Sidney Reilly

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Sidney Reilly
"The Ace of Spies"
Salomon Rosenblum, later known as Sidney Reilly, circa 1899.
Birth name:	Shlomo Rosenblum
Born:	24 March 1873 (?) Kherson, Czarist Russia
Died:	5 November 1925 (?) Moscow, Soviet Union
Height:	5' 9" (1.75 m)
Spouse(s):	Margaret C. Thomas Nadine Massino Nelly "Pepita" Burton Purportedly Others

Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly, MC (c. March 24, 1873? – November 5, 1925), famously known as the Ace of Spies, was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service. He is alleged to have spied for at least four nations.^[1] His notoriety during the 1920s was owed in part to his friend, British diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, who sensationalised their thwarted operation to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918. After Reilly's death, the London Evening Standard published in May, 1931, a Master Spy serial glorifying his exploits. Later, Ian Fleming would use Reilly as a model for James Bond. Today, many historians consider Reilly to be an exemplary prototype of the first 20th century super-spy.

[edit] Origins and youth

The origins, identities and activities of Sidney George Reilly have befuddled researchers and intelligence agencies for over a century; hence, much of his reported life and infamous exploits should be taken with a grain of salt. Reilly himself told various tales regarding his origins in order to confuse and mislead investigators. At different times in his life, Reilly disparately claimed to be the son of an Irish merchant seaman, an Irish clergyman or an aristocratic landowner who frequented the Imperial court of Tzar Alexander III of Russia.

A commonly-accepted belief is that Reilly was born Georgi Rosenblum in Odessa, former Russian Empire (now Ukraine), on March 24, 1874 (Lockhart 1986). However, several alternative theories as to Reilly's birthplace and origins exist.

In Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 28), author Andrew Cook claims that Reilly was born on March 24, 1873 under the name Salomon (Shlomo) Rosenblum in the Jewish Kherson gubernia of Czarist Russia. Sidney Reilly (Salomon / Shlomo Rosenblum) is alleged by Cook to have been the illegitimate offspring of his mother, Paulina (Perla), and a Dr. Mikhail Abramovich (Son of Abraham) Rosenblum, the trusted first cousin of Reilly's assumed father Grigory (Hersh) Rosenblum (Cook 2004).

[edit] Early life

An 1880s portrait of Salomon Rosenblum photographed in his youth.

According to Reilly, he was arrested as a young man by the Imperial Russian Secret Police (Czarist Ochrana) in 1892 for carrying messages for a student revolutionary group called The Friends of Enlightenment. When he was released, Reilly was told by his assumed father Grigory that his mother Paulina (Perla) was dead and that his real, biological father was actually her Jewish doctor Mikhail A. Rosenblum. "Re-christening" himself as Sigmund Rosenblum, Reilly claimed to have faked his death in Odessa Harbour and stowed away on a British ship bound for South America (Lockhart 1986).

In Brazil, Reilly supposedly adopted the name Pedro. He worked odd jobs as a dock worker, road-mender, plantation laborer and, in 1895, became a cook for a British intelligence expedition (Deacon 1987). Reilly allegedly saved the expedition and the life of a Major Charles Fothergill when hostile natives attacked them. According to this suppositious tale, Reilly seized a British officer's pistol and, with expert marksmanship, single-handedly eliminated the attacking natives (Cook 2004). Appropriately for such a fantastic story, British agent Major Charles Fothergill rewarded him with £1500, arranged for him to receive a British passport and a trip to Britain where Reilly adopted the name Sidney Rosenblum (Lockhart 1986).

Evidence asserted in Andrew Cook's Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 32) contradicts the aforementioned Brazilian scenario and declares the British expedition incident to be unsubstantiated. Instead, Cook states that the arrival of Sidney Reilly in London in December 1895 was via France and due to Reilly's unscrupulous acquisition of a large sum of money in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, a residential suburb of Paris; hence, necessitating a hasty departure from that nation. According to Cook, Reilly and a Russian accomplice, Yan Voitek, waylaid two Italian anarchists on December 25, 1895, and robbed them of a substantial amount of revolutionary funds. One anarchist had his throat slit; the other, Constant Della Cassa, died from knife wounds in Fontainebleau Hospital three days later. By the time Della Cassa's death appeared in the newspapers, police had learned that one of the assailants, whose physical description matched Reilly, was already en route to England. Reilly's accomplice, Voitek, would later relate this incident and his other dealings with Reilly to the British Secret Intelligence Service (Cook 2004).

Regardless of whether Reilly arrived in England via Brazil or France, Reilly was residing under the name of Sigmund Rosenblum at the Albert Mansions, a prestigious apartment block in Rosetta Street, Waterloo, London, in early 1896 (Cook 2004). Now settled in England, Reilly created the Ozone Preparations Company which peddled miracle cures. Due to his knowledge of languages, Reilly became a paid informant for the émigré intelligence network of William Melville who was the superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch and, according to Cook, was later the clandestine head of the early British Secret Service using the code name "M." ^[2]

[edit] In London: 1890s

William Melville, the alleged first Director General of MI5, and purportedly the man who created the cover identity of Sidney Reilly for Salomon Rosenblum.

In 1897, Sidney Reilly was suspiciously involved in the sudden death of the elderly Reverend Hugh Thomas and, verifiably, had a torrid affair with Hugh Thomas' youthful wife, Margaret Callaghan, just prior to Thomas' demise (Cook 2004).

The Reverend Hugh Thomas and Sidney Reilly, identifying himself as Sigmund Rosenblum, first met in London via Reilly's Ozone Preparations Company. Reverend Hugh Thomas had a kidney inflammation and was intrigued by the miracle cures peddled by Reilly. Thomas introduced Rosenblum to his young wife, Margaret Callaghan, at his Manor House and an affair between the two developed over the next half year (Cook 2004).

On March 4, 1898, Thomas altered his Will and appointed Margaret as an executor. A week after the making of the new Will, Reverend Thomas and his nurse arrived at Newhaven Harbor Station. On March 12, 1898, in that same hotel, Reverend Thomas was found dead in his bed. A mysterious Dr. T.W. Andrew, who matched the physical description of Sidney Reilly, appeared on the scene to certify Thomas' death as generic influenza and, signing the relevant documents, proclaimed that there was no need for an inquest. Records indicate that no such person called Dr. T.W. Andrew existed in Great Britain circa 1897 (Cook 2004). Margaret Callaghan insisted Thomas' body be ready for burial a mere day and a half after his death. Six weeks later, Margaret inherited roughly £800,000. Neither the illusionary personage of Dr. T.W. Andrew who matched Reilly's description nor the fact that the nurse Margaret had hired was previously linked to the arsenic poisoning of a former employer were investigated by the Metropolitan Police (Cook 2004).

Four months later, on August 22, 1898, Reilly married Margaret Callaghan Thomas. The two witnesses at the ceremony were Charles Cross and Joseph Bell. Bell was an Admiralty clerk, while Charles Cross was a government official. Both eventually married daughters of Henry Freeman Pannett, a close associate of William Melville. The marriage brought not only the wealth Reilly desired but provided a false pretext to discard Sigmund Rosenblum and, with the help of Melville, assume the identity of Sidney George Reilly, husband of Margaret Thomas Reilly. This new identity was the key to achieving his desire to return to Czarist Russia and voyage to the Far East (Cook 2004).

[edit] Czarist Russia and the Far East

A ukiyoe print of the night attack on Port Arthur by the Japanese Navy. The surprise attack was allegedly made possible by the intelligence gathering of Sidney Reilly and Ho-Liang-Shung.

In June 1899, Sidney Reilly and his first wife Margaret Callaghan Thomas traveled to Czarist Russia using Reilly's new British passport – a cover identity purportedly created by William Melville (Cook 2004). While Margaret remained in St. Petersburg, Reilly is alleged to have reconnoitered the Caucasus for its oil deposits and compiled a resource prospectus. He reported his findings to the British government which paid him for completing the assignment. In early 1901, Reilly and his wife voyaged from Port Said, Egypt, across the globe to the Far East (Lockhart 1986).

Shortly before the Russo-Japanese War, Reilly appeared in Port Arthur, Manchuria, as a double-agent serving both the British and the Japanese interests (Deacon 1987). As the Russian-controlled Port Arthur lay under the ever-darkening specter of Japanese invasion, Reilly and business co-partner Moisei (Moses) Akimovich Ginsburg turned the precarious situation to their financial benefit and – by purchasing enormous amounts of food, raw materials, medication and coal – acquired a small fortune as war profiteers (Cook 2004).

Reilly would have an even greater success in January 1904 when he and a Chinese engineer acquaintance, Ho-Liang-Shung, allegedly stole the Port Arthur harbor defense plans for the Japanese Navy. Guided by these stolen plans, the Japanese Navy navigated through the Russian minefield protecting the harbor and launched a surprise attack on Port Arthur. Over 31,000 Russians would ultimately perish defending Port Arthur against the Japanese invaders assisted by Ho-Liang-Shung and, his acquaintance, Sidney Reilly (Cook 2004), although it did not help the Japanese much -- they themselves suffered much higher casualties which all but undermined their war effort.

Upon leaving Port Arthur, Manchuria, historian Winfried Ludecke suggests that Reilly voyaged to Imperial Japan in the company of an unknown mistress. If Reilly did visit Japan and assumedly received pay for his espionage activities, he could not have stayed there very long for, in June 1904, Reilly appeared in Paris, France (Cook 2004). During the brief time Reilly spent in Paris, he renewed his close acquaintance with William Melville, the first Director General of MI5, whom Reilly had last seen in 1899 just prior to his departure from London. Reilly's meeting with Melville is most significant for within a matter of weeks Melville was to use Reilly's expertise in what would later become known as The D'Arcy Affair (Lockhart 1986).

[edit] D'Arcy Affair

In 1904, the Board of the Admiralty projected that petroleum would surpass coal as the primary source of fuel for the British Navy. In the course of their investigation, the British Admiralty learned that William Knox D'Arcy — who later founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in April 1909 — had secured a valuable concession from the Persian government regarding the oil rights in southern Persia, and that D'Arcy was negotiating a similar concession from the Turkish Government for oil rights in Mesopotamia. Purportedly, the British Admiralty initiated efforts to entice D'Arcy to sell his newly-acquired oil rights to the British Government rather than the French de Rothschilds (Lockhart 1986).

In Reilly: Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart repeats one of Reilly's often-recited tales of how, at the British Admiralty's request, Reilly located William Knox D'Arcy in the south of France and clandestinely approached him in disguise. According to Reilly, he boarded Lord de Rothschild's yacht attired as a Catholic priest, secretly persuaded D'Arcy to terminate negotiations with the French Rothschilds and return to London to meet with the British Admiralty (Lockhart 1986). Biographer Andrew Cook claims that Reilly's involvement in the D'Arcy Affair is questionable for, in February 1904, Reilly was purportedly still in Port Arthur, Manchuria. Cook further claims that it was Reilly's intelligence chief, William Melville, and a British intelligence officer, Henry Curtis Bennett, who undertook the D'Arcy assignment instead (Cook 2004).

Although the extent of his involvement in the D'Arcy Affair is unknown, Reilly verifiably stayed in the French Riviera on the Côte d'Azur following the incident – a location very near the Rothschild yacht. Following the conclusion of the D'Arcy Affair, Reilly journeyed to Brussels, and, shortly thereafter, Reilly arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, in January 1905 (Cook 2004).

An alternative scenario put foward in The Prize by Daniel Yergin sees the Admiralty putting forawrd a "Syndicate of Patriots" to keep D'Arcy's consession in British hands, apparently with the full and eager co-operation of D'Arcy himself^[5].

[edit] Frankfurt International Air Show

In Ace of Spies, biographer Robin Bruce Lockhart recounts Reilly's alleged involvement in obtaining a newly developed German magneto at the first Frankfurt International Air Show ("Internationale Luftschiffahrt-Ausstellung") in 1909.

According to Robin Bruce Lockhart, a German plane lost control on the fifth day of the air show and plummeted to the ground, killing the pilot. The plane's engine was alleged to have used a new type of magneto that was far ahead of other designs. Sidney Reilly and a British SIS agent, posing as one of the exhibition pilots, diverted public attention while they removed the magneto from the wreck of the plane, substituting another. Later, the SIS agent made rapid but detailed drawings of the German magneto and, when the engine had been removed to its rightful place in the hangar of the late German pilot, the British SIS agent and Reilly managed to switch the magnetos once again, restoring the original (Lockhart 1986).

In contrast, biographer Andrew Cook has countered that this incident never happened and, according to 1909 documentation regarding the air show, no plane crashes occurred at any point during the event (Cook 2004).

[edit] Stealing Weapon Plans

According to biographer Lockhart, the German Kaiser was escalating the war machine of Imperial Germany in 1909, and British intelligence had scant knowledge regarding the type of weapons being forged inside Germany's sprawling war plants. At the behest of British intelligence, Reilly was sent to obtain such plans (Lockhart 1967).

As such, in 1909, Reilly arrived in Essen, Germany, disguised as a Baltic shipyard worker by the name of Karl Hahn. Having prepared his cover identity by learning the welding craft at a Sheffield engineering firm, Reilly obtained a low-level position as a welder at the plant and, shortly thereafter, joined the plant fire brigade. Reilly then persuaded the foreman in charge of the fire brigade that a set of plant schematics were needed to indicate the position of fire extinguishers and hydrants. These schematics were soon lodged in the foreman's office for members of the fire brigade to consult, and Reilly set about locating the weapon plans (Lockhart 1967).

In the early morning hours, Reilly used lock-picks to break into the office where the weapon plans were kept but was discovered by the foreman. Reilly strangled the foreman and completed the theft. From Essen, Reilly took a train to Dortmund to a safe house, and tearing the plans into four pieces, mailed each one separately. If one was lost, the other three would still reveal the gist of the plans (Lockhart 1967).

In Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly, biographer Andrew Cook casts doubt on the validity of this reported incident; however, Cook does confirm that German factory records show a Karl Hahn was indeed employed by the Essen plant during this time period and a plant fire brigade was in formal operation (Cook 2004).

[edit] Lockhart Plot

From the London Evening Standard's Master Spy serial: Reilly, disguised as a member of the Cheka, bluffs his way through a Red Army checkpoint.

The endeavor to depose the Bolshevik Government and assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is considered by biographers to be Reilly's most daring scheme. The Lockhart Plot or, more accurately, the Reilly Plot, has sparked debate over the years: Did the Allies launch a clandestine operation to overthrow the Bolsheviks? If so, did the Cheka uncover the coup at the eleventh hour or had they unmasked the conspirators from the outset? Some historians have suggested the Cheka orchestrated the conspiracy from beginning to end, and, possibly, that Reilly was a Bolshevik agent provocateur (Cook 2004).

In May 1918, Robert Bruce Lockhart, an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and Reilly repeatedly met with General Boris Savinkov of the Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom (UDFF). Savinkov had been War Minister in the Provisional Government of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, and a key opponent of the Bolsheviks. A former Social Revolutionary Party member, Savinkov had formed the UDFF consisting of several thousand Russian fighters. Lockhart and Reilly then contacted anti-Bolshevik collectives linked to Savinkov and supported these factions with SIS funds, as well as liaisoned with the intelligence operatives of the French and U.S. Consuls in Moscow (Cook 2004).

In June, disillusioned Latvians, desiring to revolt, began appearing in anti-Bolshevik opposition circles in Petrograd and were eventually directed to Captain Cromie, a British Naval Attaché, and "Mister Constantine," a false identity of a Turkish merchant used by Reilly. As Latvians were deemed the Praetorian Guard of the Bolsheviks and entrusted with the security of the Kremlin, Reilly believed their participation in the pending coup to be vital and arranged their meeting with Lockhart at the British Mission in Moscow. At this stage, Reilly planned a coup against the Bolshevik government and drew up a list of Soviet generals ready to assume responsibilities on the fall of the Bolshevik government. While the coup was prepared, an Allied force landed on August 4, 1918, at Arkhangelsk, Russia, beginning a famous military expedition dubbed Operation Archangel. Its objective was to prevent the German Empire from obtaining Allied military supplies stored in the region. In retaliation for this incursion, the Bolsheviks raided the British diplomatic mission on August 5th; disrupting a meeting Reilly had arranged between the anti-Bolshevik Latvians, UDFF officials, and Lockhart (Cook 2004).

On August 17th, Reilly conducted meetings between Latvian regimental leaders and liaisoned with Captain George Hill, another British agent operating in Russia. They agreed the coup would occur the first week of September during a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars and the Moscow Soviet at the Bolshoi Theatre. However, on the eve of the coup, unexpected events thwarted the operation (Cook 2004).

On August 30, a military cadet shot and killed Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd Cheka. On this same day, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, shot and wounded Lenin as he left a meeting at the Michelson factory in Moscow. These events were used by the Cheka to implicate any malcontents in a grand conspiracy that warranted a full-scale campaign: the "Red Terror." Thousands of political opponents were seized and executed. Using lists supplied by undercover agents, the Cheka arrested those involved in Reilly's pending coup. They raided the British Embassy in Petrograd and killed Cromie, Reilly's accomplice, who put up an armed resistance. Lockhart was arrested, but later released in exchange for Litvinov, a Soviet spy who had been arrested in London in a reprisal. Elizaveta Otten, Reilly's chief courier, was arrested as well as his other mistress Olga Starzheskaya. Another courier, Maria Fride, with papers she carried for Reilly, was arrested at Otten's flat (Cook 2004).

On September 3, the aborted coup was sensationalized by the Russian press; Reilly was identified as a leader; a dragnet ensued. The Cheka raided his assumed refuge, but Reilly avoided capture and met with Captain Hill. Hill proposed that Reilly escape Russia via the Ukraine using their network of British agents for safe houses and assistance. Reilly instead chose a shorter, more dangerous route north to Finland. With the Cheka closing in, Reilly, carrying a Baltic German passport, posed as a legation secretary and departed Moscow in a railway car reserved for the German Embassy. In Kronstadt, Reilly sailed by ship to Helsingfors and reached Stockholm. He arrived in London on November 8th (Cook 2004).

The day before Reilly and Hill met with Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming ("C") in London for their debriefing, the Russian Izvestia newspaper reported that both Reilly and Lockhart had been sentenced to death in absentia by a Revolutionary Tribunal for their roles in the attempted coup of the Bolshevik government. Their sentence was to be carried out immediately should either of them be apprehended on Soviet soil. This sentence would later be served on Reilly when he was caught by the OGPU in 1925. Ironically, within the week of their debriefing, the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Foreign Office resent Reilly and Hill to Russia under the cover of British trade delegates. Their assignment was to uncover information about the Black Sea coast needed for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Cook 2004).

[edit] Career with British Intelligence

Sidney Reilly, candidly photographed in 1924, a year before his demise.

Throughout his life, Sidney Reilly maintained a close yet tempestuous consanguinity with the British intelligence community.

In the late 1890s, Reilly was recruited by Superintendent William Melville for the émigré intelligence network of Scotland Yard's Special Branch. Through his working relationship with Melville, Reilly would later be employed as a clandestine operative for the Secret Service Bureau which the War Office created in October 1909. In 1918, Reilly began to work for "MI1(c)," an early designation^[8] for the British Secret Intelligence Service, under Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Reilly was allegedly trained by the latter organization and then sent to Moscow in March 1918 to purportedly assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin or attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks. He had to escape after the Cheka unraveled the so-called Lockhart Plot against the Bolshevik government.

Reilly told various tales about his espionage deeds and adventurous exploits. According to Reilly, he earned and lost several fortunes in his lifetime, had many wives and numerous mistresses. He claimed: in the Second Boer War he had disguised himself as a Russian arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers; the so-called D'Arcy Affair where he procured Persian oil concessions for the British Admiralty; reporting to the Kempeitai — the Japanese secret police — on the Russian military presence in Port Arthur, Manchuria, in the disguise of a timber company owner; spying on the Krupp armaments plant in Germany; volunteering for the Royal Flying Corps in Canada at the start of the World War I; seducing the wife of the Russian minister to obtain information regarding German weapons shipments to Russia; attending a German Army High Command meeting in a German officer's uniform during World War I; saving diplomats in Brazil, South America, and his thwarted attempts to engineer the downfall of the Russian Bolshevik government. British intelligence followed its policy of saying nothing about anything.

Despite the lack of such public confirmation, Reilly's espionage successes did garner indirect recognition. After a formal recommendation by Sir Mansfield "C" Smith-Cumming, Reilly was awarded the Military Cross on January 22, 1919, "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field."^[9] Biographer Cook claims the medal was bestowed due to Reilly's anti-Bolshevik operations in southern Russia; however, espionage historian Richard Deacon states the award was given for Reilly's previous clandestine activities in World War I. Reilly had allegedly parachuted behind German lines on a number of occasions. Once, disguised as a German officer, he spent three weeks inside the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) gathering information about the next planned thrust against the Allies.^[10]

Historian Deacon asserts in History of the Russian Secret Service that Reilly was, in April 1912, an Ochrana agent with the task of befriending and profiling Sir Basil Zaharoff, the international arms salesman and representative of Vickers-Armstrong Munitions Ltd. Another Reilly biographer, Richard B. Spence, claims in Trust No One: The Secret World Of Sidney Reilly that during this assignment Reilly learned from Zaharoff "le systeme." To Zaharoff, "le systeme" was the strategy of playing all sides against each other in order to maximize financial profit. In contrast, biographer Andrew Cook counters in Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 104) that there is no evidence of any relationship between Sidney Reilly and Sir Basil Zaharoff.

According to the research of Andrew Cook, Reilly was more of a con artist. Although Reilly claimed to have been employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service since the 1890s, he had volunteered his services and was accepted as an agent on March 15, 1918, but was effectively fired in 1921 due to his tendency to be a rogue operative. Nevertheless, Reilly had been a renowned operative for Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service Bureau which were the early forerunners of the British intelligence community.

Author Michael Kettle has claimed in Sidney Reilly: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy (pg. 121) that Reilly was possibly involved with Sir Stewart Graham Menzies in the forging of The Zinoviev Letter in 1924 — by which stage SIS had already fired him.^[11]

[edit] Death

Following execution in a forest near Moscow, the alleged corpse of Sidney Reilly (Salomon Rosenblum) was photographed in OGPU headquarters by Soviet personnel circa November 5, 1925.

In September, 1925, undercover agents of the OGPU, the intelligence successor of the Cheka, lured Reilly to Bolshevik Russia ostensibly to meet the supposed anti-Communist organization The Trust – in reality, an OGPU deception existing under the code name Operation Trust. At the Russian border, Reilly was introduced to undercover OGPU agents posing as senior Trust representatives from Moscow. One of these undercover Soviet agents, Alexander Yakushev, later recalled the meeting:

After Reilly crossed the Finnish border, the Soviets captured, transported and interrogated him at Lubyanka Prison. On arrival Reilly was taken to the office of Roman Pilar, a Soviet official who had arrested and ordered the execution of Boris Savinkov, a close friend of Reilly, the previous year. Pilar reminded Reilly that he had been sentenced to death by a 1918 Soviet tribunal for his participation in a counter-revolutionary plot against the Bolshevik government. Asynchronous to his interrogation, the Soviets falsely claimed in propaganda reports that Reilly had been shot trying to cross the Finnish border.

Historians debate whether Reilly was tortured while in OGPU custody. Biographer Andrew Cooke contends that Reilly was not tortured by the OGPU with the exception of psychological "mock execution scenarios" designed to shake the resolve of their prisoners. During OGPU interrogation, Reilly maintained his charade of being a British subject born in Clonmel, Ireland, and would not reveal any intelligence matters (Cook 2004). While facing such daily interrogation, Reilly kept in his cell a diary of tiny handwritten notes on cigarette papers which he hid in the plasterwork of a cell wall. While his Soviet captors were interrogating Reilly, Reilly in turn was analyzing and documenting their techniques. As the diary was a detailed record of OGPU interrogation techniques, Reilly was understandably confident such unique documentation would, if he escaped, be of interest to the British SIS. Later the diary was posthumously discovered when the cell was searched by Soviet guards, and photographic enhancements were made by OGPU technicians (Cook 2004).

Reilly was executed in a forest near Moscow on November 5, 1925; British intelligence documents released in 2000 confirm this. According to eye-witness Boris Gudz, the execution of Sidney Reilly was supervised by an OGPU officer, Grigory Feduleev. Another OGPU officer, George Syroezhkin, is credited for firing the final shot into Reilly's chest.

After the death of Reilly, there were various rumors about his survival. Some, for example, speculated that Reilly had defected and became an advisor to Soviet intelligence.

[edit] Popularity

[edit] James Bond

Sam Neill portraying Sidney Reilly in the TV mini-series, Reilly: The Ace of Spies (1983).

In Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett, Sidney Reilly is listed as an inspiration for James Bond.^[13] Reilly's friend, former diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, was a close acquaintance of Sir Ian Fleming for many years and recounted to Fleming many of Reilly's espionage adventures.^[14] Lockhart had worked with Reilly in Russia, in 1918, where they became embroiled in an SIS-backed plot to overthrow Lenin's Bolshevik government. Within five years of his disappearance in Soviet Russia in 1925, the press had turned Reilly into a household name, lauding him as a "master spy" and recounting his many espionage adventures. Fleming had therefore long been aware of Reilly's mythical reputation and had listened to the recollections of Lockhart who had not only known Reilly personally but was actually with Reilly during the turmoil and aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Like Fleming's fictional creation, Reilly was multi-lingual with a fascination with the Far East, fond of fine living and a compulsive gambler. He also exercised a Bond-like mastery of women, his many love affairs standing comparison with the amorous adventures of 007 (Cook 2004).

[edit] The Gadfly

According to biographer Robin Bruce Lockhart, Reilly encountered in London noted American authoress Ethel Lilian Voynich in 1895. Voynich was a well-known figure in the late Victorian literary scene and in Russian émigré circles. Lockhart claims that Reilly and Voynich had a sexual liaison and voyaged to Italy together. During this dalliance, Reilly allegedly "bared his soul" to Ethel, and revealed to her the peculiar story of his youth in Russia. After their affair had concluded, Voynich published in 1897 her critically-acclaimed novel, The Gadfly, the central character of which, Arthur Burton, was allegedly based on Reilly's early life.^[15] Biographer Andrew Cook, however, disputes Lockhart's romanticized version of such events and asserts that Reilly was not the inspiration for The Gadfly. Additionally, Cook ponders that Reilly was perhaps informing on Voynich's radical, pro-émigré activities to William Melville of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch.^[16]

[edit] Ace of Spies

In 1983, a television mini-series, Reilly, Ace of Spies, was made dramatizing the historical adventures of Reilly. The program won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award. Reilly was portrayed by actor Sam Neill. Leo McKern portrayed Sir Basil Zaharoff. The series was based on Robin Bruce Lockhart's book, Ace of Spies, which was adapted by Troy Kennedy Martin.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

• Andrew Cook, Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly; 2004, Tempus Publishing, ISBN 0-7524-2959-0.
• Andrew Cook, On His Majesty's Secret Service, Sydney Reilly Codename ST1; 2002, Tempus Publishing, ISBN 0-7524-2555-2.
• Richard Deacon, Spyclopaedia; 1987, Macdonald & Company Publishers Ltd, ISBN 0-356-14600-6.
• Michael Kettle, Sidney Reilly: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy; 1986, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-90321-9.
• Robert Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (reprint); 2003, Folio Society, ASIN B000E4QXIK.
• Andrew Lycett, The Man Behind James Bond; 1996, Turner Publishing, ISBN 1-57036-343-9.
• Robin Bruce Lockhart, Reilly: Ace of Spies; 1986, Hippocrene Books, ISBN 0-88029-072-2.
• Richard B. Spence, Trust No One: The Secret World Of Sidney Reilly; 2002, Feral House, ISBN 0-922915-79-2.
• Yergin, Daniel (1991). The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. Pocket Books. 

[edit] Source Notes

[edit] External links

• SidneyReilly.com: Andrew Cook's website regarding his book about Reilly.
• IMDB article about the British mini-series, Reilly: The Ace of Spies.
• List group for Reilly.