Ace of Spies (39 page)

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!

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Reilly worked behind locked doors in his flat in Potchtamsky Street. He spent hours with a hot iron and layers of blotting paper, placing the blueprints between sheets of glass and making Photostat copies. For three vital years before the outbreak of the First World War, the British Admiralty were kept up to date with every new design or modification in the German fleet – tonnages, speeds, armament, crew and every detail down to cooking equipment.
Ace of Spies
by Robin Bruce Lockhart
¹

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.

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In late 1917 and 1918, behind-the-scenes helpers such as Charles Crane, Karol Yaroshinsky the Polish-Russian banker and close friend of the Romanovs, as well as Sidney Reilly, the erstwhile Russian double agent, who was operating on Britain’s behalf, were involved in the formulation and execution of various attempts to snatch both Russia and the family from the Bolsheviks.
The Plots to Rescue the Tsar
by Shay McNeal
¹

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:

The following two officers are engaged on special secret service and should not be mentioned in official correspondence or to other officers unless absolutely unavoidable, Lieutenants Mitchelson and Reilly.
³

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 for the information of Admiral and yourself: Regarding your Military Intelligence organisation, the following has been provisionally approved. Lieutenant-Colonel Thornhill will be in charge of all officers doing military intelligence in Russia except those on secret service, whose relations with him will be defined at some later date, but who should collaborate with him in every possible way for the present and should keep him informed of any military or political information they may obtain. The following two officers are engaged on special secret service and should not be mentioned in official correspondence or to other officers unless absolutely unavoidable, Lieutenants Mitchelson and Reilly.

With regard to officers doing official intelligence under Thornhill the following is provisional establishment: one General Staff Officer, 1st Grade viz; Thornhill, one General Staff Officer, 3rd Grade at Archangel, one General Staff Officer, 3rd Grade at Murmansk. Van Someren nominated for former place. Who would you and Thornhill like for Murmansk? Five attached officers Carstin, A.F. Hill, Tanplin, Hodson and Pitts to be distributed as Thornhill thinks best. He should send orders at once to three first named who are in Russia. Two clerks, one for the office in Murmansk, and one for Archangel. Is this arrangement suitable? Lockhart has been informed that in future all intelligence will be controlled by Thornhill. One officer, exclusive of above all, will be nominated from London to run all secret service. I should like to hear who Thornhill would like in this capacity. The following are suggested as possible, Maclaren, Lee or Boyce.
⁴

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 Office
⁸
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.

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The forging of the Zinoviev letter was the high water mark in Reilly’s whole career.
Sidney Reilly – The True Story
by Michael Kettle
¹

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.