DUKES, SIR PAUL• 161the retirement of Sir John Jones. He quickly acquired a reputation as
a modernizer and persuaded the Thatcher administration to legiti-
mize the organization with the Security Service Bill, passed by Par-
liament in December 1989.DUKES, SIR PAUL.The son of a clergyman, Paul Dukes studied
music at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire before World War I in the
hope of becoming a conductor. However, soon after the Anglo-Rus-
sian Commission was established in 1915, Dukes joined it and liaised
with the Russian press covering the war. When, in July 1917, there
was a need for the commission to install a representative at the For-
eign Office in London, Dukes was selected for the task, and there he
worked under the supervision ofJohn Buchan, then Lloyd George’s
director of information.
Dukes remained in London during the October Revolution but be-
came increasingly determined to return to Russia. In December 1917
Dukes got the opportunity, having volunteered as aking’s messen-
gerto deliver dispatches to Oslo, Stockholm, and Petrograd. While
in Russia, Dukes joined an American relief mission to Samara but
was recalled to London for a meeting with Admiral Smith-Cumming,
who invited him to join theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) and
fight the Bolsheviks. Dukes accepted the assignment and the code
name ‘‘ST 25’’ and made his way to the Allied ‘‘intervention’’ head-
quarters in Archangel, adopting the disguise of a Serbian commercial
traveler for a further journey to Finland to be smuggled over the fron-
tier into Russia. Once on Soviet territory, Dukes acquired the identity
of a Ukrainian officer in the fearedCheka, and this lent him some
protection. Dukes remained in Soviet Russia until September 1919
and maintained contact with SIS by meetingAugustus Agar’s fast
motorboats, which routinely slipped across the Gulf of Finland from
their clandestine base on neutral territory. As his colleagueConrad
O’Brien-Ffrenchremarked, ‘‘Dukes was the answer to a spy-writ-
er’s prayer.’’
When Dukes finally emerged from his adventures in Latvia, he re-
ported to the British Legation in Riga and was swiftly shipped to Hel-
sinki and across the North Sea. Upon his return to London he was
reunited with Agar and in 1920 decorated with a knighthood by the
king.The Story of ‘‘ST 25’’: Adventure and Romance in the Secret