The same day a message came from Russia to the effect that no more had been found out about Sidney.
I was now desperate. My mental balance was upset and I was far from normal. I begged my new friends to secure me a Bolshevik passport with which I could go into Russia and find my husband. Mme Schultz was horrified at the thought. She said it was suicide. I knew it was suicide. But suicide was better than this, suicide was better than uncertainty, suicide was better than kicking my heels, suicide was better than waiting, waiting, waiting.
I believe I broke down. I called aloud for revenge. Something could be done, and if nobody else would do it, I would. And there I was, helpless in an indifferent world. Mme Schultz stood over me, kind, capable, sensible, sympathetic. She asked me to trust her completely. I took her hand dumbly. She asked me to join the organisation. I trusted her. With the approval of the Moscow centre I joined the ‘Trust’ under the party name of ‘Viardo’.
And thus it was that I stepped into my husband’s place in the ranks of anti-Bolshevism.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AND THEN I think I went nearly mad. I was crazed with grief and suspense. My thoughts were gnawing at my heart like black serpents. The enacting of the Nicholas Karlovitch affair had buoyed me up for a time. And then it ended in an anti-climax, leaving me at a loose end and at liberty to brood, as the lack of news from Russia gave me ample occasion for doing.
No news from Russia. Marie Schultz tended me and watched over me during those dreadful days. It was a strange maelstrom which had drawn this capable, sensible, womanly woman, whom nature one would think had intended to be a governess in a respectable bourgeois family, into its ghastly and forbidding vortex. But Marie’s appearance belied her. This calm, business-like, womanly woman, the daughter of a general in the old Russian Army, had herself served as a trooper against the Germans. And now, her kindred done to death by the those same Red monsters who had taken Sidney, the indomitable Marie carried on her warfare against enemies of civilisation who had despoiled her native country and by their existence tainted the rest of the world. Marie comforted me. She had the gift. But I was almost beyond comfort. And then Marie swore that, come what might, she would bring my husband back to me. Henceforward her life would be devoted to that and that alone. All the work which she was doing for the ‘Trust’ should give way to that: all the conspiracies in which she was engaged should go into abeyance, until she had lifted in some way the sorrow which she had been the means of bringing upon me. That would be her message to the ‘Trust’.
‘And they must find out for me,’ she said, ‘I am of the greatest value to the organisation, and they will adhere to the terms I make. I will turn my hand to nothing else, until I know what happened to Captain Reilly. I owe it to you, for it was at my instigation that Captain Reilly went into Russia. They must find out. Their influence penetrates into the governing circles of Soviet Russia. There is nothing which passes in the country of which they cannot know if they wish.’
But when I asked who were the secret leaders of the ‘Trust’, Marie was silent. These secrets were known only to a few, and woe to the member of the organisation who violated the confidence. Marie was fanatically loyal. Her belief in the ‘Trust’ amounted almost to adoration. Her husband’s position was quite inferior. He was ‘undoubtedly a very brave boy’, as Sidney had said, and he proved a magnificent subordinate. But Marie’s was the brain, which directed his coming and going. Poor George Nicholaivitch, he was very simple, very sympathetic, very anxious to help. I used to catch him looking at me with a sort of dumb sympathy in his eyes. But he could do nothing. He looked to Marie for orders. We both relied on Marie. And Marie, serene, bustling, capable, went on her way.
Still there came no news from Russia. Again I pressed Marie to secure me a Bolshevik passport, that I might cross the frontier and go in search of my husband.
‘Useless at present,’ was Marie’s reply. ‘You must learn the language first. Study the language. Yes, you must go into Russia sooner or later. As soon as you know the language sufficiently – nous verrons.’
And still there was no news, and I bethought me to play my second card. My plan was to publish in The Times the announcement of Sidney’s death. Of course I did not then, and do not now, believe him dead, but such an announcement as I contemplated might lead the Bolsheviks to make a statement on their side. Moreover private affairs could no longer be held over, and some reason must be given why Sidney should not be attending to his business.
Marie agreed that the announcement might prove effective, but she asked me to wait until she had time to communicate with the Moscow centre and obtain their permission, as the publication might endanger their activities and the lives of the members of their organisation.
In Helsingfors as in London I was a caged lion.
I longed to do something, and there was nothing to do but wait. When I had first tried to buy help for my poor husband, I had used my knowledge of Z. and his poison gas. I have already mentioned how Z. was supposed to be in touch with a group of German monarchists, who had in their possession a new kind of poison gas more terrible than any ever known before. Z. had come to an agreement with the Germans, by which they would sell him the secret of this gas, for use against the Bolsheviks. The treachery of Savinkoff had put a stop to this project, but I remember that on the night before we left for America Z. had again asked my husband to go into the matter. That was the price, with which I bargained with the ‘Trust’. If they would find out for me the truth about Sidney, I would try to get this gas for them.
Accordingly on a bitterly cold morning, I set sail for Stettin en route for Paris. Marie Schultz saw me off and took leave of me very tenderly. And before I went she promised once more that all her energies would be devoted to finding out what had happened to Sidney, and that she would leave no stone unturned in the quest. She would go at once to Moscow and confer with her superiors there. If they had no news she was to lay my scheme before them, and, if they approved of it, she was to send me a telegram ‘Signez Contrat.’ In the meantime I was to study Russian, and as soon as I was sufficiently proficient in that language, was to join Marie in Moscow. And I was also to bargain with Z. about the poison gas.
Well, in due course I arrived in Paris, a very different person from the one who left it. Now I was an anti-Bolshevist agent. For good or ill, for revenge and just to find out, I had made common cause with the people in whose service Sidney had gone to his mysterious doom, and for reasons which are sufficiently obvious, went to an obscure hotel and took a small room there. In the past few weeks my whole attitude towards life had changed. Previously I had been fond of pleasure and the good things of life; I would not willingly have hurt a fly; I had a great tenderness for all created things, and for the world which was so beautiful; I had successfully shut my eyes to the very existence of that insidious Eastern plague beneath the surface of it all. Now all that was changed. As I write now, I shudder to think of what I felt myself capable then, of what I might so easily have done in those terrible days. Only somebody, who has been through such a time can understand how a person might be guilty of a political assassination and call the crime a virtue and its retribution martyrdom. My family, to whom I now communicated the whole story, could not understand me at all, and urged me to break the connection and return to England. But I was ferociously determined. My first contact with this kind of life, the misery I saw everywhere, my own heart almost broken, the opposition of all my friends to the kind of life I now intended to live all worked upon me, until I was ripe for anything. And gradually the thoughts of revenge wormed their way through and worked uppermost in my mind.
At last the message came.
‘Signez Contrat.’ I went to the Times office in Paris and inserted my announcement.
‘Sidney George Reilly killed 28 September by GPU troops at the village of Allekul, Russia.’
The announcement brought the following letter from Dr Williams.
Dear Mrs Reilly,
With kind regards, etc.,
Harold Williams
And the next day of course all the organs of the popular press in England came out with their accounts of Captain Reilly’s adventurous career in the service of his country. It was understood that the British Foreign Office was making an investigation.
However my little plan was not entirely successful. The Bolshevik papers contented themselves with acknowledging the truth of the story of Sidney’s death. It was not until many months later that, following the death of Voikoff, they began to put about their horrible lies, saying that he had betrayed to them Mr Churchill as the instigator of his mission.
I now had a little breathing space as far as my private affairs were concerned. And meanwhile Marie was busy getting at the truth of the whereabouts of Sidney. She wrote in a more optimistic vein. She had set all her powerful machinery in motion. The ‘Trust’ would find out something. Meantime I must make progress with my Russian, and she would secure me the passport into Russia I so earnestly desired.
The first visitor to bring his condolences to my hotel was Z. The second was old Burtzev. Kindly, gentle old Burtzev, you would never recognise in him one of the foremost anarchists of his time. But so he was, and chief of the revolutionary secret service at the time of the Empire.
The visit of Z. was particularly welcome, as it enabled me to put in train the plan which had brought me to Paris. Z. was very inquisitive. He very soon had asked me who were the people, on behalf of whom my husband had gone to Russia; and when I answered that they seemed to me to be very honest and trustworthy people and that I had joined them his interest knew no bounds.
After that Z. called on me frequently, and at last, having carefully prepared the ground, I broached the question of the poisonous gas. Z. affected diffidence, but his eagerness to get into touch with my principals was obvious. I then made my conditions.
If I brought him into contact with these people and they came to an arrangement with him, he must give me his word of honour that he would let me have a sample of the gas to give to the British government without informing his German friends. I told him that I could not have a hand in such an arrangement, involving a weapon of war which might well be employed against my country without informing my government of it. Again Z. was diffident, but so eager was he to meet my principals that it is my belief that he would have accepted any terms. He only asked that I should never betray him.
Have I betrayed him by writing this confession? No. There was never anything to betray. Negotiations went on with Z. for nearly a year and nothing was done. Z. made excuse after excuse for delay. I believe to this day that his only reason for assenting to my terms was that he wished to be initiated into the secrets of the organisation for which I worked.
Well, he was initiated. He did meet one of the principals. Marie Schultz came from Petrograd to Paris and started negotiations. She came twice. She came a third time, bringing an expert with her. But Z. still made excuses and still held back.
I need not say how I questioned Marie every time she came. What had happened to Sidney? What had the ‘Trust’ discovered? Surely they must know something now? But the answer was always, No, nothing. Poor Marie, I could see how her heart was bleeding for me. But calm, optimistic, busy, self-reliant, she went on her way. She was keeping faith. She was concentrating all her energies to finding out what had happened to Sidney.
Meanwhile Z. was whispering into my ear terrible things. Day after day he came to see me. Day after day his sinister suggestion sank into my mind. Day after day I fell more and more under his influence. And the things he said were terrible – and I believed him. I listened to him, horrified and fascinated. I was prepared to obey him. Oh, I know it sounds terrible in cold blood, this thing I nearly did. But then – it was different.
I was half-mad. I had been oppressed by a grief almost too great to bear. My mind swam in blood. The courage which sustained me was the courage of despair. And Z. was so cunning, so insidious. ‘Revenge,’ he whispered, always ‘Revenge’. At that first terrible Christmas, following my bereavement, when I had returned to Paris alone, at my wits’ end and not knowing what to do, he sent me his card with the following message.
‘I can’t wish you happy Xmas nor happy New Year but revenge, revenge, for my country, for the numberless victims, and for dear Sidney.’
That was always his story. Revenge? Yes, that was my wish, but how to set about it? Z. had a practical idea, the idea, for which he had so assiduously prepared me. I could force the government to take action. I could bring my grief before the tribunal of the human race. And in helping Sidney, I could strike a shrewd blow at our enemies. How was it to be done? According to Z. it was the simplest thing in the world. All I had to achieve was a political assassination. There was absolutely no danger in it to myself. I would never be convicted in France if my story were told. He and his friends would arrange for my defence as they had done for that of Conradi in Switzerland. Rakovsky, the Soviet ambassador in Paris, was the victim, whom Z. chose for me.
And I, I was only too ready. Some such deed of violence rhymed with my thoughts at the moment. Anything, anything. This waiting was driving me mad. Something must be done. And thus I, a perfectly normal person who had led a perfectly normal life, and never taken a feverish interest in politics, almost joined the ranks of those fanatical martyrs, who use murder as a political weapon.
The thing, which saved Rakovsky and myself too was an accident of a nature which seems ridiculous enough in retrospect. When my mind was a blood-red blur and all my thoughts, sleeping and waking, were concentrated on revenge, when all was ready for my attempt, Z. sent me a copy of Shaw’s St Joan, which was, I suppose, to serve me as an example of martyrdom.
As I opened the volume there ran out from between the pages a loathsome insect. I dropped the book and sprang back with a shriek, and the insect fell to the floor and scurried away into a corner. It seemed to me like a warning, and at that moment I decided to put the matter to the priest, who was my confessor.
When I had come to Paris, the more completely to identify myself with the cause, for which Sidney had lost his liberty, and to which now I had devoted myself I had joined the Russian Orthodox Church. Marie had given me an introduction to a priest in Paris. This circumstance, by providing me with a friend and confidant in my loneliness, was to save me from the greatest misery and remorse.
The priest was horrified beyond words by the statement which I made to him. He said that in certain cases he quite saw the necessity of such actions, but such an act as that I thought of committing would not only be a sin but would help nobody. It would stain my conscience, it would endanger the life of my husband, and it would do unutterable harm to all the émigrés, who had found a home in France. And this ends the story of my career as a political assassin.
I returned to London and by the help of Captain Hill and Sir Archibald Sinclair – who had been Mr Churchill’s secretary and closely connected with my husband’s department – I interviewed Mr Gregory at the Foreign Office. The British government could take no action. The utmost they could do was to find out details of Sidney’s death through their secret agents in Russia. There was no help. I wrote to Mr Churchill, and received from his secretary the following letter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STILL NO NEWS of Sidney. The days shortened to midwinter and lengthened out again
in spring. Once more the winter stripped the trees, and a second time the spring clothed them in green. And all the time Marie worked unceasingly on the mission she had set herself – to find out what had happened to Sidney. But still there was no news. Marie came to Paris now and again, bustling and business-like as ever. Her husband too, George Nicholaivitch, I saw from time to time, when the missions on which Marie employed him brought him to the French capital and the Russian colony there. Marie’s was the brain at the back of the scheme. The whole power, influence, intelligence of the ‘Trust’ was being employed to find out the truth of what had happened to Sidney.
At the beginning of 1926 I received the following letter from the centre in Moscow.
Dear Madam,
Mme Schultz has acquainted us with the contents of your letter and we are very touched by your frankness and by the fact that you are ready to help us in the work to which we have pledged ourselves.
The misfortune which has befallen you appears to us so great that it is impossible for us to find any words of consolation to express our feelings of sorrow. We can only say that hatred of our common enemies binds us to you and compels us to unite our efforts.
Cruel fate has decided that your husband, who was our sincere friend, should perish like many others of our friends, and though we consider ourselves all doomed in advance we continue to fight in the firm hope that Good will triumph over Evil. Do not think then, dear Madam, that you are alone. Be assured that you have friends, friends a little distant perhaps but sincere friends, friends prepared to sacrifice everything for you and to do everything in their power to help you.
Adventures of a British Master Spy Page 18