Thus Reilly arrived on Russian soil via Murmansk prior to 5 April 1918. Reilly contacted the former Okhrana agent Alexander Grammatikov, who believed the Soviet government "was in the hands of the criminal classes and of lunatics released from the asylums". Grammatikov arranged for Reilly to receive a private interview with either Reilly's longtime friend General Mikhail Bonch-Bruyevich or Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, secretary of the Council of People's Commissars. With the clandestine aid of Bonch-Bruyevich, he assumed the role of a Bolshevik sympathizer. Grammatikov further instructed his niece Dagmara Karozus—a dancer in the Moscow Art Theatre—to allow Reilly to use her apartment as a "safe house", and through Vladimir Orlov, a former Okhrana associate turned Cheka official, Reilly obtained travel permits as a Cheka agent.