Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution by Giles Milton Read Free Book Online Page A

unnoticed by Mansfield Cumming, who was receiving regular reports from his principal spymaster in New York, William Wiseman.
    Wiseman, a maverick baronet, had been sent to New York in the previous year. He had established an espionage bureau based in the British Consulate at 44 Whitehall Street, Manhattan. Its principal task was to monitor Indian and Irish revolutionaries living in the city. But Wiseman also kept a close eye on Trotsky, sending agents to infiltrate his meetings and keep tabs on his revolutionary collaborators.
    In the last week of March, Wiseman received a tip-off that Trotsky was planning to return to Russia with a group of fellow activists. They were carrying a large sum of money, more than $10,000, which was to be used to finance a new wave of revolutionary activity, one far more violent than the unrest that had swept the tsar from power.
    The revolutionaries boarded the SS Kristianiaford in New York, unaware that Wiseman’s agents were tracking them. Trotsky assumed that the voyage would be trouble-free; he was to get an unpleasant surprise when the vessel made a brief refuelling stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The port was manned by British naval officials, for Canada was still a dominion of the British Empire, and these officials had been ordered to arrest Trotsky and his men.
    ‘These are Russian socialists leaving for the purpose of starting revolution against the Russian government,’ read the telegram sent to Halifax.
    Trotsky lost all his dignity when informed that he was being detained. According to one observer, he ‘crouched and whined and cried in abject terror’ – perhaps because he feared that the British would kill him. But when he realised he was not going to be executed, ‘his bluff returned and he protested violently.’
    He was held under lock and key for the next four weeks and proved a most troublesome prisoner. He spent his waking hours preaching revolution to the German prisoners of war that had also been interned on Nova Scotia.
    ‘[Trotsky] is a man holding extremely strong views and of most powerful personality,’ wrote the British commandant, ‘his personality being such that after only a few days stay here he was by far the most popular man in the whole camp.’
    In distant Petrograd, the Provisional Government was growing increasingly alarmed by the number of dangerous political exiles returning to Russia. When it learned of Trotsky’s internment, it asked the British to hold him indefinitely.
    This proved a gift to revolutionary agitators in Petrograd, who were infuriated by Trotsky’s detention. They hinted that British nationals in Russia would be targeted unless he was immediately released.
    For a few short days in the spring of 1917, British intelligence achieved the singular coup of holding both Trotsky and Lenin, the principal architects of the future Bolshevik revolution.
    But as it was with Lenin, so it was to prove with Trotsky. In the third week of April, he was released and allowed to continue on his journey. Within a few days, he was aboard a new ship, the Helig Olaf , and bound for Petrograd.

    As revolutionary figures returned to Petrograd in ever-increasing numbers, Mansfield Cumming began to consider how best to arrange his Russian operations. He was looking to the future, aware that his agents might soon have to work undercover in a country that was no longer an ally.
    He jotted a number of notes on what he considered to constitute the ‘perfect spy’: someone who could enter a country under a fake identity and live there clandestinely for many months. One man who fitted the archetypal profile was George Hill, a British officer of exceptional talent.
    A member of the Royal Flying Corps, Hill had been sent to Russia to help in the training of pilots on the Eastern Front. But he was also working for British military intelligence with the codename Agent IK8. He proved so good at infiltrating secret meetings that he was soon poached and given