Authors: Nick Barratt
The following day, Bystrolyotov was picked up from his London hotel and driven for several hours to the countryside retreat, 90 miles away. The house was situated off the Woodbridge Road in its own secluded parkland, with the tree-lined gravel drive sweeping to the front of a grand 1870s exterior. Rendlesham Hall was run by the Norwood Sanatorium Limited, which advertised a restorative, holistic and recuperative approach to alcohol addiction – an approach that its tranquil setting in the Suffolk countryside seemed to support. However patients were treated with chemical purges and drugs, including injections of strychnine, as set out in the official publication of Norwood Sanatorium in 1932 that reflected on a quarter of a century of work in this field. Financial worry was listed as one of the principal causes of alcohol abuse.
When Bystrolyotov arrived, he found Oldham slumped in an armchair in the hallway, sleeping. He was either drugged or seemed to be drunk, in line with standard practice in the sanatorium as recorded in one of its annual reports.
Having decided the patient’s degree of tolerance to alcohol, he is tapered with a sufficiency of this drug and for a sufficient length of time until there is a complete absence of deprivation symptoms and sleep is obtained without hypnotics.
When there is no tolerance, the alcohol is cut off at once and the specific treatment is commenced. This is known as the strychnine and antropine treatment and is given by subcutaneous (hypodermic) injection in ascending doses until a maximum is reached. Then there is a general reduction to the original dose.
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Regardless of the cause of Oldham’s catatonic state, when he finally roused himself he was treated to the sight of Bystrolyotov sitting opposite him, which must have sobered him up sharply. His flight from Geneva had been in vain and he knew that the game was up. ‘God damn you’, he cursed but Bystrolyotov stayed with him as he had promised Lucy.
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Over the next few weeks he learned more about OGPU’s new agent, ARNO. Oldham continued the treatment for a month, during which time Lucy – who had formed a strong attachment to the count – insisted that Bystrolyotov stay with the Oldhams in their Kensington residence. As Bazarov reported back to Moscow on 9 October:
The improvement in the relationship with ARNO is beyond doubt. ARNO’s wife suggested rather insistently that HANS should stay at their house. ARNO suggested the same. Incidentally, ARNO’s wife told HANS that when HANS came to them she would introduce him to many colleagues of ARNO, who is known to all the chiefs of the Foreign Office.
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This was too good a chance to ignore but Bystrolyotov was somewhat startled when, on the eve of Oldham’s return from Rendlesham, Lucy made a pass at him with the ‘spirited gesture of a seaport hooker, rolling up the hem of her dress, spreading her legs and begging him not to waste any time.’
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This was not part of his plan but with only a split second to decide on the right course of action, Bystrolyotov did not resist – he realised that Lucy
was too important in maintaining control over Oldham to alienate with rejection. Afterwards, wracked with shame, he was worried he had made a terrible mistake; his mission was precariously poised and the slightest wrong move would jeopardise everything. ‘I looked in the mirror. I’m sweaty; my tie shifted to one side. My God, what do I tell my superiors?’
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However, the news was well received, and Lucy was assigned the codename MADAM, perhaps as a result of this encounter.
Nevertheless, Oldham was not out of the woods. His activities in September and October had indeed attracted the attention of his superiors and the trip to Rendlesham was apparently unauthorised, which landed him in further difficulty. In a note placed on file in the Foreign Office Registry on 14 November:
Mr Oldham left the office on 9 November and has not been seen since. He has neither telephoned nor written to give any explanation for his absence. Suggest that an official letter be sent to him asking for an explanation of absence and failure to report the cause of it and telling him that he will be required to send in his resignation if he takes further unauthorised leave.
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The Head of the Communications Department, Harold Eastwood, consulted with the Government Medical Referee, Dr Turney, about the situation and reported back on 30 November:
Doctor Turney considers that Mr Oldham’s absences from duty on the grounds of ill health have been so frequent during the past two years that Foreign Office should press for his retirement for medical reasons.
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The seriousness of the situation required the intervention of Oldham’s own medical advisor, Dr Henry Rowan of 33 Onslow Square, Kensington, to reassure the officials about Oldham’s condition. Writing on 5 December 1931 in response to a request sent two days previously from the Foreign Office to provide an accurate assessment of Oldham’s condition, Rowan stated that he
...considers that there is every prospect of his making a recovery which will enable him to carry on with his work regularly and efficiently.
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The crisis was averted by a whisker, but alongside growing interest in his attendance record, a further investigation was started about his personal affairs – in particular the fact that ‘no income returns have been received from him for the years 1928–29 to 1931–32’.
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This was, in many ways, more challenging to deal with than the issue of his sick leave, as full disclosure of his financial affairs during this specific period would have raised serious questions about where his money had come from. It was not illegal for staff to enjoy private income streams – after all, it had been actively encouraged until recent years – but it would have been difficult to explain the regular appearance of payments in dollars from overseas sources. Nevertheless, it would appear that he was able to dodge these inquiries, as the question was not raised again when he finally returned to work.
During the winter of 1931–32, Bystrolyotov increasingly based himself in London and became integrated into the Oldhams’ family life – witnessing first-hand their financial hardship and forming the opinion that it was Lucy who had driven Oldham to take the desperate measures in 1929. She was reluctant to give up her lifestyle even though the money had gone. However, despite Bystrolyotov’s presence to ensure Oldham complied with the delivery of material, it was far too risky for Bystrolyotov to take it across the Channel, so Oldham was still required to travel abroad. A range of locations were used as well as Paris, such as Madrid, Trouville-sur-Mer, and a Swiss resort near Brienz, in the canton of Bern, where technical bases were set up to process the material and ensure its safe despatch back to the OGPU centre in Moscow.
Given the increasing concern about Oldham’s performance at work, a cover story was required to explain the trips overseas, so Bystrolyotov arranged for Lucy’s youngest son, James Raymond Wellsted, to be placed with a German family near Bonn to undertake his schooling, giving the Oldhams a reason to travel to see their son. Bystrolyotov also assisted with somewhat darker aspects of family life. According to his notes, he arranged for Lucy’s
daughter in law, Yolande, to visit a clinic in Berlin to have an abortion, since she had exceeded the legal time limit for the operation in Britain.
To help him travel, Oldham applied for a new passport on 16 February in his rather blunt, almost arrogant, style; he claimed he had lost the old one, but it might have been part of a ploy to create a new identity for himself or Bystrolyotov:
Dear Holloway,
Would you like to issue me with a new passport?
I am unable, at the moment, to lay my hands on the old one, No 151, issued at Bucharest on March 17 1921; it is not here, and a hurried search at home last night failed to bring it to light.
I will send it over as soon as possible.
Yours ever
EH Oldham
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Included with the papers was a declaration signed by Oldham that the passport was needed for travel to Europe for the purpose of ‘duty’. Rather disingenuously, given the covering note, he declared that all previous passports granted had been surrendered for cancellation to a British Passport or Consular office. The counter-signing officer was his Communications Department associate, Thomas Eldred Kemp, who was to play an increasingly important role in Oldham’s life. He was happy to state that he could vouch for him as a fit and proper person to receive a passport, having known Oldham for 13 years. The order to issue the passport was initialled by ‘PCH’ on the same day as Oldham submitted his application – presumably Percy Clarence Holloway, another war veteran and one of Oldham’s cronies who had worked with him as a temporary clerk after the war before switching departments to find employment as an examiner in the Passport Department. A replacement was issued immediately, entered on the Passport Office register that no fee was paid as it was ‘gratis – FO’.
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By this stage, Bystrolyotov was regularly joined by his colleagues Bazarov, Leppin and Weinstein in London, as well as another Great Illegal, Theodor
Mally – just in case further pressure had to be exerted on Oldham, who was still insistent that he was acting on behalf of a ‘source’ within Whitehall. The deployment of so many key operatives in London as a functioning cell shows the importance with which ARNO was held within OGPU and the Soviet hierarchy as an intelligence asset. Yet the strain on Oldham was beginning to show once more.
Shortly after he gained his new passport, with Bystrolyotov breathing down his neck, and worn out from over two-and-a-half years of deception, Oldham turned to drink again with the inevitable consequences in his department. Discussions among his superiors took place between 2 and 9 March about his ‘irregular attendance at the office’.
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For the first time the spectre of dismissal was raised with him directly, when he was brought in to be ‘interviewed on the question of his proposed resignation’
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– the sort of proposition in which he had little choice but to comply.
In the world of the Foreign Office, where the gentleman’s code of conduct still operated, openly discussing the retirement of a 39-year-old permanent official was an extraordinary step and demonstrated just how much trouble Oldham was in. The patience of his superiors had been tested to breaking point by his lack of attendance and served notice that everything Oldham did was now under microscopic scrutiny. Oldham was not helped by the actions of Bystrolyotov, who himself was under just as much pressure to ensure Oldham did not fall apart and thus expose the cell.
As a result, mistakes crept into Bystrolyotov’s work; on one occasion Oldham brought cipher codes and correspondence to Paris for Bystrolyotov to copy, but when pressing the material under glass to enable easier photography, he cut his finger and a drop of blood stained the paper. Despite his best efforts, he was not able to remove the stain and was forced to hand it back to Oldham in the damaged state. Remarkably, no-one noticed, demonstrating the amazing lack of security or scrutiny within the Foreign Office as well as the trust placed in civil service colleagues.
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Other cracks in Bystrolyotov’s once meticulous cover were gradually exposed as he became more jaded.
One evening, Oldham and Bystrolyotov took some time out to socialise together by watching a film in the local cinema. ‘God Save the King’ was played – a
standard custom to demonstrate loyalty to the Crown – but Bystrolyotov failed to rise from his seat. This gaffe reduced the panicked Oldham to a state of near hysteria for fear their fellow patrons might think they were spies.
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Nevertheless, he continued to do his best for Perelly and we can discern a glimpse of Oldham’s relationship with Bystrolyotov from a report sent from Bazarov back to the OGPU centre on 18 April 1932:
ARNO sees in him an aristocrat, a Hungarian nobleman who impresses him very much (he seems to have seriously believed his legend), who somehow found himself a Bolshevik, but since he is not Russian he is far more acceptable. How exactly he imagines it in his mind is not clear. Obviously, he thinks that either HANS was our prisoner of war or had got lost in Europe. HANS only asks for something, explains the pressure on my part, as if he himself were placed in such as position in which lack of success in the work means transferring him to another, non-European section.
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With great effort, Oldham pulled himself together after the ‘final warning’ from his superiors and resumed work back in the Communications Department – as well as his covert activities on behalf of Perelly. Having gathered together more material, he sailed to Calais twice in April and flew to Paris in May and Amsterdam in June with Imperial Airways,
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but his real value to the Soviets came with the Lausanne Conference that was convened between 16 June and 9 July.
Representatives from Britain, France and Germany met to discuss Germany’s reparation payments under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. These had been suspended the previous year due to the global economic crisis post-Wall Street Crash and much depended on whether Lucy’s old friend Hoover would accede to European demands for a relaxation in the terms of the loan repayments to the USA. The negotiations had repercussions beyond the nations in attendance; the Soviet Union was fearful about any diplomatic agreements between Germany and France that might threaten their security and were desperate for access to the conversations that were taking place.
The exact details concerning the material that Oldham provided from Lausanne is open to interpretation by historians, but what is beyond doubt is that he was able to pass across some very valuable documents. According to the OGPU files, and the notes compiled by Bystrolyotov, these included a Foreign Office cable dated 28 June in which Sir Horace Rumbold, the British ambassador to Berlin, stated that he obtained information about the intentions of the newly appointed German Chancellor, von Papen: