Andrew Cook - Ace of Spies

Reilly himself told numerous stories about his supposed origins. He was, at different times, the son of: an Irish sea captain; an Irish clergyman; or a Russian aristocrat. His first wife Margaret was under the impression that he was the son of a wealthy landowner and came from Poland or Russia. 7In his book, British Agent, Robert Bruce Lockhart, an envoy sent to Russia by Lloyd George in 1918, stated that Reilly’s parents came from Odessa, although he made no pronouncements upon Reilly’s own place of birth. 8Among the places in Ireland Reilly claimed to have been born were Clonmel in Tipperary and Dublin. 9While accompanying Brig.-Gen. Edward Spears on a business trip to Prague in 1921, however, Reilly was alleged to have lunched at the British Legation where he recounted stories of his childhood in Odessa. When asked by a Legation official why it was that his passport gave his place of birth as Tipperary, Reilly apparently replied, ‘There was a war and I came over to fight for England. I had to have a British passport and therefore a British birthplace, and, you see, from Odessa, it’s a long way to Tipperary!’ 10He told Pepita Bobadilla, whom he married in 1923, that being born in Ireland was a cover, and that he had actually been born and educated in St Petersburg, of an Irish merchant seaman and a Russian mother. 11

Not only was Reilly’s place of birth a mystery, but so too was his age. In 1931 Pepita Bobadilla stated in the first edition of her biographical account of Reilly that he was born in 1872. 12When she published a longer version in book form, his year of birth became 1874. 13Robert Bruce Lockhart stated that when they first met, Reilly was in his forty-sixth year, indicating 1873 as his year of birth. 14

Marriage certificates, immigration documents and passports prior to 1917 equally point to 1873 as being his year of birth. 15From the date of his recruitment into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in late 1917, however, Reilly gives 1874 as his year of birth on all official documents. 16It has been suggested that the main motivation for these conflicting stories was a desire to protect his family, as he was engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power, and was thus anxious for their safety should this ever become known. 17The more we discover about Reilly’s real motivations and behaviour in the ensuing years, however, the more we are led to an alternative theory, namely that he had little or no interest in his family or their fate after he left them, and that instead he was more concerned with masking his Jewishness. 18

If Reilly had actually written an autobiography, 19or authorised a biography, the story told would almost certainly have closely resembled that which appears in Robin Bruce Lockhart’s Ace of Spies. This is hardly surprising, given the fact that a significant part of this book is based upon the anecdotal stories Reilly told his friends, colleagues and acquaintances, particularly Capt. George Hill.

In essence, Ace of Spies is Reilly as he would like to have been seen by posterity. According to this story, he was born into a minor aristocratic landowning Russian family, in or near Odessa, and christened Georgi. His father was apparently a minor aristocrat and a colonel with connections to the court of the Tsar himself. Georgi and his older sister led a privileged life, being educated by tutors. To retain an air of mystery around this story, Reilly was always careful never to divulge the family’s name. At the age of sixteen, Georgi embarked on a three-year course in chemistry at the university in Vienna, where he made the acquaintance of Dr Rosenblum, his mother’s doctor. Here Georgi was a great success, excelling in his studies and living a somewhat debauched life to the full. He also became involved in a socialist political group which led to his arrest by the Imperial Russian Secret Police, the Ochrana. His family used their connections to secure his release, by which time his mother, who had been unwell for some time, had died. It was on the day of his release from prison that his uncle revealed to the assembled family that Georgi was in fact a bastard, the offspring of an adulterous relationship between his mother and Dr Rosenblum, the Jewish doctor from Vienna, who had treated her.

Unable to come to terms with the shame of being a bastard, he disowned his family, adopted the name Rosenblum, faked his death in Odessa Harbour and stowed away on a boat bound for South America. For three years he went from job to job, before being recruited as a cook by three British army officers who were to lead an expedition to explore the Amazonian jungle. All went well until natives attacked the party. In typical melodramatic style, Rosenblum grabbed an officer’s pistol and with expert marksmanship fought off the natives single handed. As it turned out, one of the three officers, Maj. Fothergill, was a member of the British Secret Service and rewarded him with a cheque for £1,500, a passage to Britain, a British passport and a job with the Secret Service. As compelling a story as this is, it totally fails to stand up when subjected to scrutiny.

Over and above the fact that the British Secret Service did not exist in the 1890s, birth records kept by the State Archives of Odessa Region contain no mention of a boy by the name of Georgi whose father was a colonel, for either 1872, 1873 or 1874. 20No Dr Rosenblum is listed in the Vienna City Censuses during the 1890s, 21and neither the University of Vienna nor the Vienna Technical University have any record of a student from Odessa, born in the relevant time period, studying chemistry. 22Furthermore, newspaper and archive records in both Britain and Brazil fail to mention any Amazonian expeditions during the time period in question, neither are any references to be found to British army officers or to a Maj. Fothergill. 23Such findings are hardly surprising, for Reilly’s family were neither Russians nor aristocrats.

Abram Rosenblum was born in the Grodno gubernia around 1820. 24He and his wife, Sarah, were the first of their family to leave Poland to settle in the Kherson gubernia, in which Odessa is located, in the early 1850s. His elder brother, Jankiel (Jacob), 25married Hana (Henrietta) Bramson 26in Lomza in the Bialystok province in 1840. Their sons Zeev (Vladimir) and Gersh (Grigory) were born in the province in 1843 and 1845 respectively. 27Grigory married Perla (Paulina), a reputedly attractive girl some seven years younger than himself, who hailed from a well-to-do family in Kherson. By all accounts their marriage was ‘strained’. According to later family trees, they had three children, Mariam (Maria), Shlomo (Salomon – the future Sidney Reilly) and Elka (Elena). 28Family speculation, however, raises the possibility that Grigory might not have been Salomon’s father. According to one account, Paulina had an adulterous liaison with a close relative of Grigory’s who was more of her own age. Another alludes to Paulina leaving her husband and returning to the south. Whether Paulina and Grigory were reconciled at a later date is uncertain. These rumours perhaps suggest that although the story Reilly told George Hill about his origins is essentially fiction, it would be wrong to dismiss every aspect of it as a fabrication. The rumour of Paulina’s infidelity certainly seems to strike a chord with the part of the story in which Georgi finds out that he is the product of an adulterous affair between his mother and Dr Rosenblum. If this speculation has any substance and Grigory was not, in fact, Salomon’s father, then who was?

Grigory’s brother Vladimir has been put forward as a possible candidate, largely, it would seem, on the basis that he was reputedly a doctor. A serious dispute apparently arose between the two brothers during this approximate period, which ultimately led to them breaking off contact with one another, and thus giving credence to this theory. Vladimir was, of course, older than Grigory, which does not fit in with the plausible view that the father was of a similar age to Paulina. If, as we have already seen, there was no Dr Rosenblum in Vienna, was there possibly one in the vicinity of Odessa who might be another candidate for Salomon’s natural father?