Not unsurprisingly, Reilly was viewed with suspicion by many of those he came into contact with in St Petersburg. Some thought he was an English spy, others said he was spying for the Germans. In November 1911 the Suvorins had been concerned enough to make enquiries about Reilly and his activities. Boris Suvorin initially asked his associate Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, a Novoe Vremia journalist, to check with Stephan Beletsky, the head of the St Petersburg Police Department. Beletsky referred the enquiry to Gen. Nicolai Mankewitz, head of counter-intelligence. As a result Reilly was briefly kept under close surveillance and had his mail intercepted. As with the previous year’s check initiated by the Interior Ministry, nothing that would give any cause for concern was found and Mankewitz called off the surveillance and closed the file.62
Among the regular correspondents Reilly kept in touch with was his cousin Felitsia, now living in Warsaw. Their close relationship is evident from a verse from the 29th stanza of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam he sent her:
Ironically, Manasevich-Manuilov was himself an Ochrana agent and had supplied information on Boris Suvorin and his fellow directors to the Ochrana authorities.63 As the storm clouds of the First World War approached, concern about German spies intensified and Manasevich-Manuilov turned his attention to supplying lists of suspects. With growing tensions between the two countries, naval contracts dwindled and eventually petered out altogether. Thankfully for Reilly, the clouds of war on the horizon were to have a substantial silver lining.
SIX
THE HONEY POT
While Reilly and Nadezhda Massino were holidaying at St Raphael on the French Riviera,1 a Bosnian Serb student named Gabriel Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a chain reaction that within six weeks would envelop the great powers in a world war. On 5 July Germany declared its support for Austria, who in turn issued an ultimatum to Serbia that was purposely designed to make acceptance impossible. As the great powers squared up to each other, Reilly hastily departed for St Petersburg, leaving Nadezhda to continue the holiday alone.
On his arrival back in the Russian capital, he soon learned from his contacts that Russia had resolved to take military action against Austria if Serbia was attacked. On 28 July Austria declared war on the Serbs and Tsar Nicholas mobilised Russian forces the following day. Germany’s declaration of war on Russia on 1 August found the Russians ill prepared. What would turn out to be a catastrophe for Russia, and the Tsar in particular, would provide Reilly’s big chance, not only to make the millions he dreamed of, but also to make his mark on history.
As the hostilities commenced, a small army of contractors and brokers set off to secure the guns, ammunition, powder and general military equipment that the Russian war effort would need in abundance. Within days of war being declared, Reilly had been commissioned by Abram L. Zhivotovsky of the Russo-Asiatic Bank and the Russian Army to acquire munitions for the Russian Army.2 Before departing for Tokyo in early August he wrote to both Margaret and Nadezhda.3 For Margaret it would be the last letter she would receive from him until the war was over. Once in Tokyo, Reilly successfully secured a large powder deal with Taka Kawada and Todoa Kamiya of Aboshi Powder Company,4 and the contract was then put in the hands of Reilly’s agent in Japan, William Gill.
While Reilly was in Tokyo, Samuel M. Vauclain, vice president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, arrived in St Petersburg seeking contracts for narrow gauge locomotives and munitions.5 Although Reilly was absent from St Petersburg, Vauclain found that his main competitor for the munitions contract was Reilly. It was obvious to him that Reilly had tremendous political backing in Russia which emanated from the office of the Tsar’s cousin, the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, a contact Reilly had made at the time of the Russo-Japanese War through Moisei Ginsburg. The grand duke showed Vauclain a telegram from Reilly, sent through his London office, in which he had cut his contract price.6 However, on this occasion, Vauclain won the contract, and took back an order for 100,000 military rifles, converted to use Russian cartridges, to be manufactured by the Remington Arms Company. Not long after, Vauclain shrewdly converted the Baldwin plant at Eddystone, Pennsylvania, which was running two thirds below capacity, to manufacture arms and munitions.
Before the war was over, the United States would manufacture over a third of all Russia’s war munitions and equipment. American industry quickly saw the opportunity that beckoned, as indeed did brokers such as Reilly. Having concluded the powder deal in Tokyo, Reilly booked a passage on the SS Persia, which sailed from Yokohama Docks bound for San Francisco on 29 December 1914. It arrived in San Francisco on 13 January 1915.7 On arrival he declared to US Immigration that he was a forty-one-year-old merchant of British nationality, born in Clonmel, Ireland. He further declared that this was his first visit to the United States, that his journey had started in St Petersburg and that he had a through ticket to his final destination, New York City.8 Apart from his claim to have been born in Clonmel, the rest of the informa-tion he gave was true. From San Francisco he travelled to New York by train, where he took an apartment at 260 West 76 Street.9
Through the Russo-Asiatic Bank he was introduced to Hoyt A. Moore, an attorney specialising in import and export matters. Moore not only provided advice to the new arrival but also recommended an acquaintance, thirty-year-old Dale Upton Thomas, whom Reilly took on as his office manager. Hays, Hershfield and Wolf, at 115 Broadway, another Moore introduction, became Reilly’s legal representatives. A short walk away, with its classical arched entrance and grand marbled lobby, was the Equitable Building, at 120 Broadway, which Reilly chose as his New York base. He took 2722, a prestigious high-floor suite overlooking the downtown financial district of Manhattan, from where he and Thomas were to operate for the next three years.10 The Equitable Insurance Company was well established in Russia11 and its Broadway building was already home to a number of Russian tenants, a good number of whom were dealing in wartime munitions contracts in America. It was also through Hoyt Moore that Reilly met Samuel McRoberts, vice president of the National City Bank, who was also keen to profit from the honey pot that the war in Europe promised to deliver. To this end he procured Reilly’s appointment as managing officer of the Allied Machinery Company, which was also based at 120 Broadway.12 It has been suggested that Allied Machinery was a Reilly front company, when in fact it had been established since 1911. McRoberts was elected to the board of directors the following year, from which position he was able to introduce Reilly into the company. Company records indicate that Reilly was neither a shareholder nor a director, and was purely an employee, albeit a senior one.13 The purpose of the company was to ‘manufacture, produce, buy, sell, export, lease, exchange, hire, let, invest in, mortgage, pledge, trade and deal in, and otherwise acquire and dispose of machinery, machine-tools and accessories, machinery products and parts and goods, wares and merchandise of every kind and description’. In other words, it had an extremely wide remit and was ideal for trading within the new munitions marketplace.