Adventures of a British Master Spy

by Sidney Reilly

  Capt. Sidney Reilly, MC

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  INTRODUCTION

  FOREWORD

  PART 1: SIDNEY REILLY’S NARRATIVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  PART 2: MRS REILLY’S NARRATIVE

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART 3: MRS REILLY’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  APPENDIX ONE: REPORT TO THE WAR OFFICE FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

  APPENDIX TWO: THE MURDER OF SIDNEY REILLY

  COPYRIGHT

  INTRODUCTION

  THE MEMOIRS OF Sidney Reilly, the so-called Ace of Spies, make for intriguing reading. The first half is Reilly’s own account of his operations in Bolshevik Russia on behalf of MI1c, the organisation now known as the secret intelligence service (SIS), or more colloquially, MI6. The second half is an account of the fallout from his final fatal mission to Russia by Pepita Bobadilla, an actress who married Reilly in 1923. The marriage was bigamous, although she was unaware of this until some years after Reilly’s death.

  Reilly’s reputation as a British spy was badly tarnished by historians dismissive of some of the stories written about him. But his account here of British espionage operations in Petrograd and Moscow during 1918 match up to that given in an official dispatch to the Foreign Office by George Hill, who operated alongside him (see Appendix One). This led to suggestions when the book was first published that Hill, rather than Reilly, was the author, but it includes details that Hill clearly did not know and could not have known and which we now know to be true. According to Pepita, the story is told from Reilly’s own accounts of his operations. Certainly, Hill, the author of another Dialogue Espionage Classic, Go Spy the Land, was involved in the compilation of the book, but that is unsurprising given Reilly himself was dead, Hill was better informed about Reilly’s exploits than anyone else, and the publishers had employed a journalist to ‘ghost’ Pepita’s account.

  Pepita’s description of Reilly as ‘the ideal husband’ might stretch credulity but she gives a very credible account of her own experiences following Reilly’s disappearance. These are all the more convincing given the involvement of the mysterious ‘Commander E.’, Ernest Boyce, the MI1c Head of Station in Helsingfors (Helsinki), and his supposed contact with the Trust, ‘Bunakoff’ (actually Nikolai Bunakov, Boyce’s chief agent runner and a long-standing British secret service officer). Their attempts to persuade Pepita to hand back documents that showed their involvement in Reilly’s final mission are entirely credible given the insistence of SIS chiefs that the disastrous mission was nothing to do with them.

  It is easy to understand the cynics’ views of this book. Getting to the truth is difficult with Reilly. His activities – in government service, in business, and in love – have been exaggerated over the years, but there is no doubt that he led an extremely colourful life and believed very strongly, arguably too strongly for an intelligence officer, in the anti-Bolshevik cause. A former SIS officer who looked after the service’s archives once told me:

  He’s been written off by historians by and large. But he has been greatly underrated. He was very, very good – a very able agent and a far more serious operator than the impression given by the myth. Historians do have this tendency to write off something that has been made to appear glamorous. He was unusual but I don’t think he was glamorous. He was a bit of a crook, you could almost say, certainly sharp practice. But as an agent he was superb.

  Michael Smith

  Editor of Dialogue Espionage Classics

  July 2014

  FOREWORD

  MRS REILLY

  IT IS ONLY after long and careful consideration that I have decided to publish the truth about my husband’s journey to Russia, and his subsequent capture by the Bolsheviks. What his fate was no one knows. The Bolsheviks have maintained the closest secrecy on the subject, and though, indeed, his name was included in a list of executions published about a year after his capture, and though strong reasons have also been given for supposing that he was actually killed by the secret agents of the Tcheka at Allekul when he first crossed the frontier, I am in receipt of information of a considerably later date, of which the purport is that he is still alive in Russia.

  Was Sidney killed at Allekul? Was he actually executed a year afterwards in Moscow? Why was it that the Bolsheviks did not broadcast their triumph to the whole world that they had caught the famous Sidney Reilly, their implacable enemy, who almost overthrew them in 1918, whose work against them the whole world knew, who in 1925 prevented them from raising much needed loans in America? Is he still languishing in a Russian prison without trial or conviction? For my part I sincerely believe that he is still alive.

  How the Tcheka shrouds its activities in the most complete obscurity sufficiently appears in the ensuing narrative, where is set forth how it has lured the chief enemies of Bolshevism one by one back to Russia. There were three people whom the Bolsheviks feared beyond all others: Savinkoff, Sidney Reilly and General Koutepoff. Sidney admired both Koutepoff and Savinkoff exceedingly and, more particularly, the latter, and in this book will be read how they were lured back to their doom by a force which worked with ghastly and occult frightfulness. Whether my husband was the victim of a plot, and walked into a trap which had been set for him, the reader must judge for himself. All I can say is that after his disappearance, first Marie Schultz and then her husband, both associates of Sidney in the anti-Bolshevik cause, gave their lives in an effort to discover his fate. And both of them undoubtedly were the victims of the Bolshevik provocation agents, who tempted them over the border into that unhappy land where the Tcheka maintains its rule of terror. Nay, I myself received an invitation to go to Moscow to see my husband, and a facsimile of the letter, signed by the notorious Bolshevik agent provocateur, Opperput, is included in this volume. All these matters, however, are dealt with in detail in the latter part of this work.

  My husband left behind him a great mass of papers connected with his exploits as an agent of the British secret service, which are now in my hands. Among them is his complete personal narrative of his part in the so-called Lockhart conspiracy, which forms the first part of this work. Here and there the actors in the story are designated by initials only. The identity of some of them is unknown to me, while of others it has seemed to me to be wisest to preserve the anonymity. Where, however, I have known the names of the persons thus disguised and have been convinced that the publicity could not be fraught with any disagreeable consequences to themselves, I have permitted their several identities to be revealed. Then again considerations of public policy have compelled me to suppress certain facts in Sidney’s history. But with these reservations what follows is a complete circumstantial and fully documented account of my husband’s career as an agent of the British secret service – a story which reads like the wildest dreams of the writers of mystery fiction come true.

  Who was Sidney Reilly? Already he is becoming a myth and a legend. All sorts of amazing and fantastic adventures in Germany and Russia have been attributed to him. Everything which passed behind the scenes of the whirl of European war politics has been ascribed by somebody or other to the mysterious Sidney Reilly. Everybody who knows anything of secret service operations has heard of him as of a mysterious and potent figure, a man
of infinite courage and resource in an amazing variety of disguises. He had become a legend in his own lifetime. A great deal that has been published about him is untrue; though, to be sure, his adventures surpass any fiction. The section devoted to him in Winfried Ludecke’s standard work Behind the Scenes of Espionage abounds in inaccuracies. The work of Saugann, widely read in France but forbidden in England, which affects to be an exposure of British secret service methods, is false from start to finish. In typical French style the author represents Sidney as an undergraduate of the University of Oxford, who joined the secret service as the consequence of an unhappy love affair. This, in common with the rest of the account, is pure nonsense.

  What authentic information with regard to Sidney is at present in the hands of the public? That he was the hero of an amazing series of adventures in Germany during the war; that he was hunted there high and low without being discovered; that he was the English ‘ace’ of espionage; that he visited Litvinoff in prison and went to Russia on a passport provided by the famous Russian revolutionist; that he was appointed to a responsible official post by the Bolsheviks; that he organised the so-called Lockhart conspiracy; that following the fiasco he escaped from Russia by the skin of his teeth and got to the German naval base at Reval [Tallinn]; that nothing daunted he there resumed his secret service operations, and finally returned to England in possession of the most invaluable information; that he was forthwith sent on another mission to Russia, where sentence of death had been passed upon him; that he returned to Russia again and again; that finally he went once too often and was captured at Allekul; and that his fate remains unknown to this day – this sums up the authentic public knowledge of his activities. The world knows nothing of Sidney’s private life, of Sidney the ideal husband. It knows nothing of the romance, the tragedy, the intrigue, the mystery which forms the background to his amazing adventures. It is my task in the work I have undertaken to give to the public the full story of all these things, partly in his own words and from his own papers, and partly from my experiences as the wife of one of the most amazing men of his generation.

  Sidney George Reilly was born in 1874. His father was an Irish merchant sea captain and his mother a Russian. After being educated in Petrograd on purely Russian lines he obtained a post with the Compagnie Est-Asiatique with whom he acquitted himself so well that in 1900 he was appointed the chief agent of the company at Port Arthur. Here he remained for four years, familiarising himself with political conditions in the Far East and obtaining a degree of personal influence and connection which in a few years’ time was to be of the greatest use to himself and to the Russian government.

  In 1904 he returned to Petrograd where he had been appointed to an important post with the house of Mendrochovitch and Count Tchubersky at 5 Place de Cathedral de Kazan. This house was the most important firm of Russian naval contractors, and represented in the Russian capital the great Hamburg firm of Bluhm and Voss. At the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, Messrs Bluhm and Voss acted as agents for the Russian government in the repatriation of Russian prisoners in Japan, and in this connection the experience and personal influence of Sidney Reilly made his services invaluable and enhanced his reputation in Russian official circles. More than this, he was able to use the influence he had gained with the Russian government to place with Bluhm and Voss large orders in connection with the restoration of her navy on which Russia was then engaged, and it may be assumed that his commission was large.

  But except for two or three very intimate friends, he never entertained at his own home. Hardly anyone could boast of being his friend. Always a little sombre, serious, elegant, Sidney Reilly was greatly admired at Petrograd, but, naturally enough, the mystery in which he shrouded his personal affairs made him the subject of innumerable whispered stories and rumours.

  Who was he? Nobody knew for certain. On his passport he was described as an English subject, but he neither knew nor cared for the English colony there. Russians regarded him as an Englishman who had become, to all intents and purposes, Russian. He was known in a dozen European capitals and was everywhere at home. He wrote and spoke English, Russian, French and German irreproachably, but each one, it was remarked, with an accent equally foreign.

  In 1909, the year of the exploits of the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, some of the leading spirits of Petrograd hit upon the idea of forming an aeronautical club. A committee was formed and the club, under the title of the ‘Ailles’, came into being. But something more was needed to give it an impetus. Following a general council meeting of all its members, a letter was addressed to Sidney Reilly, asking him to join them. Sidney Reilly consented, joined them as a respected and much admired friend, and very soon had become the leading spirit of the club. For the next two years all his activities were engrossed in the ‘Ailles’. He was recognised as a loyal friend, a good companion, and as a man who dominated his company.

  In the year of the foundation of the ‘Ailles’ he was appointed to the council of his old firm, the Compagnie de Navigation Est-Asiatique. By this time he was recognised as one of the leading figures in the Russian commercial world, and circumstances were soon to arise which were to provide a field for his talents in commercial diplomacy.

  Such was his position and reputation when in 1914 war broke out between Russia and Germany, and at once created a demand for munitions to which he more perhaps than any other man in Russia was in a position to attend. He immediately proceeded to Japan to place contracts for military equipment in the name of the Banque Russo-Asiatique. From Japan he went to America and placed large orders with the chief engineering firms there. During this period he returned twice to Petrograd but he was in America when the news arrived that a revolution had broken out in Russia, that her continuance of hostilities was unlikely and that in any case her need for munitions had come to a sudden stop.

  Reilly was at a loose end. There was nothing left for him to do in America and little purpose in his returning to Russia. The orders which he had placed were taken over by the British government and he himself came to England to put his services at the disposal of his father’s country. His particular value to the British Intelligence Department became immediately obvious. A man of the greatest courage and resource, he had moreover the advantage of a perfect mastery of the German language, and in a very short space of time he had become one of those who undertook the difficult and hazardous task of entering Germany (usually by aeroplane via the front line) in quest of military information. His services in this direction were of the utmost value and his exploits in Germany have become legendary, so much so indeed that it is practically impossible to sift the true from the false in what has been told of his adventures there.

  He had made a number of trips to Germany whence he had brought back information of greatest value to the Allies when the complete breakdown of Russia and the working there of influences inimical to the Allies led to his being sent to Petrograd to work against the German agents in Russia.

  Mrs Reilly: this photograph was carried by Capt. Reilly and is posted at all Russian frontiers for identification purposes

  PART ONE

  SIDNEY REILLY’S NARRATIVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘PASS, COMRADE RELINSKY,’ said the Lett soldier on guard at the corner of the street.

  I passed. The soldier did not trouble to examine my papers. He knew me. I was Comrade Relinsky of the Tcheka-Criminel – a communist and a comrade. With the canaille in the street it was different. The papers of many of them would be found not to be in order. Fully half of them would be hauled off to the Butyrsky.

  I turned into the Tverskoy Boulevard, ruinous, deserted, desolate, strewn with dirt and litter. It was a beautiful day in Moscow – the time midsummer 1918.

  A lean, pitiful scarecrow of an object, starved, emaciated, hungry, was standing at the corner of the boulevard. He gave me one frightened glance when he heard the Lett address me as a comrade. Then he shuffled hastily away, pitifully trying to disgui
se his poor attempt at speed.

  It was gloriously warm. The boulevard was bathed in delightful sunlight. It seemed wrong somehow that the sun should shine and the world go on, when here in Moscow so much shame was being wrought. Was heaven then indifferent? Could the sun look unblinkingly on the lurid sins of man?

  Halfway down the boulevard I passed another human wreck, an old, old man, with long silver hair and a straggling grey beard. He was crying. His shoulders shook with convulsive sobbing. The shameless tears trickled down his thin, furrowed old cheeks.

  ‘What is the matter, diedushka?’ I asked him.

  ‘I am hungry,’ sobbed the old man. ‘For two days I have stood in the queues and got no food. Lord, have mercy on us, what is to become of us all?’

  At the next corner the usual food queue was waiting. It had been there when I had passed in the morning, three hours before, long, silent, listless, apathetic, like a snake torpid with starvation. The people would come early and line up there, very early, because there was never enough bread to go round. Starvation menaced the city. There were far too many mouths to fill. But the Bolsheviks were steadily reducing the surplus population. Everywhere everything spoke of dearth and stagnation. The peasants got no profit from bringing food into the city. They were rewarded only by a sense of having done their duty. The reward was inadequate. The peasants tilled and sowed for themselves only. Moscow was a city of the damned.

  Near the Cheremeteff Pereulok a fitful attempt was being made to clear the litter from the dirty streets. A gang of men and women were working there, men with well-bred, scholarly faces, women dignified and refined. By them, keeping guard, was a workman covered in bandoliers and with a holster at either hip. They were members of the bourgeoisie; they had been stock-brokers, lawyers, schoolmistresses, when there had been stocks, laws and schools in Russia. Being bourgeoisie they were made to work for the new taskmasters. They were tired, emaciated, starving, weary. It was great fun to keep them from the food queues. A dead horse lay at one side of the road. It had dropped there from sheer exhaustion and starvation when it had become too weak to go on. It had been left there. The carcase had now been there for several days.