In the world history of secret wars, this "knight of the cloak and dagger" still remains a mysterious and ambiguous personality. Therefore, even the researchers of his biography preface many episodes of his life with the words “possible”, “according to some sources”, “it is not excluded”. The name of this British intelligence agent is Sidney George Reilly.
Although the hero of our story, who was born in 1873 in Odessa, claimed that his father, an Irishman by nationality, was a captain of the merchant fleet, it is reliably known that the boy was born thanks to the efforts of the famous doctor Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum and his mistress Polina. To the credit of Aesculapius, the bastard Solomon, he did not abandon to the mercy of fate, but gave up the family of his cousin 6 for education.
From cooks to scouts
How Solomon's childhood passed, history is silent, but after being arrested for participating in a student revolutionary circle in 1892, Rosenblum moved to Brazil, where, in order to get a livelihood, he took on any hard work: loading logs in the port, building roads, collects fruits on plantations. And here the young man was incredibly lucky - he managed to get a job as a cook in a British expedition, which, however, did not do any scientific research, as it consisted entirely of British intelligence officers "Secret Intelligence Service" (SIS).
From that moment on, a new employee replenishes its ranks, who, upon arrival on the shores of Foggy Albion, having received British citizenship, changes his name to Sydney, and after marrying a rich pastor's widow, takes her last name Reilly. Apparently, the ex-Rosenblum was doing well in the new field, since in 1897 Lieutenant Reilly was appointed assistant military attaché to the British embassy in Russia. And six years later, he was sent on an inspection trip to Port Arthur, where, on the eve of the war, he sketched a plan for the fortifications of the Russian army and sold it profitably to the Japanese. For the next ten years, Reilly continued to work on the banks of the Neva, officially coordinating the supply of weapons to Russia and overseeing contracts for the restoration of the tsarist navy after losses in the Russo-Japanese War. What did he do as a scout during this period, alas,is not known for certain. Most likely, having solid connections, Reilly collected information about the military potential of a potential enemy.
Hunting for Latvian live bait
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After two revolutions and the outbreak of the Civil War, agent ST-1 (that was Reilly's working pseudonym) was first spotted in the north of Soviet Russia, in Arkhangelsk, where the Allied military mission was located and where, according to some reports, he secretly took out the head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky. … Then the spy finds himself in the south, at the headquarters of Denikin's White Guard army. And, finally, he decides to move to active actions to overthrow the Soviet regime. It is difficult to say how effective the work of the "fighter of the invisible front" was before, but in Russia he suffered a complete fiasco.
In early 1918, the head of the British diplomatic mission, Sir Bruce Lockhart, arrived in Moscow. His task was to convince the Soviet government to continue the war with Germany. However, it was clear from the very beginning of the negotiations that they were doomed to failure. The mission included a member of the SIS, Captain Cromie, the naval attaché of the now defunct embassy in Petrograd, who is still on its territory, who was tasked with calculating the possibility of organizing a conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet government. And Sydney Reilly, who was seconded to Russia, became his right hand.
In June 1918, they came from the capital to Petrograd and two representatives of the anti-Soviet underground, the Latvian shooters Schmidken and Bredis, came into contact with Kromi. Subsequently, Lockhart wrote in his memoirs: “Latvians were the only soldiers in Moscow. Whoever controlled the Latvians controlled the capital. The Latvians were not Bolsheviks, they served the Bolsheviks because they had nowhere to go. They were foreign mercenaries. Foreign mercenaries serve for money. Cromie and Reilly immediately appreciated the possibility of using the Latvians as the main force in the coup, especially since they were guarding the Kremlin, as well as other state institutions, and gave them a letter of recommendation to Lockhart.
So, from the beginning of August, preparations began for an armed uprising in Moscow. Moreover, the commander of the regiment of Latvian riflemen Berzin Lockhart not only donated 1 million 200 thousand rubles, but also introduced him to other participants in the conspiracy - the American diplomat Poole and the French consul Grenard. And they, in turn, informed Berzin about the main liaison with the anti-Soviet underground, the former assistant to the American trade attaché Kolomatiano, who was hiding under the name of Serpovsky.
The paradox of this situation was that there was no conspiracy. It was an elaborate operation of the Chekists, who had been eyeing Lockhart and his company for a long time. After the murder of the chairman of the Cheka Uritsky in Petrograd and the attempt on Lenin's life, it was decided to transfer the operation to the final stage. Lockhart, Poole and Grenard were arrested and subsequently expelled from Russia. Cromie put up armed resistance during the arrest and was killed. Kolomatiano was also taken into custody, and the papers found in his possession made it possible to eliminate the entire network of conspirators in Moscow and Petrograd. But Reilly managed to escape, and after a while he, sentenced in absentia to death in Russia, appeared in London as an adviser to the Minister of War, Winston Churchill.
Operation "Trust"
Apparently, the failure so angered Reilly that the fight against the Bolsheviks became his credo. “Oh God, will the people of England never understand? Germans are human beings; we may even be defeated by them. Here, in Moscow, the archenemy of the human race is growing and gaining strength … At any cost, this abomination, which originated in Russia, must be destroyed … - Reilly wrote in his diary and soon turned from words to deeds.
Having come into contact with another anti-Soviet terrorist Socialist-Revolutionary Boris Savinkov, in 1920 he took part in raids on Belarus by the "rebel army" of Bulak-Balakhovich, two years later he was organizing an attempt on the life of members of the Soviet delegation during a conference in Genoa. And then the Kremlin decided: that's enough, it's time to end Reilly.
Thus began Operation Trust, the purpose of which was to oppose White émigré organizations, such as, for example, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) in general, and setting a trap for Reilly in particular. Surprisingly, Reilly, who considered himself an experienced intelligence officer, did not learn a lesson from the arrest of his colleague Boris Savinkov, whom the Chekists lured from abroad by creating the mythical anti-Soviet organization Syndicate.
This is how the "Monarchist Organization of Central Russia" was born. More precisely, it existed, but the Chekists managed to take control of its work and place their people in leading positions. The monarchists' search for connections with foreign countries did not go unnoticed by the White émigré organizations. It was their representatives who helped the interested Reilly to meet at the beginning of September 1925 in the Finnish Helsingfors with the “emissary” of the ICRC Yakushev. The Chekist played his role so convincingly that the spy believed in the existence of an illegal counter-revolutionary organization operating under the guise of a commercial commercial institution. After a short thought, he decides to visit the USSR to meet with the leadership of the "Trust". And on the night of September 25, it crosses the border through the "window" on the border river Sestra.
In the morning he arrives in Leningrad, and a day later, at a dacha outside Moscow, the representative of the SIS had a meeting with a group of “prominent figures of the Trust”. Reilly felt like a fish in water. He spoke of the inevitable fall of Soviet power, persuaded the audience to spy for British intelligence, and suggested organizing the extraction of money for anti-Soviet activities by stealing art treasures from museums and selling them abroad. And in the evening, Reilly was already reflecting on his mistake in the cell of the OGPU internal prison on Lubyanka. Hopes that his owners would help him get out of the prison were dashed after he learned that "two unknown smugglers were killed while crossing the Soviet-Finnish border." This was done in order to continue the operation, and the "Trust" existed for two more years.
And Reilly, in accordance with the earlier sentence, was shot on November 5, 1925.