Paul Dukes, a fluent Russian speaker, had already been in contact with the intelligence services while working in Petrograd as a member of the Anglo-Russian Commission, a British propaganda organisation. A few months before the October Revolution, he was asked by Tsarist intelligence chiefs to provide them with as much information as possible on the Bolshevik leaders. In order to spell out to officials back in Whitehall precisely what the Russians did and did not know, Dukes filed two heavyweight reports on the leading Bolsheviks, derived from information provided by the Russians and the French. These added significantly to what MI1c and MI5 knew and almost certainly had an impact on Cumming's subsequent decision to select him for the secret service mission in Russia. After the revolution, Dukes remained in Russia, working in the south, ostensibly with a relief mission funded by the American YMCA. Called back to England in the summer of 1918 by an "urgent" telegram from the Foreign Office, Dukes arrived by Royal Navy destroyer at Aberdeen and was put on a train to London's King's Cross station where a car was waiting to pick him up....

The colonel, Frederick Browning, took Dukes to Cumming's office to meet the chief. "From the threshold the room seemed bathed in semi-obscurity," Dukes recalled. "The writing desk was so placed with the window behind it that on entering everything appeared only in silhouette. A row of half-a-dozen extending telephones stood at the left of a big desk littered with papers. On a side-table were maps and drawings, with models of aeroplanes, submarines, and mechanical devices, while a row of bottles of various colours and a distilling outfit with a rack of test tubes bore witness to chemical experiments and operations."

These evidences of scientific investigation only served to intensify an already overpowering atmosphere of strangeness and mystery. But it was not these things that engaged my attention as I stood nervously waiting. My eyes fixed themselves on the figure at the writing table. In the capacious swing desk-chair, his shoulders hunched, with his head supported on his hand, sat the Chief. This extraordinary man was short of stature, thick-set with grey hair half covering a well-rounded head. His mouth was stern and an eagle eye, full of vivacity, glanced - or glared as the case may be - piercingly through a gold-rimmed monocle. At first encounter, he appeared very severe. His manner of speech was abrupt. Yet the stern countenance could melt into the kindliest of smiles, and the softened eyes and lips revealed a heart that was big and generous. Awe-inspired as I was by my first encounter, I soon learned to regard "the Chief" with feelings of the deepest personal admiration. In silhouette, I saw myself motioned to a chair. The Chief wrote for a moment and then suddenly turned with the unexpected remark, "So I understand you want to go back to Soviet Russia, do you?" As if it had been my own suggestion.''

Dukes was given the designation ST25, as he was to be run by John Scale in Stockholm. Cumming told him that he had to find Merrett and pick up the reins of the agent networks set up in Petrograd and Moscow by Stephen Alley, Ernest Boyce, Scale and Jim Gillespie, as well as those run by the now-dead naval attache Francis Cromie. "The words Archangel, Stockholm, Riga, Helsingfors recurred frequently, and the names were mentioned of English people in all those places and in Petrograd," Dukes recalled. "It was finally decided that I alone should determine how and by what route I should regain access to Russia, and how I should dispatch reports. "Don't go and get yourself killed," said the Chief in conclusion, smiling. Three weeks later, I set out for Russia, into the unknown."

Sidney Reilly and George Hill were not heading back to Russia alone: Cumming had recently hired a new recruit to his organisation, someone he had first met four months previously. His name was Paul Dukes and he was charged with the task of rebuilding Cumming's shattered network inside Russia.

Dukes was a talented musician and former conductor with the Imperial Mariinsky Opera. He had been living in Russia since 1908 and had witnessed first-hand the revolution that had swept the Bolsheviks to power. Indeed he had been one of the trio of Englishmen who had first glimpsed Lenin on his return to Petrograd in 1917. He had also seen the civil unrest that accompanied Lenin's first months in government.

Dukes's intense eyes hinted at an inner sharpness, an ability to think on his feet and take clear decisions in moments of crisis. This natural intelligence, coupled with his fluency in the language, had already earned him unofficial employment in the service of the Foreign Office. It was almost certainly his vivid despatches about the Bolshevik revolution that brought him to the attention of Mansfield Cumming.

"One day, when in Moscow," wrote Dukes, "I was handed an unexpected telegram. 'Urgent' - from the British Foreign Office. 'You are wanted at once in London', it ran."

He wasted no time in heeding the call. He took the train to Norway, bought himself passage across the North Sea and eventually arrived in Aberdeen. Here, he was met by a passport control officer who put him on the first train to London where a car was awaiting him.

Dukes was mystified by the summons. "Knowing neither my destination, nor the cause of my recall, I was driven to a building in a side street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square. "This way," said the chauffeur, leaving the car."

Dukes was led into a labyrinthine building with "rabbit-burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the roof." He was eventually ushered into a tiny room, the office of a colonel in uniform.

Dukes was not at liberty to provide his name when he came to publish his account, but it may well have been Colonel Freddie Browning, who was still employed as Cumming's unofficial deputy.

After a warm handshake, the colonel informed Dukes that he was being offered a job in the Secret Intelligence Service. He was to return to Russia and remain there, "to keep us informed of the march of events."

Dukes was taken aback by the unexpected job offer and blurted a series of objections. The colonel brushed these aside with a wave of his hand and told him to return to Whitehall Court on the following day. The arrival of a young secretary heralded the end of the interview: a bewildered Dukes was led back through the maze of passages.
"Burning with curiosity and fascinated already by the mysticism of this elevated labyrinth, I ventured a query to my young female guide. "What sort of an establishment is this?" I said.

Dukes noticed a twinkle in her eye. "She shrugged her shoulders and without replying pressed the button for the elevator. "Good afternoon," was all she said as I passed in."

Dukes's induction into the Secret Intelligence Service was to become a great deal more mysterious on the following day. He was escorted back to the colonel's office and provided with a more precise brief. He was to gather intelligence on Bolshevik policy and was also to investigate the level of popular support for Lenin's regime.

"As to the means whereby you gain access to the country," said the colonel, "under what cover you will live there, and how you will send out reports, we shall leave it to you ... to make suggestions."

"In silhouette I saw myself motioned to a chair. The Chief wrote for a moment then suddenly turned with the unexpected remark, 'So, I understand you want to go back to Soviet Russia, do you?' as if it had been my own suggestion."

Knowing neither my destination nor the cause of my recall, I was driven to a building in a side-street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square. The chauffeur had a face like a mask. We entered the building and the elevator whisked us to the top floor, above which additional superstructures had been built for war-emergency offices. I had always associated rabbit warrens with subterranean abodes. But here in this building, I discovered a maze of burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the roof. Crossing a short iron bridge, we entered another maze, until just as I was beginning to feel dizzy I was shown into a tiny room about ten-toot-square where sat an officer in the uniform of a British Army colonel. "Good afternoon, Mr Dukes," said the colonel. "You doubtless wonder that no explanation has been given to you as to why you should return to England. Well, I have to inform you, confidentially, that it has been proposed to offer you a somewhat responsible post in the Secret Intelligence Service. We have reason to believe that Russia will not long continue to be open to foreigners. We wish someone to remain there to keep us informed of the march of events."

I wrote mostly at night, in minute handwriting on tracing-paper, with a small caoutchouc (latex bag) about four inches in length, weighted with lead, ready at my side. In case of alarm, all my papers could be slipped into this bag and within thirty seconds be transferred to the bottom of a tub of washing or the cistern of a water closet. In efforts to discover arms or incriminating documents, I have seen pictures, carpets, and bookshelves removed and everything turned topsy-turvy by diligent searchers, but it never occurred to anybody to search through a pail of washing or thrust his hand into the water-closet cistern. Only on one occasion was I obliged to destroy documents of value, while of the couriers who, at grave risk, carried communications back and forth from Finland, only two failed to arrive and l presume were caught and shot.