Ace of Spies**
Israeli historian Benny Morris searched the official
files of Britain’s MI-6 and Russia’s KGB (now FSB) and numerous other sources
to produce a credible biography of Sidney Reilly, perhaps the foremost spy of
the early 20th Century. Born Sigmund Rosenblum in the early 1870’s
either in Ukraine or Poland and by 1899 Rosenblum, under the auspices of
Scotland Yard, becomes Sidney Reilly. From there he becomes the stuff of
legends admired by James Bond’s Ian Flemming and the subject of a 1983 Thames
TV (and shown on PBS) series starring Sam Neill.
Reilly turns up in Port Arthur at the time of the
Japanese attack on the Russian navy in 1905 and in 1911 he is in Persia to
facilitate the British takeover of their oil fields giving Britain control of
the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later British Petroleum.
His most famous escapade was being the key instigator
of the Lockhart plot, where he and the British representative Robert Lockhart
in the pay of MI-6 attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik government of Lenin and
Trotsky. Their plot is foiled by the Cheka and both of them escape by the skin
of their teeth. Thereafter we see Reilly at the Paris Peace Conference. Reilly
returns to Russia to provide intelligence on the southern front where he
accurately predicts the fall of the White armies. Unable to stay away from
Russia Reilly is lured back to Russia in 1925 by the Cheka and it is there
where he meets his ultimate demise.
Along the way we see Reilly as a successful
businessman, arms dealer and bon vivant around town. He spends money as fast as
he makes it and has numerous and sometimes simultaneous affairs. If a anything
he makes the fictional James Bond look celibate.
Reilly is in the middle of world-shaking events, and
he was for many years under the control of MI-6’s Mansfield Cumming, known as
“C” and the model for Flemming’s “M”. He meets Churchill and works with the
infamous arms dealer Basil Zaharoff.
Because this book is part of Yale’s Jewish Lives
series Morris notes Reilly’s near complete withdrawal from the Judaism of his
family and also how he suffers from the antisemitism of upper-class Britain.
Despite his new name, most understood him to be Jewish. My one real criticism
of the book is that it bogs down at times, and it becomes too academic.
Nevertheless, it encouraged me to rewatch the “Ace of Spies” series on demand.
**With apologies to Robin Bruce Lockhart
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