Herbert returned to Scotland Yard, wrote out his report, and then met with Basil Thomson the next day. What happened next is unclear. Mim Kemal Oke (a prominent Turkish “denialist”) claims:

Talat Pasha also dared to make the threat that he was going to incite the Pan-Turanist and Pan-Islamist movements against England, unless she signed a peace treaty favorable for Turkey. This courageous action of Talat Pasha made the British very anxious. Their intelligence service established contact with its counterpart in the Soviet Union to evaluate the situation. Talat Pasha’s plans made the Russian officials as anxious as the British. The two intelligence services collaborated and signed among them the death warrant of Talat Pasha. Information concerning his physical description and his whereabouts was forwarded to their men in Germany. However it was decided that Armenian revolutionaries carry out the verdict.

In other words, Oke claims that British intelligence was asking itself, “Why go through the trouble of killing Talat when the Armenians are ready to do the job?”³¹

An entry in Aubrey Herbert’s journal is interesting:

Friday March 4th, 1921. Reached London on Tuesday, wrote my report that night and Wednesday morning, sent it in yesterday. To-day, I went to see Sir Basil Thomson, to tell him that I thought that he much better send it to Lord Curzon. It seemed to me much better to meet trouble half-way. Alan [sic] Leeper dined last night. I saw he knew something. He is a curious fellow, all light and no heat, all brain and no soul, and an Australian accent in his heart. Basil Thomson quite agreed with me. He also seemed to have given it away, pretty freely, on his own, but said that he had been going to write and ask me if he could not do what I suggested.³²

There is definitive proof that assassination of Turkish leaders had been put on the table by the Brits as early as 1919. A cable dated August 12 of that year from the American ambassador to Great Britain, John W. Davis, to Secretary of State Robert Lansing reads in part: “I also met General Bridges who has just returned from scene of operations.… He also says that by his advice, British government has offered or will offer price of 35,000 sterling on the head of Enver Pasha who is now in Asia Minor leader of the Young Turks and growing pan Islamic movement. He, as well as Curzon, anticipates disorder following withdrawal of British troops. He remarked casually that ‘The thing to do is for us to do the job and you to pay for it.’ ”³³

Given Britain’s obsessive anxiety about revolution among Muslims living in Arab territories as well as in Persia and India, Talat’s threats, as reported by Herbert, were taken very seriously by Scotland Yard. What Talat didn’t seem to understand was that although the British may have welcomed any plots against the Russians, Islamic revolution was their greatest fear. Britain had three prize possessions in that part of the world: the Arab mandates, with their rich oil reserves; the Suez Canal, the vital artery to India; and India itself. As each of these was either populated by millions of Muslims or surrounded by Muslim territories, they were especially vulnerable to Islamic revolt. In fact, with India, Egypt, and Mesopotamia under his command, King George V ruled over more Muslim subjects than any other monarch in the world. Should an Islamic revolution be sparked within the USSR, there was a great danger that such a movement could ignite rebellion in the British possessions as well. Pan-Turanism was an exciting idea for Turkish nationalists. It was a potential nightmare for the British.

What is known is that Herbert was debriefed by Basil Thomson upon his return to England (probably on the Monday, the twenty-eighth of February). Furthermore, British intelligence had pinpointed Talat’s exact location two full months before Tehlirian arrived in Berlin. The address “4 Hardenbergstrasse” is mentioned explicitly in the briefs. Though there is little doubt that Tehlirian and his crew did track down Talat in Berlin, they could not absolutely confirm that “Ali Salih Bey” was in fact Talat Pasha. Caught up in Hamlet-like indecision, the conspirators sought some kind of concrete evidence that the man who lived at 4 Hardenbergstrasse was indeed the former leader of Turkey. Apparently they got the proof they needed.

A few days before the assassination, Tehlirian and his friends received a ciphered telegram from Geneva confirming that the man living at that address was their man. Was it possible that British intelligence tipped off the Tashnags? It would have been very easy for Scotland Yard to let the ARF leadership in Geneva know where Talat was living. Geneva could then contact Natali, and no connection could be traced back to the British.

Is it just a coincidence that Tehlirian moved to Hardenbergstrasse only a few days after Herbert met with Talat? What is also interesting is what Herbert does not say. Herbert obsessively kept a daily journal, but he writes nothing on the day Talat is killed. He claimed that he had food poisoning and could not write. The day after the assassination he states in an offhand manner, “This morning the papers told me of the murder of Talaat.” This is an intriguing entry, given that Herbert had just spent two full days with the man only three weeks before his death. He had written a report on that meeting. He had discussed Talat with his superiors. But when Talat is murdered, he only learns about it in the newspapers? No one phoned him or sent a memo? He continues: “I am very sorry. I think that he was a great influence for peace.” There is a strikeout and then: “He may or may not have been a criminal. I cannot tell, but he was a very unusual man, and had remarkable attraction.”³⁴

Until his death in 1923, Aubrey Herbert continued to receive very sensitive assignments. In 1922, weeks after the Smyrna debacle, he was asked to serve as liaison between Churchill and Mustapha Kemal. A. J. Sylvester, private secretary to the prime minister, advised Lloyd George in a memo on September 26, 1922: “Mr. Churchill thinks that the suggestion that Aubrey Herbert should go and see Kemal is very important. The difficulty in this respect is that Aubrey Herbert is almost blind, and from what I hear is practically out of the picture for this work.”³⁵

In Constantinople, the British ambassador begged Herbert to stay away from Kemal.³⁶ The British had promised the French that they would not deal with Kemal behind their back. In fact, the French were already secretly working with Kemal. Herbert never made it to Ankara and died a year later, eighteen months after the assassination of Talat. Perhaps he was not an out-and-out spy. But Herbert did serve as a model for the fictional character Sandy Arbuthnot in John Buchan’s best-selling spy thriller Greenmantle, published in 1916. One character says of Arbuthnot: “I know the fellow—Harry used to bring him down to fish—tallish with a lean, high-boned face and a pair of brown eyes like a pretty girl’s. I know his record too.… He rode through Yemen, which no white man ever did before. The Arabs let him pass, for they thought him stark mad and argued that the hand of Allah was heavy enough on him without their efforts. He’s blood brother to every kind of Albanian bandit. Also he used to take a hand in Turkish politics, and got a huge reputation.”³⁷

It is not hard to see why British leaders would embrace the idea of working solely with Kemal. If Talat and Enver could be taken out of the picture (as they were), General Kemal would be the only man with whom Britain would have to negotiate. Though Talat was no longer in charge in Turkey, he had every intention of returning to power once the fighting had ceased in “the homeland.” Talat believed that he was first in line to lead postwar Turkey. From his vantage point, the energetic Mustapha Kemal was a general and no more than that. Talat could handle Enver Pasha, and he could handle Kemal. This put the two leaders on an inevitable collision course—one that was obvious to any serious observer of postwar Turkey.