Chapter 2
The Count
If you were part of London’s high society in 1929 you could’ve met the dashing Hungarian Count Hans Gallieni. Gallieni was young, fit, handsome, cultured and intelligent, a doctor who was fluent in multiple languages.
This suave and sophisticated socialite feigned disinterest and naivety when people talked politics but deep down he was a Trotskyist who passionately believed in global Communism. You see the Count was a fraudster and if you had met him in Germany he could’ve been posing as Count Joseph Perelli or if you ran into him in France perhaps he was posing as a businessman from Italy, Belgium or even the USA.
The Count’s real name was Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bystrolyotov. It’s possible, even probable that Dmitri did have royal blood. The rumours were rife that his father was Count Alexander Nikolaevic Tolstoy, the governor of Vitebsk, a town of around 60,000 people in Belarus but unfortunately for Dmitri, he was born illegitimate.
Dmitri’s mother was just eighteen years old when he was born, she was the daughter of a Ukrainian clergyman. His mother was a passionate suffragette who was determined to prove that a woman in her modern world didn’t need a man in order to raise a child. So she offered herself up to the local “Nobility” and swiftly found a taker.
Thus Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bystrolyotov was born January 4, 1901 but by the time he was 3 years old his mother had decided that she didn’t want to raise a child anymore and sent him away to live with relatives.
So Dmitri became just another “Royal Bastard” in a time and place that was full of them, unrecognised by his father and unwanted by his mother. Dmitri was desperate to belong, to be part of something bigger than himself and he had burning contempt for the Aristocrats, the Ruling Class, he was the ripest of converts to communism and a star pupil for Soviet Intelligence.
Dmitri was Russia’s answer to Errol Flynn, he was a handsome womaniser, and a sailor turned actor but he exceeded Errol in that he was also a doctor, writer, polyglot, and a lawyer, he was the Soviet James Bond long before there even was a 007.
Posing as Royalty he seduced key women all over Europe. He persuaded them to steal files from work and even from their own husbands. He spied in England, France, Italy, the Congo and many other exotic locales.
Dimtri’s magnum opus was in NAZI Germany (Berlin to be precise) where in the mid 1930’s he managed to steal literal reams of files from the NAZI’s. He proved, years before anyone else, that Germany was rearming.
Dmitri was perhaps the greatest spy the Soviet Union ever produced but in 1937 he was arrested in one of Starlin’s purges. Starlin had grown suspicious of anyone who had lived in a foreign country so he had them all arrested. When Starlin’s staff double checked on the arrest of Dmitri, Starlin replied “He’s just another Royal Bastard in a continent full of them”.
Dmitri was tortured until he confessed to whatever it was that they wanted him to confess to. Unfortunately his wife (yes he was married all this time) and mother were denied any work, food or shelter from the state because of Dmitri’s crimes & tragically they both committed suicide.
Dmitri was imprisoned until Starlin died in 1955, Dmitri died in 1975.
