Was James Bond Based on a Real Person?

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning," wrote Ian Lancaster Fleming from his vacation home in Jamaica in 1953. And so James Bond made his debut in the casino of the fictional French resort of Royale-Les-Eaux in Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale. Bond's real birthplace was in Ian Fleming's fertile imagination as he typed these words at his beachfront home he called Goldeneye in Oracabessa, Jamaica. "My plots are fantastic," Fleming wrote, "while being often based upon truth." His fiction was the playground of bizarre and outlandish antagonists that waged a unique war on political super powers by executing heinous crimes and atrocities. His villains were freakish egomaniacs that have become the precursors of the modern day terrorist. Fleming used many of his experiences as a British naval intelligence officer as the basis for incidents in his popular novels. Along with his fictional plots that were based on fact, real people were the basis for Bond as well as characters like "M," "Q," and Miss Moneypenny.

Ian Fleming, an Englishman who lived from 1908 to 1964, created one of the most memorable characters in fiction from a mixture of his own experiences as a British naval intelligence officer, and a combination of other infamous spies like the Yugoslavian Dusan "Dusko" Popov, British-Russian super spy Sidney Reilly, Secret Intelligence Service Station Chief of Paris, Cdr. Wilfred Dunderdale, British Naval Intelligence agent Michael Mason, friend Sir Fitzroy Maclean, and Fleming's brother Peter Fleming. Popov, wealthy and flamboyant, became one of the most successful double agents of the European theater of war. His persona was the exact opposite of the stereotypical spy of the early twentieth century - the non-descript, non-entity that dwelled in the shadows of the espionage world.

The Development of Bond

Bond, in Fleming's eyes, was an "interesting man to whom extraordinary things happen." Bond's introduction into the literary genre of the secret-agent story [1] was met with mixed results. Negative comments like Paul Johnson's of the New Statesman who dismissed the novels as "sex, snobbery, and sadism," were offset by a growing enthusiasm for Fleming's work from respected authors like Kingsley Amis, Anthony Burgess, Raymond Chandler, Evelyn Waugh, and major public figures like Senator and eventual President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Anthony Eden. William Stephenson, Churchill's secret U.S. envoy known as "Intrepid," told Fleming after reading Casino Royale that it wouldn't sell because the plot was based too much on realistic intelligence work - "truth is always less believable." [2]

"There are three strong incidents in my first book Casino Royale, which carry it along and they are all based on fact," Fleming wrote in a 1962 article "How to Write a Thriller." [3] Two Bulgarian assassins carry box-camera cases, one a bomb and another, they are told by SMERSH agents, a smokescreen to assist their escape. However, both are bombs that "blow the Bulgars to fragments and remove all evidence which might point to SMERSH." Though far-fetched, Fleming concedes, it "was the very method used in the Russian attempt on von Papen's [4] life in Anakara in the middle of the war." The von Papen Fleming referred to was the Chancellor of Germany from June to December in 1932 and a major reason Hitler rose to power. Another Casino Royale incident based on fact is the torture scene that "was a greatly watered-down version of a French-Moroccan torture known as Passer a la Mandoline, which was practiced on several of our agents during the war."

The third scene reveals much about Fleming's interest in the development of his main character: the gambling scene. In 1941, to try to cover their route to the U.S., Fleming and his naval intelligence superior Admiral Godfrey flew from Lisbon, to the Azores, the Caribbean, and eventually into the U.S. east coast. They stayed at the Palacio Hotel in Lisbon. In the Casino Estoril in Lisbon, while he and Admiral Godfrey awaited the flight to Washington, D.C., Fleming found himself in the midst of three German secret agents at a chemin de fer table. "Then the feverish idea came to me that I would sit down and gamble against these men and defeat them, thereby reducing the funds of a German Secret Service." The plan failed when he lost all of his money.

Fleming developed the Casino Royale gambling scene with the help of fellow journalist Stephen Coulter. Coulter worked with Reuters News Agency before the war and became a staff officer at Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters as a member of the Royal Navy. Coulter gave Fleming information on casino operations and inspired him to use the gambling scene in Casino Royale. Coulter went on to become a spy novelist himself. [5]

Double Agent Popov - The Yugoslavian 007

A man who was at the Casino Estoril when Fleming was there, the double agent Dusko Popov, may very well have been one of the key models for Bond. Dusko Popov, a Yugoslavian educated at Freiburg, Germany before the war, worked for the German Abwehr and the British Intelligence community. He was one of the most celebrated and controversial double agents of World War II, along with the Barcelona-born Juan Pujol Garcia[6] (Garbo), who was instrumental in convincing the Nazis that the D-Day landings were only a diversionary attack. The Germans approached Popov believing that he had contacts with English high society. Popov claimed he had met members of the Royal family on the Dalmatian Coast. He played as if he were interested in helping the Germans with intelligence work; though he had been schooled in law in Germany, he hid the fact, like Pujol, that he had a great distaste for the ways of the Third Reich. He contacted a British embassy and told them of his desire to provide the British intelligence. Under the cover of starting an import-export and shipping business (not unlike Bond's cover of "Universal Exports"), he traveled through Lisbon and met with British intelligence.[7] In his autobiography, Spy/Counterspy, Popov wrote, "I'm told that Ian Fleming said he based his character James Bond to some degree on me and my experiences." [8]

In 1941, Popov was given $80,000 in cash from the German Abwehr, the Nazi intelligence group whom Popov double-crossed during his espionage career. Popov was instructed by the Abwehr to use the money to begin a Nazi spy ring in Britain. Popov observed Fleming following him at a café, a restaurant, and casino, possibly figuring Popov as a German agent. At a chemin de fer table Popov, like Bond in Casino Royale, became intent on embarrassing "an insignificant-looking but wealthy Lithuanian. When holding the bank, he would never set a limit, as was customary. Instead, he'd announce haughtily, 'Banque ouverte,' meaning the other players could bet as much as they wished. It was ostentatious and annoying, and not to me alone."

In the Casino Royale mission, Bond is ordered, by his superior M, to financially cripple the Frenchman Le Chiffre at the chemin de fer table. Le Chiffre, an undercover paymaster of a communist-controlled trade union in Alsace, is embezzling funds from the diabolical communist organization SMERSH. Fleming dedicates several chapters to Bond's attempt to break La Chiffre's bankroll with the exotic card game.

Fleming takes several pages to document the mysterious organization SMERSH[9] early in Casino Royale. A conjunction of two Russian words "Smyert Shpionam," (Death to Spies), at first reading, appears to be a fantastic organization spun from Fleming's head, but it was a real Stalinist counter-intelligence group supposedly responsible for the assassination of Trotsky as well as an execution squad. Fleming offers an "Author's Note" at the beginning of the novel From Russia With Love where he states that when the book was written (1956) "the strength of SMERSH at home and abroad was about 40,000 and General Grubozaboyschikov was its chief. My description of his appearance is correct." He also points out that the headquarters described in Casino Royale's fourth chapter are exactly where SMERSH resided at that moment, No. 13 Sretenka Ultisa, Moscow, with the "Conference Room" faithfully described and the real officials summoned to the room "for purposes similar to those I have recounted."

Like the fictional Le Chiffre, Popov gambled money that wasn't his. When Bloch announced "Banque ouverte," Popov dipped into his breast pocket and "extracted the sheaf of bills." He threw down $50,000 dollars of the Abwehr's funds. The sum stunned the casino; even members of other tables grew silent. "I glanced at Fleming. His face was the green of bile." Popov turned to the croupier and said he assumed the house would back Bloch's bet but of course they wouldn't. "I trust you'll call this to the attention of the management," Popov said feigning irritation, "and that in the future such irresponsible play will be prohibited." Fleming had a smile on his face "appreciating my comedy." [10]

Popov was known as a flamboyant dresser, wore jewelry, spent $80,000 in 14 months while in the U.S., had a Park Avenue penthouse, spent lavishly on Hollywood star Simone Simon, and loved fast cars. J.C. Masterman, one of the creator's of the British double agent system, recognized Popov as an agent of high quality able to meet people in any social stratum with excellent business cover for frequent journeys to Lisbon and other neutral cities. Anthony Cave Brown, author of Bodyguard of Lies, wrote that Popov was one of the two most trusted agents in German intelligence with possibly Walter Schellenberg being his only rival in trustworthiness.[11] His British case officer, Ian Wilson, gave Popov the code-name of "Tricycle" because he was to lead three double agents: an MI5 agent "Balloon," a girlfriend "Gelatine," and his brother, "Dreadnought." He originally offered his services to the British in Belgrade before the war and was assigned the code-name "Scout" as part of the Special Intelligence Service. He then allowed himself to be recruited by the German Abwehr and was sent to spy on Britain; Nazis provided him the moniker of "Ivan." He was transferred to MI5 and given the new cover name of "Tricycle." [12] Some writers have noted that his name was changed from "Scout" to "Tricycle" due to his propensity for enjoying two women in bed at the same time, and others have written that the name change was due to his "tripling" of worthwhile information to the British. Popov's celebrity as a double agent would probably be nothing more than a footnote in World War II espionage if it weren't for the fact that he carried documentation into the U.S. that showed that the Axis was interested in details concerning Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack.

In August of 1941 Popov was provided a special "questionnaire" by the German Abwehr concealed in a microdot. He was sent to the U.S. to get answers concerning U.S. and British military power, specifically asking about torpedo protection nets, strengths of U.S. armored divisions, and coastal defenses of Florida military expenditures for 1939 and 1940 for both countries. However, the most intriguing of all were several paragraphs of questions concerning Hawaii, and in particular, Pearl Harbor. There were five sets of questions concerning Pearl Harbor alone.[13]

"There was a certain urgency about it," Popov wrote. The Germans requested that Popov set up a spy network in the U.S. and then travel to Hawaii and research Pearl Harbor. Popov claims that the details concerning the questionnaire were put on a microdot, or "micropunkt" as the Abwehr told him. The microdot, the Abwehr assured him, was the newest of technology that allowed large amounts of information in an extremely small area. The F.B.I analyzed the dot.

Popov wrote in his autobiography his version of his famous trip to the U.S. When in the U.S., Popov was told the information was "too precise, too complete to be believed . . . if anything it sounds like a trap." J. Edgar Hoover, the F.BI. Director had heard of Popov's reputation as a playboy. He was outraged by Popov's lack of morals. Hoover refused to take Popov seriously though he passed on the information to the U.S. Army and Navy intelligence; he placed no special importance on it. Of course the Germans were doing a favor for their Axis partner, the Japanese. In 1946, Hoover wrote an article for Reader's Digest explaining how his agents "intercepted" a Balkan "playboy son of a millionaire in New York" and found a microdot of key information concealed on an envelope. Hoover did not mention that the contents were the German questionnaire concerning Pearl Harbor.[14] Popov was on a ship from New York to Europe when he heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack. " . . . I was sure the American fleet had scored a great victory against the Japanese. I was very, very proud I was able to give the warning to the Americans four months in advance."

The Brothers Fleming

Dr. Peter Waddell of Strathclyde University offers another candidate as a model for Bond: Peter Fleming, Ian's elder brother. Peter Fleming was educated at Eton, like Ian, but unlike Ian he was involved in more dangerous wartime activity. He was an officer in Special Operations Executive (SOE). Peter was often reported missing while engaged in dangerous missions, which included the defense of Norway from the Nazis. SOE was developed in 1940 to encourage anti-Nazi activity in Europe. He served under Sir Colin Gubbins who later became head of SOE and the model, according to Waddell, for Bond's chief "M," a role that has been linked to Maxwell Knight, Admiral Godfrey, and MI6 chief Stewart Menzies by other writers. Gubbins served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I. He was known as "M" and "D/CD (0)" with the position of heading operations and training of SOE as early as November 1940.

Ian's biographer Andrew Lycett's comments on Waddell's theories: "It is conceivable that Peter was the basis for Bond, though there are several candidates and the most likely explanation is that he was a composite." Nigel West wrote, "Bond did undoubtedly have a component of Peter Fleming, who was idealized by his brother." [15] Ian undoubtedly admired Peter's writing career as well. Both had worked in the financial world of stocks and both shared an interest in literature and writing; Peter winning a First Class Honors Degree in English Literature at Oxford. Before his work with the military he was an accomplished author publishing popular travel books Brazilian Adventure, One's Company, and News From Tartary. In 1957, he wrote an exhaustive study of Germany's plans of attacking and occupying the British Isles, Operation Sea Lion.

Fleming conglomerated many of his fellow espionage agents like Michael Mason and Wilfred Dunderdale into Bond. Cdr. Wilfred "Biffy" Dunderdale was a wealthy, flashy dresser who headed the Paris office of the British Secret Intelligence Service and drove his own Rolls Royce through the streets of Paris. He spoke fluent Russian and was instrumental in several operations against the Bolsheviks during the World War I years. He was instrumental in helping break the Enigma code[16] when he helped smuggle a Polish-made replica of the German Enigma cipher machine into Britain for decoding operations at Bletchley Park. Michael Mason, like Fleming, attended Eton, and worked for Naval Intelligence. During the early stages of World War II Mason performed numerous Bond-like operations in Romania, one being the mining of a German ship by swimming to the vessel and attaching magnetic mines to the hull. The ensuing explosion killed about 30 Germans on board; Mason subsequently killed the remaining three survivors when they tried to get to shore. Mason spent five months in Romania conducting dangerous missions against the Germans who were well aware of his presence. "They made a lot of attempts to kill me, generally by attacks in the dark streets at night. Twice they tried to run me down with cars." Both Bond and Mason were political killers but they operated with a code. Mason said, "The only men I ever slew with my own hands were, with the exception of those in the German HQ ship, all making violent attempts upon my own life." Bond, when asked why he didn't just shoot his adversaries in The Spy Who Loved Me, replied, "Never been able to in cold blood."[17]

A 1996 newspaper report told of the death of Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the Scottish author, British diplomat, Tory MP, soldier, and friend of Fleming. Fitzroy was described as a British bulldog, cool in an emergency, ruthless with the enemy. He parachuted behind the lines in Yugoslavia in World War II to link up with partisans of Josef Tito. During one of his adventures there he boldly marched into an enemy camp and seized the leader at gunpoint. Typical of a model candidate for Bond he neither confirmed nor denied numerous reports that he was the model for the Fleming agent.[18]

"James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He's not a Sidney Reilly, you know!" Fleming told his friend and Reilly biographer Robin Bruce Lockhart, son of Robert Lockhart, an assistant to Reilly in several Russian activities. [19]

Moonraker and the Real Nazi Commando Otto Skorzeny

Fleming created the definitive, twentieth-century British enemy, the personification of the Cold War villain when he created Hugo Drax[20] in 1953 for his novel Moonraker. In 1953 with the cooling of the war with Germany and the heating up of the Cold War with the Soviets, Hugo Drax became the perfect foil for Bond. Drax was a knighted Briton with a heroic and mysterious past that led him to become one of Britain's most successful and celebrated businessmen. He was found terribly injured during the Battle of the Bulge when a liaison mess hall was the target of a Nazi attack. After recovering from amnesia Drax built a huge financial empire. Drax is lauded as a hero when he develops an intercontinental missile that will protect Britain from the new Soviet threat. However, Bond finds that Drax is not what he seems to be. Drax is actually an ex-member of Nazi special forces who worked with the legendary SS commando Otto Skorzeny in Operation Griffin designed to penetrate Allied lines and infiltrate the soldiers with Nazi commandos in Allied uniform. Drax was one of the perpetrators when he was accidentally trapped in the liaison mess hall and became badly injured. Drax with his scarred face, large frame, and successful business takes on the notorious persona of the real Skorzeny.

Once lauded as the most dangerous man alive by the Allies, Skorzeny's reputation was won with spectacular commando raids, the most celebrated being the rescue of Mussolini for Hitler. Drax's missile is actually pointed at London from its launching pad in Kent. When Drax explains to Bond his real personal history, the reader sees the scarred face of the new enemy of Britain: the treasonous, ex-Nazi, liar, Soviet sympathizer, would-be mass murderer, racist, and, what really irritates Bond's boss M., a Blade Club card cheat.

M, Moneypenny, Q, and the Cinema Bond Girl

Peter Fleming's work with Sir Colin Gubbins may have given Ian an idea for "M." Bond's M was the head of a British secret service, Admiral Sir Miles Messervy (Ret.). Messervy commanded the HMS Repulse and upon retirement joined the British secret service and recruited Bond. Fleming's M has been the source of many theories concerning his real model. The real head of the British Secret Service during the Second World War was Stewart Menzies, who was known as "C," a single-letter moniker held over from the original chief, Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming, who founded the service in 1909 and ran it until his death in 1923. Waddell claims that Gubbins is the model for M going so far as to say that Fleming used Gubbins's real SOE codename. Fleming's description of M's office was based on Stewart Menzies's office right down to the use of a green light allowing entry into his office.

Another candidate is Maxwell Knight, who was head of MI5's counter subversion section in the 1940s. Knight was the leader of a special MI5 group, which included Fleming, known as Knight's Black Agents. As an agent responsible for counter-subversion, he planted MI5 agents in British communist groups and uncovered a Nazi plot to prevent America's entry into the war. Chapman Pincher, a British journalist who is an expert in intelligence matters, took some time in his book Too Secret Too Long to guess that Maxwell Knight was M.[21] Though Godfrey and Knight did not see eye to eye professionally, Knight's biographer Anthony Masters believes that Fleming "used an amalgam of Knight and his own superior Rear-Admiral John Godfrey, as the model for M, Bond's boss." [22] Curiously, Knight served as Director of Intelligence of the British Fascists (BF) from 1924 to 1927, one of several Fascist groups that flourished between wars, the most notable being Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists (BUF).[23] Knight was a homosexual who married three women and had a reputation as a womanizer. He wrote a book on nature, which was illustrated by future espionage writer David Cornwell (John LeCarre).

"Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for her eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical." [24] M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny, was based on Victoire Paddy Bennett Ridsdale. Moneypenny started her service in the cipher department but became M's personal secretary from 1952 to 1963. Ridsdale was a nineteen-year old nurse when she was approached for a job in intelligence. She became Fleming's administrative assistant and played a key role in Montagu's Operation Mincemeat. Ridsdale helped create a real persona for the fake Major Martin by posing as his girlfriend. "I was sent to buy clothes in all the best men's shops . . . to go to post offices and rather loudly send this telegram to 'my boyfriend,' hoping someone overheard me. I wrote him love letters." She noticed Fleming's debonair flair with gambling and women, a taste for fine suits and martinis. She recognized him as a hard worker who was involved in the clandestine project to break the German military code, Enigma. "He'd go off and do something brave and come back with silk stockings and lipsticks for me but I always kept him at arm's length." She became to know Fleming's work habits well and claimed that he "was James Bond in his own mind. He wrote about himself, there's no doubt about that." In 1991, in honor of her services to her country, Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace made her Dame Ridsdale. [25] However, few things are simple and without controversy within Fleming's world. One of Menzie's assistants was Kathleen Pettigrew, another model for Moneypenny according to Graham Greene biographer Norman Sherry. In July of 2000 Vera Atkins, an SOE assistant to the director died at the age of 92 and was reported by U.S. News and World Report as the model for Moneypenny. Atkins trained and coordinated a network of British intelligence agents, some of them women, who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France during the war. [26]

Q was the fictional gadget wizard who provided Bond, with a comical air of impatience, fantastic, life-saving devices. SOE had a real Q division headed by Lt. Colonel J. Elder Wills, who once designed an exploding bicycle pump and a bomb hidden in a log. [27] There was also a Charles Fraser-Smith who worked with Fleming and provided agents with odd items like shaving brushes with secret compartments and shoelaces that acted as saws.[28]

Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett asserts that the "Bond girl," celebrated in each of the Bond films, was the model of a real Fleming girlfriend, Muriel Wright. Wright was a model, skier, and equestrian with an unconventional flair for living. Wright was engaged to Fleming for a while but it was broken off when Fleming was unable to curtail his hedonistic lifestyle. Wright was killed in 1944 during a London air raid.[29]

The Last Cocktail

Both Popov and Fleming survived the war, no doubt due to their extraordinary imaginations. The British government was grateful for Popov's work and offered him citizenship, which was fittingly presented to him in the bar at the London Ritz. He refused the citizenship and settled in France where he wrote his autobiography Spy/Counterspy, which has been considered by many critics as inaccurate and full of embellishment, not unlike the autobiographical but clearly fictional work of Fleming's novels. Curiously, Popov's book appeared after Hoover's death. Popov died in Opio, France in August of 1981 at the age of 69.

Fleming was never decorated for any of his war service. He took a job as a foreign manager with Kemsley newspapers in which he personally recruited correspondents to cover the world. He took the job with the stipulation that he could have two months off each year, time he planned to spend in Jamaica. In 1946 he purchased land in Jamaica and built his home, Goldeneye, just outside the town of Oracabessa, Jamaica. Fleming wrote all of the Bond novels during the months of January and February from 1952 through 1964 at Goldeneye. Even the meaning of the word Goldeneye has taken on an air of mystery. [30]

At Goldeneye Fleming created the most celebrated espionage secret agent in fiction, though Fleming barely lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his rich imagination. When he was not at Goldeneye typing out Bond's next adventure, Fleming was in London working his newspaper job and brushing shoulders with other unlikely literary giants.[31] Fleming sold over 50 million copies of his books. He died of a heart attack in August 1964 at St. Georges, England at age 56, undoubtedly the result of drinking a bottle of gin and smoking 70 custom-made cigarettes a day. His last words: "Oh, it's all been such a terrible lark."[32]

In the end, how closely did Bond resemble a true, live secret agent? "James Bond is not in fact a hero," Fleming wrote, "but an efficient and not very attractive blunt instrument in the hands of government, and though he is a meld of various qualities I noted among Secret Service men and commandos in the last war, he remains, of course, a highly romanticized version of the true spy. The real thing, who may be sitting next to you as you read this, is another kind of beast altogether." [33]

Popov said of Bond, "I rather doubt that a Bond in the flesh would have survived for more than forty-eight hours as an espionage agent."[34]

End Notes

[1] The literary genre of the secret agent story dates back to Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands, 1903, and J.F. Cooper's The Spy, 1821. Sauerberg, Lars Ole. Secret Agents in Fiction, Ian Fleming, John le Carre and Len Deighton, MacMillan, London, 1984, p. 3. Childers's fiction was based on fact and "written with the purpose of arousing public support for building a stronger navy, and motivated by Childers's intense love of England and Ireland." Spyclopedia, MacDonald, London, 1987, p. 190. Like Fleming, Childers based The Riddle of the Sands on real experiences. The story was based on Childers's yachting experiences off the coasts of Germany and Holland. The novel involves two Englishmen witnessing the German military preparing an invasion of Britain.

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, 1907, is also considered an early form of the secret agent story and considered the first political thriller of the twentieth century complete with spies, conspirators, bombings, all set in London. For an additional viewpoint on "secret agent" literature see Keegan, John. Intelligence in War - Knowledge of the Enemy From Napoleon to Al-Qaeda, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 258.

[2] De La Rue, Keith. "The Name's Fleming - Ian Fleming," Oct/Nov, 1998, TableAus.

[3] Fleming, Ian. "How to Write a Thriller," Electronic Telegraph, Issue 926, December 6, 1997.

[4] Franz von Papen helped bring Hitler to power and was vice chancellor in his cabinet. From 1939 to 1944 he was ambassador to Turkey. Acquitted of war crimes at Nuremberg trial. William Shirer wrote that he was "more responsible than any individual in Germany for Hitler's coming to power." Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Fawcett, New York, 1992, p. 1482. Hitler commented on the bizarre assassination: "The only traces of him [the assassin] were one of his shoes and his revolver! The assassins' accomplices were so disgusted by their master's villainy that they decided to reveal all they knew of the plot." Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-44, Octagon Books, New York, 1976, p. 307.

[5] McCormick, Donald. Who's Who in Spy Fiction, Elm Tree, Great Britain, 1977, p. 57.

[6] Garbo's operation was involved with Operation Fortitude. Seaman, Mark (ed.), The Spy Who Saved D-Day, Bath Press, Bath England, 2000.

[7] Montagu, Ewen. Beyond Top Secret Ultra, Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, Inc., New York, 1977, p. 57.

[8] Popov, Dusko. Spy/Counterspy, University Editions, 1974, p. 150.

[9] SMERSH was created in 1943 and lasted until 1946. The term "death to spies" has been attributed to Stalin. SMERSH personnel uncovered spies, saboteurs, interviewed liberated Soviet POWs, and examined Hitler's bunker and the corpses found there.

[10] Popov, Dusko. Spy/Counterspy, University Editions, 1974, p. 151.

[11] Brown, Anthony Cave. Bodyguard of Lies, Harper Row, New York, 1975, p. 548.

[12] West, Nigel. A Thread of Deceit, Espionage Myths of World War II, Random House, New York, 1985, pp. 69-70.

[13] Masterman, J.C. The Double Cross System, Lyons Press, New York 2000. p. 196-198 (Tricycle's entire questionnaire.)

[14] Haufler, Hervie. "Did J. Edgar Hoover's Distaste for a British Spy Result in the War's Most Tragic Missed Opportunity?" World War II, Feb 2001, p. 70.

[15] Cobidge, Rob and McArthur, Tom. "Was Fleming's Brother the Real James Bond?" The Sunday Times, March 22, 1998.

[16] The Enigma machine, a Nazi ciphering device used by the Germans during WWII, carried most of the German armed services classified communications.

[17] Author unknown. "Real 007 Stand Up," The Sunday Mail, Brisbane, Australia, January 4, 1998, p. 48.

[18] Loudon, Bruce, " 'Real' James Bond Dies in Scotland," The Advertiser, Adelaide Australia, June 19, 1996, pp. 17.

[19] Robin Lockhart was assigned the duty of rescuing Fleming's superior Rear Admiral J. H. Godfrey when the Germans swept into France at the beginning of World War II. Lockhart was successful but couldn't help comment that "a man such as Sidney Reilly would have come home not only with the admiral's daughter but with the complete German order of battle as well!" Lockart, Robin B. Reilly: Ace of Spies, Penguin, Harmondsworth, England, 1967, p. 11.

[20] Of course the movie version of Moonraker must outdo the bizarre cruelty of the Drax in the original novel. For movie audiences in the 1970's the cinema Drax plans on not just destroying London but using his spaceships to kill the whole planet with nerve gas and having it repopulated. Though Bond foiled Drax, novelist Gore Vidal in his novel Kalki wrote of a similar demise to the entire human race but not through rogue Nazis but a fanatical Hindustani.

[21] Sherry, Norman. The Life of Graham Greene, Penguin, 1999, London. p. 83.

[22] Master, Anthony. The Man Who Was M, The Life of Maxwell Knight. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1984. p. 126.

[23] "The Secret State - The British Intelligence and Covert Action (The History of MI5 and MI6)," Wake Up Articles, pp. 1-5.

[24] Fleming, Ian. Casino Royale, MJF Books, New York, p. 29.

[25] Miller, Samantha. "You Only Live Twice: Victoria Ridsdale Was the Model for Bond's Miss Moneypenny." People Weekly, January 26, 1998, v. 49, n. 3.

[26] Grose, Thomas K. "The Real Miss Moneypenny," U.S. News and World Report, July 10, 2000, v. 129, i.2, p. 15.

[27] Cobidge, Rob and McArthur, Tom. "Was Fleming's Brother the Real James Bond?" The Sunday Times, March 22, 1998.

[28] Deegan, Liz. "James Bond Creator Ian Fleming Drew on The Dark Side of His Character," Sunday Tasmanian, Tasmania, Australia, October 22, 1995, p. 76.

[29] Lycett, Andrew. "Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Loved Muriel," The Australian, September 1, 2000, p. 13.

[30] Some have claimed "Goldeneye" is a play on the word "Oracabessa," Spanish for "golden head"; others claim it to be a reminder of Fleming's Operation Goldeneye, and author Anthony Burgess claims it is based on the Carson McCullers's novel, Reflections in a Goldeneye. A 1984 film called Goldeneye (producer David Fitzgerald, starring Charles Dance and Phyllis Logan) presents a loosely based version of Fleming's life. A John Gardner novel called Goldeneye was also made into a Bond film (1995, Albert Broccoli, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael G. Wilson producers, starring Pierce Brosnan).

[31] In 1952, he edited Casino Royale at 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a residence that once housed the esteemed novelist Henry James. Beneath Fleming, on the second floor, lived the poet T.S. Eliot.

[32] Sullivan, Walter. "Bonding Fact, Fiction," The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Australia, December 30, 1995, p. 64.

[33] Hyde, Montgomery. Room 3606, First Lyons Press, New York, 1962, p. x.

[34] Payne, Ronald and Dobson, Christopher, Who's Who in Espionage, St. Martin's Press, 1984, New York, p. 137.