Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly

^FIVE THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER

Six years had elapsed since Margaret Reilly left Port Arthur at the behest of her husband. Although her departure was nominally on grounds of impending war, to Reilly she had already served her purpose and he had effectively discarded her. She had seen little of him in the intervening years, and when she did see him or receive letters from him, he was always insistent that he was on his ‘beam ends’, with little or no money to spare her. While Reilly’s finances before the First World War certainly had their ups and downs, we can take it as read that he wished to have as little to do with her as possible. He married her for her money and unashamedly used her to adopt a new identity to conceal his Russo-Jewish origins.

Unsurprisingly, his account of their parting put a somewhat different gloss on matters. According to Reilly, she had turned to drink and become a liability to him during their time in Port Arthur. Robin Bruce Lockhart has also stated that on Reilly’s return from the Far East, he found that she had left him and disappeared.¹ This view of Margaret has been unquestioningly accepted by almost all those who have ever written about Reilly over the years. Of course, we have only his word for this assumption, which is hardly the best of recommendations.

Margaret’s reappearance in St Petersburg in 1909 was almost certainly triggered by the fact that what little money she had left was now running low. Unwelcome in the best of circumstances, Margaret would no doubt have received an even frostier reception from Reilly being in such a penurious state. Knowing Reilly as we do, it might well be asked why he had not already sought to dispose of her permanently. After all, he is reputed to have threatened to kill her on at least one occasion, although there is no evidence for this assertion. Having shown no such mercy to others who had crossed his path in the past, this is a question that begs an answer, albeit a speculative one. Margaret, we know, was not naïve in the ways of the world. Even before she met Reilly she had managed to advance her interests well enough. She was certainly not beyond gilding the truth, and was, without doubt, a quick-witted and resourceful woman. It is likely that if Reilly had actually wanted to kill her he could have done so quite easily. On the basis that he made no such efforts, we can only assume that Margaret had some kind of preventive hold over him. Being a party to the guilt and responsibility for the death of Hugh Thomas, she must also have been aware of other matters that Reilly would no doubt wish to keep secret. If she effectively held an insurance policy against any untoward accidents that might befall her, it might well have been in the form of a written statement or testimony against Reilly that was held in safe keeping as security. Should she meet a sudden or unnatural end, whoever had custody of the document would be under instruction to make it public or, more likely, direct it to the appropriate authorities.

Margaret’s own brief account² of Reilly’s life is completely silent on personal and marital matters generally. In fact, one could be forgiven for gaining the impression that they were anything but a devoted, albeit distant, couple. Some twenty years later, while working in Brussels as a governess in the household of Robert Messenger and his wife, she confided to Mrs Messenger that she had loved Reilly ‘with complete abandon, but that his many betrayals and affairs with other women had turned her love into hatred’.³ Although particularly hurt by his affair with Eve Lavallière, the wife of the director of the Parisian Théâtre de Variétés, she was never disparaging in any way about her husband, at least not in the hearing of Mrs Messenger.⁴ It would not appear, however, that it was this particular betrayal that caused Margaret the greatest distress, but a much greater sin in her eyes – that of bigamy.

This traumatic discovery while in St Petersburg apparently led Margaret to make an attempt on her own life. According to Mrs Messenger, Margaret had taken a pistol that Reilly kept in his desk drawer and shot herself in the eye. By some miracle she survived, but spent six weeks in a coma. As a result of losing her right eyeball she was given a glass eye.⁵ How Margaret managed to shoot herself in the eye without causing serious brain damage, let alone killing herself, is at first hard to fathom. It has been known, however, for those attempting suicide in this way to place the gun against the temple, behind the eye socket, rather than further back to the ear. A shot in the region of the ear would impact into the brain, whereas a shot to the forward region of the temple would enter the cavity behind the eye socket and depending upon the angle, exit through the eye or nose. Even this lucky escape would have meant tissue, skin and bone damage to the temple, eye and nose. British diplomat Darrell Wilson, who met Margaret in May 1931, when she was seeking to renew her passport, gives confirmation of this.⁶ According to Wilson, ‘Mrs Reilly is of a nervous disposition and bears the trace of an attempt to commit suicide by shooting herself through the right temple, when she found her husband had committed bigamy’.⁷

When, after six weeks, she came out of the coma, Reilly was nowhere to be found. The issue of bigamy does, of course, raise the question of with whom it was committed, for it was to be another two years before he met Nadezhda Zalessky and a further four years before they married. This account therefore gives further credence to the possibility that Reilly had indeed married a hitherto unknown bride at some point after the Russo-Japanese war, as discussed at the end of Chapter Three.

No word of Margaret’s attempted suicide appears in Ace of Spies, which contends that Reilly bribed her to leave St Petersburg.⁸ Through Boris Suvorin, part of the Suvorin family, proprietors of the Novoe Vremia newspaper, Reilly then supposedly planted a story in Novoe Vremia that a Red Cross ambulance had swerved off a mountain road in Bulgaria and fallen into a ravine killing several nurses, ‘including a Mrs Reilly who until recently was a resident in St Petersburg’.⁹ One can only assume that Lockhart himself was somewhat unsure about this tale, as in his follow-up book on Reilly¹⁰ he refers to him ‘placing a false news item in the Russian press about a railway accident in which several people had been killed, including Mrs Reilly’.¹¹ A comprehensive search of Novoe Vremia during this period failed to unearth any item about the death of a Mrs Reilly, in either an ambulance or a train accident.

Although the ambulance story is somewhat out of place, in that no situation requiring the presence of Red Cross volunteers existed in Bulgaria in 1909, Novoe Vremia coverage of the first and second Balkan wars, fought between October 1912 and August 1913, yielded a surprise result. On 8 November 1912 Novoe Vremia¹² reported that an English medical team of thirty-eight persons had arrived in Sophia, Bulgaria. According to the Red Cross, the female volunteers included a Mrs M. Reilly.¹³

As a ten-year-old, Leon Messenger was enthralled by the fact that his governess, whom he knew as Daisy, was the wife of the legendary spy Sidney Reilly. His recollections provide a rare window into Margaret’s personality and outlook on the world, which was no doubt shaped by her earlier life. Although Irish by birth, it is clear that Margaret not only regarded herself as English, but as belonging to the upper class. Messenger remembers her as ‘well educated and well read… in every respect a cultured Englishwoman who spoke in upper-class accents and was to everybody who met her… the perfect embodiment of a cultured lady’.¹⁴ His reminis-cences on her outlook are equally fascinating: on their long walks in the woods and parks, ‘she would talk about the glories of England… the greatness of the British Empire and the white man’s burden’.¹⁵

Although Margaret and Sidney were clearly leading separate lives, and always would, there was never any possibility in her mind that she would grant him a divorce. Whether this was dictated by her Catholic faith or by a hardheaded recognition that while she was legally Mrs Reilly she would always have a financial call on him, is open to question. By 1910 she was thirty-six years old, down on her luck and physically disfigured. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that she would not voluntarily sever her hold over him. Whether Margaret was ever aware of Nadezhda Zalessky is unknown. Certainly Nadezhda had no knowledge of her. Margaret was long gone from St Petersburg by the time Reilly met Nadezhda, to whom he presented himself as a bachelor.

Born Nadezhda Massino in Poltava, Ukraine, on 26 March 1885,¹⁶ the daughter of Lt-Col. Petr Massino and his wife Varvara Kondratyevna Brodskaya, she was the second of four children.¹⁷ Both parents were Jewish by origin, but had converted to Orthodox Christianity. Like Reilly, Nadezhda later drew a veil over her family origins by claiming they were Swiss by descent. In 1907 she married Petr Ivanovich Zalessky, a naval lieutenant who had taken part in the defence of Port Arthur during the siege of 1904.¹⁸ It was in Port Arthur that Zalessky first met Admiral Grigorovich, to whom he was appointed aide-de-camp when the admiral became Minister for Marine. This was a particularly important time for the Ministry of Marine, which was responsible for rebuilding the Russian fleet which had suffered such a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Japan. Their home at 2 Admiralty Quay, St Petersburg,¹⁹ was often the venue for parties and receptions, which were attended by high-ranking military and naval officials as well as senior politicians and members of the Russian Court.

In 1912 the Duma approved funds for the next phase of the rebuilding of the Russian naval fleet. Shipyards from all over Russia would shortly be competing for these orders that had the potential to keep their yards in work and their coffers full for many years to come. It was at one such reception that Reilly met Nadezhda. As a renowned beauty, she would have caught his eye immediately. At 5ft 3ins, of slight build, with dark hair and complexion, she had a captivating personality and spoke fluent French and English.²⁰ Compared with his other mistresses at this time, such as Myrtil Paul, Ganna Walska and Paulette Pax, Nadezhda’s attractions were clearly unique. He was drawn not only by her outstanding beauty, but perhaps more so by the connections and influence that might be had through her. Not only was her husband the right-hand man to Admiral Grigorovich, who would decide the tendering arrangements for navy contracts, but ultima-tely he would also carry great weight in deciding to whom the contracts would be awarded. By the time they met, her father had been promoted to colonel, and her younger brother, Georgi, had graduated from the Elisavetgradsky Cavalry School, and enlisted in the 3rd Hussar Regiment.²¹ Reilly was introduced to her family, who also lived in St Petersburg, and the evidence suggests that the family themselves provided him with a great deal of inspiration in terms of the cover identities he would use in the future.

It is worth thinking back, at this point, to the story Reilly often related to George Hill and others, concerning his origins. We have already noted Lockhart’s account of how his name at birth was apparently Georgi, the son of ‘a colonel in the Russian army with connections at the Court of the Tsar’. We are also told that Georgi had a passion for swordsmanship and ‘took up pistol shooting to reveal marksmanship quite remarkable in one so young’. It is quite evident, however, that this is a description not of the young Reilly, but of Nadezhda’s brother, Georgi Petrovich Massino, whose military service file reveals him to be the mirror image of Reilly’s ‘Georgi’ character. Reilly’s fascination with the Massino family went somewhat further a decade later, when he adopted the name Konstantin Markovich Massino when he was working undercover in Russia after the Revolution. He also claimed on a different occasion that his mother’s maiden name was Massino.²²

While Reilly’s Georgi character might be a perfect fit for Nadezhda’s brother, how close a match is her father for Reilly’s colonel, who had ‘connections at the Court of the Tsar’? If Col. Massino did have such connections, this would have been yet a further attraction for Reilly in terms of forming a relationship with Nadezhda.

According to Col. Massino’s military service file,²³ he had an exemplary career from the time he joined the army as a private on 28 May 1853. Promotions followed swiftly to under-officer (1855), ensign (1859), lieutenant (1862), captain (1868), major (1872), lieutenant-colonel (1877) and finally to colonel (1901). However, his career came to sudden halt when, on 2 May 1905, he was relieved of his command in the Siberian Military District and placed under arrest. The military authorities in St Petersburg confirmed his dismissal on 17 June 1905. After a long investigation, he was charged with corruption, profiteering and abuse of power. Finally, on 24 August 1906, he appeared before the Siberian Military District Court in Irkutsk.²⁴ The court was told that Massino had used a military hospital train to transport duty free commercial goods, including food and alcohol, from Yekaterinoslav to Irkutsk. On arrival in Irkutsk, the goods were unloaded by a merchant by the name of Mrozovsky, who then sold the goods on at a significant profit. The verdict of the court was that while insufficient evidence had been presented by the prosecution to demonstrate that Massino had received money from Mrozovsky, he was clearly guilty of an abuse of power. He was therefore sentenced to serve sixteen months imprisonment in a civilian jail, and given a dishonourable discharge from the army. As a consequence of his discharge he also lost his rank, medals and, more importantly, his pension.

He filed an appeal against the verdict, and an appeal hearing was scheduled to be heard in St Petersburg on 12 October 1906. Each and every point on which he appealed was rejected and the original verdict and sentence were upheld. This, under normal circumstances, would have been the end of the matter. However, three months later on 14 January 1907, Tsar Nicholas II himself intervened in the case and issued a decree commuting Massino’s sentence to discharge and loss of rank only. Such an intervention was most unusual to say the very least. What happened eight months later was even more so. On 19 August 1907 the Tsar issued a further decree, reinstating Massino’s former rank, along with his pension, medals and additional privileges. Who or what could possibly have accounted for this near miraculous turn of events? Who could have interceded on Massino’s behalf, at the highest level, to secure his release? Whilst high-level decisions could, at a price, be influenced, securing the release of prisoners like Massino was not any everyday occurrence.

However, Massino’s rehabilitation was engineered, it must have been done at Court level. Those with access to the Tsar’s immediate circle would have included ministers, high-ranking military officials and Rasputin. The Tsar’s former ministers and their fabled misdemeanours were a particular target for the Provisional Government which came to power after the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917. One of its first acts was to set up, in March of that year, ‘The Extraordinary Commission of Enquiry for the Investigation of Illegal Acts by Ministers and Other Responsible Persons’. One of the principal areas for investigation was Rasputin and the influence he had on ministers and the Royal family. The enquiry also had access to the Ochrana reports which catalogued the comings and goings at Rasputin’s apartment and a general digest of those he met. Although the commission’s investigations were still in progress at the time of the Bolshevik takeover in October, the new government disbanded the commission and its conclusions were never published.²⁵ However, the enquiry’s transcripts survived and provide a rare insight into the activities of those in high places. It would seem that statements from some twenty-two people associated with Rasputin were taken, which provides a vivid picture of the influence he wielded at the Royal Court.

Alexei Filippov, a banker and publisher, provided interesting testimony as to how some of those within Rasputin’s close circle exploited the influence he had with the Tsar and Tsarina by accepting ‘gifts’ from those whose interests were forwarded by Rasputin. Whether this was with or without Rasputin’s knowledge is not clear. In 1906 and 1907, Rasputin’s connections with the Court were not so well known as they became in later years, but it is interesting to note that the person who first introduced Rasputin to those of influence in St Petersburg was Bishop Feofan, who was born in Poltava. He himself had very close royal connections, particularly to the Tsarina, and is another possible link between the Massinos and the Royal Court.

Filippov himself had very close associations with Rasputin and became the semi-literate peasant’s publisher. Some six years after Col. Massino’s re-instatement, there is also evidence that Rasputin’s aide Sophia Volynskaya had links with Varvara Massino, who like herself was a converted Jew from Poltava. Filippov told the 1917 enquiry that Rasputin shifted from charitable acts of help to the exploitation of clients with the help of Volynskaya. Her husband, an agronomist, had been tried and imprisoned, but had been pardoned on representations from Rasputin. Rasputin, however, justified these acts as part of his teaching. The Tsarina had written down his words in her notebook, ‘Never fear to release prisoners, to restore sinners to a life of righteousness… Prisoners… become through their sufferings in the eyes of God – nobler then we’.²⁶

Another Rasputin acolyte, Pyotr Badmaev, may also have had a connection with Reilly, according to Richard Deacon.²⁷ Badmaev, known as the ‘cunning Chinaman’, was a doctor in Tibetan medicine, or so he claimed. In reality he was, like Reilly, a cross between a patent medicine salesman and a businessman- cum-broker. A Buryat of Asiatic descent, Badmaev was born in Siberia in 1857. His brother had established a Tibetan pharmacy in St Petersburg, and Pyotr followed him to the capital and soon established himself practising Tibetan medicine. His patients were predominantly in the upper echelons of St Petersburg society and, thanks to Rasputin, his influence permeated to the very top. He established a trading company, Badmaev & Ko, which was involved in land speculation and also sought to market a range of commodities including his Tibetan herbal remedies. These claimed to treat such complaints as pulmonary disease, neurasthenia, venereal disease and impotence. It is significant that while most patent medicine companies in England at this time promoted home-grown remedies or those imported from America, the Ozone Preparations Company was unique in having amongst its stock ‘Tibetan Remedies’.²⁸

The banker and publisher Alexei Filippov, as well as having associations with Rasputin, also knew Vladimir Krymov, the accountant of the Suvorin family, the proprietors of the Novoe Vremia newspaper. Krymov, who had power of attorney from Alexei Suvorin due to Suvorin’s ill health, was closely involved in the affairs of the family, from which perspective he provides an interesting insight into Reilly’s life during the period 1910–1914. Krymov relates how Reilly visited the newspaper’s editorial office nearly every day and was treated by the staff there as ‘one of their own’.²⁹ Reilly’s ability to network and keep his ear to the ground was obviously well recognised by editor Mikhail Suvorin and utilised accordingly.

Mikhail’s younger brother Boris shared Reilly’s interest in aviation. According to Robin Bruce Lockhart they formed a flying club called The Wings Aviation Club,³⁰ which sponsored the St Petersburg–Moscow Air Race.³¹ The reality, however, was somewhat different. Although Reilly was a member of a flying club, the All-Russian Aviation Club,³² Krylia (Wings) was, in fact, a commercial company set up principally by Boris Suvorin, at Reilly’s instigation. In other words, it was Reilly’s idea but Suvorin’s money was used to launch it. The Krylia Joint-Stock Company opened for business at Apartment 42, 12 Bolshaya Morskaya on 21 April 1910, amid a flurry of interest from the press, aviators and central government.³³ The Ministry for the Interior in particular seems to have taken a close interest in the company, requesting that the Ochrana make routine enquiries into the five directors of the company – Frenchman Ludovic Arno, Mikhail Efimov, Boris Suvorin, Konstantin Veygelin and ‘Englishman’ Sidney Reilly.³⁴ All five were given a clean bill of health by the Ochrana, which would seem to indicate that up to this point they had nothing on Reilly and furthermore did not identify or associate him with one Sigmund Rosenblum who was still on their ‘wanted list’. Such official interest might also reflect the fact that the Russian government was now taking a particular interest in the development of aviation for military purposes. In fact, Tsar Nicholas had, only a few months before, announced the creation of the Imperial Russian Air Service under the command of Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich.

Suvorin invited the famous Russian aviator Nikolai Evgrafovich Popov to open the office, and arranged for the event to be exclusively covered by Novoe Vremia. The company was the first to commercially market aircraft in Russia. Reilly’s interest in aviation had apparently been kindled by Wilbur Wright’s demonstration of the ‘Wright Flyer’ at the Hunaudières Racecourse at Le Mans in August 1908. The Wrights had, by this time, concluded that there was more to be gained from displaying their machines in public than from continued secrecy. It is clear from the European press at the time that there was certainly widespread scepticism concerning the merits of the Wright aircraft owing to their publicity-shy reputation. This attitude changed dramatically when Wilbur Wright arrived in France three months before the Le Mans demonstration and began touting the merits of the 1905 ‘Flyer’, a machine capable of flying up to twenty-five miles at a time when Henry Farman was endeavouring to achieve one kilometre in his Voisin.

Reilly was among the large crowd that gathered at Hunaudières on 8 August to watch Wilbur Wright take to the air. All scepticism vanished as he rose to a height of thirty feet and made three circuits of the racecourse before making a perfect landing within fifty metres of where he had taken off. Louis Bleriot, who was also in the crowd, told the New York Herald that, ‘for us in France and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has begun… my view can best be conveyed in the words – it is marvellous!’

The new era reached Germany the following year, when Orville Wright visited Berlin to give a similar flying demonstration. Reilly arranged to meet him afterwards and discovered the Wrights planned to withdraw from active participartion in flying demonstrations in order to concentrate on the commercial exploitation of their machines. When, the following year, they launched the Wright Brothers Company, Reilly shrewdly negotiated an agreement to be their sole representative within the Russian Empire and to market their aircraft there. Before too long Reilly had also signed a similar deal with the Farman Company.

The objective of Krylia was, according to Suvorin, to ‘assist the development of aeronautics and aviation in Russia’. This, however, did not extend to organising the St Petersburg–Moscow air race, which was in fact a competition rather than a race, meaning that competitors were judged on performance in certain areas and not just on their times.

It was actually organised by the Imperial Aero-Club of St Petersburg and the Moscow Aeronautical Society. There is no record of Krylia or Reilly in particular providing any of the sponsorship. The event cost 107,500 roubles, which was met by a donation of 100,000 roubles from the Russian government, the remainder being made up of smaller sums donated by the Imperial Aero Club, the Moscow Aeronautical Society, Moscow City Council, the Riga Section of the Imperial Aero Club, the Imperial Russian Automobile Society, and the Russian Hunting Club. The Nobel Oil Company and the Vacuum Oil Company donated their products to the event.³⁵ Lockhart is correct in stating that the competition was won by Vasilyev, although it is unlikely that Reilly was there to meet him in Moscow. After landing in Moscow, Vasilyev publicly lambasted the organisers of the event for incom-petence. The Imperial Aero Club retaliated by boycotting his victor’s banquet, which as a consequence had to be cancelled!³⁶

Reilly can, however, justifiably claim the credit for founding St Petersburg’s first airport.³⁷ According to Vladimir Krymov, this too was an example of Reilly knowing something no one else knew. He had found out that, under an eighteenth-century right of use going back to the time of Peter the Great, the Commandant of St Petersburg had the right to use a large piece of land on the outskirts of the city, known as Komendantskoe Pole (the Commandant’s Field). In practice, however, this right had never been taken up. Reilly also discovered that the long-term tenant of the land was an elderly Englishwoman who was paying a small annual rent and sub-letting plots to allotment keepers. Reilly traced her and arranged to pay her a visit. In Krymov’s words, ‘Reilly charmed her with his manners and beautiful English and obtained from her the right to let the whole field as an aerodrome’.³⁸

To provide capital for the aerodrome venture, Alexei Suvorin was persuaded to become a backer. Work to convert the land to an aerodrome with hangers and workshops was completed in time for Krylia to host the first St Petersburg Flying Week, held between 25 April and 2 May 1910.³⁹ Aviators from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland, as well as Russia, took part and prizes were awarded for height reached and length of time spent in the air. The Russians enthusiastically supported their own man, Popov, who came second and flew the highest.⁴⁰ The main purpose of the event was, however, a commercial opportunity for the display and sale of aircraft, from which Krylia did particularly well. In May 1911 a second flying week was held, during which Reilly himself participated as one of the aviators. While the aerodrome was a great success, Krymov was at pains to point out that, as a result of Reilly’s aerodrome business dealings, and having power of attorney from Alexei Suvorin, he had to honour several promissory notes issued by Suvorin. This resulted in Suvorin losing over 100,000 roubles, while Reilly avoided liability and collected a salary as a Krylia director.⁴¹

While fully engaged in exploiting the providence brought about by the onset of the aviation age, Reilly lost no opportunity to cash in on the escalating naval arms race that was now gaining pace among the great powers. Procuring Russian maritime contracts on behalf of Blohm and Voss was not, however, the limit of Reilly’s brokering ambitions. Constantinople, the capital city of the sprawling Ottoman Empire on Russia’s southern border, was not only well known to Reilly but was a ready market for German armaments. Indeed, a decade later when working undercover in Russian, Reilly would adopt, among other identities, that of Turkish merchant ‘Mr Constantine’.

Although regarded by Germany as being in terminal decline, an alliance with the faltering Ottoman Empire was seen as key to Berlin’s plan for imperial expansion eastwards. Sultan Abdul Hamid was equally looking for a new and powerful European ally to act as a bulwark against Russia, the Turks’ traditional foe, following his falling out with Great Britain over the control of Egypt. In the decade before the outbreak of the First World War, the Turks therefore looked principally to their new-found German ally to help them develop a twentieth-century army and navy. However, competition for orders was fierce and Blohm & Voss were having little success in obtaining major naval contracts. Since May 1904 they had been represented in Constantinople by one Walther Berghaus.⁴² From July 1905, when the first announcement of the rebuilding of the Turkish navy was made, until March 1909, not a single deal was successfuly negotiated for Blohm & Voss by Berghaus.

On 7 December 1909 Berghaus wrote to Blohm & Voss questioning the status of a Herr Reilly, who had recently arrived in Constantinople and was representing himself as acting on behalf of Blohm & Voss.⁴³ Reilly had good contacts in the Ottoman capital where both Ginsburg & Company and the East-Asiatic Company, for example, were well established and had good connections with Ottoman government officials. What transpired during the next three months is very much open to conjecture, as little of the correspondence between the company and Berghaus has survived. However, we do know that on 9 February 1910 Blohm & Voss wrote to Berghaus, formally dismissing him as their Ottoman representative. It would seem that they had come to the conclusion that he had passed on compromising information to a rival company.⁴⁴ The prime source of the allegations against him would appear to be ‘Herr R’. With Berghaus now deposed, Reilly set about negotiating with the Ottoman authorities and on 14 February the Turkish navy agreed to send a delegation to Germany to finalise a deal to purchase one battleship and a floating dock from Blohm & Voss.⁴⁵ Reilly took the commission for the deal, leaving Berghaus out in the cold. Little further trace of Reilly’s activites in Constantinople appear in either German or Ottoman records, suggesting that his endeavours there on behalf of Blohm & Voss were shortlived. This view is further confirmed by the fact that on 6 September 1911, Blohm & Voss reappointed Berghaus as their Ottoman representative.⁴⁶

According to Vladimir Krymov, Reilly’s finances before the First World War were ‘dire’,⁴⁷ a situation that was not remedied until the outbreak of war when the arms trade came to his rescue. Throughout his life Reilly seemed to spend money as quickly as he obtained it. One consequence of this was a short spell of having to share a flat during the autumn of 1911. His flatmate was apparently one Eduard Fedorovich Gofman. Not long after the flat-share arrangement began, Gofman was found dead, a bullet in his head and a pistol in his hand.⁴⁸ Police enquiries revealed that a large sum of money was missing from his employers the East-Asiatic Company, which Gofman had apparently embezzled. According to the police, a suicide note had been found stating that Gofman had lost the money gambling. Gofman was not a known gambler and the police could find no evidence that he had ever frequented any of the usual gambling haunts in St Petersburg. Reilly too stated that he had no knowledge of his flatmate being a gambler. The police were never able to solve the riddle and the money was never recovered. If Reilly had a hand in the embezzlement, Gofman’s death or the disappearance of the money, he had, once again, managed to avoid the consequences.

If Reilly’s finances were, in Vladimir Krymov’s words, ‘dire’, then it was down, as ever, to his expensive tastes and lifestyle. If his income was in any doubt, he would not be travelling throughout Europe and staying at such hotels as the Cecil in London, the Grand Hotel in Paris and the Hotel Bristol in Berlin and Vienna. Neither would he have been a regular at St Petersburg’s exclusive Vienna Restaurant in Ulitsa Gogolya and the Café de Paris at 16 Bolshaya Morskaya, next door to the East-Asiatic Company. The Café de Paris⁴⁹ was better known by the name of its owner, Kiuba. It was a chic restaurant with French cuisine and high prices and was frequented by the high aristocracy. The artist Milashevsky recalls that ‘all the waiters were formerly soldiers of the Guard and so they never take his Highness for his nobleness’. It was the first restaurant to have an electric sign – each letter in the word was made of electric lamps – ‘may your name shine forever’ was an in-joke among Kiuba’s customers at the time.

In addition to the Café de Paris, Reilly also frequented the St Petersburg English Club at 16 Dvortsovaia Naberezhnaia, where the aristocratic élite gambled at cards. Card gambling became particularly widespread during the first decade of the twentieth century, and flourished most of all in the so-called ‘new-style clubs’ or businessmen’s clubs. The English Club was the oldest in St Petersburg, and although founded by the English community in 1770, it was, by the late nineteenth century, a thoroughly Russian institution. Reilly, although an enthusiastic card player, was rarely a successful one. The club was, however, yet another opportunity to associate with the influential élite of St Petersburg.

Another costly expense that Reilly may well have faced was that of medical treatment. As we shall see later in our story, the likelihood was that he suffered throughout his life from a mild form of epilepsy, known as petit mal. This milder form has associations with migraine, something we know Reilly regularly experienced. We also know, for example, that between 2 March and 6 March 1911, Reilly stayed at the Weiner Cottage Sanitarium in Vienna,⁵⁰ although no details of the treatment he received have survived.

Despite the fact that he represented himself as an Irishman with a Russian mother, Reilly did not openly associate himself with the self-styled ‘English colony’ in St Petersburg. By the turn of the twentieth century there were some 4,000 British citizens in St Petersburg, most of them living on the Vasilyevsky Ostroff or in the mill districts. Many families had lived in Russia for several generations, and avoided having to become Russian citizens by sending pregnant wives back to England to give birth. It was from among this community that the ‘New English Club’⁵¹ was founded in 1905. Unlike the English Club, it was essentially an English membership institution where members drank Scotch whisky and English beer, played football, cricket, golf and billiards and held dinners to mark British national holidays. Among its 400 members was the club president, Ernest Durrent, and his nephew Alfred Hill, who joined British intelligence in the war.⁵² Alfred’s cousin, George Hill, would also become an intelligence officer and an associate of Reilly’s in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. Another member of the club, Cecil Mackie, who was a secretary at the British Embassy in St Petersburg, later recalled that, ‘at one time we had some doubt as to his right to British nationality, but the matter was never thrashed out’.⁵³

It would take a world war to provide Reilly with the opportunity of making more money than he could actually spend. In the meantime, the ubiquitous wheeler-dealer soldiered on with mixed results in the scramble for naval contracts. A letter written by Reilly on 25 April 1912 to Kurt Orbanowsky gives some very pertinent clues to his relationship with the various players involved in the naval warship programme. The purpose of the letter was, ostensibly, to explain why Blohm & Voss had not been successful with a particular tender:

On 25 April 1912 Reilly hypocritically complained to Obanowsky of insider dealing.

In reality, the letter is a subtle example of Reilly’s ‘divide and rule’ approach to life. He not only casts aspersions on the judgement of Count Lubiensky and his ability to get a more favourable verdict on the proposal, he also tries, in a very underhanded way, to drive a wedge between Orbanowsky and his ‘dear friend’, Lubiensky’s senior colleague Jachimowitz. Ironically, Reilly is the first to complain in this letter about the ‘insider-information’ swindles being perpetrated on Blohm & Voss, but his own hands were far from clean when it came to obtaining the particulars of rival tenders. In September of that year, Sir Charles Ottley, of the British shipbuilders Armstrongs, visited St Petersburg with a view to tendering for contracts.⁵⁹ Although Armstrongs had initially shown some reluctance to participate, they seem to have been persuaded to do so by Alexei Rastedt, who was ultimately appointed their Russian representative. Alexei Rastedt was no newcomer to the shipping business, and had, several years previously, been one of Reilly’s ‘background men’. When eventually Armstrongs did decide to enter a last-minute tender, this caused much friction between themselves and their Tyne- side neighbours, Vickers, which was gleefully picked up by the St Petersburg press. When the contracts were eventually awarded, there was a very strong suspicion that Armstrong’s bid had been reported to one of their rivals.

Vickers’ ruthless and unscrupulous representative Basil Zaharoff was the biggest player in the arms trade at this time, and it is hardly surprising that his name has been subsequently linked with the equally unsavoury Reilly. Zaharoff was featured as a prominent character in Troy Kennedy-Martin’s television adaptation of Ace of Spies,⁶⁰ despite the wholesale lack of evidence linking the two. Richard Deacon, who also proffered the theory that Reilly was an Ochrana agent, believed that ‘one of the tasks which the Russian Secret Service set for Sidney Reilly was to build up a dossier on the notorious international arms salesman, Basil Zaharoff’.⁶¹ Ochrana records at the Hoover Institute in California and in the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow contain no corroboration for this belief, nor for any kind of association between Reilly and Zaharoff.

Not unsurprisingly, Reilly was viewed with suspicion by many of those he came into contact with in St Petersburg. Some thought he was an English spy, others said he was spying for the Germans. In November 1911 the Suvorins had been concerned enough to make enquiries about Reilly and his activities. Boris Suvorin initially asked his associate Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, a Novoe Vremia journalist, to check with Stephan Beletsky, the head of the St Petersburg Police Department. Beletsky referred the enquiry to Gen. Nicolai Mankewitz, head of counter-intelligence. As a result Reilly was briefly kept under close surveillance and had his mail intercepted. As with the previous year’s check initiated by the Interior Ministry, nothing that would give any cause for concern was found and Mankewitz called off the surveillance and closed the file.⁶²

Among the regular correspondents Reilly kept in touch with was his cousin Felitsia, now living in Warsaw. Their close relationship is evident from a verse from the 29th stanza of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam he sent her:

Ironically, Manasevich-Manuilov was himself an Ochrana agent and had supplied information on Boris Suvorin and his fellow directors to the Ochrana authorities.⁶³ As the storm clouds of the First World War approached, concern about German spies intensified and Manasevich-Manuilov turned his attention to supplying lists of suspects. With growing tensions between the two countries, naval contracts dwindled and eventually petered out altogether. Thankfully for Reilly, the clouds of war on the horizon were to have a substantial silver lining.