At midday on 4 September, ‘a girl of Lt Reilly’s’ brought Hill a message to say that he was safe in Moscow, having travelled by train in a first-class compartment from Petrograd. On arrival at the Nicolai Station in Moscow, he had been informed that his chief courier and mistress, Elizaveta Otten, had been arrested. Hill immediately went to see Reilly, who was now in hiding, occupying two rooms in a flat ‘at the back end of town’.3 When Hill arrived there he found that Reilly had changed his name but was not going out during the day or even at night, as he had no identity papers to match the new name he was using. Reilly wanted a passport, some new clothes and another place to stay, as his present abode was ‘entirely unsuitable’.4 Although Hill makes no direct reference to whose flat this was, the transcript of the so-called ‘Lockhart Trials’ reveals testimony by Olga Starzhevskaya, who states that Reilly stayed with her between 3 and 4 September, which coincides exactly with the two days he spent at ‘the back end of town’.5
When Hill proposed that Reilly should make his escape by the safest route, heading westwards via the Ukraine, using a network of agents in that area for safe houses and assistance, Reilly refused. This route, he felt, would take far too long, and instead chose the more dangerous option of travelling north to Finland, from where he hoped to make his way to a neutral port. In the meantime, Hill moved Reilly to new accommodation the following day, 5 September. Intriguingly, although Hill was not specific as to the location, it would seem from his report that this was an office of some description.6 His dramatised version of these events, published in 1932, however, gives a slightly different account. According to this, Hill lodged Reilly with a prostitute who ‘was in the last stages of the disease which so often curses members of her profession’. Hill claimed that Reilly ‘was the most fastidious of men and while being caught by the Bolsheviks had little terror for him, he could hardly bring himself to spend the night on the couch in her room’.7 In another clue that suggests that he spent 3 and 4 September with Olga Starzhevskaya, Hill states that Reilly’s change of apartment was a good thing, ‘for the place where he had spent the previous night was raided by the Cheka the next evening’.8 This would therefore be the night of 5 September, the date of Olga’s arrest. That same evening six or seven of Hill’s couriers were arrested and summarily executed by the Cheka.
As Hill was not suspected of involvement in the Lockhart Plot, Capt. Hicks decided that he should drop his cover of George Bergmann, resume the identity of Capt. George Hill, and leave Russia with the British Mission, who had been given clearance to leave by the Bolshevik authorities. This was most fortuitous for Reilly, for Hill was now able to give him the George Bergmann identity papers that would enable him to make his escape. According to Hill’s report, Reilly left Moscow aboard a sleeper train bound for Petrograd on Sunday 8 September,9 although Reilly’s own recollection some seven years later was that the date was Wednesday 11 September.10 Hill’s account, being recorded at the time, is more likely to be the correct one. The date of his departure aside, the chronology of Reilly’s recollections coincide pretty much with accounts given by other participants. Reilly’s account states:
Having finished the liquidation of my affairs in Moscow, on 11 September, I departed for Petrograd in a railway car of the international society in a compartment reserved for the German Embassy, accompanied by one of their legation secretaries and using the passport of a Baltic German. I spent about ten days in Petrograd, hiding in various places, to liquidate my network there and also search for a way to cross the Finnish border – I wanted to escape to Finland. I was not able to do this, so I then decided to go through Revel [now Tallinn]. I departed Petrograd for Kronstadt, after receiving a ‘Protection Certificate’, which was issued to natives of the Baltic. I had, in addition to this document for exiting Petrograd for Kronstadt, a pass issued to one of the Petrograd workers committees in a Russian name. There was a launch with a Finnish captain already waiting for me at Kronstadt, on which I spent the night. I set off for Revel… In Revel I took up residence in the Hotel Petrograd using the name of George Bergmann, an antiquarian who had left Russia after a misunderstanding with the Soviet authorities… After ten days I departed secretly on the launch for Helsingfors, and from there to Stockholm and London, where I arrived on 8 November.11
Passing through Revel before crossing the Gulf of Finland to Helsingfors was not an option without risk, for Estonia was then under German occupation and the port was a major naval base teeming with officers and ratings of the German Baltic fleet. Fortunately, on disembarking, the Germans found ‘Herr Bergmann’s’ identity papers to be in order and he was able to walk away unhindered. At the hotel in Harju Street he mixed freely with the German officers staying there and dined with them on several occasions, as well as with the captain and his wife.
It was probably with some relief on Reilly’s part that the little boat eventually left Revel for Helsingfors a few days later. On arrival he bade the captain farewell and gave him a sealed, handwritten letter (in German):
I feel that after everything you have done for me, I must not leave you here clothed in all the lies I had to use, and that I owe it to you to say who I really am. I am neither Bergmann nor an art dealer. I am an English officer, Lt Sidney Reilly, RFC, and have been for about six months on a special mission in Russia, and have been accused by the Bolsheviks of being the military organiser of a great plot in Moscow… I believe it is not necessary to stress that I consider it my duty towards you not to interest myself in anything military here, and not to pump the officers who were introduced to me. I believe that I played the role of the art dealer Herr Bergmann quite well, only once or twice did I catch myself using an English expression; for the rest, I imagine your lady wife was a little suspicious of me! It would be useless to offer you my gratitude – it is too big.12
Despite the self-created myths of daring missions behind German lines, this was his only genuine encounter with German personnel during wartime. That aside, it should equally be acknowledged that he was taking no risks at Revel. Had he been exposed as a fleeing British spy, he would certainly have faced a firing squad.
While Reilly was on his way back to London from Helsingfors, the US Consul, De Witt Poole, en route to America, called into the British Embassy in Christiania (now Oslo) on 30 September. His interview with the British Ambassador resulted in a ‘personal and most secret’ telegram to the Foreign Office in London from Ambassador Sir Mansfeldt Findlay:
There is strong suspicion that an agent named Reilly, whose wife appears to be living in New York, has either compromised Lockhart, who employed him in propaganda among Letts, by exceeding his instructions and endeavouring to provoke a revolt against the Bolsheviks, or has even betrayed him.
Reilly advocated encouraging a revolt, but Lockhart, after consulting the United States Consul General and the French Consul General, refused to do so, and instructed Reilly to limit his efforts to propaganda with a view to deterring the Letts soldiers from resisting Allied forces. It appears that Reilly was in communication with a certain Russian strongly suspected of being an agent provocateur, to whom he had given an address at which he still remained some days ago. Lockhart is now arrested. Neither Reilly nor the Russian has been arrested, and they are still at large. Hence suspicion.13