The Forgotten Spy (32 page)

The report from Hunter continued:

This was almost certainly paraldehyde, a rather nasty remedy for alcohol withdrawal symptoms such as delirium tremens. Its side effects included hallucinations, trembling, slow heartbeat, nausea, confusion, troubled breathing and very bad breath. Prolonged use could lead to addiction, with organ damage often manifesting through a yellowing of the eyes and skin. Profuse sweating was not unknown, symptoms perhaps displayed back in July when Oldham had attempted to break into the Foreign Office for the last time.

Hunter’s despatch to MI5, coupled with further newspaper clippings that appeared over the following days in the
News Chronicle
and
The Times
, as well as information from the OGPU files, provide enough information to speculate on the chain of events that led to Oldham’s death.

At some point after 20 September, it seems that he was preparing to travel abroad once more to meet with Bystrolyotov. According to Bystrolyotov’s biographer Draitser’s interpretation of events, this was ‘to deliver a list of British secret service operatives posted abroad. Whether he collected the information or not is unclear today. But he seemingly intended to take some sensitive information across the British border.’
³³⁶

During this period, Lucy – who was apparently still in contact with her friend ‘Perelly’ – informed the Soviets about information she herself had received from Kemp (who was trying to find her some employment) that ‘Oldham had sent a porter from the Jules Hotel to the Foreign Office with his passport and a note asking Kemp to indulge him as a friend and mark up his passport, raising it to the status of a diplomatic courier passport; the holder of such a passport was not subject to border crossing disclosures’.
³³⁷
Kemp refused and retained the document, sending a message back to Oldham via the porter that he should come and pick it up himself. If this was indeed the case, Kemp did not reveal this information to either his superiors in the
Foreign Office or MI5 – no doubt playing the amateur detective once more in the hope of claiming the glory himself for bringing Oldham to justice. This was a costly error.

Doubtless spooked by the loss of his passport and unsure about how next to proceed, it is plausible that Oldham tried to communicate his dire situation to a Soviet agent via the phone call from Biarritz via Paris on Saturday 23 September. Two days later he received the letter from Geneva. Although this was not intercepted by MI5 – another slip by the security services – nor was it found with his personal possessions either in the hotel or at 31 Pembroke Gardens, it is safe to conclude that it was sent by Bystrolyotov, as Geneva was one of his favoured operational bases. Perhaps frustrated by Oldham’s continual failure to send over the material he had promised, or suspecting that the ‘lost passport’ was just another excuse, we can speculate that Bystrolyotov made good his earlier promise to cut Oldham off financially and indeed went further, with the threat of exposing Oldham’s activities to the British authorities unless he complied with his instructions to travel to the continent – something, of course, Oldham could no longer do. This would explain the call placed to Biarritz in response to the letter from Geneva.

With his only source of income cut off, his passport seized by the Foreign Office, and faced with mounting debts at the Jules Hotel that he could not pay, Oldham gathered together his meagre possessions and returned to the only refuge he had available to him – his empty family home. There he was doubtless surrounded by memories of happier times before his wife abandoned him and his career slipped away through the neck of a bottle. Contemplating the real possibility of prosecution as a traitor should the Soviets make good their threats to expose him, Oldham sealed the kitchen, turned on the coal gas fire, lay down on the floor, and waited for his life to ebb away.

He nearly failed to carry out this final act successfully. A police sergeant, alerted by neighbours to unexpected activity in the shuttered house as well as the smell of gas, was called to investigate. On seeing Oldham lying on the floor near the gas stove, clothed in his dressing gown, the officer smashed a window and entered the property. Oldham was still showing faint signs of life so the sergeant called for medical assistance. An ambulance was summoned
and Oldham was bundled into the back. He expired before he reached hospital, pronounced dead ‘on the way’ outside 28 Marloes Road, a few streets from his former home.

No good spy story is complete without a conspiracy theory and in Oldham’s case it is provided by a cryptic comment from Bystrolyotov’s memoirs. Referring to Oldham’s death, he states that ‘our wonderful source failed and was killed by us’.
³³⁸
There is no evidence to support the interpretation that direct action was taken to eliminate Oldham. Instead, it may simply relate to a degree of remorse or guilt felt by Bystrolyotov over the contents of the Geneva letter that triggered Oldham’s decision to take his own life. No trace of foul play was noted by the British authorities, although rather bizarrely the OGPU Centre itself suspected that Oldham had been murdered – by the British.

A subsequent newspaper clipping placed in Oldham’s file, again from the
Star
on 2 October 1933, carried an account of the post mortem and coroner’s inquest into his death.

Oldham’s age was indeed recorded as 46 years on the official death certificate, which was issued on the same day as the coroner’s inquest. No doubt he looked to be heading towards his 50s, given the prolonged effects of alcohol and drugs on his body; nevertheless, in reality Oldham was still a year away from his 40th birthday.

Attending the coroner’s inquest was Oldham’s sister, Marjorie Holloway Barratt and her husband, George Bernard Barratt. They were forced to make the difficult decision to leave their eldest son Michael at home unattended, facing the traffic along Wolves Lane as he walked to the isolation hospital to check on his brother’s state of health.

On 3 October, the surveillance operation on Oldham was terminated via a terse, two-line note from Watson. The phone intercepts on the deserted 31 Pembroke Gardens ceased.

Oldham’s MI5 file shows that once the HOW was suspended on 3 October, it was deemed pointless to continue further monitoring of overseas phone calls to the Jules Hotel, so these ceased on 4 October. A week later, Harker spoke to Norton at the Foreign Office who confirmed that no further action should be taken, and as far as MI5 was concerned the case was closed. However, within the Foreign Office the fallout had only just begun.

An internal investigation into Oldham’s activities was launched, though the entire episode is now shrouded in secrecy since no files from the Communications Department were selected for permanent retention during the period 1927 to 1935. The day books of the Foreign Office, where a range of activities were recorded, are equally silent on both the original break-in, as already discussed, but equally there is no hint of any extraordinary activity throughout the summer and autumn of 1933.

The clearest indication of the seriousness with which Oldham’s break-in
was treated can be found from the order given on 26 July 1933 to change ‘the locks and keys of a considerable number of presses in which highly confidential documents are kept in the Foreign Office within the shortest possible period.’
³⁴¹
The Chief Clerk, Howard Smith, found it prudent to provide only a verbal update to the Director of Printing and Binding about the ‘circumstances which render necessary the alteration of the locks’. However, it is astonishing to learn that the process was still underway in December, with no end in sight:

A handwritten note indicated that this topic should be brought up again on 26 March 1934 – a full seven months after the original incident. Other files suggest that there were further discussions about Foreign Office security from July to October, but even the descriptions of the file content were deemed too sensitive to commit to print.

Clearly, the Foreign Office suspected that some of its confidential material had been compromised; but equally, because of the sensitive nature of some of the diplomatic correspondence and files in its possession, it did not want external bodies such as MI5 or SIS involved until it had ascertained exactly what had happened. This was why the remainder of the investigation into Oldham’s activities took place behind closed doors, with the primary attention shifting to the source of his money throughout 1932 and 1933. Equally, the Hungarian Count Joseph Perelly was also a subject of great interest.

As a result, Oldham’s wife – with whom he had clearly travelled abroad throughout this period – came under intense pressure to reveal what she knew, although the Foreign Office worked through the family’s solicitors, Walbrook and Hosken. Kemp had previously contacted Angus Walbrook on 16 August in the presence of Harker, Cotesworth and Lee to ask about Oldham’s address and shortly after Oldham’s death it seems as though he was approached once again, this time with the request that he should compile a complete list of Oldham’s financial transactions based on the paperwork in his possession.
³⁴³

To cover up the fact that the real nature of the inquiry related to the potential leak of confidential Foreign Office material to an overseas power, the reason given to Walbrook was that Oldham was one of a number of employees suspected of being involved with drugs smuggling. This was a complete fabrication, but the threat of subsequent police action was sufficiently convincing to elicit the support of the solicitor. He was asked specifically to look for any connections Oldham might have had with Germany; this was probably a result of the misinformation that Bystrolyotov had fed Kemp during the meeting with Lucy on 19 July. However, the changing international situation also played a part. On 16 October, Germany announced its intentions to withdraw from the League of Nations, amid growing fears about Hitler’s plans to expand his country’s military capability. No doubt the Oldhams’ cover story also helped add further credibility to the idea that Oldham was involved with the Germans, given that Lucy’s son had indeed spent long periods of time near Bonn, as well as the recorded occasions when the couple had flown to Berlin. However, it would seem as though her familial links to Germany remained undetected and therefore not investigated.

Walbrook duly explained the situation to Lucy and asked for her assistance, but she informed him that she knew nothing about any German connection, other than the fact that Da Vinci (Bazarov) was the man who bought any material that Oldham might have procured. She considered him to be an ‘evil man’ who had subverted both her husband as well as her ‘Hungarian count’. Walbrook clearly understood the seriousness of the situation and pressed her to reveal any details of Perelly’s whereabouts since he was the link to the Germans that had dragged Oldham ‘into some dirty business’.
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It appears
that the Foreign Office claimed to have evidence that Oldham’s disappearance at the end of July was to take part in ‘a wild binge with prostitutes’ in Vienna and Berlin – a ploy intended to enrage her into a confession. However, Lucy was not fooled, and continued to claim that she knew nothing more, insistent that Perelly was of no help with the inquiries because he had merely acted as the go-between for the transactions between Oldham and Da Vinci. This was clearly disingenuous, but Lucy’s role in the whole affair is somewhat shaded in mystery. If she had instigated Oldham’s first approach to the Soviets in 1929, as Bystrolyotov believed, then her apparent lack of knowledge at key stages shows a remarkable ability to feign ignorance or innocence about the depth of her husband’s activities and throw her inquirers off the scent. This was one such example.