The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Bystroletov ran de Ry to ground in a Geneva bar. Believing that, after the fraud practiced on him in Paris two years earlier, de Ry might reject an approach from the OGPU, Bystroletov decided to use what later became known as the “false flag” technique and pretended to be working for the Japanese intelligence service. Though de Ry was not deceived for long by the “false flag,” he agreed to sell further Italian ciphers which he claimed to be able to obtain from a corrupt Italian diplomat. Future meetings with de Ry usually took place in Berlin, where the diplomat was allegedly stationed. KGB records, possibly incomplete, show that de Ry was paid at least 200,000 French francs.²³

Bystroletov was also given the task of tracing the unidentified British walk-in (Ernest Oldham) who had offered to sell Foreign Office ciphers to the Paris residency. In April 1930, at the meeting arranged in the previous year, Oldham (codenamed ARNO by the OGPU) handed over only part of a diplomatic cipher, probably as a precaution against being double-crossed, and demanded a 6,000-dollar down-payment before providing the rest. The OGPU tried to locate him after the meeting but discovered that he had given a false address.²⁴

Probably soon after his first meeting with de Ry, Bystroletov succeeded in tracking down Oldham in a Paris bar, struck up a conversation with him, won his confidence and booked into the hotel where he was staying. There Bystroletov revealed himself to Oldham and his wife Lucy as an impoverished Hungarian aristocrat who had fallen, like Oldham, into the clutches of Soviet intelligence. With his wife’s approval, Oldham agreed to provide Foreign Office ciphers and other classified documents to Bystroletov to pass on to the OGPU. Oldham was given a first payment of 6,000 dollars, a second of 5,000 dollars, then 1,000 dollars a month. Bystroletov portrayed himself throughout as a sympathetic friend, visiting the Oldhams on several occasions at their London home in Pembroke Gardens, Kensington. Oldham’s documents, however, were handed over at meetings in France and Germany.

Having originally tried to hold the OGPU at arm’s length, Oldham became increasingly nervous about the risks of working as a Soviet agent. In order to put pressure on him, Bystroletov was accompanied to several of their meetings by the head of the illegal residency in Berlin, Boris Bazarov (codenamed KIN), who posed as a rather menacing Italian Communist named da Vinci. With Bazarov and Bystroletov playing the hard man/soft man routine, Oldham agreed to continue but took increasingly to drink. Bystroletov strengthened his hold over Lucy Oldham (henceforth codenamed MADAM) by putting his relationship with her on what an OGPU report coyly describes as “an intimate footing.”²⁵

Though Bystroletov successfully deceived the Oldhams, he seems to have been unaware that the Oldhams were also deceiving him. At their first meeting, Oldham explained that he was “a lord, who worked out ciphers for the Foreign Office and was a very influential person,” rather than, in reality, a minor functionary. At later meetings Oldham claimed that he traveled abroad on a diplomatic passport illegally provided for him by a Foreign Office friend named Kemp whom he alleged, almost certainly falsely, was in the Secret Intelligence Service. Having helped Bystroletov to acquire a British passport in the name of Robert Grenville, Oldham told him that the passport had been personally issued by the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, who believed it to be for a minor British aristocrat of his acquaintance, Lord Robert Grenville, then resident in Canada. “I didn’t know Lord Robert was here in Britain,” Simon was alleged to have remarked to Oldham. Mrs. Oldham also specialized in tall stories. She told Bystroletov that she was the sister of an army officer named Montgomery who, she claimed, held the (non-existent) post of head of the intelligence service at the Foreign Office;²⁶ a later note on the KGB file, probably dating from the 1940s, identified the mysterious and possibly mythical Montgomery as Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein! Expert though Bystroletov proved as an agent controller, his ignorance of the ways of the Foreign Office and the British establishment made him curiously gullible—though perhaps no more so than the Centre, which was also taken in.²⁷