Reilly Ace of Spies

Not a bump - a genuine post regarding Robin Bruce Lockhart's biography: Ace of Spies

Ace of Spies
By Robin Bruce Lockhart
1967

Ace of Spies is the biography of Sidney Reilly, a real life espionage agent who lived at the turn of the century and disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the fledgling Soviet Union in 1925. He was, of course, celebrated in a television series, Reilly: Ace of Spies, starring Sam Neill. I remember being very confused by the series and not particularly excited by it. I was only 12 years old mind. Recently I saw a copy of Robin Bruce Lockhart’s book in a second hand shop – with Neill pitched on the cover and Ian Fleming’s endorsement: “Bond is just a piece of nonsense… He’s no Sidney Reilly” – and thought I’d give it a go and see if my youthful memories were exact.

Well, as much as I’d like to say it was a great read and very informative, unfortunately I can’t. It’s a very turgid book which spends a lot of time relating the politics of the day and the various machinations of Red and White Russian protagonists during the civil wars which blighted the early history of the Soviet Union. There’s very little in the way of tension. Among it all Sidney Reilly cuts an aloof, almost detached figure seemingly involved in the business of spies and spying for pure personal gain, either financial or spiritual.

The subject of the book spends much of his time in various failing romantic relationships and unsuccessful business ventures. His first successes, both personally and publicly, come when he is a young man, when the rejection of his Russian family bites his soul, forces him to fend alone and twists his conscience forever. Reilly is an interesting figure at this point, altering his identity with chameleon-like ease and imbibing himself with the upper classes of British and other societies. Clearly the gentleman spy and an attractive one at that, he ceases to be interesting once he becomes part of the establishment, a moment that coincides with his middle age. Here his liaisons take on an element of desperation and they lack the success and coordination of other exploits. The prose turns as dull as the subject. The only thing to liven it up is the author’s near hysterical exaggeration of Bolshevism's murderous culture. While some of the grisly methods were probably utilized by the grim faces of the Cheka torture-masters, Lockhart seems to have inherited Reilly’s hatred of the regime and hardly gives a balanced opinion. The counter revolutionaries are an insipid bunch, but he writes about them in flowery tones, constantly reminding us how impressed Churchill was by Savinkoff and only once hinting at his alcoholism and cowardice.

This all seems rather odd as the book starts with a brilliant intrigue: it is 1917, wartime Germany and a staff car breaks down on a deserted road, the driver kills his passenger (a Colonel in the Kaiser’s High Command) promptly impersonates him and, in disguise, infiltrates a secret meeting of field marshals. The driver, of course, is Sidney Reilly and the scene sets a good pace and has ‘espionage’ written all over it. There are a couple more incidents in Reilly’s burgeoning career, when he is stationed in Persia and France, which also have that brand of the fantastic which must have caught Fleming’s attention. These brief insights into what might be termed ‘popular spy craft’ are few and far between. Mostly Reilly’s life is one of letters, clandestine meetings and secret alliances. He spends a lot of time traveling across the Atlantic, the Baltic or the Mediterranean often to no avail and is frequently more occupied with his business opportunities and losses than with working for British Intelligence.

The secret service itself comes across as a boy’s club and the roster of names are all knighted, peers of the realm or military figures, all the established upper class type. Lockhart’s father was a member of this set and served as a service representative in Russia, hence his association with Reilly. The author has certainly done his research, identified by the dull exposition of the politics and the word for word copy of various private and public letters, but you wonder if the more brilliant aspects of Reilly’s exploits are not those he “as a boy used to listen to entranced…” and are basically elaborate bed time stories retold by doting relatives and friends. It is telling he hardly mentions Reilly’s work in Germany during the First World War, the very point we enter the story and the most exciting moment in the whole book.

There is much detail in the book’s slim confines, probably too much. It is a difficult read with little to spur the reader on. The final two chapters which tell differing versions of Reilly’s last days from official and unofficial accounts are probably the most affecting. Being shorter, succinct and slightly less well-structured they give an impression of the chaos of the counter revolution movement and the desperation both of Reilly to pit the downfall of the Soviets and the Cheka to catch a man they consider a dangerous spy. Reilly was born in Odessa, the illegitimate offspring of an aristocratic mother and a Jewish doctor. We learn he was Christened Georgi, but we are not told his surname, only that he took the name of his father, Rosenblum, when cast aside by the grieving family who raised him. All of this would surely have marked him out for special observation by the secret police, even if he wasn’t already known to them.

The British Secret Service in Russia hatched a plan in 1918 to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Reilly, and to a lesser extent Lockhart Sr., were its instigators, but it was less well thought out than one might expect, relying on the goodwill and cooperation of the White Russians. While the intrigues surrounding it have a whiff of reality, it is in its demise we really get to the truth of Reilly: ultimately the ‘Lockhart Plot’ was foiled by Dora Kaplan’s independent assassination attempt on Lenin. Serendipity, coincidence, call it what you will, the Cheka took full advantage and went on what the author describes as a killing spree, which found Lockhart narrowly escaping a death sentence in prison and Reilly ultimately fleeing the country. They never even came close to a counter revolution, yet it seems to have fueled Reilly’s life from here on and the repetitious nature of events from this point in the book dulls the imagination.

When Reilly is persuaded to cross the Finnish border into Russia, we know he’s never going to return and the real mystery is why this sometimes charming, sometimes sinister man should take such a risk. We can only assume he, like many others of the intelligentsia, was susceptible to the false information provided by the Bolsheviks. In a world lacking global media, hope was overtaking reality, because there was no reality to be found, only mystery and hearsay among muddled facts, much like Robin Bruce Lockhart’s book, I suppose.

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