Ace of Spies (36 page)

Monday 2 November 1925
Called 10 a.m. SIS continued – general organisational details.
³⁷
Repeatedly asked regarding agents here
³⁸
Burberry, Norwegian Ebsen,
³⁹
Hudson
⁴⁰
in Denmark and others. Explained why agents here impossible – none since Dukes.
⁴¹
Returned to my mission in 1918. Kemp,
⁴²
misunderstanding with Lockhart.
⁴³
Conversation with Artur Khristianovich Artuzov.
⁴⁴
Zinoviev's letter.
⁴⁵
Doctor dissatisfied with my state. Styrne hopes to finish Wednesday – doubt it. Slept very badly this night. Reading till 3 a.m. Getting very weak.

Tuesday 3 November 1925
Hungry all day. Frunze's funeral.
⁴⁶
Called about 9 in the evening. Styrne's letter and message through Feduleev. Six questions, the German's work, our collaboration: what kind of materials we have concerning USSR and Comintern. China. Duke's agents. My conversation with Feduleev. Short letter to Styrne. Veronal. Slept well.

Wednesday 4 November 1925
Very weak. Called at 11 a.m. – Apology from Styrne – Friendliness. Work to 5 – later dinner. Later drive, walk. Work to 2 a.m. Slept without Veronal. Styrne gave previous protocol to sign. Began about Scotland Yard – Childs,
⁴⁷
Carter
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– Executive work. Basil Thompson.
⁴⁹
Boris Seid.
⁵⁰
Thoughts on Krasin.
⁵¹
Law regarding foreigners. Paris. Bunakov travelled to Paris. Long conversation about his trip. Protocol – My thoughts about Amtorg
⁵²
and Arcos.
⁵³
Wise.
⁵⁴
Broker, Urquhart.
⁵⁵
Possibility of agreement/terms – Russian bondholders. Divide and rule.
⁵⁶
My idea concerning an agreement with England Churchill, Baldwin, Birkenhead, Chamberlain, McKenna. Petroleum groups, Balfour, Marconi, financing of debts in USA – English unrest.
⁵⁷
Questions – again Hudson, Zhitkov, Ferson, Abaza.
⁵⁸
Questions about Persia. – Military attach矕S Faymonville,
⁵⁹
China, makes use of young English agent as an envoy in Russia. Very attentive about Berens. Existence of agents in Arcos and mixed companies. Feel at ease about my death. I see great developments ahead.

His sentence about ‘feeling at ease' in the context of his death, is not easily translated into English and can therefore be interpreted in at least two different ways. It could mean that he was now recon-ciled to his death, or it could mean that as a result of the past five days of co-operation and the absence of any further talk about carry-ing out his sentence, he was no longer so concerned about the threat.

It should also be acknowledged that whatever conclusions one draws from his ‘diary' and the OGPU's corresponding records, Reilly undoubtedly acted with courageous stubbornness during
the weeks he was incarcerated at the Lubyanka. Whatever else one could say about his actions and motivations during his life, his final weeks were a credit to his personal courage and resolve. The fact that his resolve was gradually eroded by the effective psychological techniques applied by the OGPU should not detract from this.

By 4 November the OGPU had concluded that Reilly had no more to tell. Equally, there was also the risk that the longer matters progressed, the greater the chance that the border shooting story would be exposed as a sham. Some of those involved in the Trust sting were of the view that Reilly should not have been arrested, as by doing so the whole operation risked immediate exposure. However, the decision to arrest Reilly and ultimately carry out his death sentence was almost certainly taken by Stalin himself.

Boris Gudz remembers that ‘stalin insisted that the Politburo's line was that under no circumstances was he to be released. He had to be shot, and quickly, because otherwise, eventually, rumours would start doing the rounds that we had him under arrest, foreign governments would find out about the whole thing, there would be all kind of diplomatic problems.' Stalin foresaw all these difficulties and said: We have to put an end to him once and for all – execute him!‘.
⁶⁰
Although the decision to carry out the sentence was an irreversible one made at the highest level, it would seem that the OGPU officers on the ground did, in fact, exercise a degree of discretion in how it was done. Boris Gudz was personally acquainted with the four officers deputed to carry out the order, and believes that:

There was something quite humane about the way they went about it. Reilly was driven out for walks in the open air of Sokolniki Park quite often, so this particular trip was just another one of his regular outings so far as he was concerned. Maybe he suspected something, because there were a lot of people there that day. Anyway, it was done in such a way that the end came suddenly. I know that for a fact – it was very sudden.
⁶¹

Grigory Feduleev, the OGPU agent who was in charge of the execution party, described in some detail the events which took place on the evening of 5 November 1925:

For the Deputy Head of KRO OGPU Comrade Styrne
REPORT
I write to inform you that in accordance with the instruction received from you, Comrades Dukis, Syroezhkin, myself and Ibrahim drove out of the GPU yard with No. 73 at precisely 8.00 p.m. on 5 November 1925. We set out in the direction of Bogorodsk. We arrived at the spot between 8.30 and 8.45. It was agreed that the driver, when we got to the spot, would repair a fault in the car, which he did. When the car stopped I asked the driver what was the matter. He replied that there was a blockage and it would take 5–10 minutes to put right. I then proposed to No. 73 that we stretch our legs. Once out of the car I walked on the right-hand side and Ibrahim on the left-hand side of No. 73, and Comrade Syroezhkin on the right hand side about ten paces from us. When we had gone thirty to forty paces from the car, Ibrahim, who had dropped back from us, fired a shot at No. 73, who let out a deep breath and fell to the ground without uttering a cry. In view of the fact that his pulse was still beating, Comrade Syroezhkin fired a shot into his chest. After waiting a little longer, ten to fifteen minutes, during which time the pulse finally stopped beating, we carried him to the car and drove straight to the medical unit, where Comrade Kushner and the photographer were already waiting. At the medical unit the four of us – myself, Dukis, Ibrahim and a medical orderly – carried No. 73 into the building indicated by Comrade Kushner. We told the orderly that this person had been hit by a tram, in any case his face could not be seen as the head was in a sack, and put him on the dissecting table. We then proceeded to take photographs. He was photographed down to the waist in a greatcoat,
⁶²
then naked down to the waist so that the wounds could be seen, then naked full length. After this he was placed in a sack and taken to the morgue attached to the Medical Unit, where he was put in a coffin and we all went home. The whole operation was completed by 11.00 p.m. on 5 November.

No. 73 was collected from the morgue of the OGPU medical unit by Com. Dukis at 8.30 p.m. on 9 November 1925 and driven to the prepared burial pit in the walking yard of the OGPU inner prison, where he was put in a sack so that the 3 Red Army men burying it could not see his face.
⁶³
Authorised agent of 4th section of the KRO OGPU Feduleev.

It is significant that Reilly's body was put in a sack so as to avoid anyone not involved in the operation from identifying him. Clearly they were still concerned with word getting out that Reilly had not in fact died on 28 September after all. The fact that he had been shot unawares, rather than by firing squad, as would have been the case had the sentence been carried out in 1918, can be seen as dispensation or even as a mark of respect.

This aside, the way of his death should not obscure the ultimate question of why he found himself entrapped in the OGPU's snare in the first place. Was Reilly's death ultimately brought about by his own vanity and lack of judgement? Had the king of the confidence men finally met his match, or were more sinister forces at play?

On 12 August 2001 the
Sunday Times
reported on the imminent publication of a new book by Edward Gazur under the headline, ‘Double Agent may have sent Ace of Spies to his Death'. According to the report, ‘Gazur contends that Orlov told him that Cmdr Ernest Boyce, an MI6 officer and colleague of Reilly's, played the key role in entrapping the spy. Boyce was a long-term double agent working for the Russians and was motivated solely by hard cash, said Gazur'.

The spy writer Nigel West was also quoted by the
Sunday Times
as saying, ‘The reason why this hasn't come out until now is that Orlov, who was not debriefed by British intelligence, never told anybody but Edward Gazur'. It is therefore puzzling to read in Gazur's book that:

In 1972, while Orlov and I were going over the Reilly affair, I was not concerned with the identity of the British intelligence officer who
had been compromised by the KGB [sic] as it was of no particular intelligence significance in the modern sense and consequently I never thought to ask the name of this individual. To the best of my recollection, Orlov never mentioned or volunteered the man's identity or if he did it is now long forgotten.
⁶⁴

If this is so, on what evidence is the charge against Boyce made? According to Gazur,

… based on additional facts that Orlov provided at the time combined with independent documentation, I was able to deduce the identity of this key player. Insomuch as Orlov never directly furnished this identity, I originally felt it prudent to do likewise; however, on further reflection I realised that SIS was already aware of the man's identity and so, as this information was historically relevant, there remained no valid reason to stay silent.
⁶⁵

Gazur gives no details of what these ‘additional facts' are or to the relevance of the ‘independent documentation', however. In the absence of such hard and fast evidence, the case against Boyce must remain no more than educated guesswork. This is not to say that the OGPU did not have the co-operation of SIS or former SIS operatives in their quest for Reilly. Before the entrapment operation could begin, a great deal of background research on Reilly must have been carried out. This is clear from OGPU documentation held on him. While a large proportion of the information on Reilly's personal background is erroneous, it seems clear that this could only be because he himself was the indirect source. It would seem a strong possibility that the information was obtained from an SIS or former SIS colleague, based in part on what Reilly had told that individual or individuals. It should also be borne in mind that these sources may not even have been aware that they were assisting the OGPU, as such back-ground information could well have been sought through cover organisations like the Trust and its supposed anti-Bolshevik agents.

Neither is it likely that Reilly himself volunteered this information about his alter-ego ‘Rosenblum' during his interrogation, for as we have already seen, he maintained to the very end that he was an ‘Englishman and Christian' by the name of Sidney George Reilly. To have done anything else would have destroyed what little hope he had of being extradited or swapped on the initiative of the British authorities. Where then could this erroneous information about his Rosenblum background have come from? A key clue lies in the following passage from his OGPU file:

His father was Mark Rosenblum, a doctor who worked as a broker and subsequently as a shipping agent. His mother was
née
Massino of impoverished noble stock. The Rosenblum family resided at house No. 15 on Alexsandrovsky Prospect.
⁶⁶

The view that 15 Alexandrovsky Prospect was Reilly's childhood home was the theory of one man, George Hill, who had witnessed Reilly breaking down, as a result of what he believed was an ‘emotional crisis', outside this house in February 1919. The document also contains most of the other old chestnuts Reilly told Hill about his past. Would it therefore be fair to conclude that Hill was knowingly or unknowingly an OGPU source? Notes written by Vladimir Styrne suggest that Hill, who by 1925 was no longer employed by SIS, may have been collaborating with the OGPU.
⁶⁷
During the Second World War, Hill was seconded to the Special Operations Executive, and posted, at Moscow's request, to the Russian capital to act as a liaison officer to the NKVD. He later came under suspicion following the 1963 defection of Kim Philby,
⁶⁸
although nothing conclusive appears to have come of this.

In addition to claims that Reilly's death was a result of betrayal, it has to be said that not everyone accepted that he was dead. Pepita never really came to terms with his death and continued to believe that he was being kept a prisoner.
⁶⁹
Neither in fact did his first wife Margaret believe in his death.
⁷⁰
Whilst their
sentiments might be put down to wishful thinking, others have also refused to believe he died for very different reasons. Robin Bruce Lockhart,
⁷¹
Edward Van Der Rhoer
⁷²
and Richard Spence
⁷³
have all articulated the view that Reilly defected to the Soviets in 1925 and that his death was a ‘put-up job' to cover his traces. Indeed, Lockhart devoted a whole book to propounding the thesis, although very little of the book actually relates directly to Reilly himself.
⁷⁴

The whole theory of Reilly's supposed defection rests entirely on one proposition, however – that he did not die at the hands of the OGPU on 5 November 1925. According to the account of Feduleev, Reilly's corpse was photographed in the sick bay of the OGPU's headquarters. This book contains one of the photographs taken that evening. Robin Bruce Lockhart declared that this picture is ‘clearly of someone other than Reilly' and that the ‘whole story suggests a faked death'.
⁷⁵
He later told this author that the OGPU photographs were clearly fakes as they showed a man, ‘who if not a Chinaman had Asiatic blood'.
⁷⁶
However, this is virtually the same description of Reilly that C himself gave in his cable to SIS Vologda on 29 March 1918,
⁷⁷
when he described his appearance as that of a ‘Jewish-Jap type'. Other official descriptions have also referred to his ‘oriental appearance'.
⁷⁸
Since Lockhart's dismissal of the mortuary photograph's authenticity, it has been subjected to forensic analysis by Kenneth Linge, a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography and Head of Photography at Essex Police Headquarters. A veteran of over 200 operational ‘scenes of crime' cases, Linge has been called upon to give expert testimony in criminal cases throughout the country, and has carried out extensive research into facial identification techniques.