One cannot help suspecting that the main motive for wanting to trace her estranged husband was the ‘strained financial position’ she refers to. It would seem that Margaret had been experiencing a difficult time financially during the war when she lost contact with Reilly. In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that her financial problems extended somewhat further back. On 15 May 1914 she made a Will naming the sole beneficiary as one Joseph Wary of The Villa Charlotte in Zellick, Belgium, ‘as evidence of my gratitude for the financial help which he gave me’.18
Little did Margaret know, as she sat down to write to the Air Board on 4 January, that her ‘dear husband’ was at that moment several thousand miles away back in Russia, lunching with Boris Suvorin in Ekaterinodar, Ukraine. As an acknowledgement of C’s confidence he had, within weeks, been assigned another mission, this time in the company of Capt. George Hill, whose acquaintance he had made in Moscow.
A few days after arriving back in London on 11 November, the day the war finally came to an end, Hill was summoned to SIS headquarters by C to report personally on the work he had undertaken in Russia.19 At the end of the interview Hill was given one month’s leave. ‘Alas’, recalls Hill, ‘less than a week had passed before I was summoned back to his office once again’.20 On arrival, he found none other than Reilly in C’s room. Reilly’s presence was no doubt the result of his intense lobbying to return to Russia at the first opportunity. On 25 November, for example, he had written to Lockhart to solicit his help and support:
I have told C (and I am anxious that you should know it too) that I consider that there is a very earnest obligation upon me to continue to serve – if my services can be made use of in the question of Russia and Bolshevism. I feel that I have no right to go back to the making of dollars until I have discharged my obligations. I also venture to think that the state should not lose my services. If a halfway decent job would be offered me I would chuck business altogether and devote the rest of my wicked life to this kind of work. C promised to see the FO about all this.21
Five days later, on 30 November, the Foreign Office agreed that two agents should be sent out to the south of Russia under the cover of the British Trade Corporation. Reilly, it was decided, should go, ‘with an assistant of his own choosing’,22 hence Hill’s summons to Whitehall Court. With both Reilly and Hill now before him, C explained that ‘certain important information about the Black Sea coast and South Russia was wanted for the Peace Conference that was to assemble in Paris at the end of the year’. Not only was Hill asked to volunteer to accompany Reilly on this mission to Russia, thereby forfeiting his leave, but was also informed that the Southampton train from Waterloo was departing in two hours time. After some coaxing from C, Hill agreed to go. Reilly had apparently had his passport issued and been briefed on the mission two days before where he ‘got final instructions’ and was told that he would, ‘leave on 12th’.23 Why Hill was called in at such short notice is not clear. His claim to have only been a week into his leave when summoned back may have been in error, however, as according to Reilly’s diary their meeting with C occurred on 12 December.
Several days before the meeting with C, the Izvestia newspaper had reported in Moscow that both Reilly and Lockhart had been sentenced to death in their absence by a Revolutionary Tribunal for their roles in the attempted coup, and that their sentence would be carried out immediately should either of them ever be apprehended on Soviet soil in the future.
Clearly unperturbed by this, no mention appears in Reilly’s diary. The diary does, however, corroborate the fact that Hill was somewhat less than enthusiastic to go. Hill recalls that as they left Whitehall Court that afternoon, ‘Reilly could not bear the leisurely way in which I left the building with him’,24 and quotes him as saying, ‘Hill, I don’t believe you want to catch that train. I bet you fifty pounds you won’t be on it’. As it turned out, Hill caught the train with only seconds to spare. Arriving on the platform he saw Reilly, ‘hanging out the window’ of a first-class compartment halfway up the train. Apparently he ‘paid up like the sportsman he was’. Reilly himself simply recorded in his diary that day, ‘Left at 4.30 p.m. Hill just managed catch train’.
According to Hill, Reilly was ‘extremely keen on the trip’. This may have been down to revelling in his new role as ‘gentleman spy’, or could have been for other reasons. If there was any truth to the story that he had been secreting away a wife and two children in Port Arthur, and then in Petrograd, where better to have moved them than to Odessa? He had maintained close personal and business ties with the city, which was not only free from Bolshevik control, but was an international port and a gateway to other destinations should a further move be necessary.
Arriving in Paris the following day they dined at La Rue in the Boulevard de la Madeleine, the proprietor of which was none other than the former chef at the Café de Paris (known as Kiuba’s) in St Petersburg. Hill recalls they had, ‘a great welcome and a great dinner, with marvellous wine and the oldest brandies served as brandy should be served, in crystal goblets’.25 They then proceeded to the Gare de Lyon to catch the 8 p.m. train to Marseilles. Although occupying a first-class compartment, Reilly records that he had a ‘horrible night’.26 This is hardly surprising, for according to Hill, ‘we were packed liked sardines in a firstclass carriage with people sitting on the floor and along the entire length of the corridor outside the coupes’. The train was not only overcrowded with ordinary passengers but with ‘scores of badly wounded French soldiers on their way from hospital to their homes in the south’.27
Finally arriving in Marseilles at 11 a.m. the next morning they met up with John Picton Bagge, who was returning to his post as Consul-General in Odessa, and John Waite, the former Consul- General in Helsingfors. As merchants, accredited by the Board of Trade, Hill and Reilly, along with Bagge and Waite, boarded the Greek warship Isonzo, bound for Malta. Hill notes that this was not a strange arrangement, as Greek naval ships often carried traders. The Isonzo docked at Valetta at noon on 17 December, where the party stayed overnight. Reilly spent his time in Valetta ‘making purchases’28 and writing to Nadine in New York. At 3 p.m. the following day they set sail for Constantinople on board the Rowan, provoking complaints from Reilly that it was, ‘the dirtiest ship [I] ever saw’.29 After a near miss with a floating mine off the coast of Gallipoli on 22 December, they finally arrived in Constantinople at 8 a.m. the next day, which Reilly described as ‘a lovely sight’.30 After lunch aboard HMS Lord Nelson, as guests of Admiral Calthorpe, commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, the final stretch of the journey to Sevastapol was made on the minesweeper Larne. The Larne’s skipper, Cmdr Hilton, clearly struck up a good rapport with Reilly, who found him to be a ‘tremendous chap’.31 They finally stepped ashore on Christmas Eve, and immediately set about arranging meetings.
Reilly and Hill had arrived at a particularly crucial time, for the British government had resolved on 13 November to aid the anti-Bolshevik forces, or Whites as they were known, led by Gen. Anton Denikin. Based in the south of Russia, the hope was that his Volunteer Army might defeat the Bolsheviks by pressing up through the Ukraine and into the heart of Russia, where another White Army, led by Admiral Alexander Kolchak, was advancing from the east.