Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page A

Buchanan, and ask him whether or not ‘Yusupov’s Oxford University friend’ had a hand in the murder of Rasputin.
    The ambassador was wholly ignorant of the affair and discreetly asked Samuel Hoare for information. Hoare robustly denied that any of his men had been involved. An ‘outrageous charge’, he told the ambassador, and ‘incredible to the point of childishness.’ Buchanan did not probe any further. He said he would ‘solemnly contradict it to the Emperor at his next audience.’
    Whether or not Hoare knew the truth of what took place remains unclear. He was certainly aware of a plot to ‘liquidate’ Rasputin for he had been told about it by Vladimir Purishkevich, one of the conspirators. He claims not to have believed it. ‘I thought his words were symptomatic of what everyone was thinking and saying, rather than the expression of a definitely thought out plan.’
    Although Hoare may have been ignorant of his agent’s involvement in the murder, he was remarkably quick to learn of Rasputin’s death. He sent the news to London several hours before it was publicly known in Petrograd.
    ‘In the early morning of Saturday, December 30th,’ begins his report, ‘there was enacted in Petrograd one of those crimes that by their magnitude blur the well-defined rules of ethics and by their results change the history of a generation.’
    The report was sent directly to London, where it landed on the desk of ‘the Chief’, or ‘C’, as he was known to his agents. He was the man ultimately in charge of the Russian bureau. He also ran the London headquarters of an organisation that was to operate under a number of names, but would eventually become known as the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
    Nameless, faceless and working from a secret location in Whitehall, C was to be in charge of all of the boldest undercover operations in Russia for the next six years.

CHAPTER TWO
    THE CHIEF

     
    The Chief sat in his office, his back to a glazed dormer window. A broad shaft of sunlight spilled through the glass behind him, lighting the secret inks that stood on his desk in slim glass phials.
    The positioning of his chair by the window was no accident: it meant that visitors were momentarily dazzled by the light. For the first few seconds they saw only a silhouette.
    The identity of the head of the Secret Intelligence Service was one of the most strictly guarded secrets in Whitehall. Even his trustworthy agents had no clue as to who he was. They knew him by his initial, C, and only in exceptional circumstances did they get to meet him.
    ‘A pale, clean-shaven man, the most striking features of whose face were a Punch-like chin, a small and beautifully fine bow of a mouth and a pair of very bright eyes.’ So wrote Compton Mackenzie, author of Whisky Galore , who worked for C during the First World War.
    C’s chin was indeed Punch-like (one visitor described it as ‘like the cut-water of a battleship’) and his eyes were piercing. Few interviewees would ever forget them, not least because his penetrating stare was accentuated by a gold-rimmed monocle.
    The monocle was used to theatrical effect; C would let it drop from his eye as a sign of disapproval. But his gruff exterior was offset by an underlying warmth of spirit. With favoured colleagues, that stern countenance would slowly melt into a grin and those sharp eyes sparkle in amusement.
    The Chief rarely looked up from his paperwork when visitors entered his office. ‘He remained bent over the table, perusing through a pair of dark, horn-rimmed spectacles some documents,’ wrote Mackenzie of his nerve-wracking first meeting. Finally, C glanced up and inspected his visitor. ‘[He] took off his glasses, leant back in his chair and stared hard at me for a long minute without speaking. “Well?” he said finally.’
    Mackenzie introduced himself and reminded C that he was just returned from a long stint abroad.
    ‘ “And what have you to say for yourself?” he