Free Ace of Spies by Andrew Cook

out in daylight by air and the attack on Port Arthur was at night by torpedo boats, the theory behind both acts of war was the same. The Japanese had calculated that the only possible way they could defeat a larger and theoretically stronger power was by attacking without warning and in so doing striking a blow from which the enemy would have great difficulty recovering.
    As a result of superior intelligence, Japan’s Admiral Togo was not only aware of the positions of all Russian ships but was equally aware of the layout of Russian minefields and search-light locations. This enabled the Japanese to move through the minefields unhindered and to emerge from the darkness unseen by Port Arthur’s search lights, which on the night of the attack were mysteriously disabled.Although Togo’s attack succeeded in crippling the Russian Pacific fleet, it was not until 1 January 1905 that the Japanese actually captured the port. Neither side had foreseen the lengthy siege of Port Arthur and the Japanese in particular were not prepared for a winter campaign. Although ultimately victorious, 58,000 Japanese lives were lost in comparison to the 31,000 Russians who perished defending the town.
    Credit for Togo’s initial attack on Port Arthur, which was one of the most brilliantly conceived and co-ordinated assaults ever undertaken, was very much the result of the advance intelligence operation which enabled him to access Russian defence plans. How he managed to obtain these has been shrouded in mystery for nearly a century. When the US army, led by Gen. MacArthur, arrived in Japan in August 1945, it set about examining Japanese intelligence records. A large consignment of material was taken away by MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Gen. Willoughby, and sent to Washington for detailed analysis. Students of the Russo- Japanese War hoped that here at last would be revealed the answer to the mystery. Sadly, no hint as to the identity of the agent who procured the plans for Togo was ever found in the records, copies of which now reside in America’s National Archives in Washington DC. As a result, it was widely assumed that the solution to the riddle had been lost or destroyed.
    In Moscow’s Military Historical Archives 6,000 miles away, however, a dusty file of intelligence reports finally exposes the Russians’ number-one suspect. The file, not seen by unauthorised eyes before the downfall of Soviet communism, contains a report from April 1904 addressed to ‘His Excellency the Commandant of Port Arthur’ and marked ‘Secret’. 24 In it, the conclusions of an in-depth investigation into the theft of harbour defence plans are revealed, and the culprit named as one Ho-Liang-Shung, a Chinese engineer who worked under the Head Marine Architect, Svirsky. Ho-Liang-Shung had a detailed knowledge of the harbour, its fortifications and mine field. He also had access to the harbour defence plans. According to the report, he had priorknowledge of the Japanese attack as early as 26 January 1904. On 23 February and again on 8 March, large sums of money were deposited into his bank account. On 10 April he attempted to leave without an exit permit and was detained by the port gendarme. In spite of this, he managed to escape confinement and was never seen again.
    While convinced of Ho’s guilt, the Russians were clearly of the view that he had not acted alone and was very much a minor player in a wider web. The identity of his ‘go-between’, the person to whom he had given the plans and who had paid the money into his bank account, was never established. Intriguingly, some twenty-seven years later, when Margaret Reilly wrote a manu-script about her husband’s life, she referred in passing to a port engineer acquaintance he had known in Port Arthur – ‘Ho-Ling-Chung’. 25 While the spellings are at variance, the chances of there being two engineers with such similar names, moving in similar circles, must be viewed as somewhat remote. Bearing in