Summary
Bond arrives at a horse farm in Kentucky. Banjo music plays as we see the car pull up at the farm, and Bond is welcomed to "Auric Stud" by Goldfinger. Oddjob escorts Bond into a basement lair at the estate, a small cell where he will be staying. Sitting down on the bed, Bond taps his shoe as the camera zooms in on it. The radar gets picked up by Felix and an associate. The associate suggests they go check on Bond, but Felix is sure that he will reach out if he needs them.
Upstairs at Auric Stud, a number of representatives from various organized crime groups are meeting. As Goldfinger enters the room, one of the men complains that they weren't informed that "New York and the West Coast were in on this." The men bicker, and confront Goldfinger about the fact that he owes each of them 1 million dollars. Calmly, he tells them they can either have the million today of 10 million tomorrow.
Goldfinger presses a button on the pool table, and its face turns upside down, revealing a control board of some kind. As he turns some switches, the lights go off in the room and shades descend over the windows. Twisting yet more knobs, a map appears on a nearby wall, and using a pool stick, Goldfinger begins a demonstration, pointing out his "bank" on the map, the gold depository at Fort Knox. Inside, he tells them, is 15 billion dollars worth of gold—the entire gold supply of the United States.
The men laugh about Goldfinger's suggestion that they break into Fort Knox. A man named Solo objects to the plan, pointing out that there are 35,000 troops stationed around Fort Knox, and Goldfinger corrects him that it's 41,000, before turning another knob on his control panel, which opens the floor and reveals a model of the grounds at Fort Knox. Goldfinger gives a speech: "Man has climbed Mount Everest. Gone to the bottom of the ocean. He has fired rockets at the Moon. Split the atom. Achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor... except crime!"
Downstairs, Bond waves to the man watching his cell, then smiles at him curiously and ducks beneath the window. When the guard goes over carrying a gun and kicks open the cell, Bond is nowhere to be found. Suddenly, Bond jumps down from the ceiling and lands on top of the guard, wrestling the gun out of his hands and kicking him in the face, rendering him unconscious. Grabbing the gun, Bond leaves the cell, puts on his jacket, and listens in on Goldfinger's speech to the mobsters.
As the men get more and more frustrated with what they perceive to be an impossible proposition, Goldfinger insists that he has a foolproof plan for breaking into Fort Knox. Bond, from the basement, climbs into the model of Fort Knox and watches the meeting from within the model. This is Operation Grand Slam, Goldfinger says, and he tells the men that he's spent 15 years planning the breach. Goldfinger holds up a canister that one of the mobsters helped to bring over the Canadian border, and thanks all of the mobsters for helping bring supplies that will contribute to Operation Grand Slam.
Meanwhile, as Goldfinger describes the plan, Bond grabs a piece of paper and writes down the plan for Operation Grand Slam on it. Goldfinger explains that the canisters smuggled into the country contain Delta 9, "an invisible nerve gas which disperses 15 minutes after inducing complete unconsciousness for 24 hours." Goldfinger tells the men that tomorrow at dawn, Pussy Galore's flying circus will spray the nerve gas into the atmosphere, which will immobilize all fortifications at Fort Knox. Then a group will break into Fort Knox, dynamiting an electric fence at the border, and stealing the gold.
One of the mobsters, Solo, wants his money now instead of getting involved in the Grand Slam, and Goldfinger escorts him out of the room. Meanwhile, Bond takes the chip in his shoe out and wraps it in the piece of paper on which he has written the plan for Operation Grand Slam.
Just as he does, Pussy Galore grabs Bond's ankles and sends him toppling to the ground. "Pussy, who taught you judo?" Bond says smirking, and she demands that he hand over the gun he stole. She then escorts him to Goldfinger. Along the way, one of Goldfinger's associates releases Delta 9 into the room where Goldfinger has just given his demonstration, which knocks them all out.
Outside, Goldfinger says his goodbyes to Solo, just as Pussy walks Bond up to the mansion. Goldfinger introduces Bond to Solo, as "another of [his] distinguished guests." As Solo gets into his car to leave the estate, Bond slips his note about Operation Grand Slam, with the tracking device, into Solo's pocket without Solo seeing. Oddjob gets in the car to drive Solo to the airport and they leave.
"I found him under the model," Pussy says to Goldfinger and Bond tells the jeweler that he enjoyed his discussion of "Operation Grand Slam."
One of Felix's coworkers notes the location of Bond's tracking device, and alerts Felix that Bond is on the move. They drive after the signal, following Oddjob driving Solo to the airport. On the highway, Oddjob drives past the exit for the airport and turns onto a side street, where he shoots Solo in the chest. Felix and his associate follow Oddjob, thinking that Bond is in the car. Eventually, Oddjob drives into a junkyard, where he gets out and has the car immediately compacted with Solo inside.
The car, now a small bundle of parts, is lowered into the back of another car, which Oddjob drives back to Goldfinger's estate. As Felix observes the radar, he notes that the location device isn't working, and tells his associate to go to the farm, as suspenseful music plays.
On the patio at Auric Stud, Goldfinger tells Pussy Galore that her share of Operation Grand Slam will make her a "very rich woman." She tells him that she plans to retire to an island in the Bahamas once she gets her share. "I'll hang up a sign that says 'No trespassing' and go back to nature," Pussy tells him. Suddenly, an assistant comes up tells Goldfinger that Felix and his associate are on the premises with binoculars, and Goldfinger—suspecting that they are Bond's friends—tells the assistant to bring Bond up to the patio. "Let's convince them he needs no assistance," Goldfinger suggests to Pussy, telling her to change her clothes.
Bond is being held at gunpoint by a number of guards when an assistant summons him upstairs. Once Bond is on the patio, Goldfinger offers him a mint julep, and Bond accepts. Bond then confronts Goldfinger about the fact that Operation Grand Slam won't work, and tells him that he knows Delta 9 is a fatal substance. "You'll kill 60,000 people uselessly," he says, but Goldfinger is unfazed. Sitting down, Bond posits that the gold at Fort Knox, $15 billion in bullion, will be so heavy that it will be impossible to transport. He notes that Goldfinger will have, at most, two hours before the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines apprehend the plan.
Analysis
Bond's status as a lone wolf, someone who can get by on his own, is further cemented by his associates' attitude towards him when he is taken as Goldfinger's prisoner. As Bond's freedom is limited—he is tranquilized several times and he is housed in a small prison-like cell at Goldfinger's estate—we see Felix and M. and another associate deciding that it's best to let Bond fend for himself. When an associate picks up his radar at Auric Stud and suggests to Felix that they go "check up on him," Felix insists, "He'll shout if he needs us." Thus, there is a tension between the fact that his associates could help save him, and the fact that Bond tends to work better using his own devices.
Even in the stickiest of situations, Bond remains as calm and suave as ever. After luring the guard of his cell into the room, jumping on him and stealing his gun, Bond wanders out of the cell, grabs his jacket and puts it on. It is as if the high-intensity action sequences he puts himself through are all in service of locating his finely-tailored suits and composing himself. Bond's stylishness is as important as his ability to complete difficult feats of strength and cunning.
In this section, we learn that Operation Grand Slam is a sophisticated plot to break into Fort Knox using a magic ingredient, a nerve gas called Delta 9 which can render people unconscious for 24 hours. The gas is a biological weapon with which Goldfinger will knock out his enemies while stealing their gold, and the introduction of the nerve gas into the equation grabs the attention of the skeptical mobsters, and of Bond, who secretly writes down the plan on a piece of paper.
There was hardly ever any doubt that Goldfinger was an evil man, and at every turn, he reveals himself to be even more merciless than before. Following his meeting with the mobsters in which he outlines his plan for Operation Grand Slam, Goldfinger has an associate release the nerve gas Delta 9 into the meeting room, knocking them all out. While the mobsters thought they were in on the plan to break into Fort Knox, Goldfinger was only using them all along, and his casual dismissal of them using the Delta 9 epitomizes his ruthlessness. Not only is Goldfinger a villain, but he is an especially crafty and dishonest one at that.
A persistent instance of dramatic irony is that Bond's associates never quite know what's going on with him. When he needs help, they are convinced they should stay out of it. Then, when they do go and find Bond, Goldfinger apprehends their plans to help by making it look like Bond is perfectly fine and being well taken care of. The discrepancy between what we know—that Bond needs some extra help in order to dismantle Goldfinger's plan—and what Bond's associates suspect accounts for a great deal of dramatic irony.
