Sidney Reilly

 

The Ace of Spies

“James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He’s not a Sidney Reilly you know.”

-          Ian Fleming

 

On November 5^th, 1925, just past 9 pm on a silently cold Moscow evening, a car containing six men rolled through the gates of the Lubyanka. A Dr and photographer waited patiently as one of the six men, a hooded corpse, was delivered to the infirmary. A high pitched whine greeted the removal of the hood followed by the sharp explosion of the camera’s bulb, its echo reverberating through the eerie silence of the infirmary. This man’s funeral, like his life, would be cloaked in secrecy and reported in a sea of disinformation. Confirmation of that evening’s events, including the photograph, would fail to reach the outside world for another seventy five years.

 

Shlomo Rosenblum, Sigmund Rosenblum, George Rose, Leon Rosenblatt, Pavel Relinsky, Constantine Massino, Sidney Roberts, and ultimately Sidney George Reilly were all aliases used by a man who would become known as the “Britains Master Spy” (Lockhart 7), one of the greatest secret agents of the 20^th century. Not even his employers, the British Secret Service (or SIS which later became MI6), were certain of his real name or nationality.

 

On a cold wet day late in 1895, the man who would become Sidney Reilly stepped from the boat at Portsmouth, England, along with a large group of otherwise ordinary travelers from France. He was slim build and medium height with a head slightly too large for its frame. Under heavy dark eyebrows a large pointed nose separated full lips from protruding eyes. His face was long enough to give the impression of a constant scowl beneath thick dark hair cropped tightly atop his head. The young man of 23 was once again fleeing trouble. Having been born some time in 1874 [official documents indicate March 24 (Spence 2)] to a wealthy Jewish family living in the southern districts of Ukraine, Shlomo Rosenblum fled Russia to Germany and then France. He later claimed to have been mixed up in a political plot, but government documents fail to verify this. Shortly prior to Rosenblum’s arrival in England, two Russian activists carrying pound sterling from England destined for Revolutionary coffers in Switzerland had been attacked on a late night train. Rosenblum was later said to have been behind the robbery that saw one of the men barely survive being thrown overboard while the other man was killed outright. Whatever the case, Rosenblum stood dockside in Portsmouth with almost £1,500 ($75,000 in today’s money) in his suitcase (Spence 21).  

 

Rosenblum set himself up in London selling patent medicine through his firm “Rosenblum & Company” but failed to earn as much money as he was spending. Booze, gambling, and women were taking there toll so he became a successful informant for Scotland Yard; reporting intelligence on political exiles, immigrants, and criminals alike to the then head of Special Branch, William Melville who would later become head of the British Secret Service code named “M.” Rosenblum’s situation improved when in 1897 he met Margaret Thomas, the young wife of Irish Clergyman Rev. Hugh Thomas. In 1898, two days after the 63 year old Thomas had arrived at a Sussex hotel to meet his 24 year old wife, he was found dead in his bed.  Having befriended the couple while selling medicines to the semi-invalid Thomas, Rosenblum had become romantically involved with Margaret. Within 9 days of the wealthy Thomas leaving his entire estate to his wife, he was dead. A phony death certificate from a non-existent “Dr Andrew” resulted in no police investigation. 3 Months later, Margaret and Rosenblum were married and wealthy.

 

Reilly described himself as “a practical man”, an individual governed by logic, necessity, and self interest. He is perhaps more accurately described as a mercenary: a freelance entrepreneur in the business of influence and information. Following his marriage to Margaret, Rosenblum became involved in a rubles counterfeiting scam that was suspected of bankrolling revolutionary plots in Russia. Upon the arrival of the Tsar’s investigators from Russia, an awkwardly placed “M” gave Rosenblum a new passport in the name of Sidney Reilly and sent him from the country.  

 

Ultimately, the key to understanding Reilly’s contradictory nature is to understand just what his interests were. He certainly had great belief in the economic potential of Russia and his activities supported the integration of Russia into the global marketplace. He had a forward thinking appreciation for globalization and the importance of multinational companies, pursuing interests to those ends. Ends worth reaching without regard to how they were reached. Lenin’s dictum, “flexibility in means, inflexibility in goals” was a fundamental Reilly and the dictator shared. Reilly would consort with Communists in the interests of capitalism, and as a Jew, abet and conspire with virulent anti-Semites in the pursuit of common goals.

 

When Reilly returned to England in 1917 he had spied on Russian and German financing of Boer Republics, divulged top secret military plans that had passed through his hands as a military shipping and munitions agent, made millions in commissions brokering pre war deals between the United States, Russia, Japan, and Germany, completed his second bigamous marriage, and joined the Royal Air Force to “do his bit” for the war effort (Lockhart 58). At one stage he had famously managed to get a message to a British national about to make an oil deal with the French Rothschilds: A deal not supported by the British government. By dressing as a priest, Reilly boarded the Rothschild’s yacht in Cannes, convinced them to make a donation to his church, and slipped the message to the Briton.

 

Reilly’s activities had earned him an international reputation as a man with valuable political and commercial contacts whose business dealings were more than a little questionable. He was also a man that “C”, the new head of SIS, wanted for a special mission into Russia to arrest or possibly assassinate Lenin and Trotsky. At one point during the mission, Reilly presented himself at the gates of the Kremlin as an emissary of the British Prime Minister and demanded to see Lenin to discuss the Bolshevik government’s plans for the future. This stunt nearly cost Reilly his life, not to mention his job at SIS. Eventually the plot failed and Reilly and his handler, Bruce Lockhart, fled Russia, only narrowly escaping the death sentence that had been ordered for both of them. This failed to deter Reilly who repeatedly made attempts to topple the Russian government with the help of SIS as well as foreign anti-Bolshevik movements. Reilly invested large sums of his own money in what had become a personal quest fuelled by his hatred of communist ideology as well as the enormous gains he stood to make with the installation of a new government. Eventually, Reilly’s failed attempts caused him to run out of money as well as favor. SIS officially cut ties with him in 1922.

 

A broke Reilly attempted to resurrect his patent medicine business but failed dismally. His lucked changed for the better when he met Pepita, a wealthy South American beauty. She was to be his third bigamous marriage. Once again lured into the world of international espionage, Reilly joined an anti-Bolshevik group known as “The Trust.” Unbeknownst to Reilly, The Trust was a group set up by the OGUP, the forerunner to the KGB, designed to lure dissidents back to Russia. Reilly was chief on their list of targets. He was arrested, taken to the Lubyanka, and interrogated for a number of weeks. The Russians wanted his contacts, but refused to give them up claiming he would use them to help The Trust if they let him go. The Russians repeatedly refused his offer.

 

Around 8pm on November 5^th 1925, Reilly was taking his usual walk with his captures through the forest near Bogorodsk. He was given special treatment by the Russians, possibly out of respect, or as an interrogation technique. As Reilly trudged through the snow, inhaling the crisp fresh air, he hoped the Russians were beginning to see sense and would soon negotiate with him. Moments later a bullet fired from a Mauser pistol imbedded itself in his back. He let out a “deep gasp” and fell to the ground (Spence 462). Shocked, Reilly lay in the snow, his breathing becoming slower and slower. He could here footsteps coming towards him. Almost instantly, a second bullet from the Mauser passed into his chest, ending his life. 

 

Reilly may have been the inspiration for James Bond, but his life did not represent an undying loyalty to Queen and country. Wealth, power, and influence on a fantastic scale and against even more fantastic odds characterized his adventures. His fearless and ruthless character led him on exploits requiring finely honed intellect and audacity. He would, without hesitation confront powerful statesman and captains of industry and emerge triumphant. Few of Reilly’s friends and collaborators, of which the latter far outnumbered the former, trusted him. The most bitter of his enemies saw him as an adversary of exceptional skill, deception, and determination.  The dark side of Reilly, always lurking beneath the surface, was responsible for such acts as forgery, drug smuggling, gun running, blackmail, sabotage, and murder rarely if ever sanctioned by any government secretly or otherwise. His charm wit and kindness, for which he was renowned, was enforced by a cold, calculating, and manipulative nature. Reilly was many things to many people and if nothing else, his adventures will live on in our imagination. He will always be known as Reilly, “The Ace of Spies.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Cook, Andrew. Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, 2004

 

Lockhart, Robin Bruce. Ace of Spies. New York: Stein and Day, 1967

 

Spence, Richard B., Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2002