A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (28 page)

Lockhart kept pressing both Peters and Malkov about Moura. He protested her innocence, accused Peters of making war on women, and demanded that she be set free. Peters agreed to let Lockhart write Moura a letter – provided it was in Russian so that he could censor it if necessary.

This was the moment at which the situation began to change rapidly and dramatically, and none of the persons involved ever gave a clear or consistent explanation of how or why. They kept silent, or lied.

‘My dear, dear Baby,’ Moura wrote. ‘I have just received your letter through M. Peters. Please don’t be anxious about me.’
¹⁷
After more than a week in the squalid, overcrowded Butyrka prison, his note had brought exquisite relief, a glimpse of blue sky in the darkness of her captivity. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.

What Peters thought when he met Moura, what he felt, what was said between them, went unrecorded. All Moura would say in her reply to Lockhart, written on the headed Cheka notepaper that Peters had given her, was the astonishing news that ‘M. Peters has promised to release me today’. But her freedom meant little without Lockhart:

I don’t mind waiting at all as long as you are not free. I will be able however to send you linen and things and perhaps he will arrange for me to see you. I love you my dear Baby more than life itself and all the hardships of the past days have only linked me all the more to you for life. Forgive this incoherent letter – I am still bewildered, anxious about you and so lonely but hoping for the best.

Bless you my beloved.

Your Moura.

Her bewilderment was so great that, when she stepped outside the gates of the prison, she turned and walked a long way before realising she was going in the wrong direction. She eventually made her way back to Khlebnyy pereulok, trudging along under the fading early-autumn trees – Russia was succumbing early to wintry weather – then up the five flights to the apartment. There she sat in utter solitude. The servants were still in prison, Hicks was besieged in the Norwegian Legation, and Lockhart was in the Kremlin.

Moura knew the fear that was attached to that name. Some said that prisoners who were taken within the walls of the Kremlin never came out again. But Moura had faith, and just knowing that her beloved was still alive was enough.

The next morning she began gathering things to take to him, as Peters had promised she could. Clothes and books went into her basket, along with tobacco, some coffee and a fantastically expensive ham she had managed to procure. And she wrote another letter, trying to convey her confusing feelings of love and despair.

Baby, baby – all this has wrought a great change in me. I am now an old, old woman and I feel I will be able to smile again only when God will grant me the joy of having you again . . . Oh, my Baby – what is freedom without you. My imprisonment was nothing while I thought you were free, then it became an agony of incertitude and anxiety. But I know we both must be brave and think of the future. There is one thing – Baby – all the details of life – all the small petty things I used to talk to you about – all have vanished. I only know I want to make you happy and this to me will be everything. Baby – no woman has ever loved anyone as I love you, my life, my all. I cannot write any more – my misery is too great and my longing for you too infinite.
¹⁸

It was too much to hope that she would be allowed to see him – she just had to trust Peters’ word that Lockhart would receive the letter and the basket of gifts. The Chekist honoured his word, and Lockhart was uplifted by the confirmation of Moura’s freedom and profoundly grateful for her provisions.

Knowing his habits when under stress, Moura had inserted a pack of cards in the bundle. He began a ritual of playing hand after hand of Chinese patience, just as he had when she was away on her dangerous mission to Yendel in July. This time, he felt he was gambling his life on the game, reasoning superstitiously that if he could win a hand each day, he would be safe. Although he no longer feared execution, he expected to be handed to the Revolutionary Tribunal and given a long term in prison. A real prison, not like this.
¹⁹
The news from outside wasn’t encouraging. The Red Army was recovering its strength, growing week by week and beating back its enemies on the Volga, regaining ever more territory from the White and Allied forces.

While Lockhart turned over his cards, immersed himself in books and pondered his fate, did he wonder how Moura had worked this trick? He never said, but it must have played on his mind. She was an aristocrat, the known consort and paramour of an alleged enemy spy, a long-time friend of the British . . . Regardless of any service she had given the Bolsheviks in the past, it was a marvel that she had been allowed to live, let alone been set free. And how extraordinary it was that she should be allowed to come to the Kremlin each day and deliver food and gifts for her lover – and exchange letters too. Sometimes Peters insisted that the notes be in Russian so that he could check them, but sometimes he allowed them to pass in English.
²⁰
How had she achieved all this? Did her past service to the Cheka count for so much? Or was there something else?

There were a few gossips in Moscow who believed they could supply an answer. Yakov Peters was as susceptible as any other man to the magnetism of Moura, and as willing, given the right encouragement and the right manipulation, to succumb to her powers of persuasion. (Pregnancy had evidently not diminished her attractiveness.) The young lady had been seen, said the gossips, riding about the city on the pillion of Peters’ motorcycle. It was all too clear that she had sold herself to the deputy chief of the Cheka, become his mistress. There were others who thought it more likely that she had allowed herself to be recruited, body and soul, into the Cheka itself.
²¹

Moura never spoke of this time, except to admit, some years later, that she had found Yakov Peters ‘kind’.
²²
Also muddying the waters, Lockhart would try to claim that he had secured Moura’s release by giving himself up as a kind of hostage.
²³
The true events – the compromises and bargains – were obscured forever; all that remained was the evidence of the results.

There was more to come. Diplomacy had saved Lockhart from the executioner’s bullet; Moura’s arrangement with Peters had won her release from prison and the ability to bring provisions and gifts to Lockhart. But her beloved was still a prisoner, still facing an unguessable sentence from the Revolutionary Tribunal. And she was beginning to realise that even if by some miracle he were released, he would be ejected from Russia. Either way she was going to lose him. And what would happen to her and her unborn child then? Would she be able to abandon everything and follow him? Would she even be allowed?

‘Don’t think me an hysterical coward,’ she wrote, tormented by the inability to see Lockhart and touch him. ‘I cry bitter scorching tears and I feel so small, so helpless, so utterly miserable. But I try so hard to be brave, Baby. We both need it so in order to keep all our strength and build a happy future.’ As the days went by, she worked away at Peters, and felt she was having some success. ‘I pray so hard that God should let this dreadful time for us pass quickly and I feel He is gradually answering my prayer.’
²⁴

The first real sign of an answer came during the second week of Lockhart’s captivity, when Moura was at last allowed to see him.
²⁵
Peters escorted her to the apartments in the Grand Palace. The corridor was now serving as a cell block for several high-grade prisoners, including the former commander of the Imperial Russian Army, General Brusilov, and the Left SR conspirator Maria Spiridonova.

From the moment Moura stepped into the room and her eyes met Lockhart’s and saw the joy there, every detail remained in her memory as vivid as life itself. ‘The sofa with the little blue cushion I sent you, where your dear curly head rests – and the litter of books; and the patience – and you, you, my Baby, there, alone . . .’
²⁶
They weren’t allowed to touch or speak to each other. Peters kept between them. He was in a garrulous mood, and sat and talked to Lockhart, reminiscing about his life as a revolutionary.

While Peters’ attention was occupied, Moura stood behind him, pretending to browse some books piled on a side table. Catching Lockhart’s eye, she held up a note and slipped it between the pages of Carlyle’s
The French Revolution
. ‘My heart stopped beating,’ Lockhart recalled. ‘Fortunately, Peters noticed nothing or else Moura’s shrift would have been short.’ As soon as he was alone again, Lockhart rushed to the table and leafed through the book until he found the little slip of paper. On it were just six words: ‘Say nothing – all will be well.’
²⁷

Whatever price Moura was secretly paying, it seemed to be working. Peters promised to bring her to Lockhart again, and continued to let her communicate with him and bring him provisions. Her life at the flat was lonely and miserable. The servants, Dora and Ivan, had been released and come home, but Dora was ill and both were traumatised – ‘they worry the life out of me,’ Moura wrote, ‘crying and remembering their prison experiences’.
²⁸

Despite her belief that her efforts, her sacrifice and her faith could see her through this awful time and make everything come right with Lockhart, the next time she saw him she had dreadful, heartbreaking news. She had miscarried. They had lost little Peter. Lockhart, who rarely mentioned his intimate feelings in his diary, wrote, ‘Moura brought very sad news yesterday. I am much upset and wonder how everything will end.’
²⁹
Moura tried to lift his spirits: ‘Don’t be sad about what I told you yesterday as it may make it more difficult to bear.’
³⁰

Amidst her own grief, Moura was on the verge of panic, worrying that Lockhart’s love for her would falter now that there was no child to bind their futures together. They had been making tentative plans to escape together via Sweden if he were released, but now he seemed to be wavering. ‘I am very depressed that you are so grieved,’ she wrote to him. ‘You probably care for me less now?’ She promised to make up for the loss: ‘Don’t worry, Baby. Pray God I will be able to give you later on a dear sturdy boy.’
³¹

Peters was still predicting that Lockhart would be put on trial, but Moura didn’t give up. Whatever devices and persuasions she had at her disposal (and her powers were quite magnificent, as everyone who ever knew her could testify) she exerted now. Three days later, Lockhart was officially informed that he was to be freed. Ambassador Litvinov and his staff were being released from Brixton prison and sent back to Russia, and Lockhart would be part of the exchange.

Despite the news, he was still depressed and sleeping badly. The loss of the baby, the prospect of leaving Russia without Moura, and the third anniversary of his younger brother’s death on the Western Front combined to keep his spirits and courage at bay.

The only thing that lifted him was another visit from Moura. Again she was brought by Peters. On this occasion the Chekist appeared in full duty gear in a leather jacket with a Mauser pistol on his belt; he brought confirmation that Lockhart would be set free in a few days. More importantly, he brought Moura, and this time he let them talk.

‘The reunion was wonderful,’ Lockhart wrote in his diary.
³²
During his last few days in the Kremlin, she was allowed to spend real time with him – whole days. Moura would recall those precious hours with exquisite affection: ‘How close we were to each other – how nothing existed except you and me in the whole world.’ They took long walks in the Kremlin gardens, talked at length and sat in cosy silence – ‘sitting very close and so happy with the sheer joy of being together after all the terrible ordeal. How happy I was, how happy.’
³³

It soon became clear why Lockhart was having doubts about their plan to go to Sweden. He was giving serious thought to staying on in Russia. Peters, who had become fond of Moura and seemed to regard Lockhart with an odd mixture of natural enmity, jealousy and friendly affection, couldn’t understand how he could even contemplate leaving Moura and going back to the corrupt, decaying capitalist world. Lockhart shared his disbelief. He had been profoundly unimpressed by his country’s behaviour during Russia’s crisis, and like other young people of his era he was still attracted to the fleeting ideal of democratic liberty that the Revolution had seemed to offer and might yet deliver. Peters observed Lockhart’s indecision with interest, but for the moment kept his thoughts to himself.

Having been pushed to clear the way for Lockhart’s release, Peters had to attend to the details. He was in charge of the Cheka investigation into the Allied plot. Lockhart stood accused of – indeed had been caught red-handed at – the most heinous conspiracy against the Soviet government. His name was blood throughout the Bolshevik press. And yet his release had to be justified to the public and (on behalf of the Cheka) to the government. It was too late to remove him from the frame altogether – he was acknowledged as the leader and mastermind of the plot that bore his name. But as Peters compiled his dossier on the case and wrote his report, he began systematically manipulating the evidence, snipping the cords that tied Lockhart to his eponymous conspiracy, minimising his involvement and diluting the wickedness of his character.