Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly

REILLY MYTHS

Over the years a number of myths about Reilly have gained circulation and passed into folklore. Some were fabricated by Reilly himself and blindly perpetuated by friends, colleagues, journalists and writers. Others have subsequently arisen since his death through wishful thinking and flawed research.

It is tempting to think that a longer book could be written about the person Reilly was not and the things he did not do, as opposed to who he really was and what he actually did. The following six appendices typically illustrate how such myths have arisen over the last century.

^{APPENDIX ONE} THE GADFLY

Published in 1897, The Gadfly was a great success in Britain and the United States, where it was actually first published, due to Heinemann’s fear that it might attract adverse public reaction due to the inflammatory emotions they believed it contained. The Daily Graphic reviewer said that ‘One does not often come across a story of as notable power and originality as The Gadfly’, while the Daily Chronicle hailed it as ‘a novel of distinct power and originality’.² It was in Russia, however, that The Gadfly had its biggest success. Its anti-clerical and revolutionary theme appealed enormously to those who were opposed to the Tsarist regime and who later supported the Bolshevik revolution. It was subsequently translated into thirty languages worldwide. A dramatic version was staged in Moscow for many years from 1920, taking on a Mousetrap-like run. The Russians produced two full-length film versions of the book, the first in 1928 and the second, in colour in 1955, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. There have also been at least three operatic versions produced. By the time of Ethel Voynich’s death in 1960, at the age of ninety-six, the book had sold well over 5 million copies in Russia alone and over a million copies in China and Eastern Europe.

The Gadfly is set in Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century and tells the story of Arthur Burton who, unbeknown to himself, is the illegitimate son of Montanelli, an Italian priest, and Gladys Burton, an English woman. It bears a striking resemblance to the ‘Georgi’ story Sidney Reilly told George Hill and others in the 1920s. Before the death of his mother, Arthur like Georgi is under the spiritual care of his real father, who is in charge of a seminary in Pisa. The young man is gentle and devout and even has thoughts of entering the priesthood until he becomes involved in a conspiratorial group called the Young Italy Society, devoted to freeing Italy from Austrian rule. In Reilly’s story, Georgi is at university under the care of Dr Rosenblum, where he, likewise, becomes involved in the ‘League of Enlightenment’, a radical political group.

After Montanelli is elevated to a bishopric, Arthur confesses his association with the Young Italy Society to his father’s successor Father Cardi, who immediately betrays him to the authorities. He is imprisoned, and when released is shattered to learn for the first time that Montanelli is his real father. Reeling from the shock, he fakes suicide by throwing his hat into the water at the docks and stows away on a ship bound for Buenos Aires. Georgi, also reeling from the shock of being revealed as a bastard, fakes his suicide in Odessa Harbour and stows away on a ship bound for South America. Once in South America, Arthur wanders about aimlessly, his heart filled with hatred for everything and everybody. He allows himself to be maimed and mutilated and to suffer all kinds of indignity; stuttering horribly, he ends up as a hunchback in a travelling circus, a pathetic figure of tortured ridicule. He spends thirteen years in South America before returning not just to free Italy, which was his boyhood desire, but to rid her of priests in general whilst undertaking a vendetta against Montanelli in particular. Now involved in violent action he changes his name to Felice Rivarez. He is eventually arrested and finally confronts Montanelli, now a cardinal. Arthur tells Montanelli who he really is and presses him to choose between him and God. Montanelli chooses the latter, as he must, and Arthur is condemned to be shot.³ The whole affair, however, unhinges the cardinal’s mind and while carrying the host in solemn procession, he raises it then smashes it to the ground in a symbolic identification of himself with God the Father, sacrificing his only begotten son for the salvation of mankind.

Since the publication of Lockhart’s Ace of Spies in 1967, other authors and journalists have taken his assertions about The Gadfly as sacrosanct and have repeated them as received fact.⁴ First off the mark was Tibor Szamuely’s Spectator article,⁵ which appeared some months after the publication of Ace of Spies. ‘Is it possible to imagine’, asked Szamuely, ‘anything more weird than the fact of Soviet Russia’s most revered literary hero [Arthur Burton] being based upon the real-life character of their greatest enemy?’

Szamuely was not alone in being unable to resist this line in Cold War irony. The BBC World Service dedicated one of its Russian language programmes to The Gadfly.⁶ Not only did it feature the ‘sensation’ that the prototype of Ethel Voynich’s The Gadfly was none other than the famous spy Sidney Reilly, lynchpin of so many anti-Soviet plots, but went one step further. Reminding listeners that The Gadfly was the inspiration for the deeds of Pavka Korchagin, the hero of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s classic Civil War epic How the Steel Tempered, it took great delight in raising the spectre of the young fighter for the Soviet Republic in reality following the bitter enemy of Soviet power.

Desmond McHale’s 1985 biography of Ethel’s father, George Boole,⁷ also unquestioningly adopted the Lockhart line, although he did concede that Voynich never admitted any Reilly connection with the book or its central character.⁸ Tibor Szamuely, however, casts a shadow of doubt on the matter by implying that she had deliberately remained tight lipped on the issue of who Arthur Burton’s prototype was. He relates an episode in 1955 when a delegation of Soviet journalists was in New York for the first time since the onset of the Cold War. One morning a Russian diplomat burst into the hotel room of journalist Boris Polevoi. Almost incoherent with excitement he related that he had, that very morning, seen Ethel Voynich, assumed by the Russians to be long dead. The journalists commandeered a car and raced off to her home at 450 West 24th Street. Arriving unannounced on her doorstep, they proceeded to interview her about The Gadfly and the inspiration for Arthur Burton. Szamuely quotes her response to the Burton question as being, ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t remember… it was all so long ago’.

Szamuely’s source for this answer is unclear, as the quote certainly does not appear in Russian press stories which followed the 1955 publicity. In fact, both Boris Polevoi and Eugenia Taratuta corresponded at length with Ethel after the 1955 meeting in New York. Taratuta’s correspondence and interviews with her were a major contribution to her biography of Ethel Voynich,⁹ the only one to be published to date. As a result of the 1968 BBC broadcast, both Polevoi and Taratuta published their correspondence with Ethel Voynich in a rebuttal article published in Izvestia on the subject of Arthur Burton and the characters in The Gadfly.¹⁰ For example, in a letter to Taratuta, dated 25 April 1956, Voynich elaborates on the conception of the book:

In the same letter she refers again to characterisations:

The following year, Voynich wrote on 14 January 1957 a letter to Boris Polevoi, who had specifically asked her about the Arthur Burton character: ‘You ask me whether the real prototype of Arthur ever existed… indeed, the characters in the novel do not necessarily have, as prototypes, people who actually existed’. She went on to say that ‘The origin of Arthur’s image comes from my old interest in Mazzini and a portrait of an unknown young man in black in the Louvre’.

Polevoi and Taratuta were not the only ones to dispute and challenge Lockhart’s theory. The actor Hugh Millar, a long-time friend, confidante and neighbour of Ethel Voynich’s in New York, wrote privately to Robin Bruce Lockhart shortly after the publication of Ace of Spies in November 1967, taking him to task over his claims. Lockhart’s reply, dated 8 December 1967,¹² is most revealing in more ways than one and has, to date, never been published.

When asked by Millar about his source for the statement that Ethel was Reilly’s mistress and that Reilly was the inspiration for Arthur, Lockhart replied:

Over and above the fact that Reilly is hardly the most reliable or truthful of sources when it comes to his own past (or virtually any other matter come to that), it seems certain that the ‘other author’ referred to by Lockhart was none other than Reilly’s SIS colleague George Hill. It is clear from the papers Lockhart deposited with the Hoover Institution, that Hill was actively researching his Reilly book in 1935.¹³ In terms of Hill allegedly checking Reilly’s claim directly with Ethel Voynich, it has to be said that some considerable doubt exists as to whether this was ever the case. There is no record of Hill ever having written to Ethel Voynich, or indeed of her ever having written to him. Bearing in mind that she lived in New York City between 1920 and her death in 1960, Hill could, of course, have taken the opportunity to visit New York to interview her. However, US immigration records show no sign of Hill entering the United States at any time during the inter-war period.¹⁴

Curiously, as a further justification for his view, Lockhart also stated in his letter to Hugh Millar: ‘Incidentally, a point that I did not mention in my book was Reilly’s stutter from which he suffered in his youth – a handicap also of the ‘Gadfly’.

Of the countless people who knew or had recollections of Reilly over a considerable period of time, not one has ever mentioned a stutter. The only reference on record to any kind of peculiarity in Reilly’s speech refers to his accent and pronunciation rather than to such an impediment.¹⁵ It could be, of course, that Reilly told Hill that he had a stutter as a child in order to further authenticate his claim to be the inspiration for Arthur Burton.

Over and above the compelling evidence of Ethel Voynich’s own statements and the gaping holes in Lockhart’s theory, the fact remains that the chronology simply does not add up. Ethel Voynich conceived the idea of The Gadfly in 1885/86 and started writing it in 1889. How could Rosenblum, who was eleven or twelve years old at this time have possibly had any influence in the creation of the story? By the time Rosenblum arrived in England at the end of 1895 the book was virtually finished. It must therefore be concluded that Arthur Burton was not based on Sidney Reilly, but Sidney Reilly was based upon Arthur Burton. Whether he would so readily have adopted Arthur’s mantle had he known he would ultimately share Arthur’s fate is a moot point.

Although The Gadfly provided Reilly with the template for his fabricated life story, it does not explain where he got the fine detail about the years he allegedly spent in South America. We do not need to go too far along the library shelf for the answer, which is to be found in a later, lesser-known Ethel Voynich book, An Interrupted Friendship, published in 1910. The book attempts to recapture the success of The Gadfly by returning to the story of Arthur Burton, alias Felice Revarez, and focuses on the period he was in South America.

In Ecuador a group of explorers, led by Col. Duprez, are deserted by their interpreter and seek a replacement, which turns out to be no easy task as the respectable interpreters are too scared to join them. They are inundated with applications from those who have no skill with languages. When Rivarez presents himself he is mistaken for a tramp.¹⁶ It soon becomes apparent, however, that under the grime and dirt he is a gentleman and that his claim to be able to speak several languages is true. Col. Duprez therefore takes him on and they proceed with the expedition. When crossing a river, Rene, one of the explorers, falls in and gets his equipment wet so that when he is about to be attacked by a jaguar, his gun will not fire. Just as the jaguar cuts his arm with its claws, however, a shot rings out killing the animal – Rivarez has saved Rene’s life. When the expedition is in danger from being attacked by a tribe of savages, Rivarez goes to the natives alone and successfully calms them. When he returns safely, Col. Duprez gives him a permanent contract and says that it is the only way he has at that time to show his gratitude to Rivarez for risking his life to save theirs. He adds that he will let all of France know about him when they return. Three years pass and they return to Europe.

Here then is the genesis of the Fothergill story. In this case it is at least chronologically possible that Rosenblum provided Voynich with some inspiration, although highly improbable. Again, it is more likely that he lifted the tale from her, rather than the other way around.

^{APPENDIX TWO} MISTAKEN IDENTITY

The evidence Kettle presents in support of this theory is, at first sight, compelling and beyond doubt. According to Kettle, Reilly used the name Stanislaus George Reilly to successfully make an application to study electrical engineering at the Royal School of Mines in Exhibition Road, Kensington, on 15 September 1904. On the form he refers to his experience of railway, waterway and road construction work in India. At the top of the form a college official has noted that Reilly produced a certificate confirming that he had studied at Roorkee College in India and that his date of birth was 24 April 1877.²

Kettle relates in his book how he set about trying to establish the claims made on the application form by studying India Office Records in London and initiating enquiries in India. He concludes that Reilly’s claim to have been educated at Roorkee is without foundation as indeed are his claims to have been a civil engineer.³ In his view, the whole story was a skilfully constructed alibi, which Reilly ‘carefully kept up to date all his life’⁴ as a cover for his spying activities. He produces no evidence to show that Sidney Reilly ever used the name Stanislaus Reilly or used Stanislaus’ curriculum vitae, fictitious or otherwise, as a cover or alibi for himself, however. It is also significant that not one of Sidney Reilly’s friends, acquaintances or colleagues ever heard or referred to this ‘India story’.

In July 1905, Stanislaus Reilly’s student records indicate that he completed his electrical engineering course with full marks and was then admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, to do research in civil engineering in October 1905. Kettle speculates that Reilly lived at Jesus Lane with Margaret until 1907 or 1908. On his application he had stated that he had been educated at ‘schools in India’. In establishing what seems the most conclusive piece of evidence, Kettle sought the opinion of John Conway, a Fellow of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences. He examined the handwriting on the college application forms from 1904 and 1905 with a letter written by Sidney Reilly to his wife Pepita on 25 September 1925. Conway concluded that the three samples were all written by the same hand.⁵ Kettle also unearthed an application made by Stanislaus Reilly to join the Institute of Civil Engineers in May 1925, and found from the institute’s archives that Stanislaus Reilly had remained on the institute’s membership list until 1948, when Kettle presumes that SIS had his name removed.

When marshalled together, the pieces of evidence Kettle has assembled seem to establish almost beyond doubt that Stanislaus Reilly was a character whose background had been fabricated by Sidney Reilly in order to cover his past and to gain admission to the Royal School of Mines and to Trinity College, Cambridge. Subjected to closer examination, however, major faults are to be found running through his evidence.

Kettle’s enquiries were apparently set in motion after reading in Ace of Spies that Reilly had claimed to be a graduate of the Royal Institute of Mines in London.⁶ He therefore set about finding corroboration for this in the records of London University, eventually discovering an application form dated 5 September 1904, in the name of Stanislaus George Reilly. One can appreciate that the coincidence was uncanny. A person of a similar age to Sidney Reilly, with a Polish first name and an identical middle and family name, found at an institution Reilly himself had apparently claimed to have attended.

Sidney Reilly’s claim was to have studied chemistry not electrical engineering, however. Furthermore, the application form unearthed by Kettle was not a Royal School of Mines application, it was for the adjacent City and Guilds Central Technical College, which later became part of Imperial College, along with the Royal School of Mines, in 1907.⁷ At Trinity College, it is certainly the case that S.G. Reilly was admitted in October 1905 and lived at 8 Jesus Lane, Cambridge. However, he most certainly was not living at that address ‘with his wife Margaret’ for, as Cambridge City records affirm, the address was a lodging house offering single-room accommodation to individual students. The lodging house keeper during the time that S.G. Reilly lived there was Mrs L. Flatters.⁸ College minute books also indicate that S.G. Reilly took a keen part in extra-curricular activities and joined the Trinity College Boat Club on 14 October 1905.⁹ In terms of the hand-writing on the application forms allegedly matching that of Sidney Reilly’s, one should appreciate that even among handwriting experts, such pronouncements are not viewed as an exact science. Equally, it must also be recorded that John Conway was not a handwriting expert, his field of expertise lay in establishing whether or not documents were authentic.

While Kettle quite properly checked the details of Stanislaus Reilly’s birth, had he run a similar check on records of death he would have found that Stanislaus George Reilly died at the age of seventy-five, at Horton Hospital in Epsom, Surrey, on 13 June 1952.¹⁰

The death certificate is a key piece of evidence. It provides numerous leads to other documents concerning the administration of his estate, by which other family members can be traced. In this way, Stanislaus’s daughter Aline and nephew Noel were both located. They were able to provide details of their family history and in particular an account of Stanislaus’s life and career.¹¹ From this, a check was carried out of contemporary British and Indian records, which authenticated their recollections.¹² Indian residential records confirm that he was living in India until 1903, where he had worked as an overseer and an assistant engineer in Khandwah and Dharmpur. Due to the fact that he was in London and Cambridge between 1904 and 1907 he does not appear in the residential records during those years. On his return to India he married Aline’s mother, Edith Anne, at Agra in 1909. Aline was born two years later in Dehra Dun, shortly after which he became engineer and manager of the Dehri Rohtus Light Railway.¹³ On 11 June 1918 he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers (Infantry), from where he was seconded to the Royal Engineers. A year later he was promoted to lieutenant and was promoted again to lieutenant-colonel before being released in 1920. The Reilly family returned to England before the outbreak of the Second World War, where Stanislaus was engaged as a civil engineer. Edith died in 1945¹⁴ and Stanislaus’s health, too, declined after the war. In fact, his resignation from the Royal Institute of Mines in 1948 was for reasons of ill health and was certainly not the result of SIS machinations. It is therefore clear that Stanislaus George Reilly was in fact a real and distinctly separate person from Sidney George Reilly, and not the fabrication of Sidney Reilly or SIS.

^{APPENDIX THREE} THE FACTORY FIREMAN

The story of how Reilly infiltrated the Krupps plant in Essen and made away with plans of Germany’s most secret weapons bears all the hallmarks of a classic Reilly storyline, with the courageous and resourceful ‘Master Spy’ triumphing against the odds. With a German foe, this story no doubt went down well with colleagues and friends just after the First World War. When first published in 1967, Robin Bruce Lockhart’s Ace of Spies maintained that this episode occurred in 1904. However, twenty years later, when he published Reilly: The First Man, 1909 is given as the date^.2 The story itself, whether told by Lockhart, Nash or Van Der Rhoer³ is at least consistent.

In true Boys’ Own style, the tale opens with Reilly arriving in Essen in the guise of a Baltic German shipyard worker by the name of Karl Hahn.⁴ Having scrupulously prepared his cover by spending time at a Sheffield engineering firm learning the craft of a welder, he immediately secures a position as a welder at the plant and joins the works fire brigade, which enables him to move around at night without raising suspicion. The cunning Reilly then persuades the foreman in charge of the fire brigade that a complete set of plans of the plant are needed to indicate the position of fire extinguishers and hydrants. The plans are duly lodged in the foreman’s office for members of the brigade to consult, and Reilly sets about locating the secret plans.

In the dead of night, using lock-picks, he breaks into the office where they are kept but is disturbed by the foreman. Reilly throttles the man to death before completing the theft. In making his escape, he is intercepted by a night watchman, but knocks the man out and ties him up before walking out of the factory with the plans.

From Essen, Reilly took a train to Dortmund where he had a safe house, changed into his Savile Row suit and tore the plans into four pieces, mailing each one separately. If one was lost, the other three would still reveal the gist of the plan.

The fact that this tale is nothing more than an entertaining yarn can be clearly established by reference to the substantial archives of the Krupps Company in Essen. The index of files alone amounts to over 100 pages and indicates that comprehensive records have survived which cover the development of the plant and the personnel of the works fire brigade. After a disastrous fire in 1865 Alfred Krupp decided to found a fire brigade for his factory, which on foundation consisted of thirty-six men, organised in six companies of six.⁵ It is clear from the records that the Krupps fire brigade was a professional fire brigade, and was not organised on the basis of the British model for works brigades that were made up from volunteers from among the workforce.⁶ Reilly’s story describes such a scenario whereby Hahn responds to a factory notice calling for volunteers to join the works brigade, hardly in keeping with the reality of a professional brigade.⁷

Service in the fire brigade was based on the principle that members lived on the factory site, or nearby, in houses provided by the Krupps Company. By 1900 a lack of space put this policy in jeopardy. The following year, however, measures were taken to ensure that housing for all members of the brigade was available. New accommodation in Altendorferstrasse, Bunsenstrasse and Harkortstrasse provided 214 flats by 1902.⁸ There is no record of a Karl Hahn living in any Krupps property. Likewise, there are records of those who served on the brigade from 1873 up to 1915.⁹ Again, the name Karl Hahn is noticeable by its absence.

Interestingly, it would seem that the fire brigade also acted as a security service for the plant.¹⁰ Security records and correspondence for the period 1878–1915 again make no reference to a Karl Hahn. Could it therefore be that, although not a member of the fire brigade, a Karl Hahn was employed as a welder at the plant? The card index of employees¹¹ by the name of Karl Hahn working at the plant, from the turn of the century to the outbreak of the First World War, indicates the following persons:

Of the four, only one was actually working at the plant at the time Lockhart sets his account. More conclusively, all four workers were still employed at the plant when Reilly died in 1925, and by implication could not have disappeared one dark night in 1904 clutching secret company plans. Ironically, there is one brief reference to Sidney Reilly in the Krupps archive – a press clipping from the Chattanooga Times, dated 1 August 1981, reviewing Edward Van Der Rhoer’s book Master Spy!

^{APPENDIX FOUR} THE BATTLESHIP BLUEPRINTS

The story of how Reilly supposedly made a fortune from Blohm & Voss warship contracts in 1911 through ‘Medrochovich and Chubersky [sic]’, while at the same time obtaining German warship blueprints, is pure fantasy.² According to this story, he used his position as agent for Blohm & Voss to request, on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Marine, design specifications of the latest German warships. Before passing them on to the ministry, Reilly photographed them and sent the copies to the Admiralty in London.

We already know that, despite his subsequent claims, Reilly had little connection with Mendrochowitz and Lubiensky, and was in no way responsible for their status as agents for Blohm & Voss. We also know now that he had no connection with SIS or NID before 1918. The diary of Mansfield Cumming (C) is understandably silent on Reilly before this date, for the two did not know each other or even meet until March 1918. C’s diary is particularly helpful, however, in that it indicates how SIS were actually obtaining German naval designs at the very time Reilly claimed to be obtaining them in St Petersburg.

Hector Bywater, a British journalist and naval expert living in Germany, was recruited as an SIS agent in 1910.³ He spent the best part of the next three and a half years penetrating German dockyards and the Berlin Navy Office.⁴ Working with a small group of other agents he managed to obtain photographs, silhouette drawings and design details of virtually every German warship then in commission. Had Reilly actually been a British agent at this time, and obtained the blueprints as Lockhart said, there would have been little purpose in Bywater and his colleagues risking their lives. The most charitable view one can take of this story is that it was a device to explain away his seemingly intimate pre-war relationship with the Germans. Just after the First World War, when most of his story telling was done, would hardly have been the best of times to admit to such a close association with the old foe.

^{APPENDIX FIVE} RESCUING THE TSAR

The proposition that a successful and audacious rescue actually took place and has remained hushed up for over eighty years is, in this author’s view, straining historical credibility almost to breaking point. Determining whether or not such an attempt was ever contemplated or pursued by the Allies is not, however, the purpose of this book; although Shay McNeal’s claim that Sidney Reilly was at the heart of such a plot most certainly is. According to McNeal, Reilly was sent to Russia in early 1918 to undertake a special secret assignment, which involved rescuing the Tsar and his family.² So secret was this mission to be that all mention of it in official correspondence was apparently forbidden. An extract from a cable dated 28 May 1918 from Gen. MacDonough, the Director of Military Intelligence in London, to Brig.-Gen. Poole in Murmansk, is quoted in support of this view:

However, to assert that this quotation supports the rescue theory is to misunderstand the nature of the cable. To appreciate its context and meaning, one needs to see the cable it has been extracted from in its entirety:

Following the March 1918 landing of a British marine company at Murmansk under Brig.-Gen. Poole, MacDonough was responsible for overseeing the creation of a military intelligence network to complement Poole’s operation. The reference in the second paragraph to ‘official intelligence’ is significant. Officers carrying out ‘official intelligence’ were those doing bona fide military intelligence work (i.e., those concerned with troop movements, logistics, weaponry and equipment, etc.), as opposed to those assigned to the Secret Intelligence Service and working under the umbrella of military intelligence for the purposes of cover only. For this reason, the Secret Intelligence Service operated under the War Office cover name of MI1c (later MI6). Their responsibilities, as today, were essentially to acquire political and economic intelligence (as opposed military matters). The cable therefore makes clear to Poole and Admiral Kemp (Commander of the British White Sea Fleet) that of the cohort of military intelligence officers assigned under Lt-Col. Thornhill, two – Reilly and Mitchelson, were in fact SIS officers acting under the cover of military intelligence. It is this distinction that is significant or ‘special’ and which warrants confidentiality.

McNeal also points to Reilly’s contact with the Russian Orthodox Church during the summer of 1918 as further evidence of his involvement in rescuing the Tsar. It is, she believes, ‘safe to assume that the Church would have made its best efforts to assist the former head of the Church, as in the eyes of the Church the Tsar was God’s representative on earth’, and concludes that Reilly was, ‘taking money to the Church to assist in hiding the family for a time before they were to be moved or restored.’⁵

‘Plots to Rescue the Tsar’ offers no tangible evidence that Reilly’s liaisons with the Church had any connection with the fate of the Tsar. On the contrary, documentary evidence exists which points to the more logical scenario that recognising the mass support the Church still commanded among the general population, Reilly was keen to elicit its support for his self-initiated plans to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. Indeed, on 22 June 1918 Reilly had cabled London to report that as a result of a recent meeting with N.D. Kuznetsov, an Orthodox Church go-between, Patriarch Tikhon was prepared to endorse Allied intervention, at a price.⁶

In terms of Reilly’s reports and cables generally, McNeal later states that there are ‘irregularities’ concerning Reilly’s Secret Intelligence Service personnel file, which is, ‘literally blank during the period from May to October 1918’,⁷ implying that this supports the view that he was involved in a secret mission that could not be formally recorded. The reality is somewhat different. Reilly, in fact, sent a series of cables to London during May and June 1918, but these were filed by the War Office and the Foreign Office⁸ and thus do not appear on his personnel file. Equally, during the period July to September, as in April, he was effectively following his own inclinations, contrary to the orders and instructions he had been given by London not to interfere or to become politically involved,⁹ and was not therefore filing regular reports. George Hill, who was working closely with Reilly, did keep a detailed account which refers to Reilly’s activities and is notable for its lack of any reference to the Tsar or his captivity.¹⁰

Reilly’s alleged association with the multi-millionaire banker Karol Jarosznsky during this period is also seen as a factor linking him to the escape plot. Jarosznsky was, according to McNeal, ‘a close friend and benefactor of the Romanovs while they were in confinement’,¹¹ and Reilly, in the words of Sir Archibald Sinclair, was ‘his right-hand man’.¹² While it is legitimate to quote Sinclair, it should be pointed out again that as with so many other quotes, it is the context which is crucial. In this particular case, the quotation is taken from a letter written by Sinclair to Mr Tilden-Smith, a Board of Trade official, on 11 November 1919. This was not, however, a retrospective acknowledgement of Reilly’s association with Jaroszynsky, but a comment on the position at the time of writing, in the context of the Board of Trade’s interest in Jarosznsky. Indeed, Sinclair had only known Reilly since their March 1919 introduction at the Hotel Majestic in Paris. Although Reilly had been acquainted with Jaroszynsky in pre-war St Petersburg and was closely involved in his post-war banking schemes described in Chapter Eleven of this book, there is no evidence of any kind actively linking Reilly with Jaroszynsky’s activities during the period of his first Russian mission for SIS (April–September 1918).

Despite the fact that the diary of Sir Mansfield-Cumming, the Chief of SIS, makes no reference to any matters remotely connected with the Tsar’s family and their potential rescue, McNeal alludes to a claim made by James Smythe in a 1920 book on the same subject.¹³ According to Smythe, the family were freed by British Intelligence agents through a newly constructed tunnel that led from the cellar of the Ipatiev House, where they were being held, to the nearby British Consulate.¹⁴ However, no concrete evidence of such a tunnel has ever been produced to substantiate this, or indeed any of Smythe’s other claims. The argument for Reilly’s involvement is further reinforced, in McNeal’s view, by an account of the Tsar’s last days in captivity by Parfen Domnin, his personal attendant. In this document,¹⁵ Domnin refers to an engineer by the name of Ilinsky. McNeal speculates that Ilinsky may have had something to do with the construction of the tunnel and that he and Reilly may be the same person, as this could be a typographical error for Relinsky, one of the aliases he used in Russia during this period.

All in all, the case for Reilly’s involvement is as unconvincing as it is lacking in hard evidence.

^{APPENDIX SIX} THE ZINOVIEV LETTER

Documents purporting to originate from the executive committee of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow had been appearing in anti-Communist circles in Paris for some months prior to the discovery of the so called ‘Zinoviev letter’ in October 1924. The letter, which was almost certainly a forgery, was supposedly written by Gregory Zinoviev, the president of Comintern. It called on British Communists to mobilise ‘the group in the Labour Party sympathising with the treaty’ to bring pressure to bear in support of its ratification. It further urged them to encourage ‘agitation-propaganda’ in the armed forces.²

At the 5th Congress of the Communist International in June and July, Zinoviev had clearly spoken out in favour of making Britain a priority for Comintern agitation and propaganda. The letter therefore fitted into an already established picture. The identity of the forger has never been satisfactorily established, although Michael Kettle has claimed proof positive for his theory that it was none other than Sidney Reilly. Kettle asserts that the letter ‘was first deciphered as being in Reilly’s handwriting by the present author [Kettle]’.³ Kettle called on the services of John Conway to authenticate his Zinoviev theory, who declared that he was ‘satisfied that from the quality of the writing – that is pen control and spacing, the letter formations and sizes and other characteristics – that they were written by the same person’.⁴ Bearing in mind then Conway’s flawed verdict on earlier Kettle theories (see Appendix 2), one has to be highly sceptical of his conclusion in this case.

It must also be borne in mind that the only piece of Reilly’s handwriting Conway had from Kettle for the purposes of comparison was in English, taken from Pepita Reilly’s Britian’s Master Spy book.⁵ As Conway himself concedes ‘the fact that the texts are in languages with different alphabets makes for some difficulty in comparison’. In spite of this he concludes that ‘the design and drawing of characters are the same’.⁶ In order to carry out a more reliable comparison, a handwriting analyst would require a sample from Reilly that was actually written in Russian in order that he could compare like with like. This Conway did not have. Since Conway’s analysis over thirty years ago, samples of Reilly’s Russian letter formation have come to light⁷ and add further weight to the view that Reilly was not the writer of the letter published in Kettle’s book.

In view of Conway’s questionable record and his inability to make a like comparison, his verdict can only be regarded as unsafe. Without this, Kettle’s theory is supported by only the flimsiest of circumstantial threads, namely the diary of former MI5 officer Donald Im Thurn.⁸ Im Thurn had a peripheral connection with events surrounding the letter’s eventual publication in the Daily Mail, in that he allegedly sold a copy of it to Lord Younger, the then treasurer of the Conservative Party. On 8 October Im Thurn recorded in his diary that an individual he referred to as X had met him that day and given him a very brief verbal account of what would turn out to be the Zinoviev letter.⁹ Clearly intrigued, Im Thurn asked X to find out more. On 13 October X asked for more time to ‘dot the i’s a bit more’ and the following day alleged that Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was endeavouring to prevent news of the letter getting out.¹⁰ With no more than the fact that Reilly had used a similar phrase in two letters of 25 and 30 March 1925 to former SIS colleague Ernest Boyce,¹¹ Kettle immediately concluded that here was proof that Reilly and X were the same person. Reilly, however, was on the other side of the Channel on 13 October, and therefore could not have simultaneously been in London meeting Im Thurn.¹²

Further doubt is cast on Kettle’s theory by newly declassified government papers on the Zinoviev episode. These point to Col. Stewart Menzies, then deputy chief of SIS, as the person responsible for leaking the letter to the Daily Mail. His allegiance, ‘lay firmly in the Conservative camp’,¹³ and he later admitted sending a copy of the letter to the paper’s editor.¹⁴ In April 1952, Menzies, who had risen from deputy chief to chief of SIS in 1939, wrote to the Foreign Office to say that there would be ‘no harm whatsoever’¹⁵ in destroying some of the papers concerning the Zinoviev episode. The Foreign Office later conceded that ‘perhaps some letters and papers have been destroyed in the past which ought to have been preserved under the Public Records Act’.¹⁶ It is highly unlikely that SIS knew the true origin of the letter or that Reilly had any connection whatsoever with the episode.

Despite the fact that the Daily Mail published the letter only four days before the General Election, under the headline ‘Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters’, it is highly questionable as to whether this in itself lost Labour the election. All the indicators were pointing to a Labour defeat well before the Mail’s revelation. Although Labour seats fell from 191 to 151, the party’s vote actually rose by more than a million. The real losers of the 1924 election were the Liberal Party, whose seats fell from 159 to 40.