by Andrew Cook
At the time of the investigation Nadine was living alone in a bungalow in the grounds of the Allenhurst Club, in New Jersey. Thomas Harrison, the clerk of the Allenhurst Club, described as a ‘loyal American’, had assisted the investigators and stated that Russians of good standing at the club would have nothing to do with either Weinstein or the Reillys.36
While Weinstein was staying at the club he handed in a business suit to be pressed. In it were found four papers, including ‘an elaborate type-written description, on a single piece of paper, of a new machine gun’.37 Thomas Harrison showed the papers to another guest at the club, Alfred Johnson, City Chamberlain in New York, suggesting that Weinstein should be investigated as the matter seemed suspicious. Suspicious or not, this, like much else in the investigation, failed to lead to anything concrete.
Turning again to the British authorities, the investigators made an appointment with Col. F.W Abbott at 165 Broadway, who was responsible for Russian contracts on behalf of the British government. He confirmed that he had met Reilly when the British Mission took over the management of Russian munitions contracts. Reilly had given him a great deal of trouble and implied that he had held up production to demonstrate that nothing could be done unless it went through him first. Abbott’s conclusion was that Reilly was ‘a clever schemer’,38 who was probably dishonest, although proof was so far lacking.
In search of that elusive proof, the decision was made to make a search of Reilly’s office in the hope of at last unearthing some hard evidence. The search was carried out by agents Hunnewell and Smith, accompanied by two Russian translators. They opened a large portmanteau (a leather travelling trunk) that Reilly had brought with him from Japan. Inside they found a bag concealed within a compartment, which contained two packets of letters. These were clearly exchanges of correspondence between him and Nadine dating back to when she was in the south of France and he was in Russia, Japan and New York. She signed her letters ‘Kisenka’, meaning kitten in Russian. The two bundles of letters were shown to the interpreters, who concluded that they were merely love letters and of little consequence.39 Hunnewell and Smith were, however, puzzled by her frequent references in the letters to his ‘system’ and how she hoped it would be successful. There was no indication anywhere to suggest what she meant or what the system was.40 Richard Spence has claimed that Reilly’s ‘system’ was an approach to business dealing gleaned from the arms dealer Basil Zaharoff.41 To Zaharoff, ‘le systeme was essentially the strategy of playing all sides off against each other in order to maximise profit. As we have already noted in Chapter Five, there is no concrete evidence that Reilly and Zaharoff ever met, let alone knew each other. His assertion must therefore remain at best speculation.
Hunnewell and Smith next turned their attention to Reilly’s safe, which was opened and the contents searched. What they found confirmed that he did indeed have ‘tremendous political backing in Russia’.42 They also found many ammunition contracts made by Reilly on behalf of the Imperial Russian government for ‘vast amounts’.43 Of particular interest were the records of cheques issued by Reilly and by office manager Upton Dale Thomas on Reilly’s behalf. Several had been written to the NewYork Club, where Reilly was a member. A cheque written to a Carl Lowie caught their eye as this showed that Reilly was transacting business with ‘someone who apparently has a German name’.44 Thomas, who had issued the cheque, volunteered that Lowie was in fact Danish. Also of interest were several large cheques, one for $6,000 made out to Weinstein and another for $2,000 made out to Jahalsky. Thomas stated that Weinstein’s cheque was in part settlement of a shipping commission, while Jahalsky’s was in part payment of money he had loaned to Reilly. A search ofWeinstein’s desk was equally fruitless.
Thomas was questioned about his knowledge of Reilly, Weinstein and Jahalsky. He told them that he knew very little about Reilly’s or Weinstein’s affairs and confirmed that he was also representing Jahalsky while he was away in Texas. The investigators found Thomas convincing and referred to him in their report as a ‘loyal American’.45 With little to show from their search at 120 Broadway, the investigators had to face the fact that their enquiry was running out of steam and out of time. The war in Europe was now drawing to its bloody conclusion as thousands of fresh American troops flooded into France, tipping the scales in favour of the Allies.
Of the three individuals the investigators initially focused upon, Reilly, Weinstein and Jahalsky, very little of worth was found that corroborated the view that they were either in sympathy with Germany or that they had aided or abetted the enemy in any way. Of the three, only Jahalsky would seem to have warranted any real cause for suspicion, although this in itself was founded on the flimsiest of circumstantial grounds. He was later arrested and closely questioned in Texas, but was released through lack of evidence.
The investigation’s inconclusive result also calls into question the reliability of those who testified against Reilly. To a greater or lesser extent, a good number were themselves up to their necks in the murky pool of war profiteering. Some, like Vauclain, would later justify their actions by claiming their involvement was motivated purely by a desire to shorten the war, or in the earlier days of the conflict to ‘keep America out’.46 Some had lost out to Reilly in the scramble for contracts, while others had been double-crossed or conned by him. Reilly’s perceived permissive lifestyle would equally have made him a marked man among the ‘respectable’ business community.
The allegations made by Norbert Rodkinson are the most significant, as they again raise the possibility that Reilly had married bigamously during the period 1904–1909, before he met Nadine. He could, of course, have heard about Margaret’s earlier appearance in St Petersburg while living in the city. There is also a possibility that Margaret was actually in St Petersburg at some point in 1916. She herself referred to having been in Russia for a period of time during the course of the war, a claim given some credence by Foreign Office records indicating that she was issued with a passport in January 1916.47 If she was there, her presence might be explained by her work for the Red Cross or in order to take up a position as a nanny in the city’s large English colony.48 The latter scenario could also explain how children might have made their way into Rodkinson’s story of the ‘deserted family’.
Rodkinson is also important in that he seems to be the direct source for the claims about Reilly’s past which were later recycled by others and which resurface in a number of intelligence files, including those of SIS. When subjected to scrutiny, Rodkinson hardly emerges as a particularly savoury or reliable witness. Although the investigators believed him to be an Englishman, he was certainly not born in Britain. In fact, he later claimed to be an American. A memorandum from the Office of the Counselor at the US State Department, shortly after the war had ended, casts Rodkinson in an entirely new light:49
26 November 1918
Copy to: ONI, MID, Justice Department
Subject: Norbert Mortimer Rodkinson, Care Renskorff, Lyon & Co.
From the information on file in this office it appears that he is a native American citizen, born at Baton Rouge, of Russian-Jewish and French-Creole parentage. He has no birth certificate but says it was destroyed in a fire. His wife’s maiden name was Polens and she was English of German parentage and doubtful morals.50 He is a man of pleasing personality and apparently some ability – a linguist, with intimate knowledge of Russian life and affairs. His business reputation is doubtful. When, in January 1918, he obtained a passport to visit the United States, it was marked ‘No Return’ by the British authorities, but a protest from Rodkinson caused this decision to be reversed – as he was, at that time, apparently connected with the Ministry of Information. On reaching America he applied for a position under the State Department, giving five references. Of these, only one vouches for him without reserve. Another can give no definite information about him. Two of the remaining three believe him to have been born in Germany, neither believe him to be on the square, and one say
s he would hesitate in employing him in a government position.
As for his private life – he has been married twice and was once stabbed by a ‘fille-de-joie’51 while visiting in Berlin. He asserts he has been employed by the British Intelligence Department. Of this there is no record.
More revealing is a Bureau of Investigation memorandum, written some three months earlier, based upon information supplied by Col. Proskey, who sparked off the Reilly investigation in April 1917. Agent R.W Finch of the Bureau’s New York City office states that:
Col. Proskey, of Flint & Co., 120 Broadway, NY, very confidential informant of this office, advises that he has been informed that a man by the name of Rodkinson, formerly employed by Flint & Co., desires to go on the proposed Russian Commission to Russia. He desires a letter of recommendation from Flint & Co. It is said that Rodkinson recently saw Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, who has promised to secure Rodkinson an audience with President Wilson.52
Proskey goes on to relate that Rodkinson had formerly represented Flint & Co. in Petrograd, during which period his house had been raided twice by the police. He also refers to Rodkinson’s ability to speak German and Russian and states that after his ‘troubles in Russia’ he returned to the US and joined the firm of Renskorff, Lyon & Co. What lay behind his troubles in Russia is not known for sure. There was certainly a great deal of substance to the concerns outlined by the US State Department and Bureau of Investigation. For example, in the 14th US Census held in 1920, Rodkinson appears at 159 West 78th Street, New York City, living with Corinne, his English-born wife, and their English maid, Maud Peddar. He declared in his Census return that he was born in Louisiana. However, there is no record in Louisiana of anyone of that name or similar being born in or around 1874, his declared year of birth.53
He first appears in US Immigration records on arrival in New York on 10 June 1903 aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, which sailed from Bremen, Germany. Over the next two decades he, his first wife Susanne and second wife Corinne, crop up repeatedly, criss-crossing the Atlantic. Prior to the First World War, all journeys to New York began in Germany. Although he always described himself as a US citizen, as we have seen, he was never able to prove that he was born in the USA. While his general statements about Reilly’s character are very much along the lines of a good many other people who knew him, his claim about Reilly being born in Bendzine and allegedly deserting his family in 1916 are very different matters. Whether Rodkinson’s statements were true or not, he was certainly not an unblemished witness.
The result of the investigation was, to put it kindly, inconclusive. Roger Welles, the director of Naval Intelligence, who had initiated the enquiry back in April 1917, probably best summed it up, when, two months after the end of the war, he wrote to the director of the Bureau of Investigation, Bruce Bielaski, enclosing a copy of the file containing the results of the investigation:
While the investigation disclosed nothing definite, there is a mass of interesting data that might be of use to your department should any of the individuals in question come under your observation. This office believes that these men are international confidence men of the highest class.54
On that rather resigned note, Welles signed off. In spite of everything he now knew about Reilly’s nefarious disposition, even he would have found it hard to comprehend that within months of joining the RFC, the ‘international confidence man’ would be walking into the London headquarters of SIS for a personal audience with C, the service’s legendary chief.
EIGHT
CODE NAME ST1
When Col. Abbott of the British Mission in New York first heard that Reilly had been seen wearing the uniform of a British officer he was ‘astonished’.1 Knowing of Reilly’s dubious form, he could not understand how such a blackguard had been permitted to join the British Army, let alone be awarded a commission. Another officer, Col. Gifford, had spoken with the equally incredulous Maj. Thwaites, who implied he would be making clear his views to London in no uncertain terms.2 Gifford assumed from this that Reilly would be recalled and probably asked to resign. In fact, nothing of the sort happened. Thwaites’ attitude is somewhat strange to say the least in light of the following passage from his 1932 autobiography:
In 1917 as a man of about thirty-eight he [Reilly] came to me in New York with the request that I should get him into the service. He felt that he ought to be doing his bit in the war… Reilly expressed the desire to join the Royal Air Force. I sent him to Toronto to the officer in command and he was promptly given a commission. But he was too valuable a find to be wasted as an Equipment Officer, to which department he was assigned. I reported to HQ at home that here was a man who not only knew Russia and Germany, but could speak almost perfectly at least four languages. His German was indeed flawless, and his Russian hardly less fluent.3
Thwaites goes on to relate how, as a result of his report to London, Reilly was summoned for an interview with C, ‘the mysterious chief of hush-hush work’, and then assigned work firstly in the Baltic and then East Prussia before being dispatched to Russia. It is no exaggeration to describe the comparison between this 1932 account and the reality of 1917 as breathtaking. Weinstein, who in 1932 is described as ‘one of the nicest Russians I know’,4 was at the time referred to as an undesirable character and former brothel keeper who was fraternising with the enemy.5 Reilly, who is also referred to in the most complimentary of terms in 1932 was, of course, given an even blacker report back in 1917.
Neither, it must be said, does Thwaites’ version of recruiting Reilly sit comfortably with the account given within the telegrams exchanged between SIS headquarters in London and the SIS New York station during February and March 1918. With Reilly dead and Thwaites’ original reports and telegrams safely out of the public domain, he probably saw little harm in taking credit for the recruitment of Reilly, who in 1932 was on the crest of a posthumous wave of celebrity as the great ‘Master Spy’, featured in strip cartoons and serials in England and on the continent.
Contrary to claims made by countless Reilly writers, there had been no relationship whatsoever between Reilly and SIS before 1918. This is made clear by C’s personal diary, which indicates that Reilly had been proposed as someone who could be helpful to the department by Maj. John Scale, latterly of the SIS station in Petrograd.6 C’s diary further reveals Scale to have been liaising with the British Army in Canada and preparing agents with Russian backgrounds or experience for work in Russia.7 Reilly had been brought to Scale’s attention shortly after his enlistment by Maj. Strubell, the officer who had dealt with his commission and to whom he had volunteered his services for work in Russia.
While it seems evident that Reilly offered his services as opposed to being approached, his motive for doing so is far from clear. To believe that he wished to leave his wife, his mistress and his comfortable life of prosperity in New York to ‘do his bit’8 in the war, as suggested by Thwaites, is naïve in the extreme. After all, Reilly had shown not the slightest interest in doing ‘his bit’ before. Time and again it has been demonstrated that he was not someone who was in any way motivated by patriotism or ideology, but was driven purely by greed and self-interest.
Richard Spence has suggested that Reilly’s departure from New York was a direct consequence of his supposed involvement in the sabotage campaign of Kurt Jahnke,9 and that his subsequent RFC enlistment in Toronto was somewhat earlier than indicated by his Military Service Record.10 From this, and Thwaites’ statement that Reilly ‘undertook work in Russia when Kerensky was dropping to his doom’,11 Spence develops the theory that Reilly went to Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution not after it. He pinpoints Reilly’s arrival in Russia as being in early August 1917, when a special RFC training wing arrived there. Although unable to locate a personnel roster, he clearly believes that Reilly was a member of this unit:
Reilly’s disappearance [from New York] neatly coincides with the arrival in Russia during early August of a special RFC training wing. This unit was
attached to the existing British military equipment mission under Gen. F.C. Poole. Reilly’s service record lists him as an equipment officer, and he and Poole were to cross paths in Russia in 1918 and 1919.12
However, Air Mechanic Ibbertson recorded in his diary a full list of officers and other ranks who served with him in this unit and Reilly’s name is conspicuous by its absence.13 Bearing in mind the fact that the Jahnke sabotage theory is at best built on a foundation of sand, it has to be said that the wider hypothesis put forward by Spence is not substantiated by hard evidence. On the contrary, recently discovered correspondence between Reilly and his mistress Beatrice Tremaine clearly indicates that during the period July–December 1917, Reilly was in fact resident in the city of Toronto, at the King Edward Hotel. Situated on King Street East, the hotel was not only Toronto’s most luxurious, but was situated close to the Royal Flying Corps No. 4 School of Military Aeronautics at the University of Toronto, where Reilly trained prior to his departure for England in December 1917.14
Reilly’s RAF service record (note next of kin ‘Mrs A. Reilly’).
If one is looking for persuasive coincidences, then surely the revolutionary events that were being played out in Russia during October and November 1917 are far worthier of consideration? Reilly initially enlisted with the RFC in Toronto on 19 October 1917, and was placed ‘on probation’ pending confirmation of a commission.15 Several weeks before, the Bolsheviks had achieved majorities in both the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets, thus heightening speculation that an armed insurrection might be on the cards. When the Bolshevik takeover actually took place on 7 November that year,16 Reilly was already undergoing training at the School of Military Aeronautics.17
