Essay Questions

“Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is accurate.” Why does Ian Fleming preface the narrative with this caution and assertion?

Of interest is that Fleming interjects two opposing ideas into the reading experience. (The same ploy was used almost word-for-word on some posters for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid except that it actually was based on history.) The significant part, of course, is the author’s contention that much of what follows is steeped in authenticity. This actually happens to be true; many parts of the story are inspired by verifiable incidents of history. At the same time, however, inspiration is transformed into spy thriller dramatics which are not verifiable at all. This creates a dilemma for the author who wants to tamp down the more fantastical elements of his story more firmly into grounded reality, but does not want readers confusing the fantastical with the realistic. Thus, the need to offer an assertion tempered by a caution.

One of the elements of the novel which provides background accuracy is the sequence aboard the Orient Express. What real-life spy drama inspired this section?

The Orient Express was already the famous transcontinental passenger rail service in the world when Agatha Christie gave it international renown and a lifetime legacy as the setting of her most famous mystery novel. Intelligence officers from both sides of the Iron Curtain routinely made the trip, but in nearly every case without incident of any kind. In 1950, however, attaché for the U.S. Navy in Romania named Eugene Karpe boarded the Orient Express carrying a briefcase filled with highly sensitive intelligence documents. He never reached his destination. Instead, his bruised and battered body was discovered by a railroad walker inside a tunnel to the south of Salzberg. The death was ruled to be an accident, but Fleming (and others) had little trouble constructing a much more sinister version of events which Fleming later used to create high drama in his novel.

What is Spektor?

Like the sequence with Bond aboard the Orient Express, Spektor is another of those elements of the fictional thriller steeped in “background accuracy.” In this particular case, the historical analogue is not situated in the frigid intricacy of intelligence gathering and stealing machinations the Cold War, but the very hotly contested spy competition of World War II. Specktor is the highly sought-after code-breaking machine of the Soviets which Bond ponders would be a “priceless victory” even if it were only out of the hands of the Russians just long enough for them to change the settings or remove it entirely from service. A single intelligence code-breaking machine endowed with the power of a Rosetta Stone seems to be one of those extremely unlikely plot devices constructed entirely for dramatic purposes, but in fact it is based substantially on the real-life Enigma code encryption device used by the Nazis with such great success until it was notoriously broken by the Allies. Specktor is the bait used by the Soviets to lure Bond into their very complex and broad-based trap to bring down the entire British intelligence system.