If there is a spy on which rivers of ink have been spilled, it is without a doubt Sidney Reilly.
Ian Fleming himself, author of the series of novels starring James Bond and himself a member of the British secret services for a time, acknowledged that in building the personality of the famous spy he was inspired in part by Sidney Reilly, whose adventures were well known in England, both in life and especially after his mysterious death, when his partner in adventures R.H. Bruce Lockhart published his memoirs in 1932, in which he recounted both the adventures that both spies had shared, and those that Reilly had starred in before meeting him.
The problem is that the only source for telling the extraordinary story of the period not personally lived by Lockhart was Reilly himself, who has subsequently been shown to have 'embellished', to put it mildly, his biography. However, the verified part of his life is enough to make him a fascinating figure, although some episodes are far from being an example.
It is known today that Reilly was not of Irish origin, as he claimed, but that he was born in Russia around 1873 and that his name was Sigmund Rosenblum. Some of Bond's traits are shared with Reilly:success with women, adventurous spirit, taste for luxury...
However, his success with women, whom he did not hesitate to seduce to access the secrets he sought to reveal, led Reilly to marry four times... almost always forgetting to divorce before the previous one, which caused him to be accused of bigamy on more than one occasion. His first wife was married to a Protestant minister when she became Reilly's lover. Her husband died six months later under mysterious circumstances, curiously a week after appointing her wife as heir, to whom he bequeathed £800,000 at the time. Four months later the widow married Sidney Reilly.
His taste for luxury required large amounts of money, which Reilly did not hesitate to obtain through shady deals, swindles and, if the matter required, murder.
Regarding his activity as a spy, Reilly told Lockhart of his involvement in important historical events in Asia, the Middle East, the Côte d'Azur, Germany, and Russia between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also narrated how he obtained various military secrets from other countries for the British secret services in risky espionage operations, very much in the style of James Bond. However, subsequent investigations have shown that it was very unlikely that Reilly was in any of the places that he claimed on the date of the events that he narrated, if not that he was in another place.
It is true, however, his intervention in the events that made him famous in his time, both related to the Bolshevik revolution. In 1919, the British secret services encouraged various factions unhappy with the communist government to try to overthrow it. The plan, led by Lockhart, was to assassinate Lenin and Trotsky and replace the government with another, whose members had been selected by Reilly. But before carrying out his action, Lenin suffered an attack by someone completely unrelated to the plot. The Cheka began a systematic arrest operation of all possible opponents of the regime, and the entire network was arrested. Reilly himself narrowly escaped, and a Soviet court sentenced Lockhart and Reilly to death "in absentia." The affair was widely reported in the Soviet and British press and helped create the Reilly myth.
Later, in 1925, Reilly returned to Russia to lead an alleged organization that once again sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government. But it was a trap of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB). From there he loses track of Reilly. It was rumored that he was killed trying to enter Russia through Finland. It was also said that he "went over" to the Russians. In fact, declassified files have revealed that he was arrested and interrogated in the Lubyanka, and was executed in a forest near Moscow on November 5, 1925.
For those who want to know more about the history of Sidney Reilly, the English writer Andrew Cook has written a couple of books about him, which I do not know have been translated into Spanish. The one I have read is called “On His Majesty's Secret Service; Sidney Reilly, Codename ST1". There is also a curious television series, called "Sidney Reilly, Ace of Spies", very well done and starring Sam Neill, very young and wonderful in the role of him. In its day it was seen in Spain (at least on Telemadrid) and I found it a long time ago on DVD, although I don't know if it's available now.
Image| Sidney Reilly Sam Neill as Reilly
