Having a fascination for gadgets, deception and intrigue, Fleming was particularly attracted to the ‘black propaganda’ work undertaken by the Political Warfare Executive, headed by former diplomat and journalist Robert Bruce Lockhart, with whom he also struck up an acquaintance.6 In 1918 Lockhart had worked with Sidney Reilly in Russia, where they became embroiled in a plot to overthrow Lenin’s fledgling government. Within five years of his disappearance in Soviet Russia in 1925, the press had turned Reilly into a household name, dubbing him a ‘Master Spy’ and crediting him with a string of fantastic espionage exploits.
Fleming had therefore long been aware of Reilly’s mythical reputation and no doubt listened in awe to the recollections of a man who had not only known Reilly personally but was actually with him during the turmoil and aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Lockhart had himself played a key role in creating the Reilly myth in 1931 by helping Reilly’s wife Pepita publish a book purporting to recount her husband’s adventures.7 As a journalist at the time, Lockhart also had a hand in the deal that led to the serialisation of Reilly’s ‘Master Spy’ adventures in the London Evening Standard.
Although Reilly was a spark or catalyst for Fleming’s ‘Master Spy’ concept, Bond’s personality was a fictional cocktail, culled from a range of characters, including Fleming’s own.8 There are certainly threads of Reilly’s hard-edged personality to be found in the Bond who inhabits the pages of Fleming’s books. The literary Bond was visibly a much darker, more calculating and altogether more sinister character than his big screen counterpart, who has tended to dilute Fleming’s original concept over the years.
Like Fleming’s fictional creation, Reilly was multi-lingual with a fascination with the Far East, fond of fine living and a compulsive gambler. He also exercised a Bond-like fascination for women, his many love affairs standing comparison with the amorous adventures of 007. Unlike James Bond, though, Sidney Reilly was by no stretch of the imagination a conventionally handsome man. His appeal lay more in the elusive qualities of charm and charisma. He was, however, equally capable of being cold and menacing. In many ways, the closest modern fictional character to resemble Reilly is Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in The Godfather, a man of controlled coldness and deadpan cal-culation. Like Corleone, the equally calculating Reilly had a powerful hold over women — or, at least, a particular kind of woman — which he never failed to exploit.
But who was Sidney Reilly and what were the forces that drove him? To lovers, friends and enemies alike, Reilly remained a mystery. In spite of the many books that have been written about him, often themselves making contrary claims, major questions still remain unanswered about his true identity, place of birth and the precise facts surrounding his disappearance and death. During his life Reilly laid an almost impenetrable fog of mystery and deception around his origins as he adopted and shed one identity after another. Those who entered this ruthlessly compartmentalised life knew only what Reilly himself had told them.
Over a century of falsehood and fantasy, both deliberate and intentional, has obscured the real Sidney Reilly. Reilly’s tendency to be something of a Walter Mitty character, telling tall tales of great espionage feats, has only added to the legend and muddied the water still further. To piece together an accurate picture of his extraordinary life it has been necessary to shed all preconceptions and to return to square one, starting from scratch in gathering together as many primary sources as possible.
The ability to draw on many classified, restricted and hitherto unpublished sources in Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, Ukraine and the United States has helped this task immeasurably. The descendants of a number of those who played key roles in Reilly’s story have also been tracked down and interviewed. Their help in particular has provided many of the missing pieces in the jigsaw of his life, and revealed for the first time how he was propelled at the age of only twenty-five into the life of an international adventurer.
ONE
A SUDDEN DEATH
Of Newhaven there is little to say, except that in rough weather the traveller from France is very glad to reach it, and on a fine day the traveller from England is happy to leave it behind.1
These rather unflattering words were written by the travel writer E.V. Lucas in 1904. However, it is often in unremarkable places such as this that some of the most remarkable things happen. Indeed, some six years before Lucas wrote these words, Newhaven’s London & Paris Hotel was the unwitting host to an event that was to have far reaching repercussions, not only for a twenty-four-year-old heiress, but also for a man who was to become the epitome of the twentieth-century spy.
Incorporated into the design of Newhaven Harbour Station, the imposing three-storey stucco building was luxuriously furnished with thirty bedrooms and was everything the discerning Victorian traveller could possibly want or expect. It was here, at the quayside platform on the afternoon of Friday 11 March 1898, that a sixty-three-year-old invalid was helped down from the train into his wheelchair. Accompanied by his nurse, Anna Gibson, the Reverend Hugh Thomas2 proceeded to the reception desk to announce his arrival. He and the nurse had booked two rooms up to and including Monday 14 March, when his twenty-four-year-old wife, Margaret, was due to arrive from London. The three would then take the 11.30 a.m. boat train to Paris en route to a holiday in Egypt.
Despite the trappings of her social status, Margaret may well have felt that a part of her life was somehow empty. It was almost certainly her need for attention and affection that ultimately led her to respond to the overtures of Sigmund Rosenblum, of the Ozone Preparations Company.3
Hugh Thomas and Sigmund Rosenblum first met in 1897. Thomas, a sufferer from Bright’s Disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys, was one of many who succumbed to the siren voice of the patent medicines popular at the time, peddled by companies such as Ozone Preparations Company as offering miracle cures. These companies’ claims were greater than those of conventional medicine, who only prescribed bed rest, a low protein diet, massive doses of Jalap, and blood letting – the attraction of patent medicines to sufferers such as Thomas was obvious.
Hugh Thomas and Sigmund Rosenblum met regularly throughout 1897 at the Manor House, Kingsbury, and at 6 Upper Westbourne Terrace, London. Indeed, it was at the Manor House, in the summer of 1897, that Thomas introduced Rosenblum to Margaret.4 It has been claimed that the Thomases first met Sigmund Rosenblum in Russia, during a tour of Europe they undertook in 1897.5 It has been claimed, too, that Margaret’s relationship with Rosenblum developed as he accompanied them from hotel to hotel on a melodramatic journey back to England.6 The facts, however, tell a very different story. Although a passport was not as necessary as it is today for foreign travel, to enter Russia, Hugh and Margaret Thomas would most certainly have required one. British passport records show, however, that the Thomases never at any time applied for, or were ever granted, passports for Russia.7 Furthermore, Thomas household records make no reference to any foreign trips or holidays undertaken in 1897, although in December of that year, plans were made for a holiday in Egypt the following March.
Whose idea this Egyptian holiday was we do not know. Whether these plans were made with a straightforward holiday in mind or something a good deal more sinister is very much dependent upon one’s interpretation of the evidence.8 What we do know, however, is that the planning, arrangements and bookings were made by Margaret, as Thomas Cook records show. Shortly before their departure, Margaret arranged an appointment for her husband and herself to visit a local solicitor. On Friday 4 March they made their way to 13 St Mary’s Square, Paddington, a short distance from their home. Before a clerk, Hugh Thomas appointed the Thomas family solicitor, Henry Lloyd Carter, and Margaret as his Executors. The Will itself declared the following: