Another Rasputin acolyte, Pyotr Badmaev, may also have had a connection with Reilly, according to Richard Deacon.27 Badmaev, known as the ‘cunning Chinaman’, was a doctor in Tibetan medicine, or so he claimed. In reality he was, like Reilly, a cross between a patent medicine salesman and a businessman- cum-broker. A Buryat of Asiatic descent, Badmaev was born in Siberia in 1857. His brother had established a Tibetan pharmacy in St Petersburg, and Pyotr followed him to the capital and soon established himself practising Tibetan medicine. His patients were predominantly in the upper echelons of St Petersburg society and, thanks to Rasputin, his influence permeated to the very top. He established a trading company, Badmaev & Ko, which was involved in land speculation and also sought to market a range of commodities including his Tibetan herbal remedies. These claimed to treat such complaints as pulmonary disease, neurasthenia, venereal disease and impotence. It is significant that while most patent medicine companies in England at this time promoted home-grown remedies or those imported from America, the Ozone Preparations Company was unique in having amongst its stock ‘Tibetan Remedies’.28
The banker and publisher Alexei Filippov, as well as having associations with Rasputin, also knew Vladimir Krymov, the accountant of the Suvorin family, the proprietors of the Novoe Vremia newspaper. Krymov, who had power of attorney from Alexei Suvorin due to Suvorin’s ill health, was closely involved in the affairs of the family, from which perspective he provides an interesting insight into Reilly’s life during the period 1910–1914. Krymov relates how Reilly visited the newspaper’s editorial office nearly every day and was treated by the staff there as ‘one of their own’.29 Reilly’s ability to network and keep his ear to the ground was obviously well recognised by editor Mikhail Suvorin and utilised accordingly.
Mikhail’s younger brother Boris shared Reilly’s interest in aviation. According to Robin Bruce Lockhart they formed a flying club called The Wings Aviation Club,30 which sponsored the St Petersburg–Moscow Air Race.31 The reality, however, was somewhat different. Although Reilly was a member of a flying club, the All-Russian Aviation Club,32 Krylia (Wings) was, in fact, a commercial company set up principally by Boris Suvorin, at Reilly’s instigation. In other words, it was Reilly’s idea but Suvorin’s money was used to launch it. The Krylia Joint-Stock Company opened for business at Apartment 42, 12 Bolshaya Morskaya on 21 April 1910, amid a flurry of interest from the press, aviators and central government.33 The Ministry for the Interior in particular seems to have taken a close interest in the company, requesting that the Ochrana make routine enquiries into the five directors of the company – Frenchman Ludovic Arno, Mikhail Efimov, Boris Suvorin, Konstantin Veygelin and ‘Englishman’ Sidney Reilly.34 All five were given a clean bill of health by the Ochrana, which would seem to indicate that up to this point they had nothing on Reilly and furthermore did not identify or associate him with one Sigmund Rosenblum who was still on their ‘wanted list’. Such official interest might also reflect the fact that the Russian government was now taking a particular interest in the development of aviation for military purposes. In fact, Tsar Nicholas had, only a few months before, announced the creation of the Imperial Russian Air Service under the command of Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich.
Suvorin invited the famous Russian aviator Nikolai Evgrafovich Popov to open the office, and arranged for the event to be exclusively covered by Novoe Vremia. The company was the first to commercially market aircraft in Russia. Reilly’s interest in aviation had apparently been kindled by Wilbur Wright’s demonstration of the ‘Wright Flyer’ at the Hunaudières Racecourse at Le Mans in August 1908. The Wrights had, by this time, concluded that there was more to be gained from displaying their machines in public than from continued secrecy. It is clear from the European press at the time that there was certainly widespread scepticism concerning the merits of the Wright aircraft owing to their publicity-shy reputation. This attitude changed dramatically when Wilbur Wright arrived in France three months before the Le Mans demonstration and began touting the merits of the 1905 ‘Flyer’, a machine capable of flying up to twenty-five miles at a time when Henry Farman was endeavouring to achieve one kilometre in his Voisin.
Reilly was among the large crowd that gathered at Hunaudières on 8 August to watch Wilbur Wright take to the air. All scepticism vanished as he rose to a height of thirty feet and made three circuits of the racecourse before making a perfect landing within fifty metres of where he had taken off. Louis Bleriot, who was also in the crowd, told the New York Herald that, ‘for us in France and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has begun… my view can best be conveyed in the words – it is marvellous!’
The new era reached Germany the following year, when Orville Wright visited Berlin to give a similar flying demonstration. Reilly arranged to meet him afterwards and discovered the Wrights planned to withdraw from active participartion in flying demonstrations in order to concentrate on the commercial exploitation of their machines. When, the following year, they launched the Wright Brothers Company, Reilly shrewdly negotiated an agreement to be their sole representative within the Russian Empire and to market their aircraft there. Before too long Reilly had also signed a similar deal with the Farman Company.
The objective of Krylia was, according to Suvorin, to ‘assist the development of aeronautics and aviation in Russia’. This, however, did not extend to organising the St Petersburg–Moscow air race, which was in fact a competition rather than a race, meaning that competitors were judged on performance in certain areas and not just on their times.
It was actually organised by the Imperial Aero-Club of St Petersburg and the Moscow Aeronautical Society. There is no record of Krylia or Reilly in particular providing any of the sponsorship. The event cost 107,500 roubles, which was met by a donation of 100,000 roubles from the Russian government, the remainder being made up of smaller sums donated by the Imperial Aero Club, the Moscow Aeronautical Society, Moscow City Council, the Riga Section of the Imperial Aero Club, the Imperial Russian Automobile Society, and the Russian Hunting Club. The Nobel Oil Company and the Vacuum Oil Company donated their products to the event.35 Lockhart is correct in stating that the competition was won by Vasilyev, although it is unlikely that Reilly was there to meet him in Moscow. After landing in Moscow, Vasilyev publicly lambasted the organisers of the event for incom-petence. The Imperial Aero Club retaliated by boycotting his victor’s banquet, which as a consequence had to be cancelled!36
Reilly can, however, justifiably claim the credit for founding St Petersburg’s first airport.37 According to Vladimir Krymov, this too was an example of Reilly knowing something no one else knew. He had found out that, under an eighteenth-century right of use going back to the time of Peter the Great, the Commandant of St Petersburg had the right to use a large piece of land on the outskirts of the city, known as Komendantskoe Pole (the Commandant’s Field). In practice, however, this right had never been taken up. Reilly also discovered that the long-term tenant of the land was an elderly Englishwoman who was paying a small annual rent and sub-letting plots to allotment keepers. Reilly traced her and arranged to pay her a visit. In Krymov’s words, ‘Reilly charmed her with his manners and beautiful English and obtained from her the right to let the whole field as an aerodrome’.38