Ace of Spies (7 page)

Sigmund Rosenblum married Margaret Thomas five months after her husband’s sudden death.

In terms of manufacturing a new identity, who better to assist than William Melville? Prior to Sigmund and Margaret’s marriage, Melville had found a suitable Irish identity for Rosenblum to use – Sidney Reilly. A comprehensive search through Irish records of birth from their inception in 1864 (when the civil registration of births, deaths and marriages began in Ireland) found only one Sidney Reilly in the whole of Ireland.
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Interestingly, the child died soon after birth. More intriguingly, research conducted during the spring of 2003 into the family tree of William Melville revealed that his first wife Catherine’s maiden name was Reilly. According to family records, her father came from the same Mayo village as Michael Reilly, the father of the deceased infant Sidney.
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The provision of a new identity was not something Melville would have provided for any common-or-garden informer who was simply supplying émigr󠃩 ‘tittle-tattle’.

In late August 1898, according to Margaret, Sigmund went to Spain for an unspecified period, well supplied with money.
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Spain was a major terrorist centre during the 1890s and had witnessed a number of notable outrages. The previous August the Spanish Prime Minister, Canovas del Castillo, had been assassinated in Santa Agueda by the anarchist Angiolillo and in July 1896 twelve people had been killed in a bomb explosion in Barcelona. The Spanish government had made specific proposals to the British government for closer police co-operation to combat anarchism and had also referred a number of requests for action or further investigation to Melville through the appropriate diplomatic channels.
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While Sigmund was away in Spain, Margaret ‘liquidated’ the Manor House in Kingsbury.
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Initially acquired as an out-of-town retreat for Hugh Thomas, the house was now surplus to their requirements. On his return from Spain, Sigmund settled into a life of leisure at 6 Upper Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, typically giving the address a more prestigious tone by re-styling it 6 Upper Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park, London.
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Ever the gambler, he also took to horse racing (apparently with disastrous consequences) and set about enlarging his collection of objets d’art, at Margaret’s expense.
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Robin Bruce Lockhart has stated that within a few months of their marriage, Margaret sold 6 Upper Westbourne Terrace, putting the proceeds into a joint bank account and together they moved to St Ermin’s Chambers in Caxton Street, Westminster.
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The house was the property of the church commissioners, from whom Hugh Thomas had leased it since 1891, and Margaret could not possibly have sold it. Church records show that the Rosenblums moved out of the property in June 1899 and that a new lease was given to the incoming tenant, Ormonde Crosse.
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Rather than heading for the bright lights of Westminster, documentary evidence strongly suggests an alternative scenario. According to Foreign Office passport records, a passport was issued in the name of S.G. Reilly on 2 June 1899, shortly before their departure from Upper Westbourne Terrace.
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Margaret
also alluded to the issuing of a passport in a meeting she had in Brussels with the British vice-consul on 29 May 1931 when she was attempting to renew her current passport.
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According to the minute of the meeting, she stated that a passport had been issued in the name of ‘Sidney Reilly and wife’ in 1901. Study of the original document clearly suggests that the officials considering the matter questioned this claim. The date 1901 has been underlined and a question mark placed by it. This scepticism is born out by an examination of Foreign Office passport records that indicate the only passport issued to an S.G. Reilly between 1898 and 1903 was on 2 June 1899 (No. 38371). Although the 1899 register does not refer to Margaret, she may have travelled with him on the same document. Prior to the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914, passports were single sheets of paper, without photographs, and were issued for single journeys. It was common practice for a wife travelling with her husband to have her name entered on a passport issued under her husband’s name.

The consensus of other Reilly writers is that they left England for the Far East between 1900 and 1902. Michael Kettle places their departure ‘about 1900’,
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whereas Robin Bruce Lockhart has Reilly playing a role in Holland in the Boer War, spying on Dutch aid bound for South Africa. When the Boer War ended in 1902, Lockhart states, Reilly was sent to Persia to report on the possibilities of oil exploration in the area, and was eventually sent to Port Arthur in Manchuria around 1903. He also writes that Margaret stayed in England
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while Reilly was away on these missions, taking to drink in his absence. Jay Robert Nash makes similar claims to Lockhart in terms of missions in Holland and Persia, although he asserts that Reilly was at this time in the employ of NID, the Naval Intelligence Department.
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While Margaret’s own recollections refer to proceeding to China in 1901,
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this does not necessarily imply they went directly from England to China. Although she does not give a specific date for the liquidation of the Manor House in Kingsbury, we know that this occurred after August 1898. Her account also claims that
following the liquidation Reilly wished to return to Russia due to ‘homesickness’, and that in 1901 they changed their name to Reilly
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and proceeded to China. It therefore follows that they left England in June 1899 for Russia, and thence to China.

The timing of their departure from these shores was opportune to say the least, as they left at the very same time as a top-level Russian investigation was in progress in London. On 17 April, Petr Rachkovsky, chief of the Paris Ochrana, had written to William Melville at Scotland Yard seeking information concerning individuals residing in London who were ‘without any doubt’ involved in a massive rouble-counterfeiting ring operating in London. He concluded by:

… warmly recommending my friend Mr Gredinger, Deputy State Prosecutor in St Petersburg, who is leaving for London tomorrow, with the aim of taking charge of this case. It would be much appreciated if you could help Mr Gredinger out with whatever he might need and do everything in your power to make his job easier. My friend, will refund you… all of the costs which you have incurred in collecting information.
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This was no amateur racket. The counterfeiters had a contact inside the currency-printing firm of Bradbury and Wilkinson, and the contact obtained a plate that was copied by an engraver. The counterfeiters then carried out the printing themselves using their own ink and paper. Rosenblum’s name was not initially connected with the investigation. It emerged when attention turned to how the forged money was being shipped out of the country.

According to Ochrana records, Rosenblum had an interest in the Polysulphin Company, in Keynsham, Somerset.
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The factory produced a host of chemical products including soap, which it exported abroad. This was an ideal vehicle for smuggling money and indeed other commodities. Although the file itself is now incomplete, and therefore inconclusive, Polysulphin must be considered a prime suspect in terms of the counterfeiters’ distribution network.

In order to perpetrate such a scheme, an expert knowledge of printing inks would have been required. As a chemist with some experience in this line, Rosenblum may therefore have played a wider role outside that of mere distribution. Once Rosenblum’s role was uncovered, Melville would have had good grounds to fear that his connection with Scotland Yard might prove a severe embarrassment if discovered by Gredinger and the Ochrana. The safest thing all round would clearly be for Rosenblum’s planned departure to be brought forward post haste with Melville’s assistance. With his new passport and new identity, Rosenblum and his wife were thus able to leave the country, and head for probably the last place the Ochrana would think of looking for them – Russia. It would not be the first, or indeed the last time that he would disappear just as the net was tightening around him.
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The coat of arms on Rosenblum’s letter-head incorporated the double-headed Russian eagle and shamelessly appropriated the Thomas family motto ‘no faith in the world’.

L
eaving London behind, Margaret and Sidney Reilly proceeded to Russia in June 1899 where they remained until the autumn of the following year. During the summer of 1900, Reilly travelled around the oil-rich Caucasus, visiting the ports of Petrovsk and Baku while Margaret remained in St Petersburg. It is noteworthy that during these months, War Office records note that: ‘Mr Stevens (at the British Consulate in Baku) has an agent who travels between Petrovsk, Baku and along the T.C. Railway and reports to Stevens by word of mouth’.
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Whatever the nature of the information being supplied, it would appear that it was of sufficient interest to warrant payment being made to the informant. The scenario certainly fits Reilly’s ‘modus operandi’, although there is no positive proof that the informant was actually Reilly.

In September 1900, the Reillys made their way to Constantinople and took a ship to Port Said in Egypt. Here the SS
Rome
departed for Colombo, where they again changed ships for the final stage of their journey to Shanghai via Penang, Singapore and Hong Kong. After several months in Shanghai, they proceeded to Manchuria, arriving in Port Arthur during the early months of 1901.
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Life in Port Arthur was not only primitive by comparison to the one they had led in England and Russia, it was also at the very epicentre of a simmering regional conflict of interest between Russia and Japan, which before too long would break out into open hostility. Located at the tip of the Liaotung peninsula, the port held great strategic significance, due to its commanding position on the Gulf of Chihli, which gave access to the Chinese capital of Peking. In 1898 the Chinese had, by way of a lease, conceded the peninsula to the Russians, with the greatest of reluctance and much to the chagrin of the Japanese. The Russians had renamed the Port of Lushun Port Arthur and made it the base for their Pacific fleet. The harbour was, without doubt, the perfect defensive location, shielded by ‘the tiger’s tail’, a natural deep-lying peninsula. This natural fortification was further reinforced by what was reputedly the strongest fortress in China.

To the Japanese, Port Arthur was a token of Russia’s desire for naval supremacy in the region, an aspiration that they, as an emerging naval power themselves, could not countenance. On the economic front, the two powers were equally at loggerheads in that they were both competing for the same unexploited natural resources in Manchuria and Korea. In the same way that Japan saw Russia’s annexation of the Liaotung peninsula as an ominous sign in the military and naval sphere, the continued expansion of Russia’s railway empire into Manchuria raised economic danger signals for the Japanese. While trying to contain Russian expansion by diplomacy, the Japanese were at the same time preparing for the contingency of war.

Reilly entered this cauldron of intrigue determined to make the most of the business opportunities that beckoned. At first sight, his reported activities in Port Arthur seem to have little or no logical connection. Records, for example, indicate his involvement in lumber trading, real-estate speculation and shipping. Closer inspection, however, reveals that all these ventures were effectively linked by the mutual involvement of one Moisei Akimovich Ginsburg.

Ginsburg, born on 5 December 1851 in Radzivilov in the Ukraine, had long-standing associations with the Rosenblum family. His early life was quite typical of any Jew in the Russian Empire. Born into poverty, he started work at the age of eleven by writing out labels at the local customs house. At fifteen he went to the seaport of Odessa from where he proceeded to Germany, England and America. Having saved $90 working in San Francisco, he bought a third-class ticket for a ship heading for China. On the way the ship docked at the Japanese port of Yokohama, where Ginsburg took an immediate liking to Japan and decided to stay there. By 1877 he had set up his own trading company in Yokohama supplying ships sailing in Japanese waters. He soon gained a reputation as ‘the only Russian in Japan who knew perfectly the local conditions’.
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The Russian Pacific fleet, then based at the port of Vladivostok, was only in its early stages of development and its facilities struggled to supply the fleet with even the barest of essentials. Ginsburg therefore stepped in and within a few short years had become indispensable to the Russian navy.

Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, who raised the Russian tricolour over Port Arthur in 1898, recalled Ginsburg as a ‘benefactor on whom the entire Pacific navy dpended… everything – from a pin to an anchor, and from rivets to a smoke stack – we got everything from Ginsburg’.
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It was here, at the new base of the Russian Pacific fleet, that M. Ginsburg & Co. set up its new head office on Port Arthur’s main thoroughfare. The import-export company now had branches in Nagasaki, Yokohama, Chemulpo, Odessa and Singapore, and an annual turnover of over 1 million roubles.