TSARIST RUSSIAN SPY ON SHELF: NO WORK NOW

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 94, 13 September 1948, Page 6

TSARIST RUSSIAN SPY ON SHELF: NO WORK NOW

Colonel Victor Konstantine Kaledin, international spy, who hunted Stalin and Molotov for the Tsar, lived for some time in a cave at Baggy Point on the wild North Devon coast —eating boiled seaweed and trying to relieve poverty by writing short stories. He sold his war decorations for £2. Then, because the weather forced him to seek lodgings in Croyde village, he parted with his mother’s pearl and amethyst' rosary—for £3. Now aged 57,, no longer the dashing ex-officer of the Imperial Guards, the colonel wears cordurory trousers and a woollen sweater sent by friends. He started life as a page to Tsar Nicholas 11. After learning 15 languages, the secret service made him agent K. 14, and he guarded the Russian royal family. • For six months he hunted. Stalin after the latter had blown up a bank. Stalin was caught and exiled. Molotov, too. When the 1914 war began, the colonel was Sent to Germany as a double agent—to gain information by working for the German Intelligence. He followed, trapped and shot a German spy who gained entry into a lighthouse to wreck the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Then he joined British Intelligence, posed as a steward in a French vessel, uncovered a plot to sink the British battleships Iron Duke and Queen Elizabeth, and was shot at as he escaped overboard. He earned £2 5s a night working for Mussolini. He also rounded up strike leaders for American G-men. ' Then he settled in Britain, married and was naturalised in 1936. War came again. He volunteered for espionage, and was turned down, and worked as a fitter’s mate near Bath. In his spare time he perfected a new invisible ink. “The world has no use for an old spy,” said Colonel Kaledin recently.