his other mistress Olga Starzheskaya. Maria Fride, one of Kalamatiano’s couriers, was also arrested at Otten’s flat with a set of papers she had brought for Reilly. Olga later related the story of her arrest in a petition to the Red Cross Committee for the Aid of Political Prisoners:
I was arrested at VTsIK where I had worked at the Administrational Section since May. A day before, at night, my flat was searched but nothing was confiscated, and nobody was arrested. The reason for my arrest is known to me and is as follows: my groom Konstantin Markovich Massino, who I deeply loved and intended to share my life with, proved to be Englishman Reilly, who participated in the Anglo–French plot. Throughout our acquaintance he gave himself out for a Russian, and it was shortly before his disappearance that he told me who he really was. Until that moment I had no doubts he was Russian. I believed him and loved him, regarding him as an honest, noble, interesting and exclusively clever man, and in the deep of my heart I was very proud of his love. Therefore I was horrified by what I discovered about him during the interrogation. There proved to be two completely different persons. The deception, dirt and mean behaviour of this man pained me enormously. I have learnt about this ploy only from the papers. He never told me anything about it. Moreover, he seemed to me to be a supporter of Soviet power, though we never had any serious political discussions, as I was exclusively engaged in the settlement of my personal life, a new flat, household and work matters. My interest in politics was merely superficial. Throughout my stay in Moscow, and before that, I was never involved in any illegal organisations and made no statements against the existing order; moreover, I always supported Bolshevism and Communism as I understood it, and all those who knew me used to call me a Bolshevik.33
Elizaveta Otten also petitioned the committee:
I was arrested on 1 September for my acquaintance with British officer Sidney Reilly, who was involved in the Anglo–French plot. I had known Reilly over four months, as from the very beginning of our acquaintance he could bind me to himself. He never talked to me about his political motives, I only knew that he served at the British Legation. He shared a flat with us and when repression against the British officers began, he left us saying he would depart from Russia forever. Shortly before his leave he asked me to do him a favour and pass on to him any letters that may arrive at his former address while he was staying in Moscow. I promised to do that being unaware that these letters may have political meaning, otherwise I would not have agreed to do that, as I had never been involved in politics. At the interrogation I discovered that Reilly had been foully deceiving me for his own political purposes, taking advantage of my exclusively good attitude to him, and by his seeming departure from Moscow he wanted to veil a change of his attitude towards me, intending to move to one divorced lady34 he had promised to marry.35
Although both statements should be read with a pinch of salt in terms of their exaggerated naïvety concerning Reilly’s actions, they do reflect the genuine shock both women felt on learning of his nefarious and duplicitous exploitation of them on a personal level.
On 3 September, details of the ‘Lockhart Plot’ were sensationally published in the Russian press.36 Reilly was named as one of the principal plotters and a dragnet was put out for him. The Cheka raided his flat, but once again Reilly had, in the nick of time, vanished into thin air.
TEN
FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
With Cheka raids taking place throughout Petrograd, Capt. George Hill sent Lockhart a message using SIS ‘dictionary’ code: ‘I have’, he reported, ‘been over the network of our organisation and found everything intact’. ‘There was undoubtedly a fair amount of nervousness among some of the agents’, however.1 Hill, under the impression that Reilly had been arrested by the Cheka, assured Lockhart that, ‘I have got all of Lt Reilly’s affairs under my control, and provided I can get money it would be possible to carry on’.2 Lockhart was never to receive the message, for when Hill’s courier arrived at Lockhart’s flat, she found that it had shortly before been raided and Lockhart arrested. The message was therefore diverted to Lockhart’s assistant, Capt. Will Hicks. Hicks replied that it was important to lie low for some days to come, and that to the best of his knowledge there would be no more money for Hill as the source for obtaining it had completely dried up. Hicks too was of the view that Reilly had been arrested, although he had no news to confirm this. On receipt, Hill sent a further message to Gen. Poole informing him of the day’s events in Moscow.